Jack

Kit’s letter came on the Sunday.

It came to Windrush, to the post rack in the hall, in a long white envelope with a university crest on the flap, and Kit did not open it. He took it out of the rack and looked at it and put it in the inside pocket of his blazer and went to chapel and sat through the whole of chapel with his hand on his chest over the pocket like a man with a pain, and after chapel he went to the drying room and sat on the floor with his back against the radiator, where he had sat in January after the mocks, and did not come out.

Theo went in.

Frederick did not. He stood in the corridor outside the drying room with Will and waited, the way you wait outside a door in a hospital, and after eleven minutes the door opened and Theo came out, and his face gave away nothing whatever.

“Well?” said Will.

Theo did not say anything. He stood aside.

Kit came out behind him. He had his glasses off. He had the letter in his hand, open. His face was red and his eyes were red and he was holding the letter out in front of him at arm’s length as though it might go off.

“A,” said Kit.

“What?”

“A. In the chemistry. The school’s final mark. In May.” He looked at the letter. “They wrote to the school for it early because of the scholarship. And it came this week. And it’s an A.” He looked up. “And they’ve given me the place. Leeds. Medicine. Deferred one year. For Ellicott.” He looked at the letter again. “And the scholarship. The full one. The one Dad saved for. Forty-one years on the Number Four.” His voice did something. “He doesn’t have to pay. Any of it. Any of it.”

Nobody said anything in the corridor.

Then Kit Barraclough turned round, and looked at Theo Hartigan, who was standing beside the drying room door with his hands in his pockets, six foot two, looking at the floor.

“Equilibria,” said Kit.

Theo did not look up.

“A problem a night. Since January. Every night. In this corridor. On the floor. You did them with me. Every one. And I argued with every one. And you did them anyway.” Kit’s voice was very flat, the flat Leeds voice, the voice that had read Theodore Hartigan, Page of Honour, interests: chemistry, biology, first aid off a piece of paper on the gravel in August. “Every night for five months.”

“You did them,” said Theo, to the floor. “I just sat there.”

“You sat there,” said Kit, “every night.”

He looked at Theo for a long time.

Then he put his glasses back on, and folded the letter, and put it back in the inside pocket of his blazer, and stepped forward, and put both arms round Theo Hartigan, which involved reaching up a considerable distance, and held on, in the corridor outside the drying room in Windrush, with his face against the front of Theo’s school jumper, and did not say anything else at all.

Theo stood there with his hands still in his pockets.

Then he took them out.

“I haven’t even applied yet,” said Theo, over Kit’s head, to Frederick, in a slightly strangled voice. “I’ve only got half the form done. And he’s in.”

“You’ll get in,” said Kit, into the jumper.

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe,” said Kit, and let go, and walked away down the corridor with his hand on his chest over his pocket, and at the end of the corridor, by the stairs, they heard him say, quite loudly, to nobody, “Articulated,” and laugh, and go down.

---

Hattie’s letter came on the Monday.

She did not keep it in her pocket. She opened it at breakfast in the dining hall at the Coln table in front of everybody, because Hattie Ellis did not do anything any other way, and read it, and stood up, and said, oh, for God’s sake, in the voice that had once silenced the hall, and the hall went silent, and she said, to the whole of it, all four hundred, I’ve got an AUDITION, and sat down again, and put her face in her hands.

It was a drama school in London. One of the three Ms Roberts had written to in March. It was the one she had wanted. It was the twenty-third of June. She would go up on the train on her own. She would do a speech from Shakespeare and a speech from something modern and a song, and they would decide.

Will came across the hall from the Windrush table and stood beside his sister at the Coln table and looked at the letter over her shoulder.

“Titania?” he said.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Ms Roberts says not.” Hattie wiped her eyes. “Ms Roberts says do something nobody’s ever seen me do.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Hattie Ellis, and looked up at her twin brother, and her face was the face from the tithe barn on the first night, in the gold light, when the barn had gone so quiet you could hear the river. “Dad’s going to kill me.”

“Dad’s going to drive you to the station,” said Will. “And cry. In the Land Rover. And say it’s hay fever.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “ELLIS AND ELLIS,” he said. “I’ll get the sign changed. It’ll just say ELLIS.” He looked at the letter. “One of us’ll be on it.”

---

Lucía and Will ended on the Monday evening.

He did not see it. He was told about it, afterwards, by Lucía, on the bench by the war memorial, where she found him at nine o’clock, and sat down at the other end of it, the way Inés had sat in April, and did not say anything for a while.

Then she said, “We’re done.”

He looked at her.

“Me and Will. We’re done. Tonight. On the bridge.” She looked at the river. “It’s fine. It’s good. It’s the right thing. He’s going to Ellicott in September with the form and I’m going to be in Pomona working for Dad’s line for the summer and then college in Riverside and he’s going to be in New Westminster in a host family with a dog, and that’s three thousand miles, and we’re eighteen.” She looked at her hands. “We said. On the bridge. We said it was the best four months of our lives and we’re not going to spoil it by pretending it’s something it can’t be.”

“Are you all right?”

“No,” said Lucía. “Yes. Both.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, angrily, the way Jack did. “I gave him the ball.”

“What ball?”

“The one from Bibury. In March. The goal.” She looked at him. “I scored. Against the policewoman. I told you I would. In the eighty-ninth minute, from outside the box, top corner, she didn’t even move.” She almost smiled. “The Ladies won for the first time in twelve years. They gave me the ball. They all signed it. It’s been on my desk since March.” She looked at the river. “I gave it to him. On the bridge. Tonight. I said, take it to Ellicott, put it on your desk in your host family’s house with the dog, and when anybody asks you what it is, tell them it’s from a girl from Pomona who decided.” She stopped. “And he cried. Will. On the bridge. He cried and said it was hay fever.”

“Everybody in his family says it’s hay fever.”

“I know,” said Lucía. “Hattie told me.” She was quiet for a while. “It was kind,” she said. “Wasn’t it. The way we did it. It was kind.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Lucía. “I wanted it to be kind.” She stood up. “I’m still furious with you about Jack, by the way. Properly. For the rest of my life.” She looked down at him on the bench. “He’s lovely. He’s so lovely. You don’t deserve him.” She turned to go. “Nobody does. That’s the point of him.”

---

Theo and Freya ended on the Monday too.

He was told about that by Theo, in the dark, at midnight, in the room at the end of the corridor, from the other bed, the way Theo had told him about Kit in January.

“Freya and me,” said Theo, to the ceiling. “We stopped.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” said Theo. “Actually. Yes.” He was quiet for a moment. “She’s going to Edinburgh. Medicine. In September. She got her letter in March and didn’t tell me till April, because she said she didn’t want me to feel I had to be pleased.” He laughed, quietly, in the dark. “And I’m going home. And then medicine, somewhere, maybe, if they’ll have me. And it’s three thousand miles.” He was quiet again. “She said it in the library. At lunch. She said, Hartigan, you’re the best thing that’s happened to me at this school, and you’re too soft, and you’ll be a wonderful doctor, and I’m not going to wait for you, and you’re not going to wait for me, because we’d both be terrible at it.” He turned his head on the pillow. “And I said okay. And she said okay. And then she gave me a cup of tea. With sugar in.” He breathed out. “And I drank it all.”

Frederick lay in the dark.

“It was kind,” said Theo. “The way she did it.”

“Lucía said the same.”

“Did she?” Theo thought about it. “Everyone’s being kind this week.” He was quiet for a long time. “I think it’s because we’re going.”

---

On Tuesday evening Jack was at the churchyard gate at seven with Ernest on his lead.

It had been decided without anybody saying so. It was the last walk. On Thursday night there was the ball, and on Friday the leaving day, and on Saturday Trooping the Colour in London, and on Sunday the aeroplane, and in between those things there was no time for anything, and so it was Tuesday, at seven, at the churchyard gate, with the dog.

Frederick had the map.

He did not need it. He had not needed it since Christmas. He had walked the red line every Saturday since January, with Jack, in the rain and the wind and the frost and once, in February, in a hailstorm so violent that they had sheltered under the wall at Ready Token with Ernest between them like a hot-water bottle and laughed until they could not breathe. He knew every stile and every gate and every field. He knew where Purvis’s bullocks stood in the summer and where the hare lived in the long grass by the second wall. He brought the map anyway.

“Go on,” said Jack. “You lead.”

He led.

Up across the field behind the churchyard, which was long grass now, green and gold, with buttercups in it, and the evening light coming across it from the west, low, so that their shadows went out ahead of them up the slope, very long, two boys and a dog, three times their size. Over the stile, which had a cap of nothing on it now, only old wood, warm from the day. Into Purvis’s field, where the bullocks were, twenty of them, young ones, black and white, and every one of them lifted its head at the same instant and looked at him.

“They remember you,” said Jack.

“They can’t remember me.”

“They remember you. Look at them. They’re thinking, it’s him again, the lost one, the one in the American coat.” Jack looked at the bullocks. “They’re going to follow us.”

They did. All the way to the gate. And stood at it in a row with their heads over it and watched them go, with every sign of regret.

---

At the top of the lane they stopped where they always stopped, where in September he had stood and looked at the stubble shining wet, and on Boxing Day he had stood and looked at the white and said oh.

It was June now.

The wold went away in front of them in long slow curves under the evening sky, green and gold, mile after mile of it, the barley coming up silver-green in some fields and the hay standing in others and the walls running across all of it in their long grey lines with the light on their tops, and the clumps of trees, dark, and far off a farmhouse with a light in one window, and the sky enormous over everything, pale, with the first pink in it in the west, and the swallows going over the fields, low, fast, in the last of the light, like thrown stones.

He stood and looked at it.

He thought that he had seen it in every season now. Stubble and snow and mud and this. He thought that he knew it better than he knew any piece of ground in the Realm, better than the Columbia District, better than the Axis, better than the garden at Columbia Palace, which he had lived beside for fifteen years and never once walked across on his own.

He thought that on Sunday he would get on an aeroplane and in eight hours it would be gone.

“Don’t,” said Jack.

“Don’t what?”

“Do the counting face. I can see you doing it.” Jack had his hands in his pockets. “You’re counting how many days. Four. I know it’s four. I’ve been counting since Friday.” He looked at the wold. “Don’t do it up here. Do it later. Up here, just look.”

He looked.

---

They walked along the track to Ready Token between the walls with the swallows going over and Ernest ahead, in the long grass, leaping, like a dolphin, the way he had leapt in the snow. Eleven years old, and three teeth, and convinced. They did not talk. It was the longest Jack had ever been quiet with him. It was longer than the crossroads in the snow and longer than the lambing shed and longer than the telescope.

At the crossroads, Jack stopped.

There was the post in the middle with the little round metal disc on it, pointing in a direction that was not any of the four. There were the four tracks going away between their walls, all of them green now, all of them identical, all of them empty, in the evening light.

“You were here,” said Jack.

“I was lost.”

“You were.” Jack looked at the post. “Properly.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to ask you again.”

Frederick waited.

“What is this,” said Jack. He said it to the post, the way he had said it to the snow. “You and me. I asked you in December and you said you didn’t know. And I said that was all I wanted to know. That you didn’t know either.” He kicked at the grass at the foot of the post. “And it was. Then. In the snow. That was enough.” He looked up. “It’s June now. And you’re going on Sunday. And I’m asking again.” He did not look away. “What is it.”

The crossroads was very quiet. The swallows went over. Somewhere a long way off across the wold a sheep said something, once, and stopped.

Frederick put his hand in his pocket. Not the map pocket. The other one. And took out what was in it, and held it out.

It was an envelope. Long, white. With nothing on the front.

Jack looked at it.

“What’s that?”

“Open it.”

Jack opened it.

Inside was a ticket. An aeroplane ticket, printed, on a single sheet of paper, the kind you print yourself at a machine. LONDON HEATHROW TO NEW WESTMINSTER GEORGE WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL. MONDAY 11 AUGUST 2031. And a second line, underneath. NEW WESTMINSTER GEORGE WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL TO LONDON HEATHROW. MONDAY 25 AUGUST 2031. And a name. MR J. FENNELL.

Jack read it.

He read it again.

He looked up.

“That’s the day after the cricket,” said Jack, slowly. “The cricket’s here. The tenth. My birthday. The village side against Bibury. You said you’d come back for the cricket.” He looked at the ticket. “This is the other way.”

“Yes.”

“This is me going there.”

“Yes.” Frederick looked at the post with the disc on it. “I’m still coming back for the cricket. On the tenth. I’ve got my own ticket. Kimura’s got hers. It’s on the calendar.” He looked at Jack. “And on the eleventh we go back together. The other way. Two weeks. If you want. You don’t have to. It’s a return. So it’s your choice. You can come and see the Realm and the kitchen and the step and the clock that’s four minutes slow and the Monument and the Axis and Theo’s dad’s bus. The Thirty-Two. Articulated.” He stopped. “Or you can not. And keep the ticket. And it’s still yours.”

Jack stood at the crossroads at Ready Token with an aeroplane ticket in his hand and did not say anything.

“You asked what it is,” said Frederick. “In December I didn’t know. I still don’t know what it’s called. I’ve looked. There isn’t a word. There isn’t a word for a King and a boy from a village who walks his great-grandmother’s dog, in two countries, four thousand miles apart, at eighteen.” He looked at the four tracks going away. “So I can’t tell you what it’s called. But I can tell you what it is.” He looked back at Jack. “It’s not the year.”

Jack looked at him.

“It’s not just the year,” said Frederick. “That’s what it is. That’s all I know. It’s not something that was for the year and stops on Sunday. It goes on. I don’t know how. I don’t know what it looks like in a year, or in five. But it’s not over on Sunday, and it’s not over in August, and it’s not over.” He stopped. “That’s what it is. It’s not over.”

The crossroads was silent.

Jack looked down at the ticket in his hand.

Then he folded it, very carefully, along its creases, and put it back in its envelope, and put the envelope in the inside pocket of his red sweatshirt, which did not have an inside pocket, and so he put it in the front pocket of his jeans instead, and pushed it down, all the way, and kept his hand on it.

“Not over,” said Jack.

“Yes.”

“That’s not a word.”

“I know.”

“That’s two words.”

“I know.”

Jack looked at him at the crossroads at Ready Token in the evening light, with the swallows going over and his hand in his pocket on an aeroplane ticket, and his face did the thing it had done behind the bonfire, which was nothing at all, and then it did the other thing, from the bottom up, all of it, the whole of the grin, slowly, the way the light had come up into the window of the aeroplane over the sea.

“Properly rubbish,” said Jack, very softly. “At words.”

“I know.”

“I’ll take it,” said Jack. “The ticket. Obviously. I’ll come. I’ve never been on an aeroplane. I’ll be sick. I’ll hate it.” He did not take his hand off the pocket. “I’ll come.”

---

They did not go back down the red line. They sat on the wall at Ready Token instead, side by side, with Ernest between them in the long grass, and watched the sun go down over the wold.

It went down slowly. It went down the way it does in June in England, which is to say for a very long time, so that the light lay on the fields and the walls and the trees for an hour after it seemed it must be gone, gold and then pink and then a kind of pale clear green, like the inside of a shell, and the swallows went, and the bats came, and the first star came out over the trees in the east where the river was, and the wold went quiet.

“Nan says you’ll come back,” said Jack. “In the lane. At the fête. She said mind you come back.”

“I know.”

“She’s never once been wrong. About anything. In a hundred years. She told Mum in September. She told Dad in September. She said that American boy.” Jack looked at the star. “She’s a hundred. She might not be here next year.”

“She’ll be here.”

“You don’t know that.”

“She’ll be here,” said Frederick. “She’s got a card on the mantelpiece and she’s not finished looking at it.”

Jack laughed, quietly, in the dark.

They sat on the wall.

After a while, Jack put his hand on the wall between them, flat, on the stone, still warm from the day, the way he had put it on the table at the New Inn on the first night in October with a pint glass in it. And Frederick put his hand on top of it.

The way Will had put his on Lucía’s, at the table by the fire, without either of them looking.

Neither of them looked.

---

They went back down at ten, in the dark, by the second red line, the one that went down the long field to the gate above the school, with Ernest ahead, and at the gate, where in September Kimura had been waiting in the lane with her hood up, nobody was waiting.

Nobody had been following. Frederick knew. He had known since the churchyard gate. Kimura had stood at the end of the lane at seven with her hands in her pockets and looked at the two of them and the dog setting off up the field, and had looked at Frederick, once, and then had turned round and walked back down the lane toward the New Inn, and had not come.

He did not know if she had asked anybody. He did not think she had. He thought she had decided.

At the gate, Jack stopped.

“Same time Saturday,” said Jack.

“I’m in London on Saturday. Trooping.”

“I know. I’m coming. On the Mall. With a flag.” Jack looked at him in the dark. “I meant the tenth. August. Same time. Same gate.” He opened it. “I’ll be here.”

“I know.”

“With Ernest.”

“I know.”

Jack looked at him a moment longer. Then he stepped forward and kissed him, at the gate above the school, in the dark, quickly, the way you would kiss somebody on a station platform when the train is about to go and you have both already said everything.

“Not over,” said Jack.

And went off down the lane toward the village with Ernest, not walking backwards, not shouting, for once, at all, and at the corner by the churchyard, in the dark, where in September he had turned round and shouted NETS! NOVEMBER! at the top of his voice so that the wood pigeons went up out of the trees, he did not turn round.

He lifted one hand, without looking back, the way the Duke lifted the hazel stick, about an inch.

And was gone.

---

In the blue notebook, at midnight, in the room at the end of the corridor, he wrote:

Kit got in. A. Hattie’s got an audition. Lucía and Will, kindly. Theo and Freya, kindly. Everyone’s being kind because we’re going.

The last walk. The bullocks remembered. Ready Token. Jack asked again. I gave him the ticket. I said it’s not over. He said that’s two words.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he turned back, through the notebook, all of it, every page, every day since the thirtieth of August. The radiator works. Lost 31-5. The 5 was me. They left a space at the Tomb. Somebody’s checking. I have had a most rare vision. Two hundred and seventy-eight days. One line each. Some more.

He turned to the last page that had writing on it, and under two words, he wrote, small, at the bottom:

Something has happened here that I didn’t know the word for. I still don’t. It’s two words. I’ll tell Señora Ruelas on the twenty-eighth.