Two Nineteen

Teresa came back through the door behind the security desk at ten past two.

He watched her come across the lobby between the rows. She walked the way she had walked out of the dust at Grand Central, not fast, with one hand out a little in front of her, as if the floor might not be there, and she came and knelt in front of him on the marble and took out the pocketbook, and he could see from her face before she had opened it that there was nothing in it.

She wrote. She held it up.

THE HOUSE: COSTELLO’S STILL AT GC. INSPECTOR AT THE BOROUGH. NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING. RADIOS STILL GONE.

She turned the page.

THE HALL ON ATLANTIC AVE: A WOMAN ANSWERED. THE STEWARDS ARE COUNTING. THEY’RE RINGING ROUND THE HOSPITALS. THEY’VE GOT A LIST OF WHO’S BEEN SEEN AND WHO HASN’T. FRANK’S NOT ON IT EITHER WAY YET. SHE SAID THE STEWARDS WENT IN LAST AND THEY’RE THE ONES NOBODY’S COUNTED.

He read it.

She turned the page again, and wrote, and this time she did not hold it up at once. She looked at what she had written. Then she held it up.

THE BOATS: NOBODY ANSWERS. THE LINE TO ST GEORGE RINGS AND RINGS.

He looked at her.

She closed the pocketbook. She did not put it away. She sat on the marble in front of him with it in both hands, on her knees, and looked at the cover of it, at the City’s crest under the blood, and did not look up.

He put his bandaged hand on top of hers, on top of the pocketbook. She let him. They stayed like that.

---

On the small television, the one that had been on the security desk first, they were showing the Governor-General.

They had been showing her, he understood, for some time, over and over, on a loop, the same few minutes: the big one had the King’s photograph still, or the studio, or the Commons, and the small one had her. A room he did not know, with tall windows and a flag, and a lectern, plain, wooden, and a woman standing at it in a dark suit with a sheet of paper, reading. She read without looking up. She read steadily, from the top of the paper to the bottom, and her face did not move, and her voice, which he could not hear, did not seem to change; he could see that from her mouth, which made the words the same size all the way down. When she reached the bottom of the paper she looked up, once, at the camera, and then the picture went back to the beginning, and she was standing at the lectern again with the sheet of paper, about to start.

Along the bottom, white on dark red, still, not crawling:

GOVERNOR-GENERAL: CONTINUITY PROCLAMATION. GOVERNMENT HOUSE, NEW WESTMINSTER.

He watched it go round three times. He did not know what she was saying. He knew it was short. He knew, from the way her mouth went, that a great deal of it was the same shape, over and over, a short word at the start of each line, said firmly, and then a long one after it.

The clerk in the cardigan had not written this one down. He had not needed to, Tom supposed; it was a document, it would be in the paper. Tom watched the woman at the lectern read it a fourth time, the same steady mouth, the same short firm word at the start of each line, and he thought, for no reason, of Frank at the steward line with his arms out, saying the same thing over and over into the men’s faces, HOLD. HOLD IT. THERE MAY BE ANOTHER ONE, and how the words had not been for the men to understand but for them to stop.

---

At nineteen minutes past two the big screen changed.

He was not watching it. He was watching the small one, the woman at the lectern, going round for the fifth time; and the lobby moved, and he looked up, and everybody was looking at the big one.

It had been the studio. A man at a desk, the ABC’s man, the national service, the one whose voice Tom had heard out of the door of the coffee place on Vanderbilt and out of the dashboard of Car Six, with a sheet of paper in front of him and a face that looked as if it had not moved since eleven. Now it was a room in Albany. He knew it was Albany because of the stone, the old dark stone and the carved wood behind the lectern, the Assembly building, the same stone the man in the raincoat had stood in front of on Friday on the television over the door of the bar on Lexington, saying NEW SESSION OPENS MONDAY. A man was at the lectern. Big, grey-haired, in a dark suit, with his hands on either side of the lectern, the way the Prime Minister had stood at the despatch box, and his face very set.

Then it was a photograph.

The whole screen. A woman, in an official photograph, the kind they took for the post offices and the court buildings, against a dark background with a flag at the edge. Short grey hair. A plain dark jacket, not the grey coat. Not smiling; but with the corner of her mouth just going in, as if somebody behind the camera had said something she had found funny and she was trying not to let it show.

Under it, white on dark red, still:

MARGARET HALLORAN, LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, KILLED AT GRAND CENTRAL.

---

He knew the face.

He had known it since January. He had seen it in the paper on the steps of St Nicholas House, and he had seen it on the concourse, three times, four, crossing the floor from the Vanderbilt stairs on her own with a bag the size of a sandwich, the way you would cross your own kitchen. He had seen it on Wednesday, coming back out through the gate to look at the ceiling with five minutes to spare. He had seen it this morning at twenty-eight minutes past ten coming down the west stairs with nobody behind her, and at twenty-five to eleven going past the booth with Walter, looking up at the board, and then looking round the floor once, all of it, the way you look at a room you like before you leave it, and stopping on him.

He had seen it nod.

He sat against the wall under the plaque that said For the Better Government of the City and looked at the photograph on the screen, and he could see, on top of it, as clearly as if it were on the screen too, the face as it had been at twenty-five to eleven, across eighty yards of floor, with the paper under her arm from Mrs Abelson’s stand: the small quick nod, and the corner of the mouth going in, because it was the third time and she thought it was funny that it was the third time.

And he had turned his head. To a man who wanted the Forty-Second Street doors. Straight across and to your left. And turned it back, and she had turned too, towards Walter, and the moment had gone, and he had thought, quite clearly, next time.

---

In the lobby nobody said anything that he could see.

The man at the lectern in Albany was back on the screen. He was speaking. His face did not move. He read from a paper, the way the Prime Minister had and the way the woman at the lectern in New Westminster had, steadily, the same size words all the way down, and once he stopped, and looked down at the lectern, at nothing, for a moment, and went on.

The clerk in the cardigan was not writing this time either. He was standing by the security desk with the clipboard hanging from his hand at his side, looking at the screen, and his face was very white.

On the floor near Tom, on a cushion from a parking-fine bench, a woman in a nurse’s uniform, a real one, from somewhere, from one of the hospitals, who had come in from the junction and sat down on the cushion five minutes before because she could not stand any more, was looking at the photograph on the screen with both her hands over her mouth.

She took them away. He saw her mouth make two words. He did not need to hear them. He had grown up in a house with a nurse in it.

Oh, Peg.

---

Teresa had her pocketbook open on her knee. She was not writing in it. She was looking at the screen.

He took it from her. She let him. He took the pencil out of the spine and wrote, with his bandaged hand, slowly, in the capitals that went up and down the line.

SHE NODDED AT ME.

Teresa looked at it.

THIS MORNING. AT 10.35. FROM THE BOOTH. SHE NODDED FIRST.

He stopped. He looked at what he had written. Then he wrote the rest.

I DIDN’T NOD BACK. A MAN WANTED THE 42ND ST DOORS. I TURNED ROUND. WHEN I TURNED BACK SHE’D GONE TO THE GATE WITH WALTER.

He gave it back to her.

She read it. She read it for a long time, longer than it took to read. Then she took the pencil and wrote under it, and turned it round, and held it up in front of his eyes, close.

I SAW HER NOD. I SAW YOU TURN ROUND. I WAS ON THE STAIRS.

He looked at it.

She turned the page, and wrote again, and held it up.

YOU WERE DOING YOUR JOB. SHE WAS WATCHING YOU DO IT. THAT’S WHY SHE NODDED, KEANE. NOT FOR YOU TO NOD BACK. BECAUSE YOU WERE DOING IT.

He read it twice.

He did not know whether it was true. He did not know whether Teresa knew whether it was true. He thought that she did not, and that she had written it anyway, on her knees on a marble floor with her husband’s boats not answering, because it was the only thing she had in her pocketbook to give him, and she had given it.

He nodded.

He nodded to Teresa, on the marble, in the lobby of the Municipal Building, at twenty-five past two in the afternoon on the first of May; and she looked at him, and nodded back, small and quick; and they sat there against the wall under the plaque, and on the big screen the man in Albany had stopped reading and had looked up from his paper and was looking at the camera, at all of them, at the whole of the Province, with his hands on either side of the lectern, and was not saying anything at all.

Then the screen went to the woman’s photograph again, and stayed there.

Walter, he thought. Walter was at the gate with her.

And Mrs Abelson had stood up.