The Final

The rule was in the league’s handbook, page eleven, paragraph four, and it had been there since 1947: The final of the Cup shall be played at the home premises of the higher-seeded side.

Parliament was the higher-seeded side. Parliament had been in Division One since 1962. Its home premises were the members’ bar of the House of Commons on Charter Hill, a long panelled room with green leather benches and a portrait of a Speaker from 1811 over the fireplace, and Eight Bars, which had been at the bottom of Division Four in September, would play the final there.

Except that the Sovereign could not go in.

“It’s the Commons,” said Mr Quennell, on Tuesday, in the back room, with the handbook, and the Standing Orders of the House, and a book about the history of the Standing Orders of the House, all open on the table at once. “The members’ bar is within the precincts of the House of Commons. The Sovereign has not entered the precincts of the House of Commons since 1642, in England, when a King came in with soldiers to arrest five members and the Speaker told him to his face that he had neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak but as the House directed him.” He looked up. “It’s the reason the Speech is read in the Lords. It’s the reason Black Rod has the door shut in her face.” He closed the book. “The King can’t play darts in the Commons.”

“Then we forfeit,” said Mrs Merriweather.

“No,” said the Duke, from the dartboard, without turning round.

“Or,” said Mr Quennell, and opened the Standing Orders again, “the House could resolve to attend upon the Sovereign.”

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The House resolved on Thursday.

It was moved by the Leader of the Opposition, a small grey-haired woman of sixty from a riding in the Midwest who had moved Whitlock’s confidence motion a year before, and who was, it turned out, the captain of Parliament’s darts team, and had been since 2019, and threw, the league’s scorer said, like a woman who has been in opposition for a very long time. The motion said That this House, having been drawn in the final of the Columbia District Pub Darts Cup against licensed premises at which the Sovereign is employed, and being unable by ancient custom to receive the Sovereign within its precincts, resolves to attend upon him at those premises on Saturday the seventeenth of July, and that the House’s team shall be accompanied by the Speaker.

It passed four hundred and eleven to six. The six were, Mr Quennell reported, members who had objected that the House should not be seen to go to a bar, and had been told by the Speaker, from the Chair, that the House had been going to a bar since 1801, and they had then voted against anyway on principle, and several of them had asked for tickets.

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So on Saturday the seventeenth of July, at six o’clock, the House of Commons came to Eight Bars.

It came in two cars and a bus. The bus was the Thirty-Two, chartered again, because Mrs Merriweather had liked the last time, and it stopped outside on Garfield Street at five to six and the doors folded open and the Speaker got off first, in her robe, black and gold, with a train, which she had insisted on wearing, because, she said, the House was attending upon the Sovereign and the House did not attend upon the Sovereign in a cardigan. Behind her came the Serjeant at Arms, in knee breeches, with a sword. Behind him came the team: the Leader of the Opposition, the captain; a backbencher from the Pacific coast who had been a schoolteacher; a former Minister for Transport, who looked at the King behind the bar and said tonic first, sir? and was told never again; two members from the south who had played for Parliament for eleven years and never once lost a leg to anybody who was not also a member of Parliament; and, sixth, last, in a dark suit, tall and heavy-set and fair, carrying under his left arm, enormous and orange and perfectly serene, the cat, the Prime Minister.

“Sir,” said Whitlock, at the door.

“Prime Minister.”

“I’ve brought the mascot,” said Whitlock. “The Leader of the Opposition says it’s an unfair advantage.” He looked at the cat. “I said the other side’s got a Duke.”

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The Bloc were already there.

They had come down from Ottawa on Friday, four of them, on the train, and Frederick knew all four faces, because he had served all four of them in Le Bon Mot in September, four beers, in two languages, and been tipped by the one at the front, the small grey-haired woman with very bright eyes from a riding in the east of Quebec. They had come, she told Mrs Merriweather at the door, in French and then in English, because they had read in the Ottawa papers that a parliament was going to play darts against a King, and they wished to observe it, as parliamentarians, in a spirit of comparative inquiry.

They sat in the booth by the pool table. They did not order anything.

At half past six Mrs Merriweather went over to them.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Nous ne serons pas servis par le roi,” said the deputy, pleasantly. We will not be served by the King.

“He’s playing darts,” said Mrs Merriweather. “I’m serving.”

The deputy considered this, with her bright eyes.

“Then four beers,” she said, in English, “please,” and Mrs Merriweather brought them, and the deputy looked across the bar at the King, who had seen all of it, and lifted her glass an inch, and he lifted his back.

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The Speaker called order at ten to seven.

She called it from the end of the bar, by the hatch, in her robe, standing, because she had been told by the clerks that a Speaker presiding outside the House must stand, and had decided that she would rather stand at a bar than sit in a booth. She called it the way she called it in the Chamber, with her voice, which was the most famous voice in the Realm after the King’s and possibly before it.

“Order. Order.”

Eight Bars went silent. It went more silent than it had gone for anything all year, including the Agong, including Lucia, including the first Thursday in November when the Duke had waited forty-one seconds. It went silent because two hundred people in a dive in the Fourth Ward had heard that voice on the television every night of their lives and had never once thought they would hear it in a room they were standing in.

“The House,” said the Speaker, “is attending upon the Sovereign for the purposes of a darts match. The match will be conducted under the rules of the Columbia District Pub Darts League and, where those rules are silent, under the Standing Orders of the House.” She looked round. “Members will not throw out of turn. Members will not address the board. Members will not, under any circumstances, call another member a liar.” She paused. “Or another member’s score. If a member does so, the member will withdraw.” She looked at the Duke, at the oche. “That applies to everybody.”

The Duke looked at the Speaker.

“Yes,” he said.

“Thank you, Your Royal Highness,” said the Speaker. “Call the first leg.”

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It went to seven.

It went to seven because the members from the south, who had never lost a leg to anybody not in Parliament, lost one each, to Marcus, who hummed, and to Mr Delgado, whose back had recovered entirely and who threw, he said afterwards, for the post office. It went to seven because Mrs Merriweather lost hers to the backbencher who had been a schoolteacher, who threw with great care and apologised after every dart. It went to seven because the King lost his, to the former Minister for Transport, by a margin that the league’s scorer, the small precise man with the clipboard, wrote down and underlined, as he had in November, and then looked at, and the former Minister for Transport shook his hand and said, now we’re even, sir.

And it went to seven because, in the sixth, the Duke of Cumberland and the Prime Minister met at the oche, and Whitlock put the cat on the bar.

He put it on the bar beside the oche, where it could see, and the cat sat, upright, with its tail round its feet, and looked at the Duke, and the Duke looked at the cat, and something passed between them that nobody in Eight Bars could have described afterwards, the look of two very old and very composed creatures who had each been underestimated their whole lives and knew it.

The Duke went to the line. He did not say wait. He looked at the cat.

The cat closed its eyes, very slowly, and opened them again.

The Duke threw a hundred and eighty.

Whitlock looked at the board. Then at the cat.

“Traitor,” he said.

“Order,” said the Speaker. “The Prime Minister will withdraw.”

“I withdraw,” said Whitlock, and threw, and lost.

So it was three each, and the seventh leg, and on the scorer’s clipboard, in Mrs Merriweather’s handwriting, against the seventh leg for Eight Bars, it said Abernathy.

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Mr Abernathy had insisted.

He had been on the team since September, and he had played every round of the Cup except the semi-final, when he had been at the hospital, and the doctors had said in June that he might throw a dart if he wished, so long as he did not stand for long, and he had said in the back room on Tuesday, to the committee and the team and the Duke, in a voice that was nearly all back now, I will play the seventh leg, because I have played it in every round, and I do not intend to stop now merely because I have been ill, and the Duke had looked at him and said good.

So at a quarter to nine on Saturday the seventeenth of July, with the score at three each, Mr Abernathy got up off his stool, the third from the window, and took his stick, and walked to the oche, slowly, the left foot dragging very slightly on the tiles, and stood on the line, and took three darts out of the inside pocket of the brown jacket, and held one up.

The Leader of the Opposition was at the side. She was throwing for Parliament. She was on a hundred and four, after six darts, because she threw like a woman who had been in opposition for a very long time, which was to say patiently and with great accuracy and no hope of thanks.

Mr Abernathy needed a hundred and forty-one.

He lifted the dart.

His hand shook.

It was not much. It was very slight. But Frederick, by the bar, saw it, and Theo, beside him, in the Cranwell apron, saw it, and the Duke, at the side, saw it, and Mr Abernathy, on the line, saw it. He held the dart up in front of him, in his right hand, which had written two hundred and twelve beer mats since September and had gone downhill on one in April and had come back, and the hand shook, the dart’s red flight trembling, very slightly, like a leaf.

He lowered it.

He stood on the line for a moment. Then he turned round and looked at the room.

He looked at it the way he had looked at homeroom every morning at a quarter past eight for four years, end to end, at the usual speed, and his eyes went past the team, past the Duke, past the King, past Theo, past the Bloc in their booth, past the Speaker in her robe, to the door.

To the door, where Jack Fennell had been standing since six o’clock.

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He had flown in on Friday. He had not told anybody, except Kimura, which meant that he had told the King, because Kimura had put it on the list, on the front page this time, so that the King could not say he had not read it. He had come for the final. He had stood by the door all night, in his jacket, not playing, because he was not registered, and he had watched every leg with his arms folded and his mouth open, and when the Duke threw a hundred and eighty in the sixth he had said something so loud and so rude that the Speaker had looked at him, and he had withdrawn.

Mr Abernathy looked at him.

“Mr Fennell,” said Mr Abernathy.

Jack unfolded his arms.

“Sir?”

Mr Abernathy held out the three darts. Not to the Duke. Not to the King. To the boy from Gloucestershire by the door, who had taught the King to pull a pint and had been given a C plus for every pint the King pulled since, by proxy, on a beer mat, and who had come four thousand miles twice that year to stand at the edge of a room.

“See me,” said Mr Abernathy.

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The scorer protested.

He protested at once, the small precise man with the clipboard, from the side of the oche. He said that Mr Fennell was not a registered player. He said that the league’s handbook, page nine, paragraph two, was perfectly clear that no player might take part in a Cup match who was not registered with the league by the first of October. He said that a substitution of an unregistered player in a final was without precedent in the league’s eighty-five years, and that if it happened, the result could not stand.

The Leader of the Opposition, at the side, with her darts, looked at Jack. Then at Mr Abernathy, on the line, with his stick, holding out three darts in a hand that shook. Then at the Speaker.

“Madam Speaker,” she said. “The House doesn’t object.”

The Speaker looked at the room.

“Is that the sense of the House?” she said.

There was a pause. Then, from the members of Parliament’s team, and from the six members who had voted against on principle and come anyway with tickets, and from somewhere at the back where the Serjeant at Arms was standing with his sword, a sound, low, the sound the Commons made, aye.

“The ayes have it,” said the Speaker. And then, to the scorer, very kindly: “You may record it in any way you like.”

The scorer looked at his clipboard. He looked at it for a long time. Then he wrote something, and drew a small asterisk beside it, and put the pen in his pocket.

In the booth by the pool table, the deputy from the riding in the east of Quebec stood up.

“The Bloc,” she said, in French and then in English, to the whole of Eight Bars, with her bright eyes, “does not vote in this parliament.” She sat down. “But we would like it noted that we approve.”

“So noted,” said the Speaker.

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Jack took the darts.

He went to the line. He had played darts, he said afterwards, about four times in his life, at the New Inn, after closing, against Gaz, and lost every time. He stood on the line in Eight Bars in New Westminster with three darts that belonged to a retired chemistry teacher and two hundred people watching and the Speaker of the House of Commons in her robe at the end of the bar and the Prime Minister’s cat on the counter, and he needed a hundred and forty-one, and he looked at the board.

He did not look at it the way the Duke looked at it. He did not wait. Jack never waited for anything. He looked at it for about a second, the way he looked at a glass under a tap, without thinking, and threw.

Treble twenty.

The room breathed in.

He threw. Treble seventeen.

The room did not breathe at all.

He needed thirty. He needed double fifteen. He looked at the board, and Frederick, by the bar, saw his face, and saw that for once in his life Jack Fennell was thinking about something, and saw him realise that he was thinking about it, and saw him stop.

He threw.

The dart went into the thin red band on the left of the board, at about eight o’clock, the double fifteen, and stayed there, quivering slightly, and the room looked at it, two hundred people, the Fourth Ward and the House of Commons and the Bloc, and for about two seconds nobody made any sound at all.

Then the scorer, the small precise man with the clipboard, who had been watching every dart since September with the expression of a man who did not approve of anything, said, very quietly, to nobody, “Game shot.”

And Eight Bars came apart.

It came apart the way Daly’s had on Saint Patrick’s Day and the Maidan had in March, all at once, a sound that went up through the floor and down from the bedsheet on the ceiling, and the trombone on its brass hooks over the bar hummed with it. Mr Delgado was on a chair. Mrs Merriweather had the camera up. Marcus had both arms in the air. In the booth by the pool table, the deputy from the riding in the east of Quebec was on her feet, shouting something in French that Frederick did not catch and was later told was not parliamentary. The Leader of the Opposition, at the side of the oche, put her darts in her pocket and shook Jack’s hand, and then Mr Abernathy’s, and then, after a moment’s thought, the cat’s paw, which the cat permitted.

And Jack stood on the line with no darts left and his arm still up and his mouth open, and did not say anything, for once, at all.

“Order,” said the Speaker, at last, at the end of the bar, in her robe, not very loudly, because she was laughing. “The House will record that the winning dart was thrown by a guest, with its consent.” She looked at the scorer. “The scorer may record it as he sees fit.”

The scorer looked at his clipboard, and then wrote something, and drew a small asterisk beside it, and put his pen in his pocket.

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The league records it to this day. On page thirty-one of the handbook, in the list of Cup winners since 1947, under 2032, it says Eight Bars (Fourth Ward) bt. Parliament, 4-3, and beside it there is a small asterisk, and at the bottom of the page, against the asterisk, in the scorer’s own words, which he insisted on, a footnote.

Winning dart thrown by an unregistered player, with the consent of the House.

On the wall of Eight Bars, in a black frame, the forty-ninth, there is a photograph of Jack Fennell at the oche with his arm still up, and Mr Abernathy beside him on his stick, holding the boy’s other arm in the air with his left hand, which had stayed behind in April and had come back, and the Speaker in the background with her hand over her mouth, and on the bar, in the corner of the frame, the cat, with its eyes closed.

On the beer mat under the frame, which Mrs Merriweather pinned up with it, in red, in letters that go straight along the line, it says:

Mr Fennell: A. See me anyway.