The Letter

His father came back from Government House at twenty to eleven, and went to the study, and did not go to bed.

Frederick heard him. He was not asleep; he had not been asleep since nine, when the brown estate had gone away across the forecourt at two miles an hour with a white cake box on the back seat beside a boy in an ironed shirt, and a very old man in a grey felt hat in the front with a yellow camera, and a big quiet man at the wheel who had lifted one finger off it. He had lain under the wall map with the curtains open and looked at the Axis, and the two lines of lamps going away east to the white buildings, and thought about a corridor, and a clock over the door to the back stairs, and four minutes; and at twenty to eleven he heard the car on the gravel at the south door, and the stick on the stone of the long corridor, slowly, and the stairs; and then, instead of the stairs to the private apartments on the first floor of the central block, the other stairs, the short ones, to the study.

He got up.

He went down in his pyjamas, in his socks, along the passage and through the cream door and across the end of the East Gallery, which was dark, with the portraits in it like people standing very still in a room with the lights off, and along the long corridor, past the place where at nineteen minutes to six an old man with a stick had stopped; and up the short stairs; and the door of the study was open, and there was a light on.

His father was at the desk.

It was not the London study. It was the small one, in New Westminster, on the first floor of the central block, which his father used six times a year and which was kept for him the rest of the time exactly as he left it: a plain room with a window onto the gardens and a desk and two chairs and a fire, unlit, because it was June, and shelves of the Realm’s statutes in blue, and no boxes, because the boxes came with him and went with him. Tonight there were three, on the floor by the desk, closed. On the desk there was a lamp, and a fountain pen, and a sheet of paper.

It was plain paper. Cream. Without the crest.

His father was in the dark suit still, with the black tie loosened, and his reading glasses on, and he had the pen in his hand, and he had not written anything yet. He was sitting with the pen over the paper, looking at it.

He looked up.

“Frederick,” he said. “It is eleven o’clock.”

“I know.”

His father looked at him, in the doorway, in his pyjamas and socks, for about two seconds, over the reading glasses.

“Sit down, then,” he said. “By the fire. It isn’t lit, but sit by it anyway. It is what one does.” He looked back at the paper. “I am writing to Mr and Mrs Hartigan.”

---

Frederick sat by the fire that was not lit.

He sat in the chair beside it, a leather one, old, with his feet tucked under him, and watched his father write.

He had watched his father write all his life. At the desk in London, at the desk here, at the table on the dock at Lac du Roi in the evenings; letters and notes and the margins of papers and the pad by the telephone. His father wrote slowly. He wrote the way Castellanos took stairs, one word at a time, as though each one had to be checked; with the fountain pen, in a hand that was small and upright and very plain, the hand of a clerk, Frederick’s mother said, who had been taught by a man with a ruler in 1953; and when he wrote something that mattered he did not write it in drafts. He did not cross out. He sat with the pen over the paper until he knew what the sentence was, all of it, every word, and then he wrote it, once, and went on to the next.

So the letter took a long time.

His father sat with the pen over the paper for perhaps four minutes before he wrote the first line. Frederick could not see what it was. He could see the pen move, and stop, and the line of small upright writing go across the cream paper, and stop.

“His sister,” said his father, without looking up. “Kate.”

“Yes.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifteen. Sixteen in October.”

His father wrote something. Not much. A word or two.

“Does he swim?” he said.

Frederick thought about it.

“Yes,” he said. “He’s got a badge. From the lake in Milwaukee. When he was nine. He told Lucía. In October.” He thought harder. “He said he swam out to a buoy and back and the lifeguard gave him a badge with a fish on it, and he’s still got it, in the drawer, with Kate’s.”

His father wrote.

“Is he afraid of canoes?”

“I don’t know.”

His father stopped writing. He looked at the paper. Then he wrote again, slowly, a whole line, and Frederick saw the pen go across, steadily, and thought he knew what it said, because he knew his father; it said that there were canoes at Lac du Roi, red ones, cedar, in a boathouse, very old, and that nobody took them out before seven in the morning, and nobody took them out without Sergeant Castellanos, and that this was a rule, and that it was kept.

“Papa.”

“Mm.”

“You’re putting the canoes in.”

“I am putting in everything,” said his father, writing, “that a mother would want to know and would not like to ask.” He reached the end of the line. “Where he will sleep. Who else will be in the house. How he will travel and with whom and on what aircraft. What there is to do and what there is to fall into. Where the nearest hospital is, which is at Sainte-Agathe, and how far, which is eleven miles, and how long it takes, which is nineteen minutes on that road in August if Sergeant Castellanos is driving.” He dipped the pen. “And when he will be home.”

“When will he be home?”

His father did not answer. He wrote.

---

It was a quarter to twelve when he finished.

He wrote the last line, and stopped, and sat with the pen over the paper for a while longer, and then put the cap on the pen, and laid it down beside the paper, square. He read the letter through. All of it. From the top, slowly, with his reading glasses, without moving his lips, the way he read a Bill; and at the end he took off his glasses and sat back in the chair and looked at the window, at the dark gardens, for some time.

Then he folded the letter. In three, exactly, the way letters were folded in 1953 by men with rulers. He took an envelope from the drawer of the desk, cream, plain, without the crest, and put the letter in it, and sealed it, and wrote on the front, in the small upright hand, slowly:

Mr and Mrs Peter Hartigan 40 Dunmore Street, Flat 16 New Westminster

He looked at it.

“May I read it?” said Frederick.

His father looked at him, by the fire.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.” He put the envelope down on the desk. “It is not addressed to you. It is addressed to his parents. They will read it first. And then, if they wish, they may show it to whom they like.” He looked at the envelope. “It would be a poor sort of letter, Frederick, if the person it was about had read it before the people it was to.”

Frederick looked at the envelope.

“Is it about me?”

“No,” said his father. “It is about him.” He opened the drawer again. “You are mentioned. Once. As the boy who sits by the window.”

He took something out of the drawer.

It was a book of stamps. A small one, flat, red, with the Post Office’s eagle without a crown on the front of it, the only one in the Realm, and FIRST CLASS on it, and inside, when he opened it, a row of stamps, six, with his own head on them, in profile, looking left, at nothing.

Frederick stared at it.

“Where did you get that?”

“Dame Margaret bought it,” said his father. “On Tuesday. At the Post Office on Fourteenth Street. With her own money, in a queue, behind a woman with a dog, because I asked her to, and because if I had gone myself there would have been a photograph in every newspaper in the Realm by the afternoon of the King buying stamps.” He tore a stamp off, carefully, along the perforations. “I have paid her back. In coins. She counted them.” He put the stamp on the envelope, in the corner, square, his own head on it looking left. “I thought that if I were going to write to Mr and Mrs Hartigan, I ought to send it the way they would send it to me.” He looked at the stamp. “Mrs Hartigan sent hers second class. I am sending mine first. Because a letter asking a mother for her son for a week should not have to wait an extra day to be read.”

He held the envelope up.

“Now,” he said. “Who posts it?”

---

Castellanos posted it.

He was in the hard chair by the north wing door, at midnight, in his shirtsleeves, with his jacket over the back of the chair and the paperback with the cracked spine on his knee, when Frederick came back along the passage in his socks with the cream envelope in his hand; and he stood up.

“Sir.”

“My father asks,” said Frederick, “whether you would post this. In the box. At the corner of the Axis. Tonight.” He held it out. “He says it’s to go like anybody’s.”

Castellanos looked at the envelope. At the address, in the small upright hand. At the stamp, with the King’s head on it, looking left.

He took it.

“Like anybody’s,” he said.

He did not put on his jacket. He went out of the north wing door, in his shirtsleeves, onto the gravel, in the warm June night, and across the forecourt, which was empty, and dark, with the lamps on along the Axis beyond it; and Frederick went up the stairs to his room under the wall map and stood at the window and watched him go.

He watched him cross the gravel, a large man in a white shirt, in the dark, alone, not hurrying, the way he walked everywhere. He watched him go out through the gap in the railings where the Axis came in, onto the pavement; and along the pavement, under the lamps, to the corner, where there was a post box. A blue one. The Post Office’s colour. With the eagle without a crown on it.

He watched Castellanos stop at the post box, and look at the envelope in his hand, in the light of the lamp, for a moment.

Then he posted it.

He stood there a moment longer, with his hand on the top of the post box, flat, the way Mrs Hartigan put her hand on the table. Then he turned round and walked back along the pavement under the lamps, and in through the gap in the railings, and across the dark forecourt, a white shirt on the gravel, towards the north wing door; and halfway across, without looking up at the window, without stopping, without turning his head, he lifted the forefinger of his right hand, about an inch, at his side.

Frederick, at the window, lifted his.

---

On Thursday Theo did not say anything about it at all.

He was on the wall at ten to eight with an apple, as he always was. He said hi, and Frederick said hello, and Theo gave him the smaller and more lopsided of two apples, with a leaf, and looked across the yard at the window of Mr Pavlik’s office and lifted his hand, and the finger came up off the cup; and he talked about the cake.

“Kate ate half of it,” he said. “Before I’d got my shoes off. She said it had her name on it, nearly, if you squinted. Mum made her give it back.” He bit his apple. “There’s a bit left. With the O on. I’m saving it.”

He did not say anything about the corridor. He did not say anything about four minutes, or Peter, or Anneliese, or the acute ward, or a clock over the door to the back stairs. He did not say your dad. He ate his apple, right round, in a spiral, and the bottom of the core, and put the core in his pocket, and the bell went, and they went in, in the order of the list, behind Grant.

At lunch, Lucía asked.

“How was tea with the King?”

She said it the way she said everything, all at once, across the round table, with her fork in the air; and the whole of the round table stopped, Grant and Amira Ibrahim and Priya and June and Gallagher and Devon Price, and looked at Theo.

Theo ate something brown with a crust.

“There wasn’t any tea,” he said.

“What?”

“He was on the phone. To London. For an hour and a half.” Theo chewed. “So there wasn’t any tea. We had the tea. He didn’t come.” He swallowed. “There was a cake. With my name on.”

“So you didn’t meet him?”

“In a corridor.”

Lucía stared at him.

“In a corridor?”

“On his way to a car.” Theo ate. “He stopped.”

“For how long?”

Theo thought about it.

“About four minutes,” he said.

There was a silence at the round table.

“What did he say?” said Lucía.

Theo looked at his tray for a moment. Then he looked up, across the table, at Lucía, with her black hair in her eyes and her fork in the air and her whole face open with wanting to know; and Frederick, beside him, watched him decide; not in advance; now, at the table, the way he decided everything, by turning it round.

“That’s private,” said Theo.

“Theo…”

“It’s private,” said Theo again, quite gently. “It wasn’t about me. It was about my mum and dad.” He looked at his tray. “You can ask them. If you like. They’ll say it’s private too.”

June put her yoghurt down with a click.

“Principle,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Theo. And Lucía looked at him for a long time, across the round table, and then at Frederick, and then back at Theo; and moved her hair out of her eyes; and, after a while, ate her lunch.

---

He did not know whether the letter had come.

He thought about it all of Thursday. He thought about it in mathematics, and in history, where Mr Ferrante was on Chapter Fifteen, The Long Peace, and called on him once about the Atlantic Treaty, and he answered it, and the room did not turn round. He thought about it in gym, and at the bike racks at a quarter past three, where Theo did up a shoelace that did not need doing up, and said nothing about anything, and went off towards the gate and the buses without looking back.

He did the sum. First class. Posted at midnight on Wednesday at the corner of the Axis. Collected at six on Thursday morning. Sorted at the depot on Fourteenth Street by nine. Delivered to Dunmore Street in the second post, at about two in the afternoon. Mrs Hartigan was on earlies this week, before her nights; she would be home by three. She would find it on the mat inside the green door with the brick in it, or in the box by the bells, a cream envelope among the bills, with a stamp on it with the King’s head looking left, and Mr and Mrs Peter Hartigan in a small upright hand.

She would have it by now. She would have read it by now.

Theo would be getting off the bus by now, at Dunmore Street, and going up the four flights past the spider plant, and in at the door, and taking his shoes off at the rack.

It was a Thursday, which was his mother’s; but Stockholm had rung at noon, about a matter that could not wait for the evening, and she had sent Miss Lindqvist to the Household to say that she could not come, and that she was sorry, and that he was to tell her about his day at supper, in order.

“It’ll have come, sir,” said Castellanos, at the lights on the Axis, at a quarter to four, to the windscreen. “By now. Second post.”

Frederick looked at the back of his head.

“How do you know when the second post is on Dunmore Street?”

“I asked, sir,” said Castellanos. “At the depot on Fourteenth Street. This morning. At seven. On my way in.” The lights changed. “Like anybody.”

---

On Friday morning Theo did not have an apple.

He was on the wall at ten to eight, at the end nearest the gym, with his bag between his feet; and he did not have an apple. Not in his hand. Not in his pocket. Frederick could see his pockets, the pockets of the grey sweatshirt with the hole at the cuff, and they were flat. He was sitting on the wall with his hands on his knees, looking at the yard, at nothing in particular, and he did not look up when Frederick came round the corner of the gym, and across the clear patch, which was not a clear patch any more and had not been since December; and when Frederick sat down beside him on the wall, he still did not look up.

He did not wave at the window of Mr Pavlik’s office.

In the window, eighteen inches up, Castellanos put down his coffee.

“You haven’t got an apple,” said Frederick.

“I forgot.”

He had never forgotten. Not once, since the second of September. Not in the rain, or the snow, or the week of the frog, or the week of the half-birthday, or the week of the checks. Two a day, from the man at the depot whose brother had trees. He had never once come round the end of the bike racks without one.

Frederick took his own out of his bag. Bridget’s. A large, perfect, polished red apple from the Palace kitchens, without a mark on it, the kind of apple that is put in a bowl in a painting.

He held it out.

Theo looked at it.

“That’s a shop apple,” he said.

“It’s been to a palace.”

Theo looked at it a moment longer. Then he took it. He held it in his hand and turned it over, and looked at it, and found the place he wanted, and bit; and chewed; and looked at the bitten place as if it had told him something he needed to think about.

“A letter came,” he said.

---

He told it in pieces, the way he told things, in the order they had occurred to him, with the apple, which he ate very slowly, in a spiral, all the way round.

That it had come in the second post, on Thursday, as Castellanos had said, at about two; and that Mrs Okonjo had found it, on the mat, inside the green door, among the bills, when she came down for her own post at half past two; and had picked it up, and looked at it, at the cream envelope and the small upright hand and the stamp; and had carried it up two flights of stairs herself, past her own door, past the bicycle, to the fourth floor, at eighty-one, without the lift, because it was not her hour, and knocked on the door of flat sixteen, and given it to Mrs Hartigan, who had just come in from her shift, in her coat, with her shoes still on; and said, in the voice like a church, Anneliese, I think this is the one, and gone back down.

That Mum had opened it at the counter. Standing up. In her coat.

That she had read it. And then sat down, which she did not do. At the table. In her coat. With her shoes still on, on the lino, which she would have killed anybody else for. And read it again.

That Theo had come in at a quarter to four and found her like that. Sitting at the table in her coat with her shoes on and a letter in her hand, on cream paper, in small upright handwriting, and the envelope on the table beside her with the stamp on it, and her face doing something he had never seen it do, and her other hand flat on the table.

“She looked at me,” said Theo. “When I came in. From the door. And she didn’t say anything. She just held it up.” He bit the apple. “And I took my shoes off. And came and sat down. In the chair with the cushion.” He chewed. “Your chair.”

“Did you read it?”

“She wouldn’t let me.” Theo turned the apple. “She said it was to her and Dad. She said Dad had to read it first, before I did, because it was to both of them, and she wasn’t going to have him read it second.” He considered. “So we waited. For Dad. He was on a late, because he’d swapped, for Wednesday. Till half past six. We sat there. Me and Mum. At the table. With the letter on it, face down, under the salt.”

“Under the salt?”

“So it wouldn’t blow away. When Kate came in.” Theo looked at the apple. “Kate came in at five and saw it and screamed and Kringle went under the sofa again.”

---

“And your dad?”

Theo was quiet for a while.

“Dad came in at twenty to seven,” he said. “And took his shoes off. And saw it. Under the salt. And Mum didn’t say anything. She just pushed it across the table. And he sat down. In his chair. The one with the arms. At the end.” He paused. “He never sits in that one. Nobody sits in that one. That’s for visitors.”

“And he read it?”

“He put his glasses on,” said Theo. “And read it. All of it. Slowly. Like the crossword. And then he put it down. On the table. And put his hand on it. Flat.” Theo put his hand flat on the stone of the wall. “And didn’t say anything. For ages. And then he took his glasses off. And put the pencil behind his ear, which he never does when he’s not doing the crossword. And got up. And put his shoes back on.”

“And went to the depot.”

“And went to the depot,” said Theo. “At ten to seven. Without his supper.” He bit the apple. “He came back at nine. And had his supper cold. And didn’t say anything about where he’d been. And Mum didn’t ask.”

Frederick sat on the wall.

“What did it say?” he said.

He had not meant to ask. It came out of him the way is it because of me had come out of him in October, before he could stop it, into the air between them on the wall, where he could not take it back.

Theo looked at him.

“Mum says you’re to come to supper,” he said. “Tonight. She says she’s not deciding anything without you there, because you know what it’s like, and she doesn’t, and she’s got questions, and she’s not asking them in a letter to a King.” He turned the apple. “She says you’re to read it. At the table. After supper. She says it’s hers to show who she likes.”

“And the dates?” said Frederick. “Did it say the dates?”

Theo stopped turning the apple.

He looked at Frederick, on the wall, beside him, for about three seconds; steadily; the way he had looked at the corner of the long corridor where an old man with a stick had gone; with the grey eyes, or green, and an expression that was not about to say anything funny at all.

“From the twentieth of August,” he said. “For a week.”

Frederick did not say anything.

“The day after my birthday,” said Theo.

He went on looking at Frederick. He did not ask. Frederick waited for him to ask; waited for the question that was in the air between them, on the wall, in the June sunshine, the same question that had been in the air at the end of the gallery on Wednesday, how did he know; and if Theo asked it, he would have to answer, because he did not lie.

Theo did not ask.

He looked at Frederick a moment longer. Then he looked down at the apple in his hand, Bridget’s apple, the shop apple that had been to a palace, which he had eaten right round, in a spiral, all the way, to the core; and he looked at the core; and he ate the bottom of it.

“Huh,” he said.

He put the core in his pocket. He looked across the yard at the window of Mr Pavlik’s office, eighteen inches up, where Castellanos was sitting very still, with his coffee on the sill beside him, untouched, looking at the wall.

Theo lifted his hand.

The finger came up off the sill. And stayed up, this time, for a long time, much longer than a second; and went down.

“That’s not a bad apple,” said Theo, standing up, as the bell went. “For a shop one.” He picked up his bag. “Half past six. Don’t be early. Mum’ll be standing at the oven with her watch.”