Brennan

The board said what it had said in August.

18 ARTICLES. 14 AMENDMENTS. 1 QUESTION.

Brennan had written it before anybody came in. It was there at a quarter to nine on the last Friday of the semester when Frederick came up the curved rows of Tolliver 104 to the aisle seat two from the back, in the same large rapid capitals, in the same place at the left-hand end of the board, with nothing else on the board at all; and the room came in under it and sat down and looked at it and went quiet without being asked, the way people go quiet in a church they were christened in.

Rhys laid out the highlighters. He laid them out in a row, yellow, green, pink and blue, and then took them back, one at a time, and put them in his pocket, and sat with his hands on the desk.

“You’re not going to write anything?” said Frederick.

“It’s the last one,” said Rhys. “I want to listen to it.”

Sam, beyond Rhys, had the notebook open on his knee and the pencil in his hand, as he always had. He looked at the board for a while over his round glasses.

“That’s the same chalk,” said Sam.

“How can you tell?”

“He’s got it in his pocket. He’s had it since August. It’s gone down.” Sam made a small note. “About an inch and a half.”

There were people standing at the back again, along the wall under the clock, about thirty of them, from other sections and other years, and at least two who were older than students and had the look of people who had sat in these seats themselves a long time ago and had come back to hear the last one; and at one minute to nine Brennan came in with the leather bag and the cardboard cup and the little blue Charter rolled up under his arm, in the crumpled linen jacket and the tie with the fish on it, and put the bag and the cup down on the bench, and turned round, and looked up the rows at the thirty along the wall, and sighed.

“It’s a review,” he said. “You know that. It’s the last class before an examination. It’s going to be a review.”

Nobody at the back moved.

“Fine,” said Brennan, and picked up the chalk.

---

He did not review.

He began to. He went to the board and stood under the three lines he had written there in August and said, “Eighteen articles,” and began to go through them, briskly, a word each, as he had in the first week, a map of the year: the parties, the Crown, the Houses, the polities, the courts, the money. He got as far as Eleven. Then he stopped, with the chalk in his hand, and looked at the third line on the board, 1 QUESTION, for some time, and put the chalk down on the bench.

“In August,” he said, “I told you that the whole constitution of this Realm rests on a question nobody asked in 1820. A compact made with a man, by name, who died, and was never renewed, because nobody asked.” He looked at the room. “I said that my job for the next nine months was to ask it. Mr Oyelaran. How long has it been?”

“Eight months and six days,” said Sam, at once.

“Thank you. I’m a little early.” Brennan picked up the Charter and unrolled it and did not look at it. “I’ve asked it. I’ve asked it three times a week, in this room, at nine in the morning, for eight months and six days, and I’d like to tell you, before you go and write about it on Thursday, what happened when I did.”

He went to the right-hand end of the board, to the clear space past the last article, where in January he had stood with the chalk on the board and his back to the room for longer than two seconds; and the room knew it, all of it, eighty people and thirty along the wall, and stopped breathing, as it had stopped then.

He wrote:

CAN AN INHERITED OFFICE BE REFUSED?

All of it. Seven words, and the question mark. He did not stop at the sixth.

Then he turned round.

“I started to write that in January,” said Brennan, “and lost my nerve, and rubbed it out, and gave you a question about Article Nine instead. Some of you noticed.” He did not look up the rows. “I’d like it on the record that I’ve found my nerve again. It took me three months. That’s about the usual time for a republican.”

The room laughed, a little, carefully.

“The answer is yes,” said Brennan. “It can. Article Fifteen tells you how, if you read the commentary, including the small type. And some of you will know that this year we watched it done, by somebody else’s constitution, in somebody else’s language, in four minutes, without looking at the paper.” He put the Charter down on the bench. “That’s not this course. It’s not my business, and I’m not going to make it my business on the last day. I’ll say only this. It was done properly. I have spent twenty-two years telling the first-years of the March that nothing in a monarchy is ever done properly. I’d like to apologise to about three thousand of them.”

Beside Frederick, Rhys had stopped moving altogether.

---

“And there’s this,” said Brennan.

He came down off the step in front of the board and stood at the front of the bench, as he did when he was about to ask somebody something, and the room shifted, the way grass shifts before the wind reaches it; and he looked down, not up, at the front row, at a boy in a Sun Devils cap on backwards who had gone, already, very slowly, the colour of the wall.

“On the first of February,” said Brennan, “I told a student in this room that if he wanted to know what something cost the Realm, he should write to his Member of Parliament. It was a brush-off. I’d like to be honest about that. It was a thing professors say to get to the end of the hour.” He considered the boy in the cap. “Mr Pruett wrote to his Member.”

Pruett looked at his desk.

“And his Member, who has sat for Flagstaff and the High Country for thirty years and has a voice like a gravel lorry, put it down on the order paper. And on a Wednesday afternoon in February the Treasury stood up at the box on Charter Hill and answered it. One word.” Brennan waited. “And the House laughed. And the record of the House, which has been kept in the same form every sitting day since 1785, wrote down that it laughed. In square brackets.”

There was a silence in Tolliver 104.

“That’s Article Eleven,” said Brennan. “That’s what we did on the first of February, and a few of you were awake for it. Two accounts is where you hide things, and a House that can’t stop the money can’t stop anything, and a boy from Prescott can make a minister stand up in front of the cameras and say what a thing costs.” He picked up the Charter again and rolled it tight. “Nobody asked you, in 1820. Nobody has asked you since. That’s still true, and I’m still going to say it, at length, to the first-years in August. But I came into this room last summer thinking that the trouble with the Realm was that nobody had ever been asked.” He tapped the rolled Charter against the bench, once. “And I’m going out of it thinking that I may have had the question the wrong way round.”

---

He went back to the board.

He stood under 1 QUESTION with his back to the room, and Frederick watched his shoulders, in the crumpled jacket, and saw him decide something, the way he had seen a great many people decide things from the back of a room, and knew a moment before it came what it was going to be.

“A student wrote in the final in December,” said Brennan, to the board, “in the third question, which was the one about what the King is for, that the question was usually asked the wrong way round.”

Rhys’s hand closed on the desk.

“I put a line under it,” said Brennan, “and a question mark beside it, which is what I put beside sentences that sound better than they are. And I gave the paper the best mark in the section, and the student a C, because his essay was the worst, which is what arithmetic does.” He did not turn round. “I’d like to take the question mark off. I can’t. The scripts went to the registry in January. So I’m saying it here, to the room, which is the only place I’ve got.” He picked up the chalk and put it in his pocket. “It was the wrong way round. I’ve been asking it the wrong way round for twenty-two years. It’s not whether anybody consented in 1820. It’s whether anybody’s still asking now. And you are. Three times a week. At nine in the morning. And once, in February, in a letter.”

Then he turned round, and looked at the room, and his face was quite ordinary, the face of a tall stooped man of fifty-five with a grey beard and hair that had been red, who had taught the same course in the same room for twenty-two years and had just said something in it he had not said before.

“I’m still a republican,” said Brennan. “I’d like that minuted. Mr Whitfield.”

Rhys took a highlighter out of his pocket, at once, as though he had been waiting all morning for the order, and uncapped it, and then looked at it, and put it back, and took out a pencil instead, and wrote something in his notebook in very small letters; and Frederick, beside him, read it upside down. Still a republican. (Minuted.)

“I’m a republican,” said Brennan, “by about this much less than I was in August.” He held up his finger and thumb, a little way apart, about the length the chalk in his pocket had gone down since August. “That’s all. Don’t put it in a newspaper.” He looked at the girl along the back wall with the pencil behind her ear, who had been there on the first of February and was there now. “Especially don’t put it in a newspaper.”

The girl with the pencil smiled and did not write anything down.

“Thursday,” said Brennan. “Nine o’clock. The big theatre on the north side of the mall, where you sat the last one. Bring two pens. Read the commentary.” He picked up the bag and the cardboard cup. “That’s it. Go.”

---

They did not go.

Nobody had arranged it. Frederick had been in rooms where things were arranged, and this was not one of them. It began in the front row, with Pruett, who stood up, red to the ears, with the cap in his hand, and began to clap, slowly, in the way of a boy who has decided to do a thing and is now committed to it; and then Diego, beside him; and then the girl who had aged in the midterm; and then the row behind, and the row behind that, and the thirty along the back wall, until the whole of Tolliver 104 was on its feet, eighty seats and thirty standing, clapping a man in a crumpled linen jacket with a fish on his tie who stood at the bench with his leather bag on his shoulder and his empty cup in his hand and looked at it the way a man looks at weather he did not order.

Rhys was clapping. Sam was clapping, carefully, with the notebook under his arm. Frederick stood on the aisle two rows from the back, and clapped, and found that he meant it.

Brennan put the cup down on the bench.

“Don’t,” he said, over it. “Please. You’ll make me think I’m good at this.” He picked the cup up again. “Thursday.”

And went out, through the door at the front, and into the corridor, before it had finished.

---

He was at the door at ten.

He was always at the door at ten, in the corridor that smelled of floor polish, with the bag on his shoulder and the empty cup in his hand, letting the room go past him in its stream; and the room went past him now more slowly than it ever had, and a great many of them said something, thanks, professor, and see you Thursday, and one girl, I’m still a monarchist, to which he said, good, write it down, with sources. And when Frederick came out with Rhys a pace behind and Sam a pace behind Rhys, Brennan was looking at the floor.

He looked up.

“Mr Hanover.”

“Fred.”

“Mr Hanover.” Brennan turned the cup round in his hand. He looked at it, and at Frederick, and at the corridor, and then back; and Frederick watched him take hold of something, the way he had watched him in this corridor since August, and get it down off the shelf where he kept things, and look at it, and not put it back.

“How’s your mother?” said Brennan.

Frederick looked at him.

It was not the question. In eight months and six days of Brennan wanting to ask him things in this corridor, and asking, and not asking, it had never once been that one. It was not a question a professor of the Charter asks a King. It was the one Mr Luna asked, and the girl from Yuma with a coffee, and a boy in a cap at the dish return in January. It was a question one person asks another.

“She walked down a room,” said Frederick. “At Easter. To the door. My father opened it.”

Brennan stood very still in the corridor for a moment.

“Good,” he said.

He did not say anything else for a while. A boy went past with a skateboard under his arm and said later, professor. Brennan did not hear him.

“And your father,” he said. “Did you ever ask him? About the pencil?”

“Yes. In January.”

Brennan waited. Frederick did not say anything else.

“You’re not going to tell me.”

“Not before the exam.”

“Fair.” Brennan almost smiled, at the corner of the grey beard, very briefly. “I’ve wondered since August. We wonder professionally. I told you.” He shifted the bag on his shoulder. “And Mr Hanover. In December you argued from experience, and I gave you a C for it, because in this course you may not cite yourself. That’s still true.” He looked at the empty cup. “There’s a department across the mall, in the brick building with the ivy that nobody’s managed to kill, where they’d call a man who was in the room a primary source, and give him a grant.” He looked up. “If you ever declare.”

“I’m undeclared.”

“I know you are. It’s on the list.” Brennan nodded, once, as one man nods to another across a room. “Have a good summer, Mr Hanover.”

He turned, and went away down the corridor, with the bag on his shoulder.

He went three steps.

Frederick watched the place, three steps along, where in August Brennan had stopped and turned round and come back with a question he could not keep on a shelf, and where on the first of February he had walked straight through and gone round the corner; and Brennan reached it.

And stopped.

He stood there for a moment with his back to them, in the crumpled jacket, by the fire notice and the water fountain, quite still. Then he turned round, not all the way, only his head, over his shoulder, the way a man looks back at a house he has just left, to see that the lights are off.

“Goodbye, Fred,” said Brennan.

And went on, round the corner, and was gone.

Rhys let out a breath.

Sam took out the notebook, and opened it, and looked at a page for a long time; and then wrote something on it, small, and closed it again, and put it in his pocket; and Frederick did not ask what it was, and Sam, for once, did not tell him.

---

Ms Ybarra was in the basement with the cactus, which had grown since January by about the width of another pencil.

“April,” she said.

“You said April.”

“I did.” She looked at the calendar on the wall, which had a photograph on it of a lake in the White Mountains with snow on the far shore. “It’s the twenty-eighth. You’ve cut it fine.” She found him on the screen. “Hanover, F. Still nothing in the box.” She took her glasses off and held them by the cord. “So. What else?”

He sat in the chair and thought about it, with the bottoms of the palm trees going past in the window at the level of the grass, and the heat outside at ninety-three, and the cold of the basement on his arms.

“I found out I’m a primary source,” he said.

Ms Ybarra looked at him for a moment, and then laughed, which he had not heard her do, a short surprised sound that she seemed to disapprove of.

“Whose?”

“Brennan’s. He said so. This morning. In the corridor.” He thought. “And I found out that a man from Potsdam can beat anybody in the world at anything by watching them do it first. And that rocks are better than I thought, and Spanish poetry is better out loud, and nobody else gets up for music at eight in the morning, and it’s very good when they don’t.” He looked at the cactus. “And I found out my mother can walk to a door.”

Ms Ybarra did not write any of it down.

“None of it’s a major,” he said.

“No,” said Ms Ybarra. “You said that in January.” She put the glasses back on, and clicked, and somewhere in the basement the printer began to work, and she reached behind her without looking and took the sheet off it and held it out across the desk, past the cactus.

HANOVER, F. Class of 2037. Palo Verde Hall 312. Intended major: UNDECLARED.

It was the same sheet. It said the same thing. He folded it in four and put it in the back of his notebook with the other two.

“Come back in October,” said Ms Ybarra.

“I’ll come in October.”

“You said that last time,” said Ms Ybarra, and turned back to her screen.

---

His mother wrote at ten at night, which was six in the morning in London, because she was up.

How was your republican?

He answered it on the step under the narrow window, with the window open an inch and the heat coming in off the car park, which was still eighty-four in the dark and smelled of hot tarmac and somebody’s barbecue.

He asked how you were.

There was a pause. Then the three dots, for some time.

Then tell him, wrote his mother, that I am very well, and that I am going to do the stairs today. All of them. Your father is going to sit on the step below the green chair with a cushion, and I am going to walk past him, and past the chair, without sitting in it, and if Ebba tries to time it I will have her sent back to Stockholm. A pause, and the dots again. And tell him thank you for asking. Republicans do not have to. That is how you know they mean it.

He sat on the step for a long time with the telephone in his lap.

Then he wrote, I’ll tell him, and found that he did not know when; and that it did not matter, because on Thursday Brennan would be walking the aisles of the big theatre with a paper rolled into a tube, wondering, professionally, about a great many things; and that one of them, if Frederick rang London first and did not fill the space, might for the first time since August be something he could answer.