Book Twenty

House Rules

2030

A photograph of the landing at the top of a worn staircase in an old apartment block on a rainy morning: a man in a dark overcoat sits very upright on a wooden kitchen chair beside a brown door that stands ajar onto a lit kitchen, with two red dispatch boxes on his knees and a cup of coffee and a biscuit balanced on top of them, looking out of a rain-streaked window with a spider plant on the sill. Crown on the Potomac House Rules Book Twenty 2030

February 2030. Frederick is sixteen, crowned twelve weeks ago at Westminster, with his father home in a wheelchair at the end of the kitchen table and fifty-four in chemistry. At lunch he says that Theo's flat is the easiest place in the Realm, and Theo writes five rules on a napkin: eat what is on the table, take the jobs you are given, the sofa and not a bed, the boxes done at the kitchen table like homework, and nobody from the Household upstairs. The loser wears a shirt to school on Monday. If it is the King, it will be a Green Bay Packers shirt, which no royal figure may wear.

House Rules is four floors and four days: a spring on the left, a rabbit called Professor, beetroot, a Private Secretary on a kitchen chair on the landing with two red boxes and a biscuit, two hampers and the letters between two kitchens, a bare flagstaff on the Axis and a phone-in about it, a shopping list in Wisconsindeutsch that ends at till four with nine rolls of toilet paper, a petition about the lift, the Columbia Bowl from six seats in the ordinary stands, in grey, with a camera that finds him at half time, and at eleven on Sunday night a bus driver grey on his bathroom floor before the six fifteen.

Each chapter opens with a short extract from the Universal Register, the encyclopedia of the world the book is set in. The extracts are quoted from the Register as it stands; the chapters show what happened in the rooms it was not in.

Begin reading: Chapter One, Simply Not Good → Characters

Part One: The Terms (Wednesday 6 to Friday 8 February 2030)

  1. 1 Simply Not Good Frederick. 9 min.
  2. 2 The Napkin Frederick. 9 min.
  3. 3 Ratified Frederick. 10 min.
  4. 4 Dame M Frederick. 12 min.
  5. 5 The Lift Has a Notice on It Frederick. 10 min.

Part Two: Friday (Friday 8 February 2030, the first night)

  1. 6 Shoes Off Frederick. 10 min.
  2. 7 The Rota Frederick. 10 min.
  3. 8 On the Hour Frederick. 12 min.

Part Three: Saturday (Saturday 9 February 2030)

  1. 9 Five to Five Frederick. 11 min.
  2. 10 Boxes Frederick. 12 min.
  3. 11 The List Frederick. 9 min.
  4. 12 Checkout Frederick. 13 min.
  5. 13 The Flagstaff Frederick. 10 min.
  6. 14 The Block Frederick. 12 min.
  7. 15 Four O'Clock Frederick. 10 min.
  8. 16 Schafkopf Frederick. 12 min.

Part Four: Sunday (Sunday 10 February 2030, the Bowl)

  1. 17 Washing Frederick. 15 min.
  2. 18 Six Seats Frederick. 15 min.
  3. 19 The Fourth Quarter Frederick. 16 min.
  4. 20 Eleven O'Clock Frederick. 9 min.
  5. 21 The Rule Frederick. 12 min.

Part Five: Monday (Monday 11 February 2030, midnight to homeroom)

  1. 22 New Westminster General Frederick. 13 min.
  2. 23 The Ruling Frederick. 13 min.
  3. 24 Yellow and White Frederick. 16 min.