The Fourth Quarter

Green Bay kicked off.

He did not know football. He had played it, badly, for a school side that did not win, on the defensive line beside Theo, and been put in late in games that were already decided; and he had watched it at the Hartigans’ flat when it was on, perhaps eight or nine times in four years, and understood it about as well as he understood Schafkopf, which was to say that he knew it while it was happening and forgot it on the stairs.

He understood row K.

He understood, by the end of the first quarter, that Margit shouted. She shouted from row H, three rows down, at the field, in English and in Wisconsindeutsch and in a third language that was a mixture of both and that he thought might be the language of the north-east of the District on a Sunday in February, and she shouted at the players, and at the referees, and at the big screen at the north end, and once, when a Green Bay player dropped a ball he should not have dropped, at God, by name, briefly, and a woman beside her in row H said Margit without turning round, and Margit said sorry, Ilse, and went on shouting.

He understood that Mr Hartigan did not shout.

Mr Hartigan sat in seat eleven on the aisle with his hands on his knees and his eyes on the field and did not say a single word, at all, through the whole of the first quarter, while Boston scored twice and Green Bay did not. His face did not move. When Boston scored the second time, Theo, in fourteen, put his cheese over his face and made a sound like a dog being stepped on, and sixty thousand people round them in green and gold made the same sound, and Mr Hartigan did not move. He sat. He watched. He waited, Frederick thought, the way a bus driver waits at a red light at five in the morning with nobody in the street: not patiently, because patience was a thing you chose, but as a fact, because the light was red and would change when it changed.

At the end of the quarter it was fourteen to nothing.

“Saukalt,” said Margit, from row H, to the field, with deep feeling. Pig-cold. Frederick did not know what it meant about football, and found that he knew exactly what it meant.

---

At the end of the row, in seat sixteen, Castellanos was not watching the football.

Frederick could feel him not watching it. He sat in his grey suit with his coat open and his hands on his knees, exactly as Mr Hartigan sat at the other end of the row, and his eyes went round the tiers, slowly, all the time, sorting them, the way they had gone round the rows of a gym through an inch of open door in June. Behind them, in row L, a raincoat that was Kimura, with her hands in her pockets, not watching the football either. Somewhere down by the gangway at the bottom of Section 114, the night man, the size of a door.

And every so often, when the noise went up, when Boston did something or Green Bay nearly did, Castellanos’s eyes came round to row K, to seat thirteen, to the grey jumper between a cheese and a nurse, and stayed there for one second, and went on.

---

At half time it was seventeen to three.

The players went in. A band came out onto the field in white uniforms and played something with a great many trumpets in it, and sixty thousand people stood up and stretched and sat down and talked and ate and went to find the lavatories, and Mrs Hartigan took a flask of coffee out of her coat pocket that nobody had known she had and poured some into its lid and handed it along the row to her husband without looking at him, and he drank it without looking at her.

“It’s not over,” said Theo, in fourteen, with his cheese in his lap, to nobody. “It’s not over. It’s seventeen to three. That’s two scores. It’s not over.”

“It’s not over,” agreed Kate, in fifteen, who did not believe it.

On the big screen at the north end, above the tiers, forty feet high, the picture changed.

It had been showing the band. Now it showed the crowd. A camera somewhere was going round the stadium, slowly, finding people: a man in a cheese with his face painted green and gold, who saw himself and screamed; a woman in dark blue and red kissing another woman in dark blue and red; a baby in green and gold ear defenders, asleep. Each time the camera found somebody, the people round that somebody saw them on the screen and cheered, and the cheering went round the stadium after the camera like a wave after a boat.

The camera came round to the Green Bay end.

It went along the tiers behind the bench. Section 112. Section 113. A row of men with no shirts on and the letters of the club’s name painted on their chests, one letter each, who stood up in order. Section 114. The front rows. Margit, in row H, in her cheese, who saw herself forty feet high and shrieked and pointed at herself and then at the screen and then at herself again.

The camera went up three rows.

And stopped.

---

He saw it happen on the screen before he understood it had happened to him.

On the big screen at the north end, forty feet high, above sixty thousand people, under the floodlights, there was a picture of a row of seats in a stand. A big man on the aisle in an old green and gold shirt, with his hands on his knees. A woman in a coat with a green and gold scarf, holding the lid of a flask. A boy in a foam cheese with his mouth open. A girl in a bobble hat. A man at the end in a grey suit, who had already turned his head away from the camera and was looking at the gangway. And in the middle, between the cheese and the woman with the flask, in a grey jumper, with nothing on his head and nothing green or gold anywhere on him at all, a tall boy of sixteen with fair hair, looking up at the screen with his own face looking down at him from forty feet.

The picture did not move. Whoever was working the camera had stopped it there, and held it there, and was not going to move it.

For about two seconds nothing happened.

Then the noise came.

It did not come from Section 114. It came from everywhere at once, from every tier, from both ends, from the dark blue and red at the far end and the green and gold all round them, sixty thousand people seeing at the same moment who it was, and it was not a cheer, at first, it was a kind of enormous intake of breath, a whole stadium going oh, and then it was a cheer, and then it was a roar, and it went up into the dark over the floodlights and did not come down.

On the screen, in letters across the bottom of the picture, somebody in a control room somewhere had typed, very fast, with one mistake in it that they did not correct:

PRIVATELY WTIH FRIENDS

---

“Oh no,” said Theo, with enormous joy, in fourteen.

Mrs Hartigan did not move. She sat in twelve with the lid of the flask in her hand and her eyes on the field and her face exactly as it always was, and Frederick saw, out of the corner of his eye, the corner of her mouth go in.

At the end of the row Castellanos had stood up.

He was standing in the gangway with his back to the field and his coat open, looking at the tiers, all of them, at sixty thousand people looking at a screen, and his face was the face from the bluff at Santa Monica, the one that was the only thing on the bluff not moving.

Frederick looked up at the screen. At himself, forty feet high, in grey, with nothing on his head, looking up.

He did not know what to do. He had stood in front of a great many people. He had never once been found by a camera in a crowd, sitting down, as a private person, without a lectern or a step or a Lord Chamberlain to tell him which way to face.

And then he did.

He had seen his father do it. Not at a football match, because his father had never once been to one privately. At the Trooping in London, from the balcony, when he was eight and standing beside him. At the end of a procession. At the end of anything, in front of a crowd that was not all one thing. His father had raised one hand, not high, the palm open, and turned, slowly, and given the same wave, at the same height, for the same length of time, to every side of the crowd in turn, so that nobody in it could say afterwards that the King had waved at them more.

He raised one hand. Not high. Palm open.

He turned towards the north end, to the green and gold, behind the Green Bay bench, the end he was sitting in, and waved, once, slowly.

The north end roared.

Then he turned, all the way round in his seat, past Theo’s cheese, to face the far end of the stadium, the south end, behind the other bench, where the tiers were dark blue and red, and gave exactly the same wave. At the same height. For the same length of time. Not one second longer.

There was a moment of silence at the south end.

Then the south end roared too.

---

On the screen, the camera held for one second more. Then somebody in a control room let it go, and it went on round the stadium, to a man in dark blue and red with a cardboard lobster on his head, and the stadium laughed, and the noise went back to being weather.

He sat down. His face was hot. He kept it still.

“You waved at Boston,” said Theo.

“I waved at everybody.”

“You waved at Boston,” said Theo again, with the deep, delighted outrage of a man who has been given something to say for the rest of his life. “In our section. In front of Dad.”

In eleven, on the aisle, Mr Hartigan had not moved through any of it. He had sat with his hands on his knees and his eyes on the field, where there was nothing happening, while the King of fourteen realms was found by a camera forty feet high beside his wife.

He did not look round now either.

“Same height,” said Mr Hartigan, to the field. “Both ends.”

Behind them, in row L, Kimura leaned forward with her hands in her pockets, between Frederick and Theo, and said, very quietly, close to the back of his head:

“Ten out of ten, sir.”

And Castellanos, at the end of the row, sat down in seat sixteen, slowly, and let out a breath that Frederick could hear over sixty thousand people, and put his hands back on his knees, and did not look at anybody, and something happened at the corner of his mouth that on any other man would have been a smile.

---

In the third quarter Green Bay scored.

He did not understand how. Something happened in the middle of the field, a great collision of green and dark blue, and then a green and gold player was running, all on his own, along the line at the side, right below Section 114, with nobody near him, and the whole of the north end rose out of its seats as if lifted by a single hand. Margit was standing on her seat in row H, shouting. Theo was standing on his. Kate had both arms in the air. Mrs Hartigan had come up out of twelve with the flask lid held up like a torch.

Mr Hartigan did not stand. He sat with his hands on his knees.

The player ran into the end of the field and fell down there on purpose with the ball, and sixty thousand people screamed, and the score on the big screen changed to seventeen to ten.

And Frederick, in seat thirteen, in his grey jumper, found that he was on his feet.

He did not know when he had stood up. He was standing with his fists closed and his mouth open and something in his chest that had come up all at once like the floor of a lift, and he made himself shut his mouth and open his fists and put his hands behind his back, and stand there, very straight, with his face kept still.

Three rows down, Margit had turned round on her seat and was looking up at him.

“Neutral,” shouted Margit.

“Neutral.”

“You’re standing up.”

“I’m standing up for the row,” shouted Frederick, and Margit laughed so loudly that Ilse, beside her, put her hands over her ears.

---

Twenty-four to seventeen, with nine minutes left. Twenty-four to twenty-four, with two.

He could not afterwards remember most of the fourth quarter. He remembered pieces. Theo with his cheese hat off, holding it in both hands against his chest like a man at a funeral holding his hat. Kate with her eyes shut and her bobble hat pulled down over them. Mrs Hartigan with the flask lid empty in her hand, not drinking from it, holding it. Margit in row H with her hands together in front of her mouth, not shouting, for the first time all night, which was the most frightening thing he had seen all weekend, including the beetroot.

And Mr Hartigan, in eleven, on the aisle, with his hands on his knees.

Not moving. Not speaking. Watching the field with his whole broad tired face perfectly still, the way he watched the road at five in the morning, the way he had watched Frederick across his own table on Wednesday night with a napkin between them.

Eleven seconds. Green Bay with the ball, a long way from the end of the field, much further than anybody in row K thought a ball could be kicked. A man in green and gold walking onto the field on his own, right below them, with a kicking tee in his hand.

“Oh no,” said Theo, very quietly. “Oh no. Not him. He missed one in October from closer.”

Nobody said anything.

The man put the tee down. Somebody put the ball on it. The whole stadium went quiet, sixty thousand people, quiet in a way he had not known sixty thousand people could be, so that he could hear, far off, a train on the railway bridge going over, and a dog barking in the car park, and Castellanos breathing at the end of the row, and, nowhere, the radiator in the Hartigans’ flat a mile and a half away, which he found he was listening for anyway, as if it were going to do something.

The man kicked the ball.

It went up. It went a very long way up, into the floodlights, turning over and over, end over end, very slowly, the way things go in dreams, and came down, and down, between the two tall yellow posts at the far end of the field, exactly between them.

---

Mr Hartigan stood up.

He stood up out of seat eleven, all at once, the way he had not stood up all night, not for the touchdown or the band or the camera, and he did not shout, and he did not raise his arms, and he did not look round. He stood on the aisle of row K of Section 114 in his old green and gold shirt with his hands at his sides, looking at the field, where men in green and gold were running in every direction and falling on top of each other on the grass, and the big screen said twenty-seven to twenty-four, and his face did something Frederick had never seen it do, which was everything at once.

“Endlich,” said Mr Hartigan.

At last.

And then the north end exploded. Theo threw his cheese at the floodlights and it went about four rows and came down on a man in row N, who threw it back. Kate was standing on her seat screaming. Mrs Hartigan was standing in twelve with her hand over her mouth and the flask lid in the other. In row H, Margit had her arms round Ilse, and Ilse was weeping, and the men with the club’s name painted on their chests in Section 113 were falling over each other in order.

Margit let go of Ilse.

She turned round, and looked up three rows, and came up them. Over the backs of the seats. In her cheese and her Dorsey’s tabard, over row I and row J, with people helping her over by the elbows, until she was in front of row K, and had her arms round him, the King of fourteen realms, in his grey jumper, in a hug that smelled of the deli counter and charcoal and beer, before either of them knew she was going to, and he stood in it with his arms half up.

She stopped. Halfway through. With her arms still round him.

“Oh,” said Margit. “Neutral.”

“Neutral,” said Frederick, into her cheese.

She let go. She stood back on the steps of the gangway, in front of row K, and looked at him, red-faced, under the cheese, with her hands on his shoulders, the way she had looked at him across the deli counter on Saturday, and something in her face settled.

“You stood up,” said Margit. “For the kick. I saw. I’m a witness.” She took her hands off his shoulders. “Witnesses say what they see.”

---

He turned to Mr Hartigan.

Mr Hartigan was still standing on the aisle, with Theo hanging on his neck from behind, shouting, and Mrs Hartigan beside him with her hand on his arm. He looked at Frederick coming along the row towards him past his wife’s knees.

Frederick held out his hand.

He had thought about it, in the fourth quarter, in the pieces of it he could not afterwards remember. He was a private person tonight, in row K, outside the official-neutrality rule, and the article said so, and he could have done anything he liked. And he did not want to do anything he liked. He wanted to do the thing his father had done for fifty-six years, in every realm and every language, to anybody in the Realm who had won anything: any game, any race, any election.

“Congratulations, Mr Hartigan,” said Frederick.

Mr Hartigan looked at the hand.

Then he took it, in his own, broad and hard and dry, a bus driver’s hand, and shook it, once, firmly, and held on for a moment longer than he needed to, with Theo still hanging on his neck from behind and shouting into his ear.

“Danke,” said Mr Hartigan.

Kate, on her seat, held up her fingers, and then ran out of fingers, and held up her bobble hat.

---

They walked home.

A mile and a half, back up the long straight road from the river, past the bridge over the railway and the old brick warehouses and the bus garage, in the middle of the whole of the north-east of the District going home in green and gold in the dark, singing. Not one song; every song; the Green Bay song and the Battle Hymn and things he did not know at all, in English and in Wisconsindeutsch and in Polish and in Greek, and somebody, somewhere behind them, a trumpet. Car horns from the avenue. A man on the railway bridge with a flag, waving it at every train that went under. A window open on the second floor of a terrace with a woman leaning out of it banging a saucepan with a spoon.

Nobody looked at him. Or everybody did, and nobody said anything, which in the north-east of the District on Bowl night came to the same thing.

At the depot gates Joe’s van came past them slowly with the half oil drum in the back and the flag on its wing mirror, and Joe leaned out of the window and shouted Peter, and then same height, and then both ends, and drove on.

Mr Hartigan raised one hand to him, not high, palm open, and Frederick saw him do it, and did not say anything.

---

At twenty to eleven the room that was two rooms was dark and warm and smelled faintly of the Bratserl that were not there, and the radio on the windowsill was still on, very low, the music station, and Professor was asleep in his box on the rug with the lettuce leaf untouched.

Mr Hartigan, who should have been in bed at nine, who had an early shift in the morning, the depot opening at five, washed out the cool box at the sink.

He was humming. The same tuneless song as the pancakes.

“Peter,” said Mrs Hartigan. “Bed.”

“I’m going,” said Mr Hartigan, and did not go, and washed the cool box, and Frederick dried it with the tea towel with the map of Wisconsin on it and put it away in the cupboard under the counter where it lived, and neither of them said anything, and at a quarter to eleven Mr Hartigan dried his hands and went to the door to the passage, and stopped there, and looked back at the room, and at the sofa, and at Theo’s cheese hat on its arm, which had come home in Theo’s coat pocket, squashed, and smelled of beer.

“Left,” said Mr Hartigan, and went to bed.

At eleven the light went out.

At three minutes past, from behind the door at the end of the passage, there came a sound that was not snoring.