The Rule

He heard them on the stairs.

He had heard Theo go down those stairs two at a time on Saturday morning, not loudly, but fast. He had heard the Private Secretary come up them with two red boxes, measured, as if counting. He had heard Mr Hartigan go down them in his socks with his shoes in his hand at five to five so as not to wake anybody.

This was not like any of those.

It was two people, coming up from the street door at the bottom of the stairwell, and they were not running, because you did not run on stone stairs in the dark with a light on a timer that gave you a minute and a half, you climbed, very fast, at a pace that did not change, taking every step, and he could hear them taking every step, two sets of feet, one heavier, one lighter, round and round the square well, the first landing, the second, past Mrs Okonjo’s door, the third, past the twins’, and he counted without meaning to, under his breath, fourteen and fourteen and fourteen and fourteen, and at the top of the fourth flight the feet stopped.

He had the door open.

---

Castellanos was on the landing.

He was in his grey suit, with his jacket open, and he was breathing hard, which Frederick had seen perhaps three times in his life, and his hands were at his sides, empty, and he was standing exactly one pace back from the strip of brass at the bottom of the Hartigans’ door.

He did not come in.

He stood on the lino of the landing in the light from the open door and looked past Frederick into the room that was two rooms, at the table and the sofa and the squashed cheese hat on its arm and the passage door at the far end with the light in it, and he did not move his feet.

Behind him, on the top step, Kimura, in her raincoat, with a torch in her hand that she had not switched on, breathing hard too, looking at the back of Castellanos’s head.

“Sir,” said Castellanos.

He had come up fifty-six steps in under a minute because the King had sent him four words and then a sentence. He was on the landing. He was one pace from the door. And he was waiting.

Frederick understood, standing in the doorway in his pyjamas, that Castellanos had read the napkin too. Theo had photographed it on Wednesday night and Castellanos had sent it to everybody and somebody had put it in a frame on the detail’s board. No Household upstairs. Castellanos knew exactly where the line was, and what it was worth, and whose it was, and he would not cross it on his own. He would stand on the landing with his chest going and his hands empty until somebody whose line it was said so.

“Mrs Hartigan,” said Frederick, over his shoulder.

She was already in the passage door, in her blue dressing gown, with her hair loose and a red hot water bottle in one hand. She looked at Castellanos on the landing. One glance, the chart glance.

“In,” said Mrs Hartigan.

---

Castellanos came in.

He came over the strip of brass in his shoes, because there was no time for shoes, and nobody said shoes, and Mrs Hartigan did not look at them. He crossed the room that was two rooms in four strides and went down the passage to the bathroom and stopped in the bathroom door and looked at Mr Hartigan on the lino on his knees, bent over, grey, with Theo beside him with two fingers on his wrist.

“Mr Hartigan,” said Castellanos.

Mr Hartigan lifted his head, a little, off his knees. He looked at the man in the grey suit in his bathroom door. He had seen him at the kerb for four years, at a quarter past nine, in a dark blue car, waiting. He had never once seen him on the fourth floor.

“You’re not allowed up,” said Mr Hartigan, through his teeth.

“No, sir,” said Castellanos. “I’ve been asked.”

---

“Stone,” said Mrs Hartigan, from the passage, to Castellanos’s back, fast, the way she would have said it to a doctor at the foot of a bed. “Left renal colic. Pulse one twenty-two, regular. Temperature thirty-eight and a half. He can’t stand, he can’t walk, he won’t be carried. An ambulance is an hour, possibly two. It’s Bowl night.” She stopped. “How fast to the General?”

“Eight minutes,” said Castellanos, without turning round. “Seven if I don’t stop at the lights on the bridge. I won’t.”

“Then we’ll go in yours.”

“Yes, madam.”

“He won’t be carried,” said Mrs Hartigan.

Castellanos looked down at Mr Hartigan, on his knees on the bathroom floor in his green and gold shirt with the G on it, with his face grey and wet and his teeth together and one hand pressed into his side.

“No, madam,” said Castellanos. “He’ll be sat.”

And he turned round to the landing door and said, not loudly, “Kimura,” and Kimura came over the strip of brass in her shoes with the kitchen chair from the landing in both hands, the one with the wobble, the one the Private Secretary had sat on with a biscuit, the one that was Kate’s, and brought it down the passage at a run, and put it down in the bathroom door, square.

---

“Jobs,” said Mrs Hartigan.

She said it to the room. To all of them. In the voice she used for Jobs at ten on a Saturday morning, and for bowls, and for Frederick. And they turned to her, all of them, Kate with the rabbit and Theo on the bathroom floor and Kimura by the chair and Frederick in the doorway, and she gave them out, one at a time, fast, without looking at a list, because she did not need one.

“Theo. With your father. Hold his hand on the stairs. Count his pulse at every landing and tell me.”

“Yes.”

“Kate. Put Professor in his box and bring the box. We’re not leaving him alone in a flat with nobody in it on Bowl night. Then your father’s coat. The grey one. And the blue blanket off the sofa.”

“Yes.”

“Frederick.” She looked at him. “His shoes. By the door. And his wallet, on the dresser, the brown one, with his card in it for the depot. And your own shoes. And then the light on the stairs. You hold the button at the bottom of each flight so it doesn’t go out on us between landings.”

“Yes, Mrs Hartigan.”

“Sergeant.” To Castellanos. “You and the sergeant, the chair. I’ll go in front, backwards. I’ve done stairs backwards with a chair more times than either of you.” She put the hot water bottle under her arm. “Now.”

---

They got him onto the chair.

He would not be lifted. He got up off his knees himself, with Theo’s arm under one of his and Castellanos’s under the other, and his face went from grey to white with the effort, and the sound came out of him once through his teeth, and then he was up, bent, with his hand in his side, and they turned him, and he sat down on the kitchen chair with the wobble in the bathroom doorway like a man sitting down on a bus seat at the end of a long shift.

“Six fifteen,” said Mr Hartigan.

“Peter,” said his wife.

He shut his eyes.

Castellanos took the back of the chair. Kimura knelt in front and took the front legs. They lifted, together, without a word, and the chair came up off the lino with Mr Hartigan on it, and they carried it down the passage and through the room that was two rooms and out over the strip of brass onto the landing, and Frederick went ahead of them with Mr Hartigan’s shoes in one hand and the brown wallet in the other and his own shoes not on, because there had not been time, in his socks, to the head of the stairs, to the light switch.

And stopped.

---

The lift door was open.

On the fourth-floor landing, the brown metal door with the window of wired glass in it, with the notice taped to the glass, LIFT OUT OF ORDER, ENGINEER MONDAY, SORRY, D. (1st FLOOR), and Again in pencil, was standing open, and the light inside the lift was on, and in the lift, in a pair of striped pyjamas and a cardigan with leather patches on the elbows, with his stick in one hand and the other on the brass panel of buttons, was Mr Dabrowski.

“I heard,” said Mr Dabrowski.

Everybody on the landing looked at him.

“I don’t sleep,” said Mr Dabrowski. “Not since 1979. I heard feet on the stairs, fast, two people, at twenty past eleven, past my door. Nobody goes up those stairs fast at twenty past eleven unless somebody’s ill.” He looked at Mr Hartigan on the chair between Castellanos and Kimura. “Peter.”

“Dabrowski,” said Mr Hartigan, with his eyes shut.

“It’s Peter,” said Mr Dabrowski, to the lift, in the voice of a man explaining something to a machine that he has known for a very long time and does not entirely trust. “It’s Peter Hartigan from four. He’s ill. He has to go down.” He patted the brass panel. “You’ll do it for me. You’ve always done it for me.” He looked at the landing. “Six persons,” he said, “or four hundred and fifty kilograms. Whichever is the sooner. Get him in.”

---

They got him in.

Castellanos and Kimura carried the chair over the gap between the landing and the floor of the lift, which was half an inch lower than it should have been and always had been, and set it down in the middle of the lift, and Mr Hartigan sat on it with his eyes shut and his hand in his side. Castellanos got in behind him. Mrs Hartigan got in beside him, in her blue dressing gown, with the hot water bottle pressed against his back now. Mr Dabrowski was already in, against the panel.

That was four. Mr Hartigan was a big man. Castellanos was built like a door.

Kimura looked at the lift and stepped back onto the landing.

“I’ll take the stairs,” said Kimura, “with the King.”

Theo looked at the lift, and at his father in it, and at the gap.

“Go,” said Frederick. “Theo. Go. Count his pulse.”

Theo got in.

Five. Mr Dabrowski looked at the five of them and at the brass panel and said something to it, very quietly, in Polish, which Frederick did not know any of and understood, and pressed the button marked G, and held it, and the brown metal door with the notice on it slid shut, and through the window of wired glass Frederick saw Mrs Hartigan’s face, looking out at him, and Theo’s, and the back of Castellanos’s head.

There was a grinding.

There was a clank.

There was a long pause, in which nobody on the landing breathed.

There was a second clank, and the lift went down.

---

He ran.

Down fifty-six steps, in his socks, with Mr Hartigan’s shoes in one hand and the brown wallet in the other, with Kate behind him with her father’s grey coat over her arm and the blue blanket over her shoulder and the box marked TEXTBOOKS held against her chest with the rabbit in it bumping, and Kimura behind Kate with the torch on now, lighting the steps, and the light on the timer going out above them at every landing and Frederick hitting the switch at the bottom of every flight with the heel of his hand as he passed it, so that it came on again below them, ahead of them, a minute and a half at a time, all the way down.

Past the twins’ door on the third floor, where a light came on under it, and a small voice said is it him and a larger voice said hush.

Past Mrs Okonjo’s on the second, where the door opened as they passed and she stood in it in a long nightdress and a headwrap with her hand at her throat and said Peter? and Kate said stone, Mrs Okonjo, he’ll live, without stopping, and Mrs Okonjo said God keep him and did not close her door.

Past Mr Dabrowski’s on the first, standing wide open on its chain, with the television on inside, very loud, a man selling something.

Down into the hall, past the post boxes.

The lift was at the bottom with its door open and its light on, and the chair was already out of it, and Castellanos and Kimura were already carrying Mr Hartigan in the chair through the street door and down the step and across the wet pavement under the street lamps to the dark blue car at the corner, whose doors were open, and whose engine was running, and whose interior light was on.

Mr Dabrowski was standing in the lift in his striped pyjamas with his hand on the panel, watching.

“Thank you,” said Frederick, going past the lift, in his socks, with the shoes. “Mr Dabrowski. Thank you.”

“I read your petition,” said Mr Dabrowski.

Frederick stopped.

“You read mine,” said Mr Dabrowski. “On the landing. Twice. All of it.” He took his hand off the brass panel. “So I asked to read yours. Theodore showed it me through the chain this afternoon, on his way to the Bowl, out of his shirt. He’s very proud of it.” He looked at Frederick in his socks with Mr Hartigan’s shoes in his hand. “Rule three. In capitals.”

“I know.”

“You’ve lost,” said Mr Dabrowski.

“I know.”

“Good,” said Mr Dabrowski. “Go on. Give Peter his shoes.”

The lift door slid shut on him, and the notice, and Again, and the lift went up, with a grinding and a clank, to the first floor, and stopped there.

---

On the pavement it was raining, very fine, and cold, and he was in his socks.

Mr Hartigan was in the back of the dark blue car, sitting up, with the blue blanket round him and his wife beside him with the hot water bottle against his back and her hand on his wrist, and Theo in the front passenger seat, the King’s seat, the one Frederick had sat in every morning for four years, turned round in it with his hand over the back of it holding his father’s other hand. Castellanos was at the wheel.

Frederick put the shoes in through the open back door, on the floor, by Mr Hartigan’s feet. He put the brown wallet in Mrs Hartigan’s lap.

Mr Hartigan opened his eyes.

He looked at Frederick, standing on the wet pavement in the rain, in his pyjamas and his socks, at a quarter to midnight, in the light from the car door.

“The bet,” said Mr Hartigan.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Mr Hartigan looked at him for a long moment. The bus driver’s look. Grey, wet, white at the mouth, with his son’s hand in his and his wife’s hand on his wrist.

“It does,” said Mr Hartigan, and shut his eyes.

Castellanos looked at Frederick in the mirror. Then at Kimura, behind him on the pavement, and the grey car coming round the corner from the depot gates with the night man at the wheel.

“Sergeant Kimura has you, sir,” said Castellanos. “Eight minutes.”

The door shut. The dark blue car pulled away from the corner, fast, faster than he had ever seen it go, towards the avenue, past Dorsey’s, dark, towards the lights, and the bridge, and the hill, and the main gate of New Westminster General, and its tail lights went round the corner and were gone.

He stood on the pavement in the rain in his socks.

Kate stood beside him with the rabbit in its box and her father’s grey coat still over her arm, because nobody had taken it.

“You lost,” said Kate.

“I know,” said Frederick.

The grey car stopped beside them, and Kimura opened the back door, and stood holding it.

“Shoes, sir,” said Kimura.

He looked down at his feet. He had left his own on the mat at the top of four flights, by the door, where the rule said.