The Roof

At ten past three in the afternoon Alexander went to bed.

He did it exactly as he did it at night. He went down the corridor with his towel and his washbag and came back in pyjamas, buttoned to the neck, and folded the clothes he had taken off and put them on the shelf, and then took another set off the shelf and laid them on the chair by the desk: the trousers first, then the shirt, then the jumper, then the linen jacket on the back of the chair, so that the thing he would put on first was at the bottom and the thing he would put on last was on top.

Frederick watched this from the bed by the window with the laptop on his knees.

“It’s three o’clock,” he said.

“It is ten past three.” Alexander set the alarm on his telephone, and looked at it, and set it face down on the desk, square to the edge. “It is ten past eleven at Potsdam. At midnight they will pour tin in the observatory, and my mother will stand at the window and say that she can see Orion over the Havel, whether or not she can, and somebody will win who is not competing. I shall be asleep.”

“On purpose.”

“Yes.”

“What time’s the alarm?”

“Twenty-three fifty-five.”

“That’s five minutes.”

“It takes three minutes to dress, if the clothes are in order,” said Alexander, “and two minutes up the back stairs, if one does not stop on the landing to read the thermometer, which I shall not.” He got into the bed by the door and lay on his back and folded his hands on the blanket. “I have told Mr Luna. He has said he will not hold the hatch.”

“He’ll hold the hatch.”

“He has said he will not,” said Alexander, and closed his eyes, and was asleep, Frederick thought, within about a minute, which was a thing he had not been able to do in November, and Frederick sat by the window with the laptop on his knees and listened to it for a while, because he had listened to the other thing for a month.

---

The new year reached Stockholm at four.

He watched it with the sound off, at the bed by the window, so as not to wake anybody: Skansen in the dark on its hill over the water, and the crowd in hats with their breath going up, and the lamps, and the actor at the lectern in his long black coat, reading the poem about the bells with the snow coming down on his shoulders, in silence, because Frederick had turned him off.

He did not need the sound. He knew the last verse. His mother had said it with the actor without looking at the screen every year of his life, and she was saying it now, he knew, in London, at eleven at night, in the green chair.

The telephone lit on the blanket.

Are you watching?

Yes. With the sound off. Alex is asleep.

At four in the afternoon?

On purpose.

There was a pause, of the length his mother took to decide whether a thing was funny.

Good, wrote his mother. Then he is the only one of us who will have one midnight. Your father has had two already. He watched Stockholm, and said the man read it too slowly, and now he is waiting for Big Ben with the window open, and Brannigan is standing beside the window with a blanket, waiting for your father.

On the screen the clock over Skansen reached twelve. The crowd kissed one another without a sound, and a rocket went up behind them over the water, white, and the snow in front of it lit up like a curtain.

On the desk by the door, Alexander’s telephone lit too.

It lay face down, square to the edge, and the light came round the sides of it and lay on the desk in a thin bright frame for a few seconds, and went out, and came again, and went out. Frederick looked at it. He did not get up. On the bed by the door Alexander lay on his back with his hands folded, and did not move, and the frame of light came a third time round the telephone and went away, and did not come back.

It was midnight at Potsdam as well.

---

At four minutes past four his own telephone lit again. It was a photograph.

It had been taken from above, in bad light, of a white saucer on a dark wooden table, and in the saucer there was a small shape of grey metal, still with a dull shine on it, about the size of a walnut, with a flat bottom and something on top of it that went up in a point.

There was no message.

He looked at it for some time. Then, a minute later, the telephone lit once more.

Ship.

He laughed, quietly, through his nose, and on the bed by the door Alexander did not wake. Two years running. Lukas had worked out how, and would not tell anybody.

---

London came at five, at one minute past.

“Big Ben.”

“Did you hear it, Dad?”

“Window.” A breath, and the sound of a room in London round him, and somewhere the clock in the hall that was not on time and had been told so. “Open.” And then, with the satisfaction of a man who had been waiting a year to say it again: “On time.”

“It’s always on time.”

“Yes,” said his father, as though this were a point in its favour that other people had overlooked. A breath. “Two.”

Frederick waited.

“Midnights.” His father found the word and brought it back. “Two.” And then, after a long time, as though going further into the house for something: “Alex?”

“Asleep.”

There was a pause on the line from London.

“Good,” said his father.

“He’s doing it on purpose.”

“Good,” said his father again, quite differently, with the weight on the other end of it; and then the telephone went away from him, and his mother said “Puss, Fredde. He is going to sleep in the chair now. Brannigan has the blanket,” and the line went.

Jack’s came at a quarter past, from Gloucestershire.

HAPPY NEW YEAR HANOVER FROM THE FUTURE. AGAIN. pub doing auld lang syne. the man from bibury has learned the second verse and is doing a third. mum not crying. takings good. And then, a minute later: IS ALEX UP

Asleep. On purpose.

GOOD, wrote Jack, in capitals, and then, for once, nothing else.

---

At ten, Parma and Wilmington and Detroit and New Westminster, all at once, as they had last year, because two hours ahead was two hours ahead wherever you stood in it.

happy new year from the future, wrote Tyler, under a photograph of a back garden in the snow with the same great many people in coats in it holding sparklers, and the same small boy, a year bigger, holding three. 19 inches. grandpa did not set the hedge on fire. grandma hid the matches. tell the german.

He’s asleep.

at ten??

On purpose.

dude, wrote Tyler, and then: respect.

Happy New Year, Freddie, wrote Theo, at two minutes past. It’s next year here. Still all right. Desmond’s had a sparkler. Mum says it’s a fire risk. Tell Alex happy new year when he’s up. Not before.

He’s asleep, wrote Frederick.

I know, wrote Theo. He told me on Thursday. I said it was clinically very sensible. And then: It is, by the way.

Frederick looked at that for a while, on the bed by the window, with the telephone in his hand and the butte black in the glass and the A on it that he could not see.

---

Mr Luna came on at ten with a paper bag.

He put it on the desk beside the radio and the jar of butterscotch and the crossword, and did not explain it, and wrote 10 p.m. 62 on the clipboard, and sat down, and turned the radio on, low, the same station in Phoenix as last year, the same band with trumpets.

At twenty to twelve Frederick came down with Rhys and Sam, in their coats, and stood by the desk.

Mr Luna looked at them over his glasses, and counted them, and looked at the stairs behind them, where nobody was.

“He’s asleep,” said Frederick.

“I know, son. He told me.” Mr Luna opened the drawer and took out the ring of keys on its loop of grey wire and found the one without looking. “Five to twelve, he said. He said not to hold the hatch.”

“Will you hold the hatch?”

Mr Luna considered this, with the key in his hand.

“I’ll stand near it,” he said.

Rhys had his telephone out. He looked at it, and put it away, and took it out again, and looked across the road through the glass doors, at the second floor over the dentist’s, where the blind was halfway down with the lamp on behind it.

“You didn’t ask,” said Sam.

“No.”

“Last year you asked.”

“Last year she answered,” said Rhys. He put the telephone away for good. “She doesn’t do that now. I’m not going to make her not do it.”

Mr Luna looked at him for a moment over the glasses.

“It’s my roof,” said Mr Luna. “The rule’s mine. Stay off the chillers.” He stood up, with his hand on the edge of the desk, and picked up the paper bag and the radio and the clipboard. “That’s the whole rule.”

“What about the edge?” said Rhys.

“Edge is three feet of concrete, son,” said Mr Luna. “You’re all grown.” He looked at the clock over the post-room hatch. “Mostly.”

---

The roof was as it had been. The four chillers stood in their row down the middle on their steel legs, grey, the size of small houses, still, because it was fifty-seven degrees and nobody in Palo Verde Hall had needed cooling since November; and between them and the parapet there was the strip of gravel, ten feet wide; and beyond the parapet there was the whole of the town.

Mr Luna set the radio down on the gravel by the third chiller, the one that had gone the August before last, and looked at it.

“Still fine,” said Rhys.

“They always look fine,” said Mr Luna, and opened the paper bag.

It was grapes. Twelve in each paper cup. Five cups. Sam counted his at once and found that there were twelve, and looked at the fifth cup, which Mr Luna had put on top of the radio, and counted that too, without being asked.

At eleven fifty-seven Mr Luna went and stood near the hatch, with his back to it, looking at the town, with his hands in the pockets of his cardigan, not holding it.

At eleven fifty-eight the hatch came up.

Alexander came out of it onto the gravel in the trousers and the shirt and the jumper and the linen jacket, in that order, buttoned, all of it, to the neck, with his hair combed, and a pencil in the breast pocket of the jacket, and stood up straight, and looked round the roof, at the chillers, at the parapet, at the four of them, and at Mr Luna, standing beside the hatch with his hands in his pockets, looking at the town.

“You did not hold it,” said Alexander.

“Didn’t need to, son.”

“Two minutes,” said Alexander, to Frederick. “I said two.”

“You stopped on the landing.”

There was a short pause.

“Seventy-nine,” said Alexander. “It is always seventy-nine. I wanted to see whether it would be seventy-nine at midnight on the last night of the year.” He came across the gravel. “It was.”

Mr Luna took the fifth cup off the top of the radio and held it out to him.

---

At eleven fifty-nine Sam held up his left hand with the watch on it, flat, palm down, like a starter.

They were at the parapet. Frederick had not decided to be. He had walked across the gravel with his cup to look at the town, and found that the concrete came to his hip and that the town was on the other side of it, and stopped; and Alexander had come and stood beside him, a foot off, with his cup in both hands, as he stood beside things. Rhys was a step behind them both. He had not decided to be either.

“Do you know about the grapes?” said Frederick.

“One at each stroke of the clock. Twelve. One for each month.” Alexander looked into his cup. “It is Spanish. I read about it in November, after Mr Luna told me what he does on this roof.”

“He told you?”

“At the desk. At one in the morning.” Alexander did not look round. “He said he had been waiting thirty years for somebody to ask if they could come, and that last year three people had asked, and that he would like four this year, and that I was the fourth.” He paused. “I asked.”

“Twelve,” said Sam.

He counted as he had counted the year before, like a man who had been waiting all year to count something for everybody at once, and had: one, and a grape, and two, and a grape, each second given its whole length and not a hair more, his voice going out over the gravel in the cold, clear, not loud. Rhys was behind by three. Mr Luna ate his one at a time, small and neat, with his eyes on the butte.

Alexander ate his grapes exactly on Sam’s numbers.

He did not fall behind and he did not get ahead. He put each one in his mouth on the word, and ate it in the second, and was ready for the next one when the next number came, twelve times, perfectly, with his eyes on the town; and Frederick, beside him, eating his own, did not make twelve wishes this year either. He made one, as before, twelve times, and it was a different one, and he did not look at the person he was making it about.

“Eleven,” said Sam. “Twelve.”

And the first rocket went up behind the butte.

---

It went up from the lake they could not see, a thin line of gold, climbing very fast and very straight, and stopped at the top as if deciding, and opened, all at once, silent, over the whole of the hill; and the butte stood up black in front of it with every edge of it drawn in light; and then the gold came down, and the near face came up out of the dark for a second, the stepped path and the A, as clear as noon, and went again; and then the sound came, long after, a deep soft thump in the gravel under their feet.

Then the others, in twos and threes and then in dozens, gold and white and green and the red that was nearly brown, and every one of them lit the hill from behind, so that it stood there being photographed from the wrong side by somebody who would not stop.

Alexander watched it with his hands on the parapet.

He had put the empty cup down on the concrete beside him, square to the edge, and put both hands flat on the top of the parapet on either side of it, the way Frederick had once seen him put both hands on a parapet in the snow, and he watched the fireworks over the butte without saying anything, with his face lit gold and white and green by turns from a mile off.

“Happy New Year, sir,” said Rhys, behind them.

“Happy New Year, Rhys.”

“Happy New Year, Alex.”

“Happy New Year, Rhys,” said Alexander, without turning round, and Rhys went pink from the ears inwards in the light of a gold one over the butte, as though he had not expected to be answered by name on a roof.

Sam had the notebook out, and was counting the fireworks in fives, four strokes and a bar across them.

“Feliz año, son,” said Mr Luna, from the steel housing at the foot of the third chiller, where he had sat down with the clipboard on his knee. “Both of you.”

“Feliz año,” said Frederick.

“Feliz año nuevo,” said Alexander, with every letter in it, and Mr Luna nodded slowly, as at a thing pronounced correctly.

---

Across the road the lamp went out.

It went at seven minutes past, between a green one and a gold, the one window over the dentist’s going dark behind its blind, not the blind, the lamp; somebody in the room reaching out and turning it off, as you turn off a lamp to see out of a window without being seen in it.

Rhys saw it. Frederick felt him see it, behind his shoulder.

“She’s watching,” said Rhys, very quietly, as he had last year.

Then he stopped.

Frederick did not turn round. Beside him, Alexander did not turn round either. Sam’s pencil, behind them, stopped on the notebook for exactly one second, and then went on in its fives, four strokes and a bar. Mr Luna, on the steel housing, looked at the dark window across the road over the top of his glasses, and then at the butte, and said nothing at all.

Nobody said anything. It went on not being said for some time, while the fireworks went up, and Rhys stood behind them with his ears going pink in the dark for a reason that had nothing to do with the cold, and Frederick, at the parapet, found that he had to look very hard at the butte.

---

At sixteen minutes past twelve Sam turned the notebook round.

311.

“Five more than last year,” said Sam.

“Is that good?”

“It’s five more,” said Sam, who did not hold with good as a statistic, and closed the notebook on the pencil.

“Resolutions,” said Mr Luna, from the steel housing. “Everybody says one. That’s the rule.”

“Whose rule?” said Rhys.

“Same as last year. Mine. It’s my roof.” He pointed the pen at Rhys. “Political.”

Rhys thought about it with all the seriousness it deserved.

“Beat him,” he said, and nodded at Alexander. “In the spring. Outright. Not a tie.”

“You will not,” said Alexander, to the town.

“Accountant.”

“Get him a C,” said Sam, and nodded at Frederick. “In something with numbers in it.”

“That’s not your resolution, son. That’s his.”

“It’s mine,” said Sam. “He’s not going to make it.”

Mr Luna looked at Alexander, beside the parapet, with his hands on it.

“Son.”

Alexander did not answer at once. He stood with his hands flat on the concrete on either side of the empty cup, and looked out past the butte, to the west, where the city went on for ever in its long straight lines of orange light to the mountains, and a plane was going down into it with its lights on from somewhere it was already next year.

“Thursdays,” said Alexander.

Mr Luna considered this. He did not ask what it meant. Frederick watched him not ask, on the steel housing, with the clipboard on his knee, and understood that he did not need to, because he had been at a desk at one in the morning in November with a chair pushed out with his foot.

“Thursdays is good, son,” said Mr Luna.

Then he looked at Frederick.

“Son.”

Frederick looked at the butte. The smoke was going off it now, west, over the Avenue, in long grey ribbons in the dark, and it stood where it always stood, black against the glow of the town beyond it, with the stars coming back over it one at a time.

“Declare,” he said.

“Declare what?”

“In May. On the form.”

Mr Luna looked at him over his glasses.

“That’s not what I asked, son.”

“I know.”

Beside him at the parapet Alexander did not move, and did not turn his head, and did not ask; and Frederick did not look at him, and did not need to, because he knew exactly what it looked like when his cousin did not ask a thing, and what it cost, and where it was kept.

Mr Luna was quiet for a moment on the steel housing.

“Last year you gave me a lease,” he said. “This year you gave me a resolution.” He stood up, with a hand on the chiller, and picked up the radio and the clipboard and the empty paper bag. “That’s progress, son. That’s what that is.”

“What’s yours?” said Frederick.

“Same as every year,” said Mr Luna. “Be here.” And he went to the hatch, and down, and they heard him on the back stairs, slowly, going down to write the number at twenty past, and to write twenty past beside it, so that the law would know.

---

They stayed at the parapet a little longer, the two of them, while Rhys and Sam picked up the paper cups off the gravel behind them and argued in low voices about whether a firework that does not go off counts as a firework for the purposes of a count.

“Why did you sleep through it?” said Frederick. “Potsdam.”

Alexander took his hands off the parapet and picked up the empty cup.

“Last year,” he said, “I poured tin at midnight in the observatory at Potsdam, and wrote to you at six minutes past, and then sat up in the dome until it was midnight here, which was eight in the morning, so that I could think about a roof I was not on.” He looked at the cup. “It was a very long night. It had two midnights in it and I was in neither of them.”

“So this year you slept through one.”

“So this year I slept through one,” said Alexander, “and was on the roof for the other.” He turned the cup in his fingers, once. “It seemed more correct.”

“Your phone went. At four. Three times.”

“It was Mama.” He did not ask how Frederick knew. “She knew I would be asleep. I wrote to her on Friday. She said she would ring anyway, at midnight, three times, so that I would know in the morning that she had.” He looked across the road at the window over the dentist’s, which was still dark. “I will know in the morning.”

Across the road the lamp came on again behind the blind, halfway down, as it always was.

“Goodnight, Frederick,” said Alexander. “Happy New Year.”

“It’s twenty past twelve.”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “I wanted to say it at the right one.” And he went across the gravel to the hatch, with the cup, and down the back stairs, and Frederick heard him stop on the landing, very briefly, at the place where the thermometer was, and go on.