Not Papa

The corridor was full of people looking at him.

Thirty of them, the first three rows, standing along both walls between the gym doors and the trophy case, with their telephones in their hands, lit. Nobody was talking. They had been talking; he had heard them, through the door, and then not. They were not talking now. They were looking at him come through the door, all of them at once, and then, all of them at once, not looking at him, looking at their telephones or the floor or the noticeboard with the swimming gala on it, because they were Ellicott and Ellicott did not look.

Abrams had his hand over his mouth.

He saw that, and he saw the light from thirty screens on thirty faces, and he saw Castellanos standing by the door with his back to the wall, and the Private Secretary beside him with the pale blue folder under his arm, both of them already standing, as if they had stood up when the bolt was drawn and had been standing since.

And then he saw his mother.

She was not by the door. She was a little way along the corridor, by herself, against the wall opposite the trophy case, in the grey dress, with the cardigan over her arm, where she would be the first thing he saw when he came out and looked left, and not the first thing anybody else saw. She was looking at him.

She came off the wall and across the corridor to him, through the thirty of them, who moved aside for her without being asked, and stopped in front of him, close, and put her hand flat on his chest, over his shirt, over his heart, the way she had when he was small and had woken up from something.

“It’s not Papa,” said his mother.

---

He did not say anything.

He found that he could not. He stood in the corridor with her hand on his chest and his telephone dark in his own hand, and the floor of the old building was very steady under his feet, steadier than it had been all morning, and his eyes were full, and he let them be, because she was standing between him and the thirty, and because she had said it before anything else, before the Plate, before anything, because she had known that it was the thing he would need to hear first, and had stood against that wall in the corridor waiting for the door to open so that she could be the one to say it.

“I know,” he said, after a moment. His voice did not work properly. “I worked it out. At half past eleven. From the folder.” He swallowed. “Not before.”

“I know you didn’t.” Her hand stayed where it was. “I saw your face. At five past.” She looked at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know the door was bolted. I came along the corridor and tried it like a fool, and then that man came out and was very polite to me, and I could see you. And I thought, if I go, he’ll think it’s his father. And if I stay, he’ll think it’s his father. And if I ask the man to tell him it isn’t, the man will say he isn’t permitted. So I asked anyway.” She almost smiled. “He wasn’t permitted.”

“He told me the regulation.”

“He told me that too. He said, madam, I am permitted to remind a candidate of the regulations.” She took her hand away. “I liked him very much. I couldn’t have hit him.”

---

“Majesty,” said the Private Secretary, at his elbow. “When you’re ready.”

He was not looking at Frederick. He was looking at a point on the wall just past Frederick’s left ear, at the level of the noticeboard, with the folder square under his arm. He had said Majesty and not sir, which he never did in a school.

“Yes.”

“Dr Brooks has given us her office. There’s a telephone. Don Ignacio is at the gate and will wait.” A pause, exactly long enough. “The President of the Council is at a telephone in Córdoba and will speak to you when you’re ready. The Viceroy is at his desk.”

“At his desk.”

“At his desk, sir.”

Frederick looked at him, and the Private Secretary looked at the noticeboard.

“Walk with me,” said Frederick. “Tell me on the way. All of it. From the beginning.”

---

They went along the corridor towards the trophy case, and the thirty along the walls moved back against them to let them by, and did not speak, and did not look, and looked.

At the trophy case Lucía was standing with her telephone in one hand and her other hand on the top of the case, and as he came level with her she took her hand off the case and held it out to him without a word, and there was a lemon in it.

His. The one he had held in the queue at twenty to nine. The yellowest thing in the corridor.

He took it. He did not say anything. Lucía did not say anything either, and her face was white, and she looked at him the way Mr Paredes had sounded on the telephone on Saturday morning, and then looked at the floor.

He put the lemon in his blazer pocket with the cards.

Behind him, through the gym doors, Mr Lumsden’s voice said fifth row, at the same volume as it had said everything.

---

Theo caught up with him at the corner by the front office.

Theo had come out with the fourth row behind him and must have stood in the corridor for a moment and turned his telephone on and read whatever was on it, because he came round the corner at a run, a real one, the run he did across a football pitch towards somebody on the ground, with his blazer over his arm and his telephone still in his hand and his face white under the freckles, and stopped beside Frederick, breathing, and did not say anything for a second.

“Freddie.”

“I know.”

“It’s on everything. It’s on the ABC. There are tanks…” Theo stopped. He looked at the Private Secretary, and at Castellanos, and at the Queen of Sweden, and got hold of himself, all at once, the way he did. “Sir. Can I come?”

“It’s not one of your three duties.”

Theo looked at him.

“I know it’s not one of my three duties,” said Theo, in a low furious voice. “I know my three duties. I’ve got them on a card. None of them is a coup.”

It was the first time anybody had said the word. Theo said it, out loud, in the corridor by the front office, under the clock, with Mrs Delahunt at her desk behind the glass looking up at them through the WELCOME sign.

The Private Secretary did not react at all.

“Go and get your biology book,” said Frederick. “You’ve got biology on Thursday. Go home and revise. I’ll ring you tonight.”

“Freddie…”

“Please.” He looked at him. “I need you to have done all right. Not considering.”

Theo looked at him for a long moment. Then something in his face gave way, and he nodded, once, and stepped back against the wall by Mrs Delahunt’s window, out of the way, and stood there with his blazer over his arm, and did not go, and watched them go along the corridor towards the stairs.

---

“Sir,” said the Private Secretary, on the stairs. “From the beginning.”

He said it the way he said everything, flat, from memory, without looking at anything, and Frederick listened to it the way he had listened to the Viceroy’s letter at half past seven, all of it, carefully, so that he would only have to hear it once.

“At five past ten in Buenos Aires, five past nine here, Colonel Rodolfo Iriarte moved out of the Patricios’ barracks at Palermo with his regiment. He was joined by an armoured squadron from the garrison at Campo de Mayo, about twelve vehicles, and a signals company. By half past ten their time they held the Plaza de Mayo, the Avenida de Mayo as far as the Congress, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Interior, and a commercial radio station on the Avenida, Radio Buen Ayre. The armoured vehicles are in the square, facing the Casa Rosada. There are roadblocks at the ends of the Avenida. No shots have been fired. Nobody has been hurt, so far as anybody knows.”

They reached the top of the stairs. Castellanos was a step behind. His mother was a step behind Castellanos.

“At eleven their time the colonel read a proclamation on Radio Buen Ayre. It was addressed to Your Majesty. He asked Your Majesty to dismiss the government of the President of the Council, to dissolve Congress before the second reading tomorrow, and to govern the Plate through the Viceroy, directly, until new elections, which he proposed should be held in a year. He said that he was acting in defence of the Crown against those who would abolish it by ballot. He said that the Army had sworn its oath to the King and not to the President of the Council, and was keeping it. He ended viva el Rey.”

Frederick stopped walking.

The Private Secretary stopped too, and looked at the wall.

“He sent the same thing in writing, sir, before he read it. To the High Commission, by facsimile, at ten to ten our time. A letter, addressed to you, and with it an instrument, drawn up in your name for your signature, dismissing the government and dissolving Congress, with a place for the Viceroy’s countersignature. Don Ignacio has both. They are in his folder. He has had them since ten o’clock, and he has not let them out of his hand, and he has told me he will give them to nobody but you.”

“At the gate.”

“At the gate, sir. He would not come in. He said that the Plate’s business with the King would be done where the King could see it done, and that a High Commissioner who carried that folder through a door would be carrying it on the colonel’s behalf.” The Private Secretary paused. “He said that to Dr Brooks at twenty past ten, sir, through the wire. He’s said it to me since. I don’t think he’s said anything else all morning.”

---

They went on along the upper corridor, past the art room, past the windows over the yard.

“The Viceroy,” said Frederick.

“The colonel came to the gate of the Casa Rosada at ten forty their time, sir, with the proclamation, and asked to see him. The Viceroy did not receive him. He sent down a note by the officer of the guard. It said that the Viceroy had read the proclamation and would not act on it, and that the colonel’s demand was one which no Viceroy could grant and no King could lawfully be asked. At eleven twenty, after the proclamation was read on the radio, he issued a statement from the Casa Rosada in Spanish and English, two sentences. The first said that the government of the President of the Council was the King’s government and remained so. The second said that the Viceroy would not dismiss it, and would not leave the Casa Rosada.” The Private Secretary did not change his voice. “He has a guard of about sixty men. They are at the gate. He’s at his desk, sir. He has been there since eight.”

“Without asking me.”

“He couldn’t ask you, sir.”

“No,” said Frederick.

He thought of the man in the arch, in Source C. Too small to have a face. Hands behind his back.

“The President of the Council,” he said.

“Warned at ten their time, by her Minister of Defence, who had a telephone call from an officer at Campo de Mayo who would not go with his squadron. She left her office on the Avenida de Mayo at ten past ten by car, with two officers and the Minister, before the Avenida was closed. They went out by the Panamericana to the airfield at San Fernando, and flew to Córdoba in the provincial government’s aircraft. She’s at the Governor’s residence in Córdoba, and has been since a quarter past twelve their time. She has the Cabinet on the telephone, the ones who could be reached. She has not given you advice yet, sir, because she could not reach you to give it. She is ready to.”

“And the Navy?”

“The Navy has said nothing, sir. Nor the Air Force. The rest of the Army is in barracks. The Minister of Defence has spoken to every commander he can reach, and none of them has moved, and none of them has said they will not.” He paused, very slightly. “The two ships are in the Caribbean, sir. They signalled the Casa Rosada at noon their time. I don’t know what they said.”

---

They had come to the end of the corridor, to the door with PRINCIPAL on it in old gold letters, half the gold gone. It was shut.

“And here,” said Frederick. “The Realm.”

“The Prime Minister rang the Palace at a quarter to ten, sir. I took the call. He asked me to tell you three things when you came out, and asked me to tell you them in his words.” The Private Secretary looked at the door. “That the Realm’s government will not advise you on the Plate, and will not be seen to have, in any way at all. That it will say nothing about the Plate in public until the Plate’s own government has spoken, and then only that it is a matter for the Plate. And that he says this because it is the rule, and not because he does not care, and he asked me to say that last part twice.” A pause. “He does care, sir. He said.”

His mother, behind Castellanos, said nothing.

Frederick turned and looked at her.

“And you couldn’t,” he said.

“No.” She did not look away. “I’m not Regent. I haven’t been since the second of May. And when I was, I couldn’t advise you on the Plate either. Nobody could, but the Plate. I acted for you on Arrieta’s advice for seven months, and never once on my own.” She folded the cardigan over her other arm. “So I came to the door to look at you. Because that was the only thing in the world I could do this morning that was mine to do.”

He looked at her for a moment.

Then he turned back to the door with PRINCIPAL on it in half-gone gold, and put his hand on the handle, and it was not bolted, and he went in.