The Kitchen Table

On Tuesday evenings, from November until the end of April, he had sat at the long kitchen table at Columbia Palace and watched his mother do the boxes.

It had been the arrangement. On Tuesdays the Regency Office sent the evening boxes down to the kitchen instead of the small dining room, because the kitchen was warm and Bridget was there and his mother said the boxes were less frightening next to a range; and she did them at the end of the table nearest the dresser, one at a time, with the others shut, and he sat opposite and watched, and was allowed to have an opinion about everything in them, and had one about most.

Since the second of May it had gone the other way.

He did the boxes. She watched.

---

The Plate’s was the last.

He did the others first, because that was the rule, and because the Plate’s was the one he wanted to do and you did the one you wanted last. New Albion, two papers. Hanover, nothing. The Realm’s, which the Private Secretary had brought down himself at half past six and put on the table beside the bread board without a word, and which had in it, on top, a single card, white, stiff, of the kind Dame M used, but not in Dame M’s hand.

It was in a small upright hand that was not a clerk’s. One line.

Sir. I said nothing. It was very difficult. C. W.

He read it twice and put it face down beside his plate, and his mother, across the table, looked at it, and did not ask.

“The Prime Minister,” he said.

“I know his hand.” She turned her coffee cup round on its saucer. “He rang me at a quarter to ten, after he rang the Private Secretary. To say he’d rung the Private Secretary. He said he was ringing me as a friend and not as anything else, and that he was going to put the telephone down now before he said something he’d regret, and he did.” She looked at the card. “He’s very young.”

“He’s twenty-seven.”

“That’s what I said.”

---

The radio on the dresser was on. Not low. Bridget had turned it up at six, when the news came on, and had not turned it down, and was standing at the range with her back to the table, stirring something that did not need stirring.

The ABC had had the Plate at the top of every hour since one. At six it had been the armoured squadron, back in its lines at Campo de Mayo by five their time, all twelve vehicles, the last of them going in through the gate in the dusk with its hatches shut and a crowd at the gate that did not cheer and did not jeer and stood there until the gate closed. At seven it was the signals company, back at its barracks. And the Chief of the Army Staff, speaking from the Ministry of Defence, in Spanish with the ABC’s translator over him a second late, saying that the Army had not moved and would not move, and that the units which had left their barracks this morning without orders were returning to them under their own officers, and that the Army’s oath was to the King, and that the King had spoken.

The Patricios were still on the Avenida.

The ABC’s correspondent in Buenos Aires said so at seven, a man with a tired voice and a great deal of traffic behind him. Most of them. Not all; some of their companies had gone back to Palermo in the afternoon on foot, up the Avenida de Mayo past the Congress in their ranks with their rifles slung, and nobody had stopped them. But the colonel was still in the Ministry of Defence building, with perhaps two hundred of his men, and the doors were shut, and the lights were on, and nobody knew what he was doing.

The square was full. The correspondent said that too. It had been filling since two. It was ten past eight in Buenos Aires and dark and cold, and there were people in the Plaza de Mayo from the Casa Rosada to the Cathedral, sitting on the stones, in coats, with flasks, and the women in white headscarves had been given chairs by somebody, and were sitting on them at the north side by the barrier, which was not there any more.

The lights were on in the corner window on the first floor of the Casa Rosada. The correspondent said that people kept looking at it.

---

He opened the Plate’s box.

It was thin. It was nearly empty. The Private Secretary had put in it only what had to be in it: a copy of the President of the Council’s advice of twenty to one, as the Private Secretary had written it down on a card in Dr Brooks’s office, typed now, on the Plate’s paper, for his initials, so that the advice he had acted on would be on the record in the form in which it had been given. And under it, a single sheet from Don Ignacio, in the broad nib, in blue-black ink.

Sir,

The colonel’s papers went back to him at five o’clock by the High Commission’s facsimile, with a covering note in my hand which said that the King had read them twice and returned them unsigned on the advice of his President of the Council. The colonel’s office acknowledged receipt at five past five. It was the same officer who sent them. He wrote, at the foot of the acknowledgement, “Gracias.”

I have gone home. My wife says I am the colour of a brick, and has put me in a cold bath.

Ignacio Anchorena

He initialled the advice in the corner, as he had initialled four names for the Order of May at half past seven that morning, which felt like a week ago, and shut the box.

---

“Where did you go?” he said. “This morning. Before the door.”

His mother did not answer at once.

“To the hospital,” she said. “At ten. Dame M came into my study at twenty to, in the middle of the Swedish ministers. She doesn’t come in in the middle of anything. She stood in the door and said the Plate, ma’am, and I looked at her face and knew it wasn’t your father, because she’d have said the hospital. So I told the Swedish ministers I would call them back, which I’ve never done, and she told me.” She turned the cup on its saucer. “And I sat there. For about five minutes. And then I thought, I can’t do anything. I’m not Regent. I wouldn’t be able to do anything if I were. Nobody can do anything, except Arrieta, and the Viceroy, and you, and you’re in a gym. So I went to the hospital and sat with your father for an hour. Because that was a thing I could do.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No.” She looked at him. “I didn’t tell him anything. I read him the paper. The sport. He likes the sport.” She almost smiled. “He knew something was wrong. He kept looking at me. He looked at me the way you looked at me through that door.”

“And then you came to the school.”

“At eleven. Because I’d been sitting by his bed for an hour thinking about you sitting in a room with the door bolted, not knowing, and I thought: I can’t tell him. I’m not allowed to tell him, and I mustn’t, and I won’t. But I can look at him.” She stopped. “So I went and looked at you.”

---

Bridget put a plate in front of him. Fish, and potatoes with parsley on them, and peas. He had not asked for anything. She put another in front of his mother, and went back to the range, and turned the radio up a notch.

He ate. He found he was very hungry. He had not had anything since the two eggs at a quarter past six.

“He waited,” said his mother.

He looked up.

“The colonel,” she said. “He waited. Have you thought about that? He wrote to the newspaper on the fourth of June. Not in March, when the Viceroy’s five years were up. Not in April, when the bill was first printed. He wrote on the fourth of June, and moved on the twelfth, the day before the second reading.” She put her fork down. “And not one day of it before the second of May.”

“Because I was a minor.”

“Because I was Regent.” She said it quite simply. “If he’d done this in April, I’d have been the Regent of the Plate, at that breakfast table in the small dining room, with Arrieta on the telephone in the first ten minutes. And I’d have acted on her advice at ten past ten, by telephone, from the breakfast table, and said something, and it would have been over by eleven, and he knew it. Everybody in Buenos Aires knows who I am. I’ve been their Regent for seven months. I’m not very interesting, and I’m not at all frightening, and I always do exactly what the President of the Council advises, which is the most frightening thing a Regent can do.” She picked up her fork again. “He waited until it was you. Sixteen, with no record in the Plate. And then he waited until you were in a room with the door bolted.”

“He thought I’d be easier.”

“He thought you’d be his,” said his mother. “That’s different. He thought a boy of sixteen who had never refused anything would want to. He thought you’d read his letter at noon and see a man asking you to be your father.” She looked at him across the table. “I think he’d have been very surprised by five words.”

---

At eight the news came round again.

The ABC’s man in Buenos Aires, with the traffic behind him. Nine o’clock there now, he said. The Patricios’ companies on the Avenida de Mayo had been withdrawn to the Ministry of Defence building, all of them, and the Avenida was open, and the buses were running on it for the first time since ten in the morning. The colonel had not been seen. The Chief of the Army Staff had sent an officer to the Ministry’s doors at half past eight, and the doors had been opened to him, and he had gone in, and not yet come out. In the square the people were still sitting on the stones, and somebody had brought a guitar.

“And in the history of the River Plate,” said the man from the ABC, “there has been one attempt like this before that ended without a shot fired. In September 1930, when the Viceroy refused, and the garrison of the capital would not move against him. It collapsed within two days. Tonight, in Buenos Aires, people are saying that this one has taken one.”

“It isn’t over,” said Frederick.

“No,” said his mother.

“He’s still in the building.”

“He’s still in the building.” She looked at the radio. “In 1930 it took two days, and nobody in London did anything at all, and it was over. Tonight it’s taken one day, and you did one thing, and it isn’t over yet.” She looked back at him. “You have to let it be over in their time, Frederick. Not ours.”

---

At a quarter to nine the cream telephone on the wall by the dresser rang.

The old one with the curly cord, that the kitchen used for tradesmen and the Household used for nothing. Bridget turned from the range and took it off the wall and said kitchen, and listened, and turned round, and held it out to him across the room at the full length of the cord.

“Switchboard, pet. Mr Hartigan.”

He crossed the kitchen and took it.

“Theo.”

“You said you’d ring,” said Theo. “You didn’t ring. It’s a quarter to nine. I’ve done the whole of the endocrine system. Twice. Kate’s tested me. She hates the endocrine system. She says it’s glands and she doesn’t care about glands.”

“I’m sorry. I was going to.”

“I know you were going to.” Theo’s voice changed. “I saw it. In the gym. On my phone. The car going out. Freddie…” He stopped. “I’m not going to say anything about it. I’ve decided. I’m not going to say anything about it ever, because you’d hate it.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to write it in the planner, though.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to write it in capitals.” A pause. “That’s not saying anything. That’s history.”

---

“Freddie,” said Theo. “I’ve got to tell you something. About the paper.”

“What?”

“I did Seven too.”

Frederick leaned against the wall by the dresser with the curly cord round his wrist.

“I did Seven,” said Theo, “because it was the only one I had eleven cards for. And I said the King’s refusal mattered more.” He said it fast, as if he wanted it over. “Because the King’s was the one everybody could hear. Because a man under arrest in a house is brave and nobody knows, and a King in London is the one the whole world hears say no. And because…” He stopped. “Because I thought you would. I thought you’d say your dad’s mattered more. So I wrote it like you’d write it.”

Frederick did not say anything.

“And then I came out and found out you’d been in the next desk writing the opposite,” said Theo, “while a colonel tried to make you be your dad, and you rang the Viceroy first. And I’ve been sitting here doing glands for three hours thinking, that’s me failed history, then. That’s me got it exactly backwards in front of the Board.”

“You haven’t failed.”

“I’ve got it backwards.”

“You haven’t got it backwards.” He looked at the dresser, at the blue china bowl with the last of the Pomona lemons in it, three of them, and the cake tin. “You’ve got it the other way round. It’s not the same. Mr Ferrante says that’s history too. You can argue either way if you can stand behind it.” He thought. “Could you stand behind it?”

There was a pause on the line.

“Yes,” said Theo. “Yes. I could. Because it’s true. It’s the one everybody heard. It’s the one people in the square were waiting for this afternoon. They had the Viceroy all morning and they waited for the King.” A breath. “That’s why you said it like that, isn’t it? Está. Not es. So they’d know where you were.”

“How do you know what I was thinking?”

“I don’t,” said Theo. “I’ve got a C in Spanish and I’ve known you since we were twelve. It’s the same thing.”

---

“Then we’re both right,” said Frederick.

“Are we allowed to be both right? In the Board?”

“Mr Ferrante says that’s what you do when you’re frightened of saying one. I said both, in the first line.” He looked at the radio. “And then I said one.”

“Which one?”

“The Viceroy.”

“And I said the King.”

“Then between us,” said Frederick, “we’ve said both, and one each.” He thought about it. “That’s probably a B.”

There was a silence on the line, and then a sound he had not heard from Theo since the top of a Ferris wheel at Santa Monica, before the wheel stopped: Theo laughing, properly, helplessly, with his hand over the receiver and not over it enough.

“I’m going to write that in the planner too,” said Theo. “BETWEEN US: A B.”

“Go to bed. You’ve got biology on Thursday.”

“You’ve got geometry tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“Nine to twelve,” said Theo. “In the gym. With the box.” His voice changed. “Freddie. Is it over? In Argentina?”

He looked at the radio on the dresser. At his mother at the table with her coffee. At Bridget’s back at the range.

“Not yet,” he said. “Tonight. In their time.”