Count Them

By the end of August the two words were everywhere.

They were on the hoardings by the railway and on the side of a bus that went past the shop four times a day, in red and black, with nothing else on them but a small square photograph in the corner. COUNT THEM. They were on a banner hung from a window in the old commercial quarter by somebody who had painted them on a bedsheet. Somebody had chalked them on the pavement outside the Treasury, and the Treasury had had them hosed off, and somebody had chalked them again the next morning in larger letters. They had become, in a month, the thing people said when they meant that they did not know what to do about the Territory either and wanted credit for admitting it.

On the Tuesday morning, before the shop opened, Caleb heard Signe Halvorsen on the radio for the first time.

He was in the kitchen with the boathouse radio on and the window open, eating toast standing up, and the presenter introduced her and she said “Good morning,” and he stopped chewing. He had seen her in the Commons from the gallery, writing on her knee, and on the poster at the end of his street. He had never heard her speak. She had a flat, unhurried Minnesota voice, the voice of somebody who had chaired a great many meetings in church halls and had learned to wait for the room.

“The question your listeners keep putting to me,” she said, “is what the Bloc thinks the Territory should become. And I keep telling them that we don’t know. Nobody knows. Nobody in Parliament has the faintest idea what four million people want, because nobody in Parliament has ever asked them, or even counted them. We’re going to count them first. Then we’ll ask them. Then, perhaps, we’ll know something.”

“But you must have a view,” said the presenter.

“I have a view about not having a view until I know what I’m having it about,” said Halvorsen. “It’s an unfashionable position. It seems to be doing quite well.”

The presenter laughed, which presenters did not usually do with the Bloc.

Caleb finished his toast. He stood at the kitchen window and looked down at the street, where a man was walking a dog past the hoarding at the end with the poster on it, and the dog stopped at the foot of the hoarding, as dogs do, and the man waited for it, looking up at the two words without seeming to read them.

It was an obvious thing to say. He had said it in the Lords on the twenty-seventh of July because it was obvious, and she had said it on the radio a month later because it was obvious, and it was obvious because it was true. Anybody who had read the evidence would have said it. Halvorsen had probably never read the evidence. She had got there on her own. That was the best thing about it.

He turned the radio off and went to work.

---

Oliver Grant came at eight in the evening with six bottles of beer in a paper bag and his jacket over his shoulder, and stood on the landing outside the flat with the air of a man who had walked up three flights and wanted credit for it.

“There’s no lift,” he said.

“There’s never been a lift.”

“There should be. It’s a capital. People live up stairs in a capital.” He came in and put the beer on the kitchen table and looked round. “Nothing’s changed. You’ve got the same radio.”

“It’s a good radio.”

“It’s your grandfather’s radio. It’s from a boathouse.” Oliver took two bottles out of the bag and opened them on the edge of the table with the heel of his hand, which he had been doing since their first year at King’s College and which had never once worked first time. It did not work first time now. “How’s the map lady?”

“Mrs Pell.”

“How’s Mrs Pell?”

“She’s very well. She gave Samuel tea in the good cup.”

“Samuel was here?”

“Last week.”

“And got the good cup. He always gets the good cup. It’s the beard.” Oliver got the second bottle open at the third attempt and handed it over. “I’ve been on the campaign for three weeks. If I have to listen to one more candidate say the people of this Realm I’m going to resign and come and sell maps with you.”

He was a political reporter for a New York daily with a bureau in the capital, the second most junior man in it, and he had been the only one of their circle at King’s College to go anywhere near politics. He had gone into it the way other people went into medicine, as a vocation he was slightly embarrassed by and would not stop talking about. He was thin and dark and quick and talked with his hands. Caleb had known him since the first week of their first term, when they had been put in the same boat in the college eight and discovered in the first outing that neither of them could row and both of them could sail.

They sat in the front room with the window open, and the light going over the roofs, and talked about nothing for an hour. About the friends from college, none of whom were in politics and all of whom had views about it. About a wedding in Connecticut in June that they had both been to and neither had enjoyed. About Oliver’s editor, who believed the Bloc was a passing fashion and would be under twenty seats on the night.

“What do you think?” said Caleb.

“I think he’s wrong. I think they’ll double. I think Labour’s going to fall through the floor and the Liberals with it, and the Conservatives will come first and not be able to do anything with it because they won’t sit with the Alternative.” Oliver drank. “And then there’ll be nobody. Nobody who can count to two hundred and thirty-three. I’ve done it on paper twenty times. There are two ways to a majority and nobody will take either of them.”

“Then there’ll be another election.”

“Then there’ll be another election, at Christmas, and the same thing will happen, and the country will be very tired.” Oliver put his bottle down. “Which brings me to the thing I came to say.”

“I thought you came for the beer.”

“I brought the beer. You haven’t got any beer. You never have any beer.” Oliver leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Whit. On the night of the division.”

Caleb didn’t move.

“There was a story going round the lobby the next morning,” Oliver said. “That after the vote, somebody had been talking about a Prime Minister from the Lords. To hold things together while the courts decided about the five. You’ll have heard it.”

“It was on the radio.”

“It was on the radio, but not who. Nobody said who. I’ve had it from three people since. A whip’s researcher who wasn’t there, a Labour member who was, and a man in a bar who’d had it from somebody’s nephew. None of them knew the name. All three of them said the same thing about it, though. A peer who knew about the Territory. Young. No party.” He looked at Caleb. “There’s one.”

Caleb drank some of his beer.

“I’m not asking you to tell me,” Oliver said. “I’m telling you I know, so that you don’t find out from somebody else that I know and think I’ve been sitting on it.”

“You have been sitting on it.”

“I’ve been sitting on it for three weeks.” Oliver sat back. “And I’m going to go on sitting on it.”

“Why?”

“Because it didn’t happen. Because a story about a thing that didn’t happen is a story about the person who’s telling it, and I’m not interested in writing about me.” He picked up the bottle again. “And because you’re my friend, and you’d never speak to me again, and I’d miss the spaghetti.”

“You hate my spaghetti.”

“I love your spaghetti. It’s the worst spaghetti in the capital and I’ve eaten it for eight years.” Oliver drank. “That’s the other reason. Don’t make me say any more reasons. I’m a reporter, I’m not supposed to have them.”

They were quiet for a while. The light went off the roofs. Somewhere below in the street a radio was playing in an open window, the ABC, a man’s voice, and then a woman’s, and then a burst of laughter from an audience.

“Did you know?” Oliver said. “At the time?”

“No.”

“When did you find out?”

“A clerk told me. In the shop. The second week of August.”

“The committee clerk?”

Caleb said nothing.

“All right,” said Oliver. “Don’t tell me that either.” He looked at the window, at the dark roofs, at the place at the left-hand end where you had to lean to see the dome. “What did you think? When he told you.”

“I laughed.”

“And then?”

“And then I sold a man a road atlas of Maine.”

Oliver laughed, suddenly and loudly, the way he always had, and spilled beer on his trousers and didn’t notice. “Of course you did. Of course that’s what you did.” He wiped his eyes. “God, Whit. Anybody else in the world would have been on the telephone to their mother.”

“I didn’t tell my mother.”

“You didn’t tell your mother.” Oliver stopped laughing. “Does Samuel know?”

“No.”

“Does anybody know? Apart from me and a clerk and three whips who’ve forgotten?”

“Mrs Pell knows something. I don’t know what.”

“Mrs Pell,” said Oliver, “knows everything. Women like that always do.” He finished the bottle and put it on the floor by the chair. “Have you heard Halvorsen? On the radio?”

“This morning.”

“It’s your line, you know. Count them. I looked it up. You said it in the Lords on the twenty-seventh. Not settled. Counted. It’s in the record.” He looked at Caleb sideways. “Nobody’d said it before you. Not in either House. I checked.”

“It’s an obvious line.”

“Is it.”

“Anybody who’d read the evidence would have said it.”

“Nobody had read the evidence,” said Oliver. “Except you.” He let it go. He stood up and stretched, and found his jacket on the back of the sofa. “I’m on the early train to Philadelphia. The Conservatives are doing something with a choir. Pray for me.”

At the door he turned round on the landing with his jacket over his shoulder, the way he had arrived.

“Call me if anything happens,” he said.

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Call me anyway.” Oliver went down the first flight and stopped and looked back up the stairwell. “And Whit? Buy some beer. It’s an election. Things happen at elections. You should have beer in the house for when they do.”

His footsteps went down the stairs, three flights, and the street door banged. Caleb stood on the landing for a moment in the dark, and then went back in and washed up the bottles and put them out for the morning, and turned on the radio, very low, and there was music.