A Year

Kowalski had come as a lumberjack again.

The same plaid shirt, the same beard drawn on with eyeliner, and on his head, held there by an elastic strap under the chin, the same plastic axe that went in at one side of his skull and came out of the other. He sat at his desk two rows from the front with the axe at a slight angle and an expression of great dignity.

Mr Abernathy came in, sat down, opened the roll book, took out his pen.

He looked at the axe.

He looked at it. Then he looked down at the roll book.

“Abrams.”

Nothing about the district. Nothing about costumes that obstructed the face. Nothing about the date. He read the roll at the usual speed, with the small pause after each name, Bello, Castañeda, Diaz, and Frederick listened for the pause after Hanover to be different, a quarter of a second, the way it had been for Castañeda in September.

“Hanover.”

“Here.”

It was not different.

“Hartigan.”

“Here.”

At the end Mr Abernathy closed the book and looked up over his glasses.

“Mr Kowalski.”

“Sir.”

“The axe is a year older. So is everybody in this room.” He put the pen away. “Radiators are fixed. Don’t touch them. The end.”

---

“He noticed,” said Theo, on the stairs.

“Noticed what?”

“Don’t.” Theo hitched his bag. “He looked at the axe for four seconds. I counted. Four seconds for an axe. He’s never looked at anything for four seconds.” He went up a step. “That was for you. The axe was a year ago. He was telling you he knew what day it was without saying it.”

“He was looking at Kowalski.”

“He was looking at the axe,” said Theo. “Kowalski’s just under it.”

---

There was nothing in the newspapers.

He had expected something. The morning paper had a paragraph on page nine: A year ago today, and two sentences, and a photograph of the Standard on the roof that had been taken in May. The ABC at seven had not mentioned it at all; it had led with the Lords and three amendments to the California Reconstruction Bill to be moved on Thursday, and then rain on the Lakes.

Rosalind Aird had arranged that. He knew she had because she had asked him in September what he wanted for the thirty-first, and he had said nothing, and she had written it down, and said nothing is the hardest thing to arrange, sir, and gone away, and arranged it.

He was more grateful than for most things that year.

---

At two o’clock he was in Mrs Pruitt’s room.

It was the same room. The second floor, the west side, the long whiteboard and the window over the car park. A year ago he had sat in the second row by that window and the clock above the door had said two, and nothing had happened, and he had been unable to find anywhere in himself where it was. Then a knock, and Mrs Pruitt in the bright empty corridor with an email, deciding in front of him not to say a thing she had been about to say.

Junior year, and still Mrs Pruitt. Precalculus now, not geometry; but she had put a circle on the board at the start of the lesson, freehand, very round, and three points on it, and said that before they did anything new they were going to do something old, because she had found in thirty years of teaching that it was good for people.

He looked at the circle.

The clock said a minute to two.

“A, B, and C,” said Mrs Pruitt. “A and B are the ends of a diameter. C is anywhere you like on the curve. What’s the angle at C?”

“Ninety,” said Devon.

“Always?”

“Always.”

“Prove it.”

Devon went to the board. He drew the lines, big, the way he always drew them. Radius. Two isosceles triangles. The angles adding up. Priya went up and wrote the last line, neat. It took four minutes.

The clock said three minutes past two.

Nothing had happened. Nothing was going to. He sat in the second row by the window with his hands on the desk and found it at once, this time, where it was. It was in his chest, about where his father had put his hand on the apron. It had been there for a year. He was used to it.

“It doesn’t matter where C is,” said Mrs Pruitt. “That’s the whole thing. You can put the point anywhere on the curve and it makes no difference at all.” She looked at the board. “I said that last year, on this date, at this time. I’m saying it again because it’s still true. Some things are.” She capped the pen. “Now. Functions.”

She did not look at him once.

---

The Prime Minister came on Wednesday because the Lords sat on Thursday.

He walked down the Axis at a quarter to six, the same as always, with the satchel, looking in the windows; but he was in the small study at five to, which had never happened, and he did not sit down at once. He stood at the window looking back up the Axis towards Charter Hill.

“They’re moving them tomorrow, sir,” he said. “All three. At four. I’ll be on the front bench. I’ve spoken to everybody I can speak to.” He sat down. “I’ve counted. I’ve counted eleven times. On the first amendment I win by about thirty. On the second, by about ten. On the third, I don’t know.”

“What’s the third?”

“The third is the clever one.” He did not open the satchel. “It doesn’t take out the damage suffered by persons. It leaves those words in and adds four of its own after persons: having an insurable interest.” He looked at the King. “Which sounds like a definition and means that a person who rented, or had no insurance, or lived in a house that was never insured because nobody would insure it, is not a person for the purposes of the Act.”

Frederick thought of the flats by the river mouth at Ventura. Of Inés at the desk by the door, with her hand flat on the page.

“Who drafted it?”

“The same firm. Better than the other two. They always save the best for last.” A pause. “If it goes through, the Commons sends it back. I’ll make sure of that. But it’ll have been said, by a House of Parliament, that a person without a policy isn’t a person. And that will be in Hansard, sir, for ever, beside your clause.”

“It isn’t my clause.”

“No, sir,” said Lord Whitlock. “Forgive me. It’s page six of my Speech.” A pause. “In your voice.”

They sat for a while.

“Prime Minister. Do you remember what I said on the first of June?”

Lord Whitlock looked at him. Then he reached inside his jacket, which he had never done in that room, and took out a folded sheet of paper, and did not unfold it, and held it up between two fingers for a moment, and put it back.

“Every word, sir. In my pocket. I’ll have it on the front bench tomorrow.”

---

Not a word about the year. He went through four other things, the Lakes and a judge and a treaty and the Coast Service’s helicopters, in his head, without a paper, and at a quarter to seven he stood up and picked up the satchel and bowed his head and went to the door.

At the door he stopped, as he always did now.

“One thing, sir. Not business.” He looked at the floor. “A year ago tonight, at about this time, I was in the Privy Council chamber, and you were across the table, fifteen, and you’d just been proclaimed, and you didn’t say anything for two hours because you weren’t allowed to. And afterwards I sent you a note.” He paused. “You answered it with one line. About the Regency Act.”

“I remember.”

“I’ve got that in my pocket as well.” He opened the door. “Good night, sir.”

---

At four, before the Prime Minister, he had been on the sixth floor.

His father had been in the chair by the river window with the rug, and the newspaper on the tray table, folded open at page nine.

“Year,” said his father, before Frederick sat down.

“A year.”

“Two. O’clock?”

“I was in Mrs Pruitt’s room. The same room. She did the same proof. The angle in a semicircle.” He sat. “She said it doesn’t matter where C is. She said it last year, at two. She said it again because it’s still true.”

His father thought about that for a while, looking at the river.

“Good. Teacher.”

“Yes.”

Frederick looked at the newspaper on the tray. The photograph of the Standard on the roof, taken in May.

“Papa. Do you miss it?”

He had not meant to ask. He had decided in the car not to.

His father looked at him. Then the breath, and the hold.

“Boxes,” said his father. “No.”

Frederick waited.

“Sundays,” said his father. A long breath. “Quarter. To four.”

The telephone. Every Sunday at a quarter to four, New Westminster time, from London, for fifteen years. Twenty minutes. The realms and the trains and what each of them was reading.

“You miss the Sunday calls?”

“No.” His father looked amused. “Had. Them.” A breath. “Now.” He lifted one hand off the rug, slowly, and turned it over on his knee, palm up, and looked at it, and then at Frederick in the plastic chair. “Every. Day.”

Frederick could not answer for a moment.

“Four. O’clock,” said his father. “Better.”

He picked up the blue book.

“Seven. Oh. Four,” said his father, before he could open it.

“I know, Papa.”

“Just. Checking.”