Remembrance

He laid the wreath with his left hand.

He had practised it on Saturday, in the Palace, in the long gallery, with a wreath of the right size and weight made out of cardboard and paper poppies by somebody in the Household who had stayed up to do it, and his mother had watched, and Dame M had watched, and his father had watched from a chair by the window with his hands on the head of his stick. He had practised walking forward the four paces from the line to the foot of the Cenotaph, and stopping, and holding the wreath out in front of him with both hands, and then, because his right hand was strapped and could not grip, letting it rest on the strapped hand and guiding it down with the left, and laying it on the step, and stepping back the four paces, and standing still.

He had practised it eleven times. On the eleventh his father had lifted the stick an inch off the floor.

What he had not practised was the neck.

He could not turn it. Four days after Westminster he could turn it about as far as you can turn a bottle top that has been put on by somebody stronger than you. He could look straight ahead. He could look down, if he bent from the waist, which he could not do at the Cenotaph. He could not look left or right at all, and so on the Sunday morning in Whitehall, in the cold and the grey, standing at the head of the line in a dark coat with the wreath in his hands and the long white stone in front of him going up into the sky with nothing on it but the flags and the words, he could see only the stone.

He could not see the crowd. He knew it was there. He could hear it, which is to say he could hear the particular silence of a great many people standing on pavements in the cold not talking. He could not see the class, who were somewhere on the pavement on the left, behind the barriers, near the corner of Downing Street, with Mr Abernathy at one end and Mr Ferrante at the other and Theo, presumably, sticking up out of the middle like a mast. He could not see his father, who had insisted on coming, and was at a window above, in the Foreign Office, in a chair, with Niamh.

He could see the stone.

The clock in the tower at Westminster struck eleven. The gun went in the park, far off, a single heavy thud you felt in your feet.

And then nothing.

---

He had stood in two minutes’ silence every year of his life. He had stood in it at the Tomb in New Westminster on the Eleventh, every year since he could walk, beside his father, and then, last year, in front of everybody, alone, laying the Crown’s wreath. He knew what it was like. He knew how long two minutes was, which is a great deal longer than it sounds, and how the silence changes in the middle of it, about halfway through, when everybody has stopped thinking about how long it is and starts thinking about what it is for.

This was different. He did not know why at first.

Then he did. At the Tomb, in the Realm, the silence was for the King. That was what the Register said, in its way: that the Realm had built its memory of the war around a King’s grief, around a King who had stood at a grave and could not speak, and every year since the whole Realm had stood with his successor at that grave and been silent with him. The silence there had a centre. It was the man at the front. It was, for the last two years, him.

Here it did not.

Here the silence was for the dead. The stone in front of him had no name on it, no King’s name, no anybody’s name. It was empty on purpose. And the thousands of people on the pavements of Whitehall behind him were not standing still for him, or with him; they had their backs to him, most of them, facing the stone as he was, and they were standing still for their own. For grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-uncles in photographs on mantelpieces, from villages like Coln Saint Aldwyns, from every street in every town. They were not looking at the King. They were looking at the same place the King was looking.

He was not the centre of it.

He was in it.

The silence went on. Somewhere on the left, a child said something, high, one word, and was hushed. A pigeon went over. His neck ached, all the way down, steadily. He did not move.

The bugle.

---

He laid the wreath with his left hand, and it was all right.

---

The class was on the 13.21 from Paddington. He was on the 13.21 from Paddington. There was no special carriage and no other train, and so the King of Great Britain, who had laid a wreath at the Cenotaph at four minutes past eleven, found himself at half past one in coach C of an ordinary train going west, in seat 42, with Theo in 43 and the rest of the senior class of Ellicott High School in seats 44 to 74, eating sandwiches out of paper bags.

“You did it with your left,” said Theo.

“I couldn’t do it with my right.”

“I know. It looked fine.” Theo ate a sandwich. “You couldn’t see us. You couldn’t turn your head. Devon waved at you for the whole of the march past. He thought you were ignoring him.”

“I was.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

Across the aisle, Mr Ferrante was looking out of the window at the backs of houses going past, with a newspaper open on his knee that he was not reading. He had been quiet all morning. He had stood on the pavement with his scarf round his neck three times and his hands in his pockets and had not said a word, and had not said a word since, and Frederick, who had known him for four years, had never known him not say a word for four hours.

“Sir,” said Frederick.

Mr Ferrante looked round.

“Are you all right?”

Mr Ferrante thought about it.

“My grandfather was English,” he said. “My mother’s father. From a village in the south. He went to the Realm in 1912 with his parents, aged nine, and when the war came he was fifteen and he lied about his age and joined up, in the Realm, and went to France in 1918 with the Realm’s army, and came back.” He looked at the newspaper on his knee. “And his brother, who stayed, who never went to the Realm at all, who was a year older, went to France in 1916 with the British army.” He folded the newspaper. “And did not.”

The train went through a cutting. The window went dark, and then light.

“I’ve never been to look for him,” said Mr Ferrante. “My grandfather never told us the village. He’d only ever say Hampshire. As if it were one place.” He looked out of the window. “There’ll be a name. On a board. Somewhere. In one of the churches down there.” He looked at Frederick. “I stood in Whitehall this morning and thought, I’m standing in a country where my great-uncle’s name is on a wall I don’t know the way to.”

“You could find it,” said Frederick.

“I could.” Mr Ferrante looked at the newspaper again. “I’m a historian. I’ve spent my whole life finding things.” He paused. “I’ve never once wanted to find something that might be mine.”

---

The evening service at St John the Baptist was at five, in the dark.

He walked down to it from the school with Will and Theo and Kit, along the river in the cold, under a sky with the last of the light going out of it behind the hill, and the church at the end of the lane had its windows lit, yellow, all the way down, and the bell going, one note, over and over, slow.

It was full. He had not expected it to be full. It was the whole village, in coats, in the pews, with their hats on their knees, the people he had seen in sheets and bin bags on Thursday and in a field round a bonfire on Tuesday, Gaz and Little Rob in clean shirts, Mr Purvis in a black overcoat with a row of medals on it that nobody had known he had, Mr Ellis in a tie, Sue Fennell in the choir stalls in her surplice glaring at the basses, and Mrs Haverfield in the front pew, in her coat and headscarf, with Ernest under the pew, as always, asleep.

On the wall by the font there was a board.

It was wooden, dark, with gold letters on it, very old and a little faded, under a carved cross. At the top it said, in gold: IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE MEN OF THIS PARISH WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES. And then the dates, two sets of them. And then the names.

He read them. He read them all, standing by the font with his hat in his left hand, while the bell went on. Purvis, A. E. Purvis, W. Ellis, T. J. Fennell, G. Cole, R. And the rest of them, down to the bottom of the board. He did not count them. It was not the count that mattered. It was that he knew the surnames. They were the names of the people in the pews.

Cole, R. was in the second set of dates. The second war.

He looked at the front pew. Mrs Haverfield was sitting with her chin up and her hands folded on top of her stick, looking at the altar.

Behind him in the doorway Mr Ferrante had come in, quietly, with his scarf, and had stopped too, and was looking at the board.

Frederick watched him read it. Every name. Slowly. With his lips moving very slightly, the way they moved over the map of 1779.

He had said himself that it would not be here. Frederick could see him look anyway. He got to the bottom of the board and stood for a moment and then went and sat at the back, by himself, at the end of a pew, with his hands in his lap.

---

At six minutes past six by the church clock, the vicar, the Reverend Alan Prothero, who had been a chaplain in the Army for twenty-two years and had buried men on four continents, came down from the altar and stood in front of the board by the font, in his white surplice, with the whole church turned round in the pews to face him, and read the names.

He read them as if he knew every one of them. He read them slowly, one at a time, with a pause between each, and after each name, from somewhere in the pews, very quietly, somebody said we will remember him, a different voice each time, not loud, as if it were not a thing that was said in a service but a thing that was said between people.

Purvis, A. E. And from the pews, Mr Purvis, in his overcoat with his medals: we will remember him.

Ellis, T. J. And Mr Ellis, in his tie: we will remember him.

Fennell, G. And from the choir stalls, Sue Fennell: we will remember him.

Cole, R. And from the front pew, very small, very clear, not looking round: we will remember him.

And then the two minutes again. The second time that day. In a village church in the dark, with the candles, and the cold coming in under the door, and Ernest asleep under the front pew, and the whole of Coln Saint Aldwyns standing still in its coats, and the King of Great Britain at the back by the font, among them, his neck aching, not able to turn his head, looking at the board, and not the centre of anything at all.

He thought it was the best two minutes of his life.

He thought that was a strange thing to think about two minutes of silence for the dead, and that he would not say it to anybody, and that it was true.

---

At the New Inn afterwards the fire was lit and the place was full of the coats from the church, and Sue Fennell had come straight from the choir stalls and was behind the bar in her surplice with the sleeves rolled up, pulling pints, and Jack was beside her in his black T-shirt, and when Frederick came in through the door with Theo and Will and Kit, and the whole pub turned round, and turned back, Jack looked up from the pump with the grin, and then saw who was behind them, and the grin went somewhere and came back as something else.

Castellanos had come in behind them.

He did not usually come into the New Inn. He usually stood outside, by the bridge, with his collar up, or sat in the car at the end of the lane. He came in now, in his dark coat, and stood just inside the door for a moment, looking at the room the way he looked at every room, and then walked through it, between the tables, to the bar, and stopped at the far end, where Gaz and Little Rob were on their stools, and stood there.

Gaz and Little Rob looked at him.

Gaz and Little Rob got off their stools, together, without being asked, and went and sat somewhere else.

“Pint, please,” said Castellanos, to Sue Fennell. “Of whatever he’d have.” He nodded at Jack. “And one for him.”

Sue Fennell looked at Castellanos for a long moment over the reading glasses. Then she looked at her son. Then she pulled two pints, and put them on the bar, and took the money, and went to the other end of the bar, and began, very loudly, to polish something that did not need polishing.

Jack came round the end of the bar.

Frederick watched it from the table by the fire, where Will had put him, with a lemonade, and his neck held straight. He could not hear it. The pub was too loud, and the fire was too loud, and Will was telling Kit about a ram called Gordon. He could see it. Castellanos at the end of the bar with his pint, not drinking it. Jack in front of him with his, not drinking it either. Castellanos saying something, short. Jack answering, longer. Castellanos saying something else. Jack answering, shorter, looking at the floor. Castellanos saying a third thing, and waiting.

Jack looked up.

Jack said something. One word, Frederick thought. Perhaps two.

Castellanos looked at him for a while.

Then Castellanos picked up his pint and drank about a third of it, and put it down, and nodded, once, and turned and walked back through the room between the tables, and went out of the door into the dark, and did not look at the table by the fire as he passed it.

Jack stood at the end of the bar with his pint.

Then he drank about half of it in one go, and put it down, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked across the room at Frederick, and his face was the colour it had been in the lane in September.

---

“What did he ask you?” said Frederick.

It was later. It was by the churchyard wall, outside, in the cold, where Jack had walked him on the way back up to the school, with Ernest on his lead, because Mrs Haverfield had gone home at seven and had handed Jack the lead at the door of the pub without a word, as she always did. The lane was dark. The church was dark now too. Somewhere along the river behind them Kimura was walking, at a distance, very quietly, which meant that he could not hear her at all.

Jack looked at Ernest, who was sniffing the base of the wall.

“Three things,” said Jack.

“What things?”

“First one,” said Jack, “was did I know who you were.” He looked at Ernest. “I said yes. He said, not the King. Who he is. I said I didn’t know what he meant.” He frowned. “He said, you will.”

Frederick did not say anything.

“Second one,” said Jack, “was whether I’d tell anybody. Anybody at all. Ever. And I said no. And he said, not the papers. Anybody. And I said I’ve told Gaz and Little Rob I like you, they’re not stupid, they’ve got eyes, and he said that wasn’t what he meant either.” Jack shook his head. “He said, the thing you’d tell. Will you tell it. And I said no. Not ever. Not unless you said.” He looked up. “That’s what I meant. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Good.” Jack looked back down at the dog. “I didn’t know if it was a trick.”

“What was the third?”

Jack was quiet for a moment. It was the second time in a week that Frederick had known him to be quiet.

“Third one,” said Jack, “he said, do you like him.”

The lane was very dark. Ernest had found something at the base of the wall that interested him profoundly.

“What did you say?” said Frederick.

Jack looked at him. In the dark, by the churchyard wall, with the names on the board inside behind the door, and the river going, and the cold.

“I said obviously,” said Jack.

---

On Monday, the Eleventh, at eleven in the morning in New Westminster, which was four in the afternoon in Gloucestershire, the Governor-General laid the Crown’s wreath at the Tomb.

He watched it on Kit’s laptop in the Windrush common room, on the table, on the pile of Persuasions, at four o’clock, with the telephone in his other hand, because it was four o’clock, and at four o’clock he rang his father, and he had rung, and his father had said no read, which meant that today he would not read the arrivals at Paddington, and they had watched it together, four thousand miles from the Tomb and a hundred miles from each other, on two screens, with the line open between them, saying nothing.

The Governor-General stood at the Tomb in the cold under the bare trees with the wreath. The crowd stood behind. At the front of the crowd, where the King had stood for fifty-six years, where Frederick had stood last year alone, there was nobody. The space was there. The Realm had left it.

The silence began.

On the line, in London, his father was breathing.

In the common room the English sixth-formers who had come in to watch stood up, all of them, without being told, because they had seen the Americans stand up, and stood still, in the Windrush common room, by the fire, in front of a laptop on a pile of Persuasions, for the Realm’s dead, in the Realm’s silence, that was not theirs.

Two minutes.

At the end of it the Governor-General laid the wreath.

On the line, his father said, slowly, carefully, one word at a time, like a man laying stones:

“They.” A breath. “Left.” A breath. “Room.”

“I saw.”

“For.” The longest breath. “You.”

Frederick looked at the screen. At the space at the front of the crowd, under the bare trees, with nobody in it.

“I know,” he said.

He wrote that night in the blue notebook:

Two silences. One in Whitehall, one in the church. I wasn’t the middle of either. Cole, R. Fennell, G. Mr Ferrante read our board anyway. Castellanos asked Jack three questions. The third answer was obviously. They left a space at the Tomb.

And then, under it, after a while:

End of Michaelmas, nearly. The radiator still works.