Book Twelve: Time, Gentlemen Part Seven: New Wessex Characters
Chapter Fifteen
Both Halves
Frederick. Sydney and Wellington, in New Wessex. Friday, 16 January, to Sunday, 18 January 2032.
Federal officials have periodically attempted to popularise a national demonym; the attempts have not survived contact with the population.
“Ninety-one,” said Theo, at the door of the aeroplane, and stopped on the top step.
The air came up the steps at him like the inside of an oven that somebody had been baking bread in and then left the door open. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on Friday the sixteenth of January in Sydney, and the sky was a hard, enormous, almost white blue, and the tarmac was shimmering, and the band of the New Wessex Navy, drawn up at the bottom of the steps in white, was playing the Realm’s anthem with the expressions of men whose instruments were too hot to hold.
“Thirty-three,” said Theo. “Point. Something.” He came down two steps. “It’s January.”
“It’s summer,” said Frederick.
“It’s January,” said Theo again, as though repeating it would make it true, and went down the steps into the heat like a man walking into the sea.
The bar in Sydney was in the Rocks, in an old stone building by the harbour that had been a bond store in the 1830s, and it was called the Harbour Master’s Arms, and it was run by a woman called Mrs Doreen Fitzsimmons, who was seventy-one and had been behind a bar in the Rocks since 1977, and who had, according to the Sydney papers, which had covered her all week, trained four hundred bar staff in her career, more than any woman in the federation, including a former Prime Minister, two swimmers who had swum for the federation, and a man who was now a bishop.
She met him on the step. She was very small, with white hair cut short and a voice like a gravel path, and she shook his hand and looked at him, up and down, and said:
“You’re the one who can’t do the stout.”
“Yes.”
“Saw it on the news. Both of ‘em. Ninety-four seconds and a hundred and fifty-one.” She let go of his hand. “That’s not a stout problem, love. That’s a waiting problem. You wait too long or you don’t wait at all.” She turned round and went inside. “We’ll fix that.”
He did not know, until about seven o’clock, that he was being tested.
He thought he was working. He was behind the bar of the Harbour Master’s Arms from half past four, with Mrs Fitzsimmons beside him and Theo at the other end, in a room with a stone floor and a high timber ceiling and every window open to the harbour and four ceiling fans going round, and he pulled beer. He pulled a great deal of beer. He had never pulled so much beer in his life. In New Westminster in a busy hour he might pull ninety pints. In the Harbour Master’s Arms between five and six on a Friday in January he pulled, by Kimura’s beer mat, two hundred and twelve, and they were not pints, they were schooners, which were a different size, smaller, and middies, which were smaller again, and ponies, which were smaller than that and which nobody seemed to order except an old man in the corner who had ordered one an hour since 1983, and they all had to be pulled differently, and Mrs Fitzsimmons stood beside him and corrected every one.
“Less head,” she said.
“Less?”
“Less. Half a finger. Barely. You’re not in Dublin now.” She took a schooner off him and tipped the top of it away and topped it up. “In Sydney you serve the beer. Not the foam. Nobody wants to pay for foam.” She put it on the bar. “Faster.”
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going as fast as you think you’re allowed.” She took the next glass. “Watch.”
She pulled a schooner. She pulled it in about two seconds, straight, almost upright, fast, with a flick of the wrist at the end that took the head off it, and there was barely any head at all, a thin white line, and she put it on the bar on a mat and took the money and gave the change and was pulling the next one before the first customer had picked his up.
“Like that,” she said.
He did it like that. It came out wrong. He did it again. It came out less wrong. By half past six he could do it about as fast as Mrs Fitzsimmons had done it when she was, she said, eleven, and helping her father.
At seven, she took a stopwatch out of her apron.
“Right,” she said. “Ten schooners. Under a minute. Half a finger of head on every one. Go.”
“Is this a test?”
“Course it’s a test, love,” said Mrs Fitzsimmons. “It’s a test for the paper.” She nodded at the window, where a photographer and a man with a notebook were standing on the stone step outside in the heat. “Sydney Morning Herald’s doing it. Tomorrow you’re in Wellington. Wellington Courier’s doing the same thing over there.” She held up the stopwatch. “Whoever trained you better wins.”
“Wins what?”
“Wins,” said Mrs Fitzsimmons, and clicked the stopwatch.
He did ten schooners in fifty-four seconds, with half a finger of head on nine of them and a whole finger on one, which Mrs Fitzsimmons held up to the window and showed to the photographer with an expression of deep sorrow, as though it had died.
“Nine out of ten,” she said. “Fifty-four seconds.” She put the stopwatch in her apron. “That’s a Sydney barman, that is. That’s one of mine.” She looked at the window. “Write that down.”
The man with the notebook wrote it down.
The next morning the Herald had it on page three under the headline SYDNEY’S KING: 10 SCHOONERS IN 54 SECONDS, with a photograph of Mrs Fitzsimmons holding up the one with the whole finger of head, and a quote from her that said he’s one of mine now, the Kiwis can have what’s left, and underneath it a short article that explained, for readers who might not be aware, that the King would be in Wellington that evening, and that the New Zealand half of the federation had, as usual, different views.
Wellington was cold.
It was not cold the way New Westminster was cold in January. It was sixty-four degrees, which Theo said was eighteen and which was, Theo said, getting off the aeroplane into a wind that came straight up the harbour from somewhere near the South Pole, the best weather I have ever been in, in my life, I want to live here. But after Sydney it felt like a different planet, and it was a different planet, in every sense that mattered to the people who lived in it, as the King discovered in the first ten minutes.
The bar was on the waterfront, in a building that had been a warehouse, and it was called the Southerly, and it was run by a man called Mr Hemi Tane, who was sixty-four and had been behind a bar in Wellington since 1986 and had, according to the Wellington Courier, which had covered him all week, trained five hundred bar staff in his career, more than anybody in either half of the federation, a figure which the Wellington Courier printed in bold.
He met the King on the step. He was a big quiet man with a grey beard and a black apron, and he shook the King’s hand, and looked at him, and said:
“I saw the paper.”
“Which paper?”
“The Sydney one.” Mr Tane let go of his hand. “Ten schooners in fifty-four seconds. Half a finger of head.” He turned round and went inside. “We’ll fix that.”
“More head,” said Mr Tane.
“More?”
“More. A finger. A good finger. A head you could stand a coin on.” He took a glass off him and looked at it and tipped it away. “This is a handle. Not a schooner. In Wellington, we serve a beer properly. You don’t rush it. You let it come up. You give the man his head.”
“In Sydney they said nobody wants to pay for foam.”
Mr Tane looked at him with an expression of very great patience.
“In Sydney,” he said, “they also put beetroot on a hamburger, and think a bridge is a personality.” He pulled a handle, slowly, at the angle, letting it come up, and the head rose a full finger, thick and white and dense as cream, and he set it on the bar. “Like that. Slower.”
“Slower?”
“You’re going as fast as Doreen told you to.” Mr Tane did not smile. “I’ve known Doreen thirty years. She’s a good woman and she pulls a terrible pint.” He took the next glass. “Slower.”
He did it slower. It came out wrong. He did it again. By half past eight he could pull a handle with a full finger of head, slowly, letting it come up, and it was, he thought, a very good pint, and it was also exactly what Mrs Fitzsimmons had spent three hours on Friday in the Rocks telling him never to do.
At nine, Mr Tane took a stopwatch out of his apron.
“Right,” he said. “Ten handles. A full finger on every one. No time limit.” He looked at the window, where a photographer and a woman with a notebook were standing on the step in the wind. “Wellington Courier’s doing it.”
“No time limit?”
“No time limit,” said Mr Tane. “That’s the point. In Wellington, we don’t hurry.”
He clicked the stopwatch anyway.
Frederick stood behind the bar of the Southerly with a handle in his hand and the stopwatch going and the woman from the Wellington Courier at the window and understood, with total clarity, that there was no way through this. If he pulled ten handles with a full finger of head, slowly, the Wellington Courier would print that he was a Wellington barman, one of Mr Tane’s, and the Herald would print that he had abandoned everything Mrs Fitzsimmons had taught him in twenty-four hours, and the federation, which had been formed after a war in which the two halves had suffered in common, and which had been arguing ever since about which of them had suffered more, would have something new to argue about. If he pulled ten handles with half a finger of head, fast, the same thing would happen the other way round.
He looked at Theo, at the other end of the bar.
Theo, in the Cranwell apron, which in the cold of Wellington he was very glad of, looked back at him, and shrugged.
He looked at Kimura, at the end of the bar, on a stool, drinking a handle with a full finger of head that he had pulled for a man at eight and then pulled again because the man had wanted a schooner. Kimura did not shrug. Kimura did not do anything. Kimura looked at him the way she always looked at him when he was about to do something stupid, which was without any expression whatsoever.
He pulled the first handle.
He pulled it with a full finger of head, slowly, letting it come up, the Wellington way, and set it on the bar.
He pulled the second handle with half a finger, fast, straight, with the flick of the wrist, the Sydney way, and set it beside the first.
He pulled the third Wellington. The fourth Sydney. The fifth Wellington. The sixth Sydney. He went down the row, ten glasses, alternating, one of Mr Tane’s and one of Mrs Fitzsimmons’s, slow and fast, full and thin, until there were ten glasses on the bar of the Southerly in a line, five and five, like the keys of a piano.
Mr Tane looked at them.
The woman from the Wellington Courier looked at them.
“Which,” said Mr Tane, after a very long time, “is which?”
“The odd ones are yours,” said Frederick. “The even ones are hers.”
“And which are yours?”
Frederick thought about it.
“None of them,” he said. “I haven’t got one yet. I’ve only been doing it since September.” He looked at the ten glasses. “I’ve had a lot of teachers. A boy in Gloucestershire. His mother. A man in Dublin. My father. Mrs Fitzsimmons. You.” He put the last glass down. “When I’ve got my own, I’ll tell you.”
Mr Tane looked at the row of ten glasses.
Then he clicked the stopwatch, and looked at it, and put it back in his apron.
“Two minutes forty,” he said. “That’s a draw.”
It was not a draw in the papers. In the Herald, on Monday, it was KING SHOWS KIWIS SYDNEY WAY, with a photograph of the even-numbered glasses. In the Wellington Courier, on Monday, it was KING POURS WELLINGTON, with a photograph of the odd-numbered glasses. The federal government, asked for its view at a press conference in Sydney on Monday afternoon, said that it was delighted that the King had enjoyed both halves of the federation equally, and that it hoped the occasion would encourage citizens of both to think of themselves as members of a single nation, and the press conference laughed, and the minister said he had not meant it as a joke.
On the aeroplane home, somewhere over the Pacific, Theo leaned across the aisle.
“Did you mean that?” he said. “About not having your own yet?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you’ll get one?”
Frederick thought about it, for a long time, over a very large ocean, with Theo in the Cranwell apron, which he was wearing as a blanket, and Kimura asleep across the aisle, and Mr Quennell two rows back writing Rule Fourteen in his notebook and then not knowing what to put after it.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t decided.”