The Draft

The manual was nine pages long.

Mr Quennell had it typed, by the twentieth of July, on the Household’s paper, with the crest at the top of the first page and RULES FOR THE SOVEREIGN WHEN SERVING BEHIND A BAR under the crest in capitals, and a note under that in smaller type, adopted by the Committee on the Conduct of the Sovereign While Employed, September 2031 to July 2032, as amended, and twenty-six rules, numbered, each with the date of its adoption and the vote and, in a column on the right that Mr Quennell had added in February without telling anybody, a note of how many times it had been broken.

He laid it on the round table in the back room on Tuesday the twentieth at two o’clock, and the committee looked at it.

Dame M read it all. She read it the way she read everything, from the first word to the last, without moving her lips, and turned the pages very precisely, and when she had finished she took off her glasses and laid them on top of it.

“Mr Quennell,” she said. “The column on the right.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Rule One. The King shall not be tipped.” She put her finger on the column. “You have written every Friday.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Not a number.”

“I stopped counting in November, ma’am,” said Mr Quennell. “Sergeant Kimura has the number. It’s on a beer mat. It’s a very large number.”

Through the hatch, without turning round, Kimura said: “Four hundred and six.”

“Four hundred and six,” said Dame M.

“Not counting the Queen of Sweden, ma’am,” said Kimura. “She was outside the jurisdiction.”

---

The committee had met forty-two times.

It had met every Tuesday since the ninth of September except three, two in December, when the King was in Ireland and the committee had met anyway and been told by Bridget that it was ridiculous to meet about a man who was in Dublin and had gone home, and one in April, the Tuesday after Mr Abernathy, when it had not met because Dame M had said, in a note to the members, that it would be improper to meet in a back room to discuss the conduct of a bar while a man who drank in that bar was in hospital, and that the committee would reconvene when he was home.

It had been interrupted on forty-one of the forty-two occasions. Mr Quennell had kept a record of that as well. It had been interrupted by deliveries of beer through the yard door on nineteen occasions, by regulars wandering in from the bar to vote on twenty-three, by Kimura objecting through the hatch on thirty-four, and by the Duke practising at the dartboard on every occasion without exception, including the three on which the committee had not met, because the Duke had come on the Thirty-Two anyway, on Tuesday, at a quarter past two, and practised in an empty room.

It had adopted thirty-one rules and withdrawn five. It had struck one paragraph, about Kimura’s stool, at its first meeting, and never reinstated it. It had heard from the Treasury twice, from the licensing inspector once, from the Speaker of the House of Commons once, by letter, thanking it for its hospitality on the seventeenth, and from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of the Federation of Malaya once, by a note in his own hand, enclosing a photograph of two kings at a tea stall, signed by both, with the words for your manual, which Mr Quennell had had framed and hung in the back room over the Christmas tree in its box.

“The question for the committee,” said Dame M, “is the last rule.”

---

There had to be a last rule.

That was Dame M’s view, and she had expressed it in July, in writing, to the members, and nobody had disagreed, because nobody ever disagreed with Dame M in writing. The year ended in August. The German Emperor was coming in August, on a state visit, the date not yet fixed but expected for the middle of the month, and the Household would be occupied with it, and after the state visit the King would leave Eight Bars, because he had said he would work behind a bar for about a year, and a year was a year. The committee would dissolve. The manual would go into the Royal Archives, with the minutes of forty-two meetings and Kimura’s beer mats, which Kimura had agreed to deposit on condition that nobody read them before 2082.

“A manual,” said Dame M, “should end with a rule that closes it.” She put her glasses back on. “I invite proposals.”

There was a silence in the back room.

At the dartboard, the Duke threw three darts, and they went into the treble twenty, one after the other, and he did not turn round.

“Rule,” said Bridget, eventually, “the end.”

“That’s not a rule,” said Mr Quennell.

“It’s a rule if we vote for it.”

“It has no operative content.”

“Neither did Seven,” said Bridget, “and you drafted it.” She looked at him over her handbag. “The Page of Honour shall not be more popular than the Sovereign. What was the operative content of that?”

Mr Quennell went pink.

“It was withdrawn,” he said.

“It was withdrawn,” said Bridget, “because Theo is more popular than the Sovereign, and has been since Brunswick, and everybody knows it, including the Sovereign, who says it’s restful.” She folded her hands. “Rules are for things you can stop. You can’t stop the end.”

---

Castellanos proposed one on the second Tuesday.

He had sat through the first Tuesday saying nothing, which was how he sat through most Tuesdays, in his jacket, with his visitor’s lanyard in his pocket so that the card did not show, and his hands folded on the table. But on the twenty-seventh he came in at two with a sheet of paper, folded, and put it on the table in front of him, and when Dame M said proposals, he unfolded it.

“The Sovereign shall at all times remain behind the bar,” he read.

There was a pause.

“That was in the preliminary schedule,” said Mr Quennell. “In September. Section four, paragraph one. You said it was the only one that mattered.” He turned pages. “It was never numbered.”

“No,” said Castellanos. “I’d like it numbered.”

“As the last rule?”

“As the last rule.” Castellanos folded the paper again. “It’s the only one he’s kept. Every night. Every country. Ottawa, the Mount, the tea stall, the truck. He’s never once come out from behind the bar while he was working. Not to shake hands, not for a photograph, not for an Emperor.” He looked at the table. “He stands at the edge of the room. He stays there. He lets them come up.” He put the paper in his pocket. “I’d like it written down that he did.”

Dame M looked at him for a long time.

“Inspector,” she said. “You have been sitting at the end of that bar on Monday evenings since November.”

Castellanos did not move.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Against your own advice.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“May I ask why?”

Castellanos thought about it, the way he thought about everything, for some time, with his hands folded on the table of the back room of a dive in the Fourth Ward, with the Duke at the dartboard behind him, and the Christmas tree in its box, and the photograph of two kings at a tea stall on the wall above it.

“Because I spent six years,” he said, “making sure nothing happened to him in rooms. And then I sat in this one, on a Monday, and watched things happen to him, all night, every Monday, good things, mostly, and some foam.” He looked at the hatch. “I wanted to see that. Before I’d only seen the other kind.”

---

Mr Quennell proposed his on the twenty-seventh as well.

He proposed it last, at a quarter past four, when the committee had been sitting for two hours and had been interrupted by a delivery of lager, two regulars wanting to vote on whether the King should be allowed to wear the Cranwell apron at the state banquet, which was not on the agenda, and Kimura, through the hatch, objecting to the regulars. He proposed it from a sheet of paper that he had evidently written several times, because it had crossings-out on it, and he read it in a voice that was not quite steady.

“The Sovereign may drink,” he read. “One whisky. On shift. At the end of the year.”

Nobody said anything.

“I’ve looked at all of them,” said Mr Quennell. “All twenty-six. And the five we withdrew. And the one we struck.” He put the sheet down. “Every single one of them says the Sovereign shall not. Shall not be tipped. Shall not taste spirits on television. Shall not choose a costume, shall not stand on the bar, shall not express a preference for the whisky of any one part of any realm over another.” He looked at the manual. “We’ve spent forty-two Tuesdays telling him what he can’t do behind a bar.” He looked up. “I thought the last one should tell him what he can.”

Dame M looked at him over her glasses.

“Mr Quennell,” she said. “You have never been in a bar.”

Mr Quennell went very pink.

“No, ma’am,” he said.

Through the hatch, very clearly, Kimura said: “Item.”

“Sergeant?”

“That’s not true, ma’am.” Kimura did not turn round. “Mr Quennell’s been in this one every night since some time in the spring. He sits in the booth by the pool table. He has a half of bitter, which he gets the King to pull, and he drinks about a third of it and leaves the rest, and I drink it, being an error.” She paused. “He talks to Mr Delgado about the post. He talks to Marcus about the trombone. He was here the night Theo saw Mr Abernathy’s writing go wrong, and he stood by the door and held it open for the paramedics, and nobody asked him to.” She drank. “He’s on my beer mats. Every night. I can give you dates.”

Dame M looked at Mr Quennell.

Mr Quennell looked at the table.

“Since when?” said Dame M.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” said Mr Quennell, honestly. “I really don’t. I think I came in once to check a rule. About the umbrellas. In February. And then I came in again because I’d left my pen. And then.” He stopped. “And then I don’t remember deciding to come in. I just did.”

“I can tell you,” said Kimura, through the hatch. “I’ve got the mat.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, Sergeant,” said Mr Quennell, very quietly, and Bridget, beside him, reached over and patted his hand.

---

They voted at half past four.

There were two proposals, Castellanos’s and Mr Quennell’s, and Bridget’s, which Dame M had ruled out of order on the grounds that it had no operative content and Bridget had accepted on the grounds that it did not need one. Dame M put Castellanos’s first.

“The Sovereign shall at all times remain behind the bar. In favour?”

All four hands went up. Through the hatch, Kimura’s hand went up as well, although she was not a member, and Dame M looked at it and did not say anything.

“Carried. Rule Twenty-Seven.” Dame M turned the page. “The Sovereign may drink. One whisky. On shift. At the end of the year. In favour?”

Bridget’s hand went up at once.

Castellanos looked at the proposal, and at Mr Quennell, and at the Duke at the dartboard, and put his hand up.

Mr Quennell, who had proposed it, put his up.

Dame M looked at the paper.

“I should like it noted,” she said, “that the Master of the Household has never before voted to permit the Sovereign to drink whisky in a public house.” She put her hand up. “And that she does so now on the grounds that he has earned it, and that Alistair Rennie will never let her hear the end of it if she does not.”

“Carried,” said Bridget. “Unanimously.”

“Rule Twenty-Eight,” said Dame M. “The last rule.” She took her glasses off. “To be read out at the end of the year, on an occasion the committee considers appropriate, by the member who proposed it.”

Mr Quennell looked up.

“Me?”

“You,” said Dame M, and stood up, and gathered the nine pages of the manual, and the minutes of forty-three meetings, and squared them on the table, very precisely, and put them in the folder, and the Duke, at the dartboard, threw three darts, one after the other, into the treble twenty, and turned round, and said, in a whole sentence, to the committee, the first he had addressed to it in forty-three Tuesdays:

“About time.”

---

That evening, at a quarter past eight, Mr Quennell came into Eight Bars through the front door, which was the first time anybody could remember him using the front door, and sat in the booth by the pool table, and asked the King for a half of bitter, and the King pulled it, at forty-five degrees, and put it on a mat in front of him, and Mr Quennell drank about a third of it, and then, for the first time, by Kimura’s beer mat, drank the rest.

Kimura looked at the empty glass when the King brought it back to the bar.

“Huh,” she said, and wrote something down.