Every Landlord

The Lord Chamberlain had been very clear about the dress.

“White tie,” he had said, on Tuesday, in the back room, with the leather folder. “For the gentlemen. Evening dress for the ladies. Orders and decorations to be worn. It is a state banquet, sir. It is in a street, and it is on plates from a school cafeteria, and the Duke is to be seated at the end of the table nearest the dartboard at his own request, but it is a state banquet, and the dress is the dress.” He had turned a page. “The Sovereign will wear the Charter.”

“And the apron?”

The Lord Chamberlain had looked at the King for a long time over the leather folder.

“Sir,” he had said at last, “the Household has no precedent for the Sovereign wearing an apron over the Order of the Charter. I have looked. I have looked very hard.” He had closed the folder. “I have decided that the absence of a precedent is not the same as a prohibition.”

So at half past six on Thursday the nineteenth of August, the King of Great Britain and thirteen other countries stood behind the bar of Eight Bars in white tie, with the crimson sash of the Order of the Charter across his chest, and the star on his coat, and over all of it, tied at the back with two equal loops by Lukas Brandt, who had offered, a plain black apron with EIGHT BARS on the bib in white, which Mrs Merriweather had had made for him in September and which he had worn every night since, and which had, over eleven months, become the most photographed garment in the Realm.

Theo, beside him, in the Cranwell apron over a dinner jacket, looked at him.

“You look ridiculous,” said Theo.

“I know.”

“You look amazing,” said Theo. “But you look ridiculous.”

“I know,” said Frederick. “That’s the dress.”

---

The landlords came at six.

They came in a bus. It was the Thirty-Two, chartered for the third time, because, Mrs Merriweather said, it was now traditional, and Peter Hartigan drove it, in his uniform, from the hotel on the Axis where the Household had put them all for the week, and it stopped at the barrier at the Ninth Street end of Garfield Street at five to six, and the doors folded open, and seventeen landlords from fourteen countries got off.

Frederick stood at the door of Eight Bars and watched them come down the street.

Mr Ouellette came first, from Ottawa, tall and bald, in white tie, with a small enamel sign under his arm that he had brought as a present, on a hinge, which said THE RIGHT WORD on one side and LE BON MOT on the other, and he held it up as he came down the street, French side out, because it was a Thursday. Behind him came Herr Kuhlmann from Hanover, red-faced, in a waistcoat, with a stoneware jug with a pewter lid, and beside Herr Kuhlmann, deliberately, so that neither could be said to have arrived first, Herr Brandes from Brunswick, who was eighty-two, in his green hat with the feather, with a black glass bottle under his arm sealed with wax. Madame Lecoq came from the Mount, in black, with a bottle of Calvados and a tide table, which she said she had brought in case. Sue Fennell came from Coln, in her good dress, with Mick beside her in a suit that did not fit, and Mrs Haverfield’s terrier, Ernest, on a lead, because Mrs Haverfield was a hundred and one and could not come and had said that Ernest would represent her, and Ernest looked at Garfield Street and the trestle tables and the lights in the plane trees and sat down on Sue’s foot.

Mr Kinsella came from Dublin, with a flat cap in his hand and eleven men behind him in caps, because, he said, the regulars had insisted, and had paid their own fares, and had brought their own watches. Mrs Hegarty came from Clare, small and fierce, and beside her, very slowly, on her arm, in a tweed cap and a coat buttoned to the neck in August, with a drum under the other arm, came Seánie Hegarty, who was eighty-nine, and who looked down the street until he found Theo in the doorway of Eight Bars, and lifted the drum an inch.

Mrs Fitzsimmons came from Sydney and Mr Tane from Wellington, side by side, not speaking. Don Aurelio came from Buenos Aires, a republican, in a black suit with no decorations, with a dark bottle under his arm, and looked at the King in the crimson sash and the apron and laughed his short bark of a laugh, like a door being kicked open. Mr Mahlangu came from Pretoria and Mrs Arendse from Cape Town and Mr Botha from Bloemfontein, together, at exactly the same speed, so that none of the three capitals arrived before the others, and Mr Botha was carrying a tray, under a cloth. Mr Muthu came from Kuala Lumpur in a white vest and a checked sarong, because, he said, he did not own anything else and the Agong had told him it would be perfectly all right, and it was, with two steel mugs in his hand. Mrs Dela Cruz came from San Isidro, with Marisol, who was twelve, and had grown four inches, and was wearing the white dress she had worn as the reina, because it still fitted, nearly. Mrs Clarke came from Kingston, enormous and cheerful, in red and gold, with a single feather in her hair. And last, from Stockholm, in a waistcoat, with a white beard cut very short, came Herr Lindqvist of Källaren, who was not related to Ebba Lindqvist and had a badge on his lapel, which he had had made, that said so.

They came down the street to the door of Eight Bars, all seventeen, under the lights, past the trestle tables and the mismatched plates, and stopped, and looked at the King in the doorway in white tie and the Charter and an apron, and the King looked at them.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

“Where’s the bar?” said Sue Fennell.

---

The bar was eight feet long.

It had been eight feet long since 1983, and it had held, at most, all year, three people behind it at once: the King and Theo and, for six weeks, the Duke, or the King and Theo and Mrs Merriweather, or, on Monday, the King and an Emperor and a barback, and on Monday it had been crowded.

At seven o’clock on Thursday it held nineteen.

Frederick did not know how it happened. He knew that at a quarter to seven he was behind the bar with Theo, in their aprons, waiting, and the state banquet was being seated down the length of Garfield Street, three hundred and eleven people, the German Emperor and his suite at the top table outside the door, and the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and the Leader of the Opposition and the Speaker in her robe and the Chief Justice and the ambassadors and the regulars of Eight Bars and the committee and the English form, who had come from Coln with Ollie and a quiz, and the Bloc deputies from Ottawa, who had come to a dinner in a bar and not to a state banquet and had made that distinction clear on their place cards, and his mother and his father, at the end of the table nearest the dartboard, and Jack, and Kimura, at the edge, on a stool by the door, in a dark suit, with her back to the street and her eyes on everything. He knew that at ten to seven Mrs Merriweather rang the brass bell, three times, and the first course came out of the kitchen, which Bridget had commandeered at four o’clock and was running, as she had run the floor of the Station Hotel for nine years, like a general.

And at five to seven, Sue Fennell lifted the flap at the end of the bar and came behind it.

“Shift up, love,” she said. “You’ll want help.”

And then Mr Kinsella came behind it, to the stout tap, which Mrs Merriweather had put in in January, and stood at it, and looked at it, and said, so. And then Herr Kuhlmann, with his jug, and Herr Brandes, with his black bottle, and stood at opposite ends, as far apart as possible, which was about four feet. And then Mrs Fitzsimmons and Mr Tane, who had not spoken since Sydney, came behind it together and stood shoulder to shoulder at the lager tap and began, at once, without discussion, to pull alternate pints, one Sydney and one Wellington, half a finger and a full finger, so that the row of glasses on the drip tray looked like the keys of a piano. And then Madame Lecoq, and Don Aurelio, and Mr Muthu with his steel mugs, and the three from South Africa, all at once, and Mrs Clarke, who did not so much come behind the bar as arrive behind it, and Mrs Dela Cruz, with a towel over her shoulder, and Herr Lindqvist, and Mr Ouellette, who hung his enamel sign on the optics, French side out, and said, in French and then in English, in honour of the occasion, every order in both.

Nineteen people behind eight feet of bar.

The King was in the middle of it. He was wedged between Mr Kinsella at the stout and Mrs Fitzsimmons at the lager, in white tie and the Charter and an apron, with his elbows pinned to his sides and Herr Brandes’s feather in his left ear, and he could not move. He could not reach the bitter tap. He could not reach the till. He could not reach anything. He stood behind the bar of Eight Bars at the state banquet for the German Emperor, which he had been looking forward to for five months, with seventeen landlords from fourteen countries all round him, every one of them pulling, pouring, opening, ladling, talking, in eleven languages, and every one of them, he understood, doing it for him, because he had let them come and stand at his bar, and he could not pull a single pint.

“Sir,” said Mr Quennell, at the hatch, in white tie, with a clipboard, in a voice of acute distress. “Rule Twenty-Seven.”

“I know.”

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

“I am behind the bar.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mr Quennell. “But you are not doing anything.”

“Nobody will let me.”

Through the hatch, beside Mr Quennell, on her stool, Kimura did not turn round.

“Rule Twenty-Seven,” she said, “doesn’t say he has to do anything. It says he has to stay there.” She drank. “He’s staying there.”

---

So he stayed there.

He stayed there for two hours. He stayed there while the state banquet ate its first course and its second down the length of Garfield Street under the lights, on plates that did not match, from the Cathedral and three churches and the Ellicott High School cafeteria, while the German Emperor at the top table outside the door ate Bridget’s soup and said, to the Prime Minister, in a voice that carried, that it was the best soup he had eaten on any state visit in any country, which the Prime Minister said he would tell Bridget, and the Emperor said, no, I will. He stayed there while Mr Muthu pulled tea from four feet, behind the bar, in his sarong, for the Speaker of the House of Commons, who had asked for it, and drank it standing in her robe, and said order to it, quietly, because she said it deserved to be called to order, it was so good. He stayed there while Herr Kuhlmann and Herr Brandes each poured a glass of their beer, Broyhan and Mumme, and set them side by side on the bar, and asked the German Emperor, who had come in from the top table to see, to judge, and the Emperor looked at the two glasses for a long time and said, Brunswick is older, and Herr Brandes hit the bar with his green hat, and then the Emperor said, Hanover is better on a Friday, and Herr Kuhlmann put both hands flat on the bar, and they both looked at the King, wedged between them, and the King said, I said that in October, and Alexander said, I know, I was there, I am quoting you.

He stayed there while Don Aurelio poured a glass of the bitter with cola for the Leader of the Opposition, who had never had it and drank it and made the face that the King had made in Buenos Aires, which was broadcast that night on every channel in the River Plate, where it was by then the most famous face in the country after his own. He stayed there while Mrs Clarke ladled rum punch for the Bloc deputies, who would not be served by the King, but would, they said, be very glad to be served by a woman from Kingston, and were, and the deputy from the riding in the east of Quebec lifted her cup an inch to the King across the bar, and he could not lift anything back, because his arms were pinned, so he nodded.

He stayed there while Seánie Hegarty sat on a chair by the door with a stout that Mr Kinsella had poured him in two parts, and did not play, and Theo came out from behind the bar, because Theo was not the Sovereign and Rule Twenty-Seven did not apply to him, and sat on a chair beside Seánie, and Seánie gave him the drum, and Theo played it, by the door of Eight Bars, in the Cranwell apron, under the strings of lights, while Marcus, on his pallet by the window, played the trombone, and they had never played together before, and they found each other in about four bars, the drum not on every beat and the trombone low and dark and round, and three hundred and eleven people at four hundred and eighteen yards of trestle tables stopped talking, down the whole length of the street, to the church.

He stayed there.

He did not pull a single pint. Not one, in two hours. And at about half past nine, wedged between Mr Kinsella and Mrs Fitzsimmons, with Herr Brandes’s feather in his ear and the crimson sash crooked across his chest and the apron soaked through with three kinds of beer and a little rum punch, he understood that it was the best night of the year.

---

At a quarter to ten, Mrs Merriweather rang the brass bell.

She rang it once. Garfield Street went quiet. Down the four hundred and eighteen yards, the conversation stopped, table by table, from the door of Eight Bars to the church, like a light going out along a corridor.

Mr Quennell stood up.

He stood up at the hatch, in white tie, with his clipboard, which he put down on the counter, and a single sheet of paper, which he did not put down. He was very pale. He had been very pale since about four o’clock, when Dame M had reminded him, at the round table in the back room, in front of the committee, that Rule Twenty-Eight was to be read out by the member who had proposed it, and that the committee considered this the appropriate occasion, and that the German Emperor and the Prime Minister and the Speaker and the Chief Justice and three hundred and seven other people would be present, and that she was sure he would do it very well.

He looked at the sheet of paper.

He looked down the length of the bar, at the nineteen people behind it, wedged, with the King in the middle. He looked out of the door at Garfield Street, at the trestle tables under the lights, at the German Emperor, at the Prime Minister, at the Speaker in her robe, at the Duke and the Queen at the end nearest the dartboard, at the regulars and the committee and the English form and the Bloc, at Seánie Hegarty by the door with Theo and the drum.

“The Household’s Committee,” said Mr Quennell, in a voice that was very nearly steady, “on the Conduct of the Sovereign While Employed, has met on forty-four occasions since the ninth of September 2031, in the back room of these premises, and has adopted twenty-eight rules, of which this is the last.”

He looked at the sheet.

“Every rule the committee has adopted,” he said, “has told the Sovereign what he shall not do. Shall not be tipped. Shall not taste spirits on live television. Shall not choose a costume. Shall not stand on the bar. Shall not express a preference.” He looked up. “The committee has decided that the last rule should tell him what he may.”

He read it.

“Rule Twenty-Eight. The Sovereign may drink. One whisky. On shift. At the end of the year.”

There was a silence down the whole length of Garfield Street.

Then, from the top table, outside the door, the German Emperor, King of Prussia, in white tie and the order of the Black Eagle, who had been told about the manual in letters every month since September and had read it twice on the aeroplane and had been, on Monday, cheered for a mistake for the first time in his life, began, slowly, to clap.

And Garfield Street clapped with him.

---

Mr Quennell sat down. He sat down very suddenly, at the hatch, on the stool beside Kimura’s, and put his face in his hands, and Bridget, who had come out of the kitchen to hear it, in her apron, came round the end of the bar and put her hand on his shoulder and left it there.

Behind the bar, Mr Kinsella moved a foot to the left. Mrs Fitzsimmons moved a foot to the right. For the first time in two hours, the King could move his arms.

Sue Fennell, at the end of the bar, reached under the counter, and took out a bottle.

It was a plain bottle, with no label, only a piece of masking tape on the side with something written on it in pencil. It had come in the diplomatic bag on Tuesday, from London, with a note in a flat square hand on Downing Street paper that Sue had read and given to the King and that the King had in the inside pocket of his white tie, under the sash, where he had been carrying it all evening.

Sir. My brother-in-law says it’s nearly four years old now and it’s still not the best. I’ll not be there; it’s your realm and not mine, and the Emperor’s not mine either. But it’s the end of the year, and Fennell says the committee’s going to let you have one, and I’d like it to be this. Mind the water. A.R.

Sue put the bottle on the bar, and a small glass, the tulip kind, and a jug, and a teaspoon.

The King poured. A finger. From the bottle with the masking tape, from a shed outside Auchtermuchty, which was entirely legal and which nobody was to ask about. He took the teaspoon and dipped it in the jug and let one drop of water fall off the end of it into the glass, and watched the whisky turn over, like smoke.

He held it under his nose. A cut field. Something young. Fife.

He drank it, slowly, behind the bar of Eight Bars, in white tie and the Charter and an apron, with seventeen landlords round him and three hundred and eleven people in the street and the German Emperor at the door, and held it in his mouth, and swallowed, and breathed out through his nose.

It was not the best.

It was good.

He put the glass down on the bar, and looked down the length of Garfield Street, under the lights, to the church, and did not say anything at all, and at the till, behind him, though he did not see her lift it, Mrs Merriweather took the fifty-first.