For the next several days, the wave got no higher but it seemed steadier. It was not a chop but a continual smooth wake, streaming across the shore to the east as England began its turn to the west. The cricket ground grew deserted as the boys laid aside their kites and joined the rest of the town at the shore, watching the waves. There was such a crowd on the Boardwalk that several of the shops, which had closed for the season, reopened. Mrs. Oldenshield’s was no busier than usual, however, and Mr. Fox was able to forge ahead as steadily in his reading as Mr. Trollope had in his writing. It was not long before Lord Fawn, with something almost of dignity in his gesture and demeanor, declared himself to the young widow Eustace and asked for her hand. Mr. Fox knew Lizzie’s diamonds would be trouble, though. He knew something of heirlooms himself. His tiny attic room in the Pig & Thisde had been left to him in perpetuity by the innkeeper, whose life had been saved by Mr. Fox’s father during an air raid. A life saved (said the innkeeper, an East Indian, but a Christian, not a Hindu) was a debt never fully paid. Mr. Fox had often wondered where he would have lived if he’d been forced to go out and find a place, like so many in novels did. Indeed, in real life as well. That evening on the telly there was panic in Belfast as the headlands of Scotland slid by, south. Were the Loyalists to be left behind? Everyone was waiting to hear from the King, who was closeted with his advisors.
The next morning, there was a letter on the little table in the downstairs hallway at the Pig & Thistle. Mr. Fox knew as soon as he saw the letter that it was the fifth of the month. His niece, Emily, always mailed her letters from America on the first, and they always arrived on the morning of the fifth.
Mr. Fox opened it, as always, just after tea at Mrs. Oldenshield’s. He read the ending first, as always, to make sure there were no surprises. “Wish you could see your great-niece before she’s grown,” Emily wrote; she wrote the same thing every month. When her mother, Mr. Fox’s sister, Clare, had visited after moving to America, it had been his niece she had wanted him to meet. Emily had taken up the same refrain since her mother’s death. “Your great-niece will be a young lady soon,” she wrote, as if this were somehow Mr. Fox’s doing. His only regret was that Emily, in asking him to come to America when her mother died, had asked him to do the one thing he couldn’t even contemplate; and so he had been unable to grant her even the courtesy of a refusal. He read all the way back to the opening (“Dear Uncle Anthony”) then folded the letter very small; and put it into the box with the others when he got back to his room that evening.
The bar seemed crowded when he came downstairs at nine. The King, in a brown suit with a green and gold tie, was on the telly, sitting in front of a clock in a BBC studio. Even Harrison, never one for royalty, set aside the glasses he was polishing and listened while Charles confirmed that England was, indeed, underway. His words made it official, and there was a polite “hip, hip, hooray” from the three men (two of them strangers) at the end of the bar. The King and his advisors weren’t exactly sure when England would arrive, nor, for that matter, where it was going.
Scotland and Wales were, of course, coming right along. Parliament would announce time-zone adjustments as necessary. While His Majesty was aware that there was cause for concern about Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, there was as yet no cause for alarm.
His Majesty, King Charles, spoke for almost half an hour, but Mr. Fox missed much of what he said. His eye had been caught by the date under the clock on the wall behind the King’s head. It was the fourth of the month, not the fifth; his niece’s letter had arrived a day early! This, even more than the funny waves or the King’s speech, seemed to announce that the world was changing. Mr. Fox had a sudden, but not unpleasant, feeling almost of dizziness. After it had passed, and the bar had cleared out, he suggested to Harrison, as he always did at closing time: “Perhaps you’ll join me in a whisky”; and as always, Harrison replied, “Don’t mind if I do.”
He poured two Bells’. Mr. Fox had noticed that when other patrons “bought” Harrison a drink, and the barkeep passed his hand across the bottle and pocketed the tab, the whisky was Bushmills. It was only with Mr. Fox, at closing, that he actually took a drink, and then it was always scotch.
“To your King,” said Harrison. “And to plate tectonics.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Plate tectonics, Fox. Weren’t you listening when your precious Charles explained why all this was happening?
All having to do with movement of the Earth’s crust, and such.”
“To plate tectonics,” said Mr. Fox. He raised his glass to hide his embarrassment. He had in fact heard the words, but had assumed they had to do with plans to protect the household treasures at Buckingham Palace.
Mr. Fox never bought the papers, but the next morning he slowed down to read the headlines as he passed the news stalls. King Charles’s picture was on all the front pages, looking confidently into the future.
read the Daily Alarm. The Economist took a less sanguine view:
Although Northern Ireland was legally and without question part of the United Kingdom, the BBC explained that night, it was for some inexplicable reason apparently remaining with Ireland. The King urged his subjects in Belfast and Londonderry not to panic; arrangements were being made for the evacuation of all who wished it.
The King’s address seemed to have a calming effect over the next few days. The streets of Brighton grew quiet once again. The Esplanade and the Boardwalk still saw a few video crews which kept the fish and chips stalls busy; but they bought no souvenirs, and the gift shops all closed again one by one.
“Woof,” said Anthony, delighted to find the boys back on the cricket ground with their kites. “Things are getting back to normal,” said Mr. Fox. But were they really? The smudge on the eastern horizon was Brittany, according to the newsmen on the telly; next would be the open sea. One shuddered to think of it. Fortunately, there was familiarity and warmth at Mrs. Oldenshield’s, where Lizzie was avoiding the Eustace family lawyer, Mr. Camperdown, by retreating to her castle in Ayr. Lord Fawn (urged on by his family) was insisting he couldn’t marry her unless she gave up the diamonds. Lizzie’s answer was to carry the diamonds with her to Scotland in a strongbox. Later that week, Mr.
Fox saw the African again. There was a crowd on the old West Pier, and even though it was beginning to rain, Mr. Fox walked out to the end, where a boat was unloading. It was a sleek hydrofoil, with the Royal Family’s crest upon its bow. Two video crews were filming, as sailors in slickers passed an old lady in a wheelchair from the boat to the pier. She was handed an umbrella and a tiny white dog. The handsome young captain of the hydrofoil waved his braided hat as he gunned the motors and pulled away from the pier; the crowd cried “hurrah” as the boat rose on its spidery legs and blasted off into the rain.
“Woof,” said Anthony. No one else paid any attention to the old lady, sitting in the wheelchair with a wet, shivering dog on her lap. She had fallen asleep (or perhaps even died!) and dropped her umbrella. Fortunately it wasn’t raining.
“That would be the young Prince of Wales,” said a familiar voice to Mr. Fox’s left. It was the African. According to him (and he seemed to know such things), the Channel Islands and most of the islanders, had been left behind. The hydrofoil had been sent to Guernsey at the Royal Family’s private expense to rescue the old lady, who’d had a last-minute change of heart; perhaps she’d wanted to die in England. “He’ll be in Portsmouth by five,” said the African, pointing to an already far-off plume of spray.
“Is it past four already?” Mr. Fox asked. He realized he had lost track of the time.
“Don’t have a watch?” asked the girl, sticking her head around the African’s bulk.
Mr. Fox hadn’t seen her lurking there. “Haven’t really needed one,” he said.
“You bloody wish,” she said.
“Twenty past, precisely,” said the African. “Don’t mind her, mate.” Mr. Fox had never been called “mate” before.
He was pleased that even with all the excitement he hadn’t missed his tea. He hurried to Mrs. Oldenshield’s, where he found a fox hunt just getting underway at Portray, Lizzie’s castle in Scotland. He settled down eagerly to read about it.
A fox hunt! Mr. Fox was a believer in the power of names.
The weather began to change; to get, at the same time, warmer and rougher. In the satellite pictures on the telly over the bar at the Pig & Thistle, England was a cloud-dimmed outline that could just as easily have been a drawing as a photo. After squeezing between Ireland and Brittany, like a restless child slipping from the arms of its ancient Celtic parents, it was headed south and west, into the open Atlantic. The waves came no longer at a slant but straight in at the seawall. Somewhat to his surprise, Mr. Fox enjoyed his constitutional more than ever, knowing that he was looking at a different stretch of sea every day, even though it always looked the same. The wind was strong and steady in his face, and the Boardwalk was empty. Even the newsmen were gone—to Scotland, where it had only just been noticed that the Hebrides were being left behind with the Orkneys and the Shetlands. “Arctic islands with their own traditions, languages, and monuments, all mysteriously made of stone,” explained the reporter, live from Uig, by remote. The video showed a postman shouting incomprehensibly into the wind and rain.
“What’s he saying?” Mr. Fox asked. “Would that be Gaelic?”
“How would I be expected to know?” said Harrison.