The Second Card on Selene’s Stair

On quarter-night the harbor’s books went up to Selene by the eighth bell, and Ilex took them. She had taken them up for eleven years. In eleven years she had been late twice. Both times the Bell Gate had rung early, and both times she had written that down.

Tonight she carried the quarter ledger flat on her two hands, like a tray, with Part Eleven of the serial Pell was lending her tucked under one arm. It was called The Brass Key of Windward House. Three people on the quays had already finished it. One of them had started to tell her the ending while she was buying a hot paper packet. Ilex had walked away in the middle of his sentence and left the packet on the counter. She was not sorry. She could buy another packet. She could not buy another ending.

So she wanted two things that night, and she knew which came first. The ledger would be on Selene’s table before the eighth bell, without one smudge on it. After that, Part Eleven would be read by Ilex, in order, from the first page.

Selene’s Court was at the top of the harbor, up an ordinary stair. The stair was ordinary in every way but one. Its lamps lit one step ahead of whoever was climbing, so a person going up always had a lit step waiting. The card that made them do it lived in a brass box at the foot, behind a little door, with a drawer underneath for a rag and spares.

Ilex liked the stair. She did not like the top three steps. On the top three steps the lamps lagged. They came on as a foot came down instead of before, and so everyone who arrived at Selene’s Court arrived on three steps of guesswork.

“The top three steps lag,” Ilex said to the brass box. “That’s a fact.”

She balanced the ledger on top of the box, square to the edges, and took a card out of her pocket. It was a fresh copy of the stair card. She had signed it out of stores that afternoon and entered it on the proper line.

“Two cards will be quicker than one,” she said. “That’s a guess.”

But it was a quarter to eight, and it seemed a good guess. She opened the little door and slid the new card into the clip beside the old one. It would only go in the other way round, so she put it in the other way round. A card is a card, she thought. That was also a guess. She did not say it out loud.

She shut the door.

Every lamp on the stair came on, one after another, from the bottom to the top. Then they came on again from the top to the bottom. Then up. Then down. A ribbon of light ran up and down the stair as if it had somewhere to be in both directions.

Ilex opened the box again. The two cards sat side by side in the clip, as alike as two slices off one loaf. She could not have said which one was hers. She could pull one and hope. That would be a guess. She had thirteen minutes and a hundred and twelve steps.

She picked up the ledger, shut the box, and began to climb.

* * *

By the fourth step she had the trick of it. The stair was not a stair anymore. It was a column of figures. When the ribbon ran up, three steps above her lit in a row, and she went up those three. Three and carry. Then she stood still while the light ran off the top and came back down, and when it turned she went up three more. The ledger stayed flat. Part Eleven stayed under her arm.

She was not the only one. A woman from the night kitchen was coming down with an empty tea can, hopping three steps at a time and waiting in between, the way people move about a house when they are trying not to wake a lodger. And on the landing halfway up was Tam Dunnock from the east quay, who had read Part Eleven twice.

“Ilex!” Tam said. “Have you got to the regatta yet?”

“No,” said Ilex. Three steps. “And I am not getting to it on a stair.”

Ilex went up three more on the ribbon and was out of hearing. Tam turned round and came up after her, which a man on his way down has no business doing, and he was not very good at the hops.

“I’ll just tell you who it was,” he said. “It was the—”

“Tam Dunnock,” said Ilex, without turning round. “I am holding the quarter.”

Tam stopped. Everyone on the quays knew what the quarter was. He stood on his step with his mouth shut and let her go.

The top three steps did not lag. For once in eleven years they lit well ahead of her, and then lit again, and then lit a third time, which was more than anybody needed. She had a minute in hand. She knew, because she looked.

Selene was at the work table, holding a corrected card up to the lamp the way a jeweler holds a stone she has already decided not to buy. She looked past Ilex at the stairwell, where the light was going up and coming down and going up again. She did not ask. Anyone who knew cards could see there were two in the box.

Ilex set the ledger on the table, square to the edge. Across the harbor the Bell Gate began to ring eight.

Selene turned the pages with one finger. She never hurried over figures. It was one of the things Ilex respected about her, and would not have said.

“The west mooring is up,” Selene said.

“By forty loads,” said Ilex. “That’s a fact. Sorrel says it’s the weather. That’s a guess.”

“Sorrel says everything is the weather, or the start of a fleet.” Selene closed the ledger. “On time, and not a smudge. Good. Now. The night crews come up for their orders at the half, carrying things. I would like them to arrive walking. Put the stair right before then.”

“It may not be as quick as—”

“I didn’t ask how quick it would be,” said Selene, and picked up her card again. “I asked for it by the half.”

* * *

Tam was waiting at the foot of the stair. He looked like a man who had been thinking on the way.

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said. “I mean, I was. But I wouldn’t have. Nobody on my crew reads. I just wanted somebody to have read it.”

“Then keep the stair clear for me,” said Ilex. “Nobody goes up while the box is open. Tomorrow after first bell I’ll have read it, and you can tell me everything, starting at the regatta.”

Tam cheered up at once. He stood on the bottom step with his arms out, like a man stopping a cart.

Nobody pulls a stair card with somebody on the stair. The lamps stop where they are, and so does the somebody, and they have opinions about it afterward. So Ilex worked in the gaps. The night crews were already coming, early, with coils of line and baskets of hot packets.

In the first gap she took out both cards and held them to the lamp on the post. The left one looked cleaner.

“This one’s newer,” she said. “That’s a guess.”

The next crew was at Tam’s elbow, so she put them both back. The crew went up in hops, with plenty to say about it.

In the second gap she turned the cards over. Same backs. Same soft edges. Same mark under the last stroke, in the same neat, old hand.

“They’re the same,” said Tam.

“They look the same,” said Ilex. “That’s all we know.”

By the third gap her watch said twenty past. This time Ilex did not look at the faces at all. She ran her thumb along the corners, one card and then the other, the way she ran her thumb down a column to find the line that didn’t add up.

One corner was rough. She tipped it to the lamp. It had been darned with blue thread, in small careful stitches. The mend was nine years old. She knew, because she had entered it.

“This one has been darned,” Ilex said. “That’s a fact.”

“Who darned it?” said Tam.

“Pell,” said Ilex. “Stores, nine years ago, corner caught in the clip. It’s on the proper line.”

She put the darned card back in the clip alone, the right way round, and shut the little door. The ribbon stopped. Tam let the next crew go. They went up the ordinary way, one lit step ahead of their boots, all the way to the top three. There the lamps lagged exactly as they always had. Ilex found she could live with that. She had been living with it for eleven years.

The new copy was still in her hand when Selene’s note came down. Selene sent notes down the stairwell on a cord with a clothes peg, since the stair was for people and the cord was for paper. This one said:

Ilex. Keep the new copy in the drawer. At midnight put it in instead of the old one, the way you had it. I go down at midnight, and I have been walking down that stair one step behind its lamps for years. I had decided it was a test of nerve. S.

Ilex read it twice. Then she said it out loud, so it would be in order.

“One card the right way round lights a person up the stair. That’s a fact. The same card the other way round lights a person down. That’s a guess until midnight. Both together light everybody everywhere, which is not the same as lighting anybody.”

“And the test?” said Tam.

“It was not a test,” said Ilex. “That’s a fact too.”

She laid the new copy in the drawer, on top of the rag. Then she took the small blue book of standing duties out of her coat and turned to the page after Oil the Chart Room hinge, first of the month. She wrote: Turn stair card, 12 o’clock. Under it, smaller, she wrote: Turn it back after. Ilex did not hold with a duty that never finished.

It was the first new standing duty in four years. She underlined it, which she did not do for loads.

* * *

At midnight the Bell Gate rang twelve, and Ilex was at the foot of the stair with the box open. She took out the darned card and laid it in the drawer. She slid the new copy into the clip the other way round, the way it had gone in by mistake, and shut the little door.

At the top, a door opened. Selene came out with her coat over her arm. The lamp at her feet came on, and then the one below it, and then the next one down. Selene came down the way she did everything, quickly, as if a great many people were watching, though there was only Ilex. The lamps kept up. They lit one step ahead of her all the way down, a hundred and twelve steps.

She stopped on the bottom step and looked at the lamp beside her, and at the brass box, and at Ilex.

Ilex said, to nobody in particular, “That’s a fact.”

“So it was not a test,” Selene said. “A pity. I was passing it.”

“Twelve o’clock tomorrow,” said Ilex.

“Is it in the ledger?”

“It’s in the ledger.”

“Then it will happen,” said Selene, and went out under the arch into the blue night, toward the quays and the late food.

Ilex turned the card back. The darned one went into the clip, the new one went into the drawer, and the stair was ordinary again, lagging at the top three steps for anyone who wanted to go up.

There was a bench under the stair, and a lamp on a hook above it. Ilex sat there and opened Part Eleven at the first page. Nobody told her anything. She read it in order.

It was the cook.

Ilex had guessed the cook in Part Four. She had written it in the back of her day book and marked it, as she marked everything that was not certain, a guess. Now it was a fact. She would say so to Tam in the morning, after first bell, once he had told her everything from the regatta on.

She sat under Selene’s stair with the book open on her knee and the harbor going on outside, and of all the facts Ilex had kept that quarter, that one was her favorite.