February 1950

He was not allowed to attend the hearing. There was his age, for one thing, but he knew it was really the reporters. From his bedroom window he could see them every morning when his father left the house. Mr Benjamin, his father’s lawyer, would come for him-it was somehow unthinkable that he should make the short walk down 2nd Street to the Capitol alone-and the minute they were down the steps Nick would see the clusters of hats swooping toward them like birds. There was even a kind of ritual about it now. No one stood in front of the house. Usually they were across the street, or on the corner, drinking coffee from paper cups, exhaling little puffs of steam in the cold February air. Then the front door would open and they would stamp out their cigarettes, suddenly on duty, and surround his father, falling into step with him and Mr Benjamin as if they were joining them for a stroll.

In the beginning there had been photographers, their hats pushed back on their heads as they popped flashbulbs, but now there were just the reporters. No one yelled or pushed. The ritual had turned polite. He could see his father in his long herringbone coat drawing the pack with him as he moved down the street, Mr Benjamin, terrier-like, hurrying to keep up. His father never ignored the reporters. Nick could see him talking-but what did he say? — and nodding his head. Once Nick saw one of them laugh. His father had said the whole thing was a goddam circus, but from up here in the window, watching the hats, it seemed friendly, a gang of boys heading for school. It wasn’t, though. At night, alone in the study, smoking in the light of the desk lamp, his father looked worried.

His mother always left separately.