Not My Street

MARIES LOOSE BY THE QUARTER. NO CREDIT. NO REASONS ASKED.

ALL LINES ARE LOGGED BY TIME. WHAT IS SAID IS TREATED AS SAID. NO REFUNDS.

Nell took the vest off its hook and held it out across the counter. Her other hand stayed on the soap tin, well clear of the envelope.

"Your vest's here, Dasu, nobody's touched it. If that's pay, it goes in the book under your name, paid against arrears, and you can watch me write it."

Dasu folded the vest over her arm without putting it on and set a paper bag down beside the shut book. Maries, loose from the tin at Hebble's. On this row you took Maries to a house you'd wronged, because nobody could call a Marie showing off.

Neil was on the wet lino past the back step, rent book under his arm, pen uncapped. Above him a bracket was bolted high on the back door frame, empty. He lifted the pen toward the doorway and didn't cross it.

"Put it in the book, Nell, and I'll take the figure from the doorway. I'm not coming in there, I know where the box can't hear and where it can."

Nell opened the book, took the pencil from behind her ear, and took the envelope with her back to him. "Count it with me, Dasu, then I'll write the figure. Neil, you'll have it from me after, not through the door."

Dasu tipped it onto the page and laid each note down with her thumb. "Forty-two pounds sixty, that's the lot, there's no more behind it. Write it as paid against arrears, and nothing else beside it."

Nell wrote it. Paid against arrears, Dasu, Register pay. She turned the book round, squared the notes into the float drawer and shut it.

Ladder feet scraped on the yard flags. Gordie Kell, half an hour early, was setting Dasu's old ladder under the bracket with a boxed unit tucked under his arm.

"You're early, Gordie," Nell said, "and the bracket's bolted but nothing goes on that door till I've seen the docket. Whatever you write on it, you write my name for the back room, not Dasu's and not Winnie's."

"That's my ladder, Gordie, and it's yours now, so mind the rungs," Dasu said, and went for the front.

A box said it, in her own voice.

I took the last of Dasu's pay and my first thought was that the float balances Friday. I'm glad she's gone, so I don't have to thank her.

"Gordie Kell, round four, the backs, love. Two units fitted, third in hand, docket line to follow."

He had the docket flat on the glass and two of the shelf coins gone already. Over the shelf a stuck-on notice said all lines were logged by time, and under it someone had written a number in biro that someone else had tried to thumb out.

"On the survey, three's mine to answer and I'll answer it myself: it's not my street, but I fitted what I was sent to fit."

A knuckle rapped the pane. Martha held the board up outside, third line blank, as if he might've forgotten where it was.

"I'll take it as your answer to three: not your street. When you're done, I'm ringing mine."

Gordie hung up and shouldered out into the drizzle. All morning he'd watched the row read a quarter of Maries carried past their doors, a quarter exactly, and he wasn't handing anybody anything else to weigh.

"I said what I said, love, and it's logged."

"Then I'll put it down as you said it, Mr Kell: not your street, and no name given for whose. That's a refusal, and I'll ring it in as one with the time on it."

"Put down what I said, love, the words I said, not a word more. I fitted the bolt and the unit, that's what I know, and the rest isn't mine to give you."

She wrote it on the blank line, reading it out, and stepped into the kiosk.

"Martha, survey round four, Farrow Row, ringing from the bend kiosk, time logged. Question three stands as the installer's words, 'not my street, rest isn't mine to give,' and no street is named, which I am recording as refused."

Her last coin dropped with a clunk and the line died. The bell rang back at once, loud through the wet glass, and a flat voice asked for the installer on round four, by name. She held the receiver out. Gordie took it and shut the door on her.

Up the row, Dasu had come out to the end of the backs.

The box next door took its half second, in his voice.

I keep saying not my street because if it's nobody's, I never have to look at Dasu stood up the row there. Fitting bolts is easier than saying whose name goes on that line.

He came out wiping the docket with his thumb. "That's said, love, and it's yours to write. I'll take the ladder up to the backs now, boss is stood there waiting on me."

Martha watched Gordie reach Dasu, lean the ladder on a yard wall, and come back down alone without looking at her. He shut himself in the kiosk, fed it coins out of his own pocket, and his mouth moved once, briefly. Then he went back up the row.

The bell rang. She lifted it, and the flat voice read her the round four log for close: installer, in his own voice, question three answered, and the name he'd given was Dasu's. Dasu's hand had once put the widow at number nine on a sheet like this.

The board was still against the glass with refused pencilled on it in her own hand. The voice waited for the reporter. Martha held the pencil over the word.