The Ink Goes Back In

Pencil on string by the door. Please write it. The box only hears what you say out loud.

Paper on a step belongs to nobody. Shout down a hole long enough and you'll call it an answer.

She stepped off the kerb and held the bundle out flat, both hands, the way you pass something hot.

"Take them. Knock the doors yourself."

Neil did not take them. He kept the rent book open on his forearm with the pen capped in his fingers and looked at the paper like it had been dropped in a puddle.

"Don't be daft."

"I'm not being daft. They'll not open to you, and that's the point of it, Neil. They open to me because I wash their sheets and I know what's in their pockets, and you've been using that." She pushed the bundle nearer. "It's yours. Your name's on the top one and you've had your hundred a door already."

He took it then, because she would not lower her arms, and the moment it was against his chest he looked smaller with it. Up the row somebody's front door clicked shut. Winnie stood by her scuttle with the two torn halves still in her apron pocket and did not say a word, which from Winnie was a kind of shouting.

"You know what you've just done," Neil said. "Three months goes back in tonight."

"I know."

"You'll be out by Easter and there'll be no launderette on this street at all, and they'll all be sat there with their bags on the bus to the supermarket wondering why." His own voice came down off the box over her shopfront then, half a second behind him, flat and tired and absolutely his. I don't want to be the one that does it.

He went white round the mouth. He looked up at the grey box, and then at the kerb, at nine or ten of them stood there with their arms folded.

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant, though," Perry said from the lamp post. "You've the bundle. Go on and knock. First door's mine and I'll tell you the same as I told her, and you can have it in your own front street where it does the most good."

Neil stood a while. Then he walked up the pavement to Perry's step, and he did not knock, he put the whole bundle down on the step and set the rent book on top of it so the wind would not have it, and came back down with his hands empty and his face set.

"Rent book's up there," he said. "I can't write in it from here, can I. You fetch it down to me and I'll put your three months back in and we're straight. Or you leave it where it is on the old man's step, and I'll come for it Friday, and we'll see what you've got by Friday."

She looked up the row at the rent book sat on Perry's step with her PAID in it, and she started walking.

Perry's door came open before she had bent down for it.

"It's not been rained on," he said. "I've had my eye on it from the window."

"I'm only taking the book."

"I know what you're taking." He had the flat tin in his fist and he worked the lid with his thumbnail, open, shut, open, and there was nothing in the lid now to look at.

She lifted the rent book off the bundle and the papers stayed where they were, squared up, the top one with his address on it. "Your card's in my apron," she said. "It's wrapped in a receipt so it doesn't crease. You can have it back whenever you want it."

"Keep it a bit."

"I will. I'd rather hold it than—"

Her own voice came down off his lintel, half a second behind her, out of the grey box over his own front door. I'm keeping it so you have to come to me for it.

Perry did not move. "Aye," he said. "That's about the size of it."

"Perry, I didn't mean—"

"You did. It's all right, girl. It's a card off a packet of cigarettes." He shut the tin. "Our Walter had the same one in his pocket when he went in a submarine a long way north and they sat up top three days listening for a knock on the hull and nothing ever came back at them. So I'm not precious about a captain. I'm precious about what's in my head, and you're stood on my step with your meaning coming out of my wall, so go on down and let him do his ink."

She went down. Neil had the pen uncapped already, resting the book on the flat of his arm like a man signing for a parcel, and he wrote the three months back in under the PAID in a hand that did not hurry.

"Right," he said. "That's you straight with me as of now, which means you're not straight at all. And I'll tell you the rest in front of them so nobody says I crept up on you. Friday I'm bringing you notice in writing. End of the month you're out of that shop unless you've got the three months in cash in my hand, and I'll not take a bit of it on account."

"You'd shut the only washer on the street."

"I'd shut the only washer on the street." Nothing spoke off any wall.

Up on the step Perry bent his stiff back and picked the bundle up off the stone and tucked it under his cardigan sleeve.

"These'll go on my table," he said. "Paper on a step belongs to nobody. He can come and ask me for them."

Neil's van pulled away past the bend. Winnie stood at her gate with the torn halves in her apron and said Nell's name once, quietly, and Perry's door stood open behind him with the forty forms inside it, and Nell was in the middle of the pavement with a rent book in one hand and nowhere settled to put her feet.