The Collector's Box

Paper keeps where you put it. Mouths don't.

Door money is paid to the landlord. Collection money is paid to the named collector. The office does not alter names.

Nell wanted the forty forms off Perry's table and into her own hands tonight, because Friday was coming with written notice on it and the end of the month after that.

She knocked. Perry came with the lamp behind him and the forms squared up on the table under the window, a magnifying glass sat on top of them like a paperweight.

"I've come for them," she said. "The forms."

"I know what you've come for." He did not move out of the doorway. "I've been at them since my tea. Reading, with a glass and a pencil, same as them in Drayholt. Paper doesn't get broadcast, does it. You can hold a thought on paper all night and it stops where you put it."

"Perry, I'm not arguing the paper with you. I need them in my hands by the morning."

Her own voice came down off his lintel, half a second behind her, light and quick and absolutely hers. I want them so I can write the names in myself.

The street heard it. Two doors along a window went up. Nell stood there with her ears going hot and her hand still out.

"Aye," Perry said. "That's a Friday talking."

"I wouldn't do it."

"You've thought it, though, and thinking it is where it starts." He stepped back off his step into the hall, out from under his own box, and when he spoke again nothing followed him. "I'll stand in here, if it's all the same. You're getting the truth off me free, so I'll keep the rest."

"That's not fair and you know it."

"It isn't. I'm old and I'm taking what I can get." He picked the top form up and turned it over and brought it to the light so she could see the back of it. There was a small ruled box down in the corner with printing in it, not handwriting, the same grey type as the rest. "Read that."

She read it. Collector, it said, and under that her own name, and under that the launderette, number eleven, the bend. Typed. Printed before the bundle ever came out of a van.

"That's on all of them," Perry said. "Forty of them, your name on every one, and he never wrote a word of it. They had you down as the woman who knocks before he ever stood in the street and offered you half. Somebody at that office knew who washes the sheets on this row."

"Then who told them?"

"That's your question, not mine." He held the bundle out, both arms, the way she had held it out to Neil. "Our Walter used to say every light on a coast has its own count, and you lie out there in the dark counting the gaps and that's how you know whose water you're in. I've no count on these people at all. Take them. I'd sooner it was you than him, and now I've heard what's in your head I'll be at that window all night."

The forms were heavier than she remembered. Up the row Winnie's gate went, and the window that had opened did not shut, and Nell stood on the pavement with forty copies of her own printed name against her chest.

Dasu had the van's back doors open and was counting brackets into a plastic tray, two at a time, under the lamp at the bend. Nell laid the form down on top of the brackets, face down, with her thumb on the little ruled box in the corner.

"That's typed," she said. "Not written. Typed before Neil ever opened his mouth at me. Who put me in there?"

Dasu picked it up. She held it out at arm's length and did not look at it long.

"Sit down a minute."

"I'll stand."

"Aye." Dasu set the form on the van floor and put a bracket on it so the wind wouldn't have it. "When I survey a street I fill a sheet at the end of the day. Doors, which walls'll take a fixing, where the damp is. Three questions at the bottom. Last one asks who the street goes to."

Nell waited.

"I walked this row in January," Dasu said. "Before any of it. Tuesday, raining. I stood under your awning twenty minutes waiting for it to pack in and four people came past that door and every one of them said something to you through it. One of them left a bag. One of them left a dog. So I wrote: the launderette, number eleven, the woman who does the sheets."

"You wrote me down."

"I wrote what I saw."

"You've been stood at my kerb since Monday telling me to read every line of everything before I put my name near it." Nell's voice had got loud and she let it. "And you'd already put my name on forty pieces of paper for them."

"I didn't put your name on anything. I didn't know your name in January." Dasu rubbed her mouth with the back of her wrist. "They found that out themselves. I gave them a doorway and they came back with a woman."

Up the row a window was open that had been open an hour. Nell could feel it on her neck.

"Say the rest," she said. "You've the rest of it in your face."

Dasu looked at the brackets.

"Drayholt," she said. "Same sheet. Same last question. I wrote number nine, because she had everybody's spare key on a nail in her kitchen and she'd been on that street fifty year. And when the forms came off the van her name was printed on the back of every one of them, and she knocked the doors, and she got the half, and when it all went wrong there was only one name on the paper to be angry at. That's the woman that sold her yard. Nobody would stand with her by then."

"You never said."

"No."

"You said you tell people first. You've said it to this street with your own mouth."

"I tell them about the box." Dasu's hands had stopped. "I've never told anybody about the sheet. I'm telling you."

Nell looked past her. Her own grey box sat lit over the launderette door, eight or nine steps off, and the window up the row was still open, and Dasu was stood on the kerb, well out of the box's hearing.

"Come and tell me by my door," Nell said, and put her hand on Dasu's sleeve.

Neil had his tea spread out on the van bonnet, chips in paper, the vinegar going up in the cold. Nell put the form down beside them, face down, her thumb holding the corner flat so the wind couldn't have it.

"Read the little box."

"I've read it." He didn't look. "I've read forty of them."

"It's typed, Neil. It was typed in an office before you ever stood in my doorway being generous." She waited. He ate a chip. "So tell me what it's worth. My name, printed. What's it worth to you?"

"Nothing." He wiped his fingers down his jacket. "Nothing at all, and that's God's truth. I'd rather it wasn't."

"Don't be clever with me."

"I'm not being clever. I thought the collection money came to me and I'd hand you half out of my own pocket, like a man. That's how I said it to you and that's how I had it in my head." He folded the paper over the chips. "Then I rang them about the extension letter and the woman put me right. Door money's mine and it's spent. Collection money goes to whoever's printed in that box. You, not the landlord."

Nell had her hand still on the form. "Say that again."

"You'll not hear it any plainer."

"Then come and say it where it counts." She lifted the form off the bonnet and walked, and she heard him swear and come after her, and she only stopped when she was in her own doorway with the lit box above her and his boots four feet off.

"Give it here."

"Take it off me, then."

He reached. His sleeve came past the step, and half a second later his own voice came down off her wall, flat and tired. I told them she was doing it before I ever asked her.

He stood with his arm out and let it finish.

"Aye," he said. "Well. They had the launderette down already. All they wanted off me was a yes. I gave them a yes and then I came and made it true."

"You'd sold me before you ever asked me."

"I kept my house out of the bank for another quarter. My old man's name's on a wall in a church up the road because his boat went on a mine at sea the first winter of that war, and I can tell you what that name's been worth to me since. Nothing." He took the form, slowly, and put it inside his coat. "They don't want names, Nell. They want signatures."

"Then I'll tell you what mine's worth. There's money sat with my name on it and I can't touch a penny of it till they all sign, and one of them won't, and you know which."

"I do know." He went back to the bonnet and picked his chips up and didn't eat them. "Which is why when you tell me you've nothing, I'll say in front of whoever's at their gates that there's money with your name on it and you've chosen not to go and get it. They'll look at Perry, and they'll look at you. That's what it's worth."

He got in the van. Up the row Perry's window had a lamp behind it, and Nell stood under her own box with the whole bend quiet, working out who she was going to knock on first.