The Ink Goes Back In

Nell wanted the rent book down off that step and the three months written back in where the whole bend could watch the pen do it, because owing money quietly had already cost her more than owing it out loud ever would. If Neil wrote it in tonight she was behind again by morning, with the meter and the soap bill and nothing coming in but a Tuesday wash. If she left it up there she would spend the week with her hand out to neighbours she had only just stopped being paid to knock on.

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 off Norway 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.