The Little Ruled Box

The form went into Winnie's hand and Winnie didn't look at the front of it. She turned it over, ran her thumb across the small ruled box on the back the way you'd feel a sleeve for a pin.

"Your name's in there."

"It's in all forty."

"Then take it out of this one," Winnie said. "Put mine."

Nell had the pen half out of her overall pocket and left it there. Down the bend somebody's gate went and came back.

"Winnie."

"I'm not daft. Somebody's got to be stood there when they come with the money. You said it yourself, it goes in a hand. Let it go in mine."

"It's my name printed."

"It's printed because a woman in a van wrote launderette on a bit of paper in January," Winnie said. "That's all it is. It's not scripture."

Dasu came off the kerb fast for a woman her size. "No."

"I never asked you."

"I know what I'm saying. There was a woman in Leeds had that box with her name in it and she was sixty-eight and she had a yard and a dog and by the end of it she had the dog." Dasu's hands were open. "They come to the collector. Everybody else gets to be cross with the collector. That's what it's for, that little box. It's a place to stand so nobody has to look past you."

"Well, I've a front room nobody sits in," Winnie said. "What's it going to cost me?"

She stepped up. One stiff knee first, then the other, up onto the launderette step with the lit box over her, closer to it than she'd been to anything since the day it went up.

Half a second later her own voice came down off the wall, thin and perfectly steady. *If my name's on it they'll have to knock at mine.*

Winnie stayed where she was and let the street hear it out.

"There you are," she said. "That's the worst of me, and it's not much."

Neil had his hands out of his jacket. "It won't work. They pay the printed name. You scribble on that and it goes in a drawer and nobody gets a penny, and I'll tell you now, I asked."

"You asked about the end date and she wouldn't tell you," Nell said.

"I asked about the box as well. It's typed for a reason."

"Then let them come and say so to her face."

"Aye, and when they say no, who's stood on this pavement having promised forty people a share?" He pointed with two fingers, at Nell, then at the row. "You. Same as ever."

Perry hadn't moved off his step. "Nothing ever changes round here," he said. "Let the woman have her name on something."

"You'd say that," Neil said. "You've signed nowt."

"I've signed nowt," Perry agreed.

Winnie flattened the form against the shutter with her coal-black palm, the back of it facing out, the little box waiting, and held her other hand out for the pen.

Nell took it out of her pocket. She thumbed the cap off and stood there with the nib an inch from her own typed name, the whole bend quiet behind her, Dasu saying her name once, low.