Part Payment

She squared the notes on her knee, wet as they were, and put the whole lot into Neil's hand and folded his fingers over it the way Martha had folded hers.

"That's the arrears," she said.

"That's not the arrears." He had hold of it, though. He turned away a little to count, lips going, and when he'd done he put the notes inside the rent book and shut the book on them.

"It's shy," he said. "You know it's shy."

"I know."

"The rest's still owing."

He was stood on her step to say it, under the light, and half a second after he'd finished the box gave him back off the wall.

*I'd have taken half of that and still come. I just didn't want to go home and tell her I'd stood here and got nowt.*

Neil looked up at it, the way he always did.

"Her," Winnie said. "Who's her?"

"Mind your own."

Winnie had come up the pavement with the form still held against her cardigan, back outward, the biro on it gone furry where the damp got in. She didn't look at Neil after that. She stood square in front of Nell and turned her wedding ring round on her finger, round and back, with the thumb, the way she did on her gate.

"Forty ways," she said.

"Winnie."

"You said it under that thing and it never argued with you. That's the only promise anybody's had off this street in a fortnight."

"I know what I said."

"Then say the other now. Say it where it'll come off the wall, same as the first one did, so I've heard both."

Nell stood with her hands empty for the first time all night, and the gutter kept on behind her.

"The money's gone to him," she said. "There's no forty ways. There's no share, not for you, not for Perry, not for anybody. It went on my rent."

The box took its half second.

*I wanted it out of my hand before any of them could ask. I'd rather owe him than stand here owing the lot of you.*

Nobody said anything. Down the bend a car went through the water at the drain and the sound of it carried right up the row.

"Well," Winnie said. "That's honest, and I've had a bellyful of honest." She put her hand out anyway, palm up, small and stiff with the coal still in the creases. "I'll have mine."

"There's nothing left to have."

"I know that." The hand stayed out. "I want it said I asked. In front of them. You can shut your fist on nothing, I'm not fussy."

So Nell put her empty hand in Winnie's and Winnie closed it and let go, and went off up the pavement with the ruined form held to her chest and didn't look back.

Martha was already at the edge of the lamp with the wallet under her arm. "Goodnight," she said, to none of them in particular, and started walking.

Neil had the rent book open on the sill with the pen uncapped, waiting for Nell to put her mark against the part payment. Perry's sea captain card was in her overall pocket. Martha was fifteen steps off the bend.