Two Needles

"Six," said Saul, as we came across the yard. "And the Warden. Good. And a lamp each, I see. Very good."

He had his cardigan on under his coat, and his reading glasses on their chain, and he looked as if he'd slept. He probably had. There was a kettle going on the little stove behind him, and a plate of bread and butter on the long table, and the tent was warm.

"Sit," he said. "Eat something. Tea's terrible." He was already pouring it into chipped cups, and he put one in each of our hands as we went past him.

Pim sat down on the grass where he was, just outside the flap, and didn't get up. Gus and I carried Bea in between us and put her on a camp bed in the corner, and Ansel lowered himself onto the end of a bench and let his bad leg go straight out in front of him and shut his eyes. Mags stood by the table. Tamsin came in last and stood by the tent pole, where she'd stood on Monday morning.

Saul had a sheet of paper on the table. The list. Eight names, in his neat hand.

HESTER LUND already had a line through it. He tapped his pen twice on the paper, and drew another, a little further down.

TOBIN ASHE.

I had Tobin's tin in my coat pocket, and his envelope buttoned in the pocket inside that, and I watched a man with a cup of tea in his other hand cross him out.

"I'm sorry about Mr. Ashe," said Saul, without looking up. "He was a cheerful boy."

"His name was Tobin Edward Ashe," I said.

Saul looked at me over his reading glasses, the way he had about my boots.

"Yes," he said. "It was." And he wrote something small next to the line, and put the pen down.

I thought about all the things I could say, and then about the license, and the debt, and three more years at the Desk, and I held my cup in both hands and drank the tea, which was terrible.

He went down the line of us with the lamps first.

He held each one up to the light at the tent flap, and looked at it, and turned it over, and handed it back. "From the room," he said each time, pleased, like a man checking eggs. When he got to Gus he held the lamp a little longer.

"Your father brought one of these up," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Before my time. I've read his paper." He handed it back. "Pass."

Gus held the lamp a moment longer than he needed to.

There was a paper to sign. Ansel had told us about it in the tally office. I promise not to tell how I passed, in long words, with a line at the bottom. Mags read hers twice before she signed. So did I. Number twenty-nine in my notebook: don't sign anything you haven't read twice. I'd lost the joke, but I hadn't lost that.

Ansel signed his with his eyes shut, nearly. Then he sat and looked at it, at his own name at the bottom, and put his hand over his mouth, and kept it there.

"Thirty," he said through his fingers, to nobody. "Last go."

Bea reached over from the camp bed and took his other hand, and held it.

"Last thing," said Saul. "Then breakfast, and the train."

He turned to the scale by the open flap, where the end of the long table met it. On Monday I'd only seen its foot under the canvas. A big round face of glass, the size of a dinner plate, with numbers round the edge, and a single black needle resting at nothing. A flat brass plate to stand on, set into a wooden base. Beside it on the table lay a row of little ones, the size of a pocket watch, with glass faces and brass cases. Weigh-glasses. I'd only ever seen them in pictures.

"The True-Weight scale," said Saul. "You'll have heard of it. Everybody who comes up out of a land steps on one. Lands do odd things to people. We check." He smiled. "Warden?"

Tamsin stepped onto the plate without a word. The needle swung, and settled at 1.00, and she stepped off again and went back to her pole.

Saul nodded at Pim.

Pim got up off the grass and stepped onto the plate. The needle swung, and settled.

1.00.

"Agbaje, real," said Saul, and wrote it down.

Gus. 1.00. Mags. 1.00. Gus and I got Bea onto the plate on her good leg, and she leaned on the table with one hand while we let go. The needle swung under her and settled. 1.00. Ansel got on by himself, holding the table. 1.00.

"Marlow."

I stepped onto the plate.

The needle swung up and stopped at 1.00, the same as all the others, and I let my breath out.

Then I saw the other one.

There was a second needle. Thinner than the first, and paler, and I hadn't seen it a moment ago because it hadn't been there. It came up from the bottom of the dial, slowly, and trembled, and stopped.

0.61.

Nobody said anything. The kettle went on ticking on the stove.

I looked down at my own feet on the brass, as if they might explain it. They were the same boots. They still didn't keep the wet out.

Across the tent, by the pole, Tamsin's face didn't change. One hand closed on the handle of her shovel. Then she took one step toward the scale, and stopped.

Saul looked at her. Just for a moment, over the top of his glasses.

She didn't take another step.

"What's the other one?" said Pim. His voice had gone high. "Saul. Sir. What's the other needle?"

Saul leaned over the dial and tapped the glass twice with one finger. Both needles shivered. The thick one stayed on 1.00. The thin one stayed on 0.61.

He smiled.

"It's an old scale," he said. "It's had a long night. Like the rest of us." He straightened up. "Step down, son. You're real enough for me."

I stepped down. The second needle sank back to the bottom of the dial, and was gone.

He'd done the others first, one after another. He signed mine last, at the long table, standing up, with his tea in his other hand.

It was a card, stiff and cream-coloured, the size of a hand, with the Warden seal on it in red. My name was already printed. He filled in the rest while I watched. FIELD WITNESS. FIRST MARK. And under it, CARRY: 8.

As a Provisional I'd been allowed three. Mags held hers up beside mine without a word. Hers said eight too.

"Congratulations," said Saul, "Field Witness Marlow."

He blew on the ink, and held it out.

Everybody was looking at him. The seal, the signature, the famous man in the cardigan handing over a license with a smile. Pim had his mouth open. Gus was watching Saul's hands. Mags was watching Saul's face.

My left hand took the license. My right hand was resting on the table, next to the row of weigh-glasses, and when I lifted it, one of them came with it, and went into my coat pocket next to Tobin's tin.

Nobody saw. I'm nearly sure nobody saw.

Outside, the wind had got up. Somebody had brought a stretcher from the engine house for Bea, and a Warden I didn't know was helping Ansel toward the gate in the chain fence, and the others were following, with their lamps still burning in their hands in the daylight.

Tamsin was already gone. I hadn't seen her leave.

I was last out of the tent. Saul was standing at the flap, holding it back for me, with his cup.

As I went past him he leaned in, close, the way you'd lean in to tell someone their collar was turned up.

"I'd keep that notebook somewhere safe," he said quietly.

Then he let the flap fall, and went back in to his tea.