One of Them Is Lying

When you pass the Field trial, the Wardens give you your fee back. Forty crowns, in a brown envelope. They call it a signing bonus. A clerk at the gate in the chain fence handed them out with the train tickets, and made us sign for them.

I had it counted before the train left Harrow.

Forty crowns. A Field Witness pays his service off in one year instead of three. A Field Witness can rent a flat in a part of the city that doesn't flood, with a door that locks. Forty crowns was a month's rent and a month's deposit, near enough. I'd done that sum in my head about a thousand times, at the Desk, in the queue, in bed with the man next door coughing through the wall.

I did a different sum on the train.

Coat's twenty-two. That leaves eighteen. I'm going to get her gloves too. The good ones, with the fur inside.

You'll pass, and then you'll pay me back double.

Twenty doubled is forty.

He'd known about the refund all along. I'd thought he was being stupid about odds. He'd just been betting on me.

On Wednesday morning I went to Fennick's, on Coal Street, near the bridge. The coat was still in the window. Grey wool, big buttons, a collar that goes up past your ears.

The man in the shop looked at my boots and then at the money, and decided the money was more interesting. He wrapped the coat in brown paper and tied it with string. The gloves were nine crowns, which was more than I'd ever paid for anything I could wear, and they had fur inside, the good kind, and he wrapped those too.

That left nine. I put the nine in an envelope.

Then I sat down on the step outside Fennick's with the parcels on my knee and got my notebook out.

15. I owe Tobin 20 crowns.

I'd checked that line every day for two weeks. I'd checked it on the train going up. I took my pencil and drew a line through it, carefully, and wrote underneath.

(crossed out) 15. I owe Tobin 20 crowns. (end crossed out)

15. Paid. Forty. Double, like he said.

Monday's pages were after it. My writing from the change, and the line by the bulb, and at the bottom, in the same hand, I'll be home for supper. I looked at it for a while. Then I shut the notebook and went to find his mum.

Ada Ashe lives on Rope Lane, two streets back from Calloway's laundry, in the bottom half of a house with a red door. I'd never been. Tobin had told me the house number about fifty times, so I'd remember it for when I came round for tea. I'd never come round for tea.

She knew before I said anything. Someone from the Wardens had been on Tuesday night, with a letter. She stood in the doorway in a cardigan with her arms folded, and she was small, the way he'd been small, and she had his face. She coughed, once, into her hand.

"You're Iven," she said. "From the Desk. You're the one who kept fining him."

"Yes."

"Six times," she said. "He told me every time. He was proud of it." She stood back from the door. "Come in, then. Mind the step."

I sat at her kitchen table and put it all down in front of her, one thing at a time, because I didn't know how else to do it. The coat in its brown paper. The gloves. The envelope with the nine crowns. Then the other envelope, the small brown one, with his coin in it. The brass tally, number up. The crib tin, dented, with nothing in it.

"He asked me," I said. "On the train. If he didn't come up, would I bring you something of his. So you'd have something."

She didn't open the coat. She picked up his pay envelope first, and read the front of it, and read it again.

T. Ashe. Paid in full. Home for supper.

"He was never home for his supper in his life," she said.

She put it down, very carefully, square to the edge of the table. Then she picked up the tin and held it in both hands in her lap, and looked at it, and didn't say anything for a long time. I didn't either.

"Did he count?" she said in the end. "Down there."

"Everything. Stairs. Lamps. The whole way."

"He counted the stairs when he was three," she said. "Fourteen, up to the bedroom. Every night, out loud. I used to lie there and listen to him get to fourteen."

My hand had closed on the edge of her table. I left it there.

She turned the tin round in her hands. "Eight to one, the laundry gave him on you. Mrs. Calloway brought it round this morning. All of it, in a jar. She was crying."

"He'd have liked that."

"He'd have been unbearable," said Ada Ashe, and laughed, and coughed, and laughed again, and then put her hand over her eyes.

When I left she was still sitting there with the tin. The coat was on the back of the chair, still in its paper. I hoped she'd put it on. I wasn't going to ask.

On Thursday I went back to the Rumour Desk.

Nothing had moved. The queue still went out the door and down Tallow Street. My stamp was where I'd left it. Somebody had put a paper bag of sweets on my desk with PIM written on it, which meant Pim had bought them and wanted me to know.

Field Witnesses work the Desk like anybody else, till the Wardens find them something worse to do. Mrs. Odell looked up when I came in. She looked at me for a long moment over her cigarette.

I put the license on her desk. She picked it up and read it, all of it, both sides. Then she put it down.

Something happened at the corner of her mouth. It wasn't much. It didn't stay long. But I'd worked for her for four years, and I'd never seen it before, and I'll swear to it in front of anyone.

"Marlow," she said.

"Mrs. Odell."

"Next!" she said, past me, to the queue, and went back to her paperwork.

Pim was at the next desk. He waited till the first customer had gone, and then leaned over, the way he used to.

"I've been thinking," he said. "About the joke."

"You don't have to tell me it again."

"I'm not going to." He straightened a form that didn't need straightening. "I'm going to get a new one. A better one. It'll take me a while. Good ones do."

"All right," I said.

"It'll be the best joke you ever heard. You'll laugh so hard Mrs. Odell has you fined."

"All right."

He nodded, and turned back to his queue, and that was that. I sat there with my stamp in my hand for a minute before I called the next one.

The rest of them I heard about the way you hear about anything in Merriton, which is from Pim. Bea was in the Warden infirmary with her leg in plaster up to the hip. The black hadn't faded. Ansel had gone home to see his mother, with his license in his top pocket, and told the whole street. Gus hadn't sent a word to anyone, which from Gus was close to a thank-you. Nobody had seen Mags.

Nobody had seen Tamsin either. I hadn't asked. Pim told me that too.

Sunday. Ten to seven. The bottom stair of the hostel on Lock Row, across from the hall telephone.

Mr. Pruitt was in his chair by the front door with his newspaper.

"Evening, Mr. Pruitt."

"Evening, son."

I'd thought about a door that locks every day for four years. I'd spent the money on a coat.

At seven exactly the phone rang. I picked it up before the second ring.

"Iven?"

"Hi, Mum."

"You sound thin."

"I passed."

There was a little crackle on the line. Then she laughed. That laugh that starts small and trips over itself, as if she's surprised by how good the thing is.

"I knew you would," she said. "I knew it. Didn't I say?"

"You said wear two pairs of socks."

"Did you?"

"I've only got one pair, Mum."

"That's the whole trouble with you," she said, and laughed again, and I sat on the bottom stair and listened to her laugh.

I told her about the license. I didn't tell her about the mine. I didn't tell her about Tobin. I told her I'd come and see her soon, on the train, now that I had money, and she said "You always say that," and I said "This time I mean it," and she said she'd put the kettle on, and I said I hate tea, and she said she knew, and she'd put it on anyway.

Then she sang, the way she always does at the end.

"Night, love," she said.

"Night, Mum."

I put the phone down, and sat for a moment, and let the minute finish.

"Who were you talking to?" said Mr. Pruitt.

He'd put his newspaper down. He was looking at me over the top of it, at the phone, at me.

"My mum."

"Phone never rang, son."

I looked at him. He looked at me. Then he shook his head and picked his paper back up.

Number twenty-eight in my notebook says Mr. Pruitt drinks. I went upstairs.

My room has a bed, a chair, and a window that looks at a wall. I sat on the bed with the door shut. It doesn't lock.

I got my notebook out first. I didn't open it. I thought about Saul at the tent flap, leaning in. Then I lifted the loose board under the bed, the one where I keep the rent, and put the notebook in, and put the board back, and sat on the bed again.

I took the weigh-glass out of my coat pocket.

It was the size of a pocket watch, brass, with a round glass face and numbers round the edge. I'd been carrying it around all week. I hadn't looked at it once. I'd told myself that was because I was busy.

I held it flat on my palm, over the scar the tally had left when I took Tireless. It had gone pale and shiny that week, the way they do. The number still showed.

The needle swung, and settled at 1.00.

Then the second one came up from the bottom of the dial, thinner and paler, the way it had in the tent, and trembled, and stopped.

0.61.

I sat and looked at the two of them for a long time, with the man next door coughing through the wall.

One of them was lying. I just didn't know which one.