Tuesday, the ninth of December. A quarter to five, and dark.
Dot went up the stairs as if she'd swallowed a lit match.
She had left the street door on the latch behind her. At the top the kitchen door was open a hand's width with the light lying out across the landing, and the smell coming out of it was tea and coal and the tail-end of somebody's onions. It was the smell of six years of coming in late with her feet wet and being told about it.
She put her hand on the door and her ears went. She felt them go. On Saturday she had sworn she would never lie again, and here she was about to do it on purpose.
"Boots," said Mrs Ruddock, from the range, without turning round. "I did that lino Saturday."
Dot wiped her boots. She wiped them on the mat, one and then the other, for a great deal longer than boots require, and came in.
The kitchen was as she'd left it. Small, hot, full. The bluebell cloth, with the worn white place at her end. The wireless on the dresser with its back screwed on, Pike's work, the little knob taped so nobody would turn it wrong. The rent book beside it with its soft corners. Mrs Ruddock was at the range in her apron with her sleeves pushed up, and the kettle was coming to the boil.
She turned then, and looked. It took her about a second.
"You've a face on you like a wet week," she said. "Don't stand in my light."
Dot went to her own place, at the worn end, with the cloth under her elbows.
"Not in your coat," said Mrs Ruddock. "Take it off. Give it here. It's black to the cuff, what've you been doing, you've had it in the gutter. That's a three-pound coat, that was." She took it and hung it on the door, and stood with her hands on her hips looking at Dot with her head on one side. She was sixty-one and about five foot one, with her grey hair scraped into a knot and a small, quick, sharp face that looked at Dot, most evenings, as if she were a column that had come out right. "You've been crying. No, you've not, you've been running. You've a stitch. I can see it from here."
"I ran," said Dot. "Some of it."
"You're not to. Not in that chest. Nurse Rhys'd have your hide, and then she'd send me the bill."
She got two cups off the dresser and poured from the pot that had been stewing on the hob since four, and got the sugar out of the tin, and Dot watched her hands. They had never been slow with a coin. They were red and small and had a scar across the back of one from a copper lid, thirty years ago, and she'd told the story of it a dozen times and always got the number of children wrong.
"One for you," said Mrs Ruddock, and stirred it in. "It's rationed, and I'm not made of it. Two for me. I'm sixty-one, and I'll have what I like and the Ministry can come and count."
She set the cup at Dot's elbow. It was the blue one with the chip. She sat down across the table with her own, and it steamed between them, and Dot put both hands round it because it was something to do with them.
"Well?" said Mrs Ruddock. "Out with it. Cyril'll be round when they shut, and I'm not having him find you in that state."
"Kemp said pink," said Dot. "At Gully's, in the daylight, with his hair on end. And Sergeant Bowyer came in a motor car and said murder."
"Ernie Bowyer. In a car." Mrs Ruddock sniffed. "His mother'll hear of that."
"He's putting Winston to the inspector at seven. Winston, and the bag."
"The lad in the cells."
"Mr Ferrar, Mrs R. He's got a name." She was talking faster now, which was easy; it was the only speed she had. She could feel her ears blazing, and she went on into the heat of them as into a wind. "He'll say he stole it. And that he did the old man, for the rent, and hid it. And it's such a silly place to hide it! In your own drawer! With all the week's rents gone out of it, the thirty-three pounds —"
"Thirty-one pound four," said Mrs Ruddock.
She said it as she'd have said two and four, not two and six. She said it to the cup, sharp, her mouth already turning for the next sentence.
"He never got thirty-three off that street in his life. There's not the money in it. Never has been, not since the war, half of them don't pay a week without you knock twice. It's a good Friday when it tops thirty." She reached for the sugar. "Thirty-three. Who told you thirty-three?"
Dot didn't say anything.
The spoon stopped an inch above the bowl.
Mrs Ruddock looked at it. She put it down, carefully, on the cloth. Then she looked at Dot, and Dot looked back, and neither of them moved. Down in the street somebody laughed, and a door slammed, and a milk float went by, on a night when nobody had had milk since Friday.
"Everybody'll know it by now," said Mrs Ruddock. "Ada Pollard's girl does the station floors. She'll have seen it on the desk. She sees everything, that girl, she's a mouth on her like a —"
"It's in a book in Sergeant Bowyer's drawer," said Dot. "I read it once, under a police lamp, and I said it to two policemen. Nobody's said it on the Row, Mrs R. Not once. Only you."
"Well," said Mrs Ruddock.
It was a calm little word. She got up. She took the kettle off the hob, because it was boiling, and put it on the trivet, and stood with her back to the room and her hand on the handle.
"You never told a lie in your life," she said.
"I did that one."
"So you did." She turned round. Her face hadn't changed. It was still the face that looked at Dot as if she came out right, and it was white. "Sit still. You'll want your tea and it'll go cold."
She made a fresh pot, since the kettle had boiled and the other was stewed black. She warmed it first, as she always did, and swilled it, and tipped the water in the sink, and put in three spoons from the caddy, and Dot sat and watched her do it and could not have moved for a hundred pounds.
"Ted's father," said Mrs Ruddock, "had those houses forty year. He'd have skinned a flea for its coat. Seventeen in Cinder Row and six in our street, and the roofs never done, and every rent day he sent a man round with a book. Ted got them when the old devil went, and Ted got pneumonia the same winter, and that was 'thirty-one. And I was forty, and I'd a mortgage on nothing and a hole in every roof in Lowmarsh."
She poured on the water. She put on the cosy.
"Who was going to see to them? The Council? I'll tell you what the Council was going to do. It was going to send a man with a clipboard." She sat down. "Nobody knew they were Ted's. That was the old man's doing, the firm, the trustees, Fennimore, a brass plate on the High Street. I kept the plate. You don't tell a street you're the widow Ruddock. They'd know where you live."
"Alfred," said Dot.
"I needed a man to knock. Alf Bracegirdle had a barrow and a wife with the consumption and the bailiffs in, and he knocked. A tenth of everything, I gave him, twenty-one years, and never a farthing wrong from that man, I'll say that." She poured. Her hand was steady. "Every Friday he came up those stairs and put the bag on this table and I counted it. You'd be at your work. You thought I paid him."
"I thought —" Dot's voice cracked. "I never looked."
"You never asked. I never said." Mrs Ruddock pushed the blue cup across. "And there never was any thief up my yard. That tin was in that bureau from the Friday to the Monday night, with my good gloves on top of it, and Monday night I put it over my own wall by the coal for the girl to find. I'd told her she weren't to touch my coal. A girl that proud'll be down at it before it's light. Nobody believes a woman as finds her own tin. Ernie Bowyer'd have had me down for the insurance, and it's not insured."
Dot's hand shook so that the tea slopped in the saucer.
"Thursday," she said.
"Thursday." The old face didn't move. "I went to him. Nine o'clock at night, down the back way. I went to talk. And he stood on that half-landing and roared. Twenty minutes, at me, down a dark stair, like I was a dog in a yard. Not a pin's worth of respect. He'd carry my book no more. He'd take no more off that street for me. Monday he was going to the sanitary man, and the Medical Officer, and Fennimore, and he'd tell every soul in Cinder Row whose houses they were." She stirred her tea round, once, and put the spoon down. "Twenty-one years. I'd kept that man in boots."
"The baby," said Dot. "Christine Tapsell. Six weeks. It was that night."
"That was the fog."
"Maureen says it was the cellar. The window, that he never mended —"
"That was the fog." Mrs Ruddock had got up. She'd gone to the dresser for the caddy, though the pot was full, and she stood with her back to Dot, turning the caddy over and over in her hands, looking at the lid. "It's on the paper. Bronchopneumonia. Half that street's got it. The fog killed that baby, Dot, and it's killing them in palaces. One baby, in a week like this, and he'd have the Council in over one."
She put the caddy down.
"And I'll tell you what the Council does. It calls the street unfit. And then it pays for the dirt and not a brick. Seventeen houses, gone for the price of the ground, and Ted's father's ground at that. And every soul in that street knowing whose dirt it was, and me at the top of Flax Street with the bailiffs."
"So you —"
"I never laid a finger on him."
Dot had risen without knowing it. They stood on either side of the bluebell cloth.
"The tap," said Dot.
"I turned a tap." She said it flat. "I turned a tap off, and I turned it on again. Friday. It was coming on yellow; you'd not have known your own sister at arm's length. I know that yard in the dark. I was up it with Ted's father's book before I was married. He was asleep by his fire with his stockings up and his mouth open, snoring like a pig, with his waistcoat undone, and I stood there and waited, and the flame went blue and then it went out. That was all. That was all it was." She drew a breath. "He went in his sleep. It's a mercy."
St Saviour's began to strike, slow and clear now the air had gone, each stroke like a coin on a plate. Five. Dot counted them. She listened for the landing, and it didn't creak. She stood alone in the kitchen with her landlady, and the last stroke went out over the roofs.
"And the bag," she said. It was hard to get out. "You took the bag."
"It was mine. It was my money. It was on the table, in the bag with the book, and I took it off him. And I laid his snake along the door on the hall side after me, so the smell'd not get out and the gas'd not get in the passage." She snorted. "You'd think I'd have left it the right way round."
"Winston kicked it straight."
"So he did. Well." She picked up the spoon and put it down again. "And I come out of that yard gate with my scarf up and my bag up, and walked slap into Norman Gully, galloping, late for some poor soul. I knew his voice. Mind yourself, madam, like I was anybody. He'd not have known my face from a gatepost in that. And I told him what he was, and I could have bit my tongue in half."
"Undertaker," said Dot.
"A man like Norman says everything, sooner or later, to anybody with a pencil. One day he'd say a woman. So I gave him one first. My own front step, going for my flask, and him coming round out of Tanyard Road. And I made it a grievance." She sniffed. "You'd not look at a grievance."
"And the flask."
"I sent Cyril with your soup on the Friday so I'd a reason to come for it. You'd had nothing but tea since Thursday. Twenty to three I came, in at your front door, and sat on that radiator, and told him his muffler was a disgrace, which it is." She almost smiled. "And don't you put the time on me. I never gave you a time. That was you and your church clock."
"I didn't know."
"No. You'd not." She looked away. "Then Saturday. I'd five pound out of that bag, in half-crowns, and I put it in Norman Gully's hand for the Wednesday and a decent elm. Forty of them. Out of Alf's own bag, for Alf's own hole in the ground. That's only right. The rest's in the Post Office in my own name, where it belongs. I never thought a lad in a yard would count them." She turned her cup round on its saucer. "And a bit of his purple off the tray on his sill while he wrote me the receipt. For a pincushion, I thought. Then I thought of a better use."
"And the pie."
"Mutton. Stanley wouldn't touch it." She sniffed. "I was up for the tie, and the drawer was open, and it won't shut, the whole house says so. I put the bag on the shirts. That's all. It was doing nobody any good in my press."
"For Winston."
"A lad like that gets six months for a bag. Not a rope. I did my sums." She met Dot's eye at last, and it was the old eye, sharp and level, quite dry. "Nobody said gas till you did. That was all done. He was going to Gully's on Wednesday, decent, on the nail, chest and bed and all, and they were going to say a kind word and have a ham tea. And you went poking. With your mouth. Nobody'd have looked at it, Dot, if you'd left it be."
"You lent Stanley the money."
"And it's in my book, with the interest." She said it to the cup. "I knew Norman'd seal the minute he was paid. He's forty waiting."
"Monday night I told you gas," said Dot. "In this kitchen. I stood there and told you. And you fetched me the blanket."
"I lent it. I don't lend that blanket."
"For a man in a cell —"
"I lent it."
She said it with something like anger. Then it was gone, and she picked up her cup and looked into it and found it empty.
"Six years," she said. "Six years in my house, and never a week late but the once. I'd not have had it touch you. It did. Well." She put the cup down. "The winter of 'forty-nine I carried your coal in from that yard and it never went in the book. Not a penny of it. So don't you stand there looking at me like I've not done right by you."
Dot couldn't speak. It was a thing that had never happened to her in her life. She had a whole mouth full of words, and they were all at the front of it, and none of them would go out.
Mrs Ruddock looked at her for a long time, and something in the sharp little face made up its mind. She sat down slowly and laid her hands flat on the cloth, as if she were about to add a column.
"Now you listen to me."
"I'm listening."
"I know why your mother was at number eleven that Tuesday."
The kitchen went a long way off. The kettle on the trivet, the dresser, the bluebells: all of it slid back and back like a train pulling out, and Dot was left on the platform with her whole body pointing after it.
"Lil Neave," said Mrs Ruddock, "was my tenant."
She waited. Then she got up and lifted the cosy off the pot and felt the side of it with the flat of her hand, and put the cosy back.
"I'll walk to that station in the morning," said Mrs Ruddock. "On my own two feet, in my good hat, not fetched in a van for the street to look at. Nine o'clock. And tonight you'll have your mother, every word. I'm asking nothing I've not paid for."
Dot held on to the edge of the table.
A night. Winston, in a cell, with his name pinned to a board. Seven o'clock. The man in the Wolseley, and the bag. He'll charge who he likes.
"Winston first," said Dot.
It came out very quiet.
"Dot."
"Winston first. Tonight. Now."
"You'd give it up." Mrs Ruddock's voice was flat with disbelief. "For a lad you've known four days."
"Yes."
Neither of them spoke. Then Mrs Ruddock nodded, once, as she'd have nodded over a bad shilling, and got up.
She went to the bureau in the corner by the window, the one Dot had never in six years seen open, and unlocked it with a key from her apron pocket. She took out a ledger. It was a big square book, bound in black, with a label on the spine in a neat old hand: Tanyard Estates. She took out another. She took out five, six, eight, twenty years of them, laying them on her forearm like loaves.
"Mrs R."
"They'd be no use to you. There's Ted's name all through them."
She opened the door of the range with a rag round her hand, and put the ledgers in.
Dot was across the kitchen before she knew she'd moved. She had them out with her bare hands, out of the fire, three at once, black at the edges, the paper curling and the corners alight, and she was beating them on the lino with her palms and shouting something, she didn't know what. The range door was hot. So was the iron. Her right hand went white and then red and then a great burning bracelet round the palm, and she went on. When it was over the kitchen was full of the smell of scorched paper, and Mrs Ruddock had a rag over the range door and was looking at her hand.
"You daft girl," she said, gently. "Look at that."
Half the pages were burnt through to a lace of brown. The labels held. Tanyard Estates, on every spine. Dot had the biggest of them against her chest and could feel it smoking.
"Twenty years of it," said Mrs Ruddock. "In my own hand. You've spoilt it."
Somebody coughed in the doorway.
It was a small, dry, apologetic sound, somebody clearing his throat for a hymn. Mr Pike stood on the landing in his good black coat with his hat held in both hands over his stomach. His muffler was crossed over the chest and the ends tucked in. He had come up the stairs without a creak. Dot had never known him do it.
"I came at five to five," said Mr Pike. He was grey. His voice was the voice he used for the date. "The street door was on the latch. I have been on the landing since the sum." He looked at the ledgers and then he looked at Mrs Ruddock, and didn't look away. "I heard it from the sum, Mavis. All of it."
Mrs Ruddock stood by the range with the rag in her hand.
Nobody spoke. The kettle had stopped singing on the trivet. Dot thought the whole house was listening, every floor of it, down to the cinders under the grate.
Then Mrs Ruddock put down the rag. She smoothed her apron with both hands. She turned to the dresser and got a third cup off its hook, and looked at it, and set it on the table beside the others, square to the edge of the cloth.
"Two sugars, Cyril," she said. "You know how I take it."