Millions (18 page)

He was pushing the girls towards me and I saw now that one of them was Gemma. She whispered, ‘Sorry about this. Tricia Springer told us you gave her three grand for carol-singing. We are on the bones of our, you know. Don’t tell anyone.’

‘What do you want? I mean, how much?’

‘Oh, thanks a lot, son,’ said her dad. ‘A couple of hundred. Maybe three would get us through . . .’

The bag was behind the door. I grabbed a handful of notes from the top and handed it over, thinking, I wonder if Tricia told anyone else.

The man said, ‘Yes!’ and punched the air as he led the girls away. When they stepped back out from the door, they triggered the reactive halogen light. And then I saw it.

The whole close was packed with people. Hundreds of people all pushing and shouldering their way down the path towards the door. Each and every eye was staring at me. Each and every eye was full of want or need. There were hundreds. It felt like millions.

I remembered what St Peter had said about putting our address on the back of the envelopes. He’d been right. Well, he was infallible. We were besieged. Hoping it was a dream, I shut the door too quickly. It woke Dad. From upstairs, he shouted sleepily, ‘Damian, who are you talking to?’

‘No one. Just checking.’

Then the doorbell rang. I froze. It was him. It must be Glass Eye. I had to answer. The others were just a dream. While I was thinking, Dad was coming downstairs, muttering, ‘Who is it at this time of night.’

‘I’ll get it.’

‘Don’t be daft.’ He yanked the door open and a woman in a smart suit stepped right in, saying, ‘Some 50 per cent of families with a chronically ill child break up. Long-term care is stressful and impoverishing. We aim to give people a break and to help them over the hardest times with simple things like train fares and overnight expenses for as little as . . .’

‘What the . . . Do you know what time it is? This is a private house. There’s kids.’

‘Exactly. Kids. Kids are what it’s all about. Kids with chronic illness, as if that wasn’t hard enough to deal with in itself, but all too often that illness leads to the break-up of the child’s family.’

‘Look, it sounds great, but come back in the morning, eh?’

Dad was trying to push her back out, but the minute he did, a tall man with sticky-up hair was standing in his way, holding up something like a tiny ladder. ‘This may look like a tiny ladder to you, but to a hedgehog it’s a lifeline. It’s the difference between life and death.’ It was a little ladder actually. It was for helping hedgehogs out of cattle grids and drains. ‘They cost eight pounds a time to manufacture and install. With your help we could save hundreds of hedgehogs.’

‘Why me?’

‘Oh, come on, everyone knows. Why not give us a handful. This delightful ceramic hedgehog will be yours to keep.’

‘In the morning. We’ll talk in the morning. Now, come on. Please. There’s kids . . .’ and he pointed at me.

But it was no good. Everyone just started shouting and waving leaflets and pictures. The reactive halogen light snapped on and off like lightning. It felt like the whole population of the world was trying to get through our front door.

‘Look, this is that same donkey after only three months in our care!’

‘You may be asking yourself, why does Waterloo Station need friends?’

‘I know that irritable bowel syndrome isn’t sexy . . .’

‘. . . and if you gift-aid your donation, then it’s worth 30 per cent more to us without costing you a penny. I’ve got the forms here.’

‘Yoga for prisoners . . .’

While Dad was shouting at them, I quietly picked up the bag of cash and took down my new red duffel coat. I slipped into the living room. There was someone banging on the window. He was pressing a photograph of a woman in a head-scarf up against the glass, yelling, ‘They want to send her back tomorrow. They say I can appeal, but how to appeal with no money? She have no one back home. They all dead.’

He hadn’t finished when someone shoved him out of the way and started knocking on the glass too. It felt like the whole house was about to crumple under the weight of people’s needs. They all looked angry and desperate. Dad was shouting, ‘Anthony, shut the door,’ as though he thought that they were going to just burst in and take the money. I could see he was scared, just like he’d been scared of Terry from IT. I made my decision.

I opened the back door. There was no one there. At the bottom of the garden, I dropped the bag over the fence and climbed over after it. I could still hear them shouting. I could hear them all the way to the railway line. When I got to the holly bushes, the phone buzzed. Glass Eye was growling at me through the video screen. ‘Where are you, you little bastard. What the hell is going on?’ I dropped the phone. He carried on yelling into it. The screen glittered as I walked away, like a talking raindrop. Looking back towards Cromarty Close, I could see a pale blue light flashing on and off and I knew the police had arrived.

It was Anthony who told me what happened later. Lots of police had come because the neighbours had complained about the noise. The police got everyone out of the house and then Dad had to try to explain to them why all these people thought he had a load of money. Dad just said, ‘I don’t know. Someone must’ve been saying things about us.’

‘Untrue things, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

But the community policeman was there by then. He picked out the new plasma-screen TV and the dishwasher right away and said, ‘So has the Good Lord been pouring out his comforts and consolations on you and all, then?’

Dad said, ‘What?’

‘Mind if I take a look round?’ said the copper. And off he went upstairs.

Dad hissed at Anthony, ‘Where is it? Where is it all?’ because he couldn’t see the bag of money anywhere. It was Anthony who noticed that my coat was missing as well. He didn’t say anything. He knew where I’d be. He sneaked the back door open. And there, on the patio, was Glass Eye.

He leaned down right into Anthony’s face and hissed, ‘You’re the clever one, aren’t you? You were clever with me last time. Don’t try to be clever with me this time or I’ll drown you. OK?’

Anthony stood back to let him in.

‘Where is it?’

Anthony said it was upstairs. Glass Eye pushed him forward. Anthony led him up to his bedroom. And the first thing Glass Eye saw, before he was inside the room even, was the wall completely covered with old money. They don’t take the glue very well by the way, so they’d started to bubble a bit. It looked like the money was crawling up the walls. Glass Eye walked in there and stared at it up close, like he couldn’t believe it. He touched it. It was only then he realized the community policeman was in the room already. ‘Did you know,’ said the policeman, ‘that 70 per cent of British banknotes contain traces of cocaine? Some 40-odd per cent contain traces of gunpowder. You know, from guns. It’s all on there. If you could read it. That’s the thing, isn’t it, you can’t read it. Them notes. People have sweated for them, stolen them, wasted them, died longing for them, and what do the notes care? Not a thing. Now. Who are you?’

Glass Eye put his head on one side to look at the man with his good eye. ‘Who am I? Who the hell are you?’ he said.

‘We’re the police,’ said the community policeman.

I was next to the track by then. The up-train went screaming past in a mighty rushing wind of diesel and noise. It blew away the sound of the shouting from the Close and tossed my hair around. Even the big fat white moon seemed to shake as it went by. When it had gone, I had thirteen minutes till the next train came. I stepped on to the track. The rails were shining blue. They looked like a long metal ladder leading all the way to the moon and the moon looked like the entrance to a tunnel full of light.

I tipped the bag of money out on to the track. I had taken a box of matches from the kitchen. I tried to light one. It blew out before it lit properly. I put a ten-euro note between my teeth and lit that from the next match. It burned really quickly. I dropped it on to the pile. I thought it was going to blow out right away, but another note caught fire first and then another and then another, and soon dozens of them were blazing. As they burned they rose into the air, carried up by their own heat. Soon they were dancing all around me, like a confetti of fire. I started to laugh and out of nowhere a charm of zebra finches flew through the middle of them, twittering madly. The gust of their wings seemed to make the fire brighter and more and more sheets of flame whooshed into the air. I put my arms out and spun around, whirling the flames higher and higher.

When I stopped, that’s when I saw her. She was sitting down, which surprised me. She obviously had been there a while, watching me.

I said, ‘I know you’re only a dream, but I don’t care. It’s nice to see you, even in a dream.’

She smiled. Then she looked past me at the fire. Its rosy glow spread over her cheek. Her skin was shiny and perfect. She wasn’t wearing foundation or a tinted moisturizer. She just had better skin than other mothers.

I said, ‘I tried to be good with it, but the money just makes everything worse.’

She stood up and for a minute I thought she was going to walk away. I shouted, ‘Talk to me,’ and then more quietly, ‘please.’

She looked at her watch. She said, ‘Two minutes, OK? And listen. I am your mother after all and I’m dead, so I know what I’m talking about. All right?’

Of course it was all right.

‘You need to use conditioner on your hair. Your dad won’t think of that, but it makes all the difference. Believe me. Dental hygiene. It’s no good saying your prayers and then forgetting to brush your teeth. If you get a gum infection, it’ll colour your outlook and you’ll lose your zest. You can’t move in purgatory for people with no zest and it’s all so avoidable. Now, Anthony. He seems to have taken it better than you but he hasn’t. He’s got a good heart. He just, well, he doesn’t know where it is. He’s going to need you. Be good to him. Me. You are not to worry about me. You have been worrying about me, haven’t you?’

I just nodded.

‘Well, don’t. It’s very interesting where I am. We’re kept very busy.’

‘What about Dad?’

‘Well, obviously you should be good to him as well. He is your father.’

‘No, but I mean, couldn’t you talk to him?’

‘What about?’

I wasn’t sure whether to say.

‘He can’t see me anyway.’

‘Why not?’ I knew why not really. I looked back towards the house.

‘It’s her, isn’t it? Your dad and her. Damian, you know how complicated the money was? Well, people are even more complicated. You want things to be good or bad. But things are complicated. The thing to remember is that there’s nearly always enough good around to be going on with. You’ve just got to have a bit of faith, you know. And if you’ve got faith in people, that makes them stronger. And you . . . you’ve got enough to sort all three of you out. That’s why I’m counting on you.’

I said, ‘I’ve not been worrying about you. I’ve been missing you.’

She said, ‘Well, that’s allowed.’

Then I asked her. ‘Anthony says you’re not a saint.’

‘Well, the criteria are very strict. It’s not just a case of being very good and all that. You do have to do an actual miracle.’

‘So . . .’

‘Oh, I’m in there. Course I am.’

‘What was your miracle?’

‘Don’t you know?’ She looked me up and down, then said very quietly, ‘It was you.’

In the distance I could hear Anthony calling me. She looked at her watch. ‘One oh four. Step off the track, then.’

The up-train was coming. I stepped off the track backwards and so did she. So we were on opposite sides of the track. The train rushed between us. I was sure she wouldn’t be there when all the carriages had gone. But she was. She was still there. I grinned.

Anthony was nearer and louder now. I yelled, ‘Coming!’ and turned to go to him.

She said, ‘Hey.’

I looked back at her.

‘Aren’t you going to say goodbye?’

I ran across the line and hugged her. She smelt of Clinique Everyday and rain. She was warm. At least I think she was warm. It could have been the heat from the burning money, gusting towards me. Then I felt her wedding ring snag in my hair. And I knew it was a real hug. It made all the things that had kept her from me seem like dreams. She whispered, ‘Be good to him.’ Then she was gone.

‘What have you done?’ It was Anthony.

He knew what I’d done really. I didn’t say anything. I just started to walk back to the house. He followed me. I wasn’t looking at him when I said, ‘Did you see her?’

He didn’t say no. He said, ‘What did she say?’

I stopped and turned to face him. ‘She was pleased with us. She says we’re going to be all right.’

We set off for the house.

‘Damian,’ Anthony said, ‘you’re not a nutter by the way.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but you are.’ I laughed and ran off.

‘Right. You’ve had it.’ He chased after me. We were doing about ninety when we hit the kitchen door. Dad looked up, shocked, like a comet had come through the window.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he yelled.

Dorothy was there and so were the policemen.

‘We were just going to have a cup of tea,’ said the community copper.

‘He’s burnt it.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Damian burnt the money.’

The policeman looked at me very hard and said, ‘No harm done, then. That’s what the government wanted to do in the first place. It’s to do with the money supply.’

Dad went up to the front bedroom and opened the window. The voices in the Close poured in like water. He shouted, ‘Listen!’ And the voices stopped. ‘The boys . . . one of the boys . . . has . . . down by the railway . . . he burnt the money. All of it.’

There was no sound in reply. It felt like there was no one out there. Then one voice – an old man’s voice – went, ‘When you say burnt, how badly?’

‘What?’

‘Only, if you can still see the serial numbers, apparently you can get remuneration at the bank.’

There was one more second of quiet and then suddenly a huge wave of voices exploded. There was shouting and yelling and pushing and shoving and the whole crowd of people poured out of the Close and through the gardens towards the railway line.