Chapter 122: The Tin III

Danny put the mug down on the carpet by his foot.

"It’s not right, though," he said. "Is it."

"No, it’s not right."

"Then let me..."

"No." She was looking straight at him now. "And I’m not doing the speech I done you about the car, before you start getting ready for it, because that was about a motor sat outside for 40 women to look at and this isn’t. This is different and it’s worse, and I’ll tell you why, and you’re not going to like the reason."

"Go on then."

"Because I’d have it."

The pipe went knock.

"I’d have it, Danny." She said it absolutely flat. "I wouldn’t say no. I’d do the bit where I said no, I’d do 2 or 3 goes of that, and then I’d have it, and we’d both know I’d only done the no so you’d ask me twice."

"That’s not..."

"It is, and I’ve just sat here and told you what people are like when they know a number, and then I want you to believe I’m the one that isn’t." Her jaw had gone tight. "I’m not special. I’ve done it twice in this room in the last 20 minutes. Once when you said the million and once when you said the 58 grand, and the second one was about me, so don’t sit there telling me what I’d do."

"Then have it."

"And what am I after that?" she said.

Danny stopped.

"You’ve come here today and asked me what a fair wage is and I give you an honest answer," his mother said, "and it were honest because I’ve got nothing in it. 13 quid. I thought it were good. It weren’t, and you knew it weren’t, and you let me say it anyway, and I’ve had to sit here and find that out, and that were worth having."

"It was."

"Now put me on 15." She let that sit. "Next time you come round and ask me a question about money, what do I say?"

"Whatever you think."

"I’d say what keeps it coming." She picked her tea up. "And I’d not even know I were doing it. That’s the bit. I’d think I were being straight with you, same as I thought 13 were generous."

Danny sat on his mother’s settee in a room with the fire on 1.

"So that’s a no," he said.

"That’s a not yet, and don’t you dare go quiet on me about it." She had a mouthful of tea. "There’ll come a day when I can’t do the trolley and there’ll be a day after that when I can’t do the stairs, and you’ll not have to ask me anything then because I’ll be on that phone to you myself. And I’ll not be proud about it and I’ll not do the no 3 times. All right?"

"All right."

"Say it back so I know you’ve took it in."

"When you can’t do it you’ll ring me."

"I’ll ring you." She put the tea down. "And until then I’m on twelve twenty-one and I’m all right on it, and that’s not me being brave, it’s just what’s true on a Tuesday."

She picked the postcard back up off the arm of the settee and put it in her lap, face down, and did not say anything else about it.

He left it another 20 minutes.

He let her get on to Denise’s knee and the leaflet, and Eileen on the third floor at Tower Court, and a thing about a woman at Rye Lane who had put a hoover through a window, and he let her do all of it, and then he put his mug down.

"There’s one more."

"I knew there was one more." She did not sound cross. "You’ve had a look on you since you come in. Go on."

"I need my birth certificate."

His mother went completely still.

"What for?"

"The will. She wants it because if somebody ever argues about a will the first thing they go at is whether you’re who you said you were, and a passport’s a travel document and a birth certificate’s the other one." He said it the way Priya had said it. "She wants it Thursday."

"You can get one."

"I know you can."

"Twelve pound off the register office and it comes in the week, Danny, I’ve done it. I did it for your nan." She was watching him. "You’ve not come here for a form you can buy."

"No."

"Then what have you come for?"

And Danny sat on his mother’s settee in Battersea and told her the closest thing to the truth he had said out loud to anybody in 6 weeks.

"Because a new one’s just a printout," he said. "It’s a bit of paper a computer did last Tuesday. And the one in that tin is the one they gave you in the room, and it’s got the date on it and somebody’s handwriting on it, and it’s been in this flat my whole life."

"And that matters to a solicitor, does it."

"No," Danny said. "It matters to me."

His mother sat and looked at him for a long time.

Then she got up and went out, and he heard her in the kitchen, and he heard the tin come off the side, which is a sound he has known his whole life and has never once thought about.

She came back with it and sat down and put it on her own knees and did not give it to him.

"I told you to stay out of it."

"I know you did. Friday morning, on the walkway, and I’d been in your bag 11 days before that."

"Twelve," she said.

"Twelve."

"Twelve, and you’ve sat in my front room for 2 hours and give me a postcard back and a million pound and a wage, and you’ve got all the way to the tin before you’ve said it out loud." Both her hands were flat on the lid and they stayed there. "So we’re doing this bit first."

"Mum..."

"You went in my bag while I was asleep in your house."

"Yeah."

"In your house that I’d come to because you asked me and I got 2 buses." She had not raised her voice once. "And I made you a shepherd’s pie and I slept in your spare room in a dressing gown off a hook, and you stood in that kitchen in the dark and went through my handbag."

Danny did not say anything, because there was not a thing to say that was not smaller than what she had just said.

"What did you take?"

"Nothing."

"Danny."

"I didn’t take anything out of it," he said. "That’s true and it’s not the answer. I looked at his address and I wrote it down."

"Where."

"In my phone. It’s still there."

His mother’s thumbs moved on the lid of the tin about a quarter of an inch and stopped.

"Right," she said. "And what have you done with it?"

And this was the one he had been carrying up the stairs and along the walkway and through the whole afternoon, and it turned out to be the easiest thing he said all day.

"Nothing."

"Nothing."

"I’ve looked at it," Danny said. "I’ve looked at it a lot. On the bus and in bed and stood in that shop. And I’ve not rung him and I’ve not wrote to him and I’ve not got on a plane, and I don’t know if that’s me being good or me being a coward, and I’ve stopped trying to work out which."

"It’s neither," his mother said. "It’s just Tuesday and you’ve not done it yet."

"Yeah."

"And one day you will, and I’d rather know before than after, and that’s the whole of what I want out of you. Not a promise you’ll not. Just that I’m not stood at that sink finding out off a postcard." She looked at him. "Can you do that?"

"I can do that."

"Then that’s the bag dealt with and I’ll not bring it up again," she said, "and if I do you can tell me I said that."

The fire clicked over on 1.

"Right." Both hands still flat on the lid. "So you’re asking."

"I’m asking."

"Say it properly."

Danny sat forward.

"Mum. Can I have my birth certificate out of your tin."

And his mother took the lid off.

She did it on her own knees, turned very slightly away, the way you do with a bag on a bus, and he did not lean over and he did not look.

He saw the edge of a card with a robin on it. He saw a rubber band round something. He saw her go past 2 things without touching them and stop at a third.

She took one item out, and it was flat and pale and about the size of a postcard, and she did not show it to him.

She folded it once and put it in her cardigan pocket.

Then she went back in the tin and got out a slip of paper about 4 inches wide, folded in 3, gone soft at the creases and the colour of weak tea.

"There."

He took it.

CERTIFIED COPY OF AN ENTRY OF BIRTH. And in a registrar’s hand, in real ink, his own name, and the date, and the district, and under MOTHER her name and her maiden name in somebody else’s careful writing, and under FATHER the name of a man on a jetty in Noosa.

Danny sat and looked at it.

"He signed it," he said.

"He was there. He was there for that." His mother put the lid back on the tin. "He was very good for about 3 years, and then he wasn’t, and there’s no form for that either."

She stood up with the tin under her arm.

"Right. Fish fingers or do you want a proper tea, because I’ve got mince and I can do it in 40 minutes."

"I’ll have the mince."

"Then go and put the telly on, because I’ve had it off all afternoon and this room’s like a morgue."

And she went out to the kitchen with a biscuit tin under one arm and something folded in her cardigan pocket, and Danny sat on the settee with a piece of paper in his hands that proved he had been born, and did not ask her what she had taken.