Millions

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  When the bag of money landed in front of me, it put me in mind of St Nicholas straight away. I could have asked him for guidance. Or I could have asked St Matthew, who is the patron saint of money. Or I could have called the police. Or my dad.

  Personally, I ran across the field shouting, ‘Anthony! Anthony! Come and look at this!’ I was that excited, you see.

  I’m not sure now that it was the best idea.

  When I got to the house, it was still dark but there was a light on in the kitchen and I could see Anthony making toast. I tapped on the window. He jumped in fright, but then he saw who it was and let me in.

  ‘What are you doing out there? You’re freezing. Where’ve you been? Have you been out all night?’

  My teeth were still chattering. I said, ‘I’ve found . . . I’ve found . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come and look.’

  Anthony put his coat on. He could tell I was excited, but he wasn’t that convinced. ‘This had better be something that other people can see.’

  This reminded me of what the woman had said at Huskisson House. What if you could see things that weren’t there? What if it wasn’t as optical as I thought it was? But when we got to the hermitage, the bag was there. I pointed to it.

  Anthony said, ‘What?’

  ‘You know when you tell people Mum is dead and they give you stuff?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, I told God.’

  I pulled back the box and Anthony saw it – a big bag stuffed with money. His face glowed. He says now that it’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He was so happy just then.

  ‘And it’s from God, you reckon?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, he really wanted to cheer us up.’

  It needed the two of us to carry the money back across the field towards the house. Think of that. More money than we could carry. I wanted to spread it all out on the dining table so Dad would see it when he got home and be of good cheer, but Anthony said we mustn’t tell Dad about it.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Tax.’

  I had to ask him what tax was.

  ‘If Dad knew about it, he’d have to tell the government, and if they knew about it, they’d want to tax it. At 40 per cent – that’s nearly half of it. We should just hide it and go to school.’

  But we couldn’t. We had to know how much was there. We tipped the money on to the table.

  ‘Anyway,’ Anthony said, ‘if God had wanted Dad to have this, he would’ve sent him a cheque in the post.’

  It was hard to argue with that.

  I started to help him count. At first we just tried to count all the tenners using our ten times table, but we lost track of which ones we’d counted. The room seemed to be filling up with notes. Then Anthony had the idea of counting them into piles of a hundred, and then counting the hundreds. But even that was no good. After ten minutes the whole floor was tiled with wads of money. We couldn’t find anywhere to sit, let alone count. So then we tried making them into piles of a thousand. There were 229 piles of a thousand. Plus 370 pounds change. That’s 229,370 pounds. Or twenty-two million, 937 thousand pence.

  For a while we just looked at it. Then Anthony picked up a thousand pounds and put it crossways on top of another thousand. Then he picked up another and put it crossways on top of that. Then I picked up a pile and put that on top of the other three. Then Anthony. Then me, and on and on building a tower of cash. We got it almost as tall as me before it fell over. Then we both started laughing.

  That was the first time we played Cash Jenga. We played it every night for the next week. The highest we ever got was Anthony’s eyebrows. But that first time was the best, when it just sort of invented itself out of our excitement.

  Cash Jenga is a great game if you can afford it.

  We were late for school, but somehow it didn’t matter. Whenever we saw each other in the playground or in the corridor, we just grinned. Having a secret is like having a pair of wings tucked in under your blazer. I gave Barry my Pringles (barbecue flavour) without being asked. I just handed them to him while we were lining up at the end of Small Play. I said, ‘Enjoy.’ He looked a bit surprised.

  On the way home, we stopped at the shop and Anthony bought a bottle of Sunny Delight the size of an oxygen tank. He saw me looking at it and said to the man, ‘Make it a double.’

  While the man was getting my bottle, a girl from Anthony’s class – the one with the nice corn rows in her hair – came in and Anthony said, ‘Make it three and have something for yourself.’ And he gave a tenner to the man and the bottle to the girl. Just as he was handing it to her, Barry came in and went, ‘Ooooohooo, you love her! You bought her Sunny Delight.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I buy her Sunny Delight?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you buy me Sunny Delight?’

  ‘All right, then, I will.’

  So he bought another bottle. By which time, Barry’s mate Kaloo was there saying, ‘You only bought that cos you’re scared of Barry.’

  So Anthony bought a fifth bottle and gave that to Kaloo.

  By now people were piling in to see what was going on. Kaloo went, ‘The new kid’s sucking up to us. Buying us Sunny Delight.’

  ‘I’m not sucking up to anyone,’ said Anthony, and he proved it by buying everyone a bottle. Twenty-three bottles of Sunny Delight and a box of Walker’s prawn cocktail. Not a packet, a box. One of the big boxes you get from the wholesaler.

  ‘Spending money like it’s going out of fashion,’ said the shopkeeper.

  ‘It is going out of fashion,’ said Anthony.

  Outside, on the pavement, everyone scrummed hungrily round the Walker’s box. A couple of them left their bikes sprawled on the pavement. Anthony shouted, ‘Who wants to lend us a bike?’

  A couple of lads stood up and looked at him.

  ‘Tenner,’ offered Anthony.

  The bike owners clambered over each other to get to us first. In the end, we went for Terry Keegan’s Raleigh Max and Franny Amoo’s Pavement Shark. Payment was on collection of the bikes from our house, before five, which is when Dad was due home.

  It was good to be able to get nice stuff without having to go on about dead people. Both the Pavement Shark and the Raleigh Max have excellent suspension, so we rolled home over the back field, by the railway. Anthony talked about all the things we could get – bikes of our own, quad bikes even, new trainers, new tops, mobiles, Beyblades. All the things that Dad said were a waste of money – sea monkeys, or the X-Box, or the Gamecube, or extra channels or X-ray specs.

  ‘They don’t work. You only see skeletons.’

  ‘Skeletons are good.’

  And when we got home, instead of turning the oven on, we called Pizza Reaction and ordered pizzas. I asked for one with extra cheese and extra pepperoni. While we were waiting we played Cash Jenga, which I won.

  Then Anthony thought of real-money Monopoly. ‘It’ll be brilliant,’ he said. ‘I’ll be banker.’ But we’d only just got the board set up when Mr Pizza Reaction came up on his moped.

  As we opened the door, Dad was just pulling into the car port. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked, as he headed for the house.

  ‘We’ve ordered pizzas instead of cooking. We thought it would be excellent.’

  ‘Where did you get the money?’

  ‘I’ve got money,’ said Anthony.

  ‘What, from your birthday and stuff?’

  ‘Stuff, yeah. It’s sterling, so we have to spend it before € Day anyway. We ordered one for you.’

  ‘What kind of one?’

  ‘Seafood with extra anchovies.’

  Anthony opened the box and steam curled out like candle smoke and the smell of cooked cheese and damp bread filled the room.

  ‘Nice. That is very, very nice of you.’ Dad just stared at the pizza for the longest time, saying nothing.

  ‘Is it the wrong kind?’ I asked.

  He suddenly marched into the kit
chen, blew his nose and came back saying, ‘ It’s the right kind. It’s just the right kind. It’s very much the right kind.’

  I said, ‘Cardboard boxes are definitely better than the polystyrene ones. The polystyrene ones make them go rubbery, I think.’

  ‘Yes, they do,’ said Dad. His eyes were so shiny that I thought for a minute he was going to cry. Obviously people don’t cry about pizza. ‘You’re very good lads,’ he said. And then he picked up the biggest slice of pizza I’d ever seen, folded it over and put the end in his mouth. He looked like a gorilla gargoyle and we all laughed.

  I said, ‘Who invented pizza?’ I didn’t really want to know. I just thought Dad might like to talk about general knowledge, the way he used to. I remember him reading a whole book on the history of the potato.

  ‘Pizza,’ he said, ‘was invented in Naples. It was originally just a herby bread which market traders used to sell to poor people. When Queen Margherita came to visit Naples in 1889 , she really took to it, so she got the most famous pizza maker – Rafaelle Esposito – to make one specially for her. It was his idea to put basil, tomato and mozzarella on top. Green basil, red tomatoes and white cheese, you see, colours of the Italian flag. And that’s why it’s called Pizza Margherita.’

  We all cleared up and that was a great day.

  8

  Anthony says I need to get more financial about the story. So, financially, we had 229,370 pounds sterling. On the morning of 1 December this was worth 323,056 euros. It’s true that you can’t buy love or happiness with money, but it is interesting to see what you can buy.

  For instance, you could buy 15,390 pairs of Micro Turbo racers at €20.99 a pair. Or 3,756 Sky Patrol quick-charge, easy-to-fly remote-control helicopters at €85.99 each. Or 22,937 Airzookas (they fire balls of air at people). Or 43,159 kite-in-a-keyring sets. Or 5,736 table-top candyfloss makers. Or 1,434 Shogun Nude BMXs. Or 2,699 Gameboy Advance Sps.

  On 1 December we had seventeen days left to spend it.

  On the same morning, we opened the front door to find six lads and two girls waiting on their bikes. As soon as Anthony looked out, they all started shouting, ‘Want a bike? Anthony, want a bike? Anthony? Anthony, have a bike!’

  Anthony took a good look at each bike. ‘I think what we’d really like is a lift,’ he said. ‘Kaloo and Tricia.’

  Kaloo McLoughlin and Tricia Springer had BMXs – the kind with the little pommels sticking out of the back axle for you to stand on. Anthony went on Kaloo’s bike and I went on Tricia’s. We cruised to school with all the other bikes trailing along after us like a motorcade. Everyone was looking at us. It was the best thing. At the gates, Anthony gave Kaloo and Tricia a tenner each.

  Tricia didn’t seem that happy about it. ‘It’s a kilometre. A tenner’s too much. I just want enough to buy a set of glitter pens.’

  The truth is, we didn’t have anything smaller than a tenner. If you asked our Anthony now, he’d say this was where everything started to go wrong. According to him, the problem with the money supply created an inflationary environment in the playground. We didn’t even know we had a problem then, though. We just thought we had over 229,000 pounds to spend.

  It seemed like it would be easy. At lunch, for instance, we had Hot Dinners instead of sandwiches and we didn’t have to queue. Peter Ahenacho queued for us and brought it over to the table, like a waiter. Tracey Edwards went and got our cutlery and drinks and cleared up after us. We gave them ten pounds each. Afterwards, we had extra helpings of pudding (chocolate flan) for ten pounds each. We were just finishing when Barry came and sat at our table. He had a set of walkie-talkie watches.

  ‘They’ve got a 200-metre radius. New batteries. Matching designer fascias. What d’you think?’

  ‘Ten quid,’ said Anthony.

  ‘No way! You gave her ten quid for fetching a fork. Forty.’

  ‘Forty quid, then.’

  So we’d spent 100 quid today already.

  Out on the playground other people came up to us with stuff they’d brought in from home. There was a Gameboy; some goggles that helped you see at night, half a dozen micro-machines. We spent 150 pounds just walking from the monkey bars to the boys’ toilets.

  In the boys’ toilets, there was a boy from Year Five called Aamar. He had a big faded yellow box with footballers on the front. The corners of the box were all blunt. ‘Subbuteo, that’s what this is. You must’ve heard of it. It’s a legend.’

  No, we hadn’t.

  ‘Football game, man. Classic, isn’t it? This is my dad’s from way back. Family heirloom.’

  ‘So it’s second-hand, then?’

  ‘Not second-hand, man, antique. Antique. Legend. Timeless. Look. These are the teams – Arsenal and Man City.’

  He opened the lid. There were dozens of tiny players lying in rows like they were asleep. It had miniature floodlights, ambulances, referees, linesmen, managers’ dugouts, a TV van, advertising hoardings. Everything. It was a world, where you could be in charge. We had to have it.

  ‘Forty quid.’

  ‘Forty! You’re jesting, my friend. You’d give me ten quid if I sharpened your pencil, mate. I’m looking for a ton for this.’

  ‘A hundred quid! Now who’s jesting? I could buy a real team for a hundred quid. I could buy Crewe Alexandra.’

  ‘Do it, then. It won’t have managers.’ He pulled a freezer bag from his pocket. Inside it were two tiny plastic men in sheepskin coats. One of them had a little hat on. The other had his collar up. We both gasped. ‘It will not disappoint you, my friend.’

  I said, ‘How are we going to get all this stuff home?’

  Anthony said, ‘A hundred quid for this but you deliver.’

  Aamar spat on his hand and held it out for Anthony. Anthony looked at the hand and passed him a paper towel.

  It was all a bit unenlightening.

  Outside the gates after school, everyone who had a bike was waiting for us, shouting, ‘Want a lift? Give you a lift?’

  We breezed past them out of the gates, where a big black saloon was waiting. Anthony had booked us a taxi. We climbed in and waved goodbye.

  I said, ‘That was a great day. If we go on like that, we’ll spend the money in no time.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ hissed Anthony. He nodded towards the cab driver, then whispered, ‘We’ve spent a bit yesterday and 350 quid today, which leaves us about 229,000. If we spent this much every day it would take us 655 days to get rid of the money.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We’ve got sixteen days after today. Mind you, we haven’t paid for the taxi yet.’ The taxi was four quid all the way home, which is actually cheaper than second helpings of pudding when you think about it. Anthony gave the man a tenner and told him to keep the change. Which was a mistake really, as it would’ve been good to start getting some change.

  9

  The minute we arrived at school next morning, we were surrounded by people trying to sell us stuff. Anthony bought: two micro-scooters (boxed); a Real Madrid away shirt; an original Harry Potter swatch watch; a video tape of The Blair Witch Project (someone said if you watched it you died, so we never did); a proper casey signed by the actual treble-winning Man United team; a packet of space ice cream; a pen that writes under water and a digital camera disguised as a pen (we didn’t have the right kind of computer to get the pictures off it).

  People tried to sell us rubbish as well – for instance, those toys you get in Happy Meals or the Make Your Own Crystal Garden set which five different people tried to sell me and which no one ever tried to make. But it didn’t matter. If we said no, someone else could buy it. Everyone had money now because nearly everyone had sold something to us. There was money everywhere. Money was a craze, like yakky yo-yos or Beyblades. Football was out. The playground was one big car-boot sale.

  Mr Quinn came over to me and said, ‘Lots of excitement on the playground today, Damian.’

  I said, ‘It’s all very unenlightening.’

  He lo
oked at me a bit strangely.

  Anthony wanted to buy some flying saucers on the way home but when we got to the shop, the shelves were almost empty. They’d bought everything except the Fisherman’s Friends and Vim.

  The shop man said, ‘What’s going on? Where’s it all come from?’

  Anthony decided we shouldn’t go there any more just in case.

  I didn’t buy anything much personally, though I did manage to get to the repository shop at the back of St Margaret Mary’s. I got statues of St Francis, St Martin de Porres, the Little Flower, Gerard Majella and the Child of Prague. I got miraculous medals of St Benedict, St Bernadette and St Anthony. They had a St Christopher, but I don’t count him as a proper saint personally. They had colourful cards of all the above plus St Michael the Archangel with a burning sword. They all fitted on my windowsill. It was a different matter with the micro-scooters and the Airzooka. Anthony tried to squeeze everything under the bed, but there was hardly any space because of the Subbuteo and the money.

  ‘You’ll have to put them in your den.’

  ‘It’s not a den, it’s a hermitage, and I don’t want it cluttered up with worldly goods. That’s the whole point.’

  ‘You know what we could do? We could rent a garage, a lock-up.’

  ‘I don’t know why we don’t just tell Dad. What’s the point in having all this stuff if we can’t even play with it?’

  ‘OK. OK. OK. We’ll play Subbuteo.’

  He didn’t actually want to play. He was just making a point. We spread the cloth out on the floor and it was so green, it was like having a real little lawn in your room. You flick the player with your finger and the player flicks the ball. Sometimes you miss the ball and then it’s the other one’s turn. Anthony could hit the ball five or six times in a row and I’d move the linesmen up and down the touchline. We barely spoke as we played and the cloth seemed to grow bigger and greener, so it was like being on a real pitch, except it was quiet and everyone did what you told them to. Anthony flicked one in from the wing that dropped into the centre. There was nothing between him and my goal. You’re allowed to move your goalie while the other one takes his kick. He shot. I quickly moved my St Gerard Majella statue into the goal. The ball hit the skull at St Gerard’s feet and went bouncing off down the pitch, into Anthony’s area.