Millions

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  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.

  The police went after them due to concerns about large numbers trespassing on railway property.

  Which left Dad and me and Anthony and Dorothy. She was putting her coat on. She said, ‘Well, it was fun while it lasted, eh?’

  Dad said, ‘Listen, if you want the car . . .’

  ‘No, no. I love my little car. Thanks all the same.’ She kissed him on the cheek, ruffled my hair and went to ruffle Anthony’s but stopped herself just in time. And then she left.

  We stood around saying nothing. I was waiting to hear her engine start up. But it didn’t. Instead, the doorbell rang. It was her, back again. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘there’s no easy way to say this, but the fact is . . .’ She put her hand inside her coat. ‘I kept a bit back. For myself. It’s yours really.’

  And she put a wedge of money on the table.

  Dad looked shocked at first, then pleased.

  ‘It’s six grand,’ she said.

  He went to the biscuit tin on the top shelf, levered it open and pulled out another wedge. He put it next to Dorothy’s. She laughed. ‘You crook!’ she said.

  ‘It’s the dollars. It felt different somehow. Ten grand’s worth.’

  ‘Ten grand! That’s worse than me! That’s twice as bad as me, nearly!’

  Anthony was emptying his dressing-gown pocket. He had a roll of notes the size of a Jaffa orange. ‘I just liked having a wedge. The feel of it. It wasn’t the money really. It was more like a stress ball.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Four thousand three hundred and forty-five.’

  They stared at him. He shrugged. ‘I enjoy counting it.’

  Then they all three stared at me. I said, ‘Well, don’t look at me. I haven’t got any.’ They kept staring. ‘I haven’t!’

  ‘Well, you could’ve put a bit by, you daft sod.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  20

  If our Anthony had been telling you this story, it would be the most unhappy ending ever. He would put, ‘And so they failed to make proper use of their once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity and they all regretted it ever after.’

  Anthony regretted it hundreds of times every day. Every time we passed a shop window or saw an advert, he’d shake his head sadly, thinking of what might have been.

  Because what actually happened was this. Since I was the only entirely honest member of the family, Dad said I could decide what we did with the money. And with 20,345 new euros we built 14 hand-dug wells in northern Nigeria.

  Sometimes money can leave your hand and fall like water from a pipe on to the hot ground, and the dusty earth swallows it up and bursts into food and flowers for miles and miles around
. And all the seeds and roots and lives that were lying dead in the ground spring all the way back to life.