Chapter 196: D. Flynn I

The pages after the flyleaf were 61 years of pencil.

Danny turned them standing in the doorway with Jodie at his shoulder. Dates down the left, in the same small upright hand. A place. A time in and a time out. Sometimes a word or 2 after it, and sometimes nothing.

14 March. Highgate. 22:00 to 04:00. The judge. Called me Rose. I let him.

2 August. Bow. 09:00 to 13:00. The birds.

9 November. Maida Vale. 21:00 to 05:00. Mrs P. Her son made tea in a pot. Didn’t ask my name.

"That’s Pemberton’s mother," Jodie said. "That’s the tea."

He kept turning. The entries got shorter in the 80s and longer again in the 2000s, as if she’d had more to say when she was old. Near the end the pencil went faint and wobbly. The last entry was this autumn.

10 October. Last door. Tired now.

Then 2 blank pages. And then, on the inside of the back cover, written firmly, in pencil gone over twice so it would last, a list.

HOW TO ASK.

Not for yourself. They will say no every time.

In the hall, when the table is out. If the table is not out, wait. It comes back.

With your own pen. Never theirs.

Write who it is for, and what. Plain. No please.

Don’t sign it. Not your name and not host. They know who’s asking.

You will not be told yes. You will find out.

Ask small, love. I asked big once and got you. I’m not sorry. But I should have asked smaller.

Jodie read it twice over his arm, with her chin on his shoulder. He could feel her thinking.

"Not for yourself," she said. "Pemberton asked them last Thursday to close his own record. For himself. They told him only the host could ask, after he’d signed. Whatever they said, he’d have known this rule, Danny. He’s been going since 1958."

"He knew the pen one. He gave me his pen on Sunday and told me never to write with theirs. And he knew the name one. He told me on the bench that when you ask you don’t give your own name. He was taught it in 1958." Danny ran his thumb down the list. "So he knew every rule, and asked for himself anyway. He knew they’d say no."

"He asked so he could tell you he’d asked," Jodie said slowly. "So you’d know what he wanted. So it’d be in your hands and not his."

They stood in the doorway with the book open between them and the kettle going cold behind them.

She asked on the Saturday night, and Vic came on the Monday.

"Tomorrow I see my mum on my own," Danny said. "Then you get the first one, the same night, word for word. I promised you after Mum and that’s tomorrow."

"I know when it is," Jodie said. "I’ve had it written down since the night you showed me your phone."

At half 7 on Friday the light came in thin and white, and the window was open an inch, and Jodie was awake before him again, lying on her side watching him with her hair over the pillow.

"You’ve got to go to Battersea," she said. "On your own. And you’re going to come back different. I can see it on you already."

"I’ll be back by 9 with less in my pockets than I went with."

"Then come here first," she said. "Before you go and empty them."

I rolled over onto her and she kicked the duvet off and opened her legs to take me in between them, warm and naked, and her arms went round my neck. I kissed her slowly and she kissed me back slowly, and we both took our time.

She drew her knees up and then lifted her legs, one and then the other, and put her ankles up on my shoulders, and looked at me from underneath with her lip between her teeth.

"Like this," she said. "I want you as deep as you’ll go."

I put my hands flat on the mattress either side of her and leaned down over her, and she was folded right up under me with her calves against my chest and her heels by my ears. I pushed my cock into her slowly. She was hot and wet from sleep and I went in deeper than I’d ever been in her, all the way, till my balls were pressed against her arse, and she made a long low sound and her eyes went wide.

"There," she said. "Oh, fuck, right there."

I didn’t move for a breath. Then I moved, slowly, long deep strokes, pulling nearly all the way out and sinking all the way back in, and every time I bottomed out she gasped. Her tits moved with every stroke and her nipples were tight and pink in the cold air from the window. I turned my head and kissed the inside of her ankle where it rested on my shoulder.

"Slow," she said. "Don’t you go fast. I want this to take ages. I want you to be late."

I did as I was told, till she was shaking under me and grabbing the sheet in both fists, with her pussy clenching on me every time I went deep, and her face had gone pink right down her throat. I got my thumb on her clit and held it there, pressing, while I kept up the long strokes.

It took her with her calves pressed hard against my chest and her back arched off the mattress, crying out, and her cunt pulled at me in long hard waves, and I went over with her, buried as deep as I could go, my forehead against her shin and her name in my mouth.

She let her legs down slowly round my waist and pulled me down onto her and held me there.

"Now go and see your mum," she said into my neck. "And come back and tell me. All of it."

At 10 he gave John Mulvey’s tie back to Pat at the shop on Verney Road, in its paper bag, creased.

Pat took it out and looked at the creases and looked at him.

"That’s been held on to," she said. "Hard. Not at the funeral, either. I’m 75, Danny, I’ve seen a tie that’s been held on to." She folded it back into the bag. "Don’t tell me. I’ll put it under the mattress with the iron on top and it’ll come out. John’s did, every time. He’d come home from a do with his tie like a corkscrew and I never asked and he never said, 46 years.

"How was it? The funeral. Was there many?"

"9. In a chapel for 100. His brother asked me to say something and I said it. Then they put him in under a plane tree with room left for the brother."

Pat nodded slowly. "That’s right. John’s got a space beside him at Highgate. I go up on his birthday with the trolley and Ray drives me. You’ll have to drive me when Ray’s dead. You’re writing that down, are you?"

"I’ll drive you, Pat. Put me down for it."

His mother had the door open before he was off the stairs. She’d swapped her Friday like she’d said she would, and she wasn’t in her ward clothes. She had her good blue blouse on, and her hair down, and an apron over the top, and the flat behind her smelled of a pie in the oven and the gas turned up too high.

"No Jodie, then," she said.

"Jodie’s at home. I came straight from Verney Road."

"Come in, then. I’ve done a steak pie. I’ve done it from the butcher’s, not a tin, so you’ll eat it." She was moving before he was through the door. "Denise has been round twice this morning wanting to know who’s coming, she saw me with the butcher’s bag, I said nobody, my son, she said that’s somebody.

"And the Co-op’s moved the bread back. Back where it was. All that, 3 times since August, and it’s back where it was in July. I stood there in front of it and laughed out loud and a lad stacking the milk thought I’d gone.

"Sit down. Not that one, the beer mat’s slipped. Sit on mine. I’ll take the wobble."

She talked all the way through the pie. The ward, the lady who wouldn’t eat and had eaten a whole jelly on Wednesday for a student nurse with a nice face. Denise’s grandson and his engines. She asked nothing about the funeral or Jodie, and she didn’t stop for long enough that he could start.

Then she put her knife and fork together on her plate, and put both hands flat on the Formica, and stopped.

"Right," she said. "The Monday."

He’d had it ready for 11 years, and gone through it again on the bus.

"You were on an early. 7 till 3. It was the October, the one I was 17. I’d not gone to school that day. I was in my room. At about 11 somebody knocked, the proper knock, a fist. You were out, so I went.

"There was a man on the walkway. About 50. Big, heavy, a good coat on him and a gold ring on his little finger. He said, Mr D. Flynn? And I said, that’s my dad, he’s gone. And he looked at me and he said, You’re D. Flynn and all though, aren’t you, son?"

His mother didn’t move.

"He said his name was Vic. Vic Harrigan. He said my dad had borrowed 5,000 pounds off him in a pub in Clapham in the spring before he went, cash, and signed a bit of paper for it. He took me down to his car on the street to show me the paper. It was in Dad’s writing. The capitals. D. FLYNN. And this address under it, this flat.

"He said it was 9,000 now, with what he called the time. He said a debt goes with the address and the name, and I’d got both. And then he said your name, Mum. Your first name. And he said what bus you got at 6 in the morning, the 44, and what stop you got off at."