Receipt Required

The fishmonger wanted Mara to take the parcel back because the boots inside it were brown. He stood in his stocking feet on a square of newspaper, holding one boot beneath the shop lamp as though better illumination might establish a crime.

“I ordered black.”

“Then write to the bootmaker.”

“You brought them.”

“I can take credit for the journey.”

Behind him, his daughter scraped scales into a bucket. She had already signed the delivery slip. Mara held it away from a drip falling off the awning and waited while the fishmonger examined the other boot.

“These are brown too.”

“That should help your case.”

His daughter laughed into her shoulder. Eventually he paid the carriage penny, warm from his trouser pocket, and Mara left before he could discover anything else wrong with the pair. At the corner she tucked the signed slip into her route book. Her former dispatcher had treated every missing receipt as evidence that she had spent the evening somewhere comfortable. The carbon duplicates had cost her sixpence. They had recovered eleven shillings.

Bellwether’s harbor lamps were coming on through a mist that smelled of wet rope and the brewery drain. Mara had one collection left at dispatch. If she completed it before the night accounts closed, she kept the full route fee. A returned item meant a deduction, even when the intended recipient had moved to another country or developed unreasonable opinions about brown.

Orrin Pike had cleared the counter when she arrived. Usually it held mugs, rate tables and an orange he intended to eat until it became unsuitable. Tonight there was one envelope.

“Special delivery,” he said.

“Special rate?”

“Ordinary rate. Receipt required in duplicate.”

She put her book on the counter. Orrin did not move the envelope toward her, so she turned it herself.

The envelope was addressed to Tomas Vale, 14 Wren Passage, Bellwether.

She took her hand off it. Somewhere behind the sorting racks a tap needed a washer. She counted four drops before Orrin spoke.

“It came with the late collection.”

“My brother.”

“Yes.”

“There are other people called Tomas.”

“There are.”

“Then you might have started with one of them.”

Orrin pushed his spectacles up. He had known Tomas when Tomas still came to meet her after work and helped himself to the dispatch pencils. For years afterward, Orrin had kept buying the same soft kind.

“I have no alternative addressee,” he said.

Mara looked again. The handwriting was upright, cramped toward the end of Passage. No sender’s name appeared on the front or back. The flap was sealed with ordinary gum. She held it near the lamp; the paper inside showed as a folded rectangle.

“He’s on the memorial.”

Orrin’s thumb rested against the edge of the counter.

“I know.”

Tomas’s name was cut into the Breakwater Flood memorial with the names of people who had died seven years ago. Mara had never seen his body. At first she had corrected officials who said recovered when they meant reported. Then there had been fewer officials to correct.

“Who brought this in?”

“I didn’t receive it at the door.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“It’s the answer I have.”

She could make him stamp it undeliverable. He had a stamp specifically for that purpose; dispatch possessed more ways to refuse a journey than vehicles to make one. She could go upstairs to accounts and argue about her fee. Instead she opened her route book.

Wren Passage had been on her first harbor round. Tomas had lodged above a woman who repaired umbrellas and disliked visitors using the bell. Mara remembered carrying him a saucepan there, wrapped in a towel because its handle stuck out of her bag.

An old carbon page in Mara’s route book read: 14 Wren Passage — upper lodging — T. Vale.

She touched the entry. The blue lettering was faint beneath the pressure marks of later work.

“At least one of us kept an address,” she said.

Orrin reached under the counter for a fresh receipt set.

“Get the recipient’s signature. Keep the carbon attached.”

“You’ve said duplicate.”

“Attached, Mara. Bring the whole set back.”

His voice had lost its office tone. She waited for more, but he squared the unused forms instead.

Mara put the sealed letter and the fresh receipt set in her inner coat pocket. She would try the address before returning it. Orrin watched her fasten the button, and she disliked him for looking relieved.

At the mouth of Wren Passage, two council workers were changing the street board. One steadied a ladder while the other painted over the name with a brush too wide for the frame. Pale strokes still showed through the grey.

“What’s it called now?” Mara asked.

“Ask him.” The man holding the ladder nodded upward.

“Consolidated with Dock Lane,” said the painter.

“I need fourteen.”

“Twelve’s the last.”

She walked past them. The passage smelled of cabbage water. Twelve stood beside a long wall patched with small red bricks; beyond it, Dock Lane carried carts toward the warehouses. There was no umbrella shop. No bell, no upper window with Tomas’s chipped basin on the sill.

Mara went back to twelve and counted her steps to the corner. Twenty-three. She returned, checking for a recessed entrance. A woman carrying a covered pie waited for her to move.

“Was there a house here?” Mara asked.

“Where?”

“Next to twelve.”

The woman glanced at the wall. “You’re next to twelve.”

Mara let her pass.

She took out the book to check whether she had confused the number with another lodging. The old page was difficult to find with cold fingers. When she had it open, she looked up.

A narrow door stood between twelve and the red brick.

Its bottom rail had swollen against the step. There were three plugged screw holes where a bell might have been, and a brass numeral fourteen darkened around its nails. Mara kept her thumb against the page.

She closed the book.

The wall ran uninterrupted to the corner.

A cart rattled over the drain at Dock Lane. She stood still until it had passed, then opened the book to Tomas’s address again. The door was there.

“Excuse me,” she called to the woman with the pie.

The woman stopped reluctantly.

“What colour is that door?”

“Which door?”

Mara pointed. The woman looked, shifted her hot dish to the other hand and said, “I haven’t got time for this.”

Neither had Mara. Accounts closed at ten. She thought of telling Orrin that and started to laugh, a brief ugly sound that hurt her throat.

With the book open in her left hand, Mara pressed her right palm against the door. The paint felt gritty. A splinter caught her glove. She pulled free carefully and knocked twice.

Something scraped inside. She brought out the envelope and fresh receipt set, awkwardly, keeping the book balanced against her wrist. Her fingers found the perforation where she usually separated the recipient’s slip.

“Delivery,” she said. “For Tomas Vale.”

There was a pause long enough for her to hear the council ladder being dragged across the stones.

“Don’t tear off the carbon,” a man said from inside. “Leave it attached, please.” She knew that patient irritation: Tomas explaining why a cupboard hinge needed its third screw while she stood holding the cupboard door. Mara stopped pulling at the paper. She kept her palm flat against the wood.