Millions

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  ‘What the hell was that supposed to be?’

  ‘I prayed.’

  ‘You can’t pray in football.’

  ‘Excuse me. Brazilians pray all the time. They’re always crossing themselves.’

  ‘Saints do not come down and kick the ball for them.’

  ‘How d’you know? They always win.’

  ‘If you can have a saint, I can have Action Man.’

  So Anthony laid his Action Man across the mouth of the goal.

  ‘What? Where’s the logic in that? You can pray to a saint. You can’t pray to a doll.’

  ‘Action Man is not a doll.’

  ‘A doll is a doll is a doll and Action Man, I hate to tell you, is a doll.’

  ‘It’s got a grappling hook.’

  ‘Barbie with a grappling hook.’

  ‘What’re you talking about, Barbie? It’s a bloke. It’s got grip-action hands.’

  ‘St Francis could talk to animals.’

  ‘Dr stupid Dolittle can talk to animals. Are you going to play him out on the left?’

  We were so absorbed in this discussion that we didn’t hear anyone coming upstairs or opening the door until it was too late. Until Dad was looking down at the Subbuteo, saying, ‘Where the bloody hell did that come from?’

  Anthony can lie so fast it feels like the truth but blurred. ‘Won it,’ he said.

  ‘Won it for what?’

  ‘Art.’ He was actually picking up speed. He was amazing.

  ‘Art? What did you do? Paint the Sistine Chapel?’

  ‘Made a model.’

  ‘What of ?’

  ‘You know. What’s it called? Tracy Island. It’s excellent. The best.’

  ‘Excellent. The best.’ Dad said the words slowly to himself, as though they were his favourite flavour. He was lost. That’s the other thing about Anthony’s lies. They weren’t just quick, they were tasty. People wanted to swallow them.

  Dad looked at me. I did a St Roch. There’s no patron saint of lying. You tell a lie; you’re on your own.

  To be nautical about this, we were getting into murky waters. The first chance I got, I retreated to the hermitage to contemplate my situation. I took St Francis with me, to help me focus. Unfortunately, Anthony had got there first. The place was cluttered up with material possessions, namely the two micro-scooters (boxed) and the Airzooka. There was no chance of a visitation as long as they were there.

  I went and got the tartan blanket that used to be in the boot of the car and covered them up with it so that it looked like a couch. It was better than looking like a shop window. I stood the statue of St Francis up on the back of it, looking down at me. It was one of those of him holding a bird’s nest. The minute I put it down, I had my idea.

  I got a wad of money from the bag under the bed, remembering to zip it tight afterwards and to push the Subbuteo back in front of it. Then I took the money down to the Shopping City. Just as you go in, there’s a place that used to be a swimming pool but now it’s a pet shop. There’s a massive cat fish in the baby pool and the main pool is ornamental carp. If you dip your fingers in the water, the fish come up and let you stroke their heads. The staff say it’s because they’re friendly. It could be because they want to get out of there, though. You can’t tell with fish.

  All around the poolside, where the changing lockers used to be, that’s where they keep the birds. Hundreds and hundreds of them piled up on top of each other in little cages. It’s very noisy, not because of singing, but because of wings buzzing like pages in a flicker book. I asked the bloke if I could buy some.

  ‘Sure. What d’you want? Zebra finches . . .’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Our canaries are going cheep. Ha ha.’

  ‘I’ll have some of them as well, then.’

  ‘We do have parakeets and cockatiels, that type of thing.’

  ‘They sound good too.’

  ‘You’ll have to make your mind up.’

  But the nice thing about being rich is that you don’t have to make your mind up. ‘I was thinking of having some of each.’ He looked none too certain, so I showed him my money and then he looked worse. I said, ‘It was given me, after my mum died.’

  So he took me round with a shopping trolley. When you choose a bird, they put it in a little box, a bit like a cake box with holes in. I tried to pick one from each cage. It was hard to choose, but I asked for guidance and did my best, and after one trip round the poolside I had two dozen boxes of birds and no cash left.

  The man helped me push the trolley to the door. ‘You’ll have to bring that back, you know. How’re you getting home?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not going far. I’ll bring the trolley back right away.’

  I pushed the trolley over the road and took the path up the Rise. When I got to the top, I lined up all the boxes. I opened the first one, then the next. Nothing happened. You have to tip the box a bit when you open it. If you do, the birds inside fan their wings, lift their necks and fly off. I opened the next box and tipped it, and the next, and the next. Birds exploded from the boxes like fireworks. Parakeets went off like rockets. Zebra finches went up like showers of sparks. The cockatiels screamed as they whirled away into the sky, flying round and round each other. The whole sky was full of colours and singing.

  In case you don’t know, this is what St Francis did when he was my age (i.e. in 1190 ). He bought some birds from the market and let them go. So I was actually doing a saintish thing. In fact St Francis didn’t have a shopping trolley, so he probably didn’t do it to as many birds as me. So technically I was being more saintly than him even. The parakeets flew low over my head, like they were trying to thank me. Their long red tails streamed out behind them like fire.

  I turned around to watch them and there was a man behind me, in a tatty brown gown, with a bald head and a big hole in the back of each hand. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this brings back memories.’

  I said, ‘St Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)?’

  ‘I did this, you know.’

  ‘I know. I know. That’s why I did it.’

  ‘Course, mine was mainly pigeons and songbirds. We couldn’t source the tropicals back then, or the fancies really.’

  ‘Do you know of a St Maureen at all?’

  ‘Doesn’t ring a bell to be honest.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But there again, I’m kept very busy these days. My trouble is I’ve become increasingly relevant as time’s gone by. There’s the environment, animal rights, the Third World, and now this whole Muslim thing. I met the Sultan, you know.’

  ‘I know. In Acre in 1219. You walked over hot coals without being hurt.’

  ‘Don’t try that at home.’

  The parakeets came swooping back and flew over our heads towards town. We strolled up after them. You could see the whole muddy river now, and the town perched on the edge of it and the oil refinery with its plumes of bright yellow smoke. And the Widnes–Runcorn bridge like a big stepladder leading up to Heaven.

  ‘I was the first vernacular poet in Europe. And the first environmentalist. And I started out by doing exactly what you’re doing. Setting birds free.’

  ‘What did you do after that?’

  ‘Well, you know . . .’ He waved his hand towards the Shopping City. There was a bus pulling up and crowds of people waiting to get on it. ‘I helped the poor.’

  ‘Of course. Of course you did. That’s brilliant. Thanks.’

  I ran all the way home.

  10

  The Widnes–Runcorn two-hinged arch bridge – proper name ‘the Jubilee Bridge’ – was built in 1961. It’s not really a ladder to Heaven. This doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as a ladder to Heaven. There is. It’s in Genesis, Chapter 28, Verse 12.

  Every time you do a good deed, it takes you up a rung. Well, 229,000 pounds is enough money to give 458 poor people 500 pounds each, and 458 good deeds equals 458 rungs of the ladder, which is a long way up. We would be practically saints in Heaven by
the time we’d given it all away. I decided to tell Anthony about the exciting opportunity for canonization.

  He was behind the telly, rigging up a new Digibox. ‘Anthony,’ I said, ‘do you ever feel that the money is hollow and meaningless?’

  ‘How can it be meaningless? It means we’re rich.’

  ‘What has it given us really, apart from piles of stuff ?’

  He switched the telly on and flicked through all the channels, making sure the new ones were there, and said, ‘Thirty new channels, that’s what.’ Then he sat down to watch World Federation Monster Truck Tug of War.

  ‘Won’t Dad notice thirty extra channels on his telly?’

  ‘Dad never notices anything.’

  The Monster Trucks were good but not meaningful. ‘Imagine if we could be saints.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think we should give the money to the poor. We’ve got enough to give 458 poor people 500 pounds each. And then they won’t be poor any more. And we would be saints, which would just be quality. If you’re a saint you can walk through fire, or do a miracle, or grow a big bushy beard like St Wilgefortis.’

  ‘What’s so good about growing a beard?’

  ‘Wilgefortis was a woman. She grew it to avoid unwelcome male attention.’ The unwelcome attention, by the way, was from the King of Sicily. Wilgefortis’s dad wanted her to marry him. When she woke up with the beard, the King of Sicily changed his mind, which was exactly what she prayed for. Her father did have her crucified though. ‘Come on, Anthony. It’s a brilliant idea.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nice but not practical. Where would you find 458 poor people?’

  ‘The world is full of poor people. The whole world is poor nearly. You’ve only got to look at the telly.’

  ‘Yes, on the telly but not round here. There’s no poor people round here. The house prices keep them out.’ He explained about house pricing and social zoning. ‘We live in an exclusive development, which means there are no poor people here. The only people who can afford to live here are nice people. You must’ve noticed. It’s not like where we used to live.’

  He was right. In St Francis’s day, there were lepers, beggars, mendicants, orphans and young women forced to sell their honour on every corner. Nowadays, you could walk from Cromarty Close to Great Ditton Primary every day for the rest of your life and never meet a young woman forced to sell her honour.

  ‘Now, I’ve got an idea that is practical.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We buy a house.’

  ‘But we can’t just spend it. It’s been given to us for a higher purpose.’

  ‘That’s the beauty of it. When you buy a house, you’re not spending the money. You’re keeping it. It’s called investing. Houses are always going up in price. If you buy a house now, for say a 150,000 pounds, in ten years’ time it will be worth maybe 300,000 pounds. So when you sell it, you will make 150,000 pounds’ profit. That’s called equity. You must have heard of equity.’

  ‘I don’t want equity.’

  ‘It’ll be great. We can get rid of all the money in one go, and when we’re older sell the house, and we’ll have even more money then than we’ve got now. And in the meantime, we can keep our stuff in there. It’d be better than your cardboard den.’

  I tried to explain the difference between a den and a hermitage, but it fell on deaf ears.

  In the estate agent’s, Anthony went up to the counter, like it was a sweet shop, and said, ‘Have you got any houses in Swindon?’ He was mad on Swindon, because that’s the place where house prices were going up fastest.

  ‘Well, no,’ said the woman. ‘We only really do local. Most of our customers want a house where they actually live.’

  ‘This is for an investment portfolio.’

  ‘Oh, is it really? Oh, well, then. Is this a project for school?’

  Anthony immediately invented a non-existent project, a non-existent school and a non-existent teacher. Honestly, if he was telling you this story, you wouldn’t know which bits were true and which weren’t.

  The woman was very kind. She told him all about how mortgages work and she gave him piles of leaflets, describing available properties, mostly three-bedroom detached new-builds.

  ‘What if you don’t want a mortgage? What if you wanted to just pay all at once in cash?’

  ‘Well, you’d need a wheelbarrow and a lot of security.’

  Anthony laughed. He had to explain the funny side of this to me later. It was about how hard it would be to carry such a lot of cash. ‘People don’t really understand just how little 229,000 pounds really is,’ he said sadly.

  The minute we got home he went through all the leaflets, looking for a property that was not too near our house (in case Dad got suspicious) but not too far away (so we could keep an eye on it).

  I did say, ‘Anthony, this isn’t right. We don’t want a house. We’ve got a house. What’s the point of having two houses? Think about it.’

  He handed me one of the leaflets. It was a picture of our old house. Underneath, it said it was a character property with surviving period details, inc. fire surround, in a settled residential area. Two bedrooms, two reception, kitchen and separate utility room. And that was it. Nothing about us or what happened there. You wouldn’t know it was our house except for the address.

  I said, ‘Why hasn’t anyone bought it?’

  ‘No one wants it. I told Dad to rent it out to students. It doesn’t matter. The insurance paid the mortgage off.’

  ‘What insurance?’

  ‘Never mind. Look at this. Number 17 Badger’s Rake, conveniently placed for the Shopping City.’

  If 229,000 pounds equals possibly 458 steps up the ladder, then spending 229,000 pounds on a house equals 458 steps down the ladder obviously. There is no patron saint of estate agents because no estate agent has ever become a saint. There have been saints who were sailors, blacksmiths, soldiers, bakers, teachers, housewives, swineherds, kings even. But in the whole of history, not one estate agent ever became a saint or even a blessed. It makes you think.

  I have heard of people having a sinking feeling before, but I thought they were being metaphorical. When the taxi came to school and I discovered that Anthony had pre-booked it to take us to 17 Badger’s Rake, I felt my stomach lurch, just the way it does in a lift. We went down and down and down, along the streets of the Old Town. The houses in Badger’s Rake were even less saintly than ours. They had bay windows with criss-cross metal on them, fir trees all around and rapid, unimpeded access to the motorway. At number 17, the lady from the estate agent’s was already waiting on the doorstep.

  Anthony jumped out of the car and shook her hand. ‘We haven’t got the money on us. But we can get it to you if you come to ours.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ said the woman. She didn’t look as friendly as she did in the shop. ‘Look, I’ve helped you with your project already. This is going a bit far. This is cheeky. I’m going to call your school and speak to the head teacher.’

  ‘No. This isn’t for the project. This is for our –my dad’s – property portfolio. We – my dad – really wants to buy the house.’

  ‘Well, then, where is he?’

  ‘He said to start without him.’

  ‘Start without him? How can we start without him? How can you show someone round a house who isn’t here?’

  Anthony pulled out the digital camera shaped like a pen. ‘He gave us this. He said to take some pictures and show him later.’

  The woman looked at her watch and opened the door. ‘I need a pee anyway. You might as well come in.’

  Anthony asked her if she thought the house would hold its value.

  ‘I’m on the toilet, if you don’t mind,’ she shouted through the toilet door.

  We went to look at the sunken bath in the en suite while we were waiting for her to come out. We heard a flush and then a shout.

  ‘Come on. Out, the pair of you. Come on.’ She was holding the front door open, for us to go o
ut.

  ‘We can offer 210,000, cash. And obviously there’s no chain,’ said Anthony. ‘What do you think? Deal?’

  He’d already explained to me that people would do anything for cash. So I was expecting her to say, ‘Oh, thanks very much. It’s all yours.’ But she didn’t. She glared at him and said, ‘You are one cheeky little git,’ then drove off in her Nissan Micra.

  Divine intervention the only explanation.

  It was a long walk back to the Shopping City and we didn’t pass any buses, or any taxis. In fact, there wasn’t even a pavement to speak of and it was getting dark. But I was so happy, the oncoming headlights seemed to be haloes dancing round us. One of the parakeets flew by. It flashed through the streetlight like a tongue of fire. I wanted to say something comforting to Anthony, but all I could think of was, ‘I’m starving. Can we buy a pizza?’

  ‘We can buy a Pizza Hut if we want to.’

  ‘Just a pizza for now.’

  And then – just outside Dixons – another miracle – a girl in a parka stepped in front of us and said, ‘Big Issue. Help the homeless.’

  I gave her a tenner and told her to keep the change.

  ‘Thanks, mate. I’ve had nothing to eat all day.’

  ‘Oh. We’re just going for a pizza. Come with us.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ The girl picked up her bag of magazines. She was going to come with us.

  Anthony tried to put her off. ‘She doesn’t really want a pizza. She wants more money. We haven’t got any more money.’

  ‘No, I really fancy a pizza actually. Can I ask my friend?’

  She nodded to a boy with a dog who was crouched in the doorway. ‘Course you can,’ I said. ‘The more the merrier.’

  The girl had five friends between Dixons and Pizza Hut. The waiter had to put two tables together to fit us all in. Two people had to share menus because there weren’t enough to go round. They do a pizza that goes right to the edge of the pan, so it’s an inch bigger in diameter than the normal one. It’s called ‘The Edge’. I had a Hawaiian Edge and so did the girl in the parka. Two of her mates had a Farmhouse Edge. One of them had spicy beef. Anthony and the other two had Meat Feasts. Everyone had garlic bread with extra garlic. And we all went to the salad bar. It was amazing. It was the most food I’ve seen in one place since First Communion. Six meals equals six good deeds equals six rungs surely.