Chapter 179: Next of Kin I

They were on the Vespa by 5 to 11, Jodie behind him in her coat with nothing much under it and her arms locked round his middle, down through Shoreditch and over London Bridge and along the river to Westminster, with the cold coming off the water.

St Thomas’ A&E at half 11 on a Friday was full. A man with a tea towel round his hand. A girl in a sequin dress crying on the phone. A security guard eating crisps by the door. Danny gave his name at the desk and the receptionist looked at her screen and then at him.

"Mr Flynn. He’s in cubicle 14. He’s told every one of us you’d be coming."

Pemberton was sitting up on a trolley behind a blue curtain in a hospital gown, with his good coat folded on the chair beside him and his grey hat on top of it. There was a drip in the back of his hand, taped down. His face had gone small and grey, and his eyes were exactly the same.

"Mr Flynn," he said. "And Miss Carter. You came over the river at this hour."

"You asked for me. The policeman rang at quarter to 11 and we came straight down."

"I did ask." He looked at the drip. "They have put salt water in me. I am told it is the done thing."

The doctor came through the curtain before Danny could answer, a young man with a lanyard and a coffee and the face of somebody 14 hours into a 12-hour shift, and he started talking as soon as he saw there was somebody new to talk to.

"Hi, sorry, Dr Achebe, I’m one of the registrars down here tonight. You’re Mr Flynn? Brilliant. So, Mr Pemberton’s bloods are back and they’re mostly fine for a man of 90. Better than mine, honestly. His kidneys are a little bit unhappy. He’s had nothing to drink since Thursday morning, apparently, so we’ve got the fluids up.

"He’s had a sandwich. He described it as an insult, but he ate it. His blood pressure’s a bit low but it’s coming up. Heart’s fine. He walked in here on his own feet with a lady holding his arm, I’m told, and then the lady left.

"I’d like to keep him in, maybe 2 nights, on a ward, to watch his kidneys and make sure he’s eating. He says no. He says he’s got a funeral on Thursday and a crossword at home. I’ve told him the funeral’s 6 days away and the crossword will wait."

Achebe drank some coffee.

"The other thing is we’ve got no next of kin on his records. Nothing. He says his brother died last week. I asked him who we should ring if anything changes overnight, and he said, and I’m quoting him, Mr Flynn, who will be here before midnight. And here you are. So. Are you happy to be his next of kin? Relationship?"

Danny looked at Pemberton. The old man was looking straight back at him.

Next of kin. I’ve known him a month. He’s paid for 2 of my ceilings, lied to me on a bench, and told me not to save him. What’s that make me?

And who else is there? Nobody. Robin’s in a fridge waiting for Thursday.

"Neighbour," Danny said. "Put neighbour. And yes. I’ll be his next of kin. My mobile’s on that sheet already."

Achebe wrote it.

"Brilliant. Thank you. Honestly. You’d be amazed how many 90-year-olds come through here with nobody to ring." He was already halfway back through the curtain. "There’s a bed on Victoria ward from about 1 o’clock. A porter’ll come. I’ll be back in an hour if he gets bored."

The curtain swung shut.

Jodie sat down on the end of the trolley, by the old man’s feet, careful of the drip line.

"You went in that house at 10 on Thursday morning," she said. "It’s nearly midnight on Friday. That’s a day and a night and a day. What were you doing all that time?"

"Sitting in the hall." Pemberton smoothed the blanket over his knee. "On that chair, mostly. After Mr Flynn and Mrs Anand and the insurer had gone, I asked them for one thing, Miss Carter. I was told no. I waited to see if they would change their minds."

"Through the night?"

"Through all of it. They brought me nothing and I asked for nothing. On Thursday evening the woman told me she would take my note to my flat, so that Mr Flynn would find it. I gave it her, and my key."

He turned the drip hand over on the blanket.

"This afternoon, at about half 5, I found I could not stand up. She came and stood in front of me and said, Mr Pemberton, a party may not die in the hall. She put my coat on me and walked me to a car, and walked me through that door out there, and gave them my name and my doctor, and went."

"Did she say anything else?"

"She said good evening. She always does."

Danny pulled the plastic chair closer and sat on the edge of it.

"Your note. I asked them to close my record. What happens to somebody whose record’s closed?"

Pemberton took a while to answer.

"The house stops writing," he said. "About you. It stops putting you down. You are not asked for. Cards stop coming. Nobody stands in a hall and says your name and the year you first came." He looked at the drip in his hand. "That is all I know of it. I have never seen it done. I have heard of it being done twice, in all the times I have sat in that hall since 1958."

"Why do you want it?"

"Because I am 90, and on Thursday I am going to put my brother in the ground at the City of London Cemetery at 11 in the morning. Robin was never written down by the house. He sold cars and bought flats and went to Romford dogs on a Saturday, and nobody in a white house kept a list of him. When I go in beside him, I would like to go in the same."

Nobody said anything. On the other side of the curtain the girl in the sequin dress was still crying, and somebody was telling her it was all right.

"And only the host can close it," Danny said. "After he’s signed. And signing’s continued service, for as long as I’m the host. Forever, maybe."

"Yes," Pemberton said. "That is the price. I knew it was, when I asked. That is why I wrote you what I wrote."

Danny sat looking at him.

He’s asked the house to let him go, and the house has put the key in my pocket and priced it at the rest of my life. And he’s told me not to turn it. So what do I do, sit on it while he dies?

"The person who asked for me," Danny said. "Before you got your card. The secretary said asked for. Do you know who?"

"No." The old man looked straight at him. "I have asked that every year, and I asked it again yesterday, and you heard what I was told. I do not know, Mr Flynn. On my brother’s name, I do not."

He reached across with his good hand to the coat on the chair, and felt in the inside pocket, and held out a small white card.

"The funeral director. Robin chose them himself in September. Will you ring them in the morning and tell them where I am? They will want to know I have not died before the funeral. It would confuse them."

The porter came at 10 to 1 with a wheelchair and a Glaswegian voice. Danny carried the coat and the hat up to Victoria ward behind him, and Jodie carried the shoes.

At 2 in the morning they rode back over the river with the city empty and orange, and slept on the new mattress under the ceiling in their clothes, with Jodie’s coat over both of them.

At half 7 on Saturday morning Danny went down to the Turkish shop on the corner in his socks and came back with a kettle in a carrier bag, ￡14.99, and a screwdriver, ￡2.

At 8 he was stood on a kitchen chair at the window with the screwdriver in his teeth, taking out 2 screws somebody had driven through the frame 11 years ago to stop it opening.

"There. Somebody screwed it shut," he said, and pushed. The window went up 4 inches and kept going, and the cold came in, and the noise of a bus and a man shouting at a dog.

"11 years," Jodie said from the mattress. "2 screws."

"I never looked. I thought the wood had swollen."

"You never looked at anything in this flat except the ceiling." She sat up with her coat round her shoulders. "Kettle?"