mass broke away into his hand. It wasn’t solid at all, but consisted of tightly packed bundles which had stuck together in the damp that had seeped into the leather bag.
Cooper tilted the bag more, and the heaps of paper slid out. They were like wedges of frozen snow slipping on to the ground and separating into dirty crystalline rectangles. They were unfamiliar, yet he knew what they were.
‘Bank notes,’ he said.
‘They can’t be,’ said Fry.
‘I think you’ll rind they are.’
‘But they’re white. Has the colour faded? Is it foreign currency?’
‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘They’re British sterling.’
Cooper looked up. He could barely see George Malkin’s face. His expression was impassive. For a big man, it was surprising how easily he had almost faded into the rock among the shadows outside the light of the lamp. ‘Mr Malkin?’
‘Aye, you’re right,’ he said. ‘But I’m not surprised you’ve never seen them before. You’re much too young, the pair of you.’
‘I’ve heard of them, though,’ said Cooper. ‘These are 15 notes, aren’t they? White fivers. They haven’t been in circulation for nearly fifty years.’
‘That’s right. White fivers. They’re part of the wages for RAF Bcnson.’
Together, they carried the bags back to the house. On the
C* ^ ^ o
sitting room table, the bank notes looked almost at home, as if they were back in their own time again. It was as if a part
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of George Malkin’s life had been frozen in 1945 and had never changed since.
‘We thought at first it was a German plane that had keen shot down,’ said Malkin. ‘There had keen stories just before that of a Junkers that had been downed near Manchester. So we didn’t think it was wrong to take the bags.’
‘But you must have heard later that the aircraft was British/
^
‘It was too late then. We knew we couldn’t tell anybody about the money. Ted threatened me not to say a word. Not that I needed telling. I always thought Ted would know what to do with the monev. I thought he had a plan. He never told
- O 1
me what it was, but then I was only his annoying little brother, and I didn’t need to know. When he went oH (or his National Service, I thought we’d do something with the money alter he came back. I thought he would tell me what the plan was then, because I’d be seventeen and grown up enough. But, of course, Ted never came back.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Ted was called up when he was eighteen vcars old, and
: & v ‘
they sent him to Malaya. He was dead before he was nineteen shot by a Chinese communist rebel when his troop train was ambushed.’
‘Did your mother and father never know about these bags?’ asked Cooper. He watched Malkin shake his head. ‘How on earth did you keep them secret all that time?’
‘I left them in the old mine workings, where we’d put them. Sometimes, as a lad, I would go up there with a torch, and I’d get the bags out and look at the money. I didn’t know what to do with it, but I knew I’d do .wmetAin^ with it one day. It made me feel different from the rest of the kids. I really believed I was a secret millionaire. That helped a lot when I had bad times. I hey were like friends waiting to help me out when I needed them. Even after Mum and Dad died, I didn’t bring the bags into the house. They never knew about the money while they were alive, and it seemed wrong to produce it when they were dead. As long as their memories still hung around the house, 1 felt as though I’d be giving away my secret to them. It’s surprising how long it takes people to leave a place after they’re dead.’
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Cooper nodded. ‘So you never moved them?’
‘Once. One day I saw some potholers coming into the mine. They had ropes and helmets and lamps, all the proper tackle. There was nothing I could do while they were in there, hut I was terrified they would find the hags my hags; I pictured one of them shining his lamp into the crack, and that w ould he that, all those years of w aiting wasted. 1 thought of starting a rock fall to hlock the mine entrance, so that they would all die in there. It seemed like the only option. Then at least no6oJy would have got the money.’
Malkin paused, momentarily shaken hy a desperate memory. ‘But eventually they came out with their ropes, and they went away. And the bags were still there, where I had put them. I dragged them out and brought them up to the house. But then I started worrying about Florence finding them, so I took them back.’
Cooper stared at the bundles of notes. Those in the middle looked as though they might be as clean and pristine as when they were first issued.
‘I don’t know much about currency,’ he said. ‘But I’ve a feeling …’
o
‘Oh, I know,’ said Malkin. ‘They took those notes out of circulation in 19S7. 1 should have spent them when I was twenty years old, when I could have made proper use of them and set myself up for life.’ He began to toss the bundles back into the bags. “I remember the day I read the news that white fivers wouldn’t be legal tender any more. It was like all my dreams had been smashed. That money was my future, as I thought. It felt as though I’d just lost a fortune. It was like thinking you’d won the jackpot on the National Lottery, then finding you’d lost the ticket. They’re not even a secret any more, are they?’
