The Bonfire Committee

—How much? said Ted.

—For the four, eight hundred.

Nora heard Ray breathe out beside her.

—Eight hundred, said Ted.

—I am not haggling with you, Ted.

—I have not started haggling with you, Ron.

—You have been haggling with me since 1988.

The two of them looked at each other for a while, in the way of men who have known each other for forty years and enjoy this part.

—Nine hundred, said Ted.

—Eight fifty and I take the softwood away for nothing, which saves you a skip.

—Done.

They shook hands. It took eleven seconds.

Nora stood there with her notebook and did not write anything, because the entire transaction had happened in a language she did not speak.

—Right, said Ron. I will want a fortnight. I have to get a lorry up that track and I am not doing it in the wet.

He drove off. Ted came over to the tape.

—Eight hundred and fifty pounds, he said.

—That is your money, said Nora.

—It is.

—The beams are yours. It is your barn.

—It was my barn, said Ted Rowntree.

He looked at the black heap for a moment.

—Five hundred and fifty to the committee for the fireworks, he said. Three hundred stays with me for the fence at the bottom of the field, because if I am putting eight hundred people next to a beck I want a fence I have not mended twice.

—Mr. Rowntree, said Ray.

—Do not.

—I was only going to say thank you.

—Yes, said Ted. Well. Do not.

He walked back to his quad bike.

—One thing, he said, over his shoulder. It was her idea, was it?

—Yes, said Ray.

—Thought so, said Ted Rowntree, and started the engine.

—Can I ask you something? said Ray, when the quad bike had gone. Why did you not want to do it?

—Do what?

—Sell the beams. You said it was a horrible idea and then you went to Ted anyway. So you did it, but you did not want to.

Nora looked at the black outline where the barn had been.

—Because it feels like being paid for it, she said.

—It is not being paid for it.

—I know it is not.

—Nora, said Ray, and it was the first time he had used her name since the ninth of September. Ted is going to get eight hundred and fifty pounds for four beams that are otherwise going in a skip in January. That is not us profiting from a fire. That is a man with a broken fence.

—I know.

—But it still feels like it.

—Yes, said Nora.

They walked down the track and neither of them said anything until the gate.

Then Nora stopped.

—I need to tell you something, she said, and I have been trying to work out how to do it for two days, and I have not worked it out, so I am going to do it badly.

Ray waited.

—My dad’s things were in that barn.

He did not say anything.

—Three boxes, said Nora. From his workshop. He left in March last year and my mum was going to take them to the tip in April, and I moved them up here on my bike, and I have been going up there about twice a week since then to sit next to them. That is what I was doing on the ninth of September. That is the whole thing. That is the entire secret.

She looked at the gate rather than at him.

—And I could not say it at the meeting because my mother was in the second row and she does not know, and she is going to find out, because Ron is going to move eleven beams and somebody is going to find whatever is left of them, and I would rather you heard it from me than from the village.

There was a silence that went on for about four seconds.

—Okay, said Ray.

—That is it?

—What do you want me to say?

—I do not know. Something.

—Right, said Ray. Something. I have spent three weeks assuming you were up there for a reason you were ashamed of, and it turns out you were up there for a reason that is nobody’s business, and I feel like a complete idiot, and I am sorry.

Nora looked at him.

—Why did you think I was ashamed?

—Because you would not say it.

—You would not say yours either.

—No, said Ray. I would not.

And that, Nora thought afterwards, was the moment. That was the point at which one of them could have said the other thing, and neither of them did, and everything that happened in the next four weeks happened because of that gap of about two seconds in a farm gateway on the third of October.

—Right, she said. Fine.

—Fine.

—Where are we with the raffle?

—Six.

—Six prizes?

—Six businesses said yes, said Ray. Out of nineteen. Two hampers, a haircut, a meal for two, a car wash and a bag of dog food.

—A bag of dog food.

—A very large bag of dog food. Winnie says it will sell.

—We need twenty-two.

—We need sixteen more in twelve days, said Ray. Saturday. I will get the van.

—Do you want the bad news first or the other bad news? he said.

—There is other bad news?

—Colin has sent me the marshal list. We need fourteen. He has got nine, and four of the nine are over seventy-five, and one of them is Winnie, who will be running the raffle at the same time.

—So we need five people.

—We need five people who are willing to stand in a wet field in the dark in a yellow jacket and tell strangers where to park, said Ray, on the fifth of November, which is a Wednesday.

The Saturday was the fourth of October and it rained from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon without stopping.

They did Bakewell first, then Matlock, then the industrial estate at Rowsley, and they went into forty-one businesses and came out of them with fourteen prizes, which Nora had not expected and which took nine hours.

She learned three things.

The first was that Ray was extremely good at this and she was not.

She had a printed letter, on paper, with the parish council heading, explaining the event, the charitable purpose and the tax position. It was a good letter. She had checked it four times.

Nobody read it.

What worked was Ray leaning on a counter and saying: we are doing the bonfire in Marlow End on the fifth, we need a raffle prize, everybody who comes will see your name on the board. Twenty seconds. That was the whole approach and it worked eleven times out of forty-one, which was better than her letter did.

The second thing she learned was that people asked about the barn.

Not everybody. Maybe one in five. A woman in a card shop in Matlock said: Marlow End, is that where the fire was? And Ray said yes, and she said, oh, that was terrible, and Ray said yes, and she gave them a candle.