The toll house at the junction is a museum now, with the window the toll keeper leaned out of and the tally sticks on the wall that he notched for each boat, one notch, one toll. Every night at midnight the window opens. Coins are put on the sill from outside, old ones, a toll's worth. The window closes. And the tally stick on the wall, which is behind glass, has a new notch in the morning, and the sticks were full when the tolls stopped in 1948, and they are fuller.
I am the curator of the toll house at a canal junction, which is a small museum in a small building, and the window is the exhibit, and it is in use.
The toll house.
A round building at the junction where two canals meet, with a window on the towpath side that the toll keeper leaned out of to take the money from every boat, and a ledger, and tally sticks, hazel, one notch per boat, on the wall in a rack. The tolls stopped in 1948. The house is a museum. The window is painted shut.
At midnight it opens.
The toll.
The window, painted shut, opens outward, onto the towpath. Coins go onto the sill. From outside. I have found them in the morning: old coins, the right money for a toll, a boat's worth, by the ledger's rates, in the coins of a year that is different each night, going back, and the coins are in a tin now, a year of them. The window closes.
And the tally stick on the wall, the top one in the rack, behind glass, in a case I lock, has a new notch. A clean cut, hazel, the way a knife makes it, one a night, and the stick was full in 1948, notched to the end, and the notches have gone on past where the stick was full, closer together, onto the last inch, and there is not much stick left.
What has been checked.
The window, screwed shut. It opens.
The house, at midnight, by me, inside it, in the dark, at the ledger. The window opened beside me. The night came in, and the smell of the cut, and a hand, I did not see it, put coins on the sill, one at a time, counting, and a man's voice outside said the boat's name and the cargo, the way they did, name and tons, and waited, and the hand that took the money and notched the stick was not there, and the window closed, and the coins were on the sill, and the stick was notched.
I was at the ledger. I had the pen. The ledger's last entry is 1948. I did not write anything, because I did not know what I was allowed to write in a museum's ledger, and the window closed on a man who had said his boat's name and got no answer.
Who.
The toll keeper. The last one. He had kept the window from the twenties to 1948 and had notched every boat, and the company's records say that when the tolls were abolished he had been told on a Friday and had kept the window open on the Saturday anyway, and had taken tolls from the boats that came, and notched them, and had been told to stop, and had not, and had been retired, and had died, the records say, in the house, which he had been allowed to stay in, in the fifties.
He is taking the tolls. Every night. From the boats that came after 1948, one a night, working back, and notching them, on the stick that was full, because a boat through the junction is a toll and a toll is a notch and nobody told him the ledger had closed, or somebody did and he did not hold with it.
What is done about it.
The coins are in a tin and the museum's accounts have them as, donations, unattributed, and the trust that runs the museum has asked why the donations are in pre decimal coin, and I have said, the visitors are old, and the trust has accepted that, which tells you about the trust.
What I do.
I curate the house.
A toll was written in the ledger. The stick was the keeper's tally and the ledger was the company's record and the two had to agree, and they did, for a hundred and fifty years, and they have not since 1948, because the stick has gone on and the ledger has not.
So I write the ledger. At midnight I am at it with the pen, and when the window opens and the voice says the boat and the tons, I write it. The date, which is tonight's. The boat. The cargo. The toll, from the rates on the wall, which I have learned. And I say, out of the window, the thing the ledger says the keeper said, which is, that's right, safe passage, and the coins go on the sill and the window closes.
The stick has changed. The notches were going onto the last inch and there was not much left. There is a new stick in the rack. Hazel. Fresh cut, green, put in the rack above the old one, behind my locked glass, with one notch in it, and the old stick has been moved down, full, finished, the way a keeper retires a stick when it is done, and I have started to think that a toll keeper who has had a ledger kept for him at last has decided the tally can go on a while yet, and I have bought hazel.