Witness account · 3 min read · Set in The Aldgate Cistern ·
The Rain That Was Receipted
The cistern keeper files numbered receipts for overnight rainfall the weather station never recorded, and the gauge answers every second check.
- reliability: uncorroborated
- witness: "Ronald Petch, cistern keeper"
The Aldgate cistern received water on eleven nights this year for which the weather station records no rainfall, and for every one of those nights this office holds a numbered receipt. I am the cistern keeper, the receipts pass through my hand, and I am putting the fact on paper before the gauge does it for me some morning without being asked.
This office receipts all water received, whatever the source. My duties are the whole of that sentence: at six I climb the iron stair, read the float gauge to the hundredth, rule the entry, and issue a receipt in serial order for the night's intake. On the eleven nights in question the gauge rose with the sky clear of cloud to the horizon and the street sounds dry under the vent: one tenth, one quarter, one night near half an inch, and in the morning the cooks drew from the store and the level came down again by exactly what they drew.
The cross sheet from the weather station is kept by Mr. Stanley Voisey, and we compare monthly against signature. His column reads NIL for all eleven nights. Mine reads the rises. We have each signed our own column for the six months running, and neither of us will sign the other's, which is correct procedure and gets the columns no nearer each other.
The gauge never lies twice. I read it again at noon, and the second float on the far ladder agrees with the first to the hundredth. The covers are lead and locked, nothing overhangs the store, no pipe enters that is not on the drawings, and the well has been plumbed twice this year by men I paid myself. No check has ever returned a second answer to the same night. Whatever arrives agrees with itself, and it agrees with the receipts.
So the receipts stand, and they are set in order. They are serial, stamped, and carry the entry: received into store, by no recorded fall. The hall files them without query and never fails to file them, and the cistern balances to the level the receipts say it should. Once, when the columns first crossed, I asked the hall in writing about the difference. The answer that came back was a receipt for my enquiry, stamped and serial and countersigned in a hand nobody at the counter would own to.
And nobody has confirmed any of it, which I record plainly. Voisey stands by NIL, which is his duty and I do not argue it. The hall clerk files and does not read. The level of the cistern is a reading and not a witness, and the two plumbers went home to their suppers. This account is uncorroborated, and I am the only hand behind it, though every receipt behind me carries two stamps.
What the papers leave open is a column that belongs to nobody. Eleven receipts balance against eleven rises, to the hundredth, with NIL standing on the record against every one. If the water is in my cistern and the papers are in the hall, then the sky is short one column, and I cannot close the ledger without it. Who is paying the water in?