Forty-One, Nine, One Ladder

A click is not a light. Report lights only.

Dark front unit logged by tenant: replace first, refit inside door frame. Do not discuss with tenant.

Kiosk at the bend: coins only. Says nothing back. Out of order on Sundays, same as everyone.

"Forty-one units, nine brackets, one ladder, and you'll want to check the third shelf, the catch sticks."

Dasu said it into the back of the van, with her back to the man holding the docket. She lifted the first bracket out and put it in his hands. "Vest and keys last, I'm not done till I've counted."

He was broader than her and younger, and he took each one carefully, as if she might want it back. Gordie Kell. She'd known the name since training.

She heard Winnie's knees on the step before she saw the apron at the edge of her sight.

Nell set the shop book on the bumper and rolled her sleeves higher. "I'll hold the book here, Dasu, and your count goes in it as you say it, same as the fuse will when it's time. Hooks behind my counter are still yours if you need somewhere to hang that vest."

Dasu had seen those hooks, a row of them worn to the brass where coats had hung for years.

She passed the last bracket over and wiped her palms down her cardigan. "Nine brackets, that's the last of them, and the ladder's yours now, Gordie, mind the left foot, it slips." Then she looked at Winnie, once, and away.

She gave the folded vest to Nell. "Hang the vest on your hook till Friday, I'll not be wearing it where it's going."

Winnie stepped in and closed Dasu's fingers round the fitting sheet with a black hand. "That's yours, I've not read it and I'll not keep it where my name might be put to it. Come Friday you'll have a cup in my front room whether the light's on or not."

"Then I'll take it, Winnie, and I'll keep it shut too. Friday, then, and I'll bring my own biscuits."

"Biscuits, then, and mind you bring the plain ones, I've no patience for the cream."

Dasu went toward the bend on foot. Her van stayed at the kerb with somebody else's keys in it. Next door's box hung lit, pale green, and Winnie didn't look up at her own.

It clicked once, dry, loud enough to carry down the wet row, and nothing came after it.

Dasu half turned at the bend. "That was the fuse, Winnie, or it wasn't, and either way it's not mine to say."

"It clicked, that's all, and a click's not a light."

A box along the row said it for her, in her own voice.

I was glad it didn't light. Her van's gone for my bit of pride, and I'd sooner that box stayed dark than have it show me so.

Nell set the shop book on the arm of Winnie's chair, open at the blank fuse line, and kept the pencil in her fist. The fire was banked so low it barely reached the hearthrug. Gordie had knocked a minute behind her and stood just inside the door with the docket open and the ladder still on his shoulder, because there was nowhere in this room you'd lean a ladder.

Nell didn't look at Winnie. She looked at the dark box through the half-drawn curtain, then at his page. Front unit, clicked, dark, fuse refitted by tenant, to be rung in.

Winnie wiped her coal-black fingers down her apron, taking her time, then laid her palm flat over the docket.

Gordie eased the page out from under her hand without tugging and tapped the biro on the printed footer. Nell read it upside down. A front unit logged dark by tenant got swapped first, and refitted on the inside of the frame.

"Nobody's name goes on it, love, I'll put 'tenant' and leave it there. But the footer says dark front unit gets swapped, and I can't cross a line I watched happen, so I'll write 'to be rung in' or I'll write 'swap tonight', and you pick which one, because the backs don't hang till one of them's down."

His other thumb sat on the pouch at his belt. The phone stayed in it. So far it was the most discreet thing on Farrow Row.

"Write 'to be rung in', Mr Kell," Winnie said. "If the backs hang late, they hang late, and I'll not be hurried by a footer."

He wrote slowly and turned it for her. "There you go, love: 'tenant, to be rung in', and nothing after. I'll ring it from the box at the bend in the morning, not from here."

"Right, love, first bolt, old unit, coming off now. Boss, keep it steady, the feet are sticky with this drizzle."

Gordie had shaken the rail under Dasu's hands before he went up, and it hadn't shifted. She'd planted herself on Winnie's step and hadn't moved off it. He climbed two rungs and set the spanner.

Through the open door Martha's pencil scratched. "First bolt, old unit, off at the spanner, Winnie watching, Dasu at the ladder. Gordie, you've named it, now name the second, and say it to the frame."

Before eight he'd stood in the kiosk at the bend with a stack of coins on the shelf, reading his own line into the receiver, tenant, to be rung in, word for word. The office came back inside the quarter hour. Swap today, refit inside the frame, facing the room, nothing on the backs till it's done. He'd written that down word for word too. The row had it by half past, and the bit they liked best was the coins. His phone was Row issue, pouch-grey, and it hadn't been out since he got here. Somebody had said that made it the only thing on the street that hadn't said what it meant.

Winnie had the fuse shut in her fist in its paper sleeve, and coal had got into the paper.

"First screw going in, inside of the frame," Martha said. "Gordie, that's the question three answer I came for: say out loud whose street this is when the last one's tight."

When the last one was tight Winnie shook the fuse out of its sleeve and pushed it home with her thumb, and kept her thumb there.

"That's the last screw, and that's my thumb on it, Martha, write it so. Whatever it does now, it does in my front room, and it can say what it likes without me owning it."

The unit faced straight across the room at the pipe rack. She didn't look at it.

Gordie stood by the frame with the screwdriver and said nothing. Martha's pencil waited. Winnie still had her thumb on the fuse, and the fuse would come out as easily as it had gone in.