Tea First

FLOAT: owed to the launderette. Not a favour. Not a handout. Ask at counter to read.

UNIT DARK AT THIS ADDRESS. RESTORE OR CERTIFY FAULTY. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS NOTICE IN PERSON.

FUSE NOT BLOWN. TAKING ITS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT HURRY IT.

Nell set the soap tin on Winnie's back wall and held her hands out, open, the ink from last night still in the creases. Winnie was behind her gate with the till money done up in a tea towel and pressed flat to her cardigan, one coal-black thumb on the knot.

"It's gone in the post, Winnie, with my name on it and nothing signed," Nell said. "I'm not here to take that money back off you, I'm here because the drawer's empty and I can't open without it."

"It's for the drawer and nothing else, and it goes back as the till's money, not as anybody's handout, so you'll write it down as owed to the launderette and I'll not have my name on that line. I'm keeping my signature, Nell, and I'll not tell you how I'll be tomorrow."

Winnie held the bundle out over the gate between two fingers and kept her thumb on the cloth until Nell's hand was right under it. Then she let go of the money and kept hold of the cloth.

"The towel I'm keeping," she said. "It's mine."

Nell opened the shop book on the lid of the soap tin.

"Dated today, then," Nell said, writing. "Owed to the launderette, written as Winnie said. Neil's shortfall goes on the line under it, in my name, and nobody's thanked for it."

Through her open back door came the long two-note chime of the box over her front, the one it gave when nobody had answered by eight. It carried the length of the ginnel.

"Let it ring, it'll tire itself out. I'll answer my own door when I choose to, and not to a box that counts to eight."

Winnie kept her hand flat on the fuse board. The cupboard under the stairs smelled of the gas meter and old boots, and her fingers left a black mark on the white plastic. Behind her, Dasu's toolbag sat on the hearthrug, on his side of the fire, where nobody had put anything down in years.

Martha stood on the mat inside the front door with rain coming off her mac and a paper in her hand.

"I'll not sign a working box faulty, Martha," Dasu said from the rug, "and I'll not touch that fuse, because that's Winnie's to say."

Martha held it up at her chest and read without lifting her eyes. "'The unit at this address is to be restored to service or certified faulty by the installer of record, today. Certified by Dasu Rang, on the step, with her name signed.' Then I'd like it said out loud, Winnie, whether that fuse goes back in."

"It goes back in when I say, Martha, and not because a paper tells me it's today. Whose name is on that sheet besides Dasu's, and who typed mine on it before I'd said a word?"

She wiped her hand slowly down her apron and held the palm out. Martha kept hold of the corner a moment before she let go.

Winnie read it at arm's length, every line, to the bottom. Through the front window her box hung over the door, dark.

"There's the address and Dasu's name and nothing else, so you were right, Martha, and I'll say that much." She folded it in half and held it out, well away from the pencil. "Write that I said it, Martha, and write it in your own hand, not typed, and put no 'Winnie' on the line as a signature. The fuse goes in when I've had my tea and not before."

It came in through the glass off the box next door. Dasu had hung that one herself.

I'd let Dasu lose her van sooner than put that fuse back in, and I'm calling it tea so nobody sees it. Winnie's jaw went tight. She looked at Dasu.

Winnie pulled a chair out from the table and sat down on it stiffly. "She waits in here, Martha, where I can see her, and she has her tea in my cup like anybody else. The van's nothing to do with what that voice said, and nobody's to write it down."

Dasu sat on the edge of the settee. The cup, when it came, was the good one, with a gold line round the rim worn thin where a mouth went.

"It's a good strong cup, Winnie," Dasu said, "and I'll take my time over it."

Martha zipped the notice into her wallet beside the survey sheet. "I'll tell the office it's refused, and that you said it here with Dasu listening."

Nell read the letter through once, standing at the counter with the cold machines at her back, then turned it face down beside the shop book. She didn't touch the ruled line. Her hands were dry, but she wiped them down her overall anyway.

Under the line it said Collector's countersignature. Above it was Dasu's name, typed, and Winnie's door number, and the word faulty, twice.

"I'm not signing a thing that calls her box faulty when it's only the fuse, and I'm not leaving Dasu to be struck off for it either," she said. "Somebody go and fetch the fuse from Winnie's, before noon."

Dasu was in the doorway under the lit box, hands open at her sides, the cardigan pocket left alone. "Don't fetch it on my account, Nell, it's Winnie's fuse and Winnie's to say. I'll not have it carried out of her house by anyone she hasn't told, and I'll not sign her box faulty either, so let noon come if it must."

Winnie had come down the row without either of them seeing. She stopped under the box with coal on her fingers and something shut in her fist.

"Nobody carries it out of my house but me, and I'm here, aren't I. I'll put it back with my own hand, Dasu, but I'll not have my name typed on a paper to say why."

Perry was a step behind her with his tin. "Put it in, Winnie, and leave the paper be. Nell can write in her book that the fuse went back by your hand at whatever o'clock it is, and that'll do for anyone who asks."

Nell wrote it under the float line. Fuse back by Winnie's hand. She left a space for the time and turned the book round.

Nell tucked the letter under the book and stood in the doorway next to Dasu. Up the row Winnie climbed her step and reached up with her thumb. The box over her door stayed grey. The whole row had been saying since last night that Winnie's fuse wasn't blown, it was just taking its time.

A van with the office's lettering came round the bend and pulled in behind Dasu's. The door slammed. A young man in a grey coat got out with a clipboard and started reading numbers off the doors.

The box over the launderette took its half second, in Dasu's voice.

I'd sooner that light stayed dark, so it's Winnie's fuse in the wrong and not my sheet. I'm glad of every minute it doesn't come on.

Nell went back to the counter, took the letter out from under the book and held it up so he could see the blank line. Then she tore it across, once, and put the halves down.

"That's my answer to your office, lad, and you can write that I gave it."

Dasu took the fitting sheet out of her pocket and laid it beside the halves, still folded. "That's Nell's answer, lad, and mine is the sheet, which was mine to carry and is no one's now but Winnie's to read if she wants it."

Winnie had come all the way back down. She picked the sheet up between two black fingers and didn't open it. "I'll hold this, Dasu, since you've made it mine, and I'll read it in my own time at my own table."

Perry's voice came from out on the row. "I'll say what I saw at noon, lad, and not a minute before."