Tea First

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.

"Read it out to Dasu, then, since it's Dasu it's aimed at," Winnie said, looking at the paper. "That fuse stays where I left it till I've heard what she'd be signing, and whose name goes on it."

"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."

Martha wrote on the back in pencil and read it off. "'Winnie says the fuse goes in after her tea, and Dasu will not sign it faulty. ' That's your answer in my hand, Winnie, and I'll leave it that way, but I'd still like it said where Dasu can hear whether the office is to send someone else if tea runs long."

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.

"Nobody's sending anyone else, Martha, and Dasu keeps her van. If tea runs long, it runs long."

Dasu kept her hands open at her sides. The sheet was in her pocket and it could stay there.

"I heard that voice, Winnie, and I'll not hold it against you or ask you to unsay it. Take your tea; if the van goes, it goes, and the fuse is still yours to put in."

"Dasu, you heard her say the van can go," Martha said, "so I'd like you to say yourself, here, whether you're waiting in it or in this room."

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.

"I'll not write the voice, Winnie," Martha said, "but I'll ask it plain: is that fuse going back today, or is it not?"

"It's not going back while you stand there asking, Martha. Leave your pencil in your wallet, and I'll put it in or I won't when Dasu's cup is empty."

"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."

Dasu drank. Half the cup was gone. Martha stood on the mat with the wallet under her arm and her hand on the latch, the cupboard stood open, and Winnie sat with her coal-black hands in her lap watching the level go down.