Tenant, and Nothing After

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.

"Leave the line standing, Mr Pask, it's true enough, she put the fuse back and the box stayed dark. But you'll write beside it that the tenant refitted it on my say-so."

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

"As for replacing it, you'll not take that unit off my door frame tonight on a click."

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 Pask," 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."

Nell opened her book and wrote under the float line, fuse refitted, box dark, seen. "There, Winnie, it's in my hand and not yours, so if anyone asks it was me that wrote it."

Winnie read both lines, lips moving, and touched neither. She went to the door and put her palm on the frame beside the box. Gordie ducked the ladder under it. As the foot cleared the frame the box clicked, dry and loud, and stayed dark.

"That's the second click, Mr Pask, and you heard it the same as us."

"Let it click," Winnie said, not looking up. "You write what you saw and no more, and nothing about me being glad of anything."

"Heard it, love, same as you. I'll put 'second click, dark' and nothing else, no names and no gladness, that's not mine to write."

Nell wrote second click, dark, heard, under her first line and turned it to Winnie.

"Thank you, Nell, leave it in your hand."

"Right you are, love, it's yours till you've said," Gordie said from the step.

Next door's box took its half second, in his voice.

*I was glad it was her fuse on that line and not my hands. Every 'love' tonight was just me getting the backs hung by nine.*

He stopped with his back to them and pressed his thumb down on the pouch.

"You said you were glad it was her fuse, Mr Pask, and I heard that as plain as the click," Nell said. "If your backs hang by nine it'll be nobody's gladness that did it."

"Mind what the air says out of you, Mr Pask," said Winnie. "It's no more yours than it was mine."

He half turned. "I heard what I heard, love, and it's not going on my docket."

He went down the path and stopped at the gate. "Night, loves. Nine tomorrow, and I'll ring it from the bend like the line says."

Nell held the book against her chest with the soap tin on top. The docket went off under his arm with the afternoon line still in it, the one from yesterday's click, fuse refitted by tenant, that Winnie had covered with her hand and not asked about. Winnie stood in the doorway under the dark box with her hands in her apron, and Nell had the pencil behind her ear and her mouth half open.