Inside the Frame

"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."

He'd named the first because she asked and it cost him nothing. He got the spanner on the second and leaned.

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.

"That's the second, Gordie, I see it turning," Winnie said from inside. "The old one's mine till it's in your hand, and then it goes in the dustbin sack, not on any docket with my name."

"Take your time on the second, I'm not going anywhere." Dasu kept her eyes on the spanner and never once on him.

The third bolt gave and the dead unit came away into his palm. He brought it down past the rung.

"It's down, Gordie, and the ladder's held. Put it in the sack where Winnie said."

"Say where it goes and say it loud," Martha said, "then name who fixes the new one and who pushes the fuse."

He put it in the sack without saying where.

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

"Now the new one, Gordie, and you'll lift it out where I can see your hands."

He did, slow. He hadn't spoken since the first bolt, though Martha kept asking. Winnie stood with two fingers on the wood beside the pale square. The paper round the door had gone brown over forty years, and only the square was still the colour it started.

"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."

"Steady, Gordie, I've got her," Dasu said from the step.

The square went under grey a screw at a time. 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.

"Written: fuse pushed by Winnie's thumb, fitted inside the frame, Dasu listening." Martha held the notice up, dripping on the dust sheet. "Gordie, that's the refusal and the order both on the record, so say whose street this is, out loud, for question three."

Dasu let go of the rails and wiped her palms down her cardigan. "The ladder's done with, Winnie, and I'll not say a word for that box either way. Friday I'll be at your table with the plain biscuits, if you'll have me."

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.