Chapter 108: The First One

His mother rang at 6:40 while he was on the bridge and he pulled in on the south side to take it.

"I’ve been through the whole lot."

"Mum, it’s 20 to 7."

"I’ve been up since 4, I’m on Tower Court at half 7, so it’s this or it’s tonight." Paper moving about on her end. "Right. I’ve got a letter from the water off 2018 with Pembury on it and your name on it, because you were on that bill with me for a bit. Do you remember that?"

"I remember that."

"And I’ve got the thing from the council about the bins that had both of us on. And I’ve got, " A pause, and something being turned over. "I’ve got your provisional licence application. The old paper one. You never sent it."

Danny stood on a pavement on the south side of the bridge with the traffic going past.

"Why’ve you got that?"

"Because you left it on my table in 2016 and you never took it away, and I’m not the sort of woman who throws away a form with her son’s name on it." She said it the way she says everything. "It’s got that flat on it in your handwriting."

"Mum."

"What?"

"That’s brilliant, that is."

"Well." She had gone slightly brisk about it. "It’s a bit of paper. What do you want it for?"

"Insurance," Danny said. "There’s a form and it’s got a box on it."

"Right." He could hear her not asking the next one. "Well, it’s in a bag by the door and I’m not posting it, because it’s got your signature on it, so you’ll come and get it."

"I’ll come Saturday."

"Saturday." Tsk. "You’ll come Saturday and you’ll eat something while you’re here."

The unit door went up at 9:20 and Femi backed a Transit onto the pavement outside the shop with the hazards going and Ray came out to move a car that was not his.

The machine came out on a pallet truck with a moving blanket over it and 2 ratchet straps, and it took Femi and Danny and Ray and a bloke off the tyres called Junior to get it off the tail lift.

"Seventy-eight kilos." Femi had gloves on and a bar in his hand. "It’s the boiler. The boiler’s most of it."

"Can we not wheel it in?"

"You’ve got a plank and a threshold, not a ramp. That thing goes over on that plank and it’s £4,600 on your new floor." He got the blanket off one corner. "We’re carrying it. Four corners, on 3, and nobody’s a hero."

They carried it 14 feet and put it down twice on the way and Junior said something about his back on the second one.

Then it was on the counter, and Femi got the blanket off it properly, and it sat there.

Red. Three group. The paint gone dull on one corner where somebody had leaned something against it for a long time, and the dent along the bottom of the drip tray, and the group heads polished up to nothing.

Danny stood in the middle of his own room with his hands on his hips and could not say anything at all for a bit.

"It’s facing the door," Femi said.

"Keisha said face it at the door."

"Yeah, she was right." He was already under the counter. "Where’s your softener?"

"In the back kitchen, in the box it come in."

Femi’s head came back out.

"You’ve bought it."

"She said buy it, so I bought it. Monday."

"Right." Something like respect went across his face and went away again. "Most people don’t. Most people say yes and then it’s 6 months and they ring me up with a boiler full of Bermondsey."

Keisha came at 10 with the canvas holdall and a bag of beans in her other hand and did not say hello.

She put the beans on the counter, put the holdall on the floor, and stood looking at the machine for about 20 seconds without touching it.

"Femi."

"Keisha."

"You’ve had the group 3 apart again."

"I’ve not touched it since Peckham."

"You have, the seal’s seated different." She had one hand on it now. "Don’t argue with me, I’ve had my hands on this thing 3 times."

"I gave it a look Tuesday because I wasn’t happy."

"Right. That’s all I wanted." She got her sleeves up. "Water."

It took them until 25 past 12 and Danny got put to work inside 4 minutes.

"Bucket under there and tell me when it runs clear." Femi did not look round. "And you’re timing it. Nine minutes on that flush and I want to know when we’re at 9, not when you think we’re at 9."

So he lay on his back under his own counter with a bucket and a phone with the stopwatch going, and the water came out cloudy and then less cloudy and then not, and he said "clear" at 4 minutes 40 and got asked how clear, and said clear, and got told to look again properly.

"That’s not clear, that’s got a tint on it. That’s your line."

"How long’s it got a tint for?"

"Till it hasn’t." Femi had a laptop out on the floor plugged into the side of the machine, which Danny had not known was a thing that happened. "It’s an 11 month empty building and everything in that pipe’s been sat still since March. Nine minutes."

At 8 minutes 50 Keisha put a thermometer in the bucket, and then again 30 seconds later, and then looked at both readings and said something to Femi about the dial that he disagreed with for about 2 minutes.

Danny lay under his own counter and listened to 2 people argue about his shop and did not have one useful thing to add to any of it.

At 5 past 12 the boiler came up and the machine made a noise it had not made before, a low steady hum with a tick under it.

Keisha stood back and looked at it.

"Right."

"Is it on?"

"It’s on." She got the beans open and the grinder was not there, because the grinder comes Monday, so she had a hand grinder out of the holdall, which she then used standing up for a full 4 minutes without complaining about it once.

She pulled the first shot at 12:14.

She let it run, watched it, and threw it straight in the bucket.

Second one at 12:16. Same. In the bucket.

Third one she looked at all the way down, picked up, smelled, and put down without drinking.

"Femi."

"Mm."

"It’s 2 degrees under."

"It’s 3 under, I’ve been saying since 11."

"Then fix it."

He fixed it, which took 6 minutes and involved a screwdriver and a lot of swearing at the position of something.

Fourth one at 12:31.

Keisha pulled it, and she did the thing where she watched it come off the group and her whole face stopped doing anything, and then she picked the cup up and drank about a third of it.

Then she stood there and did not say anything for 4 seconds.

"Right," she said.

"Right what?"

"That’s it." She put the cup down. "That’s what that machine’s for."

"Can I have one?"

"No." She was already going again. "Not that one. That one’s not for you."

Danny stood in his own shop.

"Who’s it for?"

"Whoever comes in that door next," Keisha said.

Norman came at 20 past 1, because it was Thursday.

He got over the scaffold board with the stick going tap tap tap and stopped 3 feet inside, and he looked at the floor.

"You’ve had it done."

"Monday."

"That’s a proper floor, that is." He said it like a man reading out a price. "My mother had a hall like that. You’d have had that under lino when I was a boy and everybody did."

Then he saw the machine, and he stopped again, and the stick went still.

"What’s that?"

"That’s the machine."

"That’s a lot of machine."

"Four thousand six hundred pound," Danny said, because he had decided on the way over from the bridge that morning that he was going to be able to say numbers out loud in his own shop.

Norman looked at it for a long moment.

"Ted had a Formica counter and an urn," he said. "You put a shilling in a saucer."

"Do you want a coffee?"

"I don’t drink coffee."

"Norman."

"Never have." He got himself onto the milk crate in stages. "Tea. And that’s all I’ve ever had out of this room, 40-odd years, and I’m not starting now at 81."

Keisha came round the end of the counter, and Norman looked up at her, and Danny watched him do the thing that men of 81 do, which is decide in about half a second whether to be charming.

"Who’s this?"

"Keisha. She’s going to be running that machine."

"Are you." Norman put his hand out from a milk crate. "Norman Whittle."

"Keisha Adjei." She shook it. "You don’t drink coffee."

"I do not."

"Right." She went back behind the counter. "I’ll do you one anyway and you can leave it."

Pat came at 25 to 2 with the trolley, and the wheels went up over the board without her looking down, and she got 4 feet in and stopped with both hands on the handle.

Nobody had told her about the floor.

"Oh," she said.

And then she did not say anything else for a while, which from Pat was the loudest thing that happened all day.

She got herself into the bentwood chair and got the leg out straight and made the noise she makes, and looked at the room the whole time.

"Ted never had that."

"No."

"He had something brown." She was still looking. "You couldn’t tell what it was. It come up the same colour as the walls and everybody thought that was how it was meant to be."

Keisha put a cup down on the counter and pushed it 6 inches towards her.

"What’s that?"

"Coffee."

"I have tea."

"I know you have tea. Norman’s told me twice and he’s not even drinking his." Keisha said it flat. "That’s the first one out of that machine that was any good, and it’s been 25 minutes and it’s going cold, and I’d rather it went to somebody who’s been coming here 16 years than in a bucket."

Pat looked at the cup.

Then she looked at Danny, and then at Keisha, and then she reached over and took it, and had a sip of it the way people do who are being polite about something.

She put it down.

"That’s not like the coffee in the garage."

"No."

"That’s not like coffee at all." She had another one, bigger. "That’s more like, I don’t know what that’s like. That’s like something you’d have after your dinner somewhere."

"That’s about right," Keisha said.

"Is it dear?"

"It’ll be £3.20."

"Three pound twenty." Pat put it down hard enough to hear. "For that? In here?"

"Mm."

"Well, I’d not pay it." She picked it straight back up. "But I’d have one on a Thursday."

And she drank the rest of it, and Keisha went and stood at the far end of the counter and wrote something on a bit of paper and did not let anybody see it.

Norman left his.