My Clocking In System

By 6 the carcass was along the window run with a straight end on it and a gap where the machine was going, and the floor underneath it was grey, and it was going to stay grey, and both of them knew it.

Facing the door.

Danny went round the room with the notebook and Keisha’s list and did the ones he could do himself.

Number 10 was the gap along the skirting where she’d put a finger in up to the knuckle and said mice. He’d done that Monday with the sealant gun and made a mess of the first 2 feet.

He crossed it off.

Number 14, the hatch, taken off its hinges and gone. Number 19, the horrible colour on the back wall, first coat on. Number 22, a socket where a socket needed to be, which he could now test, because there was electricity in the building.

He got to 9 outstanding and stopped.

Then he went out to the scooter and got the thing he’d bought at the market on Tuesday and hadn’t mentioned to anybody.

It was a cast iron umbrella stand, £12, off the same bloke he’d got the chair off, chipped green paint and a hole in the base where the tray had rusted through.

He put it in the corner by the door, on the honey side, where a man coming in would reach it before he’d taken 2 steps.

Then he stood back and looked at it and moved it 6 inches and looked at it again.

Sandra’s woman came at 5 and Sandra had said her name twice on the phone and Danny had still had to write it down. Yvonne Baptiste. Fifties, long grey coat, a laser measure in her hand before she was through the door and a folder under her arm she never opened once.

"Right." She stopped inside and looked at the ceiling. "Who put that light in?"

"It was here."

"It’ll have to go."

"It’s the only light I’ve got."

"It’s the only light you’ve got and it’s the wrong light, and I’m not going to argue with you about it because you’ll work it out yourself the first morning you stand under it at 6." She was already walking. "This your counter?"

"Terry’s just fixed it."

"Then unfix it."

"Yvonne, "

"I’m joking." She did not smile. "It’s in the right place. Whoever told you to face that machine at the door was right and whoever told you to keep the corner return was wrong."

"Same person told me both."

"Then they changed their mind, which is the only useful thing anybody in this trade ever does." She got to the window and turned round and looked back at the door, and stood there for perhaps 8 seconds. "Your girl behind that counter’s going to be squinting into the sun all June."

Danny put his hand over his face.

"What?"

"Old boy told me that on Monday," he said. "Sat on a milk crate. Took him about 4 seconds."

"Then listen to the old boy, he’s cheaper than me." She had the laser measure up at the window. "Blind, or a film, or you plant something outside, and I’d do the film because a blind’s a thing somebody has to remember to do at 20 past 5 in the morning and nobody ever does."

She went the length of the room twice.

"Now. The ceiling."

"What about the ceiling?"

"What’s under your feet?"

"Boards."

"Hard. Walls?"

"Plaster."

"Hard. Window?"

"Glass."

"Hard." She stopped in the middle. "So at 6 in the morning you’ve got 20 blokes in donkey jackets in a hard box, and a grinder, and a steam wand, and a door going, and it will be so loud in here that nobody will be able to hear the person next to them and nobody will know why they don’t want to stop."

"So what do I do?"

"You put absorption in that ceiling, and you do it before the decorating and not after, and it’s about £2,400 and you will never once look at it again as long as you live."

Danny wrote £2,400 CEILING and underlined it.

"And the back wall wants opening up," Yvonne said.

"No."

"You’ve got a dead room back there doing nothing."

"That’s the kitchen."

"Half of it’s a kitchen. The other half’s where somebody’s put a wall in 1978 to make an office nobody’s sat in since." She rapped it with a knuckle, tok tok. "You take that out, you get 4 more covers and your light comes right through."

"I’m not taking a wall out."

"You’d get it back in a year."

"I’ve got 9 things on a list and no name over the door and I’m not taking a wall out."

Yvonne looked at him for a moment and then wrote something in the folder she hadn’t opened.

"Fine."

"That’s it? Fine?"

"You said no and you gave me a reason. Most people say they’ll think about it and then don’t ring me back." She came back down the room. "Right. Last thing, and this one’s free. Who’s in here at 6?"

"Blokes off nights. Builders. Bus drivers."

"Sitting down?"

"No. In and out."

"And at 11?"

"Old people," Danny said. "Prams. People who’ve got nowhere else."

"Staying 2 hours?"

"Probably."

"Then that’s two different rooms," Yvonne said, "and you’ve got one room to do it in. So nothing heavy gets fixed to that floor. Nothing. No banquette, no fixed seating, no built-in nonsense, no matter who tells you it looks better, because at 6 you want that floor clear and at 11 you want it full, and the only way you get both is if a woman of 60 can move a table on her own without asking a man to help her."

She put the laser measure in her pocket.

"Right. I’ll do you a drawing and a schedule and it’ll be with you Wednesday, and you’ll not like the number at the bottom of it."

"How much won’t I like it?"

"You’ll ring me up about it," Yvonne said, and went.

His phone had been going in his coat pocket most of the afternoon and he’d been ignoring it, and when he looked at it at 6:40 there were 2 missed calls from his mother, one from Keisha, and a message from Jodie sent at 4:12.

He rang his mum back first and got 11 minutes of Denise’s shepherd’s pie and a thing about the lift at Tower Court, and said yes in the right places, and did not take in one word of it, because he was reading Jodie’s message over the top of her.

so what are we doing tomorrow then. and dont say ill sort it because you said that on monday

Danny stood in the middle of a lit-up building site and felt the entire day go out of him.

Oh no.

Monday. On the phone. She was in the bath and she said next week you’re taking me somewhere with tablecloths and you said Saturday, tablecloths, you pick, I’ll book it tomorrow.

And that was Monday. And it’s Friday. And it’s 20 to 7.

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