Reborn Seven Days Before El Niño

l Veyr

sat on a concrete plinth behind the stairwell head-house with a f

door and stood back. "

ing to touc

feeding this building since 1998 and it's never once been empty, and if you run it dry th

us with a torch. "T

arms. "And before you say it, I

it fo

lds on a list and a tap on the half-landing th

t a man coming Friday at se

at the tank

. "Bottom of the tank. It's for the gardener, back wh

's the

y the door. It's got a split i

he tank. Warm, the way the tarmac h

n will this

, when the pressure drops

t's ful

wrong in front of forty people. This tank doesn't fill off the Kessel East branch. It fills off the old Fenner main - the industrial one, the one that run

ound. "Say

et. "Kessel East valve went Wednesday night, that's why the yard tap was dead before dawn and Harrow Row went at three. But Fenner's still open. They'll

ight it

efore you ask, no, I don't know when they're closing Fenner. Nobody tells the caretaker anything. I know what the tank does because I've w

out loud, because Sable was standing

housand if we're lucky and two if we're not. Six days of forty-four people on four tho

and and whatever I can get in tonight. You don't get

erything that holds water," I said.

oof and it's got two thousand litres sitting on it. It'll give you a dribble and then it'll

nt a

lders have pumps and buil

l find a

more about it. Nineteen years I've watched four people try to organise this stairwell, one about the bins, one about the fro

nd

sday and nobody's put a fist through anything. So I'm giving you the hose, an

-

the stairwell because there

the back of a torn-open cardboard box in marker. Odile had her baby on her

n took questions, t

I watched the faces go. Then I told them about the tank, and about t

man on the second landing s

g water first, in sealed cans with the lids taped. Everything else comes out of the open containers. Nobody draws without Mira writing it down. If you've got a rela

es who won'

k. That's not cruelty

this afternoon offering cans at three times the price. To

nd

him where t

-

g on her shoulder and her hair down and her

re to fight

y it fro

've been on my fee

t on the step with th

een busy,

you. Sinc

before she breathed, but I'd spent six years reading Dacre's face for

a talker,

. Halim's just g

one, no joy in it, and pushed her hair back

of Fenner Street Wholesale in a white van and I know where the van goes."

watched her decide something, and I wa

onday for four thousand litres by Sunday. Cash. I've spent most of

Dac

d into since March and a hundred and forty cans he thinks are empty, and he's out on this road telling anyone who'

ou nee

g and keep looking at his own hands. I can

t's gon

g and brought out a small red

wenty-four hundred litres and I'll be short and he'll want his deposit back." She took her hand off th

red notebook and

s in t

pushed it an inch toward me. "I want your list. Thirty-one names and a ro

ok up and held it c

he contract - the actual paper, signed, with the terms on it - and I'm going to want to walk into that sh

ened, just slightly.

ry. That's not about you. That's what getting burned does to a person."

ng whether you

rrow morning with the key and the

e might say something else, and then she didn't. She went off down Kessel Road with the empty ba

-

n on Friday with a van and a bag of t

a bad temper and he'd

tenancy. Commercial use. Comp

's a q

rwell at the empty steps and

he

d and I told them not to come." I stepped aside

nd watched him, and the young man wrote on the clipboard,

ht.

ed him to the street side and stood him at the parapet where he could see Kessel East laid out below, and the yard be

d. "Your notice says five days and it'll be six. There's on

down at the queu

my departmen

whose

tankers on streets and I don't authorise distribution points and if I went back to my supervisor and told him a woman on Kessel Eas

orm number for the

t smiled

it gets signed off, they put a tanker on the street and they run it twice a day." He looked at me. "I can ask whether it's been activated. That's all

tell them

feeds that tank behind the head-house." He nodded at it without looking. "It's on the schedule for Sunday mornin

tood at the parapet with my hands on the warm concrete and worked out what

y. And the buyer comes Sund

he head-house and pulled t

lted to the wall and a hose bib at the bottom of it and a foot of dead water under

e with the hose. The t

at do

t seven on a Friday morning, and I had a full tank, a capped tap, thirty-one names, a red notebook I

ill everything in this building that holds water, and then