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In a room sunk deep within a city tenement a cigarette is being lit, the first of the day. Chilled early morning air is drawn through the ochre moon tip fuelling a pine blaze of blue and gold; the match is extinguished with a gust of breath and discarded in a cluttered ashtray. Outside the sun is gradually building the day with light. There’s no hurry, each day begins this way. At this precise moment it is a world of brooding slumbersome blues; a few moments earlier the buildings and trees were every shade of mauve and quite soon a golden resplendence will furnish the city with a crisp light made luminous by an early morning mist. Street lamps will flicker and fade and the uneasy silence of night will retreat to the secret corners and dark forgotten alleyways beyond the reach of the sun. A cool finger presses absently on the kettle switch. Whose finger? It’s not your concern, you don’t know her. A thirst for warmth is all that matters here; a cigarette, a cup of tea and then what? Two mugs sit side by side on the formica work surface. In each a crisp new tea bag, a spoonful of sugar and a spoon. Soon their time will come, it always does. The kettle boils and the water is poured. A milk carton is taken from the fridge, she pours a splosh in each of the mugs, takes one of them in her hand and carries herself to the sofa. The curtains remain closed; they only open on weekends and bank holidays. She squeezes the tea bag against the inside of the mug with the spoon and then dumps it in the ashtray with all the others. If we were at all interested we could calculate how many days ago the ashtray had last been emptied; we could count the tea bags and divide the number by two, then we would know. The mug is now half empty, she looks at her watch. Down stairs a key is being taken out of a pocket by weary fingers that deal with the lock with practiced efficiency. Whose fingers? She knows him, you don‘t. The lock is open. She hears the door and drains the dregs of her tea then carries the mug to the kitchen; she places it on the work surface and takes the full mug of tea which has been standing there all this time. She carries the mug through to the bedroom, stopping to dump the second compressed tea bag of the morning into the ashtray. When he enters the bedroom she is in the bed and the tea is on the bedside table. Within seconds he has dropped his coat and bag on a chair, taken three or four swigs of tea and is half through removing his clothes. She watches him. He’s tired. Their love making is slow and rhythmic. They waltz to a heart beat pressed skin to flesh in the soft warmth of their love, all moments should pass this way; and when the moment has passed they lie in each others arms until the alarm rings and then she is gone. The doors are yet uneasy upon their hinges, the locks are still in
shock… and he is all alone.
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