lost altogether; in its place was a continuing liquid plop, as the bucket filled with rain water.
On his seat G sat, his shoulder-blades pressed against the four remaining supports, his legs stretched out before him, and his fingers curled under the seat of the chair. The fingers of his left hand came in contact with an irregularity on the underside of the chair seat; he identified the irregularity as the date 1912, carved on the chair when it was made. He rubbed his fingers back and forth across the four digits.
‘Are the fish glad to be caught?’ he said quietly.
The rain continued steadily outside. A gust of wind came, sending the water drops scattering. Some minutes later, another gust came. Soon it was blowing steadily. The outermost twigs of an elder tree which grew behind the bungalow scraped across the back wall.
Even with the increased noise in the bungalow, the drip of rain into the bucket was clearly audible. The heaviness of the note finally reminded G that the bucket was almost full. He got up, went over to it, felt for its handle, straightened up with it and made his way carefully to the door. As he went, he heard the drips from the roof fall to the floor.
He tugged at the door. It came quickly open and a gust of wet air blew into his face. Descending onto the one wooden step, he held the bucket by top and bottom, swung it, and sent its contents flying out towards the grass.
The bulk of the house was dark, except for a section of it that included the small bow window of Mr Mary’s bedroom. This section was lit by a street light that burned on the other side of the brick wall in which stood the brown side gate. This light threw the shadow of the wall slantwise up the side of the house; it gleamed on the bits of broken glass embedded in the wall and now washed by the rain, casting their shadows also onto the house.
G threw a look at the house and retreated into the bungalow with the empty bucket. He slammed the door. The door key fell out of the lock and dropped to the floor.
Without hurry, G took the bucket back to the corner and stood it down there. The clear metallic noise began again at once in the room.
Going over to the cupboard, G opened one of its doors and felt inside for a candle and matches. He located them, and stuck the candle, which was already partly consumed, in the candlestick. He struck a match with difficulty, hearing it grind too softly against the damp side of the box, and then transferred its small flame to the black twist of the candle’s wick. When the candle burned properly, he left it where it was and collected the ingredients for a kettleful of tea. Into his small kettle he put a handful of leaves of tea from a green packet, adding to them a splash of milk from a tin of condensed milk that bore two punched holes in its top. Taking up a tin mug, he dipped it into the bucket filling it with rain water and poured this liquid into the kettle on top of the tea leaves and the condensed milk. He did this a second time, wiped the bottom of the kettle with a rag, and set it down on the paraffin stove. Then he blew out the candle, closed the cupboard, and returned to the wheelback chair, taking the tin mug with him.
Several sounds were distinguishable in the wooden room. The wind could be heard outside making several distinct noises in its course over different obstacles. The rain could be heard, making different vibrations, a light one on the window, a heavier drumming kind on the wooden sides of the bungalow, and a muffled kind on the asphalt of the roof overhead. The leak from the corner of the roof still contributed its noise into the bucket. The elder tree still raked the back of the bungalow with its twigs. To all these noises, another was later added. It was only a whisper of sound when G first detected it, but he had been anticipating it, and held it steadily in his attention until it grew stronger. Eventually it was loud. It cheered G.
To accompany the sound, a trickle of steam came from the spout of the kettle, which was deeply cleft, so that in the dim glow from the stove it looked like the open beak of a bird. The sound and the steam grew together in volume, the former now loud and insistent, the latter now a column that continued the line of the kettle spout outwards for some centimetres before billowing upwards in a cloud.
At first G gave no outward indication that he heeded these manifestations from his kettle. Only when the kettle lid became agitated by the pressure of steam inside, so that it jarred in its socket, did he stir. Removing the kettle from the stove, he poured some of its contents into his tin mug. He set the kettle down by his right foot, where it would be handy for a refill.
The time taken to bring the kettle to a boil over a weak heat had been considerable. G was not in any hurry. It took him as long to drink the unsweetened contents of his mug. When he had drained the mug, he refilled it. By now the tea was cooling; he drank this second cup no faster than the first.
He rinsed out the mug in the bucket, which was now half full of water, and set it back in the cupboard beside the packet of tea and the condensed milk. Then he freshened his hands and face in the bucket. Several drops of water fell from the roof into the hair on the crown of his head as he did so.
Picking up the bucket by the handle, he carried it over to the door and opened the door. Some wind and rain blew in upon him. He grasped the bucket with two hands and threw its contents clear of the steps. Then he came in and slammed the door as tightly as possible into its socket. Sometimes on windy nights, an extra strong gust would blow the door wide on its hinges.
After replacing the bucket in its corner, G walked to the other end of the room and sat down on the edge of the couch. He undid the laces of his boots and was easing them off his feet when a slight difference in the opacity of the gloom made him look up and out of the nearest window.
From where he sat on this side of the room, he could see through the streaming panes to the blank black west corner of the house and the blur of the garden beyond it. When he stood up and padded to the window, he could see the small bow window of that room he had never entered, the room that was Mr Mary’s bedroom. A light had just come on in the room. As G looked, a figure came to the window.
The figure was darkened by the light behind it. The street lamp faintly lit it, but the blur on the two panes of glass interposed in the space between G and the figure made all detail impossible to distinguish. The figure reached up its arms in a wide gesture and drew the curtains together across the bow window. A slight chink of light remained at the top of the curtains, then this was adjusted. There was no further sign from the window of the house. G waited where he was for some while.
‘Another satisfied customer.’
He went back to his couch. He pulled off his trousers, set them carefully on the floor, and climbed on to the couch. Three blankets were lying on top of it. He worked his way under them, adjusted them round his stockinged feet, pillowed his head with one arm, and closed his eyes.
The bottom of the bucket was already covered by water leaking in from the roof, so that the metallic sound of dripping was replaced by the liquid sound of dripping. He lay listening to it for a certain passage of time.
When the bucket became full, the water started to pour down the sides of the bucket. It collected in a puddle about the bucket and commenced to trickle across the floor in a north-easterly direction. The wooden bungalow was built above the ground on ten low brick pillars which left a gap between the ground and the floor; some of these pillars had sunk slightly, so that the bungalow had a slight list towards the corner that stood nearest to the brick wall containing the brown side gate. This list was sufficient to give the water a flow. It pushed outward until it touched the front wall of the bungalow, and then ran along beside that wall until it reached the gap under the door. The water then flowed away under the door and escaped into the soil beside the bungalow step.
‘Several factors worth investigating there, when we get the instruments,’ Midlakemela
