Tea and Biscuits

Gertie sat on the stool by the window and rubbed reflectively, and almost automatically, at her hip. The rain was drumming on the porch and she could see it bouncing back up off the pavement. She rubbed her hip again, 'Always worse when it rains!' She shook her head, 'The only answer the op I suppose.'

Since Bert had died about ten years ago she had taken to having conversations with herself. 'I suppose if I'd had kids I could have been talking to them. But then I don't answer myself back like they would have done.'

This was her treat, after she had done as much housework as her creaking bones allowed and had made herself a cup of good strong tea. 'My mother would have been shocked at me drinking tea out of what she'd call a navvies cup. Fine bone china for her but you get so much more in a mug.'

She lifted the drink to her lips, its perfumed vapour drifting around her face. Taking a sip she sighed and then took a bite out of a chocolate digestive.

'Been a long time since I made any biscuits, can't stand up for long enough these days.'

Leaning forward she twitched the net curtain a little to get a better view.

'You're just nosey,' Bert used to say.

'Only interested love,' had always been her stock reply.

The window was an ideal spot to sit and watch the world go by, 'Much better than the rubbish they put on the tele in the afternoons. Houses nobody can afford to buy, antiques that should really be in the skip and as for all those food programmes!' She shook her head, tutted and took a long satisfying drink. The teapot was close at hand, stewing nicely, and ready for her second cup.

She limited her curtain twitching to the time it took to drink two mugs of tea and two biscuits.

Her house was one of those old Victorian terraces, a tiny front garden and then the main road.

'It was lovely and quiet when we first moved here. Not many people with cars. Now look at it. We had a lovely privet hedge and in the spring great clumps of daffodils. All gone now, easier to keep tidy with that paving. Bert liked to sit out there on a chair and smoke his pipe. Chatting to everyone who passed. And he said I was nosey.' she chuckled and took another sip.

They'd put the bus stop outside her house when the new ring road had been built.

'Dirty, and noisy,' had been her first thoughts. 'Those nets will need washing every week and as for the window. I won't be able to see out.' She'd grumbled and moaned for a few weeks and then had taken up her position on the stool at the window with tea and biscuits.

'It keeps you out of mischief,' Bert had laughed.

She soon got to know the regulars on the bus, and some of the drivers even waved when they saw her looking. She gave them names and made up lives for them, missed them when they were absent.

'They were lovely when Bert died. The driver stopped the bus and some of the passengers got off and stood on the pavement and waited till the hearse had gone. Bert would have loved that.'

She leant forward, wincing slightly, and rubbed the condensation off the window. The rain had intensified. She tried to peer through it and could just about make out a figure standing at the bus stop.

'Poor thing will be drenched. He's not even wearing an overcoat, and no umbrella. Is that a newspaper he's got. He can't possibly be trying to read it in this rain. There's not another bus for ten minutes. I could ask him in I suppose.'

She edged herself towards the edge of the stool, almost getting to her feet but not quite.

'It would be foolish I suppose.'

Just then the rain stopped and a shaft of sunlight seemed to illuminate the figure. He turned, looked straight at Gertie and smiled.

'Well I never he looks just like my Bert.'

She smiled and waved and took a last sip of her hot, sweet, navvie's tea.