The Flour Delivery

The flour came on Tuesdays and Fridays at four in the morning, and Kemal was always up for it, and so was the cat.

The cat’s name was Dolly. She had arrived at the bakery some years ago in the way of cats, which is to say that one morning she had not been there and the next she had, sitting on the step with her paws together as if she had an appointment. Kemal had given her a saucer of milk, which was a mistake, and a piece of ham, which was a bigger one, and that had been that. She lived in the bakery now. She slept in a flour crate that had been lined with a jumper, and she had opinions about the delivery.

At ten to four Kemal unlocked the back door and propped it open with the brick, and the cold came in, and Dolly went and sat in the doorway with her back to him and looked out at the yard.

The yard was dark and wet and smelt of the night. There was one lamp at the far end, on the wall of the garage, and it made a small yellow pool with a drain in the middle of it, and beyond that the lane, and beyond that nothing much, because it was four in the morning in a town of eight thousand people and every one of them, as far as Kemal could tell, was asleep.

Inside, behind him, the bakery was warm. The big oven had been on since three and had got up to heat, and the first batch of dough, mixed the night before, was under its cloths on the bench, risen and soft and waiting. The room smelt of yeast and warm brick and, faintly, of the cat. The strip light hummed. The radio was on very low, a voice reading the shipping forecast to nobody, and Kemal had not turned it up because he liked it that way, a murmur, company without content.

At four exactly the van came.

He heard it first, at the top of the lane, the engine and the tyres in the wet, and then the lights came round, sweeping over the wall and the drain and the cat, who did not move, and the van backed in, slow, beeping, and stopped, and the engine went off, and the door opened, and Steve got out.

“Morning,” said Steve.

“Morning,” said Kemal.

“Cat,” said Steve, to the cat.

Dolly looked at him and looked away. This was also the arrangement.

Steve had been driving the flour round for longer than Kemal had been baking, and he did it the same way every time. He opened the back of the van and the smell came out, dry and clean and a little sweet, the smell of a great deal of flour in one place. He pulled the first sack to the edge and got his shoulder under it and walked it across the yard and through the door and into the store, and set it down on the pallet with a soft thump and a small white breath of dust, and went back for the next.

Twelve sacks. Kemal took every other one. They did not talk while they carried, because you do not, but between sacks, in the yard, in the cold, with the breath going up from both of them, Steve said the usual things. The road was quiet. The bridge was down to one lane again. His youngest had a new tooth. Kemal said the usual things back. The ovens were good. The bridge was always down to one lane. He was glad about the tooth.

Thump. A white breath. Back for the next.

Dolly supervised. She did it from the doorway, and then from the top of the first sack on the pallet, where she sat with her tail round her feet and watched each new sack arrive and settle, and when the last one was down and the pallet was full she walked along the top of them all, testing, the way a cat will walk along a wall it has walked along before, and then she sat down again at the far end and closed her eyes, which meant that the delivery had been accepted.

Steve signed the sheet. Kemal signed the sheet. Steve tore off the copy and gave it to him and put the rest in his pocket, where it went every Tuesday and Friday and was never seen again.

“Bread?” said Kemal.

“Go on.”

There was always bread. Not from this morning, that was not baked yet, but from yesterday, a small loaf put by for the purpose, wrapped in paper and left on the shelf by the door, and Steve took it and put it on the seat beside him and would eat it, Kemal knew, in the cab, at the next stop, with the door open and the engine ticking.

“Friday,” said Steve.

“Friday.”

The van started. The lights came on and swung across the yard and the wall and the drain, and then they were going away up the lane, and the engine went away with them, and then it was quiet again, the wet quiet of a yard at four in the morning, and Kemal stood in it for a moment with the door open and the cold on his face and the warmth of the bakery on his back.

Then he kicked the brick away and shut the door.

Dolly was already asleep on the flour.

The bakery hummed. The oven was at heat. The first batch was risen under its cloths, and he lifted the corner of one and looked, and put it back. He washed his hands at the sink, slowly, the flour dust going off them in a small cloud into the water, and dried them on the towel, and stood for a moment at the bench with his palms flat on the wood and his eyes shut, which was a thing he did, every morning, before he started, and had never told anybody about.

Then he started.

He turned the dough out. He cut it and weighed it and shaped it, each piece, into a round, with the heels of his hands, the way he had been taught, and set the rounds in their rows on the boards, and covered them, and took the first board to the oven, and opened the door.

The heat came out at him, dry and enormous and kind.

He slid the loaves in. He shut the door.

The radio murmured. The shipping forecast had finished and something with a piano had started. Outside, above the yard, the sky had not changed yet, not at all, but it would in an hour, going from black to the colour of ash, and by then the first loaves would be out and cooling on the racks and the whole shop would smell of them, and at seven he would turn the sign, and the first customer, who was always the same woman with the same dog, would come in for the same loaf, and the day would be going.

But for now it was ten past four. The oven ticked. The flour sat on its pallet, twelve sacks, with a cat on top.

Kemal poured a coffee from the pot and sat on the stool by the oven door, where it was warmest, and drank it.

Dolly, from her sack, breathed out, once, in her sleep, and a very small puff of flour went up and settled.

The bread rose in the dark of the oven.

And the town slept on around them, all eight thousand, warm in their beds, with no idea, and no need of one, that somewhere down a lane in the wet and the dark the morning had already quietly begun.