The drivers' room is empty from the last sign off at one until the first sign on at a quarter past five. At half past four the kettle boils. The camera shows it switch itself on, and the steam, and six mugs lifted off the hooks on the wall, one by one, and set on the counter, and the tea made, and the mugs back on the hooks washed by a quarter past five, and the milk down a pint, and the sugar down, and the chairs round the table pulled out and pushed back.
I am the depot manager and the drivers' room is the room I am least welcome in, which is right, and I would not know about the half past four brew if it were not for the camera.
The room.
A table, chairs, a kettle, hooks with mugs on them, a fridge. The last driver signs off at one and the first signs on at a quarter past five, and between those times the room is locked and empty and the camera, which is there because of a theft, records it.
At half past four the kettle boils.
The brew.
The kettle switches on. The camera shows the light. It boils. Six mugs come off the hooks. Not fall. Come off, one at a time, lifted, and set on the counter in a row. The tea goes in, from the caddy, a spoon at a time. The water. The milk, from the fridge, whose door opens and closes. The sugar, in some. The mugs go to the table, to six places, and the chairs at those places are pulled out, and for about twenty minutes nothing moves on the camera except the steam from the mugs, going down, and then the chairs go back and the mugs go to the sink and are washed, and dried, and hung, and the room is as it was by a quarter past five, except the milk is down a pint and the caddy is down and the sugar is down.
There is nobody in the room.
What has been checked.
The kettle, replaced. The new one boils at half past four.
The room, at half past four, by me, in the corner, in the dark. The kettle went on. I heard the mugs come off the hooks, the small sound of the handle leaving the hook, six times. I heard the spoon in the caddy. I heard the chairs. And I heard, for twenty minutes, the sound a drivers' room makes at the start of a shift, which is not talking exactly, not that I could make out, but the murmur, the low sound of six men who have known each other thirty years having their tea before they go out, a laugh, once, and a chair creaking, and the sound of a mug put down.
Then the washing up, and the hooks, and quiet.
I did not move. I was not asked to. I think they knew I was there and I think they did not mind, the way a drivers' room does not mind the manager in the corner as long as he keeps his mouth shut.
Who.
Six. The old hands, when I asked about a half past four shift, said there used to be one. The early turn, years ago, before the timetable changed, six men who took the first buses out at five and had been doing it together since they were young, and who came in at half past four for their tea, and one of them made it, always the same one, six mugs, and the hooks on the wall were theirs.
The old hands named them. They are all dead. The last one died two years ago, and the half past four brew, the camera log says, started the week after.
They waited for him.
What is done about it.
The milk and the tea and the sugar are on the drivers' room budget, which the union runs, and the union rep has asked me who is drinking a pint of milk a night and I have told him, and he has said, fair enough, and put the order up.
What I do.
I manage the depot.
The hooks had six mugs on them, the depot's, plain. I have changed them. The old hands remembered which mug was whose, more or less, and the sorts of mugs they were, a football one, one with a name on, one that was a pint, and I have found six like them and put them on the hooks, and the camera shows them come off in an order now, and the order is the same every morning, and the old hands tell me it is the order they sat in.
I go in at a quarter to five. After. The room is clean and the mugs are on the hooks and the chairs are in. I put the kettle on for the first real driver, which is a thing I did not used to do, and I sit at the table, and I put my hand on the table at the place where the one who made the tea sat, and it is warm, and I say, morning, lads, and I go to my office, and the first driver in finds the kettle boiled and thinks it was me, and it was, and it was not.