Company

I lift the knocker and drop it on next door. Mine is left open. It's about a minute before Verna answers. "Hi. I just brought my washing round."
She pushes up her mouth like she's giving a reluctant kiss and says nothing when I'd seen her most of this week and that's all that she's said; You going to bring it? Day 1.
Don't go to the laundry girl. I'm just next door, Day 2.
Bring it nuh!! Day 3.
And here she is on Day 4 pushing up her mouth like she doesn't want me to bring it.

But it's too late. I pull in my front door. I've seen what my laundry bag looked like without these jumpers, these trousers, these jeans. I don't have to bend my knees to pick it up. I wasn't going back to "Shucks, this laundry bag's getting heavy..." not a week before Christmas, not now my non-lazy son had moved out.

She shows me the back of her permed brown hair and I'm pleased that you could still have strong hair at seventy. She asked me to dye it for her once but if I put my hands in her hair, rub her scalp and keep the dye out of her eyes that would mean we are bonded and I'm not sure how much I want to bond.
"Check to see if one of your grandchildren can do it", I said. "Serious. I'd be rubbish."
She must have, because now it looks good.

My instinct is to duck when I get in there. Dark purple wall paper that's so close, a surprising rush of thirty Richmond SuperKings to the back of your lungs, a picture that can be seen in its fullness if you back into one of the bedrooms, and I never will. I curl my way around a white plastic table that holds envelopes and junk mail.
In the living room I scan for the low velvet sofas almost beneath large cabinets full of boxes, glasses, figurines. There's plants, a squashed ball of empty carrier bags, green cushions piled on the floor. Three old dolls, frames and photographs, a tall silver ash tray.
Verna takes her usual seat on the other sofa, retrieves a pair of glasses and resumes her word search. Someone slick is solving a crime on TV.
Pass a double fronted fridge and you are in the kitchen.

I move a stool out of the way and pull open the washing machine door. In go those darks. Door closed, buttons remembered from when she forgot and I came to the rescue. Temperature forty. Dial turned to number one for quick. Press start. The stool is pushed back in front of the machine, I put my black bag on top, pick up my box of Daz and go back into the living room.

"Thanks for letting me use it." I say.
"Thats alright. You're like my gran'daughter".
The man on TV is shouting at a woman now.
"I'll come and sit with you in a while ok."

Back at mine, I sit up in bed and read more of 'Antagonia and Me'. Then I go to the bathroom, lift up the laudry bag without bending my knees and tip the contents in. A quick dazzle of powder, turn the tap on, wait just while and leave them in there to soak.
I make sure my keys are in my back pocket when I close the front door.

"Hi. D'you want some company?"
"Yes, come."
I follow her dyed brown hair to the living room and ease myself down.