The Bread Man of Alder Street

Nobody on Alder Street orders bread.

This is not because the residents of Alder Street do not eat bread. They eat a great deal of it. It is because ordering is unnecessary. On Tuesday and Friday mornings, at some hour before anyone is properly awake, bread arrives on the step in a brown paper bag folded twice at the top, and it is always exactly what you needed.

Mrs Oyelaran at number 4 gets a seeded rye, because she has always got a seeded rye, and because in 1998 she mentioned in passing that her late husband had liked it.

The Hendrys at 11, who have four children and no time, get a loaf the size of a car battery.

The young man at 19, who moved in last spring and has not yet spoken to anybody, gets a small white bloomer and, on the Fridays, a single cinnamon bun. Nobody has told him this is unusual. He assumes it is simply how streets work in this part of the country, and he has been quietly moved by it for eleven months.

The bread man is called Peter. This is known but not discussed.

What is discussed, occasionally, over fences and at the corner shop, is the question of how he knows. Because he does know. When Mrs Oyelaran's sister came to stay for a fortnight, the bag on Tuesday contained two seeded ryes without anybody having said a word. When the Hendrys' eldest went off to university in September, the car battery shrank by a quarter. And when Dev at 27 was in hospital for six weeks, no bread came at all — but on the morning he got home, there it was, still warm, with a note that said only: welcome back.

There are theories.

Jenny at 8 believes he simply pays attention, which is the least magical explanation and therefore the most upsetting one, because it implies that anybody could do this and nobody does.

Old Frank at 31 maintains the man has a list. Frank has never explained who writes the list.

The young man at 19 has no theory, because he does not yet know there is anything to explain.

The truth, which nobody has asked Peter directly, is that he walks the street on Sunday evenings. That is all. He walks it slowly, once, in the dark, and he looks at the windows — not into them, that would be rude, but at them. He notes which lights are on late. He notes the recycling. He notes when a car has not moved. He notes the small white flag of a curtain left undrawn for three days running.

Then on Monday he bakes.

He has been doing this for nineteen years and it takes him about forty minutes and he does not consider it remarkable. When people thank him, which they do, he says ah, well, and looks at the ground, and goes on to the next step.

Last Friday the young man at 19 was awake early, and heard the gate, and came to the door in his dressing gown, and found Peter on the step with the bag already folded twice at the top.

They looked at each other.

"I've been meaning to say," said the young man. "The buns. Thank you."

"Ah, well," said Peter.

And that was the whole of it, and both of them thought about it for the rest of the day.