‘There’s some plastic sheeting.’ I find it on one of the wooden racks. ‘Hopefully, we won’t need it, but I’ll keep it to hand.’ I have another look in case there’s some big enough to cover the boat, but no such luck.
‘OMG! MAJOR!’ Rainbow exclaims. ‘A bucket that MATCHES my wellies. Well, not THESE ones, OBVS, but the ones I’ve got at home. RESULT.’
I have no idea when or how a pink bucket found its way into Dad’s garage, but clearly it’s making Rainbow happy. ‘I think maybe you should call your dad, Rainbow.’ I lean on a spade, wondering if we could dig some sort of a trench with it to divert the water. ‘If this gets any worse, he’s going to struggle to get here to pick you up at all.’
‘I’ll stay,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to leave you like this, am I? DUH! I want to help.’
I’m not sure whether Rainbow will be a help or a hindrance, but there’s no doubt we could do with an extra pair of hands and some cheery chatter.
‘That’s great. Thank you.’
‘I’m like family and EVERYTHING,’ she asserts. ‘We sink, we sink TOGETHER.’
In truth, I was hoping for something a little more positive than that from her.
‘We’ve got LOADS of cake too,’ she reminds us. ‘All our teeth might fall out, but we’re not going to STARVE! LOL.’
‘Let’s take what we’ve got back to the house,’ Danny says. ‘We can lay it all out on the veranda. Then I’ll go up into the loft to try to catch all the leaks before they do too much damage.’
‘Good plan.’ I squeeze Lija’s shoulders. ‘See, it’s not too bad.’ And I cross my fingers behind my back while I say it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The water continues to rise, slowly but surely. Danny takes some of the buckets into the loft.
‘I’ve managed to catch the worst of the leaks,’ he says when he comes back down. ‘For now. But if this doesn’t let up, we could be fighting a losing battle.’
Lija says nothing, but grows a little paler.
‘I thought we could take some of the stone from the rockery in the front garden and lay it out on the drive to try to divert the water away from the house.’
‘It’s worth a go,’ Danny says. ‘Anything is.’
The rockery was once Miranda’s pride and joy, but when she took to her bed, sadly, it became overgrown. It’s now more weed than plants. I used to have a token attempt at clearing it once in a while, but it’s obvious that Lija hasn’t touched it since I left. It looks even worse in the winter when the pretty, colourful alpine flowers are all dead and there’s nothing but soil and brown, soggy remnants of plants.
‘OMG. This is like being with ACTUAL Bear Grylls or SOMETHING,’ Rainbow trills, clearly not quite appreciating the gravity of the situation. ‘I can help. I got my Survival Badge in the Guides and EVERYTHING.’
‘What did you have to do for that?’ I ask, hoping that there might be something we can glean from her knowledge.
‘I can’t remember,’ she says, after much eye-rolling. ‘But I’m pretty sure I had to take my nail varnish off for it. RAD!’
‘Did you camp?’
She thinks again. ‘Nah. I’d have remembered that. I’m not that keen on nature. My nan says that more people get killed by COWS than by cars. Fancy that. I hate cows. But you only see them if you go into a field. So I don’t go into fields. DUH! Did you know that you can kill someone if you drop an EGG off the top of the Empire State Building?’
‘Your nan said,’ Lija and I chorus.
Rainbow looks stunned. ‘How did you know? OMG. You’re like psychic and EVERYTHING.’
One day I would like to meet Rainbow’s nana. But today we have slightly more pressing problems.
So we all gear up again and traipse outside. It’s getting dark now and we work by the light from the garage. Danny hefts the stone from the rockery and we manhandle it as best we can into the drive, forming it into a line that curves away from the wall of the house and heads towards the garden. Soaked through, we take a breather from our toil. Rainbow looks half-drowned and her curls hang in rats’ tails. All credit to her, she’s worked like a Trojan.
For a while our little wall of rockery stones sways away the majority of the water and it looks as if my plan might work. But then, to our collective dismay, the water begins to find its way through any gaps in the stones and, soon, the muddy water is on either side of our rather ineffectual attempt at a barrier.
‘Fuck,’ Lija mutters.
I couldn’t agree more.
‘I’ll take the car and go into town,’ Danny says. ‘The DIY sheds will still be open. I’ll get as many sandbags as I can for flood defences.’
Lija digs into her pockets and then throws him the keys. ‘You have money?’
‘Enough,’ he says.
‘Be careful, the lane looks almost impassable,’ I warn. The rivulets of water are certainly gathering in strength.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he assures me. ‘I’ll try not to be too long.’
‘What can we do while you’re gone?’
‘Move all that you can upstairs. Get anything valuable out of the way. Just in case. I’m hoping it won’t come to that, but best to be prepared.’
‘What about Stan?’
‘I’ll see how his cottage is doing as I go out. If it looks like he’ll need them, I’ll get him some sandbags too. He’s a bit higher than us though, so he should be OK.’
‘God, this is awful.’
Danny kisses me goodbye. ‘See you as soon as I can.’
He jumps into the car, backs out of the drive and turns into the lane. The water is almost up to the sills, so he drives slowly. Even so, the wake from the movement washes the water over the stones, rendering all our good work futile.
‘Oh, BUM,’ Rainbow mutters and we all go back inside.
We spend the next hour carrying all the furniture that we can lift upstairs. We stack the chairs on top of the tables in the dining room and roll up all of the rugs that we can.
‘What will we do about tomorrow’s customers?’ Lija says. ‘Shall I ring round and cancel them?’
I chew at my lip. ‘Let’s wait for a while. We’re all dry for now. Fingers crossed that it stays that way.’
As we’re finishing moving the small items, I hear Lija’s car in the drive. Danny is back. He’s been gone much longer than I’d hoped and I rush into the kitchen to greet him.
‘It’s like Armageddon out there,’ he says, looking drawn. ‘I struggled to get back. Loads of the roads are flooded and the traffic is backing up now.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘I know. We’re not the only ones up to our eyeballs in water.’
‘Did you get some sandbags?’
He nods. ‘Not as many as I wanted though. It looks like there’s been a run on them and there were only a few left. I grabbed as many as I could and filled the car boot with as many packs of sand as I could manage too.’
Some of my panic ebbs away. ‘That’s a relief.’
‘Not really.’ His face is dark. ‘Come and look at this.’
I slip on my boots and, taking my hand, he leads me outside. Carefully, we pick our way down the garden in the gloom. The water has risen much further since I last looked and the canal has burst its banks. The bottom half of the lawn is completely under water and two ducks scoot about on its turbulent surface. Both The Dreamcatcher and the Maid of Merryweather are straining at their moorings. We’ll have a good paddle to get back onto them.
‘We’ll have to move the boats, but it will have to wait,’ Danny says. ‘Hopefully, they’ll hold for now. I think we’re going to need these sandbags sooner rather than later.’
‘All hands to the pump again.’
I take Stan a quick sandwich to tide him over and check that he’s OK. The water is halfway up my wellingtons, but Stan has a solid garden wall which seems to be holding off the water, channelling it – for better or worse – towards Canal House. I tell him of our progress. ‘It�
�s still terrible out there, but Danny’s brought sandbags to fill and stuff. We’re going to get cracking now.’
‘Can I help?’ Stan says.
‘No, love. You just sit tight. This is a bit of an ad hoc dinner, but I’ll try to bring you something warm later.’
‘Don’t think about me,’ he insists. ‘Just protect yourselves and the house.’
‘Will do.’
When I get back, Lija, Rainbow and Danny are filling sandbags under the shelter of the veranda and I join them. In better circumstances it might feel a bit like playing on the beach like we did when we were kids, but now it’s just hard graft. It takes us an hour and still the water is rising. We lug them to the side of the house and Danny manoeuvres Lija’s car so we can work by the light of the headlights. The water is still lapping at the sills and I’m not sure how we’ll save the car from going under. We heave the sandbags into place, forming a low wall in an effort to divert the water away from the house and channel it down the garden. It’s taller than our effort with the rockery stones and has fewer gaps. I keep my fingers crossed.
By some miracle, it works and the little river turns in a more friendly direction. We all stand and watch it, breathing a collective sigh of relief. It’s getting late now – it must be ten o’clock – and we’re all bone-tired.
‘Time for tea!’ Rainbow says. ‘Yay!’ Even she doesn’t have the usual amount of enthusiasm in her voice.
We troop back into the kitchen, pulling off our boots and throwing our wet coats on the floor. I’ll put the clothes dryer up in the utility room in a minute. But not now. First, I need some sustenance.
Lija wanders out of the kitchen and into the other room. I hear her cry out and bolt in after her, Danny hot on my heels.
She’s standing in a puddle on the dining room floor. ‘Is coming up through floorboards,’ she wails. ‘What to do now?’
‘Oh, shit.’ Danny runs a hand through his wet hair. The water is dirty and putrid. The smell is awful. ‘Let’s stack the tables against the far wall and take the chairs upstairs.’ We all swing into action again, stacking and shifting until the main floor of the dining room is clear. The water is still seeping in, ominously. Soon the floor will be completely awash.
‘I’ll get what brooms we have. Can we sweep the water towards the French doors?’
‘We need a pump,’ Danny says. ‘The ground must be completely saturated. I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to stop this.’
‘I’ve got a mop too.’
‘Towels,’ Lija says. ‘I will get towels.’
So I boot and suit again and leg it to the garage where there’s a choice of three brooms. I grab them all and bring them back, snatching the mop and bucket on my way. Danny and Rainbow are piling towels on the floor while Lija runs upstairs to find more.
‘Here’s the mop and bucket.’ Rainbow takes it from me and sets to.
I go into the living room as no one’s checked in here yet and, to my absolute dismay, the carpet in there is sodden too. My heart drops to my welly boots. Bloody hell. What now? I feel as if we’re being assaulted on all sides. We’re used to inclement weather in England, but this is beyond a joke. The rain is of biblical proportions and is coming at us from all sides – through the roofs, the walls and now the floor.
‘Danny!’
He comes running. I stamp on the floor to show how squelchy it is. Water oozes round my boot.
He shakes his head, at a loss. ‘We can’t do anything in here other than save the furniture.’
‘There’s a pile of bricks behind the garage. Shall we bring some in so that we can put the sofa and chairs up on them? That might do it.’
‘Good idea. I’ll come with you. Rainbow and Lija can carry on mopping up in the dining room.’
So we head out into the deluge again and find the pile of bricks. We load up and haul them back into the house. When we’ve got a dozen or more, we stack them up and with much grunting and grumbling and some help from Lija and Rainbow, we lift the sofa onto the bricks. While they return to mopping and bailing out, Danny and I tackle the chairs in a similar manner.
‘Is the kitchen the same?’ Danny asks.
‘Not yet. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed that it doesn’t affect that too.’
‘It’s bound to,’ is his conclusion and, in the next hour, he’s proved right.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We’re all exhausted when first light comes creeping through the window. The only good news that I can give you is that the rain has finally abated with the coming of the dawn. We’re all sitting at the kitchen table, worn out. None of us went to bed or even grabbed a few winks and now I can hardly keep my eyes open. Exhaustion has given way to despair. We’ve worked together all night to keep the flood water under control. And we managed it. Sort of.
Currently, we’re still sitting with our feet in an inch of water. The kitchen has quarry tiles on the floor and the water came in through those too but, thankfully, they should be all right when they dry out. However, the damage to the kitchen cupboards is much worse. The water will have soaked into the base boards and they’ll need to be replaced, if not all the cupboards. The carpet in the living room is ruined, but I think we’ve salvaged the furniture. It smells damp and terrible in there. The dining room floorboards will probably need replacing, but will hold for now if we can somehow dry them out. The water covered the skirting boards so they’ll need renewing in all of the downstairs rooms too. I guess we’ll have to wait for the view of the insurance assessor. Then a shard of terror strikes my heart.
‘You are insured, aren’t you, Lija?’
She nods her head. ‘You think I am fool?’
‘I was worried for a moment. It’s easy to overlook these things.’
‘I will call them.’
‘Let me do it for you,’ I say. ‘You look shattered. Why don’t you go and lie down for a bit? There’s not much else we can do now.’
‘I have to call all customers and cancel.’ She looks close to tears.
I put my hand on her arm. ‘We should be up and running by the end of the week. We’ll all pitch in. It’s not as bad as it looks.’
Rainbow, who has been strangely quiet, stands up and says, ‘Tea. We all need more tea.’
‘I’ll second that,’ Danny says.
She bustles about making tea and she piles some leftover cake on a plate – which is a great idea as I think every one of us is too tired to consider making anything else for breakfast. Even toast seems a step too far.
When Rainbow sits down again, we all sip our tea and tuck into slightly stale Victoria sponge for breakfast. As we missed dinner last night, it tastes flipping wonderful.
‘I’ll go back to The Dreamcatcher,’ Danny says. ‘I’ll have a quick shower. I feel like I stink to high heaven.’
We probably all do. The water that comes up in a flood definitely isn’t of the clear and sparkling variety. There was stuff floating in it that I couldn’t bear to examine too closely.
‘After that, I’ll go into town and order some extra sand and bags to be delivered in case there’s any more rain,’ he adds. ‘We only just had enough last night. I think without them it could have been a whole lot worse.’
He’s probably right, but it’s hard to look on the bright side at the moment.
‘I’ll help Lija here,’ I say. ‘I’ll squeeze in a shower when we’re done.’
‘I’ll have a look at the Maid of Merryweather before I go. See if she’s sustained any more water damage.’
I’m sure she will have and that makes my heart even more sad. He pushes away from the table, gives me a stubbly kiss and then heads off.
‘OMG,’ Rainbow says when he’s gone. ‘I’m such a SKANK.’ She sniffs at herself. ‘Well ripe! POO. I bet this is what the ZOMBIES on The Walking Dead smell like. Zombies are DEAD but, like, not really DEAD.’ She rolls her eyes, wondering at the mystery of zombies.
‘You know that zombies aren’t real,�
�� I tell her.
‘SERIOUSLY?’
‘I’m pretty sure that The Walking Dead isn’t a documentary.’
‘Hahaha,’ she laughs. ‘Try telling RICK GRIMES that!’
‘Zombies aside, I can’t thank you enough. You’ve worked so hard,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve been great. We couldn’t have managed without you.’
‘Thank you,’ Lija says. ‘You are gold star employee.’
Rainbow beams with pride. ‘OMG.’ She’s gone all giggly. ‘This must be what it’s like to get an OSCAR and EVERYTHING.’
Thankfully, she doesn’t feel the need to launch into an acceptance speech.
‘Do you want to call your dad soon to come and collect you? He’ll probably be able to get through all right now.’ Though we’ve yet to check the lane. I should go to look in on Stan too but, if he’s managed to sleep, I don’t want to wake him too early.
‘Nah,’ she says. ‘I’ll stay here and clean up. If that’s all right?’
‘It would be very kind of you,’ I say. ‘Go and have a lie down for an hour. I don’t want you keeling over.’
‘Cheers,’ she says and bounces out of the room.
Despite the dark hours of the night, Rainbow is a bright spot. She makes me smile.
‘What you grinning at?’ Lija snarls.
‘Oh, Rainbow. She’s fun to have around.’
‘Is bloody annoying,’ she bats back.
‘Don’t say that. She’s been a great help.’
Lija’s expression says that she reluctantly agrees.
‘I don’t want you to worry,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll soon be up and running again. This is just a little hiccup.’
She snorts.
‘Look outside.’ The sun is trying its level best to break through the clouds. ‘It could be a lovely day. I’m sure the worst is over now.’
Lija glares at me, eyes bright with tears. ‘Worst is not fucking over, Fay Optimist.’ She wrings her hands and the tears run down her cheeks. ‘I am up duff with baby.’
Christmas Cakes and Mistletoe Nights Page 12