by Marie Browne
‘Can you pass me that big screwdriver?’ He flapped his hand vaguely in the direction of the toolbox, never taking his eyes off the sink.
I passed it to him and he began digging out the silicon. An hour later he admitted defeat and, using a jigsaw, basically cut out a rectangular section of wall with the sink still attached. We made quite a few attempts to remove that sink over the next few months and were defeated every time. Later, when Geoff was looking for a piece of wood to form the base of Sam’s new wardrobe, he re-used that wall. One day, someone is going to dismantle the wardrobe and wonder why in hell there is an upside-down sink still firmly attached beneath the floor.
It occurred to me at this point that maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as we had expected. When discussing the whole ‘let’s do up a boat thing’, we had expected to be able to take walls out and put walls in and just generally move things around and have it finished in about six months – it was certainly never going to take more than a year. We had allotted one day to remove this bathroom and now, at the end of that time, we had managed to remove one wall (that hadn’t been attached to anything much), a shower tray and a sink. I had a nasty feeling that this was just a taste of things to come.
We stood in our dust-ridden gap and surveyed the damage,
‘Oh well,’ I turned to Geoff with a grin, ‘at least that’s probably going to be the worst thing to get out.’
He pursed his lips, looking at me with a very odd expression, then, very gently, reached up, grabbed my face and turned it toward the outside wall, ‘No, that’s going to be the worst thing to get out.’ He let go of my head and, taking a step back, hunkered down on his heels and stared into our former bathroom. I stayed where I was, confused. I couldn’t see what I was supposed to be looking at, or at least nothing that I would class as a major potential problem, just a little, round porthole and an expanse of wall.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ I asked eventually.
Geoff sighed. ‘You’re looking too high,’ he said, ‘look down.’
I did. ‘What, the toilet? That’s just bolted onto that step, you can see the big bolts holding it down and look ...’ I stepped forward and grasped the toilet bowl and gave it a good wiggle. ‘It moves. I don’t think it’s cemented down, what’s the problem?’
‘It’s not the toilet, you twit.’ Geoff stepped forward and gave the step a kick; it made a hollow, metallic bonging sound. ‘It’s the tank that the toilet’s attached to.’
I must have been having a stupid day because I still couldn’t see a problem. ‘It’s not that big,’ I said, following its line with my foot. ‘Look, it stops here, that makes it about one foot deep by two foot wide by two foot long, what’s the problem?’
Geoff rolled his eyes, grasped me by the arm and gently propelled me along the corridor and into the next room, then pointed under the bed.
‘Have a look under there,’ he suggested.
Shrugging, I got down on hands and knees and peered into the dank recess under the bed. Even after my eyes adjusted, it took a moment to work out what was lurking under there. When I finally grasped what I was looking at, I was really confused.
‘Why is there another tank under there?’
Geoff looked heavenwards. ‘It’s not another tank, it’s the same bloody one. It comes through the wall, and carries on under this bed.’
‘But ...’ I spluttered, getting down and having another look, ‘that’s huge – it’s got to be eight foot long.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Geoff gave me a condescending look. ‘Eight foot indeed – you never have had much of an eye for lengths, have you?’
I looked up at him and made a conscious effort to keep my mouth shut as a couple of ‘length’ jokes ran through my mind. ‘Well, how big is it then?’ I asked.
Geoff grinned at me. ‘Seven foot ten,’ he said, and then ran like hell before I could find something to throw.
We decided that the only way to even attempt to get this thing out was to remove absolutely everything around it. So, with that hastily constructed plan in mind, we de-constructed the rest of the bathroom. We removed the plumbing for the shower, the shower itself and the bed in the next room (which at least gave us some more free space to stack our seemingly never-ending range of boxes). By the time we had finished, there was a huge tank with a toilet perched on top of it, looking slightly embarrassed to be so revealed.
Lounging in the corridor, with a cup of tea, we contemplated this strange modern sculpture; I was just about to comment that we could probably sell it to the Tate when a horrible thought occurred to me.
‘What’s under that toilet?’ I asked Geoff.
He frowned, ‘The tank.’ He pointed at it.
‘Yes, I know but what happens when the toilet comes off? Is there just a hole that leads directly into the tank?’
Geoff’s frown deepened. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what did you think there was going to be?’
‘So, let me get this straight,’ I took a deep breath. ‘We take that toilet off and there is just an open hole, and we have to get this tank up on end and manoeuvre it up those steps and outside with a load of … poo slopping around, is that right?’
Geoff laughed. ‘No, I cleaned this tank out as best I could before we left Braunston and we haven’t used it since. Obviously I couldn’t get it completely clean – that would be impossible – but it should be OK to move.’
‘Right ...’ I wasn’t completely convinced, but obviously there was nothing for it but to give it a go.
Geoff removed the toilet. It came off so easily that we just knew the next stage was going to be a complete flaming nightmare. We stood at either end of it (Geoff had the end with the hole in it – I had made sure of that) and, taking a couple of deep breaths, reached down, grasped the tank and heaved ... Good grief I had never felt anything so heavy in my life. Geoff managed to get his end off the ground by two inches, my end didn’t move at all. Oh dear, oh dear.
After an hour, which consisted of mostly grunting, straining, scuffling, sweating and swearing, we had finally both moved to the same end of the tank and were inching it around the boat to the tune of ‘1 – 2 – 3 LIFT, Argh! Thump! 1 – 2 – 3 LIFT Argh!! Thump!’
We had managed to get it diagonally, widthways across the boat with one end perched precariously on the first of the steps and the other end wedged solidly into the wall on the opposite side of the boat, and there it stuck solid. The tank was actually seven foot, six inches long, and the width of the boat was seven foot. We were in deep trouble.
It was like some horrible antique comedy sketch. With the tank wedged against the wall, we couldn’t move it back, we couldn’t stand it up on end because there wasn’t the headroom, we couldn’t stand either side of it and lift it because the steps were in the way, and we couldn’t climb over it and lift it from the outside because it was just too damned heavy. We were completely at a loss.
It’s one of those moments where the boating community shows its true colours; these people are absolute diamonds. Don’t think for one minute that they won’t laugh at you when you are in trouble, because they will, uproariously and hysterically, but even while laughing, they will always pitch in and help.
We had only met our next-door neighbour on two occasions and everybody had been polite and nice and that had been about it. We had been a bit worried about living next door to Steve because everybody referred to him as the ‘party boat’, which did not bode well for a quiet life, but so far we hadn’t heard a peep.
Steve was off work due to having damaged his back, but he limped past at the point where the swearing was loudest, had sized up the situation in one glance and, grinning, enquired whether we were having fun or would we like some help. He then piled in, bad back and all, and gave us a hand. There was a lot more swearing, pushing and lifting and a fair few ‘ouches’, but eventually the wretched thing lay on the grass outside. Looking back at the boat I noticed that with the removal of the concrete shower tray and t
his huge monstrosity, she had developed a definite list to the right; obviously Geoff would need to do something about that pretty soon, at least before we took anything else out. I had horrible images of her just rolling over.
With the tank finally evicted, we took stock of what was left behind and, unfortunately, although not unexpectedly, there was far more damage than we had originally expected. Over the years, water dripping out of the shower and probably other sources of wetness, upon which I don’t want to dwell, had seeped through and rotted the floor beyond repair. The only course of action was to replace it. At that point I gave up counting both time and money as it was horribly obvious that we were going to end up way over budget on both.
Chapter Sixteen
It’s a Floating Bathtub –
No, Really, It’s a Bathtub!
I HAVE TO ADMIT that taking out two bathrooms (luckily we only had to remove one pump-out tank, the other one was staying in use) had taken far, far longer than we had anticipated. What with puttering about putting in a new floor, blocking up holes and other such important (prevaricating) jobs, summer had become a cherished memory and we were now well into October.
On a crisp, chilly, autumn morning, with the central heating yet again refusing to work properly, despite me giving it its early morning kicking, we had finally finished building – or rather re-building – our first new room: our beautiful bathroom. This had been created from the one bathroom we had left and half a cabin; the original wall between them had been removed to create a large open space that stretched the width of the boat. The original cholera farm had been banished to the local tip, and a hygienic new sink unit, lots of shiny new shelves and a wonderful rainfall shower had been installed. With another new floor in place (both bathrooms had been similarly soaked through) and all the other bits and pieces in, we had only to situate, fix and plumb in the bath and we would be finished.
One morning, just as I was heading out to Tesco, once again leaving Geoff to swear at the plumbing, he called me into the bathroom.
‘Sit on the loo,’ he said, pointing toward the toilet, balancing on top of the pump-out tank.
‘What?’
‘Sit on the loo.’ He gave me a gentle push toward the tank. ‘Just sit down and tell me if you feel there’s enough space.’
I climbed on to the box we were using as a step and sat down on the closed toilet seat. ‘Enough space for what?’ I looked around, then leant on the wall. ‘It’s a bit cramped I suppose, but come on, what do you expect?’
‘Hmm.’ Geoff helped me down from the tank, then stood staring at the wall. ‘You off then?
‘Yes.’ I watched him walk around the wall and listened to him tapping it gently on the other side. ‘I’ll only be about an hour – do you want anything?’
‘Mars Bars,’ came the prompt reply. ‘See you later.’
I shook my head at his odd behaviour and left. It was actually about two hours later that I arrived home. Having run into one of the other marina residents in town, we had decided to go for coffee.
‘Hello!’ I called as I dumped the shopping.
‘Here,’ Geoff called. ‘Come and sit on this loo.’
‘Déjà vu much?’ I muttered at him as I climbed back onto the toilet. I sat and stared at him. ‘What were you expecting – that I’d have lost a couple of inches off the shoulders while shopping?’
Geoff grinned. ‘Yes, actually, doesn’t it feel better now?’
I stared at him for a moment, wondering if he had completely lost it, then, sighing, I looked at the wall. How odd, it did seem further away, not very much, but certainly enough to make getting to the toilet-roll holder a lot easier.
Geoff’s grin got wider.
‘How did you do this?’ I twisted around on the toilet seat.
‘I moved the wall three inches to the left,’ he leant on the wall. ‘It’s surprising what a difference it makes.’
‘How did you move an entire wall?’ I got up from the toilet and walked around the other side.
‘It’s really easy,’ Geoff laughed. ‘All you do is unscrew those battens, then just push it and, hey presto, the whole wall moves. Get it to where you want it, screw the battens back down in the new position and suddenly you have more space. He rubbed his shoulder. ‘It would have been easier if you’d been here though. Trying to hold a six-foot piece of wood up and then screw it in place on your own isn’t easy. It fell on me twice before I wedged it up with ladders.’
He showed me how the side partitions were fitted into the boat – it was quite ingenious really, the wall was one piece of wood shaped to fit under the gunnels, battens were screwed to each edge and then screwed straight to the side of the boat, the floor and the ceiling. When we had taken out the first bathroom, we had only had to remove the front and that had been easy; I hadn’t realised the whole boat was done in the same way, and it opened up a whole new set of possibilities of the size of rooms.
‘Ha, you couldn’t do that in a house, could you,’ I laughed. ‘What on earth is all that?’
In the empty space earmarked for the new bath lay a good eight foot of garden hose. It snaked backwards and forwards, fixed with little hoops to the bathroom floor, and had one end attached to a small contraption screwed to the floor, from which ran another small piece of hose and disappeared into the outside wall.
‘... and what’s this thing?’ I tapped the little silver thing with my foot. It had ‘Whale Gulper’ etched across it.
‘That’s my new pump.’ Geoff tiptoed across the hosepipe, being very careful not to disturb any of it. ‘This is great; it can run dry and won’t go bang.’
‘What’s all the hosepipe for?’ I nudged the snaking hose. Geoff immediately slapped my foot, fed up with me kicking things.
‘That’s to get the water out of the bath. Do you remember all that black gunge in the shower? Well, that’s because the old pump couldn’t get all the water out and it just ended up sitting there.’
I wrinkled my nose and nodded – I still had nightmares about the black slime in the bottom of the shower tray.
‘Well, if you don’t have all this hose, you end up with a small amount of water left in the bath every time you empty it. The hose acts like a sump.’
‘What?’
Geoff sighed and grabbed a watering can from the side. He lifted the loose end which had a funnel attached to it. ‘This end will be attached to the bath.’ He began pouring water into the hose until he couldn’t get any more in. ‘So, there’s your bath full of water.’ He waved at the wall, ‘Flick that switch, can you?’
I did so and immediately the pump began to make a distinctive, rhythmic, gulping noise. It sounded like a darts player downing a quick tenth pint before his next game. With every gulping sound, water bubbled up out of the funnel and, with a ‘blurp’, exploded all over the bathroom floor.
‘Oh, that’s good.’ I threw a towel to Geoff who quickly mopped up the tide.
‘Yeah, it does that – whatever you do, don’t have the bath too full.’ He held the funnel upright and we watched as the water disappeared into the pipe. I could hear a faint ‘splosh, splosh’ and the water evacuated the boat via one of our many outlets. After only a minute or so the tone of the pump changed and Geoff waved at the switch again. ‘That’s it, the pipe’s empty. Turn it off, can you?’
‘Do we have to go through this every time we want to empty the bath?’ I looked at the now silent pump. ‘Why can’t we just pull the plug and let it drain away? This rigmarole is going to take bloody ages.’
‘Marie,’ Geoff looked at me with a slight frown. ‘The bottom of the bath is well below the water level. If you’ve found a way to make water run uphill please let me know, because we can negate all the laws of physics and make a great deal of money.’
I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘Nobody likes a smart-arse, you know.’ I went to put the shopping away.
Putting the bath in last hadn’t been ideal, as there were just too many opportunities for some
thing to go horribly wrong, but we needed the space that the bath would occupy to move around while working, so it had been sitting out on the bank for the last two weeks. Geoff, unhappy with putting the bath in as the last item, had measured, re-measured and re-re-measured, so was as confident as he could be that the bath would fit perfectly within its allotted outline. I felt he was being a complete ‘old woman’ about the whole thing and was supremely confident that the bath would fit in the gap.
Oh yes, we had thought of everything and, patting ourselves on the back, we manoeuvred the bath through the double doors at the bow and carried it smugly down the boat (I was just wondering where I had put my secret stash of bubble bath, a good hour in a hot bath with a large glass of wine and possibly half a pound of Thornton’s finest would really hit the spot) and I was just about to ask Geoff how long it would take to plumb it in, when we hit a wall. This was not a metaphorical wall; this was a Geoff-built, over-engineered, bloody great, double-skin, wooden wall, complete with sliding door that, very cleverly, slid away out of sight on opening. It was the door that had stopped us dead, as it didn’t quite slide all the way into the wall, needing a little bit left out to be able to grab it and close it. It was the ‘little bit’ that had changed the dimensions of the doorway.
Geoff looked around the bath to see why we had stopped and a look of absolute horror dawned on his face.
‘That door ... wasn’t there,’ he muttered.
When? This morning? Just now? When wasn’t that door there? I was confused by the existential mutterings emanating from my suddenly sweating and goggly-eyed husband.
‘That door wasn’t there,’ he said again and putting his end of the bath down, squeezed past me and began measuring up the dimensions of the bath and then the dimensions of the doorway – this did not look good.
Sure enough, the only way that bath was going to make it through was if the wall was completely removed or we could shrink the bath. As shrinking the bath would need an Aztec Shaman and suggesting that the wall should be removed would put my husband on an immediate course of Valium, we turned around and dragged the wretched bath back up the length of the boat, through the front doors and out onto the gangplank.