I handed it to Penny.
“Queer sort of vase,” she said, “it’s warm.”
“Give it to me,” Sylvia said.
We huddled round with interest as she undid layers of brown paper, then layers of tinfoil, until she came to the most succulent, mouth-watering, crisply-browned, freshly-cooked roast chicken we had ever seen.
Twelve
If the first day was hell, the first night was worse. Thanks to Barbara Basildon though, we did at least get our second wind. Like four vultures we sat amid the debris in our split-level living-room, which bore as much resemblance to the elegance we had seen in the show house as Buckingham Palace to the monkey-cage in the zoo, and attacked the chicken until nothing remained but a few sad bones.
“Three cheers for Barbara Basildon,” Peter said, wiping his greasy fingers on the nearest piece of newspaper.
Sylvia did not join in.
“Don’t be churlish, darling,” I said. “It really was a very lovely thought. Not to mention meal.”
“You will have to pay; dearly. Don’t forget she now knows where you live. I wouldn’t be surprised either if she’d got our private telephone number.”
“It’s ex-directory.”
“She’ll find out. People like that can find out anything.”
“Well, if she does we can change it. You’ve got an absolute thing about Barbara Basildon.”
“I know I’ve got a thing about Barbara Basildon.” Her voice rose. “Lots of people have things about people, you ought to know. I can’t help it if she…”
“All right, all right. Don’t get all worked up about it. Everything’s going to be fine. You’re tired and we all need a good night’s sleep. You stay there and rest for a bit till Eugénie comes back and I’m going to see what I can do with that door. We can’t sleep with a bloody great hole in the front of the house all night.”
“Barbara Basildon!” Sylvia said nastily.
“Penny,” I said, “look after your mother.”
I never had been particularly handy; not only with fuses and Rawlplugs and the like but even in my own work. I was quick enough off the mark at diagnosing strained muscles and pulled ligaments but bandaging them up was another matter. More often than not the patient got no further than the waiting-room door when the dressing I had so painstakingly applied would be flapping in the breeze. I would explain that such ministrations were really the tasks of a nurse rather than a doctor, but nobody quite believed me and I had, over the years, given bandages a wide berth, using strapping with which even a mug like me with two left thumbs couldn’t really go wrong or, declaring that it was better to “let the air get to it”, rather than get involved in yard upon yard of half-inch gauze, whose ultimate end always defeated me.
When it came to household tasks I was usually defeated from the word go by my inability to find the appropriate weapon. I had, over the years, got through half-a-dozen hammers, umpteen screwdrivers and I don’t know how many “bits” for the electric drill Sylvia had presented me with one birthday. I was what was commonly known as an untidy workman and like magic they just seemed to disappear. On this occasion, and fortunately, the builders who were in the last throes of completing our house had left a truly beautiful selection of instruments in the hall. I kicked the broken glass from around the professional looking chest in which they were laid out as neatly as a surgeon’s armoury, and selected a hammer to remove what remained of the glass panel.
Happy in my work, I smashed and crashed, removing every jagged particle, swept up the debris which deposited in the bin (how handy, I thought, to have it by the front door exactly where it was required), and found a piece of hardboard almost the right size, give or take an inch, which I prepared to nail into place when I realised I was being watched.
Two doors away, but in actual fact not more than ten yards I was prepared to swear from our own front path, a maroon uniformed chauffeur leaned against a maroon Rolls Royce. At my casual glance of interest he unfolded his arms, breathed upon the mudguard against which he had been supporting himself, polished the spot with his white pocket handkerchief and strolled towards me.
“Silly buggers!” he said.
I gaped, clutching my hardboard panel before me.
“Only moved in today, didn’t they?”
I nodded.
“Silly buggers. Doctor, i’nt ’e?”
I suddenly remembered my workman’s garb.
I nodded again.
He looked at his watch. “Overtime, I suppose?”
I agreed silently.
“Silly buggers.”
The conversation was getting monotonous.
“What sort is ’e then? Doctor I mean?”
I supported my hardboard with one hand and pushing back my cap tapped my head significantly.
“Oooh,’ he said understanding, “one o’ them.”
I was glad the message had sunk in and hoped he would pass it along the row of houses. I knew that once word got round that I was a general practitioner there would be no peace.
“Anything special?” he asked. “I mean anything special does ’e specialise in?”
I looked up and down the road furtively.
“Sex!”
He took off the maroon peaked cap and mopped his brow with the same handkerchief with which he had attended to the car. It was an invariable conversation changer. This time proved no exception.
“She’s one o’ them writers,” he said knowledgeably, watching me manoeuvre the hardboard into position. “One o’ them ole bags with a bun and beads, I s’pose.”
I hoped Sylvia wasn’t listening.
“Mine’s on the telly,” he said with nonchalant pride. “Olivia Duke. Sings with the ‘Nerve-Centres’. Reckon you’ve seen ’er.”
I nodded, my mouth full of nails.
“She’s all right. ’E’s all right too.” He leaned towards me and looked up and down the street again. “Not married!” he said with triumphant disapproval. “’E wouldn’t divorce ’er. Everyone thinks they are. Married. They’re not though. ’E’s on the stage. More in the Shakespeare line.”
“Not Lionel Duke?” I said with surprise, almost swallowing one of the nails.
“You go for that do you?” he said surprised. “I didn’t think there was many as did; not these days. Drinks. Well, they both do if it comes to that. Not that it’s any of my business. Very good to me they are; very generous. Now next door ’ere, that’s between my lot and yours, you got a very different cuppa tea…”
“Darling!” Sylvia’s voice from upstairs sailed out into the street.
I hammered a nail in loudly.
“Darling!”
I hammered louder still.
“Reckon she’s broke ’er bleeding pencil!”
“Darling!” This time the living-room window was flung open and Sylvia’s beautiful but grimy face emerged, looking me straight in the eye. “Sorry to disturb your conversation; have you gone deaf or something? It’s getting late and I was worried about Eugénie…”
When I looked round he was back leaning primly, arms folded, against the maroon Rolls Royce as if he had never moved.
Eugénie, bless her, did return, bathed, fed and ready for bed, lugged by Caroline who staggered up the stairs, a bundle under each arm.
“My! You’re in some pickle,” she said in the living-room, dumping both bundles on a tea chest. Since one of them was Eugénie, it started to cry. Sylvia picked her up with appropriate comforting murmurs concerning little diddums.
“What’s in the other bundle?” she asked Caroline. “Dirty washing?”
“It is not! Eugénie’s laundry has been taken care of. As a matter of fact Bubbles did it while we went to feed the ducks, and you will have it back clean and dry tomorrow. It was my intention to bake you some soya beans that you could just pop in the warmer but Bubbles thought you mightn’t appreciate it at this juncture…”
Thank God for Faraday, I thought.
“…so, against m
y firmest principles I stopped by the delicatessen and brought you this.” She handed me the brown paper wrapped bundle which was warm. “I guessed you’d need something good after today and wouldn’t have any left over strength to cook…”
I opened the parcel, brown paper, then tinfoil, then grease- proof until I finally came to succulent, mouth-watering, crisply-browned, freshly-cooked roast chicken.
Peter opened his mouth but I shut it with a withering glance. Penny, with great presence of mind and tact, being a woman, was kicking the bones that remained from Barbara Basildon’s chicken out of sight.
“You are a darling,” Sylvia said, kissing Caroline. “An absolute pet and we love you. We’re all absolutely starving and the minute I’ve tucked up Eugénie we shall absolutely devour that bird. You think of everything.”
“I just guessed you’d be hungry,” Caroline said, and blowing us a kiss was gone.
At half past eleven, bathed and in pyjamas, I had not as yet located my dressing-gown, and feeling reasonably human once again I begged Sylvia to come to bed.
“You can’t possibly do everything in one day,” I said. “It will take us weeks and weeks to get sorted out. You’ve achieved quite enough for today and I insist you pack it in.”
For once she didn’t argue. Her arms were loaded with dirty washing. “I’m just going to put this load in the machine,” she said. “It’s automatic and switches itself off, then I’m turning in. I’m just as exhausted as you are. And while I’m doing this you might stick those chicken bones in the dustbin. They are making a peculiar smell in the living-room.”
Anything to oblige I stumbled into the living-room where as yet we had no light and forgot, although Miss Pollock had emphasised the fact many a time and oft, that it was split level.
“Did you drop something, darling?” Sylvia called from the laundry downstairs. “There was the most frightful crash!”
I sat on the floor swearing and rubbing my barked shins. When I finally located the chicken bones Sylvia was on her way up to bed, the automatic washing machine whirring merrily away in the laundry.
“What an age!” she said. “What on earth have you been doing?”
I crossed her on the stairs, silently, and opened the front door onto the moonlit façade of Church Row Estate.
At precisely the same moment the front door of the neighbouring house opened and a pyjama-clad figure, bearing a similar parcel to my own, stepped out.
We stared at each other across the Bay Tree. He was the first to recover.
“Pilkington!” he said. “Lord Cecil. You’re the doctor. I know all about you from Miss Pollock.”
We shook hands and took the lids off our respective dustbins. Mine made a horrible clanking noise.
“My God!” Pilkington said. “They’ll never allow that!”
“Allow what?”
“Metal bins. Too much ruddy noise. Mine’s polythene yer see. Regulation.”
“Regulation?”
“Landlord’s. Everything’s ruddy regulation. No pets, polythene dustbins…”
“It’s brand new,” I objected.
“Can’t help it, old chap. Should’ve read the small writing. Between you, me, and the gate-post, not that there is a gate-post, not having a ruddy gate, I’m browned off with the whole lark. I mean, look at me in me pyjamas putting the ruddy rubbish out at midnight like some sneak thief. In the country I never knew we even had a dustbin; never even knew we had any ruddy rubbish for that matter; never even ran me own bath. First the ruddy roof fell in, then the fire in the West Wing, no insurance, couldn’t afford it, and the ruddy servants all pushing off, wasn’t worth the candle. Diana adores it.”
“So does Sylvia.”
“Ruddy dolls’ house! Me kennels were bigger.” He replaced his lid carefully, and silently.
I tried to do likewise.
“Have to do something about that in the morning.”
I promised I would and said good night. I had one foot inside the front door when he said:
“Can’t leave it like that, old chap!”
“What?”
“Yer Bay Tree.”
He was busy moving his tub of geraniums or whatever they were into place in front of the dustbin.
Sighing I heaved the Bay Tree into its original position.
“Landlord’s regulations?” I said, yawning.
“No. Wife’s. They go potty!”
I fell into bed and told Sylvia, who was already there, about our illustrious neighbours.
“How exciting,” she said. “Was he wearing his tiara?”
“No. Pyjamas. Go to sleep.”
She put her arms round me. “Isn’t it exciting? We’ve actually moved. Our first night in Bay Tree House.”
“Tremendously,” I said, kissing her. “Now go to sleep.”
“You do buy me lovely houses,” she said drowsily.
I closed my eyes and the next moment we both sat bolt upright in the moonlight as the bells of St Saviour’s Church belted out the witching hour. Sylvia avoided my eyes and I lay down and closed them once again.
I dreamed of roast chickens. I was cooking one and shut the oven door what I thought was gently. It closed with an almighty crash and, wide awake, bolt upright once again, I realised it was a car and that I was not dreaming.
“Somebody’s come to call,” Sylvia said, clutching me.
“What, at this hour?”
I looked at my watch. It was one-thirty. We waited.
“He was fabulous! Wasn’t he absolutely fabulous, Georgie?”
“It’s Olivia,” I said, “Olivia Duke. She’s on the telly.”
“I know she’s on the telly. But what’s she doing calling on us at this hour of the night… I mean morning?”
“She isn’t calling on us,” I said patiently. “She lives two houses down. It just sounds as if she’s calling on us because the houses are so close together.”
“Point taken,” Sylvia said, curling up again. “A Duke and a Pop Star, it’s quite exciting, isn’t it?”
“A Lord,” I corrected her. “Quite. Particularly in the middle of the night.”
We listened, wide awake now, while Georgie, protesting in stage whispers, was prevailed upon to come in for a night-cap. With bated breath we waited, as I guessed the entire Church Row Estate was doing, for his capitulation. We then waited for the slam of the front door; then the slam of the car door and its three point turn and departure. Into the silence I prayed that Georgie would stay the night.
We settled down again; almost.
“Sylvia,” I said. “What’s that noise?”
“What noise?”
“There’s a funny noise. Listen! If you removed your head from the bedclothes you might…”
Wearily she sat up and listened. “I can’t hear a thing. Now shut up and…my God!”
“What is it?” I said as she dived out of bed.
“The washing machine is still washing! It should have turned itself off hours ago!”
I heard her hurl herself down the stairs and shut my eyes again thinking Sylvia could cope with this one by herself.
I was wrong.
“Darling!”
“Just turn the ruddy thing off,” I shouted. “The main switch.”
“No, darling, please come!”
Recognising the urgency in her voice I got out of bed.
In the hall she was standing up to her knees in water.
Thirteen
“There is one consolation,” Sylvia said at three a.m. as we wearily mopped the last drops of water from the floor.
I waited, mop poised, in eloquent silence, to hear what it was.
“The living-room isn’t on the ground floor! It really is quite a clever idea when you come to think of it. If the living-room had been down here in the normal place and the washing machine had overflowed as it has, the living-room would be absolutely devastated, we might even have had the carpet down, we will soon, and it might very well happen again and just
think of the mess it would have made. As it is the only damage is down here and there isn’t really very much damage so you see…”
I removed the bucket from her hand. “You’re overtired, Sweetie. You go to bed and I’ll just get rid of these things.”
Like a sleepwalker she handed me the bucket and mounted the first stair. “So it is a good idea, really, isn’t it, Sweetie,” she pleaded, “I mean having the living-room on the first floor?”
I could se she needed humouring before she burst into tears from fatigue. I was not very far off myself. “It’s a splendid idea. An absolutely splendid idea. And if anyone ever showed me a house on two floors again I should think they were mad; completely mad.”
She disappeared up the stairs and I was just about to replace the mop and bucket in the laundry when I heard a tapping on the front door, at least what was the hardboard and should have been the front door.
Hallucinations, I thought. Overtired. I took one more step. The knocking came again. This time more persistent and accompanied by a loud “psssst” through the letter box.
I put down the bucket and opened the front door.
“I’m Olivia Duke!”
“I know. I’ve seen you on television.”
“I really am frightfully sorry to trouble you, but I saw the light and thought since you were still up you might be able to help.”
“In what way?”
“It’s Georgie. He’s pooped out. Just pooped out like that.” She snapped her fingers. “He wasn’t feeling too good, but we thought it was just Georgie, he’s frightfully neurotic, they usually are you know, but now he’s absolutely…”
“Pooped out.”
“That’s it! So we wondered if you could possibly… I know it’s rather a cheek but the light was on…”
“You want me to call the ambulance?”
“Good God, no! Georgie will die. We wondered if you could just come and have a quick look at him…”
I picked up the bucket again. “Well, I’m only the plumber you see…”
“Oh no, darling, I saw you move in, anyway, my sister-in-law is one of your patients, she lives…”
I put down the bucket and picked up my case, which had a tidemark halfway up it from the flood. Not troubling to roll down my pyjama legs I walked out into the night and along Church Row.
Practice Makes Perfect Page 10