Narrow Escape

by Marie Browne

  We finally got back to the boats mid-afternoon. Rob thanked me again and again and then crawled off to sleep in his van. I noticed that a lot of the cars had now disappeared. A couple of people that I didn’t recognise wandered over and asked me how he was. When I told them that he was sleeping it all off in his van they wandered over to hammer on the sides. I had to laugh. Sometimes, having fun-loving friends can be a double-edged sword.

  One surprising revelation that came with my forced trip to the hospital was that I missed it. My redundancy had come into force on Monday the second of July and I’d taken a short temporary contract with a medical drug company. However, after only a couple of weeks spent working in the ‘real world’, I found that hated it. It didn’t take much for me to realise that when the contract ended I was going to make a concerted effort to get back to the rush and stress of the hospital.

  I planned to start applying for NHS jobs as soon as possible but, by the end of July, the sun had come out. It looked as though the school summer holidays were actually going to be rain-free and, as we had a long list of ‘dry’ jobs that had to be done, the importance of getting a job faded with the promise of barbecues and long days in the sunshine.

  Chapter Eight:

  Hay Fever, Blue Skies, Barbecues And Lollies;

  Plus Thieves And Bugs And Runaway Brollies.

  “Mum?” Charlie stepped into the boat and dumped her leather jacket and helmet on top of poor Mortimer.

  “Uh huh?” I was holding on to Sam’s face with one hand, trying to administer his anti-pollen eye drops. This never went well as he always managed to blink at the wrong time and the whole procedure was one big tussle.

  “I’m going into town to look for a new job,” Charlie said.

  “You’re what?” I looked up and Sam, now that my attention was no longer on him, squirmed out from under my hand and high-tailed it up the boat. He locked himself in his bedroom and all we could hear was a volley of sneezes that just seemed to go on for ever.

  Charlie watched him go with a frown and then shook her head. “He doesn’t get any better each year, does he?” she said.

  “No,” I put the cap back on the eye drops and turned to wash my hands, there always seemed to be more on my hands than in Sam’s eyes. “He doesn’t.” I was sure I’d forgotten something and then it came to me. “What did you say about your job?”

  Charlie winced. “I need a new job, a proper job, I can’t afford to keep this one, it just doesn’t pay enough.”

  “That’s because it’s not a job, it’s an apprenticeship.” I had to keep reminding her of this but every so often she would go off on a major rant.

  “Well, it’s not fair,” she said. “I do just as much at that shop if not more than others that are getting paid twice what I am.”

  I have to admit I agreed with her, she went in early to open up, she worked through lunch and she often worked six days a week. It wasn’t fair. “You haven’t quit already, have you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not stupid, Mum.”

  No, she wasn’t, but I had the feeling she was going to be disappointed if she expected another job to just fall out of the blue.

  I shrugged. “Well, see what you can find and then think long and hard before you decide to do anything.”

  She nodded and, grabbing all her gear, disappeared out of the boat.

  I watched her go and then picked up the eye drops again. “Sam! Come out of there,” I shouted.

  All I managed to get in reply was wet sneezing and a general feeling of negativity.

  Five minutes later and Charlie was back, she looked worried. “Mum has Geoff moved my bike?”

  “I don’t think so.” I tried to ignore the slow rolling in the pit of my stomach. “You didn’t get in until late last night and he was gone by six this morning, I don’t think he’d have had time.”

  We both stared at each other.

  Charlie’s face fell as she realised what had happened to her beloved bike. “Oh no,” she said.

  I checked with Drew that he hadn’t moved it for a joke. He looked quite affronted by the whole idea. After a moment he laughed and agreed that it was something he would do but on this occasion was completely innocent. I then spent the next two hours dealing with the police and the insurance company. Luckily the bike was well insured and Charlie had locked it up with a big chain and padlock. We knew this because we found the chain, still with its lock in place, lying in the grass. The links had been severed by some very large bolt cutters.

  Drew came down to see us as we were scouting around in the grass Nancy Drewing for clues. “Oh damn,” he said. “Another one gone?” He looked over toward his own bike still locked up and safe in the car park.

  “Another one?” I’d heard that we’d had night visitors but they’d been chased off by security.

  He nodded. “So far there’s been two cars broken into, two bikes have gone missing, and a couple of batteries and some other boat bits and pieces. We know who’s doing it but so far we haven’t managed to get hold of them. We’ve told the police but unless we can give them a registration number there’s nothing they can do.”

  “So who are they?” I knew we’d always been targets for thefts but I hadn’t realise it had become so prevalent.

  “Two middle-aged blokes in an open-back lorry,” Drew said. “There’s a sign on the side that says Countrysomething Gardening Services.” He shook his head. “We keep seeing them turn up but when anyone approaches them, they jump into the van and leave.”

  “Well, if they have a name on the side of their truck surely they can be traced through that,” I said.

  “We’ve tried and the police have tried and there is a company with that name but they’re totally legitimate and I should think they’d be quite annoyed that someone was using their name.” He stared out over the flood defences and rubbed his wrist. Both wrists and hands were now out of plaster but were still giving him a lot of pain. “Obviously they’ve painted that on the side of their truck to look as if they’re supposed to be here. I’m in no fit state to chase them down,” he said.

  Drew had been acting as part-time security for the marina for a little while now. He was fully qualified and had previously held a position as a prison officer so he was good at what he did. “And it’s only going to get worse,” he said.

  I looked up from where I was watching Charlie viciously kicking the clumps of grass as she stamped around in an angry circle swearing sulphurously. “Why?”

  “I’ve just been told that security is being done away with here,” he said. “They’ve decided that we don’t need it. More cost-cutting I’m afraid.”

  I waved a hand at the empty space that had once been the proud possessor of Charlie’s bike. “Well we obviously flaming well do,” I said.

  Drew shrugged. “Not my call any more.”

  I suddenly realised that this meant he had lost his job and subsided. It wasn’t his fault and there was never any lights or real security here, he couldn’t patrol all night long.

  “Well, I’m sorry about your job,” I said.

  He gave me his normal grin. “I think, when I’ve healed properly, I’m going to back to being a mechanic,” he said. “At least I’ll be able to work for someone that doesn’t keep changing their mind, putting up new and petty rules and regulations and actually knows what they’re doing.”

  I nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

  The theft of Charlie’s motorcycle affected us all. Instead of the lazy mornings I had been enjoying I now had to leap out of bed to take her to the bus. She was furious with the whole thing and her social life was in ruins. The whole situation made her very tetchy and difficult to live with.

  Most of August was relaxed and enjoyable. Apart from Sam struggling with hay fever and Charlie moaning about her lack of transport we indulged ourselves in sunbathing, lots of barbecues, and even managed a week by the sea.

  As August came to an end and the new school year loomed ever closer, I su
ddenly realised that this month had been the whole of our summer. We’d been so busy enjoying the warmth that we hadn’t actually managed to get any of the jobs on our list completed. I looked at our rusty, tarp-covered wreck of a boat and sighed.

  Sitting on the steps with a coffee and a book, I studied Minerva. She really was becoming a very sad sight. Although the inside was coming along nicely, the outside made her look like the wreck of the Hesperus.

  Rust ran in long lines down the length of the roof where the water pooled and her once deep red paint was now pale and dull. Geoff came to join me, as usual he was carrying a cup of tea.

  “I was just looking at our paint job,” I said.

  He glanced up and then shrugged. “Modern Art.”

  I snorted.

  “I think we will call her Boat with the Blues,” he said.

  “I think it would be more correct to call her ‘Boat That Once had the Reds but has Now Faded to Rust and Holes.” I shook my head at him. “She honestly looks terrible.”

  “We should have painted her while we could, but the summer’s sort of slipped away from us, hasn’t it?” he said.

  I nodded. “In our defence,” I said, “We’ve really only had a few weeks of decent weather and I didn’t really want Sam’s summer holiday to be spent working on the boat.”

  We fell silent and stared at her. Apart from the desperate need for a paint job, all the wood needed replacing: The doors, the hatches and the overhead sliding hatch. I told myself that we’d have needed more than six weeks of sunshine to do all that but, in all honesty, I would have been lying to myself. What we actually needed was a better work ethic, there was no one to blame but ourselves.

  “I wonder what it would cost if we had her stripped back and re-painted professionally.” Geoff was obviously pondering aloud but I decided to find out. For the next hour I hit the net and then made a couple of phone calls.

  I didn’t come back with good news. “Lowest quote, eight thousand,” I said. “Highest quote was ten thousand plus.”

  Geoff looked gloomy. “Well, we’re not going to find that down the back of the sofa, are we?” he said.

  “Nope.”

  Geoff shrugged. “Well I know one job I can do which will make life much better when the winter comes back,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m finally going to take out all those windows, reseal and reseat them,” he said.

  Well I couldn’t really argue with that. Apart from the one he’d already reseated, every window had been leaking intermittently since we got Minerva and I was getting sick of wet beds and soggy clothes. I looked up at the sound of a mower in the distance. “Oh for goodness’ sake. You weren’t thinking of doing it today were you?”

  Geoff nodded with a grin and then his face fell as I pointed out the mower wallowing along the top of the flood defences toward us. “But it’s flaming Saturday.” It was almost a howl.

  The mowing interfered with almost everything. As soon as you started a job, the mower would turn up. Sitting out in the garden underneath an umbrella with a long drink and a book, the mower would turn up. Having a barbecue and lazing about with family, the blasted mower would turn up.

  On one spectacular occasion I had been asked to take part in a television programme about changing lives. Just outside the boat was the family, the producer, a camera man, a sound man, the producer’s assistant, and the actress comedienne who was introducing the show. Into all this the mower turned up. He took one look at all the people, the huge camera, the vast fluffy boom mike thing and, ignoring it all completely, carried on mowing. Eventually, the camera man, who had muscles on his muscles, put the camera down and had a quiet word. The mower shut down while the gardener made a phone call.

  Climbing down from his mower he walked toward me holding out his phone. “Wants a word …” he muttered.

  “Who does?” I tried to ask him but, after pushing his phone into my hand, he wandered back toward his machine.

  I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “What are you doing?” Strident, clipped tones that I knew only too well blasted one of my ear drums across my brain and into the other one.

  This was nothing to do with her and I was tired, irritable and fed-up, I hadn’t eaten and it was beginning to rain. “Sorry, who is this?” I said.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Oh hello,” I gave Mrs Owner a cheery greeting. “I hope you don’t mind but your lawnmower man has been asked if he could start down the other end of the line because he is rather loud.”

  She ignored me. “He said there was a film crew there,” she said. “What are they doing there without my permission?”

  “But we did get permission.” I was very happy to be able to contradict her. “We informed the office that this was going on and we were told that it was fine.”

  Silence … then: “What are they filming?” She sounded quite worried.

  “The boat, the family.” I couldn’t help myself. “All sorts of things, they want to know what it’s like living on a boat and how we all deal with it.”

  “I should have been told,” she repeated.

  “We did tell you.” I could also repeat myself when necessary.

  “You didn’t tell me.” Her voice had gone up a couple of octaves.

  “You weren’t here when we informed the office.” I tried to sound reasonable.

  “I should have been told,” she snapped down the phone.

  “Yes, you should.” I could only agree with her. “Anyway, we’re nearly finished here but I do need to go before it starts to rain, I’ll talk to you soon.”

  There was a long silence and then she said, “Right.” At this point the phone went dead. I looked at it as Geoff wandered over to see what the problem was. “How very rude.” I couldn’t help myself, I smiled a lot for the rest of the day and the mowing was started down the other end.

  The owners never spoke to me again. I can’t say I was devastated.

  The insurance company was alarmingly efficient with the claim for Charlie’s bike and before long a nice cheque appeared. Charlie opened it when it arrived and frowned. It was for much more than we’d claimed for, which didn’t seem likely at all.

  Despite Charlie’s desperate desire to grab the cheque, pay it into the bank and keep quiet about any possible mistake they might have made. I decided that I really didn’t want them coming back to me and asking for half of it back so I called them.

  Evidently the amount was correct. We’d bought the bike from a young man who had used it on his father’s farm for just riding around the fields. Drew had helped restore it and it was a rather rare import. The cost of replacing it far outweighed what we had paid for it and the insurance company, after doing their homework, had coughed up enough to replace the bike like for like.

  Charlie however, had no such plans and for once came up with an idea that made perfect sense.

  “Winter’s coming,” she said. “I don’t want to ride a bike through another winter like last year. I think I’m going to take my driving test with the money.”

  Well I certainly couldn’t argue with that. Living out in the country I always felt that having reliable transport was one of the most important things we could have. Learning to drive was expensive and time consuming but she would only ever have to do it once in her entire life. It didn’t matter if she didn’t have a car, she could drive mine but once she passed she would never have to take the test again. Well, until she was over seventy and that seemed a long, long way away.

  “Well you’d better find yourself a driving instructor then,” I said.

  She nodded. “How long do you think it will take before I can take my test?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, but I would think you should be able to take it within six months.”

  Charlie looked aghast. “SIX MONTHS?” She shook her head. “I’m not going to wait six months,” she said.

  I had to laugh. “Six
months isn’t that long,” I said. Some people take years to pass a driving test but I wasn’t going to tell her that, she’d probably cry.

  “Well it’s too long for me.” She marched into the boat and I could see her starting up the lap top.

  I settled down in the sunshine with a book but unfortunately my relaxation time was cut short. It was very irritating, the wind had got up and it was difficult to hold on to the pages.

  By the time Charlie came back the wind had really picked up and it was getting cold. The clouds had rolled in and the sun had disappeared. The only good thing about it was that the wind had blown all the insects away. It was a great year for wasps and for the last two weeks, going out in the garden with a sugary drink had become tantamount to suicide. I’d taken to throwing apples along the top of the flood defences in an effort to give the little stingers something else to concentrate on. It hadn’t worked. En masse they had made short work of the fruit and had then come looking for something to wash it down with. As Charlie stepped out of the boat I was just trying to lower the sun shade that took pride of place over the picnic table. I wished I’d done it earlier.

  “Can you give me a hand with this?” I called her over as the big blue umbrella threatened to lift me off my feet and deposit me in the river.

  Looking back I’m really not sure how much help I expected her to be. Standing all of five foot two and sporting less fat than a sparrow’s kneecap, Charlie really wasn’t in any position to try and take control of a large and cavorting umbrella.

  With her holding onto the central pole I fumbled with the catch, desperately trying to unlock it and lower it to a folded and less enthusiastic state. A particularly vicious gust of wind ripped the umbrella upward and I let go as one of the wooden spars snapped and gave me a swift rap across the knuckles. As the umbrella took off, Charlie, showing more than her normal amount of self-preservation instinct, let go as well and we watched as it took off.