Bricking It (18 page)

‘No, Tracy, I am not mucking about! There’s a ruddy Second World War bomb here! I need more units and the sodding bomb squad as quickly as they can get here!’

‘Received, Papa 72. I’ll get them out to you as soon as possible,’ the call taker responds, this time with a satisfying sense of urgency to her voice.

‘Received, Victor One.’ The copper pauses and looks round at all of us. ‘I think I’ll evacuate these people into the back garden, as far away from the device as possible.’

‘Wise move, Papa 72. Wise move.’

Kev the copper gets off the radio and tries to issue us all a reassuring smile. It fails miserably.

‘Okay, everyone. Why don’t we step out into the back garden?’

‘Alright,’ I agree.’

‘And everyone be nice to Pat The Cow,’ Danny adds. ‘Too many people on her patch makes her, um,
frisky
.’

With the warnings given, we all traipse out into the garden to await the arrival of people who, with any luck, will know what the hell to do with a seventy-year-old explosive device.

Sadly, the people in question are sequestered on the nearest army base, which is a good hour away in the car, so we’re forced to stand around like a bunch of lemons awaiting the bomb squad’s arrival. In that time another ten police officers turn up to see what all the fuss is about. By midday the immediate area is swarming with coppers. About the only constructive thing they do is erect an exclusion zone around the bomb with bright yellow tape that stretches from back up the road to where we’re all stood at the far end of the garden.

I look at my watch every thirty seconds or so. All this hanging around is costing us valuable time that could be spent on the house renovation – not to mention all the money it’s costing Danny and I, as our team of builders and gardeners stand around doing nothing at our expense.

Eventually I see a large green army truck roll up at the front of the house. Four men get out dressed in military garb. I’m very pleased to say they all look calm about the whole thing. This can only be a good sign.

One of them skirts the edges of the garden, keeping as far away from the bomb as possible, and makes his way through the mud towards us. ‘Morning, folks,’ he says. ‘I’m Corporal Smith. Looks like you have an old Luftwaffe shell in your garden, eh?’

‘Apparently so,’ I reply. ‘Can you get rid of it?’

‘Oh, I’m sure we can. Done quite a few of these over the years. A lot of the German shells were duds when they were dropped, you know. That’s what comes of enlisting prisoners of war and the poor old Jews to build your bombs for you. They’re bound to do a bad job, quite deliberately!’

This man seems quite jocular about the concept of innocent people being enslaved by the Nazis, but I think I’ll let it pass, as it’s now one in the afternoon, and those skirting boards aren’t going to fit themselves.

‘How long will it take?’ I ask Corporal Smith.

He sticks his chin in the air in deep thought. It’s a very odd gesture to make. I guess it looks perfectly fine if you’re in the military. ‘Depends on the shell, my dear. If it’s an SC50
BI
it’ll be quite quick. If it’s a
JB
though, then that could take a while.’

This makes absolutely no sense to me, obviously. But I’ll take his word for it. As long as he knows what he’s talking about, then everything is fine. As fine as it can be with an unexploded bomb less that a hundred metres away, anyway.

Of course, Sod’s Law being what it is, the bomb is indeed a bloody JB. And boy does it take the bomb squad an age to sort the ruddy thing out. I’m not privy to the actual analysis and defusement of the device, as I’m still stuck with the rest of my clan at the rear of the garden. About the only thing we’ve got to look at is Pat The Cow chewing cud and looking decidedly grumpy about having her private patch of grass invaded by quite so many people.

It’s gone
five p.m.
when Corporal Smith jogs back over to us to let us know that the bomb has been removed from the garden. ‘All done!’ he says cheerfully. ‘Looks like the fuse was missing completely. It couldn’t have gone off. You were all perfectly safe.’

This is very good news indeed. We may have lost a day, but at least the situation is resolved.

‘However—’ Smith continues.

I don’t like the sound of that
however
one little bit. Nothing good can come of it.

‘However, the JBs were often dropped in clusters,’ Smith tells us.

‘Which means?’ I reply, dread creeping into my voice.

‘Which means there’s every chance that there could be more of them in the area, also unexploded. The prisoners would often sabotage these things in entire batches. Could be quite a few of them lying around under the soil. We have protocols in place for such an eventuality, of course.’

‘What kind of
protocols
?’ I ask, my heart racing in panic.

Corporal Smith catches my mood and gives me a sympathetic look. ‘We have to do a sweep of the area. All standard stuff, don’t you worry. It just might take a little bit of time.’

I can almost hear the money draining from my bank account as I ask my next question. ‘How
much
time?’

‘Depends on what HQ says about the likely spread. But we’ve had to do this a couple of times, and both searches took a good week to complete. You can’t be too careful.’

A week!

A bloody
week
!

Smith looks even more apologetic. ‘And we’ll have to get into the house with the metal detectors too, I’m afraid. There could be a device underneath it. You wouldn’t want one going off, now would you?’

Oh god! The floorboards! The poor bloody floorboards!

I start to go a bit weak at the knees.

‘What if you find a bomb under the house?’ Danny asks.

‘Oh, we’ll whip it out, don’t you fret!’

Whip it out?

Whip it out!

It’s not like pulling out a splinter, you camouflaged idiot! If there’s a bomb under the house, things will need to be
ripped up
to get at it! Torn apart! All our hard work will be destroyed!

Okay, I know I’m going a bit overboard here, but I’ve just been told that my lovely new renovated farmhouse could be hiding several unexploded Nazi bombs, so I’m understandably a little
fraught
.

‘What should we do now?’ Fred asks Corporal Smith.

‘Oh, we’ll have the police escort you all off the property,’ he tells him.

‘What about Pat The Cow?’ Danny asks.

‘She’ll be fine down the bottom of the garden,’ I reply. ‘That cow is more than smart enough to stay away from an unexploded bomb.’

‘We’ll get to work on the sweep tomorrow,’ Smith says.

I’m speechless. This is a
disaster
.

Not only are we going to lose days of work while this man and his mates poke around our house for bombs, but if they find one, there’s every chance that they’ll have to destroy some of our renovation work to extract the thing. That’s provided they don’t set the sodding thing off! How much damage will be done to my lovely new house then?

I gasp out loud. What the hell have I become?

If a bomb does go off, Corporal Smith and chums will be blown into tiny smithereens, and all I care about is what happens to my massive financial investment. How crushingly
awful
is that?

Daley Farmhouse is turning me into something I don’t like very much – an obsessive sociopath.

I need to get away from this place as quickly as possible before it turns me completely to the Dark Side.

‘Okay, we’ll get out of your hair,’ I tell Corporal Smith. I then look around at everyone else. ‘We could all do with a few days off, couldn’t we?’ I spout in a tremulous, sing-song voice.

‘Er, we’ve only just got here?’ Sally Willingham points out. I choose to ignore her, as this is no time for level-headedness.

‘Yes! A nice week off will do us all the world of good!’ I repeat, my voice as brittle as eggshells.

‘Are you alright, sis?’ Danny asks.

‘Fine! I’m fine!’ I reply. How can I explain that a vast irrational fear has suddenly come over me that this house has corrupted my mortal soul in ways I daren’t speak of? Best to just get the fuck out of here as quickly as possible, preferably in the direction of the nearest bar.

‘Right, you heard the lady,’ Fred says to Kev the mini-copper, who has been stood at the back of our small crowd, trying to stop Pat The Cow from nibbling on his baton. ‘Lead us away, sport!’

Kev pushes Pat’s head away from his waist. ‘Thank God for that. I think this cow is about to commit a common assault on me.’

It is with some relief that I drive away from the farmhouse that evening, leaving the police and bomb squad to their risky search. While I would prefer not to have to delay work on the house any longer than necessary, it has become quite apparent to me that I need some time away from the place. It’s all I’ve thought about for months, and having one thing fill your thoughts twenty-four hours a day for so long is not healthy in the slightest.

I will use this bizarre and strange series of events to get away from the renovation completely, and give my brain a bit of a rest.

I might read some books, catch up on some Netflix, and go for a few nice walks in the countryside. It’ll be lovely. A whole week without thinking about Daley Farmhouse once!

At 7.30 a.m. the next day I’m standing at the police tape strung across the road leading to the house with an anxious look on my face. What the hell are they
doing
down there?

My much-needed break from Daley Farmhouse lasted about an hour and a half, until I remembered that the gas man was supposed to be coming out on Wednesday to run a safety check. This threw me into a panic that ensured I got about three hours’ sleep. By six in the morning I was wide awake and picturing the bomb squad ripping up the entire basement because they’d
found a five-hundred-pound bomb down there, with Hitler’s corpse draped over it.

You can imagine how delighted poor old Corporal Smith was when he saw my anxious face coming towards him as he stood by his army truck having a nice cup of tea poured directly from one of Her Majesty’s thermos flasks.

I fired twenty questions at him about what they were planning to do in their search today, none of which he gave me any particularly useful answers to.

I ended up standing forlornly at the police tape for a good two hours before deciding that I was being very silly, and should go home and try to forget about it.

I’m very pleased to say I successfully managed to do this!

Until 6.25 a.m. the next day, when I turned up at the house before Smith had even got the top off the thermos flask.

On the third morning the tea-drinking bomb disposal expert is conspicuous by his absence. Word has also obviously gotten around about me to his colleagues, as the exclusion zone around my good self is just slightly larger than the one around the house. Therefore, all I can do is stand and watch various men in green fatigues traipsing to and from the farmhouse in the kind of hobnailed military boots that can destroy the average brand-new floorboard in no time at all.

‘Hayley?’ a voice says from behind me. I turn to find Gerard O’Keefe walking down the road towards me, an old grey Jaguar parked behind him. I didn’t even hear him pull up; such is my obsession with damaged floorboards.

‘Gerard! What are you doing here?’

‘Mitchell called to say that work had halted thanks to a bomb scare?’

‘Yeah. That’s right. If it’s going to happen anywhere, it’s going to happen at Daley Farmhouse!’ I’m trying to make light of it, but inside I think I could just about cry right now.

‘So, no work at all for a week then?’

‘Nope.’

Gerard winces. ‘Costing you a fair bit, is it?’

My wince is much bigger. ‘Oh yes.’

He gives me a sympathetic look. ‘Fancy a hug?’

I nod. ‘Yes, Gerard. That would be very nice.’ I point over to the army lads. ‘They’re all ignoring me.’

‘Come here, then.’

The hug is warm, comfortable and smells faintly of paint thinner. All in all, quite the pleasant experience, I have to say.

‘So what do you plan on doing?’ he asks me once the hug is over.

‘I don’t know. I probably should go off and have some kind of life, but I can’t draw myself away from the place. Any second now I keep expecting them to find a massive bomb that means they’ll have to rip the flooring up. It’s potentially heart-breaking.’

Gerard puts his hands in his pockets. ‘Well, I’m not up to much today. I’ll hang around here with you, if you like.’

‘Wow. Thank you. It is a bit lonely stood here on my own.’

‘I’ve got a couple of camp chairs in the boot. I’ll go get them.’ Gerard turns to go back to his massive old Jag.

As he pulls the chairs out I have a little think. Gerard lives a good sixty miles away. He could have just called. But here he is, at the house, having come all the way down here on the off chance one of us might be around.

On the off chance
you
might be around, you silly sod.

My heart races. He’s still interested. Even though I turned him down for that date. So what do I do now? My reticence to get involved with another man still stands, but he’s come all the way down here from London and has brought a chair for me to sit on.

‘Here you go,’ Gerard says, plonking down a camp chair in front of me and unfolding it. He parks the second chair close to it and sits himself down, looking up at me expectantly. I sit down as well, making sure I’ve still got a decent line of sight to the army truck and the road up to the farmhouse. If anything destructive is likely to happen, I want to know about it.

‘So, tell me a bit more about yourself,’ Gerard says.

‘Huh?’ I reply, forcing my gaze away from the house.

Gerard laughs. ‘Tell me a bit more about
you
. We’re probably stuck here for a while, so we may as well have something to chat about!’

‘Fair enough,’ I say, returning the smile.

The next couple of hours are spent in idle chit-chat with Gerard, and not once do I feel bored, restless or anxious. This is a completely new experience for me, as the last man who I had such a long conversation with that wasn’t my brother was my ex-husband Simon. Conversations with him were usually stressful, unpleasant and demeaning – towards the end of the relationship anyway. Having a decent chat with a narcissist and a misogynist all rolled into one human being is nigh on impossible.