Narrow Escape (12 page)

Geoff laughed. “What are you moaning about? It's your day off.” He scuttled out of the boat before I could decide what to throw at him.

Standing in the launderette I realised that we didn't really get ‘days off'. Living like this you just have to group everything together and do it whenever you can. Hoping that no one would mind, I dumped all my washing into one of the big dryers and then did a very fast supermarket run. The only way to fit everything in is to make sure you have excellent time management. I got back just as one elderly lady was about to take my dry washing out of the dryer.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” I panted as I rushed in. “I hope it wasn't in there too long.”

“You can't just leave your washing in there and wander off you know, it's very selfish.” She glared up at me from about four inches below my chin and then shook a gnarly finger at my nose. “We're all waiting for that dryer.”

I looked around, there were at least four other dryers standing empty and silent. “I'll keep that in mind,” I murmured at her.

“Make sure you do,” she snapped at me. “I'm just going across to the shop to get some washing powder. I'll expect you out of that dryer when I come back, it's the best one you know and you're hogging it.”

Well, there wasn't really anything I could say in the face of such righteous ire so I nodded and watched her leave.

“Don't mind her.” A woman reading a newspaper spoke up. “Your washing must have finished about a minute before you walked in through the door; she's just a cantankerous old misery.”

“Thanks for telling me.” I gave her a smile. “I thought maybe I'd miscalculated and it had been about half an hour or something.” I began taking the dry washing out of the machine and piling it on the side ready to be folded and put away. “Mind you, I'm not going to argue with her, scary little thing.” I folded a towel and placed it in my basket. “It was like being told off by the wicked witch. I half expected her to wave a stick and turn me into a toad; I bet she's a demon with her family. Husband terrified, kids buried in the back yard.” I laughed.

“She's my mother.” The woman glared at me.

The following loaded silence obviously helped me work; I'd never packed up washing so fast in my life. On my way out to the car I decided I probably needed to find another launderette. Or at least fit myself with a muzzle.

When Geoff walked in that night I couldn't wait to tell him about my mishap with the witch in the laundry and moan that if we had a washing machine like normal people this sort of thing wouldn't happen. I recounted the story and he laughed.

“One of these days,” he said, “you're going to just keep your mouth shut.”

“Well it's been nearly fifty years, I haven't managed it yet,” I said. “You look a bit ruffled yourself. Did you have a rough day?”

“I did a bit.” He took a long sip of tea.

“Oh yeah?” I plonked myself down next to him on the sofa. “So who did you mortally insult?”

“No one.” He sighed. “I got taken captive.”

“What?”

Now, to most people, this would be taken as a joke but I was the office manager for a maintenance company when one of our engineers was held at knife point. The rather confused lady on the other end of the very large, very sharp knife, rang me to tell me that I could have my engineer back when the parts for her boiler were delivered and not before. We'd had to get the police involved. I'm sure this sort of madness happens more than people can believe. “I thought you were at the RSPCA, what grabbed you, an injured badger?” I was being serious, I've been backed into a corner by a grumpy badger – those things can be quite scary.

“Ducklings,” he said.

Silence fell for a good thirty or forty seconds.

“Sorry, for a moment there I thought you said you were taken captive by ducklings.” I swivelled around to get a better look at him. He didn't appear to be joking.

He nodded. “I was up a ladder replacing an extract fan in a pen with about thirty orphan ducklings in it.”

“O … K.” I was still baffled to see how little fluffy ducklings could have grabbed him. I mean, knock you unconscious and try to steal your soul, sure, but captive? They were certainly branching out their nefarious activities.

“Well I was up there about ten minutes,” he said. “When I'd finished, I looked down and the ducklings had decided to climb the ladder. They were completely packed on to the two bottom steps. Those that couldn't get on were just running around and around the ladder. Those things move pretty quickly you know.”

I started laughing. I tried to keep it to myself but I had this mental image of my rufty tufty husband stuck up a feather filled ladder, I knew exactly what he was going to say next and sure enough I was right.

“Well, I couldn't jump over them because with my great feet I was sure I would land on one of the ones that were rushing about trying to get on the ladder. I certainly couldn't climb down the steps because they were all packed on to them like little fluffy sardines, so there I was – stuck.”

I snorted gently.

“The staff were at lunch and every time I called for help, it startled the ducks and they all shifted about, one was pushed by the others and it fell off,” he said.

“Oh no!” I couldn't help it, I just couldn't keep a straight face. “Was it all right?”

“It seemed to be.” He took another swig of tea and shuddered. “It just bounced down the steps, fluffed itself up at the bottom and came around and started climbing the flaming ladder again.” He shook his head. “It was like that flipping penguin run game where the penguins climb up the iceberg and then slide down and another takes its place.”

My face began to hurt just a little bit. My poor husband looked so mournful it was hard to keep it straight.

“So anyway, there I am, stuck at the top trying to whisper for help, I can't move because I don't want to shake the ladder, I've got a box of tools that's precariously perched on the top with me.” He paused for a moment and rubbed his leg. “I was up there for about half an hour. I'd just got to the point of attempting the long jump when they started feeding whatever was in the next pen. With one clatter of a pail all the ducklings leapt off the ladder and rushed over to the door.” He frowned and settled himself deeper into the sofa. “One of the staff came in and just looked at me, I must have looked completely insane, white and shaking at the top of these flaming steps. She asked me if I was OK, well there was no way I was going to tell her what happened so I just nodded. She gave me a very odd look as she walked out.”

That was it, I howled with laughter and spilt my tea.

Geoff looked hurt. “That wasn't the end of it, my next job was in with a woodpecker.”

“Well they're only little.” I managed to get the words out between taking gulps of air, my sides hurt and my cheeks felt stretched.

“Little and angry.” Geoff widened his eyes as he remembered his day. “I walked into the pen and this thing started screaming at me at the top of its little lungs. You could tell that it was using every woodpecker swear word it knew. It didn't shut up once the entire time I was in there, just kept screaming and swearing. By the time I left I had the shakes and a headache.” He held his cup out with a sad look. “More tea?”

I managed to stop laughing long enough to take the mug.

“Thank God I don't have to go back for another month,” he said.

I handed him his refilled mug. “I thought it was me that any wildlife, big or small, wanted to traumatise. I didn't realise it was a family thing,” I said.

“I'm going to need all that time to get over the nightmares,” he said. “I think I have post-duckling-stress-disorder.”

I laughed and rubbed my head where the dent was still evident. “Don't we all, honey,” I said. “Don't we all.”

As the rain continued to fall we began to notice a strange smell permeating the boat. As soon as you walked in through the door this faintly sickening odour hit you in the back of the throat. I began to use scented candles, joss-sticks, and even aerosols. Anything that didn't smell of rotting meat.

Eventually I'd had enough. “What the heck is that smell?” I finally cornered Geoff.

He looked faintly surprised. “What smell?” He sniffed the air. “I can't smell anything.”

Sam looked up from where he was doing his homework. “I can't smell anything either.”

“I can.” Charlie got up from where she was watching a film and opened one of the kitchen cupboards. She peered into the darkness. “I thought maybe some veggies had escaped and begun to form their own civilisation in the back of here, like last time.” She got up and dusted her knees off. “But there's nothing in there.”

Charlie and I wandered about sniffing like bloodhounds while Geoff and Sam watched us, both wearing identical looks of bemusement. They are very similar in looks and obviously neither has a good sense of smell.

“It's definitely here.” Charlie tapped her foot on the front step.

“I think you're right.” I stooped to take a final sniff of the step. “Is it the carpet, do you think?”

Charlie shook her head and took the top of the box that formed our front step. She wandered into the kitchen and sniffed at it. “Nope just smells like dusty carpet.”

“Is it really that bad?” Geoff wandered over and began sniffing. “I honestly can't smell a thing.”

I nodded. “It is that bad. What's under this box?”

Geoff shrugged. “Just those water catching mats, and then there's the floor and below that we're into the metal bottom of the boat.” He lifted the box up and took it away. The sweet, nauseating stench wafted up at us.

“Oh YUCK!” Sam grabbed his nose. “I can smell it now.”

Geoff looked irritated. “I'm going to have to get that bit of floor up,” he said. “There's a possibility that a mouse or a rat has managed to get in and then couldn't get out and died under there.”

The rest of the family all took a good couple of steps back.

He looked up and grinned. “I take it that means that the man with no sense of smell is on his own for this one?”

We all nodded frantically. If you'd put us in the back of a car we could have sold insurance.

“Whoever makes me a cup of tea doesn't even have to look in the hole,” he said. There was a rush and scrabble as we all leapt toward the kettle.

“You're all pathetic.” Geoff laughed and went to get his jigsaw.

It took him about an hour to find the source of the smell. A mouse; a very long time dead mouse by the level of decomposition that had already happened. Unfortunately, all that was left was lying in about half an inch of water which, presumably, had managed to get in via the same hole as the mouse. It was a stinking soup.

By this time the smell was so bad that Charlie, Sam, and I had taken refuge in Charlie's boat. I took the opportunity to complain about her lack of housekeeping and irritated her by collecting stray socks that seemed to be trying to inch themselves under every available surface.

“Oh for goodness' sake, stop it!” Charlie grabbed the socks from me and shoved them into her dirty washing bag.

On the front of the bag it read, in stages, ‘One week, two weeks, three weeks, naked'. By the way it bulged Charlie should have, by rights, been running about in the buff at least a week ago.

“You always do this, you always come in and take over,” she said. Glaring at me she folded her arms across her chest. “This is why I'm moving out next week.”

I nodded and coaxed another sock from beneath her sofa.

“I am!” She snatched the sock away. “One of the healers that comes into the shop said that I can rent a room from her if I hate living with you lot so much.”

That got my attention. “You tell people you hate us?”

Charlie had the good grace to blush and, dropping the sock, she hurried over to give me a hug. “I don't tell them I hate living with
you
,” she said. “I just tell them that I hate living so far out in the country. I want to live in town.”

“But you're only just seventeen,” I said. “You're supposed to hate living with us, can't you put up with hating being here until you're at least eighteen?”

Sam, sensibly deciding that the stench of dead rodent was probably preferable to the fracas that was just about to erupt, made a quick exit.

Charlie sighed and plopped herself down on the sofa. “She's a really nice lady, she's married and they have a spare room that I can have for fifty pounds a week,” she said. “It's only available for three months and we decided that it would be a good way to try moving out and see if I can manage.”

I wandered over to her rat cage and peered inside. Three pinched little faces of varying colours peered back at me. “I'll need to talk to Geoff about it,” I said. I was really just playing for thinking time.

“What's the point?” Charlie stared down at her feet. “I'm going to do it. There's really nothing you can say to stop me. I'm going to be safe so you can't use that old chestnut to keep me here. I'm going to be warm and close to work. I really can't see what you'd have to moan about.”

Taking a deep breath I decided to ignore that faintly facetious tone she always used when she felt I was trying to hold her back.

“I'm not trying to ‘keep you here' as you so delicately put it. Good grief, you make me sound like a jailer. If you think you can cope on your own I won't stop you but here's the deal,” I said.

Charlie glared at me, pinched her lips together and huffed.

I silently counted to ten and kept my expression very blank.

“What?” She began picking her fingernails.

“I go with you to take your stuff and if it's a pit or it looks like there's something dodgy going on you come out of there and home with me immediately,” I said.