Narrow Escape (2 page)

With Mortimer sulking in his basket and Eric lying trussed and furious on the table; my rather disgruntled husband finally had time to say hello. While I made tea he managed to unearth just Eric's feet from the towel and busied himself unwrapping the ribbon and cling film from around the bird's long black claws.

“But why did you let the flaming dog out with you?” he asked.

As I placed his mug of tea on the table, Eric swivelled his head with horror film precision and glared at me. He would have been fantastic as an extra in any Hitchcock film. Opening his beak he gave me the full view of his little pointed tongue then, with a clack that made me gulp, he snapped it shut and just continued his silent and accusatory stare.

“I didn't even think about it,” I said, “he just came out with me like he always does; I didn't really notice he was there until he started eating the chicken.” I shrugged.

“Hmm … well, he was nearly eating crow.” Geoff smirked at his own bad pun and studied the bird's claws. “Why don't you go and clear up the mess while I finish this, then I might just be able to get some sleep.” He gave a huge yawn and rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, he looked like a ten-year-old that had been allowed to stay up too late.

Wincing, I remembered that he'd just done a twelve-hour night shift. I'm sure that the last thing he wanted to do was play cat's cradle with a sociopathic corbie. Dismissed and gently grumped at I went to do garbage detail. I didn't complain, if I hadn't been such a wimp and had done it last night none of this would have happened.

I was still picking up the frozen rubbish when Geoff threw Eric out of the boat. Ruffled and obviously in a foul humour the bird stalked across the snow toward me. I don't actually think he was really heading in my direction but I wasn't taking any chances, picking up the bin bag I high-tailed it toward the skip. By the time I'd crept cautiously back to the boat, expecting a whispered ‘Nevermore' in my ear at every step, Geoff had gone to bed and Eric had taken himself off only God knew where.

Seven hours later, full of fish pie, jam roly-poly, custard and tea, Geoff was back to his normal good humour.

“Why on earth did you try to pick the damn thing up?” He laughed. “I could hear you screaming as I got out of the van. But as Mort was barking I just thought he was up to no good and you were shouting at him. I couldn't believe it when I came over the floods. It looked like you were being attacked by some sort of dark angel.” He sniggered. “There was just a ball of feathers and feet and dog and snow. I thought it was some sort of new extreme sport you were trying out.”

Charlie looked up from her book. She'd slept through the whole thing and was very cross about it. “I hope you didn't hurt poor Eric,” she said.

“Hurt poor Eric?” I rubbed the lumps and scratches on my hand that he'd dished out by stabbing me with that great beak. “What about me?”

Geoff, Charlie and Sam all turned to look at me. “Maybe you shouldn't deal with animals, Mum.” Sam seemed to sum up everyone's thoughts. “You always seem to come off worst.”

I decided to change the subject. “Was that the last night shift?”

Geoff gave a huge sigh of relief and nodded. “For a while, their electrician's back so I can go back to my normal hours, thank goodness.

Sam nodded. “Yeah and I can have my bed back.”

This was rather an interesting conundrum. Geoff had been offered a week's worth of nights with one of his company's customers. The money for working anti-social hours was far too good to turn down and he'd accepted without either of us really thinking it through. It was only when he staggered home after the first shift that we'd discovered a rather sticky problem. When you sleep totally different hours to everyone else and you don't actually have a bedroom to go and hide in, where do you go? You either have to sleep in your bed, which for us is still in the middle of the living room and everyone else in the boat has to tiptoe around you (our bedroom is going to be one of the last places that gets built). Or you throw your son out of his room and use that. The whining from Sam had been growing with every passing day. I was glad that that we'd soon be back to normal.

Charlie gave a big sigh.

“What's up, chuck?” I knew exactly what she was going to say but, as she had taken to whinging about this ‘problem' almost continually, I knew better than to ignore her.

“College,” she muttered. “We go back on Monday and it's just going to be the same old boring rubbish we've been doing since I started.”

I nodded. “That's the way things tend to go.”

“Well I don't want to do them, I signed up to do art,
my
art, not study someone else's.”

Charlie climbed to her feet and pushed her long dark set of dreadlocks out of her face, tying the front ones in a knot behind her head. “Why won't they let me do my own stuff?”

This same conversation had been going around and around for most of the Christmas holidays and I was now lost for something new to say. Sam, surprisingly, came to my rescue.

“How do you know your stuff's any good?” He gave her a big cheesy smile. “If you don't learn other things you'll just do the same old rubbish over and over again. By the time I go to college to take my A levels, you will have reached the heady heights of congratulating me on my results before asking me, ‘do you want fries with that?' Art is such as waste of time, you should be doing something interesting, like maths.”

Charlie glared at him for a moment her bright blue eyes turning icy and cold. We all tensed waiting for the inevitable. “You are such a little creep,” she screamed. “Art isn't a waste of time, not everyone wants to be a geeky little nerd like YOU!”

Geoff held up a hand to forestall one of the scraps that seemed to be far more frequent these days.

Charlie ignored him. “I'm going to my boat, I hate living here and I hate this weather.” She slammed out of the door and into the snow. Failing to shut the door behind her properly, she ignored it as it swung open letting a great blast of cold air into the room.

Sam got up to shut the door. Before he did, he leant out into the white flakes and yelled, “Don't forget to do that homework while you're there!”

I didn't catch the vague words that drifted back to us through the swirling snow, but the short sentence definitely included the word ‘off'.

He closed the door and, sniggering, looked around the room. He was greeted with almost matching looks of disapproval from both parents. He gave us a theatrical shrug and a big smile. “What?” he said.

“I know she's been winding you up for years.” I gave him a hard frown. “I know that you are now taller than she is and you've found your revenge bone …”

Sam smirked.

“… But you have to understand you are dealing with five foot and two inches of pure rage there. If she gets
really
angry with you I can guarantee you are going to regret it.”

Sam's smirk dropped and he looked a little uncertain.

“Just keep it in mind. If you push her too hard you are going to find yourself swimming.”

“Or flying …” Geoff said.

Sam swallowed hard and gave the door a nervous look. “I think I'll go and read,” he said.

Geoff nodded. “I would if I were you.”

Our youngest gave the door another quick look and then scuttled off to his room. Geoff rolled his eyes. “That boy has no sense of self-preservation, does he?”

Since leaving school Charlie seemed to be either deliriously happy or heading toward psychopathic hysteria. We all found ourselves treading very lightly around her. She would morph into a screaming banshee at the smallest of things and I found myself trying to remember if I had been this psychotic at seventeen. From what little I could remember, I have to admit that I had probably been as bad if not worse. And we all say we'd like to be young again. No thanks, anything below twenty-two is just hormonal chaos.

The snow lasted another week before the thaw set in. By this time we were all heartily sick of the cold, the treacherous icy lane, digging vehicles out of the snow because they'd missed the road, and we were all generally looking forward to spring. It seemed we had a long way to go.

Just as there was a hint that winter might actually release its death grip on the land, the temperature dropped again. Everything that had been dripping and melting now, once again, became solid and slippery.

Since the first major freeze in November we had been struggling to cope with our pumps, pipes, and water tanks. Quickly installed as they were, it hadn't taken us long to find out that we hadn't put anywhere near enough insulation around any of them. I was fairly sure that, since the weather had taken a serious turn for the worse in December, we'd actually had only three days of running water. It wasn't just us, all the boats were affected. It wouldn't have changed anything even if our plumbing had been up to scratch; all the taps and pipes in the marina were also solid. The local supermarket was rapidly running out of big bottles of water and house-dwelling friends were getting used to us turning up and stealing fifty litres of water at each visit. I was sick to death of five-litre bottles. They lurked in the kitchen, in the bathroom, and lined up in military rows down the length of the boat. Unfortunately, most of them were usually empty.

One bitterly cold Saturday morning, Geoff trotted past with three hot wheat bags in his arms. Doing a bit of a double-take I rescued ‘Beddy Bear' from inside the steaming pile. Geoff's expression switched between guilty and irritated. “I need more heat.” He reached for the hot, seed filled toy frowning when I held its dangling legs out of his reach.

“There is no way you are taking this into that smelly engine room of yours. I ducked as he made a swipe for it and stuffed the bear into the back of my big woolly shirt. Ooo, that was really nice and warm.

“Sam hasn't used it for years.” Geoff grabbed the collar of my shirt and stuck a cold hand down my neck making me scream. “It just sits on the top of his wardrobe; I could give it some purpose in life.”

“It doesn't matter.” I sniggered and fell back onto the sofa trapping the hot toy between me and the cushions. “It's a treasured childhood toy and it would scar his little psyche to find it wrapped around a set of oily pipes.

Geoff grabbed my arm and tried to roll me onto the floor; his long fingers digging into the spots between my ribs making me laugh and scream. I retaliated by trying to poke him in the tummy button. Mortimer, wondering what was going on, decided to join in. He couldn't decide who to protect so he just jumped over both of us until we all fell off the sofa and lay in a screaming, giggling, and barking heap on the carpet.

The noise finally roused Sam from the model he was making. I looked up to find him standing above us, shaking his head and looking long-suffering. Reaching down he plucked Beddy Bear from Geoff's hand and, with a muttered “Mine I think,” wandered off down the boat.

Geoff stood up and brushed himself off before pulling me to my feet. “Well I'd better go and try to defrost that stupid pump.” He glared at me and gave me one last poke in the ribs. “And, now that you've stolen my teddy bear, I'm going to have to find something else to melt the ice with.”

Standing by the door he pulled on another pair of thick socks, a pair of boots, his fleece, a waterproof jacket, hat, and gloves. Turning carefully so that his increased girth wouldn't knock anything from the top of our new TV cabinet he gave me a meaningful look. “Are you doing anything useful at the moment?” he asked.

I stared around the sofa, my book lay face down on the cushion and my empty coffee mug had been knocked over. The blanket that I'd been burrowing into lay in a heap on the floor, it didn't look like an area that was being used by a busy person. “Yes?” Well, it was worth a try.

“I thought not.” He nudged the log basket with his foot. “We could do with some more fuel.” Grinning at me from under his hat he turned and headed out into the cold.

Watching him go I considered if mutiny was an option. Grabbing my blanket I wrapped myself back up and sat on the sofa. Nope, I wasn't going to get away with this. Eventually I couldn't put it off any more and after faffing about clearing the coffee cups away I sighed and went to find my own outside gear.

The wood was cosy and protected inside a small log store which, like a lot of other things at this time of year, was also covered by a heavy tarpaulin. Every time we needed fuel for the fire we had to battle with this frozen covering which seemed intent on staying exactly where it was. The wood was being used up at an alarming rate during this very cold snap and I knew that I would have to get into the store on my hands and knees to get to the back. I shuddered, there was no end of multi-legged ‘things' that liked to live in the protective dark of the wood store. I peered into the coal scuttle. Oh poo, we were out of coal as well.

Trying hard not to think about
Cold Comfort Farm
, I peered under the tarpaulin and did a good job of ignoring the scuttling shadows that rushed away from the sudden influx of daylight. “There's nothing nasty in the woodshed.” I told myself firmly and inched my way under the tarpaulin.

Holding the tarp up with my back and shoulders I reached in blindly and grabbed as much wood as I could and passed it out into the log basket. I knew from past experience that four handfuls of short-sawn planks would be enough to fill it. Something danced lithely over my knuckles, light and hairy, it was there and gone within seconds. I drew a breath in and stayed still while it tiptoed off into the darkness. Well that was the end of anything resembling sanity. Grabbing as much wood as I could I threw it into the basket, all the while trying to ignore the imaginary hairy little feet across the back of my neck. Finally, I pulled out from under the tarp and stood up; breathing hard. I could still feel something huge and hairy dancing its way across my neck and shoulders. I pulled my hat off and frowned at the mass of dust covered cobwebs that festooned the crown. I brushed ineffectually at them and then gave up. Shrugging I pulled it back over my hair, my ears were getting cold.