Narrow Minds (14 page)

Mum opened the door and stopped mid yawn as she caught sight of Sam's package. ‘What the hell is that?' She peered into the cage then took a sudden step back as Lu launched herself toward her face, screaming incoherently. Mum shook her head then ushered us all into the kitchen where she had been making a full cooked breakfast. Sam was ecstatic and the worries of our sneaky getaway faded as he tucked into sausages, bacon and beans. Charlie was far more blasé about the whole thing and insisted on telling Mum every nuance of our late night adventure. The more she talked, the more anxious my mother became and the more anxious my mother became, the more creative Charlie became. I pushed Geoff to hurry his breakfast, I really felt we should be off toward the boat before the questions became too searching. Dad just laughed and shook his head.

By ten o'clock the sun was beating down upon my head as I sat on a bench with an ice cream. Waiting, once again, for our new boat to make its first appearance away from the sales pontoon. Geoff brought her around and threw me a rope so that we could moor her up near a skip. The marina had been fantastic and had agreed that we could use their repair dock for a couple of days while we sorted ourselves out.

‘So, what's the plan?' Having tied her safely to one of the large concrete bollards I stepped aboard dragging with me a huge bag of cleaning materials. I dumped them onto the front deck then went back for the hoover, the mop and bucket, Geoff's bag of electrical tools, a hammer, a lump hammer, a sledge hammer and a crow bar. I wasn't entirely convinced that we needed quite so many weapons of mass destruction, but Geoff had assured me they were essential so we'd brought them along.

He helped me load everything on to the boat, then stepped inside. ‘I think the easiest way to deal with this is pure violence.' He grinned and pointed toward the stern. ‘Leave those last two dinettes in place, as they'll provide beds for the kids.' He held up an electric screwdriver, gun style and gave it a bit of a whizz. ‘Take all the rest out, however you can and we'll sort ourselves out from there.'

‘Right.' I grabbed another electric screwdriver and slotted it into the first of the screws I could see that appeared to hold one of the bench sets together. ‘1 …2 …3 go!'

Five hours later, Geoff and I were both lying on our backs in the sweet-smelling grass outside the marina shop and breathing heavily. After about twenty minutes of attempting to remove screws with the appropriate tool we had given up trying to get the wretched and ancient fixings out the proper way and had resorted, as Geoff knew we would, to more violent forms of DIY (Destroy it yourself).

I had become almost expert with a crow bar and Geoff's muscles had been very useful when wielding a sledge hammer. The bangs, thumps, cracking of wood and swearing had drawn quite a crowd which scattered, like pigeons before an oncoming car every time we threw another piece of annihilated wood out of the boat.

After a while we had a fairly clear path down the boat and the pain had set in. Throwing our tools to the floor we had staggered out into the afternoon sunshine to have a drink, examine and nurse bruises and apply antiseptic to some of the larger scratches and cuts, the painful product, of flying debris.

I levered myself into a sitting position and groaned, ‘Ow, I hurt all over.'

Geoff, sensibly, stayed flat on his back. ‘You know, I don't think there's a single part of me that isn't bruised or cut or damaged in some way.' He rolled over on to his front and groaned into the grass. ‘I don't think I can get up and we still have to move all that stuff into the skip. He pointed vaguely in the direction of the sprawling pile of shattered timber, bent metal and torn soft furnishings that littered the wharf.

‘Great!' I flopped back down. ‘Maybe if we just go back to Mum's and leave it, the jetsam fairies will come and take it away for us during the night?'

‘Urgh!' Geoff heaved himself to his hands and knees. ‘Nice thought but I doubt it.' He staggered upright and held a hand out to me. ‘Come on, let's get this stuff in the skip then we can get home in time for tea.' His eyes glazed for a moment as he realised that Mum would be cooking, then snapping back to reality he moved with a far more willing gait, my mother's cooking can have that effect on a hungry man.

Another two hours hard graft and we were finally back in the car. As we headed through Birmingham, Geoff was ticking jobs off his list as I drove the well-remembered roads. Chatting about the boat and tomorrow's jobs we didn't really notice where we were until Geoff pointed out the old Rover works.

‘Wow, that's changed a lot.' I stared out at the dilapidated site, quite sad to see the remnants of the once proud company reduced to a miserable mass of rubble and dust. The buildings that hadn't been demolished stood empty and grey, broken windows and trailing wood illustrated only too well how quickly something vibrant and working can die and decay.

‘I wonder what we'd be doing now if Rover hadn't gone into receivership,' I mused at Geoff, ‘I mean, let's face it that was our undoing. If Rover hadn't gone down owing us so much money, we'd never have sold the house, never have bought the first boat. Would we still be happy mooching along with our ‘normal' life?'

Geoff shrugged and then winced as one of his minor injuries gave a twinge. ‘I don't know.' He paused and stared at the site as it rolled slowly past. ‘If you could go back, knowing what you know now, would you change anything?'

I concentrated on negotiating the roundabout that would take us to the M5. ‘Of course, I would.' I watched as Rover receded into the distance behind us. ‘I'd make sure you re-trained while we had the money to do it, I'd still buy
Happy Go Lucky
, but I don't think I'd sell her or maybe I would have bought a Dutch barge or a wide beam.'

Geoff nodded. ‘Let's hear it for 20:20 hindsight eh?'

I laughed. ‘Well we could all do with a bit of that. But quite honestly I wouldn't change anything, not the really big stuff, I'd still prefer living on a boat to a house, and I would have avoided village life.' I shuddered theatrically, ‘Actually that little period I would definitely change. I'd never have gone past the Manchester ship canal if I'd known what the last year and a half was going to be like.' Geoff opened his mouth but I cut him off. ‘And I don't care what you say, I'm never crossing it again.'

The evening passed pleasantly enough. Mum had taken one look at us as we'd staggered through the front door and thrown us straight into the shower, stolen all our clothes and put them into the washing machine, all the time pleasantly tutting and fussing. The kids had hardly looked up as we fell through the door, both of them completely mesmerised by the huge flat screen plasma TV that was Dad's pride and joy.
Star Trek
takes on a whole new dimension when it's being fed, electronically, straight into your brain.

After a huge dinner, Geoff and I retired to the parents' Jacuzzi, he had a cup of tea, I had a glass of wine, we were also equipped with his and hers tweezers. We spent a fairly unpleasant hour pulling out all the splinters that we found embedded in fingers, hands and arms. By nine o'clock we were both asleep on the sofa much to my mother's disgust. By ten the kids had taken themselves to bed and Dad poked us awake to do the same.

Awaking to the sound of the alarm the next morning, I forced open my eyes then panicked. ‘Geoff! Geoff!!'

‘Wha?' Geoff huffed, then groaned, ‘I can't move, I think I'm paralysed.'

I tried again to lift an arm, the pain was unbearable. ‘Argh! Everything hurts.'

Geoff sniggered, ‘Feeling a little sore are we?' he muttered, then lifted himself with effort into a sitting position. ‘Ow!' He rubbed his shoulder and pulled a pained face. ‘Do you think your mum has any pain-killers?' He winced and rolled his shoulders. ‘Ow, ouch, ow!'

I managed to sit up, I honestly felt as though I had been run over. ‘Oh God, I hope so. I can't believe we've got to do it all again today.'

Geoff shuffled around so that he could sit on the edge of the bed. ‘Well, look on the bright side, all we have to do today is cleaning then we have to create some sort of living space, we pretty much destroyed as much as we could, I don't think there's anything left.'

Staggering to my feet I held on to the window sill for support, my thighs felt twice their normal size (and that's no mean feat). ‘Do we have to do it today?'

‘Yep!' Geoff, finally managing to gain his feet stretched, I swear I heard something go ‘twang!' as he did so. ‘We have to move her tonight, they've put aside a pontoon for us but, really, there isn't much we'll be able to do there apart from actually move all our stuff on board and try and get the kids settled. We really have to do all that we can today, especially things that need that skip.'

He smiled as he picked up his clean and lovely-smelling clothes that Mum had placed, carefully ironed and folded just outside our door, bless her. ‘Why can't you be this sort of wife? I could get used to this sort of attention to detail.' Unluckily for him, his protesting muscles stopped him from moving as quickly as usual so, for once, I actually managed to hit him with a well thrown hairbrush. After another day of cleaning, tidying, de-moulding and general maintenance, the boat looked almost, if not entirely, liveable. Standing in the doorway with a well-deserved cup of coffee it occurred to me that dirt was relative and transferable, the cleaner the boat became so the dirtier Geoff and I became.

I looked down at myself and grimaced, my jeans were covered in oil, cobwebs, mould, moss and other more unidentifiable things. My T-shirt, once white-and-blue, now had an interesting design of red splashes down the front, I hoped it wasn't blood as I couldn't actually identify whence it had originated. My hands were spotless, after spending a day elbow deep in buckets of hot soapy water they were pink, wrinkled and sore-looking, my nails shone and not a speck of dirt could be seen beneath them.

All the hard work had been worth it. We had cleaned and scrubbed every surface and moved in a huge rug which fitted perfectly wall to wall. On top of this we had placed a small sofa, futon, thing, our television sat in the corner of the boat on a bedside table that was currently being utilised as a TV stand and DVD cupboard. The kitchen had been scrubbed till I could actually identify wood beneath the years of grease and the sink, now devoid of its growing, glowing, green plughole warmer, shone with hygienic innocence.

I smiled as Geoff staggered through the front doors and flopped down on the sofa. ‘Can we go home now?' he gasped. Apart from helping me to move in some of the larger items of furniture, he had spent the whole day in the engine room, pumping out the bilges into big containers, checking the electrics and the engine and other such mechanical and baffling tasks. He staggered to his feet again. ‘Here, come and have a look at this.' He led the way out on to the wharf again.

‘What the hell is that?' I stared at the sodden pile of material that was draped, in a still leaking heap, on the grass.

‘I think it's a sleeping bag.' Geoff prodded the squelchy thing with his boot.

I shrugged, what was so significant about a drowned sleeping bag? Unless of course its recent inhabitant was still in it.

‘Unlike last time, we don't have a prop cutter on this boat.' Geoff shook his head, ‘I think we're going to miss it, I found this wrapped around the propeller.'

‘Oh yuck!' I stepped away from the sodden thing.

‘I'm quite relieved actually.' Geoff put on a pair of gloves and started dragging the soggy item toward the skip. ‘I just thought that she handled really, really badly.' He hoisted the material into the opening of the skip above his head, shuddering as a slimy green rain pattered down onto his face and shoulders. ‘I can imagine that she'll have a lot more power now.'

I processed all this information for a moment. ‘So when were you going to tell me that she handled badly?'

Geoff had the courtesy to look slightly embarrassed. ‘You didn't need any more bad news.' He rubbed his head with a towel. ‘And I figured I could fix any problem before you got round to driving it.'

Well you can't really be angry at that sort of announcement can you? I laughed and went back inside to put the kettle on.

After a last night of luxury at my mother's, we were ready by eight o'clock the next morning to leave for yet another new home. After a round of goodbyes and the gentle acceptance of a picnic hamper from my mum we all piled into various vehicles.

Just as we pulled out of the drive Sam suddenly screamed, ‘Stop, STOP!! I've left Lu behind!' I slammed on the brakes and Geoff stopped just behind me. Sam leapt out of the car and grabbed Lu's cage from my laughing father. Lu had become quite happy at Mum's, especially as Mum kept feeding her biscuits and cake and so she started screaming almost as soon as she left my father's hands. I considered suggesting that Sam and Lu swap with Charlie and they ride with Geoff (his hearing isn't as good as mine), but finally decided that it was more important to be on our way. So off we went for the final time with Lu screaming all the way.

At the marina Charlie sauntered over to check on her rats. ‘What's happened to them?' she shouted at me angrily. I looked into the cage and discovered that all the rats were huddled into one corner, shaking and looking decidedly upset.

‘I don't know, they were fine half an hour ago.' I looked around the car ‘Maybe they pulled something through the bars of the cage and ate it?' I really had no idea why they were all upset. At that moment, Lu seeing Charlie and I so close to her cage began screaming and swearing again. The effect on the rats was immediate and extreme. As one they all laid their ears back and climbed on top of each other in a huge effort to get as far away as they could from the lunatic in the next cell. Charlie laughed. ‘So much for evil, rabid, dangerous rats.' She peered into the cage. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, it's only a flaming hamster; for normal rats that's classed as ‘dinner'. Oh for goodness' sake.'