Running Scared (31 page)

Before I had time to work it out, someone began to thump furiously on the front door. The bell jangled. Bonnie jumped off the bed and landed with a curious splashing sound. I swung my feet out and yelled, ‘Ugh!’

I had put them down, not on the carpet, but in a couple of inches of icy water.

The hammering on the door increased. As I ran out into the living room, splashing through more water, I heard a man shout, ‘We’ll have to break the window.’

‘No!’ I shouted back. ‘I’m awake! Wait!’

I unlocked the front door and pulled it open. It flew inwards, propelled by a build-up of water on the further side. I lost my footing and fell back, landing on my backside in an icy cold wet mess.

A torch flashed over me and a large figure in yellow oilskins hauled me to my feet.

‘Burst watermain, miss!’ he bellowed. ‘Emergency evacuation. Get some clothes on, grab any valuables and get out of here – right away! Don’t switch on any electricity.’

I splashed back to my bedroom, ankle-deep now in the flood. Luckily my jeans and sweater were on a chair, high and dry, but my boots, which I’d left on the floor, were filled with water. I grabbed my only valuable, Grandma Varady’s gold locket, together with my purse and the envelope which held my birth certificate and the only photos of my family I had left, and stuffed them into my jacket. Then I waded out into the living room.

They’d set up emergency lighting outside and it beamed down into the room. In it, I could see a lake all around me, with furniture sticking up like islands. But all I could see of Bonnie in the rising water level was her head, with wavelets lapping at it. Her eyes looked up at me in bewilderment, asking whether she was supposed to swim for it now. I snatched her up and, with soaked dog under one arm and waterlogged boots in my other hand, sploshed my way back to the front door. As I did, Bonnie’s tin dish floated past. I scooped that up, too.

The fireman had come back. He was waiting by the door and seized my arm. I was propelled through the mini swimming-pool which my basement had become, up the steps to street level, and found myself in the full glare of the temporary lights.

It was all go up there. There was a fire engine and another vehicle. A huge hose snaked across the pavement. People were working feverishly everywhere I could see. The tiny spring we’d inspected earlier had burst its corsets, flooding first the pavement and then, as drains proved unequal to the task, pouring down basement steps to gather at the bottom in lakes which had forced their way under my front door and those of my immediate basement neighbours.

Daphne’s door opened and she scurried down the steps. She wore her usual jogging pants and sweater but in addition gumboots, a raincoat and a sou’wester. She was better equipped than I was. In her arms she held a large tin box.

‘Oh, Fran dear!’ she wailed. ‘They say we’ve got to go to the church hall. I don’t know why we can’t stay in my place – that’s not threatened.’

‘The electrics, ma’am!’ called the nearest yellow oilskin.

I realised that there were several police cars parked nearby. An officer appeared to escort us to one of them and we sped away through the night.

A group of us, about fifteen souls in all, inhabitants of the affected properties, huddled round a pair of portable Calor Gas stoves in St Agatha’s hall. Bonnie, having shaken herself fairly dry, had taken the best place in front of one fire and curled up.

We basement dwellers had rescued a peculiar mix of valuables. One man had brought out an oil-painting. There was a crop of video recorders and home computer terminals, two guitars, a porcelain rococo clock and a cat, yowling miserably in a travelling cage. Bonnie had shown brief curiosity in that, but as it was safely locked away and couldn’t be chased, lost interest. Otherwise, we looked typical refugees. We’d been handed blankets and mugs of tea by two stalwart ladies who’d appeared from somewhere. They were in the best of spirits. One said she was the vicar’s wife. The other one informed us she was Brown Owl. They were obviously friends and lived for this kind of occasion.

At first, we, being British, affected an equal jollity, showing the spirit of the Blitz and so on, though we stopped short of the Vera Lynn songs. But it didn’t last. Before long, we put our heads together and began to grumble about the water board, the incompetence of the council, the level of council tax, and those of us from basement properties, about where on earth we were supposed to go to, when the water was pumped out.

Clearly, none of the basements would be habitable. Carpets and furniture would be ruined. Electrical wiring would have to be checked. Insurance companies would have to be contacted. It would take weeks for the last dampness to evaporate, encroaching mould would need to be cleaned away, and then the business of redecoration would start.

A computer buff was sure he’d lost all his work. His floppy disks had got wet and, ohmigod, he didn’t dare imagine what had happened to his hard-drive. Someone else had only just finished painting and decorating.

‘And a week before Christmas!’ groaned yet another.

A young woman burst into tears and declared she’d lost all the Christmas presents for sure. They’d been piled up in a corner. Everyone else turned to comforting her.

I brooded alone. I hadn’t lost any Christmas presents because to date, I hadn’t bought any and no one had sent me any, either. But it did seem likely I’d lost all my few possessions and worse, was left with nowhere to go. I had no family and no money for hotels.

Daphne, divining what was in my mind, tapped my arm and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, Fran. We’ll be able to go back to my house once they’ve checked the wiring is safe. With the steps, the water couldn’t rise to the level of my door.’

I hoped that was true.

‘You can stay with me until the basement is fit to live in again,’ she went on.

I thanked her, but said that wasn’t on. ‘It could be months,’ I pointed out. ‘I couldn’t doss at your place for so long. It wouldn’t be fair. There’s Bonnie. Anyway, what about your nephews?’

‘Oh, blow my nephews!’ said Daphne.

But I couldn’t stay with her for that length of time. Apart from all the other considerations, the flood had thrown a major spanner in Foxley’s plans. When Ponytail came back, if he did, he’d find the flat empty and locked up.

‘I’ll go down the housing department in the morning,’ I said, ‘and ask for emergency accommodation. They can’t refuse me, surely.’

They mightn’t refuse, but they’d stick me in some God-awful hole of a place for sure. And what about Bonnie? Few places accepted animals.

‘I might ask you to look after Bonnie for a bit, if you would,’ I ventured.

‘You listen to me, Fran!’ said Daphne firmly. ‘We’re only days away from Christmas and I won’t hear of your turning to the council at a time like this. I have a four-bedroomed house and I insist you stay with me – at least until New Year. Then we’ll talk it over. In any case, I’ll look after the little dog. She’s no problem.’

Bonnie, in front of the gas stove, twitched her ears.

‘We won’t be able to use the tap water,’ said a man gloomily. ‘It’ll be contaminated. They’ll bring one of those water tankers round and we’ll have to fill plastic containers.’

‘I drink a lot of bottled water, anyway,’ Daphne said. ‘At least I’ve got a supply of that in.’

‘Shops round here will soon run out of that,’ said Jeremiah.

It was four in the morning. I pulled my blanket round my ears and wondered how my boots were drying. One of the stalwart ladies had stood them upside down on newspaper to drain, near to the fire. My co-refugees kept giving them mistrustful looks.

‘The freezers will have shorted out!’ screeched the young woman who’d lost her Christmas gifts. ‘The turkey will be ruined!’

They all began again to talk about insurance. I didn’t have that, either. That was to say, I supposed Daphne’s house insurance took account of the building, but my personal possessions, well, that was another matter. Not that what I had was worth insuring. But that meant that, by Sod’s law, I had neither the goods nor a cheque on its way in the post. The less you have, the more you have to lose at a time like this. I tried that line of argument out on the computer buff, but he didn’t take the point at all. ‘A year’s work!’ he moaned repeatedly.

I left him alone with his misery.

Daphne and I had steeled ourselves to finding a mess, when we returned home just before ten, but neither of us had anticipated the level of destruction in the basement flat. The water, before they’d pumped it out, had reached a level of some forty centimetres. A tidemark round the walls confirmed it. The old rep sofa had soaked it up like a sponge and would have to be thrown out. The telly would probably never work again. It hadn’t worked well before. The pine coffee table might be salvaged. The carpet was ruined. Both bathroom and kitchen tiles had lifted. Worst of all, sewage had contaminated the water and the place stank. Bonnie picked her way fastidiously across the wreckage and returned with the bloated body of a dead mouse which she deposited at our feet.

‘Come on!’ said Daphne briskly. ‘We’ll move everything we can upstairs.’

It took us the rest of the morning, carrying the heavier items between us, up my steps, Daphne’s steps and down her hall to the utility room at the back where we stacked them up. Some things we couldn’t move, like the bed and the cooker, so they had to be left. The water tanker had turned up and so I also hauled plastic jerry cans back to the house to stock up. My arms, thanks to Ponytail’s embrace, had ached before. Now the muscles shrieked protest at every movement. So busy were we, it wasn’t until Daphne spoke of making something for lunch that I realised I’d quite forgotten about Ganesh and that I was supposed to have been at the shop. I went round to explain.

‘I heard about it,’ he said. ‘It was on local radio, breakfast-time, with the traffic news. Motorists to avoid your street. I wondered if you’d been affected and when you didn’t come in, I realised you must be. I’m really sorry. I was going to pop round later to see you.’

‘You bet I’m affected,’ I said. ‘Flooded out and homeless again.’

He frowned. ‘You can stay here until Hari gets back.’

‘No, I can’t. One of your family might turn up and find me and there’d be hell to pay. Daphne will give me a bed, at least until after Christmas.’

The bell jangled and Hitch came into the shop. He looked cheerful. ‘Hullo, darling!’ he hailed me. ‘I hoped I’d find you here. I’ve been down your street and I saw your place was one of the ones flooded out. Here, you take my card and give it to the old girl who owns the house.’ He thrust one of his business cards at me. ‘You tell her, when she’s getting quotes for the insurance, to come to me. I can give her a very good price for fixing that flat up.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And if you was to fancy lilac paint for the walls, I’ve got a job lot of that.’

I took the card without comment.

‘Gan,’ I asked, ‘I need to use the phone up in the flat, OK?’

I left him with Hitch and ran upstairs. My luck continued out. I couldn’t contact Foxley, Harford or even Parry at the nick. They passed me to someone I’d never heard of, called Murphy, and I had to tell him that Grice had been in contact.

‘Himself or one of his boys?’ asked Murphy, not sounding particularly interested.

I explained and he said, ‘Fine, I’ll tell the super. Let us know when he gets back to you.’

Then he hung up on me. I glared at the phone. For two pins, I’d have rung again and called the whole thing off. Then I remembered I couldn’t.

Hitch had left when I returned to the shop. I told Ganesh I hoped to be into work the next day as normal, but he said if I needed to mop out the flat, he could manage. We left it at that.

I dropped Hitch’s card in the waste bin on my way out.

I arrived back at the house in time to meet Daphne, who was just taking Bonnie out for a walk. An old leather dress belt in sky blue was looped round Bonnie’s collar as a lead. ‘Better than a bit of string, anyway,’ said Daphne, setting off down the street.

I let myself in, went out into the kitchen and was just about to make coffee, when the doorbell rang. I froze. Had Ponytail tracked me down already? I crept into the front room and peered out the window. I was afforded the fat rear view of one of the Knowles brothers. I had just decided to let him stew out there, when he turned and saw me.

‘Open the door!’ he shouted. It was Charlie.

I opened up and he stormed in, passing me rudely and marching through to the back sitting room.