Narrow Escape (9 page)

“It had to be you.” She leaned over the side of the boat and watched him clamber, dripping and shivering, on to the grass. “I knew it wasn't one of the kids because Marie only gave a small screech, she'd have made a lot more fuss and there would have been a second splash if one of them had gone in.”

“Are you OK?” I stepped forward and offered him a hand. It was really difficult to walk and laugh at the same time and my hand shook.

With a wet huff Dion ignored it and clambered out on his own. “You're laughing, aren't you?” he accused me as he shook himself like a dog. I noted that both dogs flinched and moved out of the way of the water, neither of them had dived in to save him. Lassies they are not.

“No, no I'm not laughing.” I knew for a fact that my face was bright red and that I was shaking with the suppressed mirth. “Are you hurt?” People falling in the river is funny but there is a multitude of hidden dangers under the water.

He checked himself over and then shook his head. “No, just a scratch on my arm and seriously dented pride.”

“Good.” I gave him a big grin. “Now I'm going to laugh.”

Dion stuck his tongue out at me.

“I am sorry about one thing though.”

“What's that,” he said.

“I just wish I'd had my phone out when you fell, I could have got that on video.” I laughed again as, kicking his flip-flops off, he began picking waterweed and tiny snails out from between his toes.

“Thanks, Marie.” He flicked a bit of weed at me.

“I'd have shared the money.” I ducked and fled as he reached for a larger clump that was floating by his boat. Definitely time to make a sharp exit.

Talking to Elaine over coffee later, I did check that Dion was entirely in one piece.

She was definitely more concerned about the changes currently happening at the marina so I assumed he was fine.

“… and not only that but I hear they're going to instigate a hosepipe ban,” she said.

“What? Sorry, I missed that, the owners are saying no hosepipes? How the hell are we supposed to fill up with water?”

Elaine laughed. “No, you dafty,” she said. “It's going to be county-wide. Evidently we haven't had nearly enough rain for the last two years and they're really worried about East Anglia. They haven't given a date yet but it looks as though we're going to have a water shortage.”

“Oh, it won't affect us.” I couldn't see how we could be stopped from filling our boats with essential water. Even at our worst we used far less than any normal household. “It's not like we all go out on a Sunday and wash our family saloons, is it?”

Elaine shrugged. “It's probably just the changes going on at the moment but I just have a horrible feeling that this is going to be one long and awful year.” She laughed. “Well, that was positive of me wasn't it?” Gathering up the coffee cups she sighed. “Maybe I'm just feeling a bit down but I just have this sense of impending doom.” Giving me a wave she headed back inside her boat.

Well that was two people that had a bad feeling about the upcoming months. I wondered whether Bill's sense of nervousness was spreading. One thing was sure, we didn't like change. I'd noticed that since the new management had taken over ‘the grumps' had been spreading like a virus. I resolved to not get involved. It would be far too easy for a mob mentality to emerge and when, one voice turns into many, it can be really difficult to separate real problems from the noise of outraged and possibly unjustified screaming.

The next day was a Sunday and I was awoken from a rather nice lie in by the boat swaying. I looked through the curtains expecting to see a stupidly fast boat disappearing into the distance. Instead, I was confronted by the odd sight of someone walking down the riverside gunwales. I jumped and suppressed a yell, I had no idea who it was, all I could see was a pair of legs.

“Geoff.” I called down the boat. “Geoff!”

The legs bent at the knee and my worried-looking husband peered in through the window at me. “Yes?” He looked slightly alarmed at my yells.

I knelt on the bed and peered up at him. “What on earth are you doing out there?” I wiped the condensation from the window so that I could study him a little better. “And why are you holding a hammer?”

“Put the kettle on and I'll come in and tell you.” Geoff stood up and the legs moved away toward the front of the boat.

I slumped back into the pillows and reminisced about the days that I was woken up by the clink of bottles from the milkman or the sound of post through the letter box. Those days were long gone.

Ten minutes later and the tea was made, the bed put away, and my husband was waving a hammer at me.

“This is all your flaming fault you know,” he said.

Well, most things around here were so I just shrugged and tried to think of what I'd done that would need a good clobbering. I shook my head. “Sorry, you've lost me. I haven't poked anything recently, I haven't broken anything, and I'm fairly sure that nothing's dropped off.“

“I want shelves on that wall.” Geoff mimicked me. “It won't take long, just a couple of shelves.”

I shrugged again. “I'm still at a loss how my wanting shelves means you have to cavort up and down the outside of the boat waving implements of mass destruction.” I took the hammer away from him and placed it carefully on the work surface.

“Because that wall's damp.” Geoff rolled his eyes as if that made the whole thing clear.

“So …”

“I took the cladding off the wall and found that all the insulation was completely soaked.” Geoff ran a harassed hand through his hair. “So then I found that all the water was coming through the window above the new desk.”

“OK …”

“So now I have to take the window out, reseal it, reseat it and make sure I've stopped the leak before I can put new insulation up and replace the wall.” Geoff took a gulp of tea and glared at me.

I thought about it for a moment. “But, that's a good thing, isn't it?” Surely getting rid of as many leaks as possible was what we wanted.”

Geoff picked up the hammer again. “The window's riverside, Marie,” he said. “I don't really want a four-hour jaunt to turn the boat around just to do one window.” He gave me a big grin. “So I'm going to do it while standing on the gunwales.”

Now that was NOT a good idea. Trying to wrestle out a fairly heavy lump of aluminium and glass while perching on six inches of steel could only end in disaster. I was certain that Geoff could see this so I sighed. “I get it, bad idea. I know you planned to remove and reseal all the windows this summer, so we'll just wait until we do all the others.”

Geoff sighed as well. “Actually, those shelves would be really useful, much as I hate to admit it. I don't want to replace that wall without doing this window and I can't really build the other bits I need until this wall's sorted out. I think it will work as long as you give me a hand.”

Oh great! My sense of balance is possibly second only to my night vision.

An hour later and Geoff was ready to take out the window. Luckily he hadn't wanted me out on the gunwales with him; he wanted me supporting the window from the inside. I was more than happy to accommodate him.

I removed the top pane of glass and set it carefully down. The window wobbled alarmingly and I held on to the aluminium spar that ran horizontally across the frame and held the main piece of glass in place.

“Right.” Geoff wiggled his fingers around the outside of the frame and gave a gentle tug. The frame came away from the boat and he let it lean at an angle on the bottom edge. “When I say
lift
we'll both lift together and then we'll angle it so that it can come through the space and you can take it into the boat, all right?”

I wasn't convinced about this idea. Because of the glass I only had a fairly tenuous grip on the bar, if this thing slipped away there was no way I'd be able to hold it. I pointed this out to Geoff who was busy studying the edge of the window.

“Don't worry about that,” he said. “All we really have to do is swivel it while it's leaning on the boat and then you can move your hands to the edges and take it inside.”

Oh well, that made sense.

“Where are you going to store it?” He studied the muck and old sealant that was hanging off the upper edge of the window frame. “You might want to put some newspaper down, if we get this on the floor we'll never get it off.”

Leaving him holding the window I scuttled around putting newspaper down. Mort, obviously remembering this routine from when he was a puppy, came and sat in the middle of it. I took another five minutes to shoo him outside; a sealant-covered dog wouldn't be good.

Back at the window again Geoff and I took a deep breath together.

“Ready?” Geoff peered at me though the glass.

I nodded.

“OK,” he said. “One, two, three, and lift.”

For once, the disaster that followed wasn't my fault, it really wasn't. As we lifted the window from its housing Geoff caught his hand on something sharp on the roof. The first I knew about it was a spray of bright blood spattered across the glass in front of me.

Geoff yelped and pulled his hand away, letting go of the window frame.

As the window swung away and down Geoff stepped back to avoid being hit. He missed the gunwales and staggered, one foot dangling in mid-air. Letting go of the window he made a grab for the rail on the roof and hung there. The sudden weight of the window pulled it out of my fingers and away the window went down into the muddy brown waters.

Geoff clambered back on to the gunwales and took a moment to calm his breathing. He studied his hand and we both watched as bright droplets of blood chased the window toward the river bed.

There was silence for a minute or so.

Geoff edged his way to the front of the boat and, holding his hand to his chest, stepped in through the front doors. “I think I'd better wash this,” he said.

I nodded and wondered If Dion and Elaine were at home. The last thing I'd dropped into the river had been the ash pan for the fire, their big magnet had dragged it out within seconds, very useful. As I walked up the boat realisation dawned on me. The window frames were aluminium – I could throw a hundred magnets into the river, that window wouldn't stick to any of them.

Deciding to deal with one issue at a time, I dealt with Geoff's hand. We didn't speak until the wound was cleaned and dressed and then only after I put the kettle on. “So what do we do now?”

Geoff wiggled his fingers and winced. “We hope that the fates are smiling on us and that window hasn't hit anything sharp on the way down,” he said.

I poured boiling water onto tea bags. “Geoff, that window's aluminium, how the hell are we going to get it back without one of us going into the river?” I stirred the tea. “The river's about eight foot deep there, I'm not looking forward to going in and I'm really very unhappy about you even attempting it.” I handed him a mug of tea. “And you certainly aren't going in with an open wound.”

Geoff peered at me over the rim of his mug and gave me a great smile. “How long have we been doing this now?”

He didn't seem anywhere near as upset as I thought he'd be. “Coming up on seven years, on and off,” I said.

“And how many things have we dropped in the river over those years.”

I started to think back and then decided there really wasn't much point. “Too many,” I said.

“So, with all that experience, do you not think I would have a contingency plan?”

The man looked way too smug and my worries started to dissolve. “Probably,” I said. “What did you do?”

He put his half-finished mug of tea on the side and waved me over to the empty space where our window used to be. “Watch and be amazed,” he said.

I stood back as he leant out of the gap and rootled around outside the boat. Moving very slowly he pulled his arm back through the window space and smiled hugely as he showed me a piece of white string.

“You tied the window frame to a piece of string?” I supposed I shouldn't have been surprised; we had dropped a considerable number of items into the river.

Geoff nodded. “While you were getting newspaper, I noticed Sam's old broken kite on the top of the boat. I decided that it might be a very good idea to use the string as a safety line so I tied one end to the top of the frame and the other end to the anchor.” He gave me a happy smile.

“Very clever, oh wise one,” I laughed as within minutes I watched him pull the window frame up from the depths. We were in luck; the glass hadn't smashed on the way down.

It took Geoff about an hour to scrape off all the old sealant and apply the new to the outside of the boat. Eventually he gave me a shout to bring the window back. I'd spent a lot of time cleaning it while he was working outside so the window now sparkled and looked almost new. Resting the very edge of the frame on the hole in the metal wall I refused to push it any further out until Geoff re-attached the kite string. I was no stranger to the same thing going wrong twice.

Luckily there was no need. The manoeuvre was slick and tidy. Within half an hour Geoff had finished screwing the frame back into place and, after wiping away the excess sealant, was once more standing inside admiring his handy work. “Ta da!” he said.

“Hmm,” I muttered non-committally at him as I studied the window. “I think you need to go back outside.”

“What?” Geoff's smile fell away. “Why, did I miss a bit?”

I shook my head. “No, it's just that one clean window makes all the others look terrible. If I give you a bucket of hot water and a sponge and squeegee could you clean all the others?”

Geoff opened his mouth and, before he exploded, I shot away up the boat.

“You can go off people.” He shouted after me.