Narrow Minds (5 page)

‘I thought it was funny Dad,' Sam said in a loud theatrical whisper as they exited stage left.

Charlie snorted and patted me on the arm. ‘Don't worry, I bought you something nice,' she said, grinning.

The rest of the morning went fairly well, and after a huge dinner that included slightly burnt turkey and very undercooked roast potatoes, everyone settled down to their various tasks. Sam and Amelia spent most of the afternoon watching SpongeBob, the two of them laughing uproariously at the silly jokes (I do think that Amelia's extreme humour may have been slightly Southern Comfort-fuelled). Charlie and Huw played World of Warcraft and Geoff played with his new electrical testing gadget. With all of the others engaged, I finally got the chance to set up my new laptop. Well, I looked at it for a while and then called Geoff over to fix it for me; it seemed the right thing to do after all he had put me through.

That evening, out in the kitchen, Amelia was helping me with the washing up, she was still fairly tipsy but was now sporting a major headache as well.

‘So how's the boat hunting going?' She paused to wash a couple of paracetamol down with a large glass of water. ‘Have you got anything yet?'

‘Nope.' I didn't really want to talk about this, I was feeling slightly guilty about the money I had spent over Christmas, I knew it had severely knocked our bank account around.

She picked up a saucepan and began an industrious if ineffectual drying movement. ‘So what are you going to do?'

Leaning on the edge of the sink I sighed. ‘I don't know, Mills, I really don't. Even if I find a boat, I don't think anyone else wants to move again.' I tailed off, not knowing what to say.

Amelia frowned. ‘I didn't want to be the one to tell you.' She nodded toward the lounge and its sleepy, overfed occupants. ‘But Charlie was saying earlier that there was no way she was going to move on to a boat again.'

‘I know.' I stirred the murky water around in the sink, I could feel tears gathering and held my breath, this was NOT the time for a good cry.

Amelia grabbed one of the clean glasses and filled it with Southern Comfort. Holding it out toward me she gave me a big grin. ‘Don't give up yet.' She stared out of the window at the sleet. ‘If it's like this in December, just imagine what it's going to be like in February.' She pushed the glass towards me. ‘I shouldn't think spring even turns up here till about June, everybody will be completely fed up with it by then.'

I stared at her over the rim of the glass. ‘When did you get so sneaky?'

Amelia blushed. ‘Sometimes you just have to wait for the right time to make your point.'

‘And your point would be?'

She flicked a nervous glance toward the living room. ‘Let's just say we're all hoping for some big changes in the New Year.'

With that slightly enigmatic statement, she dropped the tea towel on top of the unfinished washing up and sailed out of the room.

Oh dear; Amelia in that sort of mood wasn't going to be good news for anyone.

* * *

As January and February slipped slowly away, I was still having no luck finding a new boat. Once again, everything was either too small or too expensive. I was also really concerned about our finances. Every week Geoff's wages just failed to cover our expenditure. Little by little we were eating away at the savings, a couple of hundred quid here, a set of new tyres there, we just needed the car serviced, the kids needed new shoes. As the savings went down, my boat search became more frenzied. Boats I wouldn't have considered three months ago were now out of our price range and I was becoming slightly panic-stricken about the whole thing.

I worked out that at our present rate of spending we had less than three months before we wouldn't be able to buy a boat at all. I firmly ignored the little voice in my head that suggested we may already be at that point. I wasn't going to listen to that rubbish, I
couldn't
let myself listen to that rubbish, if I did, I might well be inclined to just give up and there was no way I was going down without a fight.

I stared out of the window at the sleet-filled rain and deliberately screwed my pages of calculations up and threw them, with a certain amount of vindictiveness, into the already overflowing wastepaper basket. Typically, I missed and it bounced off across the carpet. I sighed and bent down to pick it up.

The only place to put the computer desk, printer and all the other IT paraphernalia we owned was a nice little niche under the stairs. As you walked in the front door you found yourself immediately in the living room with the stairs to your left. The space beneath them made a fairly good office. Unfortunately the stairs were wider than the computer table and as I stood up I smashed my head into the underside of the polished wooden treads. The sudden pain brought tears to my eyes and I staggered over to grab the back of the sofa, trying to stop my eyes watering. Honestly it was only the bump on the head that made me cry, nothing to do with the finances, and as long as I kept telling myself that I was fine. I gave the offending piece of paper a vicious kick telling myself that I just needed to talk to Geoff about the whole thing, between us there wasn't anything we couldn't accomplish.

Unfortunately it had become almost impossible to talk to Geoff about it. In fact it had become almost impossible to talk to Geoff about anything. Completely engrossed with the stupid online game, he had taken to coming home from work, eating dinner and getting straight on to the computer. I was seriously considering hitting either him or the equipment with a very large hammer. There was, of course every chance that I was being unreasonable so, as usual, I took my woes to Helen.

‘He doesn't talk to me any more,' I ranted at her one evening over gin and bitter lemon. ‘That stupid game is just taking over, every flaming night he just sits there till he can't stay awake any more then we go to bed and he passes out. He doesn't interact with the kids, we don't go out.'

I sighed and looked at her. ‘We're running out of money, Hels, the savings are just going down and down, it's only me looking for a boat, the kids have made it clear they don't want to move and Geoff doesn't even live in this world any more, he's become some sort of Orc hairdresser or something.' I took a deep breath, any more of this and I was just going to have a complete crying fit. ‘I can't bear it, when we had the boat we did everything together, there were things going on all the time, getting water, getting coal, running about, fixing things, we laughed.' I frowned. ‘We froze our bits off as well, got eaten alive by insects and fished Geoff out of the river a lot but,' I hesitated as I tried to think of the right words, ‘it was fun.'

Helen gave me a hug; obviously this was a real problem and not one for a good nagging. ‘Well, your life is pretty much the same as everybody else's.' She laughed. ‘Lots of people spend too long on computer games, good grief I know I've nagged Dave about it often enough. There's never enough money and you rob Peter to pay Paul.' She paused for a moment, ‘Look, what exactly is it that's so important to you about living on the boat, maybe if you went through it you'd see it wasn't all that good and you could concentrate on living here.' She leaned forward with a curious look. ‘So come on convince me.'

I gulped and could feel my face heating up. ‘You're going to laugh, it's such a corny thing but to me it was the best thing in the world.'

Helen pushed her hair out of her eyes and frowned, trying desperately to give the impression that she wouldn't laugh.

‘It's the sense of community.' I gave her a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘Not something
I've
ever been worried about eh? I can't even remember a house where I haven't had some problem with the neighbours, even if it's something really paltry like their cat digging up my lawn.' I took a sip of my drink. ‘You always knew where you were with the boaters, nobody ever bothered you, nobody judged. There were boats of every shape and size down that line, but there was no one-upmanship, none of the ‘I've got a better boat than you'. People would always help out, if you ran out of coal or electricity or needed something; there were no worries about asking someone for help, you knew that in the same position they'd certainly ask you.'

I paused as I tried to remember what had made it all so very special. ‘In the summer, there were early mornings where we'd all be drinking coffee and perched on steps, some in pyjamas, some in shorts, just chatting. People would join the group or wander off, everyone knew everyone else. If people had too much of something they just left the excess by the skip or offered it around.' I grinned. ‘I remember someone had managed to pick up a load of paving slabs, far too many to pave the way to their boat. So that winter, there were about five of us that didn't need to skip through the mud, it was such a simple thing but it was so good.'

I paused for breath and took a look at Helen to see if she understood, she frowned so I carried on. ‘And every year a set of boats get lifted out for blacking, the first two days just seem to be a bit of a party, someone brings a barbecue, there's far too much beer consumed, but eventually they start work but if your next door neighbour needs help then they would do that as well. Maybe I'm wrong, not having lived through it, but there seems to still be that sense of community that my gran used to talk about.' I pondered the whole thing, then another thought occurred to me and I frowned. ‘There is one other thing, every morning that stupid postman comes to the door and delivers me a pile of letters.'

Helen shook her head in confusion. ‘Yeah, so?'

‘Well, it's just that if you're watching your budget and every day another bill comes in and another and another, and if it's not bills it's rubbish. Just bits of paper telling you that to live a fulfilled life you need to change your gas provider or your telephone provider.' I huffed in exasperation. ‘On one hand they're telling you to pay up because you're in debt and on the other they're offering more debt, more money, more …' I paused trying to think of the word that would convey my utter disgust with the whole stupid process ‘… stuff.' I shook my head, it wasn't a good word.

‘It's obscene really and it's no wonder that everyone gets into debt.' I looked up at her and took in the lifted lip and disbelieving look. ‘I told you it was pathetic, but it was the one thing I loved about being on the boat, no post. We had a box in the city and we went once a week and picked it all up, half of it went straight into the recycling and the rest we just ignored until they went away,' I said giving her a big smile, ‘it was heaven.'

Helen shook her head in complete disbelief. ‘Everybody deals with post Marie,' she said still shaking her head, ‘you just learn to live with it.'

‘But I don't have to live with it, I know I don't and that's the thing. I've seen the other side and quite frankly it's really peaceful.' I frowned and shook my head again remembering all the things about house living that I didn't have to put up with.

‘Well, I can see the appeal although I'm not sure I agree with you about the post.' Helen leant back in her chair and took a large sip of her drink, the ice cubes clinking as she lifted it. ‘But if you want your way and you're fairly sure that it's going to be good for everyone and not just you, you're going to have to do what we do best.'

‘And what exactly is that?' I sniffed at her.

‘Pick your time and be really, really sneaky.' She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Fancy another?'

Chapter Three
Dignity Disolves in Alcohol

A
S WINTER GRUDGINGLY GAVE
way to a wet and windy spring, life, unfortunately, continued unchanged. Charlie happily added to her group of friends and often went out at the weekends. I had met most of the group she hung around with and they seemed a nice enough crowd, although it is always a bit difficult to tell in a large group of gabbling thirteen-year-olds.

Charlie decided she couldn't take the accent any more and had taken it upon herself to teach them ‘proper English' as she called it, consequently her closest friends now switched between barth and bath, Carstle and castle, glarss and glass with equal enthusiasm.

Sam on the other hand had taken to the local lingo like a pro. Asking him on one occasion if he would like ice cream after tea he responded with an enthusiastic ‘wae'aye mun'. Geoff howled with laughter. I didn't find it funny at all and had to go and have a sit down.

Geoff, seeing I was upset, came and sat beside me. ‘What on earth's the matter with you?' He handed me a coffee. ‘You can't expect him to live somewhere and not pick up a couple of the local sayings.' He frowned. ‘I hadn't got you pegged for such a narrow-minded, dyed-in-the-wool southerner.' He paused then shook his head. ‘But that's not it is it?' He stared at me. ‘You've never worried if someone's from Glasgow, France or flipping Timbuktu so what exactly is the big problem here?'

‘It used to be like that.' I sighed and took a sip of scalding coffee. ‘And it's really odd, I have no problems with the people from Durham, or Darlington or even Newcastle, they seem to be welcoming, chatty and just generally nice, pretty much like people all over the country.' I paused for a moment. ‘But this village is like flaming anti-Stepford, the women at school are still not speaking to me.' I shook my head. ‘That sounds really pathetic I know, it's not that I need them to like me but they won't even acknowledge that I'm standing there, and if one of them is talking to Mickey and I go and talk to her, the other women will walk away, it really is getting ridiculous.'

Geoff snorted and looked dubious.

I took another sip of coffee and stared into the fire. ‘There was a woman standing about three feet from me yesterday and she was talking to her friend about how proud she was that she was umpteenth generation to live in the same house and that her grandfather had never gone further than ten miles out of the village his whole life. She said that she didn't understand why these people needed to move all over the country and take houses that locals could have.

They kept looking at me as they were talking then giggling, honestly it's really basic schoolyard bullying I couldn't care less about them or their stupid village; let's face it, what's here? A big fat nothing, but it does get really wearing.'

Geoff shook his head. ‘Are you sure you're not just being paranoid?' He stretched his feet towards the fire. ‘Most people I come in contact with are lovely.'

‘You're never actually here,' I moaned. ‘Let's face it, if a heavy fog came down I wouldn't dare enter the centre of the village because there is a huge and real possibility that if you tried to walk through the fog you'd end up in the Newcastle version of bloody Brigadoon or in Limbo where all the dead stand in silence and wait for judgement day.' I pulled a spooky face and wiggled my fingers at him. ‘Wooooooo!' Standing up, I wandered toward the table. ‘You spend most of your time in Durham City or over near Middlesbrough. I wish we'd never sold
Happy Go Lucky
and I wish we'd never come up here.' I paused for a moment, concentrating on sorting through that day's copious post; three bills, a letter from Charlie's school and seven pieces that looked as though they held ‘fantastic' deals that I probably shouldn't miss out on. I blinked rapidly as the addresses on the letters suddenly began to swim in sad water. ‘This place will never, ever be home.'

At the beginning of April we did have one piece of mail that was actually good news. Expecting exciting books from Amazon, I was actually waiting for the postman that morning. At the sound of an engine I dragged myself off the sofa with a grin. Listening to the car pull up outside our door I frowned, that certainly didn't sound like the post van. A well-tuned engine throbbed for a couple of seconds then faded to silence. I peered out of the window at the shiny, sapphire blue Freelander that sat on the gravel. A tall, well-built, middle-aged man climbed out, his shorts and sandals marking him as a tourist, and, straightening his multi-pocketed jacket, he headed for the door.

I beat him to it and he looked fairly surprised as I stuck my head out and grinned at his still-raised hand. ‘Hello, can I help you?'

He lowered his hand and gave me a charming smile.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe he wasn't a tourist, if he was selling something he was going to be sorely disappointed so I pursed my lips, crossed my arms, raised an eyebrow at him, then waited for the sales spiel to start.

‘Hello,' he said and gave me another dazzling smile, ‘I don't suppose you've lost a sheep have you?'

I stared at him as I went over his words in my head. Well, that wasn't what I'd expected at all. ‘Erm, no,' I said wondering if this was a new sales tactic, start with a completely mad sentence to get me on the back foot then go in for the kill, I looked over at his car and hesitantly returned the wave of the woman sitting in the passenger seat with a scruffy terrier on her lap, not a salesman then.

He continued to smile at me and I felt pressured to expand. ‘I don't have any sheep.' I gave him an inane smile.

‘Do you know anyone who has?' He was obviously a little frustrated with my reticence.

I took a moment to cudgel my brain into a semblance of working order then asked, ‘Have you found a sheep?' This was turning out to be a very short, succinct and slightly surreal conversation.

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yeah it was wandering along the road all by itself and yours was the first drive I came to.'

Right, that made sense. I felt I could actually contribute to the conversation now. ‘Well, I haven't been here long but our landlord Kevin will probably know which of his neighbours keep sheep.' I nodded and smiled, yes this was definitely a problem I could palm off on someone else. ‘If you could tell me where it is, I'll pop round and see him and he'll no doubt do something about it.' I waved over his shoulder as John the postie pulled into the drive.

‘It's in the back of the car,' he replied and grinned, pointing at his new, un-muddied bespoke 4x4.

‘What?' I stared at the car and sure enough in the shadows of the tinted boot windows I could just make out the distinctive surprised, black and white face of a small Swaledale, male by the look of the horns, not yet very long but certainly beginning to develop that distinctive curve. ‘You've got it in your car?' I must have sounded a complete half-wit. ‘How the hell did you get it in there?'

The man frowned ‘I just picked it up.' He shrugged. ‘We've got the back all caged off for the dog so I just moved the dog and bunged him in there.'

John joined us, a bunch of letters in his hand. ‘Morning.' He grinned at the man, then frowned as I blubbered through a sentence that contained the words, sheep and car then stared as I pointed toward the now rocking 4x4. Its remaining passengers were beginning to look decidedly worried.

Swaledales are the local sheep, they are tough, hardy and opportunistic. Approximately two years ago I'd had a coat that, when I walked, obviously made a noise like a feedbag and I still have outstandingly clear memories of being chased for over half a mile by a very, very intent flock of these things much to the amusement of Geoff, his mother and the kids. I finally got rid of them by ditching the coat and had shivered most of the way home. Ever since then I'd been very careful to buy only silent cold weather gear.

As we all stood in silence staring at the car, the young sheep became bored and decided that, while travelling in style was great for a while, it was now time to go back to finding those lovely ladies it had obviously been searching for when this well meaning but obviously insane person had kidnapped it.

We all winced as the sheep smashed its head into the window, the lady in the passenger seat gave a short scream and the dog began to bark which only seemed to infuriate the sheep even more.

‘Hey … HEY!' The man made a leap for his car (evidently his name was Graham, the lady in the passenger seat was now screaming over and over, ‘GRAHAM! Make it stop!'), I thought he was going to, sensibly, open the door and let it out. No, he ran to the window and began to hammer on it. ‘You stop that,' he yelled as though to his dog, ‘stay! sit!' The sheep glowered at him and backed away from the window. John handed me the pile of letters then, gently grabbing me by the arm, manoeuvred me back toward the house. We alternated between staring at each other then back at the car which was beginning to rock with each successive thump, THUMP! As the sheep sought escape, the screams and barking from the front of the car grew in both panic and decibels.

Graham was almost incandescent, veins stood out at his temples and he continued to hammer on the window. ‘Pack it in you stupid animal,' he screamed, the sheep just eyed him balefully through the glass. ‘Argh, you've pooed.' He gave the window a mighty thump with his fist. ‘Stop treading in it,' he shrieked.

John's hand closed on my arm and moved me another step into the house, we peered out through the door.

The sheep, (Ram!) jumped and closing its eyes gave the window one last bash. The lock finally gave way and the glass door snapped upward as the woolly torpedo exploded with a graceful jump out onto the gravel. John swore and grabbed the door as the enraged animal careered toward us, head down and teeth bared (or baaaaaa'd). He slammed the door shut and we both winced as the wood shuddered under the devastating impact. John grinned down at me. ‘He is NOT happy,' he said.

Giggling, we both hurried to the window and stared out as Graham stood in shock looking at his boot door. We watched with glee as his expression changed from anger to fear as he realised that the ram was backing slowly away from him, malice evident in its every movement. The screams and barking were now almost painful.

‘I think I'd better get Kevin.' John sniggered then headed off, through the house, toward the back door leaving me at the window to watch the YouTube-worthy antics outside.

I dithered, I really wanted to open the door and let the man in but I thought that any movement would attract the enraged ovine. Anyway he had managed to shut his wife up and was just creeping around the car keeping it between him and ‘Ram…bo', they seemed to have it all under control.

It seemed like an age, but was probably only a couple of minutes before Huge one and Huge two came plodding around the corner of the barn. The ram narrowed its eyes and backed up a couple of more paces. The brothers looked at each other and grinned, both stepping sideways to give the animal a couple of targets to choose from.

It really didn't take him long, putting his head down he rushed at the brother on the left. As he went past, Huge two just stepped forward and grabbed a horn in one hand and wodge of fleece in the other then spun on the spot dragging the confused animal in a circle. Legs scrabbling on the gravel, he tried to struggle but when the other brother joined in and they both had hold of his head he sighed and became as meek as a kitten.

The brothers grinned at me through the window as they staggered past dragging the now quiescent animal between them. ‘All right, Mrs Browne?' they nodded.

Shaking my head at their casual treatment of the evil beastie, I waved and opened the front door, the least I could do was offer these poor guys a cup of tea.

Marion, sat wide-eyed on the sofa watching Titch, the terrier, exploring the lounge, she could barely hold the mug her hand was shaking so hard. ‘We saw him wandering along the side of the road.' She took a sip and stared unseeing into the fireplace. ‘It was me that made Graham pick him up; he looked so sweet and lost.'

I tried to think of something comforting to say. ‘Well it's probably a good job you did.' I smiled encouragingly. ‘He could have caused a nasty accident if he'd jumped out in front of a bike or a car, it was a really good thing you got him off the road.' I stared out of the window and watched her husband as, with a face like thunder, he attempted to keep his boot shut with a mixture of grubby blue baler twine and pristine, unused, bungee cords.

She nodded, I really wished she would blink or something, she was beginning to make my eyes water just looking at her.

John sipped his tea and added his own pearls of wisdom, ‘Just be thankful he was only a baby,' he commented sagely.

The woman blinked at him, ‘They get bigger than that?' Her face was ashen. Putting her mug down on the table she turned to me with a smile and took a deep breath. ‘Thank you for the tea.' She whistled to Titch who was trying to climb into the log basket. ‘And I'm really sorry we brought that hideous animal to you.' She got to her feet with another sigh. ‘But I'll tell you this …' she narrowed her eyes and shook her head as, with Titch under her arm, she headed toward the door. ‘If ever I can't sleep, I'm going to take a valium. I am NOT going to count sheep, ever AGAIN!'

With that she nodded and, giving us a wobbly smile, headed out to where her husband was now sitting in the driver's seat, his face still purple, (if anyone needed a valium he did).

Watching them head slowly away down the drive John and I leant on each other and howled, I hadn't laughed so hard for what seemed like years. I was still laughing even after I realised that the post he'd given me didn't contain my new book.

Draining his mug, my now favourite postman grinned. ‘Well, I'd better get on my way, see you tomorrow, no doubt there will be more bills … there always is.'