The Unorthodox Arrival of Pumpkin Allan (8 page)

“Oh Dave, stop it!” squeaked Lois.

“Well, the cement was poured into the footings late on a winters evening and when the builders had gone and Debs and Richard were inside, he pushed the bags into the cement!”

“Mm, well done Sherlock. How are you going to gather your evidence? Knock down Richard and Debbie’s house and rip out the footings?” asked Tom.

Dave sipped his wine. “Mm, maybe I should conduct my own investigation. Hey, my new job could be as a private detective. ‘The Mystery of the Disappearing Old Witch’ could be my first case.”

The conversation continued into the early hours, very little being given away about any of the other neighbours. Lois and Tom who were both exhausted, said their goodnights and made their way upstairs.

As they climbed into bed, Lois was very relieved to see Tom smiling. “Well, it’s quite a place you’ve persuaded me to move to, isn’t it? I hope the rest of the residents are going to be more friendly than Mr. Black eh?”

Lois and Tom went back to London on Sunday evening having spent a very busy day trawling around the DIY and bathroom shops in a successful mission to order what was necessary. The good news was that their taste, in bathrooms at least, was very similar and they were both pleased with their order, an Edwardian style suite, more or less in keeping with the age of the cottage.

Once back at the flat, they sat and made yet another list. Annie had been left in charge of the giant key so she could let Dean in, enabling Lois to stay at the flat on Monday morning and make use of the computer and home phone. She could then organise reconnection of the landline, connection to broadband and find a man with a van who would pack up the flat and move them at the end of the following week.

Lois was so excited she could barely force herself to go to bed.

“I mustn’t forget, I need to ring the office and HR tomorrow and discuss my planned retirement!”

“Don’t say ‘I mustn’t forget’, always say ‘I must remember’, otherwise you’re sending the wrong message to your subconscious!” grinned Tom.

“Oh whatever!” said Lois, “I’ll write myself a note to make sure I don’t forget anyway. Hey, you’ve done really well today, how are your ribs feeling now?”

“Do you know, they’re feeling amazingly good. There’s still a dull ache, but the sharp nerve pain has gone. Interesting isn’t it? I expect they would have got better by now anyway, but they do seem to have improved dramatically over the course of the weekend.”

“Yes, since Saturday afternoon? Anyway, as you say, you would probably have got better anyway.”

Next morning, Tom dragged himself off to work and Lois settled into ticking the items off her list. Firstly she rang Adrienne, who was happy to tie up any of Lois’s loose ends at work. They arranged to meet for an early breakfast later in the week. Then she called the HR department, who agreed that she really didn’t have any notice to serve once her annual leave was taken into account. Only then did she ring the office. She would have felt guilty if it had been Justin that she needed to speak to, but much to her relief, his phone was answered by Ian. Lois explained the situation and said that she would make the appropriate hand-overs. Ian sounded as disgruntled as she would have expected, but she took little notice, she was feeling very excited.

Following the call, Lois checked the phone was disconnected properly, then shouted “YES!” and started dancing round the room, rubbing her tummy and singing, “No more work for us, Pumpkin, no more work for us!”

The morning passed quickly, very quickly. Lois worked her way through her list slowly, very slowly! The telecom company’s call centre in Delhi passed her from pillar to post and cut her off several times, which is something she should have taken into account before estimating how many jobs she would get done in a morning. Lois was very impressed with the fact she stayed calm. There was much controlled sighing and she ate her way through half a packet of very old bourbon biscuits. But she was totally in control of her temper, if not the phone call. The good news was that Tom had recently invested in a house phone with a loudspeaker function and a handy clip, which she attached to the top of her T-shirt. She could deal with the telecom company whilst simultaneously attempting to encourage her pixie haircut to look more pixie, less hedgehog, putting on her make-up, making tea, opening biscuit packets and looking up information on the Internet, without getting a crick in the neck.

The ‘man with a van’ was much easier to organise. She tried two phone numbers she found on the net and two she found in the local free paper that had been posted through the door on Friday. Ed was the least complicated of the four. He popped in at eleven o’clock and made a quick assessment of what the job involved. Opening the road map he’d brought with him to plan a route, said he would ‘come a week Fursday wiv free blokes and do the packin’. It would only take a few ‘ours. Den come back first fing Friday and load up de van.’ He reckoned they’d be all moved in and unpacked by lunchtime.  Ed suggested four hundred pounds in cash and Lois said that would be great and she’d see him on Thursday. After he’d gone, Lois thought she probably should have taken some credentials from him; Tom probably wouldn’t be overly impressed if he and his chums loaded up the van and then disappeared with all their belongings. “Oh well, hey ho!” she said out loud, shrugging her shoulders.

By the end of the morning Lois felt an urgent need to get to the cottage and see how Dean was getting on. She packed a large suitcase with clothes, toiletries, hairdryer, a phone just in case the telecom company got their act together and connected the line, mobile, laptop, camera, and a multitude of chargers. She finished packing the case, managed to force it shut sufficiently to do it up, went to take it to the front door and realised it was far too heavy for her to manoeuvre and had to find another bag to empty the heavier stuff into. Lois congratulated herself on, once again, being very well organised.

Tom rang, as she was about to leave the flat, “Hi Lo, just a quickie. Did you remember to pack me some clothes so I can go straight to the cottage from work.”

“Yes, yes, just finished packing your case,” Lois lied, “everything pretty well under control here, just about to leave!”

They said their goodbyes and just as Lois was about to put down the phone, Tom said quietly, “Remember to pack my bag Lo!” and hung up. Lois smiled, how did he know? She went straight back to the bedroom, dragged a small suitcase out of the wardrobe and quickly packed what she felt would be necessary for Tom for the next few days. She took one case at a time out to the car, which fortunately, was parked unusually close to the flat. It was a bit of a struggle, fitting everything into the MG, but eventually she was away. She smiled all the way from Islington to Harewood Park.

By the time she arrived, it was half past three. There was a skip parked on the front drive, which already had several carpets in it and the Lino from the kitchen and bathroom. As Lois came into the house she was surprised to hear radio four blaring from a small radio tucked behind the stairs. She heard Dean shouting instructions to two men, who were carrying the old bath down the spiral staircase. Lois briefly introduced herself to them. They managed to pant out their names. They were both apparently called Martin. One of them chuckled breathlessly, “We’re the house Martins!”

As soon as they were out of the way, Lois went upstairs to see how much progress had been made. The toilet and basin had been disconnected and in no time the house Martins were back upstairs to remove them. The floorboards throughout the upstairs were all in good condition and amazingly, no woodworm in sight. Dean was really excited by this; he liked the idea of sanding down and varnishing them. Lois wasn’t so sure. In London, in a flat, it was a great idea. But in a cottage bare floorboards would not be cosy enough and Lois didn’t like the thought of a baby crawling on them. But she just told Dean she thought leaving them exposed sounded like a great idea and she’d talk it through with Tom.

Lois suggested making tea. Both the Martins asked for a cup of hot water, in which to brew their herbal teas, of which they had brought a selection and Dean asked for a pint of water. Lois was astonished. She hid the kilo of granulated sugar that she’d bought, to cope with the needs of the builders, at the back of the cupboard and briefly contemplated giving up sugar herself. Then she shrugged, put two rounded teaspoons into her large cup of strong tea, then added another one for luck.

The four of them sat down in the garden and discussed progress. Dean had organised an electrician, wh
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he’d worked with before, to come and quote for rewiring the cottage, he told Lois he trusted this man and that electrics were definitely not something to skimp on. He then handed her an approximate cost that Danny the electrician had come up with. Lois was horrified, “Five thousand pounds, for such a small cottage?” she felt it was far too much.

“When can he start?” Lois asked, tentatively.

“Tomorrow, he’s between jobs at the moment and would just have time to fit it in. I doubt you’ll find a much better quote Lois. Electrics are expensive.”

Lois wasn’t surprised the man was between jobs, charging prices like that. Her intuition was to give Danny a miss, or at least get some more prices for the rewiring job. She told Dean that she would see if she could use Annie’s computer to organise some more quotes, at which point Dean offered to make a couple more phone calls to people he knew.

Lois phoned Annie at work to explain the problem and ask if she could use the computer. “No need!” said Annie, chirpily, “I know just the man. I’ll call him now and see if he can pop round, I’ll let you know. His name’s George by the way.”

At five o’clock, George arrived. A man in his sixties, who lived in the village. He’
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’
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done all the electrical work for Richard and Debbie’s extension and was the electrician for the Manor. He and his son would work in the evenings, starting the next day, from four ‘til seven and Saturday if necessary, and his quote was half that of Danny’s. Lois felt very smug and wondered how to spend the money she’d saved.

George gave her a list of items to buy and told her where to go for them. She felt surprisingly relieved to have a defined task for the next morning. No sooner had George left, than Dean gave her a list of plumbing fittings that he would need for the following day.

“The other thing is the bathroom paints, I presume you’re leaving the skirting and architrave as it is and just tarting it up with a bit of paint are you?” Dean asked.

“Gosh, I haven’t given that any thought, would it look okay if it was just painted over?”

“Yeah, that’ll be okay. But the window ledge, you’ve got some rot in there. Perhaps you’ll change the windows will you? Get some proper double glazing in?” The cottage had wooden, Georgian style windows, which had seen better days; some of them were secondary ‘glazed’ with sheets of Perspex.

They both went upstairs and did an inspection of all the wood in the bathroom. The window ledge was definitely rotten and would have to be replaced. Lois and Tom had discussed a budget within which to keep this first renovation, they planned to extend the cottage later and luxuries like double glazing would have to wait until then, it was bad enough adding the electrics into the current equation.

“We’ll just repaint the skirting and bits,” said Lois, “The windowsill, I’ll have a think about. Tom’s Dad’s very good at woodwork, maybe he’d be able to do something with that.”

“Oh, I’ve just remembered Lois. There was a scratching coming from the loft earlier. I had a look and found you’d caught a glis glis. Very naughty!” Lois blushed; worried that Dean might report them for setting a trap. “So I whacked it on the head, put it out for the kites and reset the trap for you, ok?”

“Thanks Dean,” said Lois, relieved.

They discussed the paints Lois needed to buy. Lois began to realise that she was going to be very busy over the next few weeks, just shopping for materials.

Tom arrived at the cottage as Dean left. He’d picked up a takeaway on the way home, which they sat and ate on the floor of the living room, propped up against the wall. They filled each other in on the days events. Then Tom cautiously slipped into the conversation that Pippa and Chris, his parents, were coming for a visit to help out, tomorrow.

“Tomorrow!” wailed Lois, turning white, “Oh God, how am I going to feed them? Entertain them? I’ll be out shopping for most of the morning. Oh Tom, I really wish you hadn’t invited them without asking me!”

“Well, they sort of invited themselves actually. It’ll be fine Lo, Crapper will bring enough lunch for the whole street and Piss’ll work in the garden. They’ll be a great asset, you’ll see!”

“And please, stop calling them that, one of these days…”

“I know, I know, one of these days you will accidentally call them Crapper and Piss to their faces and it will all be frightfully embarrassing! I think not actually Lo, the most casual you’ve been in addressing my parents is calling them Mr. and Mrs. A.”

“Well maybe not, but imagine how awful it would be!”

“Oh, they’ve heard it all before, Joe used to call them that all the time, in front of all his friends and theirs very often. They sort of got used to it.”

Joe was Tom’s older brother, who having been a bit of a wild youth, was now, allegedly, growing up. He was married, living in St Albans, with a ‘steady job’ as an estate agent and a baby due within the month.

“Well can you please ring them and let them know they’ll have to take care of themselves, for the morning at least.”

Lois and Tom had decided to stay at their own cottage that night, despite Annie kindly offering for them to sleep next door. Annie had looked stressed that morning and Dave, having said he would call round and check the glis glis trap in the loft, had not materialised. He had apparently been meeting up with his accountants during the afternoon. Lois felt they probably needed their own space. Anyway they would be fine in Honeysuckle now Tom’s ribs were feeling so much better.

As they had no usable bathroom, they used the outside toilet, which was attached to the utility room, accessible from the yard by the back door. Then they washed at the kitchen sink.

In the middle of the night Lois tried desperately to ignore the need to go for a wee. Getting up in the night had become an ever-increasing habit over the past few weeks of the pregnancy. She really didn’t want to have to make her way to the outside loo. She contemplated crouching over the open pipe that was left where the bathroom toilet had been taken away, but decided it was probably going to cause more problems than it would solve. So, torch in hand, she made her way down the wooden treads of the spiral staircase, through the kitchen, out the back door and into the toilet, the door of which she left open to let the three-quarter moon shine in. From where she sat, she had a perfect view of the garden and watched, in disbelief, as a barn owl swooped down, into the long grass of the ‘lawn’, disappeared momentarily, then flew off, with a mouse in it’s beak to the silver birch in the centre of the garden and proceeded to eat it.