'Don't move your finger,' I say, and we traipse out into Back Walls and over to the street light. Thus the awful truth is illuminated.
'The wall's in the wrong place!' I cry.
'It can't be,' says Maggie. 'Let's check again.' So three times we march in and out, taking it in turns to press a white finger against the dreadful little number on the metal measuring strip. There's no mistake. The kitchen is three inches narrower than it should be.
'This is terrible,' I squawk.
'Omigosh,' cries Maggie. 'The oven won't fit in!'
Now as you already know, this kitchen has been planned to be a miracle of design, with fridge, sink, hob, cupboards, fitting together as exactly as if they'd been welded into one piece as they came out of some kitchen parts factory. There's no margin for error. And now we've got an error, set in 8-foot-high concrete, mortared together and plastered over.
In disbelief, we examine the offensive piece of masonry from every angle. And then I see it.
'Shoot! Look at that,' I say, pointing up to the ceiling. 'It's supporting the roof. It's going to be too late to move it.'
So we look at Anthea's plan again and try to work out if there's any way we could swap around the fridge and the sink and the cupboards to make them fit. But it's hopeless.
At 7.45 next morning, after yet another night of pulling and knotting the bedclothes, I phone Nik. He's en route from Cheltenham to Stow.
'You're not going to like this,' I tell him.
'Try m…' The mobile signal's fading. He must be driving along the ridge-top near Cold Aston.
'The kitchen wall on the right-hand side,' I pause to make sure he can hear. 'It's three inches too far to the left.'
'Three inch… … can't see… what can… completely impo…' And that's all I get from him before it cuts out. I call back half an hour later, by which time he should be in Stow. But his phone's busy, so I leave a message spelling out the problem again. I can't go straight off to see him because I've got an appointment with the bank to sort out that mortgage.
'So you're living in Blockley temporarily,' observes the bank manager, or rather community-based customer services interface facilitator, when he scans our application form. I nod, only half-listening as I wonder whether we could convert the kitchen into a bedroom and put the kitchen where the guest room was going to be. Guests would have to sleep on bunk beds. And they'd need to walk across the living room and through the kitchen when they wanted a shower. But maybe…
'I was brought up in Blockley,' he goes on. I raise my eyebrows in an automated 'That's interesting' signal. 'Do you know,' he asks, and I try to concentrate, in the belief that he's going to require information from me that may have nothing to do with mal-aligned kitchen walls. 'Do you know that when I was a kid in Blockley, it had fourteen shops?'
Now ordinarily, this would have me on the edge of my seat interviewing him about the cause and exact nature of Blockley's commercial decline. He's not eighty-nine. He can't be more than thirty-five, so what he's talking about isn't that long ago. But it's a measure of my distraction and anxiety that all I can manage is a not very expressive, 'Oh.'
'Yes,' he carries on, determined to forge a bond with the client just as he was taught on the training course. 'There was a butcher who specialised in pigs' cheeks, a wigmaker, a restorer of clavichords, a marble coffin seller, two military equipment dealers, and five second-hand dog shops.' I've made this list up of course, because my mind was back on whether it might be possible to put a very big hole in the rogue wall then build another wall immediately on the other side, so I didn't register the specifics of his mother's weekly purchases along Blockley High Street.
He tells me I'll have to go and see the bank's area Gauleiter in Evesham half an hour away, and I slope off.
It's gone eleven by the time I get to the site, and I'm afraid on reflection, that in my haste, I might have been brusque with Black Beauty and the vicar. Jason, who's stuffing muck between the stones on the Back Walls side of the stables itself, gives me a chirrupy 'Morning.' He can't have heard the news about the kitchen wall and our shattered dreams. There's no sign of Nik. I make my way towards the guilty corner of the building and bump into Simon.
'Hey, Derek,' he says. He's smiling. Nik's evidently not spoken to him yet. 'You look grim,' he adds. 'Something up?'
I'll have to break the news. 'We made a nasty discovery last night,' I say. 'About the kitchen wall.'
Simon taps out a cigarette from his pack and sticks it between his teeth. 'Oh that,' he says. 'Let's have a look. See what you reckon.'
He moves his vast bulk out of the way. And there before me, is a little heap of rubble where last night's 7-foot-tall pain had been. And right next to it is an adolescent wall of breeze blocks, wet mortar dripping from its sides.
'But you've just knocked it down!'
'Sure. No big deal.' I look up at the ceiling, expecting to see it flopping, ready to fall. Simon follows my thoughts. 'The roof'll be fine for a couple of hours,' he explains, 'just till the new wall's built up to the top.'
Simon's too big and ugly for me to kiss. Another job for Maggie.
Perhaps it's this tinge of anything's possible that colours my judgement, but that evening, I hear myself agreeing with Maggie as she presses the case for the underfloor heating. Her view is that on balance we should go ahead. So we sign the contract and pop it in the envelope. But the moment it leaves my fingers and disappears into the maw of the Sheep Street postbox, I feel a weight sag the bottom of my stomach again.
It's ten days later, the night before the installers arrive, and new terrors stalk my wakeful brain. What if they're inexperienced kids who don't care? Or worse, cowboys! I'm early at the site ready to let them in. After an hour, I'm still pacing the concrete floor. They've not arrived. I knew it.
Then along comes Ken. He apologises for being late, opens his toolbox and within ten minutes he's laid the first 40 or 50 yards of the piping in long narrow rows. In a soft Ulster accent he explains what he's doing. He's been installing it for twelve years. He's what you might call middle-aged. I know that's a politically incorrect thing to say. But right now I'm desperate for a shot of reassurance, and if I can only get my shot from a dirty source, so be it.
I share my we'll-have-to-dig-up-the-whole-floor worry with him. An old chestnut, you can see from his smile.
'Provided it's properly installed and run, you've nothing to worry about,' he soothes.
'And will ours be…? properly installed and run?' I ask, and I sit at his feet (or at least I would have done if it weren't for the pipes in the way).
'It will,' he promises. And he explains the four commandments of the underfloor heating Bible.
The first is: thou shalt install an automatic cut-out in case the pipes overheat.
The second is: thou shalt attach a made-for-purpose, non-ferrous pump to stop the system furring up.
The third is: thou shalt not drill holes in the floor.
The fourth and final commandment is: thou shalt cause thy manservant and thy odd-job man not to drill holes in the floor either.
Ken looks up towards the heavens. 'It'll be perfect for a place like this with a high ceiling,' he says. 'If you had conventional rad heaters, all the heat would rise up to the roof, then fill the room only gradually, so it would be warmest over your head. But with underfloor, it's hot down here straightaway where you need it.'
What a wise and virtuous man he is. When he's packed away his adjustable spanner, I thank him for his journey down the mountain, and promise that his tablets of stone will always sit in our hearts.
The peace which his presence exuded lasts the rest of that day. After that, my faith starts to leak away. I won't be a hundred per cent sure till we're sitting in a toasty house next January, congratulating ourselves. And meanwhile, Nik has to put the system through a pressure test a week later. Any sign of low pressure will mean there's some little crack or hole or loose joint somewhere in the system.
But when
P-Day comes, I'm not there. Instead, I'm under the bed sheets on the fourth floor of London Bridge Hospital waiting to undergo a minor procedure on my heart. Nothing serious, it's just to try and correct that slight Morse code beat. I'll be out in twenty-four hours. The timing's not great though. And I can't help thinking as I lie there having my blood pressure taken that I'm breaking the first rule I was taught as a TV reporter. It came from Gerald Seymour who was then ITN's senior correspondent. 'If you're in the right place as a reporter,' he said, 'the story'll come to you. Go there and be patient.'
And as I lie on the operating table at London Bridge hospital, all I can think is, 'I'm in the wrong place.'
'I'm going to give you a sedative,' says the nurse, pumping the liquid into the drip on my wrist. She winks at me. 'You should feel a rush. It'd cost you 800 quid on the streets.' And I'm asleep while the crucial test takes place 110 miles away.
When I come round, Maggie phones.
'All clear,' she says.
'Is it? Oh thank goodness,' I reply. 'No loss of pressure then?'
'No, I mean you,' she says. 'I've just spoken on the phone to the doctor. He says you're fine.'
'Yeah, sure, but what about the heating pipes?'
'They're fine too. I watched the test myself.'
But our worries over them have hardly started. The company that was going to put in the concrete screed to encase the pipework can't come for another two weeks. I get on my knees over the phone to them. But their equipment is under repair and distraught customers are queuing outside their office. That means two weeks of those little red pipes huddled on the bare concrete, vulnerable to the hobnailed boots of every labourer who wanders in. I print off signs, and stick them on the walls, saying, 'These underfloor heating pipes are very delicate. Please do not tread on them. If they are damaged, we could have very serious problems.'
'Nobody's going to read that,' says Maggie. 'It's too long.' But she can't think how we could get the message over any shorter. She's right though. On a frosty morning, we arrive on-site just in time to see the apprentice chippy in the correctly proportioned kitchen throw a splintery piece of four-by-two in the direction of the floor. It bounces and bangs its nasty sharp edges against our little pipes.
'Can't you read?' I scream, arm jutting out at the notice taped to a dangling power cable. 'If the pipes get punctured and then buried under tons of screed and floor slabs, we are inconvenienced.' (That's from the verb 'to inconvenience' as used in the phrase "Inconvenience off!') 'I mean seriously inconvenienced!' The lad looks guilty.
Simon intervenes. 'The pipes have got water in them now, so we'd see if there's a puncture,' he says, 'and we'll do a pressure test before the screed's laid.' But I glare again at the apprentice, and am glad I made a fuss.
Maggie's left. She can't bear it.
But now I'm late. I've an appointment with the bank in Evesham 10 miles away, to plead for the mortgage. I'm still muttering to myself about the apprentice carpenter as I race a yellow Mini for a parking spot in the multi-storey. The sound of metal scraping against concrete jolts me into a curse. Then, pushing open the bank door, I realise I've also forgotten to get a parking ticket. So body repair and a £40 fine!
Are there such things as Bitterness Management Courses? £30 an hour? It could all go on the spreadsheet.
CHAPTER 27
HENGE, POUND,
PUMP AND CROSS
The fifteen forms the bank person has sent me away with do nothing to soothe my stress. I can feel the back of my neck stiffening in a way that will have me shaking, red-faced and screaming unless I take remedial action, and quick. A walk, that's the thing. Fresh air. Wide open spaces. Feet thumping up and down on solid earth.
I try to think of somewhere calming where I've not been for a while. Condicote comes to mind. The perfect little village, and I can park the car just outside Stow then walk there along the old forgotten Roman road, Ryknild Street.
It's a bright, frosty January morning, something I hadn't even noticed, rushing from crunched car to bank dungeon. There's a lark singing what seems to be hundreds of feet over my head. That's a rare thing at this time of year, so I stop to watch it till it's almost too high to make out. Then it descends and disappears behind thick elder bushes, where a light breeze is skimming through bare branches. So by the time I'm half a mile along the ancient track, I feel a soothing release spread through my body.
Ryknild Street.
I love the irony of its name. 'Street' makes it sound like it should be in the middle of a town or a city, bustling with office workers. Instead it's a 2-metre-wide cart track bordered on each side by the dead remains of last year's thistle and purple loose-strife, then a low stone wall. There's nobody here but me. The channel made by the side walls is as straight as Stan Revel, my old history teacher, taught me a Roman road should be. But the track itself zigzags between the walls, just a couple of feet every now and then, like a snake in a tube. A chaos of hawthorn sometimes mobs its sides, but mostly you can see across ploughed fields to the far horizon in every direction.
Underfoot, rounded lumps of stone show through the half-frozen mud. And it strikes me that this is what roads used to be like before John Loudon McAdam gave his name to tarmac. Till then, carriage wheels juddered and jolted their way from pothole to jagged rock to hole again. So when characters in Jane Austen complain they're exhausted after a day's journey, they're not being girlie and feeble. It would have killed my back, I know it would.
After half an hour, Ryknild Street starts to drop from the ridge down towards Condicote. And the approach makes me realise just how isolated Condicote must have seemed for most of the past 2,000 years. Even today, if you're approaching it along the old Roman cart track, you can get within a few hundred yards of its first farmhouse before you feel asphalt beneath your feet as you join a narrow vehicle-friendly country lane.
I step to the side for a car to pass, and the elderly woman at its wheel returns my nod with the kind of enthusiastic wave and full-faced smile usually reserved for returning relatives at the airport.
In a field on the outskirts of Condicote, I peer over the hedge. You might think at first sight that the view is like any other Cotswold field with cows in it. 'Very nice,' you might say and stroll on. But you'd be missing something. Look very carefully and you can make out the long curve of an earth bank sweeping around the field in a vast circle. This is where archaeologists have discovered the remains of a henge – a mini-version of Stonehenge – built nearly 4,000 years ago for purposes no one's sure about. Although what makes Condicote special today is that most of its buildings are still much as they were, on the outside anyway, between two and four hundred years ago, it's a humbling thought that this is only the most recent 5 to 10 per cent of Condicote's long and mysterious history.
The place is really not much more than a hamlet. Two or three dozen dwellings at most. I stroll down the road past 1 AGRICULTURAL COTTAGE on the right, and half a dozen houses on the left, big enough to have not gardens at their rear, but acre-sized paddocks. A couple of healthy looking oldies – must be seventy-five if they're a day – doing some heavy digging, wish me a hearty 'Good morning.'
After a few steps more, I reach the heart of Condicote. This is the Pound. It's not like most village greens. It's a small field surrounded by a 2-foot-high wall, and it's where sheep were once penned. The little road runs right around it and separates it from the church on one side, a working farm, several houses, and a field containing two shaggy ponies on the others. A 500-year-old cross of lichen-encrusted stone sits on one side of the Pound, with the original village pump a few steps away over the little wall. The only sound is the wind swishing the top branches of the Pound's towering willow trees and the drone of a distant tractor.
No box of after-dinner chocs would be disappointed to have Condicote's picture on its lid. If your great-aunt from Nebraska asked you to show her an example of the classic English village just as it was before the Industrial Revolution and the Great
Technological Page-turning of our own era, you could take her to Condicote. And you could guarantee that she'd drool and express the opinion that this little time warp of a village was a shining beacon of peace and kindness in a world that has been going to hell in a handcart ever since the invention of the internal combustion engine.
I'm just about to reflect on this from a sitting position on the time-eroded plinth of the wayside cross, when I hear a voice call, 'Hello there,' and I jump with a start wondering if I was on the verge of breaking some medieval sumptuary law by presenting my backside to the hallowed stone. But when I turn, I see a bearded smile approaching and saying, 'Hello, I thought I recognised a friendly figure.'
'Oh, Richard, hi,' I reply. 'How are you?'
Richard is chiropodist to half the feet in Gloucestershire, and is a well-known face around Stow where he practices. I'd forgotten that he lives in Condicote. I tell him how I was just admiring the place and marvelling at its history. After exchanging the usual pleasantries I tell him about my search for what makes a good English village and ask his thoughts. He beams with enthusiasm.
A Horse in the Bathroom Page 22
