More Cats In The Belfry

  That was when I went to my friends, who rang Bill for me on the spot. He'd come over the next evening, he promised. I went home and he turned up within half an hour – found he had time before supper so he'd just popped over, he explained. 'Do it this weekend,' he said, surveying the job. 'Got any planks that'd go over that glass?'

  The conservatory had been designed by Charles, with stone-built walls front and back and a glass roof sloping down between them. Across the lane, in Annabel's old stable, were five long, wide, three-inch thick planks. Placed side by side on top of the walls they formed a solid platform over the glass. Charles, a stickler for safety, had stood ladders on the platform with complete equanimity when painting the side of the cottage himself. That was why I'd boggled when the builder mentioned scaffolding.

  'Ah,' said Bill when I told him. If I could help him across with a plank he'd take a closer look at what wanted doing. Then he'd tell me how much it would cost.

  I helped him across with one plank, we raised it and positioned it, and I asked should we fetch the rest. 'One'll be enough,' said Bill airily. I closed my eyes as he leaned a ladder against the conservatory wall, climbed it and got on to the plank. I watched heart in mouth as, sure-footed as a mountain goat, he hauled the ladder up behind him, leaned it against the upper cottage wall, went up it and examined the roof-edge, the woodwork and the crack. Came down, dusted his hands and said the tile supports were solid. All it needed was a new piece of weather-boarding, cement filling, painting and a coat of whitewash. 'Seventy pounds all right for the lot?' he asked.

  Was it! I died a thousand deaths as he did the job, managing with only one plank. I nearly did myself a mischief, too, handing up hammers, nails, buckets of cement and, when that was done and dry, mixing the whitewash. But we did it. This was some time back, of course, when prices weren't as high as they are today. But seventy pounds instead of five hundred… Bill was factotum at the cottage from that time on, even if it did mean making more cups of tea than I'd ever brewed in my life. He drank tea as most people breathe. There was also the business of always turning up like a whirlwind, invariably in advance of when he'd arranged, and consistently incorporating me as handyman's assistant. But one can't have everything.

  Thus it was that when the septic tank backfired (the outlet blocked, and I couldn't have a bath, and I phoned Bill one chilly summer's evening, and he said he'd only just come home – hadn't had his supper, but he'd be over the next day definitely)... there I was in sheepskin slippers, relaxed for the evening, a quarter of an hour later when Bill zoomed down the lane, screeched to a stop outside the cottage and rushed in asking 'Where's the end of the run-off, then? And where d'you keep the drain-rods?'

  Before I had time to breathe he and I, still in my slippers, were heaving the heavy railway sleepers off the top of the pit that Charles had constructed years before on the far side of the lawn so that the outflow pipe from the septic tank could be rodded. One got down into the stone-walled pit, found the end of the pipe threaded the rods along it, heaved them backwards and forwards till the silt blockage began to give – then leapt for dear life as the pit suddenly flooded. I nearly lost my slippers and it started to rain, but we did it, lifted the sleepers back on, laid the drain-rods in the stream to wash themselves clean, and Bill said he'd best be getting back for his supper. I said he shouldn't have bothered, I could have waited till tomorrow. Well, the meal hadn't been quite ready, he said. And he hadn't liked to think of me being unable to have a bath. Now I could go and have one.

  I needed one by that time, after battling with the drain-rods, but I didn't like to say so. How much did l owe him? I enquired instead. 'Would a fiver be all right?' he asked.

  It would have taken a long time to make his fortune at the prices he charged, but he insisted that he liked giving people a hand. He gave many a hand to me. As fast as he helped restore my peace of mind, however, Saphra seemed intent on demolishing it. I'd never had a cat like him.