More Cats In The Belfry

  I'd deal with it tomorrow, I thought, being a bit of a handywoman. Change the tap washer, have the septic tank pumped out, take up the tiles and reseal the pipe... Simple it seemed until next morning, when the stopcock wouldn't turn off the water supply: it, too, needed a new washer. The tap went on dripping. I dared not take off its top, with the stopcock still full on. The local plumber's wife said he was round the bend dealing with people's burst pipes and there wasn't a hope of his coming for days. The septic tank emptying service couldn't come till Tuesday. The Water Company, whom I rang in desperation, said they didn't deal with washers or inside stopcocks, but they could give me another plumber's name from their list.

  When I rang it, his widow said he'd died six years previously, she had frozen pipes herself and she'd been waiting for a plumber for a week. At that point I began to get anxious. Particularly when, belatedly putting a bucket under the drip, I found it was filling at the rate of two gallons an hour. 48 gallons a day, not counting what I normally used. No wonder the septic tank was full up! I fitted a length of hose to the tap, running it out to the snow-covered lawn. That would take care of things till I could get a plumber, I thought. No need to bother with buckets.

  Not having a proper tap connection, I used the emptying hose from an old single-tub washing machine, leading it over the sink edge to the main hose so that the drips could trickle away easily. I relaxed that evening, watching TV, thinking how clever I'd been – only to go out at nine o'clock and find the kitchen floor flooded. The end of the hose on the lawn had frozen solid, the drips had built up behind, and the pressure had pushed the other end off the washing machine hose, which was hanging over the edge of the sink.

  I mopped up the mess and put the bucket back to collect the drips. I didn't go to bed that night. I dozed in an armchair, Tani and Saphra on my lap, the kitchen timer at my elbow timed to go off every hour. When it did, the three of us erupted like Vesuvius, Tani hid under the sofa, and I trudged out to the frozen wastes of the garden to empty the bucket. Life seemed at its lowest ebb.

  Not quite, it wasn't. That came next morning, when the tank-emptying people phoned to say their vehicle had broken down with all the work it was doing and they couldn't come till Wednesday. I rang the Water Company again, who said they were sorry, I'd have to get a plumber myself. They could give me a number... I told them about the six-year-old number they'd already given me and they changed their minds. They could send a man to turn off the water at their own outside stopcock till I could find a plumber, they offered. Anything, I said, weeping down the mouthpiece with gratitude. I couldn't tote buckets hourly through another night.

  Their man came that afternoon, couldn't find their stopcock which was somewhere under the ice outside the garden wall, and while he was searching for it fell in the stream. With his feet wet, he too altered his mind. He changed the kitchen tap washer in minutes – ­happening to have one with him in the car, he said; said he'd locate the Company's stopcock when the weather was better, and drove off at top speed to dry out. I tottered indoors and gazed at the cause of it all, stretched out peacefully, paws twitching, on the Snoozabed with his head on Tani's stomach. Nobody would ever believe it, I decided.

FIFTEEN

Spring brought the daffodils out in the valley. A vast yellow sheet of them flowing down the opposite hillside, where Charles and I had planted them years before. A sea of the paler wild variety rioting in the field beyond the cottage, where Annabel was buried, and in the Reasons' wood further down the lane. It was called Daffodil Valley even before our time, on account of the wild ones, and people still came to see them and stare over the gate at Saphra, regarding them with his Sherlock Holmes look from the other side.