The Trench

How many different types of rain can there be in one week? After heavy driving rain, swirling windy rain and stair rod showers with the merest glimpse of the sun in the rare intervals, today has seen a mist like haze where the air itself soaks you. It all makes restoration work in this little corner of France very difficult. Even Tom the cat seems to have disappeared, perhaps finding a cosier spot than under my caravan which has turned in just a couple of weeks from a nice bit of shelter against the sun to a chilly damp wind tunnel. After a warm week digging a trench across the courtyard to bring in new services to the base of the old kitchen wall, the ground has gone from dry and hard to sludgy mud, the trench filling with rainwater making progress impossible. Earlier, whilst looking out through the rivulets of water streaming down the large window at the end of the caravan where I eat most of my meals, I was working up the enthusiasm to go and lay a couple of planks across the trench, as continued leaping across was tempting fate, when I was reminded of an incident some years ago concerning a much bigger, more malevolent trench. I had taken on the plastering and flooring contract at a big old pub on the Staffordshire, Derbyshire border. The first job was concreting the whole floor and I had a new recruit, Phil. Phil was a friend who had lost his job in an office restructuring and asked if I could help him for a short while until he found a new job. Although slight, and with no practical experience I took him on, as a friend would. And so it was that we pulled up in the pouring rain in the pub car park at eight in the morning and a concrete lorry and crew waiting for us. I had never apologised to a labourer before but I found myself looking at his thin frame and saying how sorry I was that he had got to work in this weather on the wheelbarrow all day but he shrugged it off saying he was quite looking forward to building his muscles up, working with these tough looking lads who were lined up with their barrows next to the concrete lorry. As I got out and hurried across to the foreman, I noticed the lads sniggering and looked across to see Phil lighting up his pipe. Although my dad used to smoke one, it was quite unusual to see a younger man smoke a pipe and I wondered if perhaps Phil was under estimating the endeavour he was about to begin on. The rain falling heavy now, and with an impatient lorry driver pulling the leaver to start the flow of concrete into the men’s barrows, I noticed the further impediment to a smooth first day for Phil. After having their barrows filled to the brim, they had to move forward in the mud and over a bridge of three planks across a wide and deep trench. Worried I took Phil aside and told him that it did not matter if he didn’t want to do it. That it was asking too much of a chap who had never done anything like this before. But puffing on his pipe with a determination I had never seen before he said he was ready and took his place behind Gary, the big apprentice bricklayer. I watched with half closed eyes as his wheelbarrow was filled and he moved forward to the planks, wobbling as he took the strain. "You sure your man is up to it," said the foreman, but all I could do was give a weak nod. I held my breath as he mounted the planks, but the combination of weight and mud was too much for him and I moved forward shouting to just let go of it Phil. Too my utter disbelief and horror, Phil, sensing the barrows unstoppable lurch to the edge of the plank, thought that he could wrestle it back and held on as it went over, whipping him down with it as it went. For a split second I felt the shocked gaze of four or five of the men shoot towards me as though I had sent a new recruit on a lone suicide mission to the front, but running to the edge and peering over I felt first a huge sense of relief which then turned to laughter followed by the others who slid to a halt beside me. Phil climbed to his feet, covered in mud and concrete, the whites of his eyes glaring up out of the gloom but with his pipe still held firmly between his teeth. He gained the men’s respect that day. Brushing off my offer to drive him home, he went to wash his hands and face and then returned to take his place with his barrow, the concrete man showing a rare touch of pity and not filling it up right to the top as before.

The weather report gives a better week or so ahead, but perhaps I shall wait until the mud has dried up a little before I get my wheelbarrow out again.

Martyn Walker is the author of Stopcock.

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