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.

Available on Amazon

Skip

     

          Working here on my my own has its disadvantages. Aside from the obvious ones such as doing all the labouring, mixing mortar, wheelbarrowing it through to me etc, its putting up scaffolds on your own and passing things up to me when i'm  pointing old stone walls up. For instance, on friday I had knocked out an old stone doorway that had been blocked up for whatever reason a few years ago with concrete blocks and it took me a while to fill up the trailer ready for the tip. Needing a baguette for lunch which I could get from the village boulangerie where the tip was, I pushed on as they close at twelve. It is only about five miles to the village, but I had to take it easy as the trailer was heavy and I was driving the car as the old van didn't possess a toe bar. The Council tips in France are good, and the one here is no exception. Swinging in the gate, I gave a few extra revs and pull up the slope that leaves you above the skip so that you can just drop your rubbish into it. Finishing level with the one that is specially designed for rubble, I got out and after handballing a few bits of the heavier lumps, decided to un hitch the trailer and just tip it in. Just then an old chap wearing a beret pulled alongside me and after a smiling bonjour, began emptying a pruned laural bush into the gardening waste skip opposite. After hitching back up, I got back in and to my dismay, and without any warning, I turned the key and all I got was a click. The battery was dead. Hearing the old chap say something, I got out and shrugged my shoulders in a galic manner which speaks for many things here and he replied with one of his own. My french, although still on the amateur level, was good enough to understand his solution. I was to get in whilst he pushed me the couple of metres to the edge of the slope to jump start it as it went down. I had two qualms. The first was that if it didn't start, the steering and brakes were as good as useless and a turn was required at the bottom of the slope to avoid going through the hedge and into someones garden at the bottom. The other was that being a big car, the old chap would not be able to push it, judging from how he was struggling with the branches of the bush.  But he was insistent, and putting his shoulder against the back, bade me to get inside. Turning the key and putting it into second gear, I must admit I felt a little anxious looking at the hedge down below, that looked closer the more I looked at it. But incredibly, I felt a shove with what sounded like a war cry and we were off. The engine burst into life halfway down the slope and I swerved round to the left as I heard a great hollering sound and looking in the mirror, saw the old chap come running down the slope waving his arms. Leaping at my open window and throwing his arm in, he suddenly stopped, and stared in relieved disbelief that I was sitting behind the steering wheel. After pushing me over the edge, he had looked up to see me sitting to him, inconprehensibly in the right seat headed towards the hedge. Roaring with laughter, I couldn't understand, but could tell from his gestures that he thought he had sent this Englishman to his fate in the hedge. Of course, he was not to know that I had changed the numberplate to a french one but was still right hand drive. We parted still laughing, my smile leaving me when nearly home whn I realised that I would have to buy a new battery the next day.

Tea

As Danny passed me a quarry tile and I pressed it into place, the man's head appeared round the corner again.
"You lads sure you won't 'ave a cuppa tea?"
I looked at Danny and gave a little sigh. When you work in prisons you are not supposed to take anything from inmates, but the old chap seemed so eager to make one and it was about the fifth time he had asked that day that I shrugged and said okay. As he shuffled off down the corridor to his cell, I stood up and stretched to see Danny looking at me with a little grimace.
"I know," I said, but it couldn't do any harm and I was ready for one anyway.
Standing in the doorway of his cell, I was surprised at how big it was, with an armchair and a television which had horse racing on, but as he was elderly I supposed they gave him a little slack.
"I love my racing," he said, then as the tea was mashing began to tell me about his illnesses and how little he saw of his family before pouring the tea and handing it to us.
The tea was hot, so I held the mug a while whilst he sat in his chair continuing with his life story and that he had been inside for fifteen years. Taking this as a cue and thinking he had taken us into his confidence I asked what his offence had been. Danny, tiring of the conversation began to sip his tea when he said casually,
"I poisoned three people."
Convulsing backwards, Danny spit his tea up the wall and shot out into the corridor. Bumbling some excuse, I followed him and we both poured our tea ceremoniously down the sink in the toilet. Surprisingly, we were not asked for tea again.
This tea tastes great though. Even though it is very hot sitting in the shade of the caravan in the old deckchair, nothing else hits the spot for me. A couple of digestives compliments it nicely, and as I look up at the window I have put in today which basically finishes off the kid's bedroom, I feel a little relaxed thinking they have somewhere to sleep when they get here on Monday.

Martyn Walker is the author of Stopcock, available globally on Amazon