Chapter Fifteen
I Think We Broke the Neighbour

OUR FIRST MORNING AT the mooring I woke a little confused, unsure where I was. I stood staring out of the window with a cup of coffee, just letting the caffeine pull my brain together and going over, once again, the events that had led to this moment. I found myself watching the river. In the early morning chill, little spirals rose up from the shallow covering of mist and dissipated into the warmer air. It was a glorious sight and I found myself just staring, cold coffee in hand.

Beneath the mist there was less ephemeral movement and, taking a closer look, I spotted a fair number of fish slipping through the weeds, disappearing beneath the boat, and then re-appearing. Occasionally, they broke the surface to gulp at floating specs, their big wet lips causing the mist to eddy and curl, then, leaving only ripples, they would sink back into the spiralling mist, the Piscean equivalent of the Cheshire Cat’s grin.

‘I wonder if they like bread,’ I muttered to myself and wandered over to the cupboard. Ferreting around in the dark, looking for the bread bag, I became infuriated and reached up to open the curtains.

‘Ah, that’s better.’ I reached into the cupboard, grabbed the bag and as I stood up I found myself staring into a pair of big brown eyes above a nose that was pressed hard to the land side window.

I jumped backwards with a bit of a shriek at which the animal threw its head up and also stepped backwards. I had forgotten for a moment that Happy would be floating well below ground level which is why my early morning voyeur looked so huge – that and the fact that it had its huge wet nose rammed against the porthole. I couldn’t work out what it was; my mind said ‘strange, skinny, copper-coloured cow’, but no cow ever had ears like that.

As it snorted and danced backward on elegant, stick-thin legs I worked it out: it was a red deer. Good grief! The thing was huge. Even without my strange perspective, it must have stood five foot at the shoulder, it was obviously female and we stayed staring at each other for about a minute, then, blowing spit-filled steam all over the outside of the porthole, she turned and climbed effortlessly up the flood defences where she continued her unhurried wander down the riverbank.

I stood, with the bread momentarily forgotten, watching her make her elegant way along the river, stopping every so often to climb back down the flood defences, stare into another boat, before climbing back up and wandering onward.

Shaking my head slightly and wondering what she was hoping to find in the boats, I remembered the fish and turned to the other window. As I suspected, the fish were more than happy to be offered an easy breakfast and within ten minutes I had about 30 good-sized freeloaders splashing around the boat. This became a ritual, with all the breakfast crusts and edibles being thrown to the fish, which performed acrobatics to delight Sam and myself every morning.

A week later and we were still no nearer to starting the ‘refit’ than we were on the day of arrival; we had puttered around pretending to start. This had involved mowing the mooring and clearing out a load of junk from the boat which we then put into storage. Anything more constructive than that we had avoided strenuously.

Sam had settled into school well and Herbert had managed to keep dry, so it was on a Monday morning that Geoff finally announced that the real work could be put off no longer and, even though we had managed to take procrastination to a new level, we really would have to start on the big stuff.

It was decided that the first thing to go would be the second bathroom; it was situated right where Geoff had envisioned the lounge-diner would go and the wall jutted out, obscuring the entrance to the boat. It would be the easiest thing to start with, as there were no major changes to be made and we weren’t keeping any of it – piece of cake.

When I returned from taking Sam to school, Geoff had already made a start. He had removed the front wall, which he informed me had taken about three minutes as it was only joined to the other walls at the side, and I joined in with vigour. It was a lot more fun than I had expected, finally taking something apart.

We were a little surprised to find that the shower tray was actually made of concrete, especially when we tried to pick it up, and whoever had installed it was, like Geoff, devoted to over-engineering. I tried not to laugh aloud at his swearing and cursing as he tried to detach the wretched thing from the wall.

It took both of us to ‘walk’ the shower tray out of the boat, and looking around at what was left we decided that the next easiest thing to remove would be the wash basin, which was a tiny little porcelain affair.

Geoff capped off the water and removed all the taps and pipes, while I huddled underneath removing any screw that I could see. At the last two screws, I advised Geoff to hold on to it ensuring that it wouldn’t fall on me. He took a firm hold and I removed the last screw then gave him a thumbs up, telling him that he could take it away. I watched his muscles flex as he changed his grip on the sink, then he frowned and just let go. Squeaking, I crabbed away beneath it, taking a breath to give him a good telling off for trying to brain me with a sink … No need, the sink didn’t move.

Geoff nudged me with his foot, then reached down and took the screwdriver away from me.

‘I think you missed one,’ he laughed.

I looked at the sink which appeared to be performing some trick of levitation.

‘Must have done,’ I frowned. ‘I took out all the screws I could see.’

Geoff squatted down and had a good look underneath, then getting up again he wandered out and around the back of the side wall making small humphing noises, before returning and giving me back the screwdriver. Stepping up to the sink, he grasped it with both hands and applied a gentle downward pressure; nothing. He frowned and, getting a better grip, began wrenching it backwards and forwards trying to dislodge it from the wall ... nothing.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he gave the sink a hard stare, ‘there is nothing holding it on, just the silicon sealant around the top.’ He flexed his muscles again and went back to wrenching on it. Still nothing.

‘Can you pass me that big screwdriver?’ He flapped his hand vaguely in the direction of the toolbox, never taking his eyes off the sink.

I passed it to him and he began digging out the silicon. An hour later he admitted defeat and, using a jigsaw, basically cut out a rectangular section of wall with the sink still attached. We made quite a few attempts to remove that sink over the next few months and were defeated every time. Later, when Geoff was looking for a piece of wood to form the base of Sam’s new wardrobe, he re-used that wall. One day, someone is going to dismantle the wardrobe and wonder why in hell there is an upside-down sink still firmly attached beneath the floor.

It occurred to me at this point that maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as we had expected. When discussing the whole ‘let’s do up a boat thing’, we had expected to be able to take walls out and put walls in and just generally move things around and have it finished in about six months – it was certainly never going to take more than a year. We had allotted one day to remove this bathroom and now, at the end of that time, we had managed to remove one wall (that hadn’t been attached to anything much), a shower tray and a sink. I had a nasty feeling that this was just a taste of things to come.

We stood in our dust-ridden gap and surveyed the damage,

‘Oh well,’ I turned to Geoff with a grin, ‘at least that’s probably going to be the worst thing to get out.’

He pursed his lips, looking at me with a very odd expression, then, very gently, reached up, grabbed my face and turned it toward the outside wall, ‘No, that’s going to be the worst thing to get out.’ He let go of my head and, taking a step back, hunkered down on his heels and stared into our former bathroom. I stayed where I was, confused. I couldn’t see what I was supposed to be looking at, or at least nothing that I would class as a major potential problem, just a little, round porthole and an expanse of wall.

‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ I asked eventually.

Geoff sighed. ‘You’re looking too high,’ he said, ‘look down.’

I did. ‘What, the toilet? That’s just bolted onto that step, you can see the big bolts holding it down and look ...’ I stepped forward and grasped the toilet bowl and gave it a good wiggle. ‘It moves. I don’t think it’s cemented down, what’s the problem?’

‘It’s not the toilet, you twit.’ Geoff stepped forward and gave the step a kick; it made a hollow, metallic bonging sound. ‘It’s the tank that the toilet’s attached to.’

I must have been having a stupid day because I still couldn’t see a problem. ‘It’s not that big,’ I said, following its line with my foot. ‘Look, it stops here, that makes it about one foot deep by two foot wide by two foot long, what’s the problem?’

Geoff rolled his eyes, grasped me by the arm and gently propelled me along the corridor and into the next room, then pointed under the bed.

‘Have a look under there,’ he suggested.

Shrugging, I got down on hands and knees and peered into the dank recess under the bed. Even after my eyes adjusted, it took a moment to work out what was lurking under there. When I finally grasped what I was looking at, I was really confused.

‘Why is there another tank under there?’

Geoff looked heavenwards. ‘It’s not another tank, it’s the same bloody one. It comes through the wall, and carries on under this bed.’

‘But ...’ I spluttered, getting down and having another look, ‘that’s huge – it’s got to be eight foot long.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Geoff gave me a condescending look. ‘Eight foot indeed – you never have had much of an eye for lengths, have you?’

I looked up at him and made a conscious effort to keep my mouth shut as a couple of ‘length’ jokes ran through my mind. ‘Well, how big is it then?’ I asked.

Geoff grinned at me. ‘Seven foot ten,’ he said, and then ran like hell before I could find something to throw.

We decided that the only way to even attempt to get this thing out was to remove absolutely everything around it. So, with that hastily constructed plan in mind, we de-constructed the rest of the bathroom. We removed the plumbing for the shower, the shower itself and the bed in the next room (which at least gave us some more free space to stack our seemingly never-ending range of boxes). By the time we had finished, there was a huge tank with a toilet perched on top of it, looking slightly embarrassed to be so revealed.

Lounging in the corridor, with a cup of tea, we contemplated this strange modern sculpture; I was just about to comment that we could probably sell it to the Tate when a horrible thought occurred to me.

‘What’s under that toilet?’ I asked Geoff.

He frowned, ‘The tank.’ He pointed at it.

‘Yes, I know but what happens when the toilet comes off? Is there just a hole that leads directly into the tank?’

Geoff’s frown deepened. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what did you think there was going to be?’

‘So, let me get this straight,’ I took a deep breath. ‘We take that toilet off and there is just an open hole, and we have to get this tank up on end and manoeuvre it up those steps and outside with a load of … poo slopping around, is that right?’

Geoff laughed. ‘No, I cleaned this tank out as best I could before we left Braunston and we haven’t used it since. Obviously I couldn’t get it completely clean – that would be impossible – but it should be OK to move.’

‘Right ...’ I wasn’t completely convinced, but obviously there was nothing for it but to give it a go.

Geoff removed the toilet. It came off so easily that we just knew the next stage was going to be a complete flaming nightmare. We stood at either end of it (Geoff had the end with the hole in it – I had made sure of that) and, taking a couple of deep breaths, reached down, grasped the tank and heaved ... Good grief I had never felt anything so heavy in my life. Geoff managed to get his end off the ground by two inches, my end didn’t move at all. Oh dear, oh dear.

After an hour, which consisted of mostly grunting, straining, scuffling, sweating and swearing, we had finally both moved to the same end of the tank and were inching it around the boat to the tune of ‘1 – 2 – 3 LIFT, Argh! Thump! 1 – 2 – 3 LIFT Argh!! Thump!’

We had managed to get it diagonally, widthways across the boat with one end perched precariously on the first of the steps and the other end wedged solidly into the wall on the opposite side of the boat, and there it stuck solid. The tank was actually seven foot, six inches long, and the width of the boat was seven foot. We were in deep trouble.

It was like some horrible antique comedy sketch. With the tank wedged against the wall, we couldn’t move it back, we couldn’t stand it up on end because there wasn’t the headroom, we couldn’t stand either side of it and lift it because the steps were in the way, and we couldn’t climb over it and lift it from the outside because it was just too damned heavy. We were completely at a loss.

It’s one of those moments where the boating community shows its true colours; these people are absolute diamonds. Don’t think for one minute that they won’t laugh at you when you are in trouble, because they will, uproariously and hysterically, but even while laughing, they will always pitch in and help.

We had only met our next-door neighbour on two occasions and everybody had been polite and nice and that had been about it. We had been a bit worried about living next door to Steve because everybody referred to him as the ‘party boat’, which did not bode well for a quiet life, but so far we hadn’t heard a peep.

Steve was off work due to having damaged his back, but he limped past at the point where the swearing was loudest, had sized up the situation in one glance and, grinning, enquired whether we were having fun or would we like some help. He then piled in, bad back and all, and gave us a hand. There was a lot more swearing, pushing and lifting and a fair few ‘ouches’, but eventually the wretched thing lay on the grass outside. Looking back at the boat I noticed that with the removal of the concrete shower tray and this huge monstrosity, she had developed a definite list to the right; obviously Geoff would need to do something about that pretty soon, at least before we took anything else out. I had horrible images of her just rolling over.

With the tank finally evicted, we took stock of what was left behind and, unfortunately, although not unexpectedly, there was far more damage than we had originally expected. Over the years, water dripping out of the shower and probably other sources of wetness, upon which I don’t want to dwell, had seeped through and rotted the floor beyond repair. The only course of action was to replace it. At that point I gave up counting both time and money as it was horribly obvious that we were going to end up way over budget on both.