A Dog's Life by Michael Holyrod

Author:Michael Holyrod [Holroyd, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Family Life
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2016-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

BOILER, BATH AND PIPE

Because of the problem of hot water, baths were discouraged at This’ll Do. As Anne had once or twice remarked of Helga who, if you please, insisted on having a bath every day: “Some people must be very dirty indeed to need that amount of washing.”

At the back of the house, and invading the edge of the lawn, stood the great shed that housed the boiler. Since This’ll Do was heated solely by oil, and all the cooking was done by electricity (the gas oven being used primarily for the storage of old newspapers and the stove for the boiling of water for tea), the sole function of this massive boiler house was to provide the family with, as the advertisement had put it, “a constant stream of scalding water night and day”.

Eustace, besides having paid large amounts of money for the various heaters that were scattered dangerously around the rooms and buried away in the garage, had also “forked out a small fortune” installing this hot-water unit and, subsequently, in purchasing many tons of the highest-grade coal and new smokeless Bronowski Bricks with which to feed it.

Eustace, together with Mathilda, occasionally Mrs Gaff, and, when she imagined no-one was looking, Anne herself, tended it one after the other day and night. But this dark monster, standing huge and pitiless above them, seemed, as if in a fairy story, to have fallen asleep. For the ultimate product of all their exertions was a meagre amount of warm or tepid water barely sufficient for the innumerable washing-up sessions.

The person who attracted the greatest weight of censure for this steady inadequacy was North. He came one day a week, ostensibly to look after the garden, but in reality to serve as the target towards which all the family’s mistakes of the previous six days could be aimed. On the evenings of the Thursdays on which he came, the family having worked off all its collective grievances on him, he magically emerged as “a good fellow” as Eustace habitually called him. “You don’t come across his sort often these days,” he would declare, summing up the feeling of them all.

But as the days passed, North appeared in a less and less favourable light until, by the following Wednesday, Eustace, again giving expression to a unanimous feeling throughout the house, would denounce his absent gardener as “a damn fool and no mistake!”

In spite of all this, North enjoyed his time at This’ll Do and was always offering to come along whenever he was needed. For despite the changeable climate of opinion, Eustace was genuinely fond of his gardener who, bombs or no bombs, had loyally come through the war in their garden.

North had been approximately the age of forty-five for as long as anyone could remember. He had pale watery eyes that were almost invisible, sparse fair hair, and a permanently open or puzzled expression depending on the day of the week and the time of the day. He was

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