“I’ve tried everyone else. I’m desperate.”  Weekend, evening, call out fee, minimum charge, double time. Cash.  It was a Trust-a-Trader call I couldn’t turn down. 

I pulled into the drive of a red stone Victorian pile. Stone steps between armorial lions led to a recessed porch, flanked by columns, and an impressive oak panelled front door.  Overshadowed by trees, a weak single and naked light bulb above the door was barely strong enough to cast my shadow onto the tiled entrance floor.

I was wondering whether to clap the huge brass tiger’s-head knocker or ring the bell, but before I could reach for either the sound of locks and chains being withdrawn made either superfluous. The door creaked slowly open, but only just enough for a fingerless gloved hand, with broken and stained nails, to grasp the edge and hold it steady.  Half of a pale face, fringed by lank white hair, peered out, the piercing single eye scanning me up and down.

“Ah. I’m glad you called, we are let down so often”, the face said, and the door swung further back. “Come in, Mr…..Mr?

“Thank you”, I said, “James McIntyre.  McIntyre Plumbing and Heating at your service.  I take it you are Mrs Gill?”

The door opened fully to reveal the bent frame of a man.  A grease stained, frayed and crumpled, frocked coat and collarless open-necked shirt, hung limply from his gaunt frame.  

“I am not, as you can see, Mrs Gill” he said with a slight chuckle and not a sign of irritation. 

“I am Arnold.  You may call me Mr Arnold, as Mrs Gill does.  I am her housekeeper and general factotum.  She is unavailable at present, and it is me that called you. Please come down to the kitchen.  It is where the problem is, and where all tradesmen are…..received.”

As I picked up my tool bag and followed Mr Arnold I had hardly noticed a sickle shaped scar, half hidden by his flowing hair, before we were off along a series of dark panelled passages to a narrow stair and down to the basement kitchen, the passages wreathed in must and disinfectant, and lined with stuffed mounted animal heads. His stride, off kilter though it was, was surprisingly lithe and hard to keep up with, but on the way I asked him,

“What is the problem, Mr Arnold?”.

“The drains are blocked again.  I’ve had many plumbers to look at them, but it’s never fixed for long it, and they don’t come back to try again.  We hope you will have more success.”

Mr Arnold showed me a massive, antiquated butler sink, full of something disgusting, and pointed me to a large grating in the stone-flagged floor, also brimming over.  Outside the kitchen door a large manhole cover was similarly oozing at the edges, suggesting a very big problem. 

“I think this needs clearing all the way down to the main drain, I’ll need my drain rods, and the pressure jetter for after I clear it” I said, but as I turned to go back to my van, Mr Arnold had apparently read my mind: he stood in my way, holding two bags full of rods.

“I thought you might need these to start with.  Your colleagues always seem to, but then leave them behind. We have quite a collection if you need more.  I will leave you to your work, Mr McIntyre, it’s time for me to take Mrs Gill her morning tea.”

It was painfully slow going and I was going to earn my money.  Every now and again the end of the rod would grip on something solid, and then clear only to grip again, but eventually with a satisfying gurgle, and sucking noise, the residue from the sink and the grating disappeared. Result!

I was about to go up for the jetter when I heard footsteps on the stair and stood back.  A thin faced elderly woman, her white hair pulled up tight in a bun, hobbled down. 

“Mr McIntyre, I’m Mrs Gill.  Mr Arnold suggested you might be needing some assistance.  As you see, I am prepared.”

She had a plastic apron over her floral pinafore dress and was wearing pink rubber gloves.

“Indeed you are, Mrs Gill”, I said, “that’s kind of you but I’m almost finished.  I just need to wash everything down and that’s me, done.”

“You won’t mind if I check everything, will you, Mr McIntyre.  Mr Arnold dabbles with taxidermy, I expect you noticed his animal heads as you came in. He looks after me so well that I feel I have to allow him his hobby, but I do have such trouble with my drains.” 

Something had been niggling at the back of my mind, and while the old woman ran the sink taps, set about inspecting the floor grating, and the manhole, I realised what it was.  It was the way she and Mr Arnold referred to “me and we” as if they were interchangeable. A slip of the tongue perhaps, but when she bent over the floor grating, I saw a little scar peeping out at the edge of her bun.  It couldn’t be, could it?

But then, apparently satisfied with my work, Mrs Gill pulled off a rubber glove to reveal a thin hand with broken stained fingernails, and my blood ran cold.

“Now, as to your fee, Mr McIntyre.  I wonder if you are open to some sort of negotiation?”  She almost caught me by surprise, by moving un-naturally quicky, and produced a long kitchen knife.

I struck out with a drain rod across the thrusting hand, put my shoulder into her chest, and knocked her backwards with enough force to allow me to sprint for the stairs. I didn’t know if I was being pursued, but I didn’t stop until I was, breathless, at my van.  As I opened the driver’s door I thought I heard a chuckle, and then one of them call out,

“You’ve left your tools.” 

I did not go back.

1007 Words

Andrew Gold © 27 January 2025

(The prompt for this story, given at the writing group, was “The cold was a herald and I knew exactly what it meant. For once the Met Office was right. It was cold and snow had fallen. The other matter wasn’t so straightforward.”)

Sylvia stood in her dressing gown, absent mindedly flicking the last of her toast crumbs away before caressing a cup of hot chocolate and taking it to the living room window to look out at the fallen snow.  Her home weather station had already told her that it was cold but, as if confirmation was necessary, local radio had also repeated a Met Office warning of a prolonged cold spell.

She contemplated the day ahead.   Planting tulip bulbs was obviously postponed, but a minor inconvenience; in due course the temperature would rise again.  If the worst came to the worst, last year’s bulbs would eventually poke their heads through. Sylvia knew, though, that arctic air and high pressure meant little rain.  More important than delayed planting was that sustained dry weather threatened her fragile water supply.  Sub-zero temperatures could cut it off completely.

Water came to the house via a holding tank fed by old plastic pipes that ran from a crude dam on a meagre hill burn, high above Ivy Cottage.  They lay on the ground, sheltered in the abundant heather.  But when they thawed after a long freeze, lumps of ice travelled down to the tank scouring the pipes and dumping a black peat ooze into the house supply.  It had been Sylvia’s practice to regularly clean the pipes, but this involved climbing up to the dam, opening the pipe joints at intervals, and rodding them through.  In summer it was no more than a challenging hill walk through the ticks and bog myrtle, encumbered by wires and a bag of brushes and tools,.  Even supported by her trusty old cromach, in winter it was downright hazardous; the path was narrow and uneven, traversed by heather roots, and in places crossed rocky outcrops covered in snow or ice.  

After an early lunch, Sylvia wriggled into her orange overalls and her boots, pulled down the earflaps on her Shetland bonnet, grabbed cromach and tools and set off, over the stile in the boundary fence, and up the hill.  About halfway up to the dam, the path skirted the burn for a few metres, and rounded a contorted rowan tree clinging to the bank.  Whether it was carelessness caused by habit, bad luck, or just a bit of compacted snow in the cleats of her boots, Sylvia slipped sideways and in an instant found herself lying on her back in the burn, a trickle of ice cold water running down her neck.  She laughed at herself briefly but, when she tried to get up, was stopped by searing pain from a leg, which lay at an unnatural angle. 

Living alone for years had made Sylvia resourceful and not given to panic or prayer, but as she assessed her situation she realised she was in serious trouble. if not at risk of her life.  Her mobile phone was left at the cottage as there was no signal on the hill.  She was not expecting visitors, and nobody knew where she was.  Lying in the burn, despite her orange overalls, she would be all but invisible, even to someone looking for her.  The only clue to her whereabouts was the Tesco bag of tools that still lay where it had dropped by the rowan.  Then it began to snow again.

Sylvia lay there looking up, blinking through the snowflakes settling on her eyelashes, and thinking it would be a cold day in hell before she was found.  She began to wonder if there was any way she could stand the pain to manoeuvre herself to a dryer spot, when a voice from the bank above startled her.

“Well now, that’s a bit of a spot you’ve got yourself into.”

Flooded by relief Sylvia tried to see who it was, but her vision was obscured by the falling snow.  It was just the shape of a man leaning against the tree.

“Can you help me please, I need help, I think I’ve broken my leg.”

The man said “I don’t think I can move you.  I’m just up here on my own looking for sheep, I’ll have to go down for more help, the best I can do just now is throw my plaid over you.” 

The old rough plaid spread across Sylvia, and despite the water she immediately felt the calming warmth of it.

“I’ll leave your cromach by the tree to help people find you.  Be brave miss, I won’t be long.” 

Some hours passed.  The winter light began to fade, and along with it Sylvia’s hope of rescue.  She started to drift with the onset of hypothermia, which at least masked the pain from her leg.  She closed her eyes and prepared to give herself into the hands of angels.  But when she opened her eyes again it wasn’t heaven in front of her but the back door of an ambulance. and wrapping her in a foil blanket, paramedics were checking her over and splinting her leg. 

Sylvia asked them to save the plaid so that she could get it back to the shepherd with her thanks, but they said,

“What plaid is that? The rescue boys didn’t say anything about finding a plaid, or seeing any shepherd either.  I think you’ve been a bit delirious.”

“The shepherd that found me in the burn, he went for help.  How else did you find me?”

“A complete coincidence.  John Macritchie was up there looking for lost sheep, saw your cromach propped against the tree, saw your Tesco bag and looked into the burn.  John said his grandfather had a cromach just like yours; Tam Macritchie was a shepherd too, and apparently at one time lived in Ivy Cottage but he died years ago: fell into the same burn as you, looking for strays.”

960 Words

Andrew Gold ©                                                         4 February 2025