'She's handy with that
axe!'
‘Yes.’
‘It’s the upper body
strength I suppose?’
‘Well, it helps – along
with the balance, good coordination, focus; but most of all, she knows how to
take instruction!’
‘What?’
‘She understands how to
put principles into practice. I told her, rule one; let the tool and gravity do
the work.’
‘So, it’s all down to
you is it?’ Uncle exclaimed.
‘No, not at all, she’s
probably using less energy than you or I would – and we’ve done a bit of it all
our lives!’
It was fine enough for
lunch outside again. Julia, Charlie and I were well stuck-in before Uncle put
in an appearance. ‘I’ve just had the rummy-est of phone calls, in a lifetime time
of rummy phone calls.’
‘Oh dear, who was it
darling?’
‘Secretary of the Park,
said he’d been hanging on for days hoping to sort the thing out himself, but
now he felt he just had to tell me everything!’
‘Sounds intriguing.’ I
chipped in.
‘You might not think so
when I’ve told you! Apparently, the pond got so low about ten days ago everyone
could see where there must be some sort of hole. They all had a pow-wow, then
he rang the council whilst someone rang a friend who’s a top-notch land surveyor.
Council man turns up the next day, spends five minutes on the bank, then says
the lads with the red plastic barriers, stripy tape and whichever yellow
warning signs are applicable, will be around the following day. Then the
obligation would be on us to commission the relevant report from the
appropriately certified whoever! Anyway, day after health and safety goes up,
matey’s friend turns up, he spends fifteen minutes walking back and forth on
the bank, then says his report will be with us in ten days. Some joker says:
“Well aren’t you even going to get your wellies out of the four by four?” No,
he says it can all be done with an Internet search; Ordnance Survey since, I
think he said it was some time in the1860’s when they finally turned up in our
neck of woods, the Geological Survey, then for any old works like the house and
grounds - whoever has the old County Records Office archive. Onward and upward,
all the way to the present day. The ten days are up tomorrow, which is why the Sec’s
got the willies.’
Uncle stopped, there
was a very long pause, none of us had anything to say. Then turning to me: ‘Well,
should we go over tomorrow?’
‘We!’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes, I need a bagman
on these occasions, you know just the moment to hand me a note with the right
kind of wrong question written on it!’
‘My advice would be to sit
back, chill-out and let your employees handle it.’
‘Would it, would it
indeed. I’ll be the one picking up the bill if it’s serious, which I suspect it
is, because it has never even dried up before - I know because I used to visit
as a child when my distant relative owned it. You’re looking very cool about
this Tony, whilst Charlotte’s doing a lot of face-touching! Now you can
poker-face Julia and me, always could, but you can’t her - which I suppose is
why you two are together in the first place.’
Then Julia came in,
bang on cue: ‘You shouldn’t have given your Uncle that body language book by the
ex-FBI chap, reads it more often than he cares to admit.’
‘Well Charlotte, what
do you know about all this?’
‘You shouldn’t ask!’
‘I know I shouldn’t,
but he dropped hints about this weeks ago, intended to be helpful, yet I don’t
know.’
‘He holds a pretty a
strong hand.’
‘Does he? Thank you for
that. Your girl’s starting to talk, you should be mad as hell by now, yet you
sit there...’
‘Reggie! That’s enough.
You know perfectly well Tony will intervene when necessary, if necessary, if
our welfare is concerned.’
‘Slippery bugger
though.’
Then I couldn’t resist:
‘It’ll take them ages to work out what the report means anyway, and whether or
not there are any serious implications at all! Perhaps one wheelbarrow of quick
drying concrete around the hole will do it.’
‘Oh, do shut up Tony!’
said Charlie.
‘Hey ho, fiddly dee,
life is but a dream,’ she almost sang, as we siesta-ed at her makeshift
encampment in the woods. ‘Is it fair, scheming, when it’s your own family?’
‘It worked perfectly.’
‘How?’
‘You only missed one
thing, the layout of the table. I was sat opposite Julia, who knows me better
than anyone. You were sat opposite Uncle. But physically, Uncle and I were sat
closest. Staring straight into someone’s eyes, is ultimately oppositional, not
cooperative! Besides, Uncle will like you even more now, you gave him something,
when he was expecting nothing.’
‘Ah, Miss Charlotte,
the very person…’
‘Mr Gregson.’
‘Oh, Bob please, we’re
all getting to know you now. I was wondering if you could help me with
something, you know all about alternative this, and alternative that. It’s the
old, old problem I’m afraid, what counts as organic? What the EU thinks it is,
is never what us ordinary mortals think, is it! I’m told you know France… well
then, you’ll understand how French wine somehow managed to write the rulebook
on what the EU considers organic, dragged their feet for eight years if memory
serves…’
‘I really don’t know
anything about rules and regulations Mr Greg, eh Bob!’
‘The thing is they managed
to get sulphur included within the definition of organic, well I suppose they
had to, nasty stuff to work with, but takes some people worse than others…’
‘Oh! I see, you want me
to spray the vines?’
‘You’d go down well with
his Lordship.’
‘I’ll decide who goes
down well Gregson, you can call me Sparkwell.’
It was at breakfast the
following day that everything got kicked into touch for the interim. The
telephone rang and Uncle was forced to leave his toast to get cold.
‘There’s really no need
for you to go to all this trouble Charlotte.’ Our hostess asserted.
‘I don’t mind, I was
awake early.’
‘There’s something
different about you today, very neat. Very stylish you understand, but what with
your excellent posture, you don’t half look like you’re butler-ing my dear,
quite reminds me of the old days.’
‘I am in Mr Anthony’s employ
madam.’
‘Tony! No, on second
thoughts I don’t want to know. I’m not Elisabeth, I have no interest whatsoever
in your private life, if you two have got some, sub/dom thing going, good luck to
you.’
‘But it works! In
public, we’ve crash-tested it several times in big hotel lobbies. Well you know
yourself; you’ve complained about it when visiting friends, being interrupted
all the time by PAs, personal trainers fusing about, paying to have their
personal crimpers come to the house.’
‘I cut Reggie’s hair
myself.’
‘Exactly. And when you
watch them you can see they’re all trying to work out when they should be
walking two steps behind... whilst Charlie can move from skulking to loitering
to hovering like a hot knife through butter.’
‘Disaster! The whole
thing,’ interrupted Uncle coming in from the hallway.
‘Whatever’s happened?’
‘6am on the dot, email
attachment, nearly forty pages; he hasn’t got beyond the first item in the
summary, says it all, easy to fix - but it’s not ours to sodding fix!’
