 Previous
New Readers Start Here
Table of Contents Next
The charity concert at school was only days away. Lea
always enjoyed the chance to stand up in front of an
audience. It wasn't vanity, she just liked the thrill.
Her drama teacher, Miss Plant, had persuaded her to
put her name down for the poetry reading, and she agreed
simply because it gave her the chance, for the first
time, to stand alone before an audience of six hundred
people.
She even had the chance to choose what to recite. The
day Michael went to the ballet she had spent hours trying
to decide what to read. She had eclectic tastes: WH
Auden, Blake, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Wordsworth, Tennyson, Wilde. One favourite sprang to
mind. She had discarded it because the last stanza demanded
a male reader, but just now, as she crouched under her
sink with Michael, the first sprang to mind, coming
vividly to life:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
They had checked that the ring was still in the U-bend,
they had managed to undo it and much of the water that
emerged had landed successfully in the bucket they had
strategically positioned. Nevertheless, a great deal
of water had strayed onto the carpet, and Lea was by
no means sure that it would evaporate without leaving
a stain. U-bends held much more water than either of
them would have credited.
When they finally retrieved the component they were
disappointed to discover that the glint they had seen
was nothing more than the reflection from the torch.
Meanwhile the odour that emerged from the open waste
pipe was foul. It filled the room with a stench that
they could barely tolerate, and Lea had to open the
window to allow at least a vestige of fresh air inside.
The temperature was already close to freezing, so this
was not a long-term solution, but in the short term
it gave welcome relief.
It was clear that they needed to reassemble the mechanism
immediately. What was less clear was how this could
be accomplished. They had a little more than an hour
to solve the problem, and their chances of success,
they both felt, were not ones that Bicester would be
eager to bet on.
Michael swore. "Can you get some toilet paper
and wedge it in the end of that pipe? Maybe it'll stop
some of that smell."
He was angry with himself. He had bitten off more than
he could chew, he had been foolish, and Lea would get
into trouble as a consequence. She was being very good
about it but it was clear that this situation was pretty
well irredeemable. Again he tried to fit the U-bend
back into place, but he could not see how to secure
it.
He threw it down and shook his head. "I'm sorry."
She patted his shoulder. "Never give up, remember?
Contra mundum?"
"Contra mundum," he agreed firmly, quoting
from one of her favourite books. She read everything
and wrote almost constantly, keeping a diary, a growing
collection of original poetry and lyrics, and even a
screenplay. Michael did not doubt that she would be
famous one day. He shrugged. "I'm damned if I can
see how to fix this back in place, though."
"We'll figure it out." They both stared at
the white plastic pipe. Suddenly the walkie-talkie on
Michael's belt beeped. Amazed, he looked down at it
and then at Lea. This had never happened before. "You
didn't do that?"
She held up her hands, the empty palms upwards. "Not
me." As far as they knew they were the only people
in the district with these devices. No one had ever
contacted them and they had never heard any other activity
on the airwaves.
"Huh! I guess someone else around here has finally
got one."
Then some words emerged. "You kids, whatever your
names are. Can you hear me?"
Michael was astonished. "Professor? Is that you?"
Previous New
Readers Start Here Table
of Contents Next
|
