House That Berry Built (20 page)

“How far in is that spring?”

Joseph spread out his hands.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I have taken the men’s opinion, and they say between two and four feet. I have asked how they would capture it, but all they can say is ‘With stones.’”

My cousin shook his head.

“Good enough to save a meadow, but not a house. We’ve got to have masonry here. I think the thing to do is to sink a well.”

“Ah!”

“A well, say, eight feet deep. They make wells now of sections of ferro-concrete, all ready to sink. We place one section directly above where we think the spring has broken, and dig out the earth within it until it sinks; then on goes another section, and we dig out the earth again, until the two have gone down. And so on. And when we are eight feet down, we shall capture the spring. And after that we can pipe it wherever we please.”

“It shall be done, Monsieur. The sections will be here this evening, and I shall construct the scaffold this afternoon. I think that by Sunday evening we should have the spring in our hands.”

Had the clouds returned, we should have had a bad time. But, by the mercy of heaven, we had fine weather until the work was done. The men worked all day Sunday, and Jonah and I, with Carson, remained at Lally until the danger was past. From Friday to Tuesday, the three of us laboured full time, from seven o’clock till five. (Carson had driven Jill back and had returned with our things. And we had done very well at the little hotel.)

Our labour consisted mainly in shifting earth. The soil which was dug away from within the well was cast on to the heap below, and from that heap below to the heap below that; that heap in turn was shovelled into the waiting trucks and the trucks were run down a terrace and tipped straight on to the mound which had supplanted the gully of other days.

Early on Monday morning we captured the spring. This was seven feet down. It rose three feet and then stopped. That meant it had done its worst. Gravity was against it, and, now that it was confined, it found itself compelled to resume its underground course. As a result of a cloud-burst, it might rise another two feet, so we set in an overflow pipe a foot from the top of the well. That made assurance sure. Then we cleared away the loose soil between the well and the wall: and the moment this was accomplished the masons set to work. Their job was to raise the wall as fast as they could; and while the wall was rising at this particular point, stones from the ruinous cottage were packed where the soil had been.

By Tuesday afternoon the wall at this point was nearly five feet high, and the wound which had been gaping above it, whose sides had been shored with planks, had been plugged with hundreds of stones from the river-bed.

There was still much soil to be cleared from the platform side of the wall, but now, though it rained to glory, no harm could befall.

As we bade Joseph good night—

“It has been a great honour, Messieurs, to have you and Monsieur Carson in the
équipe
. You have set a great example which no one will ever forget. And let us not count this a set-back. For me, it is well that it happened. Sooner or later, you see, that spring would have had its way. And it is a hundred times better that it should have broken now than that it should have broken after the house was built.”

And that was a true saying. Had it broken the following winter, it would have been awkward indeed.

Another two days went by before all the earth that had fallen had been removed: but even when that had been done, Joseph would not proceed with the house, for fear of another fall. He concentrated, instead, upon the semicircular wall and set the few men that were left to digging the large recess which should house the septic tank. This was to lie beneath the lower of the terraces running to the west of the house. The bath- and sink-water would pass by a separate drain which did not enter the tank, but, after threading a grease-trap, would slant down under the meadows, to meet the
ruisseau
a few feet above the road. (Such a meeting had been foreseen, and when the
ruisseau
was piped, a branch had been left all ready, plugged and carefully housed.) At the opposite end of the site, the Lally water had now been led into our ground, and the plumber’s men were working upon the pipes which would lead it up to the house. That the pressure should not be embarrassed there were to be no corners, but only curves, and, before the trenches were cut, the pipes were laid in their order upon the turf. They were then lightly screwed together, branches and all, when Felix Arripe, plumber, desired us to say if the line was such as we wished.

With Joseph, we inspected the layout and found it good.

Joseph addressed his uncle.

“You will plug the main line, if you please, but set standpipes at the ends of the branches without delay. Such action, I mean, will be very convenient for me. I can then have done with the
ruisseau
. Moreover, by means of a hose, I can see if the pressure will reach the roof of the house.”

“All this I will do,” said the other, “when you have interred my pipes.”

On the sixteenth day of November, the Lally water was running upon the site – and Joseph had tested the pressure and found it would force the water as high as the roof. And the semicircular wall was nearly done.

We had, indeed, a great deal to be thankful for.

“Three weeks from today,” said Jonah, “we are going to leave Pau for England, where we shall spend a month. I think that, before we go, we should choose an electrician. You may think I’m looking ahead; but so I am. I hate knocking walls about. Arripe is in touch with Joseph and keeps him posted regarding the holes he must have. I think we should have an electrician, to do the same.”

“Why not?” said everyone.

We found one almost at once – an excellent man, called Carol, and Daphne and Jill and Berry were soon absorbed in a pile of catalogues.

“Now here’s what I want,” said Berry. “Here’s what I want. I shall have it beside my bed. You see it in the ‘big business’ films. You just breathe your requirements into it, and everyone hears what you say all over the house.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Daphne. “Anyway, it’s the very last thing you’re going to have. I can think of nothing more frightful.”

“Of course I shall have it,” said her husband. “It’s what I’ve been needing for years. Take a case in point. I’m short of shaving-cream. Well, it’s very hard to remember to buy a cosmetic like that. But if I’d had one of these gadgets, everyone in the flat would have been aware of the truth. And if I’d rammed it home, somebody would have remembered to buy me a tube today.”

“If you get one of those,” said Daphne, “you’ll live in the house by yourself.”

Berry sighed.

“Well, do remember,” he said, “that I’m short of shaving-cream.”

Jonah and I were more concerned with cables and screwed steel joints. We visited Carol, when he had studied the plans.

“How will this do?” said I. “The main lines run into the garage right at the foot of the site: and there we have the meters – in a cupboard which we can lock. From there the cables go under ground to the house, and pass by the side of the water into the furnace-room. Your main switch-board is in the garage. You have two subordinate switch-boards, one on the ground floor and one on the floor above. All the fuses are presented on these two boards, and each board will have a main switch, to cut out that floor. The boards to be hung head high, and so within reach.”

“I shall be happy,” said Carol, “to do as Monsieur suggests. But I see there will be an attic which covers the whole of the house. Also an underground chamber some twenty-eight metres long. I suggest a miniature switch-board for each of these. It will not cost very much, and the lights outside the house can be controlled from the
cave
. So the whole house will be sectioned. I have some good fuses here. They are very new. Monsieur observes the little red spot upon each? But that is not a spot. It is a little red peg which is sunk in the porcelain. And if a fuse should go, the little red peg will shoot out. One glance at the switch-board, therefore, and Monsieur cannot help seeing of all the fuses before him, which one must be replaced. And he has, of course, several spare fuses all ready to hand.”

Remembering the many occasions on which I had stood upon ladders, checking fuse after dust-laden fuse in the sweat of my face – and one very special occasion, when Berry met two hundred volts and dropped the one torch we had, and then lay down in the dark and demanded an iron lung – remembering these things, I felt that the house was worth building, if only for the sake of the fuses which Carol was proposing to use.

“And now for the rooms. I cannot bear to do damage, and I shall do my best to follow the plumber’s pipes. But my tubes must nowhere appear. So before any tiling is done or floors are laid, Messieurs will please decide exactly what lighting they want and where they would like the switches and the plugs for the light and the power.”

“We’ll see to that,” I promised. “We propose to have indirect lighting throughout the house.”

“I am glad of that,” said Carol. “It is the best light in the world: and I have a plasterer here who will fashion the fittings for that to your own design – at less than half the price which the great houses charge. Which reminds me, a new radiator has just come in. It has behind it a fan, which drives the sultry heat all over the room. I have taken the liberty of sending one round this morning to Monsieur’s flat – for Miladi and Madame to try, and to use as much as they like. It is nice in the bedroom, you know, when Madame is dressing for dinner. Her maid can switch it on five minutes before she comes up…”

It occurred to me that if Carol was as good a workman as salesman, we should, indeed, have little to worry about.

Right at the end of November, the coping was laid on the semi-circular wall.

“And now we are free,” said Joseph, “to build the back of the house. Upon that we must concentrate, for we must catch up with the front. The two must arrive together at the point where the ground-floor ceiling is to be laid. For this will be another platform – less solid, of course, but almost exactly resembling that upon which we stand. It will gird the whole house together and will give every room a ceiling which nothing on earth will crack.

“And here I take the occasion to raise an important point. Raise it I must, before Messieurs depart for Christmas, because, I think, when they return, it may be too late. It is the height of the ceilings. The plans tell me less than three metres. I find that terribly low. I would have said four metres – four metres for a château like this.”

The French believe in high ceilings. We had arranged for ceilings of nine feet six – nine feet six exactly above the floors. And Joseph was commending ceilings of thirteen feet. I knew that to argue was hopeless. But nothing this side of hell would have made me give way.

“It’s an English fashion, Joseph. Refer to ‘the Bible’. You’ll find we’re not very far out.”

Joseph smote upon his thigh.

“Of course,” he said. “But I am still concerned with the doorways and walls. I have not got so far as the ceilings. And Monsieur means to say that all these fine houses in England have ceilings as low as that?”

“Some have higher ceilings, Joseph. But only a mansion today would have ceilings thirteen feet high. And no one is building mansions.”

“But this is a mansion,” said Joseph.

I shook my head.

“It would have been lost in White Ladies, the home we have given up. There were fireplaces there which would have accepted a car. And the Royal Chamber was twenty-two metres long.”

“
Mon Dieu
,” said Joseph.

“A book’s being made about it. One day I will show you a copy. And that reminds me. Don’t forget the niche you are going to leave in the wall.”

“Monsieur need not remind me. Monsieur le Major talks of that niche every day. And he is perfectly right. He desires that, when he is bathing, the soap shall be within reach. But neither he nor I—”

“I don’t mean the soap-niche,” said I. “I mean the secret recess which is to be left in a wall.”

“Ah! I know now. I remember. Depend upon me, Monsieur – that shall be done. I have the dimensions here.” He tapped his breast. “Monsieur is going to have a canister made?”

“That’s right. I’ll get it made in London. And in it, with other things, we’ll put the White Ladies book.”

“That idea attracts me,” said Joseph. “I think it is very nice – that this house should wear in its heart the picture of its great predecessor, now full of years.”

Two days before we left Pau, with one consent we visited Paradise.

It was a perfect day, and though the beeches were bare, thousands of firs were still clothing the mountainsides. Above them, the snow-clad peaks seemed stuff that dreams are made of – against the blue. The astonishing brilliance of the sunshine, the steady thunder of the torrent, the cool, sweet air and the absence of any being except ourselves seemed to proclaim with one voice the paramount excellence of Nature, compared with Art. Great London seemed cheap and sordid beside such things: her finest buildings, vulgar beside those time-honoured walls: the roar of her traffic tuneless, beside such harmony.

Our pool had disappeared. Twelve feet of water were raging where we had lain beside it three months ago. But the meadow was at our disposal, smooth and gay and secluded – a true Horatian lawn. As I have hinted before, the oaks and the hedges about it gave it an English air, and, late in the year though it was, a lizard was sunning himself on the slates of its jolly barn.

Jill and I strolled past this, while the others were arguing where we should eat our lunch.

As we looked up at the heights—

“Shall you ever forget that day when young de Moulin got stuck?”

“Never,” said Jill. “We nearly went home that day. I suppose we didn’t really. I mean, ever since then we’ve had such a glorious time. The house and the site and those three months at Lally, and the thought that we’re going to live there… You must admit it smacks of some future life.”