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“We can make you a pile here, right, lads?”
Nods, mumbles of assent. Nobody seemed to mind.
“Thank you,” I said bravely, dropping the syllables cleanly, like marbles, and secretly full of the most pathetic pride imaginable. I had spoken to strangers.
He must have caught me staring. His eyes were the plainest, deepest brown, wet earth, almost lightless.15
The next thing I knew, he was dumping a sandbag into my arms. It was like trying to catch a baby whale. Ioofed, and clung on, and just about managed to stop it flumping onto the ground.
He grinned, teeth and dimples and freckles moving, like dust in a ray of sunlight. “Ayup, petal.”
Oh.
Ayup: from the Old Norsese upp, watch out, or look up. Usually a greeting.
Petal, most likely post-classical Latin. Even in remembering, slipping between the consonants, my tongue tastes the softness of the vowels.
I walked away from him, wrestling my whale and trying not to embarrass myself. As I dumped it on Mrs. P’s doorstep, I heardstomping behind me, and there he was, a sandbag swinging from each hand.
“This it?”
I so desperately wanted to look at him. “You really d-don’t… I can… It’s my neighbour’s.”
The door swung open. “Damn right it’s my house, and I’m not vulnerable, and I don’t want to be up to my ears in sand.”
A soft thump as he lowered the sandbags. I wondered if he was smiling at her. “I’m just dropping them off.”
Mrs. P regarded him with magnificent scorn. “So this is it, is it? The great Oxford Flood Risk Management Strategy. A man with some sand.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid he might be angry or sad or, worse, that he might not care at all. Because he was a stranger and so he might not know. He might see Mrs. P, this walnut of a woman with gnarly hands and tight lips, and not understand. He might not understand that she was kind and funny and sharp, and that she was important.
But when he spoke, there was only warmth, deep as his eyes, and the velvet-rough edge of laughter. The sort of laughter I like best, laughter that isn’t reallyatanyone.
Laughter that’s just there, for its own sake, like the touch of a friend, or a lover. “You’d be surprised,” he told her, “what a man can do with some sand.”
“Humph.”
“We’re going to be here, all day every day, until it’s over. So, if you want anything, just let us know.”
“Humph.”
“And that goes for anyone in the area. We’re here to help.”
I knew. I just knew he was looking at me. And I couldn’t not look back.
Oh.
“Thank you,” I said.
More marbles.Phad once rebelled against me, sopleasewas dangerous, but I was good atthank you. I could carry out whole conversations with it.16
He probably thought I was a fool, tame thank you or not. And he was probably right.
He was turning to go back to his team. But then he paused. “You know why the houses on this street don’t have flood cellars?”
We shook our heads in unison. Mrs. P looked like she didn’t care.
“Well, here’s the thing.” He tucked his hands behind his back, like a six-foot-four schoolboy reciting his Latin grammar. “If you all have flood cellars, and it floods, everyone’s fine. If you all have flood cellars, and a couple of you use them for storage instead, everyone’s fine and a couple of cheeky buggers get an extra basement. If everyone plays cheeky buggers, though, everyone floods.”17
