As we began month whatever (I didn’t dare count) of the Great Plan, I came to fear for my marriage. If Eeyore, when asked how it was all going had said just once more that ‘It’s really not too bad!’ I became concerned that I would kill him. The heady mix of smugness/burning martyr about him as he set off back to his warm, clean, tidy and watertight London bachelor pad every Sunday night was almost too much to bear. As it was during his daily phone call from his centrally heated office, complete with running water and loos not stuck down with gaffer tape.
With hindsight, his positivity (everything’s relative, and my mother nicknamed him ‘Eeyore’ for good reason) was probably a good thing. It quickly became clear that we and the builders were going to have plenty of opportunity to get to know each other even better. I admit it was true that The Guys were the best builders in the world, and I also admit that in a warped sort of way I knew I would miss them when they finally left. (Don’t quote me.) But I have to say that I began to get miffed at Nos.2 and 3’s desperation to get out and see them every morning, and as soon as they got home.
It took a while for the penny to drop, and to realise that the urgency apparent in No2’s speedy dressing and rushing downstairs every morning wasn’t born of hunger, or a keenness (well, she’s a girl) to get to school. ‘Don’t you want to talk to ME?!’ I would hear myself bleat pathetically at the back of her head as she vanished through the back door and round the corner. For a while her favourite was Paul, the colour-blind tiler. She was utterly shameless in her batting of eyelids and I’ve no idea where she got such wantonness – I blame the father. She’s certainly got his eyelashes.
The 18m old of course wore his hard hat all day and did a great job of demolishing most of the bits we rather thought were OK. My father’s first words were apparently ‘Daddy bang!’. Not so No3’s. ‘Pete bang, Daddy Lunnon’ more like.
No.1 rang daily from school ostensibly to check on progress generally, but only really to find out whether or not his new bedroom carpet was down yet. He did have a point of course: we realised that the rugs covering the bigger rips weren’t enough when the baby was found getting through one of the holes during an unscheduled game of pre-bath hide and seek. It was a good thing really and the carpet clearly had to go anyway. White shag pile, compressed over twenty years and now more grey than intended, was never our thing. More alarming was the fact that as we pulled him out a chunk of floorboard came too. Happily woodworm, not deathwatch, and good to find it before the new carpet went down. Eeyore assured me that these close calls were all part of the experience, and I became very good at finding silver linings.
And yet, as the weeks stretched exhaustingly and expensively into months, we found we were more settled than we had any right to be. Upheaval and chaos were the only order of the day, and for months I was certain we were going backwards rather than forwards, but it didn’t seem to matter. Those who liked us enough came to stay anyway and braved the conditions to go home laughing, feeling relieved and happy with their lot. Those who didn’t doubtless just laughed – but so what? ‘One day soon’ we reassured each other, ‘We’ll have light, and loos, and a roof, and carpets – and maybe even warmth.’ ‘Then,’ I reassured myself, ‘it won’t only be Eeyore who’s smug, and our marriage will once again be secure.’ Although as I said, everything’s relative.
