it was wrong to giggle; it let down the grownup side.
‘It was a fieldmouse,’ said Jane. ‘I know, cos their tails are longer.’
‘Tripe,’ said Timothy. ‘It was just an ordinary house-mouse. Fieldmice don’t invade a house till winter . . .’
‘How do you know, Clever Dick? It might have been a harvest mouse, the sort the Romans brought.’
‘Have you ever seen a harvest mouse, even in a book?’
‘All right,’ said Rose hastily. ‘Dirty Scrabble it is.’
It was their last happy evening.
At lunch the next day, Jane said, ‘Mr. Gotobed’s going to build you a rockery . . .’
‘A rockery? Whatever for?’
‘You can’t beat a nice little rockery, moi booty! With little plants a-growin’ hare and there!’ Uncannily Mr. Gotobed’s old gravelly voice issued from her son’s soft childish lips.
‘But I don’t want a rockery. And Miss Yaxley hasn’t even been consulted . . .’
‘Too late,’ said Timothy. ‘He’s gone for a load of them stones.’
‘But where is he going to get stones round here? There aren’t any stones. And he hasn’t finished the hedge-laying yet.’
‘I know. That’s the funny thing. He was laying the hedge quite happily, till he found what the rabbits had done.’
‘Rabbits?’ Rose’s mind began to sway again.
‘Rabbits in the garden, digging burrows. We found them and showed him. They weren’t very good burrows, not very deep. Three of them, all in one group. Mr. Gotobed filled them in again, and stamped the earth down hard. Said you didn’t want rabbits in a garden, they ate all the lettuce and cabbages.’
‘But we haven’t got any lettuces and cabbages worth saving . . .’
‘I know. We said that. But then he told us about building the rockery, and went off in a hurry.’ There was a sound of grinding outside, as they finished up their rather horrible fruits of the forest low fat yogurts, from the mini-market. A grinding as of iron on stone, a rumbling, then an enormous thump. Then a second grinding and thump; then a third.
They rushed out, to see three figures departing down the path, wheeling wheelbarrows. The first two figures were of young men in washed-out jeans, but otherwise stripped to almost the level of the crack between their buttocks. They were bronzed and muscled like young Greek gods. The sort of men Rose always felt she shouldn’t be looking at, as they rested on their shovels at some roadworks, and Rose was stuck in the resulting traffic-jam.
The last of the trio was the well-wrapped-up form of Mr. Gotobed. He turned, when he was a good distance away, and waved reassuringly.
Rose thought she ought to hurry after him. Unfortunately, entirely blocking the gate was a large and unstable heap of sharp-edged stone, quite unnavigable to anyone wearing Clarks sandals, as Rose was. To anyone wearing less than very large hobnailed boots . . .
The stone was a curious mixture; some good brown sandstone blocks, that looked as if they’d been filched from a historic monument; a lot of round stones about six inches in diameter, that Timothy said must have come from the fields; and lastly a lot of ugly shattered reinforced concrete, with rusty bits of reinforcement still sticking out of it.
Timothy surveyed the treacherous and unsightly heap. ‘Now we know how the mouse felt,’ he said, to nobody in particular.
By the time they had returned with three more barrowloads of stone, the argument was unwinnable. Rose just hadn’t the heart to make them take it all away again. They looked so hot and sweaty! And they meant so well; their grins were so boyish and pleased with themselves. She opened her mouth to chide, but only the offer of a cold drink came out.
They all, instantly, said, ‘Coke please, missus.’ And then the two young gods were introduced as Harry and Dave, and enthusiastically shook hands with everyone having first wiped their hands on their worn-out jeans with such vigor that poor Rose expected strands of pubic hair to become visible above their faded belts at any moment.
Rose might, she supposed, have still kicked up a fuss had they intended to put the rockery somewhere quite unsuitable, like the middle of the front garden. But in the end they built it on a narrow patch by the path to the outhouse, close under the shadow of the hedge. She was so relieved at the site they had chosen that she felt almost grateful to them. They carried stone all the afternoon with great energy. Rose worried about how to pay them;