The boiler remains broken. My wife sends a text to Mike the plumber. It says: “We’re cold.” He sends one back that says, “It’s spring!”. She sends one that says, “It’s snowing.” He sends one that says “ha ha.”
“And then what?” I say.
“That was it,” she says. A week goes by, then another.
“Right,” I say, coming down from my office in a fleece and fingerless gloves. “I’m going out to buy a space heater.”
“Don’t be mad,” my wife says. “It’s May.”
“I cannot work under these conditions,” I say. “I am a businessman.”
“You are not a businessman,” she says.
“I’ve waited patiently for spring to come to this benighted island, but it just hasn’t happened.”
“I’ll text Mike again,” she says. “He wanted to come last weekend, but we were away.”
I go back up to my office and shiver in front of my computer screen. I can tell from the particular way a thin breeze is moving across my neck that there is a window open in another room. The house has been cold for so long that it has become routine: wake up, dress for outdoors, work for an hour, go downstairs to put hands in oven, threaten to buy space heater, allow myself to be overruled.
The oldest one walks in, wearing shorts.
“Is the printer on?” he says.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“Trying to print something,” he says. “What are you doing?”
“I’m dying of exposure,” I say. “Have you got a window open somewhere?”
“In my room maybe,” he says. He taps a key on his laptop, and the printer judders into life.
“Please can you shut it,” I say. “Aren’t you cold dressed like that?”
“Nah,” he says, retrieving his page from the tray.
“I’m worried if the house stays cold for too long the animals will rebel,” I say. “We’re violating the basic domestication agreement – put out food, keep it warm in here, and we won’t eat you.”
In the late afternoon the weather turns colder still.
“This is ridiculous,” I say.
“Mike is coming tomorrow morning,” my wife says.
“Did he get the parts?” I say.
“I didn’t ask,” she says. “Is this oven on for a reason?” It is: I had a half-formed plan to fill it with bricks and then walk around with the hot bricks in a rucksack.
“No,” I say. “You can turn it off.”
The next day Mike arrives at 10 with his assistant and a couple of boxes of spare parts. He removes the boiler cover – still scorched from where it caught fire – and sets to work. It looks like an enormous job, but less than an hour after I return to my office I hear Mike calling me from the landing.
“That’s all set,” he says. “I’ve overridden the timer for now, but it should reset itself automatically.” I look at him for a moment.
“You mean it works?” I say.
“Yeah, it’s on now.” He steps back so I can look into the cupboard, where the boiler is humming away. Because he’s had to replace the cover, it looks brand new.
“Bless you,” I say. “Please shake my freezing hand.”
“That is cold,” says Mike.
“I know,” I say.
It takes a few hours for the house to heat through, but by evening I have retired my fleece. The next morning I wake up perspiring lightly.
I find my wife downstairs in the kitchen. Bright sunshine streams through windows, and the garden door is open.
“I think it’s time to turn the heating off,” she says.
“But we’ve only...” I say, touching the hot, sunlit work top. “Yeah, OK.”
