The Happiest Days by Jonah
This is a story about love - real love - at work in the lives of good people. It follows on from "Halls of Academia," but the story really began many, many moons ago with "A Letter from America". There are no real people herein so, if you think one of the characters is based on you, or on somebody you know, have another think and come up with a different answer. Having said that, I didn't invent every character. A couple of them were originally crafted by another author. I have to (well, actually, it is my pleasure to) thank Jacob Lion, in the USA for his permission to use his characters in my stories.
I hope you will enjoy this story, and I'm grateful to Nifty for enabling me to bring it to you. Nifty does not charge either me or you for doing so, but it does cost money to do it. Please consider donating to Nifty at https://donate.nifty.org/ to help keep this site going.
Chapter 8 Emergency - which service do you.....
As I pulled open the bedroom door a dense cloud of smoke hit me, causing me to drop to the floor. With my head close to the floor, I glanced to the left and down the stairs. The smoke was billowing up the stairs but an orange glow was detectable at the bottom. That wasn't the way out.
"Garret," I called, " get that window open and get all the bedding, clothing and anything else soft out of it. I'm getting the boys."
I reached up for their door handle. One of them was coughing, but I couldn't tell which one. I reached up for the nearest boy and rolled him towards me and off of the bed. He landed on top of me, as I had planned, and I gently rolled him to the floor, then reached for the other one. There was a lot of noise from downstairs now and we needed to move quickly.
"We're going to keep our heads low and wriggle to safety," I told them. I directed them in the direction of the door, identifiable now only because that was the direction the smoke was coming from. It seemed to take an age to get them across the landing, but it never occurred to me for one moment that any of us might not make it. There was no time for such thoughts.
The boys were wriggling alongside me now and, as I got through our door, I rolled onto my back, sat up and hauled both boys through behind me, kicking the door shut with my foot and hurling a pillow against the bottom of it. Garret had the window open so the air, although heavily smoke-laden, was soon breathable enough to allow standing up.
"Out you go Garret" I told him. "I'll pass the boys out to you."
The front door, with its porch, was immediately below our window, so he should be able to take the boys from me.
I watched as he swung himself over the cill. Then I passed the first of the naked boys out. I still don't know which boy it was. There was no time to notice things like that. When both boys were out I swung myself out of the window and joined them on the tiled roof of the porch.
"Right, next bit," I said, laying myself on my stomach. I might need your help with this bit Garret."
I wriggled backward untill my legs were in mid air, at which point there was nothing for them to gain any purchase on to go further. Garret took my wrists, lifted my front end upward and then gently lowered me until I could grip the edge of the porch. I hung there for a moment and then dropped the remaining couple of feet onto the bedding and clothing below.
"Ready?" asked Garret, who had already seated Philip on the edge of the porch.
"OK!" I shouted, reaching past the boy's calves and gripping his thighs. Garret lifted his arms and lowered him by his wrists until I could reach his waist.
"OK!" I shouted again as I swung the boy to the ground.
He passed the other boy down the same way then sat down himself and twisted until his upper half was supported on the porch.
"OK, I've got your feet," I shouted.
"There was a time when I'd have been worried to hear you say that," he remarked.
I uttered a word that I shouldn't have uttered in front of children, but I don't think either of the boys noticed.
As soon as Garret was on Terra Firma, we selected blankets and wrapped each boy in them. Then we made ourselves decent. Garret had located his jacket and retrieved his mobile phone. He was urgently tapping the keys.
"Fire,"I heard him say calmly. then,
"Yes, fire at one, four zero Newton Street, Newton St Faith. All persons out. ..... Thank you, will do."
He reached in his pocket for his ignition key.
"In the car boys," he told them. "We're going to park a bit further away. You might as well stay in the car."
"As he reversed off of the driveway, I searched for my ignition keys too. It didn't take long to clear my mini off the driveway and leave a clear field for the fire brigade.
By the time I locked the mini up again the pump from Sprowston Fire Station was already parked outside our house and firemen were busy gaining access. Since I was wearing my jacket, I could have unlocked for them but I didn't think they'd welcome the interference. I was wrong.
"Is this your house sir?" said the officer as I locked up the mini.
"Yes it is."
"Have you got the front door key in your pocket?" he asked. "I't'll save us doing more damage. Too late to do anything about that window. The fire had already broken that for us. "
A fireman stood at the broken living room window, trying to calm the flames with the first aid reel.
I handed over the key.
"There, that should get you in," I said.
"Thanks." he said. "Control said everybody's out, is that right?"
"Yes, myself, my partner and two ten year olds. The others are all in my partner's car."
"OK, There'll be a police car along in a minute or two. When it gets here, just point out to them where the children are."
Well I did that and a very nice lady policeman sat in the back of Garret's car with the boys. Before long her colleague had knocked up a couple of the neighbours and, after a few moments chatting, had sorted out who had children whose clothes might fit our boys and had found a nice lady who had orange squash in her cupboard. Another lady put on the kettle for Garret and I, not to mention the police. Our next door neighbour was a good distance down the road and we were friendly in a distant sort of way. Within a quarter of an hour of the brigade's arrival, he had set up a trestle table at his gate, from which his wife was running an emergency services canteen.
Two hours later, with the first streaks of dawn in the Eastern sky, the brigade were making up. They had kept the hosereel free for any damping down that was necessary, but everything else was being stowed away. A good many of our neighbours were in the street by that time and Garret and I recieved many offers of help. It seemed that the seat of the fire was in the living room and the living room door had held it in check for long enough for the smoke alarm to do its job. Boy, was I glad that we had that fitted. I also thanked our lucky stars that we were in the habit of closing doors before we went to bed at night. The only thing that we had neglected, and the cause of the fire - well, we had thought it was OK to leave the television on "standby" when we were not using it. Thanks to the fire brigade's promptness, all the serious damage was confined to the living room, but there was smoke damage to almost everything else in the house. As daylight arrived the officer showed us that the walls of every room, except our bedroom, were coated in a dark grey, greasy film, and the cyanide smell was everywhere.
"You'll be looking for somewhere else to live for a few days," he told us, "but contact your insurance right away, most of them have out-of-hours people for emergencies. Don't touch anything until they've been and had a look. You don't want to be paying out money to do things that you've already paid them to do. They might put you in a hotel for a day or two."
Well that was that but, we couldn't do any of it yet. Since we hadn't anywhere to live for the present, we piled into Garret's car and headed for his school, where we camped in the staff room. That was where Jean Moffatt - now the headmistress - found us when she came in at eight o'clock.
"Is this something I should know about, Garret," she asked, apparently unpeturbed that a teacher, his partner and two pupils were in the staff room before anybody else arrived.
Garret explained that we had nowhere to live and he needed to be somewhere with access to a computer and telephone.
"Well you should have rung me,you silly man. As your headmistress, I'm supposed to be informed anyway, we have a duty of care for our staff but, since Walt died, I've lived all on my own in that big house in Cringleford. I've got plenty of room, and a computer and telephone. Come on, we'll all fit in your car Garret, and you all need a shower. You all smell like your house must do at the moment. Go and get in while I raid the spare uniform store in the office."
Well Garret drove us all to Mrs.Moffatt's house which was, as she had said, huge. We all got showered, and the boys were kitted out in school uniform, although Philip wasn't going to school. I was kitted out in some clothes of the late Mr. Moffatt, which I wouldn't have chosen for myself, but it wasn't important. Garret was provided with shorts and a sweatshirt.
"The staff will understand when we tell them the reason," said Jean, "and the kids won't care".
Well that was so. Garret put through an emergency call to our insurers which resulted in a promise to send a loss adjuster quick-smart. He could be on site by ten o'clock. Garret promised that I would meet him there. Jean arranged that Philip would actually attend school but, rather than join his class, he would help her in the office.
As soon as the others were off to school I was off home to meet the loss adjuster. We'd arranged for him to meet me at the lady across the road's house, since ours wasn't suitable for me to wait in. She - bless her - made tea for me, and for the loss adjuster, when he arrived. Then it was down to work. I assured him, as we walked across, that he didn't need to put us in a hotel.
"Good!" he said, "but I won't put that on your file. You'll have lots of ancilliary expenses as a result of this, and the couple of grand we'd have spent on hotel bills will help you with that. We'll still be in pocket."
He then looked in the living room. Everything was charred black and the settee and chairs had been reduced to their frames.
"New furniture and new carpet," he said. "Your contents are insured for twelve thousand, which isn't a lot, so we'll happily pay that. As for making good, I have to ask you, after what happened, how do you feel about your home?"
I was at a loss.
"Let's put it this way. If you want us to write this off and give you the money, I can arrange it. It's not an offer I'd usually make because it could encourage folks to torch their property for claims, but I know this was an accident and if you felt that you or your family couldn't sleep easily here in future.... well, my priority is to see that we do what we can to help you get your lives back together."
"Can this be restored?"
"Oh bless you, yes," he said earnestly. "You've got experts working for you. This floor underneath this carpet is sound, and your staircase is sound. The boards and joists upstairs are sound, but this ceiling needs replacing. We'll get a builder in to do that and fit all new doors. Some of them need replacing so we might as well do the lot. That window, we'll replace with a double glazed unit unless you'd rather we didn't. Some people worry about double glazing after fires. Once the builder's gone we need a heavy clean. Unless you know an industrial cleaner that you prefer, we'll get someone in to do that for you, then you need decorating. I'd recommend you get someone you'd trust to do that, but send us the bill. I'd say that the whole operation won't take more than a fortnight, and you could actually move back in after the heavy clean if you wanted to. That'd be next weekend. That little lot should cost us less than twenty grand, which is less than you're insured for so we'll happily chuck in another five grand for other expenses plus the two grand I already mentioned. I'll give you a cheque for that now so that you have funds for clothing and other necessaries while you're staying out."
That is, as far as I can tell, a more-or-less verbatim record of what he said. I was, of course, a schoolteacher, and was used to checking students' remembrance of what I had just said. I was thankful that this man wasn't a schoolteacher. If he had said, "what did I just say" I'd have been sunk.
The only excuse I could offer would have been that I had not slept much during the night, and the experience had been traumatic. OK, so that's two excuses. In point of fact, finance was something that Garret usually handled as it was not my forte. Come to think of it I had never had cause to deal with an insurance claim before. The shock of coming into our living room and seeing it in the cold light of day was as upsetting as anything that had occurred during the night, plus I had now had time to reflect that I could have lost any or all of my family that I loved. OK so there were a good few excuses I could have offered for innattentiveness. I must remember to try to be a bit more understanding with students at school.
As he left, I trundled across the road to thank the lady there for her kindness. Then I drove into Norwich to start buying clothing. I had to guess at the boys' sizes, but that wasn't difficult. I got some decent stuff for Garret who, fortunately, I knew to be more-or-less my size. As lunchtime was looming up, I then drove to the primary school where, seeing what I had brought, Garret was pleased to see me.
I don't know whether anybody wondered why Garret was less scruffy during the afternoon session than he had been during the morning. I do know that I discovered the hard way that school dinners in a primary school are no better than those in a CTC. Then I reported to Jean and told her, as well as I could, all that the loss adjuster had told me.
"Well, I've heard of more generous offers," she said, "but at least he's getting it sorted. Now, I've done all I'm going to do here, so If you'd like to bring Philip, we'll go home and see that dinner is on for when Garret and Lloyd get back."