Water!

The first thing I had to do on arrival at Les Lavandes the next morning was find that darned stopcock. Thinking that daylight might help, I went through the same routine as I done the previous day – kitchen, outhouse number one, outhouse number two, outhouse number three, well – but to no avail. Then I started at the well and worked back into the kitchen again. Still nothing. Dammit, I needed that water. I was going to end up filthy and would have to wash before I dared face the receptionist at the hotel to ask for my room key.

The gasman arrived to defer if not vanquish my frustration. I signed the contract to rent the gas tank and for the supply of gas, hoping against hope that I had understood all the small print. I apologised for not offering my first visitor so much as a cup of coffee and told him my problem with the water supply and the elusive stopcock. The gasman explained that these are usually in one of the outhouses and set off to seek it out, quite happy to abandon whatever he was supposed to be doing next to help a client (which I was by then, having handed over a cheque large enough to buy a North Sea gas rig but just for twelve months' rental of the gas tank) out of a hole.

Just as I had done, he banged his head painfully coming out of the first outhouse and thereafter remembered to duck. Just as I had done, he followed the pipe through outhouses one, two and three and into the well. Just as I had done, he spotted the pump in the well with the pipe leading further down. Just as I had done, he found no trace of the stopcock. He scratched his head and reversed the routine, following my steps exactly. Still nothing.

He went out of the gates and looked up and down the road as if hoping to see a stopcock suddenly drive up. What he was really looking for, I finally deduced, was a sign of where the water main might be. His eyes lit up and, like a bloodhound following a scent, he went into the field beside the house. There, under a green manhole-size cover and three kapok-filled plastic sacks, was both the water meter and the stopcock with three or four lizards hibernating contentedly beside them. A minute later the kitchen tap was gushing merrily, but I still couldn't offer the gasman a cup of coffee as I had no cups! Nonetheless, he seemed quite unperturbed that he had wasted an hour of his company's time and drove away waving happily. As for me, I was just mightily relieved that I now had water.