Free House of Memories by Alice; Taylor Page A

were doing. He hoped that Danny was having a good game. No doubt he would hear it all from Shiner and Peter in the morning.
    After he had his tea, he sat looking out the window at his much-loved view, but he was not seeing Nolan’s cows in the field in front of his cottage or the village in the valley with its elegant steeple glinting grey in the early March sunlight. Instead his mind was across the river in Furze Hill. He was rearranging the farmyard and planning the best strategy with which to approach the entire project. But despite his best efforts to quell it, there was growing determinedly at the back of his mind an idea that he had already decided was not feasible. Finally he went to the drawer of his dresser and took out an old writing pad and rooted around in the bottom of the drawer until he found a pencil.
    “Jack lad,” he told himself, “it’s tough lines when you are turning to pencil and paper to straighten out your thinking. Bad sign of the head!”
    He made a list of expenses, but he was not too worried about these as Kate had said that Danny had shown her a list of what he had envisaged everything would cost him, and the lad was bound to have got all that right down to the last penny. At the same time, he would feel more on top of the job if he had his own costings, though it was the overall plan that was really bothering him. Old man Phelan had always advised having a planned strategy and doing it step by step rather than working in startsand stops. With no plan, he had warned, you spent much more and ended up with a higgledy-piggedly conclusion, that was if you ever really reached a conclusion. So Furze Hill needed an overall plan, and that was why all ideas, feasible or otherwise, had to be incorporated from the beginning or not at all.
    He was so immersed in his thoughts that he did not see Kate pass by the window, so when she pushed open the door she took him by surprise.
    “Good God, Kate,” he told her in a startled voice, “you frightened the life out of me.”
    “Jack, I looked in passing the window and it was as if you were in another world.”
    “I was,” he smiled, “over in Furze Hill.”
    “Oh,” she said with delight, “so Danny called.”
    “No, but I’m getting ready for him,” he told her.
    “But how?” she asked doubtfully.
    “Well,” he told her slowly, “I went over there this evening and…”
    “But Danny was playing a match today,” she broke in.
    “I knew that,” he told her. “That’s why I went over, because I wanted to think things out in my own time.”
    “Oh, I see,” she smiled in understanding. “That’s you all out, Jack; do it quietly in your own way, take your time and iron out all the wrinkles in advance.”
    “Only this time I think that instead of ironing out wrinkles I might be creating a very big one, and I’m not sure if I should go down that road or not.”
    “Oh,” Kate said in a surprised voice, “that’s not like you. Do you need a ‘Johnny sound all’?”
    It was an expression they had picked up from David that heused in the classroom to test if something had got through to the entire class. There would be one student who was neither too bright nor too slow, and if he got it the chances were that most of them had it.
    “Well, I suppose you’re as good a ‘Johnny’ as I’m going to get,” he said heavily.
    “Thanks for nothing,” she told him smartly, seating herself in the rocking chair in front of the fire and patting his own armchair. “Come over here to the fire. It’s getting too dusky now to be peering out the window, and anyway you always say that you think better looking into the fire.”
    He sat into his chair and took out his pipe as Kate poked the fire and put on extra logs and, having settled herself comfortably, turned to him questioningly.
    “Now what has you in such a quandary?” she demanded.
    “Well,” he told her, “I went over to Furze Hill today with a certain plan of action in my