Free Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country by Tony Hawks Page B

Eastbourne.
    As I unpacked the pool and spread it out in the garden, Nan went momentarily off-script.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘I’m going to inflate this pool, fill it with water, and then try out the Hawks Harness.’
    ‘I see.’
    Poor Nan. She spent most of her day pretending to ‘see’ what she clearly didn’t ‘see’, and had no way of differentiating between what was straightforward information, and what was downright confusing. However, on this occasion, given that no one in the family had grasped the concept of the Hawks Harness (only Ken and I had so far shown the intellectual capacity), then she could hardly be expected to ‘see’. She claimed that she did though, which made her unique in the house.
    If ‘seeing’ meant ‘watching’, then she was excelling. She had great fun observing me as I stretched out the blue plastic onto the lawn, attached the hosepipe, and began filling the pool. I had not gone top of the range. I’d spent about £90 on a circular kids’ pool, twelve feet in diameter. It would be enough to establish whether my idea would work. As Nan and I watched the pool filling with water, I could see sceptical faces inside the house, observing from the kitchen window.
    Swimming pools, even tiny ones, take a long time to fill. By the time the water had reached the required level, I was so magnificently aware that Nan liked to travel, that she treated her children equally, and that she hadn’t wanted to move to Eastbourne, that only a combination of family loyalty and a lack of suitable implements had prevented me from hoisting her in to see if she floated.
    ‘That’s very good,’ she said, coming off-script again when the pool was full.
    If only she’d been correct. It wasn’t really very good at all. Like all non-professionals, in my eagerness to accomplish the task in hand, I’d only skimmed through the instructions. A glance at them had confirmed to me what I’d expected. They were poorly written, and stated only the obvious. Yes, there had been a line in there about ensuring the pool was placed on level ground, but the garden was only on a tiny slope, and that couldn’t be a problem, surely?
    A tiny slope, it was now becoming apparent, was enough. At the end of the pool that was on the lower end of the gradient, water was now trickling over the side. Nan was watching this and smiling, as if it was a nice water feature. As if its creation had been the very reason I’d performed this laborious task in the first place. I rushed inside to get my harness and rope. The pool was now emptying itself, and at an alarming rate. I had only a small window to test the efficacy of the Hawks Harness. Ken had lent me a weightlifter’s belt that we had both surmised would be perfect for the job. It took me ten minutes to find it, and a further ten minutes to locate the rope.
    Fran’s brother and sister chuckled and sniggered, as I chased around the house in swimming trunks and anxious search mode. I could see their point of view. People in swimming trunks belong by pools or on beaches. The moment they begin doing anything else of a domestic nature away from the waterside environment, they look like perverts. OK, attaching myself to a harness and rope and climbing into a kids’ paddling pool that was rapidly emptying itself of water wouldn’t make me look any less of a pervert, but I considered it a good enough reason to run around the house in a state close to nudity.
    A single rain cloud had now spitefully come out of nowhere and arranged itself overhead. It began to empty itself, quite liberally, as if the maiden outing of the Hawks Harness had no divine backing. I rushed outside and fixed up a stepladder so I could attach the rope to a nearby tree. I glanced down and saw four giggling faces at the kitchen window, and Nan smiling and giving me the thumbs up.
    The rope in place, I was ready to trial the Hawks Harness. The single cloud had now been joined by cumuli cronies, and