The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1806 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

After lunch, I found myself nodding off and to Simon’s credit, he herded everyone out of the room and left me to snooze. I was still quite fragile–my chest hurt if I exerted myself and I tended to get short of breath–SOB in medical parlance, though I’m led to believe it means something different in the colonies.

I woke up about half an hour later to find I’d been draped in a travel rug–how kind of whoever did it. I folded it up and left it on the back of the sofa, put my trainers back on and went in search of my family who seemed to have disappeared without trace.

They hadn’t, they were all the lounge and when they saw me, Trish came running towards me, “Mummy, Bramble fell through the floor.”

“What?” I gasped, we’ve only had the poor creature five minutes.

Simon turned to look at me, “Hi, Babes, feel any better?”

“Yes thank you, what’s happened with the kitten?”

“She appears to have disappeared down here,” he pointed at a hole which had appeared in the floor right against one of the walls.

“Anyone sent for Maureen?” I asked.

“Not ten minutes ago.”

I approached the place in question, wondering how much else might be unsafe. This was the oldest part of the house, including the huge fireplace in which you could almost burn whole trees.

I bent down and could hear a plaintiff mewing from a little distance. I called the kitten but all she did was call back. I knew she’d been fed, so we had an hour or two to rescue her before she’d get very hungry.

“What is it, an old cellar?”

Simon shrugged, “I’ve tried calling Tom, but he’s not answering his mobile. The wine cellar is over the other side of the house and that’s all bricked up.”

“Is it worth checking if there’s any passage way between the wine cellar and here?”

“Seeing as you’re here now, I’ll go and look.”

“I’ll come with you, Dad,” offered Danny, and the two men went off to descend into the depths to see if they could get the kitten back through there. It was ages since I’d played troglodytes and gone down there. I wasn’t that much of a drinker, and the cellar was a creepy place plus you got cobwebs in your hair–or I did–yeuch.

“Couldn’t we put some meat on a hook?” asked Trish.

“Trish, it’s a kitten we’re trying to rescue not catch a shark.”

“Duh duh, duh duh, duh duh duh...” she sang trying to imitate John Williams famous score from the film, Jaws. I nearly laughed out loud–but it would only encourage her.

I sent her off to get the torch from the kitchen and when she came back I knelt down and tried to probe the gap with my hand shining the torch to see the size of it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see properly and when Mima tried to see as well. She nudged my arm and I dropped the torch, which brought further mewing from the kitten.

There was nothing else I could do. Trish tried to feel by shoving her arm through the hole but when Livvie mentioned there might be rats there she soon withdrew it. We’d have to wait until Maureen arrived.

I left Stella to marshal the troops while I went and made some tea–well, we Brits always do this in times of emergency, and when we’re just waiting for the next. Simon and Danny came up from the wine cellar, the former bearing a bottle of wine. “I didn’t know we had any of this down there.”

“What about the kitten?” I asked handing him a mug of tea.

“Oh it’s far too valuable to share with kittens,” he said dismissively.

“No sign of her, Mum,” said Danny.”

Maureen arrived and after grabbing a cuppa she went into the lounge to see what was what. She ummed and ahhed then went down the wine cellar, pulling a stethoscope from her pocket as she went. Simon went as well.

Minutes later, Tom arrived and was shown the hole in his floor. He was as surprised as the rest of us. Then he went down the wine cellar taking the bottle of claret back with him and muttering something about Simon.

The three came back up and agreed they would knock a hole through the wall in the cellar and see if they could rescuer her through that, Maureen would then cement it back up and also repair the hole in the floor.

Over the next hour Maureen sent for one of her workmen and some heavy tools like lump hammers and cold chisels and even a pickaxe and sledge hammer. It looked like we were setting up our own mine.

The banging began–only it wasn’t a bang it was a deep thud, thud thud, which made the whole house jar. I couldn’t do anything–the noise stopped me concentrating on anything and so I took the girls outside and we played ball on the lawn–or they did, I sat and watched.

The thudding stopped and we waited with bated breath, minutes later Danny emerged from the back door with Bramble in his arms. She didn’t seem too distressed by the whole experience, or should that be hole experience?

Simon called for me to come, and see so with a sense of foreboding, I went down the cellar steps. They’d knocked a hole through the wall at waist height about two feet square, removing about six or eight bricks or stones. My torch was still glowing about twenty five feet away. Simon shone the big lantern torch we have and it appeared we had a large chamber under the house which seemed reasonably dry. Neither he nor Maureen could explain why it had been bricked off, the storage space would be quite useful if difficult to access.

Danny came back having deposited the kitten with the girls and he climbed through and collected my torch. It was quite dusty and given the floor was made of flagstones I was lucky it hadn’t broken.

Maureen and Tom discussed the options–she suggested a surveyor and architect to ensure the safety of the room, and then to tidy it up and perhaps make an external door to the enlarged cellar.

“We could make it a games room,” suggested Simon.

It was certainly big enough to take a billiard table or a table tennis one. It would need artificial lighting and perhaps a window in any door they made–it was going to be quite dark. I left them to discuss it until I heard a yell of disgust.

Danny had gone through the hole in the wall again to look at something he saw against one of the walls. On closer perusal he discovered it was a pile of bones–human ones. That might explain why it had been bricked up but when and by whom?

I stayed to comfort Danny while Simon went up to call the police. Just what we didn’t need.