A Constant Stream

The first one came through the kitchen floor.

It simply gave way.
A mouse had got in behind the dishwasher and chewed through a pipe, and the water had been doing its quiet work underneath where no one could see it.
The survey had missed it.
The insurance would only pay for the damaged part, because the kitchen was large, and the damage was only half of it.

But the Rabbit did not want a kitchen in two halves.
One side new, one side old, a seam running down the middle of the room where anyone could see exactly where the failure had been.
The Rabbit wanted it to match.
To look whole.
To feel like it had always been meant to be that way.

So he took the money they offered and bought the materials himself, and decided he and the Otter would do it.
The two of them.
His paws were never made for this kind of work.
He is clumsy with them, more likely to split the wood or hurt himself than get it true.
But there was no money to pay an animal who could.
Solid oak counters that had to be cut and fitted.
A sink that had to be made to sit right.
Painting, now mostly done.
The floor, done.

It is taking a long time.
It is the kind of job that is always nearly finished and never quite is.
A whole kitchen, rebuilt slowly by two tired animals, so that one day a visitor will stand in it and never know that any of it broke.

Then the fence came down in a storm.
The back garden, open now where it used to be enclosed.
It has not been replaced.
It would cost too much, and so it stays down, and the Rabbit has learned to look past it.

Then the water began to come in through the skylights, in the bathroom and in the kitchen.
The survey had warned of this one, at least: the felt roof needed replacing.
But it failed much sooner than anyone had said it would, less than a year after the Rabbit and his family had moved in.
A thing you were told you had years before you had to worry about, arriving early, the way they all seem to.
That one did get fixed, at least. Another layer of felt laid over the old.
The Rabbit had a little money at the time, enough to cover it.
Keeping the water out was the most important thing.
Keeping the place a home.

Then the tank in the ground gave out, and this time it was not the water coming in. It was the water meant to leave.

The septic tank had been put in seventy years ago, and the two houses shared it.
The Rabbit could not check it before he bought the place (it was buried, with no way to see inside), and the elderly neighbour he shared it with assured him it was in full working order.
Two years after they moved in, the neighbour who owned the land above decided to terrace the hillside, and in the digging he found it.
It had been failing for a long time.
Grey water was seeping out of the sides and through the mortar, and inside, the wooden frame that held the heavy concrete lid had rotted and given way.
It was dangerous.

The quotes were shocking. £20,000, all in.
The Rabbit had a little money that year, from his bonus, but nowhere near enough.
Another neighbour further along the road, who fitted them for the farmers, did it for half, £10,000.
That was the bonus gone.

Then the rendering on the back of the house began to fall away.
When the Rabbit looked into it, he found there had been nothing for it to hold on to.
Just the bare cinderblock of the wall, and a layer of render laid straight onto it by someone who took a shortcut a long time ago and was never going to be the one standing here when it failed.
It is coming off in pieces now.
The Rabbit hopes it will not let the damp in.
Fixing it properly is five thousand pounds, or more, which is to say it is not a thing that is going to be fixed.

Then the capstones along the top of the house began to come down.
The cornicing that ran above the walls, dropping in pieces onto the paths on either side, where anyone might be standing.
Whoever built the house had taken a shortcut here too.
They had got the wrong size stones, and rather than buy the right ones they had built them up by hand, extended them, made them larger to do the job.
Those extensions overhung the edge of the sloped roof, and they were weak, and one by one they were letting go.
It was luck, only luck, that none of them had come down on the Rabbit, or his family, or a visitor, on the way to the door.
So he had them taken off, and lead flashing put in their place.
A small loan, that one. Small enough to fix.

Then the pipe under the upstairs sink.
The Rabbit found that one the way you find these things: it dripped on him, onto his laptop, while he was working.
When they cut a hole in the living room ceiling to reach it, above the sofa, they found the pipe under strain.
Another shortcut. Another animal, years ago, doing the quick version of a thing and moving on.
The hole has been in the ceiling for over a year now.
The Rabbit sits beneath it.
You would be surprised how completely you can stop seeing a hole in your own ceiling.

Then the electric meter melted away.

The Rabbit smelled it first - a chemical smell, sharp and wrong, that he could not place.
For hours he could not find where it was coming from, and for hours it grew stronger.
When he finally found it, it was in the cupboard above the kitchen door, where the meter sat: the wire from the mains had frayed, and burned, and melted clean through.
The Rabbit panicked.
He threw every switch on the board to kill the draw, to stop the house from catching, to keep it from burning down around them in the night.

He called the emergency number at ten at night.
Five hours later, at three in the morning, four engineers arrived in trucks.
They spent an hour fitting a new box and new wires, making sure nothing was left under tension, and then they put the power back and left without another thought.
That one, at least, cost nothing.

And then, today, the hot water tank.

A plumber came.
It was the eighteenth of June.
He looked, and he could not find where the leak was coming from, only that it is coming, slowly, steadily, down into the oak floor the Rabbit laid with his own hands, which is beginning to warp, and into the carpet, which is beginning to go.

The Rabbit put the largest bucket he owns underneath it.

That is where things are tonight.
A bucket, on a warping floor, under a tank that is failing in a way no one can yet locate.
Hot water tanks are expensive.
So is the skill of the animal who installs them.
The Rabbit is the only one earning, and he has started, quietly, to wonder about a bank loan, the way you wonder about a thing you already know the answer to.

This is the house above the valley.
The one with the view.
The one everyone envies from the road.

And here is the Rabbit inside it, going from room to room, catching what he can in the largest bucket he can find, hoping the damp stays out, leaving the holes he cannot afford to close, making the broken parts match so that no one will see the seam.

He does not say much about the resemblance.
He just lives in it.

He is trying to keep his head above water.
And so far, somehow, he is still holding on.