The Dunstable Message That Needed a Ladder

I knew it was going to be an unusual morning in Dunstable when Mrs Fenella Prowse asked whether I could tell the difference between a yellow pebble and a slightly more optimistic yellow pebble.

She held one in each hand. Both looked fairly cheerful to me.

“The left one?” I suggested.

“Exactly. You understand the brief.”

I didn’t, but after years running KP Window Cleaning, I’ve learnt that sometimes it’s best to let a morning explain itself.

Fenella lived in a little brick terrace with a narrow back garden and a garden gnome she turned towards the fence whenever he’d “seen enough nonsense”. Today, he was facing the fence.

Beside him stood six trays of painted stones.

I’d barely started the front windows when her neighbour, Oswin, appeared through the side gate carrying another tray. He had purple paint on his wristwatch and the worried expression of a man transporting something considerably more dangerous than gravel.

“Where do the hopeful ones go?” he whispered.

“With the sunshine colours,” Fenella said.

Then they both looked at me.

“Nothing to see,” she added.

There was, by my reckoning, rather a lot to see.

By the time I reached the back, three neighbours were crouching over the lawn. A young lad called Kit was consulting a sheet of squared paper, while Fenella shifted pebbles and Oswin followed her, shifting them back.

“It looks like a fried egg falling downstairs,” Kit announced.

Fenella sat back on her heels.

“Oh dear.”

That was when she explained. Her husband, Wilbur, was coming home that afternoon after several weeks recovering from a hip operation. His favourite chair had been moved into the upstairs back bedroom, where he could watch the garden while he rested.

The neighbours had painted stones to make him a welcome message on the lawn. Every household had contributed a few. Kit had designed the letters on squared paper.

Unfortunately, a brief shower had sent everyone scrambling to rescue the trays, and somewhere between the kitchen, shed and side passage, the carefully sorted rows had become thoroughly muddled.

“We thought we could put it right from down here,” Fenella said. “But the longer we look, the worse it gets.”

I glanced at the upstairs window. Then at my water-fed pole.

“Let me finish that glass first. After that, could I have a look from his chair?”

Five minutes later, with the window clean and the casement open, I looked down on what appeared to say WELC OME HO ME, with one letter attempting to escape into the flowerbed.

“I can see the trouble!” I called.

Below me, four faces tipped upwards.

“Oswin, that purple curve needs to come towards your boots. No, your other boots.”

He looked down at his feet, then laughed.

We worked like that for twenty minutes. Kit held the plan up to the sky. Fenella moved handfuls of yellow stones. I called directions from beside the chair, rubbing my salt-and-pepper beard whenever a letter needed thinking about.

At last, the message settled into place.

WELCOME HOME.

Underneath was a slightly lopsided sunflower.

I was putting my kit away when Wilbur arrived with his daughter. I stayed to help carry his bags, then waited downstairs while they got him comfortably settled.

For a moment, the house was quiet.

Then his laugh came down the stairs.

“Fenella! You’ve finally found a use for all those stones I keep digging up!”

She caught my eye and smiled so broadly that I found myself smiling back.

Before I left, she turned the gnome round.

“He can look now,” she said. “This is worth seeing.”