Chapter 14 — Windbreak
TAMSIN
The trial bed held water exactly as Tamsin had drawn it.
At noon on Monday, Maeve poured the final measured bucket onto the courtyard paving. Blue dye travelled towards number six, entered the removable channel grate and spread through the clean substrate without touching the contaminated ground below. Mr Bell timed the outlet with his phone.
“Four minutes twelve,” he said.
“Do it again after we install the planting,” Tamsin said.
The resident volunteers laid the bright marker layer beneath her direction. Maeve checked each overlap and photographed it before clean soil covered the warning colour. No stakes penetrated the old ground. The channel sections locked onto shallow pads and could be lifted for maintenance.
The clean substrate arrived in sealed one-tonne bags.
Tamsin checked the supplier certificate, then cut each bag over protective sheeting so no imported soil mixed with the bare contaminated corners.
Volunteers moved it in measured barrows.
Maeve kept a tally on the brick wall with chalk and stopped one resident from emptying a half load across an uncovered joint.
“Can we lose the photographs now?” Mr Bell asked.
“Once the marker layer is covered, no one can inspect the overlap without taking the bed apart,” Tamsin said. “The photographs belong to the maintenance map.”
“Not a glossy brochure?”
“No glossy brochure.”
He accepted the answer and took another barrow.
The work ran seventeen minutes behind because Tamsin rejected two channel seals with grit under their edges.
She absorbed the extra paid time. When Maeve suggested delaying the windbreak until they could fabricate a hinged brace, Tamsin looked at the forecast, the open roots and the resident volunteers already present.
The rated screen appeared sufficient, and leaving the new planting exposed overnight seemed the greater risk.
“We install the supplier detail and add ballast,” Tamsin said.
Maeve wrote the decision on the work board without arguing. The line remained there after the screen failed.
By three, the wind had strengthened from the river.
It came over the wall in gusts, flattening the sedges before letting them rise. Tamsin had specified a temporary woven screen along the west end of the raised bed. It fixed to two existing rail posts and a weighted frame, low enough to preserve the residents’ view.
Maeve held the frame while Tamsin tightened the last strap.
“It moves,” Maeve said.
“Everything moves in wind.”
“This moves a lot.”
Tamsin tested the base with her boot. Four sand-filled weights held it. The forecast gave gusts of thirty-five miles per hour overnight, within the supplier’s figure.
“Add the fifth weight,” she said.
“Or turn the screen ten degrees and brace it to the bench rail.”
“That puts the lower edge across the channel access.”
“We can hinge it.”
“Not in today’s budget.”
Maeve fetched the fifth weight.
The first plants went in behind the screen: tough sedges, sea thrift and low iris divisions donated by a resident from the upper block.
Tamsin set every crown above the wet line and kept roots within the clean layer.
She knew the river wind. She had included salt-tolerant species and a screen rated above the forecast.
At five thirty, Farah signed the installation record. The remaining money covered the second soil test, replacement plants and two paid maintenance visits.
“You look as though you’ve been awake since the last century,” Farah said.
“The flat heater is ambitious but ineffective.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
Tamsin checked the channel grate. “The site is safe. Maeve has tomorrow’s plant check.”
Farah did not ask about Graham. “Go home, whichever one currently qualifies.”
Tamsin went to Leith Groundworks. Upstairs, the two suitcases remained open on the floor because the cabinet was full. She ate toast over the sink, answered the knot-garden architect’s request for a site date and slept without unpacking.
At two seventeen in the morning, a gust pulled the windbreak free.
Maeve found it at seven, twisted across the trial bed. One weighted foot had lifted, turning the frame into a lever. The upper strap tore from the rail. The screen had struck the clean-substrate bed, exposing a corner of marker fabric and snapping two iris crowns.
Worse, the fifth sand weight had rolled into the channel and blocked the outlet.
Water from overnight rain stood against the paving below number six.
Farah called Tamsin before Maeve finished explaining.
“The resident in number six woke to water under the threshold.”
“How much entered?”
“Two towels. Mr Bell says the old drain would have taken it.”
“The old drain sits above the threshold.”
“And your new outlet had a bag in it.”
Tamsin was already pulling on work trousers. “That was my screen and my ballast. Close the trial area. Do not move the marker layer. I will be there in twenty minutes.”
She arrived nineteen minutes later.
Mr Bell stood beside the blocked channel with his broom. “Four minutes twelve yesterday.”
“The outlet failed because my weight entered it.”
“I can see the bag.”
“I should have designed the screen so no failed part could block the water route.”
Farah met her gaze. “Maeve raised the movement.”
Maeve stood behind the damaged frame, wet hair escaping her hood.
“She did,” Tamsin said. “I chose another weight.”
No one reassured her. Mr Bell pushed the last standing water away from the threshold while Tamsin and Maeve removed the frame. They lifted contaminated splashes from the clean bed with disposable pads, bagged the affected substrate and checked the marker layer. It remained intact.
The two broken iris crowns could be divided below the damage. Three sedges had wind burn but viable centres. The cost of clean replacement substrate, a new screen and labour would consume Tamsin’s remaining margin on the trial.
Farah opened the community-room door. “Residents at nine. You need to tell them whether the design is safe.”
“It will be safe when the obstruction cannot happen again.”
“That is not yet.”
“No.”
At nine, Tamsin placed the broken strap and split iris on the table. She explained the failure in the order it occurred: moving frame, added weight, lifted foot, blocked outlet, water against number six. She did not describe the supplier rating or the forecast because neither had placed the bag.
“Who pays?” a resident asked.
“Leith Groundworks.”
“Does that mean you use cheaper plants?”
“No. It means I lose the margin.”
Mr Bell tapped his broom against the floor. “What stops the next screen becoming a boat?”
Tamsin unfolded a sketch. A fixed screen would require deep anchors they could not drive through contaminated ground.
Another freestanding panel could fail into the channel.
She proposed three shorter permeable panels attached to the existing rail and bench uprights, with their lower edges above the removable grates.
No ballast would sit inside the water route.
Maeve leaned over the drawing. “The rail spacing leaves a gap at the corner.”
“Yes.”
“That’s where the wind funnels.”
One of the older residents, Celia, said the maintenance shed held willow hurdles from a cancelled allotment project. They were weathered, narrow and individually light.
“Bring one,” Tamsin said.
Celia returned with a panel of woven willow. Its uneven gaps would bleed wind instead of receiving the full load. The frame could be cut into shorter sections and lashed to rail uprights with replaceable straps. When the willow failed, residents could repair individual rods.
Mr Bell rubbed the edge. “This is local material. Meaning it has already disappointed someone else.”
“Then it has useful experience,” Maeve said.
The residents approved a same-day repair on the condition that number six received a door alarm until the next storm test. Tamsin bought it from her own account.
She and Maeve cut the hurdles in the yard. Maeve controlled the new screen installation. Tamsin began to correct the first strap position, stopped and asked what clearance Maeve intended above the channel.
“One hand’s width at the low point,” Maeve said. “Enough to lift the grate without untying anything.”
“Do it.”
By four, three short willow panels filtered the wind. None could reach the outlet if a strap broke. They replaced the lost substrate, replanted the divided iris and ran the dye test twice. Three minutes fifty-eight. Four minutes one.
Tamsin called the screen supplier from the courtyard.
Their warranty excluded “improperly restrained use in exposed coastal conditions.” She could dispute whether five weighted feet met the restraint detail, but doing so would not pay today’s wages or protect number six.
She asked only for the panel’s test orientation, learned it had been rated face-on in controlled airflow, and ended the call.
On her cost sheet, she recorded the failed screen at full price, four hours of remedial labour, replacement substrate, plant loss and the alarm.
The total was six hundred and eighty-three pounds.
She moved the amount from profit to correction and sent Farah the revised cost sheet with a zero client charge.
Farah read it on her phone. “You could call some of this unforeseen weather.”
“The wind was forecast. The failure path was mine.”
“Keep the sentence that short when the committee asks.”
Farah checked the threshold at number six. “The weather service has a heavy band on Thursday.”
“How heavy?”
“Thirty millimetres in ninety minutes.”
The trial had been designed for that load. Yesterday, Tamsin would have said so.
“We monitor from the first rain,” she said. “Maeve takes the upper inlet. I take number six and the outlet. Mr Bell keeps the broom inside.”
“I object to demotion,” he said.
“You are reserve drainage.”
He accepted that.
Tamsin paid Maeve’s hours, replacement material and the resident alarm before she left the studio that night. The margin column fell to zero.
Upstairs, she unpacked the suitcases and put her clothes into the narrow wardrobe. Empty cases could be stored under the bed; leaving them open did not keep any option more available.
She slept while wind moved through the willow panels rather than taking them with it.