The Boiler That Sang Boggle-de-bog

Boggle-de-bog, shlopelly-shlop.

Our old boiler heated enough water for the twenty people who lived in the house.

There were several students, a newly wed couple, some travelling salespeople, a French man who played the violin, two old ladies and us. Twenty people who would wash and shower and scrub. They'd fill pails to pour over their cars. They'd douse their children with warm water on sunny days, sloshing bucket after bucket for the fun of it.

The faithful boiler, with her dials and pipes, her hisses and gurgles and her one-two-three-four heartbeat, would warm gallons on cold days and fine days, through sadness and laughter, filth and sparkle-clean, spick and span. We splashed and soaked, and the hot water rarely ran out.

The boiler did her best when my mother had the baby. We washed him in a ceramic basin in the sink.

The old girl hissed and squealed when my grandfather had a stroke and went to a better place. She acquired a sheen of condensation on her surface as hot salt tear-lines inked our faces. She kept warmth in her belly when the power-workers' strikes cut electricity to the switch.

On Christmas Day twenty people took turns to wash before dressing in glitter and finery. The boiler stood like a crinoline-skirted lady in the corner of the kitchen, uncomplaining and compliant. Sometimes the needle on the thermostat quivered. Occasionally she went silent and you might have thought she'd stopped working, until her boggle-de-bog shlopelly-shlop started again and gave her away.

And then she died.

Like a surgeon, the plumber lifted panels, prodded and poked, tested and diagnosed, declared the thing defunct. Twenty people bathed in cold water for three days, until a modern rectangular replacement was shipped from the other end of the country.

Fluffy skirts of insulation were removed layer by layer, years of old paint falling to the floor. Everything was pulled away, until all that remained was a hole in the paintwork of the wall where a pipe had once fed water into the veins and arteries of the house.

The carcass of the boiler was tossed into the garden to await collection, with warnings to stay away from it. The world was beginning to learn the dangers of asbestos.

Warm water is warm water. It shouldn't matter how it is brought to that point. But I swear the new heater, with its steady blue pilot light, never fired its flame for our baths in the same way. The wetness felt different on our skins. I swear the twenty people in the house weren't quite as clean anymore.

Years have passed. I've lived in houses large and small. I've been served by a host of water heaters, some less reliable than others. One kept me awake at night with his singing: shtoo-paa, shtoo-paa, hissss. Another never quite warmed the water enough, so it felt as if it was stripping a layer of heat away from our skins. A third particularly ruthless beast had a faulty thermostat. It would bring the water to the boil so it gushed out through a valve at the top. Another was so large it had to be secured with restraints in case it walked away in an earthquake, and when the earthquake came, it walked regardless.

What I remember most about that boiler is the boggle-de-bog, shlopelly-shlop, boggle-de-bog, shlopelly-shlop, boggle-de-bog sound she made. Sometimes when I'm drifting to sleep, I think I hear her, as if the ghost of the boiler senses I'm cold inside, and wants to soothe me back to a child-like slumber.

But then, like all ghosts, she vanishes, leaving nothing but a memory of her tepid kiss on my skin.

by Nod Ghosh