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Yaxley's Cat by Robert Westall

In this extract, a mother and her two children are in a cottage which needs quite a bit of tidying up. Her young son has succeeded in getting an old water pump to work.

Timothy, who was practical like his Dad, had discovered a drum of paraffin in a lean-to, filled the oil-lamps and got them going. He used more paraffin, in a careful calculating way that brought her out in a cold sweat, to get the fire in the kitchen range going. He had also got the water-pump over the sink to work. At first it had only made disgusting wheezing sounds, but Tim had poured water down it from a butt in the garden, calling it "priming the pump" very professionally. At first it had pumped evil rusty red stuff, but now it ran clear, though Rose had visions of outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and hurried dashes to the hospital in Norwich, and how would you ever get an ambulance up that path, but if you boiled all the water . . . Now he was winding up all the clocks and really getting them ticking."