Renovation

Renovation

by Roger Ley

Roger Ley  was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. He worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites and broadcast on BBC Radio.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).

Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk

More TTTV Stories by Roger Ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/

His Amazon author page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Roger-Ley/author/B01KOVZFHM

Ancient and Modern: https://talltaletv.com/ancient-and-modern/

 

The field on the outskirts of the village had been neglected for years. It was untidy and overgrown with weeds and saplings. In the past, it had been divided up into community gardens, where the villagers could grow vegetables. But now that the world was a busier place, too busy to grow vegetables, the land had been used as a dumping ground. Most people were pleased when it was purchased by Tomkins Homes Inc. They cleared the site and, over a few months, built a cluster of houses there. It tidied the place up nicely and brought new families to the village.

The problem was the old house standing on the edge of the development. It was quite substantial, big enough for a family, but nobody had lived there time out of mind, and nor did anyone know who owned it. Its surrounding gardens were wild and overgrown; the front door was hidden by a bramble patch fit to defy a squad of marines. There was a brick-built outside privy at the back, and this too was overrun. The newness of the buildings nearby pointed up the dilapidation of the ‘haunted house’ as the village kids called it.

Certainly, the old place needed repair; the windows were boarded up, their frames probably rotten, the guttering had fallen off in places. The surprisingly tall and elaborate brick chimney was in need of pointing; the local rooks made their nests in its flues. The roof tiles were weathered and moss grown, some were missing, but the wooden structure underneath them seemed sound. The walls, which were streaked with mould and mildew, showed a few cracks but no bulging.

Mrs Waldron, the Chair of the Parish Council, saw an opportunity. At one of the monthly council meetings, she complained that the house was an eyesore and that something must be done about it. She badgered the local planning department into investigating who owned it, and when no owner could be found, it became an item on the agenda of the next county council meeting. An almost unanimous vote called for the building to be auctioned and the proceeds donated to various good causes, including public safety, education, infrastructure, and utilities. The chairman’s gavel banged down, and the wheels were set in motion.

Three months later, the auction was poorly attended due to a misunderstanding over the advertisement in the local newspaper. As Chair of the Parish Council, it had been Mrs Waldron’s job to place the advert, but she’d somehow got the date wrong. In the event, her husband Jimmy, a jobbing builder who was currently out of work, was the only bidder, and he got it for a song. Fixing up the house would be a nice project for him, and might curb his daily attendance at The Black Horse pub. Mrs Waldron looked forward to selling their current small house and moving in when it was finished.

Jimmy’s first move was to hire a chainsaw and chipper. He made short work of clearing the gardens. There had been interruptions from the old-timers of the village who stopped to discuss his progress as they walked past on their way to collect their newspapers from the general store. He’d been glad of the breaks though; he was a little out of shape these days. Soon, Jimmy, although slightly scratched and bloody, was able to show his wife their new acquisition as it now stood, stripped of its mystery and exposed for all to see.

The oldest resident of the village was Jasper Goodrum, who sat at a table outside The Wheeler’s Tea Rooms reading the morning paper and smoking his pipe. He had little need of company, other than that of his old golden retriever, which lay quietly at his feet, waiting for him to finish his coffee. Then it would be a short walk back to their small row house. Jasper had been a fixture in the mornings at the tea rooms when the current owners had taken the business over ten years before and, although no one in the village remembered, he’d also been a fixture when the previous owners had taken it over many years before that. He looked up from his paper to watch Jimmy’s progress on the other side of the road and bided his time.

Jimmy started the renovation by tearing out the windows with a wrecking bar. The next day a truck arrived loaded with smart new white, made-to-measure, vinyl windows, and he spent two weeks fitting them.

‘Shouldn’t be allowed,’ muttered Jasper under his breath. ‘Spoiling the look of the place.’ His retriever looked up for a moment, then laid its head back down on its front paws and whined quietly.

‘I’m pleased to have got them in before the winter,’ Jimmy told his wife when he’d finished the job. ‘They’ll keep the rain and local kids out. The new roof tiles should be here before the weather turns.’ He left for the pub to celebrate his progress. On this occasion his wife didn’t mind; it was his first visit that week. He’d been too tired all the other evenings.

Sitting outside the tea rooms two days later, Jasper watched with interest as another truck arrived. The driver used the crane mounted on the back to lift off six pallets of brand-new red cement tiles and stacked them near the front of the house.

‘Clay tiles would have looked much better,’ Jasper muttered as he shook the creases out of his newspaper. His old dog raised its head, hoping they were leaving for home early, but no such luck. It settled back down and closed its eyes.

Jimmy hired a drinking buddy from the Black Horse. They climbed onto the roof of the house and between them slid the old clay tiles off and let them smash on the ground at the front and back before loading them into a dumpster.

‘The rafters are in surprisingly good shape,’ he told his wife as she served him his evening meal. ‘Me and Harry can start tiling the roof tomorrow. We’ll be moving in before you know it, darling. Funny thing is, I found an old shoemaker’s last wedged in the eaves.’

Jasper, sitting at his usual table, had seen Jimmy throw the heavy metal last into the dumpster. He sighed as he stood up and left a tip by the side of his empty coffee cup. ‘Atticus Filmore put that last in the roof when he built the place,’ he told his dog, which was busy snapping at a fly. ‘It was to protect the place from thunder and lightning, and now that whipper snapper’s just thrown it away.’ He shook his head as he led the dog back to their house, his stride steady and his back straighter than one might expect for a man of his apparent age.

Two weeks later, the tiling was done. Jimmy and his friend celebrated at the Black Horse.

Soon the cold weather came, and Jimmy was pleased to be working inside. He stripped out the narrow staircase next to the chimney breast, dragged the broken treads and risers outside, and made a heap ready to burn them.

Later, when Jasper took the dog for its evening walk, he found an old shoe lying by the side of the heap. It was a woman’s shoe, old-fashioned, small, almost fit for a child, but then most people had been small back in the old days. He picked up the shoe and slid it into his jacket pocket.

‘Now what’s protecting the house from demons, ghosts, and the like?’ he asked his dog. It carried on sniffing at the base of a telephone pole and left a polite dribble before they moved on. Jasper tried to remember the name of Atticus Filmore’s wife, but it was so long ago. It was probably one of her shoes, hidden under the stairs for luck. Oh, yes, he remembered now. Her name was Mabel, Mabel Filmore. How could he have forgotten her? She’d been a forthright woman who didn’t take any nonsense from her husband, nor did she suffer fools gladly. He chuckled at the memory. Those were the days, when there were still proper Romany gypsies travelling around Suffolk. He remembered their colourful caravans and decorated horses arriving for the harvest. All gone now. Gone without a trace left behind. Although perhaps there were still a few traces left. Now Mabel, she’d been a force to be reckoned with in her time; if anyone would leave a trace after she was gone, it’d be her.

Jasper thought back. Atticus had built the house so that he and Mabel could open it as a pub, but there had been too much competition from the other three pubs in the village, and they couldn’t make a go of it. There were also those who felt Mabel was less than welcoming and had driven business away. She’d outlived her husband by ten years, making a poor living as a seamstress, but eventually she died of the consumption up in the back bedroom. Nobody had lived in the house since. It had a malevolent atmosphere, and in the end, it was abandoned. Jasper finished his musings as he arrived home and unlocked his front door.

Over the following months Jimmy fitted a new kitchen, a bathroom with a walk-in shower, and central heating. He got a grant from the government and installed an array of solar panels which practically covered the roof on the south side.

Jasper sighed as he looked over at them. ‘Ugly bloody things,’ he muttered. ‘Shouldn’t be allowed.’

Jimmy discovered that the house had a surprisingly large cellar. He lifted the hatch in the floor to show his wife, but she wouldn’t go down the steps for fear of spiders. Back at home, she looked through the folder of old deeds their solicitor had passed on.

‘It used to be a pub,’ she said. ‘That’s why it has such a big cellar. It was called “The Fishmonger’s Arms”, but don’t tell anyone. We don’t want people knowing we live in an old pub; they’ll think we’re common.’

A year after they’d bought the house, Jimmy and his wife moved in. They invited a dozen friends to a housewarming party. They laid out the food and drink early. Jimmy had a couple of beers before the guests arrived.

‘The architect said I should rebuild the chimney stack,’ he laughed as he popped the cap on a third beer. ‘But the brickwork’s as sound as a bell.’ He gave the chimney breast a thump with the heel of his hand to demonstrate. He gave it another hearty thump to reinforce his point and laughed again. ‘And he said the tiles were too heavy for the roof. What does he know? Idiot.’

Above him, sticking out of the middle of the roof and rising up ten or eleven feet, the chimney stack quivered and swayed slightly. Small pieces of lime mortar fell from between its weathered brickwork, clattering down the new concrete tiles and into the plastic gutters. A puff of wind caused the stack to sway back, a little further than before. A brick fell out near its base, just above the roof ridge, and slid down the tiles. The stack buckled, crumpled, and crashed through the roof and the upper-level floorboards. The falling masonry engulfed and crushed Jimmy and his wife, who were still standing by the chimney breast. The ground-floor joists gave way, and the rubble crashed into the cellar. Without the central support of the chimneystack, the roof fell in, dragging the walls and windows with it. The collapse caused some noise but not that much. The most dramatic effect was the cloud of dust that rose from the site and drifted over the adjacent fields. The disturbance caused the rooks that nested in the row of plane trees growing along the edge of the high street to launch themselves into the air, calling and complaining loudly to one another.

Jasper hadn’t been invited to the party, although he’d heard about it. He looked up from his paper when he heard the chimney fall through the roof and watched as the rest of the building collapsed. It was all over in less than a minute. Now, as the dust began to settle, he could see that the site was practically level; the debris had filled the cellar almost exactly. Of course, the bodies would have to be dug out, he thought, but at least that eyesore was gone. Perhaps the council would turf it over? Make it into a kids’ playground, maybe?

He stood up and left his usual tip. ‘Come you on,’ he said to the dog which was standing, ears erect, staring across the road, anticipating more excitement.

‘Show’s over,’ said Jasper, shaking the dog’s lead. ‘I knew she wouldn’t like it,’ he muttered as they walked along the street. ‘Mabel never liked anything new-fangled; she hated change. Strong woman Mabel. They don’t make ‘em like her anymore.’