by Ivan B
Yolande tossed her head.
“Well I don’t plan for bad workmanship, if you install the window properly then the sash will work every time and all the time.”
He changed tack.
“I tell you end pins are better.”
She crossed her arms and tapped her foot.
“They’re too obvious and too easily defeated.”
I foolishly decided to intervene.
“Children children.” I interjected.
The both looked at me and I realise that I was already stuffed. Whatever the argument I had to support Yolande, after all if the doctor was right she’d just saved my life.
“I’ve not heard all the argument, but I would rather if we install a burglar alarm it is not too easily defeated.”
The carpenter gave me a filthy look, I sought for a way out. “Does it have to be microswitches?”
Yolande puckered her lips.
“You could put a detection mechanism on the sash pulleys so that if they rotate it sets the alarm off, but – and it is a big but – if you leave the window open you would still be able to set the alarm.”
The carpenter jumped in. “How about adding top and bottom closure detection switches?”
She thought and then nodded.
“That’d work OK.”
He looked much relieved, she drummed her fingers on the window sill and looked at me.
“Cost you an extra £25 per sash window.”
“Fine.”
The carpenter beat a hasty retreat and Yolande smiled,
“Think July for the windows, they’ve not even made the first one yet, I caught him measuring up.”
“I thought that they had the original drawings.”
“They’re in imperial measure and he was checking his conversions.”
I didn’t feel that I could condemn the guy for this and kept quiet, she pointed upstairs.
“Your flooring man is on the top floor and did you know that you’ve got a tin trunk in the loft.”
I was confused; not difficult given my current state.
“You mean the under-eaves storage?”
She sighed heavily.
“I mean the loft, there’s an access hatch above the top landing and it contains the water-tank so the central heating engineer will need to put another water tank up there. These days we put a level detector in it to turn the boiler off should it be empty.”
She studied my blank face.
“Did any of that go in?”
“Not really, I’m still a bit groggy.”
She took on a maternal expression, well I took it for a maternal expression, it could have been compassion for the insane for all I knew.
“Would you like me to deal with the flooring man?”
As if on cue there were several large thumps from upstairs, the echoes in my head lasted longer and her offer suddenly sounded like manna from heaven.
“If you don’t mind.”
“What are your instructions?”
Instructions? I hadn’t a clue about instructions.
“Can he do the whole house.”
She grimaced, rolled her eyes and gave me a ‘do you know anything look,’
“Do you intend to have fitted carpets in the bedrooms?”
“Of course.” Silly question.
“Then why waste money on a posh floor that you’re going to cover up?”
I realised that it was not such a silly question and tried to get my aching brain into gear.
“Not the bedrooms then.”
“Bathrooms – remember smooth floors and wet feet and your propensity for accidents.”
I shuddered, “Not the bathrooms.”
She opened her mouth and I held up me hand, I’ve learnt to accept defeat without staring it in the face.
“Look, I’ll leave it to you – OK?”
She grinned and nodded. I went to bed to see if I could find some blissful pain free sleep.
I had just rolled out of bed at around 3pm when Yolande’s head popped up from the staircase.
“So you’re awake.”
I put my hands under the cold tap and sluiced my face, only to be greeted with a grim forcible whisper.
“Don’t you dare stand up straight.”
I took a step back and gave a weak smile;
“As if I would.” The fact is I nearly did.
She pointed to the house.
“You’ve got a visitor, it’s the local vicar, he says that he really must talk to you. And some guy called Norman has dropped of the dinkiest car you’ve ever seen.”
“You mean my Metropolitan 1500.”
“Is that what you call it? It needs a much better name than that, something like Miranda.”
I smiled at the concept of giving cars a name, “Where is it?”
“Top of the drive.”
I could see the glint in her eyes, “Are the keys in it?”
She jangled them. I just couldn’t face driving the thing. “Would you mind putting it in the garage while I go and see this vicar.”
“It will be a pleasure, but the chap warned me there wasn’t much petrol in it.”
I could see exactly where she was coming from.
“Would you mind…”
“Of course not.”
We walked to the house together and when we got to the car I showed her the column change sequence and reminded her that it she needed to give it some lead replacement additive from the can in the boot. She drove off like a Cheshire car with a happiness complex.
The vicar turned out to be a living replica of Julius Caesar, least he looked like every statue I’d ever seen of Julius, I’d not met him personally you understand. He told me his name was the Reverend Tommy Vines and we sat down at the kitchen table; there was no-where else to sit as the rest of the house was a mess. While he fidgeted I glanced round the kitchen that now had a large cardboard box of Pot-Noodle in one corner and two huge toolboxes in another. We chatted around inconsequential stuff for a couple of minutes until he interlaced his fingers and gave a nervous cough. I instinctively knew that the point of his visit was about to be declared.
“I’m afraid this is all rather embarrassing,” he started hesitantly, “but I really must talk to you about a couple of matters.”
Vicars always made me nervous and embarrassed vicars doubly so.
“Fire away.”
He took a deep breath, “Well firstly one of your fields is directly adjacent to our churchyard and I’m rather afraid that we’re running out of space.”
I could see what he wanted, but I decided to make him spell it out.
“Running out of space in the graveyard I presume?”
He nodded gracefully.
“Your predecessor gave us some of the field to use as a graveyard extension, but on my current estimate I think we will have filled it by the end of this year.”
“So you want to buy some of my field?”
He took on the look of a wounded deer and glanced away from me.
“It is rather traditional that the ground is given as a sort of offering.”
Since they were using the field as an unofficial car-park anyway I doubted that I would miss the ground.
“Any the other matter?”
He pulled an envelope out of his pocket as if were about to explode at any minute.
“You do own the field at the East end of the church?”
“Yes.”
“Then I have a bill for you for £199,768.”
Chapter 7
Going Swiftly Downhill
His statement certainly focused my mind and brought my consciousness to a higher state.
“Pardon?”
He fidgeted.
“With that field goes the ancient office of Lay Chancellor. Lay Chancellors are financially responsible for the upkeep of the chancel and we’ve had serious trouble with ours. The transverse beams both had woodworm and death-watch beetle, the buttresses were found to have been seriously weakened by
cracking due to frost damage and we had to have the whole roof replaced as it almost fell in.”
I tried to digest that I was involved in this catastrophe.
“How long has all this taken and why didn’t you contact Mr Grant?”
He shuffled his bottom on the stool, “We tried to, but he wouldn’t answer our letters – in fact I don’t think he answered anyone’s letters; Miss Carrington-Greeves said that they had a pile of letters four years old and none of them had even been opened.”
I crossed my arms.
“Then consider me not opening your letters.”
He looked down at the table and said softly.
“We’ve got to the stage of considering pursuing the money through the courts.”
“And if I fight?”
He sighed as if I’d been asked him who married Cain.
“You’ll lose. The whole matter of Lay Chancellors was tested in the courts by the Parish of Aston Cantalow a few years ago. They went all the way to the House of Lords and won.”
I began to see a nightmare unfolding.
“European Law?”
“Upheld the House of Lords decision in it’s entirety.”
I paused to gather my thoughts.
“Can’t you get the money from elsewhere?”
He shrugged.
“None of the normal channels will give us grants because we have a Lay Chancellor and they say we must exhaust that avenue first.”
I’d be financially exhausted all right if what he said we true! I fingered the envelope.
“Is this the entirety of the repair costs?”
He trembled slightly.
“The chancel floor is tiled and I rather fear that they will all have to be lifted and re-laid in the not too distant future.”
“And the estimated costs?”
He tried not to make eye contact;
“Not more than £20,000.”
Was I still dreaming, could all this be true?
“£20,000 for a few loose floor tiles!”
I must have practically screamed because he jumped at the intonation in my voice. He licked his lips.
“They are dreadfully uneven because of subsidence of the floor and it will all have to be dug-out and re-filled with concrete before the tiles can be put back. We can’t get mechanical diggers into the church so it will all have to be done by hand; that means people and people cost money.”
He sat opposite me looking highly uncomfortable, but I didn’t take pity on him as he was after all of my liquid assets in one foul swipe.
“So you’re really asking for getting on for a quarter of a million?”
He bowed his head.
“I’m afraid so.”
I stood up.
“I’ll obviously want to check all this out, so I’ll be in touch.”
He stood up like a man condemned.
“My church council has said that it will have to start court proceedings at the end of February if you don’t pay.”
“So you’re giving me a deadline?”
He shrugged and then gave me a haunted look.
“I’m not happy about this you know, it’s not what I went into the ministry for.”
I must admit that I felt a certain amount of compassion for him, but compassion is one thing, £219,768 was quite another.
I was still sitting at the kitchen table when Yolande re-appeared, she looked like she had just won the lottery.
“Car safety tucked away?” I enquired.
She nodded and I tried for a different response.
“What’s it like?”
“Beautiful.”
I couldn’t see how anybody would think such a monstrosity ‘beautiful’, but held my tongue. She looked at me as if for the first time.
“You look like you’ve found a penny and lost a ten quid.”
I tossed over the invoice that the vicar had brought and she glanced at it; I thought her bony jaw was going to hit the table. She said in strangled awe.
“They have got to be kidding”
“Apparently not, vicar seemed sure of his ground. I will check it out, but I have that sinking feeling that the curse of Richard Holmes has struck again.”
She sat down.
“Curse?”
“Not a curse really, but events do seem to conspire against me. At sixteen I won a car in a competition, only to be disallowed the prize because I couldn’t drive it away. At nineteen I went on a package holiday to Spain and the tour operator went broke, it wasn’t in ABTA and I had to thumb my way back across the continent. At twenty-two I landed a job in a West end play and spent three strenuous months getting up to speed and learning the part. The theatre burnt down the day before the opening night incinerating all the stage set and props. The following year I joined the bank only to have it robbed on my first day. I shan’t go on, I guess you’ve got the idea.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You mean you’ve been expecting something like this?”
Actually I’d been expecting a ruddy great satellite to fall from heaven and demolish the rectory, but I didn’t tell her that.
“Who knows?”
She passed back the keys to the Metropolitan, or should I think of it as Miranda?
“What will you do?”
To be honest I hadn’t a clue, but I felt that she might need some reassurance that I wasn’t going to pull out of the restoration.
“I suppose I could always mortgage the place and use the proceeds to do the restoration.”
She relaxed and changed the subject.
“Did I tell you I’d found some more tin trunks?”
I vaguely remembered that she had told me something.
“Really, where?”
“In the loft, they’re tucked away behind the hot water tank, there are six of them all identical.”
“Are they empty?”
“I didn’t look, after all they’re not mine.”
I moved my head and the room moved in the opposite direction, I’d had enough for the day.
“I look at them another day, I’m going back to bed.”
So I went to bed and she went back to work and the invoice for the chancel repairs haunted my dreams.
By Sunday I’d reached a turning point. I’d experienced it before: you feel ill for days and then all of a sudden at some indefinable moment you feel better. I carefully showered and then drove Fiatimo to the nearest Methodist Church. If the Baptist church had been not quite my cup of tea the Methodist was not even my cup of water. I have to say that the pianist was good, that the singing was excellent and the people friendly, but the rambling forty minute sermon was definitely not my idea of heaven. The result was that in the evening I drove to my former church in Ipswich for a spot of sanity.
Sunday night wasn’t so sane as I woke up at 2am because I heard footfalls on the gravel drive. I lay awake with my heart pounding as whoever it was walking around the garage below. I envisaged brawny men in hooded masks searching for a way in and waited for the sound of breaking glass. After five fear-laden minutes I risked a quick look out of the window, as I did so two deer trotted round the front of the garage and stood still in the moonlight for a few moments before trotting off across the lawn. I flopped back on my bed and sought to get myself under control, but the fear persisted – supposing it had been thieves, what then?
Monday morning I awoke with a mission on my mind. I started with my own solicitor and told him about the church invoice – she said that she’d look into it. I then rang Miss Carrington-Greeves, that proved to be an illuminating conversation. I started with the office of Lay Chancellor; she was unrepentant explaining that if I’d read what I’d signed I would have noticed that the Lay Chancelorship was involved. I was not a happy bunny.
“You could have told me,” I bleated, “and explained what it meant.”
She became huffy.
“I’m sorry you feel like that Mr Holmes, but our duties are only to administer the estate while it is in ou
r hands and to pass it on to the person that our client specified; nothing more and nothing less.”
I tried probing a little.
“Well would you mind telling me if there are any more skeletons in the cupboard?”
This question was greeted with silence and the longer the silence reigned the more apprehensive I got. Eventually she replied rather defensively.
“Well Mr Grant didn’t open any mail for three or four years, fortunately he had standing orders for the utilities and the rates and suchlike, but I have no real idea what else is lurking in the mail.”
“Didn’t you open it?”
“No.”
“Have you got it?”
“Yes.”
I inwardly groaned.
“Then can you send it to me. I assume that, technically speaking, unopened mail is part of his estate?”
She suddenly became polite and I had that same eerie feeling about being set up that I’d had with her before.
“Of course Mr Holmes,” she purred, “I’ll have it sent right away, is there anything else?”
Of course there was something else, just where did she think I was going to get money to pay the church invoice and restore the rectory?
“No, not for now.”
She replied with some inanity and put the phone down. I began to wonder just how large a pile four years of mail would make.
Next on my mental list was Motor Memorania, that was more successful; the Studebaker, Ariel and Mobylette had been sold and another £29,000 was winging it’s way towards my bank account. I toyed with the idea of selling the Metropolitan, but as yet I had not found the registration documents. I think I then spent some time contemplating what to do next. I reckoned that after clearing my initial overdraft and buying Fiatimo I now had some £230,000 in the bank of which I’d walled off £64,000 for Vera to play with. So I could pay off the church – at the expense of calling off Vera the vigilant – and still have a small amount left. I considered the options of paying the church in installments, mortgaging the rectory and leaving the country. In the end I decided to look round the rectory.
As soon as I entered the place I could feel that the air was warm, not warm enough to live in, but warm enough to keep the building dry. Yolande’s van was outside, but she was nowhere to be seen, so I explored the rectory for about an hour. I inspected the basement, and found a sump-pump that looked as rusty as hell. I inspected the kitchen, tried out the spiral staircase and noted that the Aga was hot and had a kettle on it. I inspected the bathroom and decided that the huge enamel bath was a luxury I would keep. Finally I got to the music room and inspected the piano; it really was magnificent. I opened up the lid, flexed my fingers and played the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, you know the da-da-da-dah sequence. I was just getting in my stride when Yolande ran into the room looking like a disturbed pheasant. She stopped halfway across the room, “Oh,” she said in bewilderment, “it’s you.”