So with the coil of rope placed on one shoulder and the rucksack slung casually over the other, Jerry set off, moving from one beam to the next while keeping a careful grip of the rafters above. The pitch of the roof meant that he was bent almost double by the time he reached the hole, and he struggled to extract the saw from his rucksack.
He dealt quickly with the battening, and once finished stuck his head and shoulders through the opening.
He tutted as he observed Martin’s ambulance parked almost forty feet below.
‘There’s a sign if ever I saw one,’ he muttered sardonically.
Stepping out onto the shattered roof, he winced as the remaining tiles cracked under his weight. He moved gingerly across to the shoulder-high chimneystack, its light-terracotta pot rising a further four feet in the air. And as he examined the cracked cement around the pot’s chunky hexagonal base, he realised that he needn’t have brought his hammer and bolster after all.
A few good rocks, he thought happily, and the pot would be his. Or rather Mrs Mulligan’s, as he reminded himself.
In order to reach the top of the pot, he was obliged to stand on tiptoe, his rucksack and the coil of rope placed behind the chimneystack. Surprised by just how thick the pot felt, he then assumed that his fingers were merely touching an inner lip.
He began to rock the pot gently back and forth, pulling a face as little chunks of concrete skittered along the lichen-covered tiles before bouncing off the edge of the roof. He could only hope that they were not marking the vehicle parked half-on the pavement below.
‘...That wreck,’ Mrs Mulligan had once observed, ‘is the simpleton’s pride and joy. He’s even got a name for it – ‘Joanna’, if you please.’
As the pot suddenly detached itself from the stack, Jerry gave a grunt of alarm. He realised that he’d not felt any inner lip – rather the object’s actual thickness. It was, quite simply, far heavier than he’d imagined.
So he’d not a hope in hell of using the rope to lower it down to the waiting ambulance, as had been his intention. It was, in fact, all he could do to prevent the pot from pitching forwards onto his head…
Or Martin’s! thought the Irishman with horror, his arms already shaking with the effort of keeping the pot held at a forty-five degree angle. For Sod’s Law dictated that were he to let go of it, it would go smashing through the windscreen of the vehicle parked below and…
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ groaned Jerry, picturing the bloody scene.
‘Martin!’ he bellowed, in what was both a warning and a general plea for assistance.
But in the silence which followed, Jerry realised that nothing short of divine intervention could save him now.
‘Martin!’ he tried again, the sweat from his forehead beginning to blind him.
This time, the answering silence was broken by the twittering of some birds in a nearby tree. And just for a moment, it occurred to the Irishman that he could at least save his own skin. All he needed to do was to let go of the pot at exactly the same moment as he threw himself to one side of the roof…
‘No,’ he muttered hoarsely, deciding that this had – after all – been his damn-fool idea and no one else’s.
‘Martin…’ he whispered, no longer possessing the strength even to shout.
And as the birds continued to twitter, he wondered almost idly why he could not just have bought Mrs Mulligan a nice bunch of flowers…
Then – as the late afternoon’s tranquillity was disturbed by a sudden, violent crash! – the birds in the tree stopped singing and instead took flight.
Silence again descended on the area; and the silence was strangely mournful in its intensity.
4
Sat in her living room, Mrs Mulligan read the article that was on the front page of the local newspaper and laughed out loud.
‘I’ve heard some tall stories, but that one tops the lot,’ she told herself delightedly.
Then, turning the page, her humorous expression instantly disappeared and she gasped in shock. So that was why she’d not seen one of St James’s most devoted parishioners recently – the man was dead!
And to think that she’d not known till now…
Disturbed by her doorbell, she shook her head, put the newspaper onto the table that was beside her chair, and standing up moved into the hallway.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, opening her door and greeting her visitor.
‘Nice to see you, too,’ replied Jerry, who (Mrs Mulligan now observed) was a little out of breath and red in the face, as though he’d just done something requiring strenuous physical exertion.
At the present moment in time, however, Jerry’s condition was of little interest to the widow. All she could think about was of that distressing article she’d just read.
‘Terrible news, Jerry!’ she proclaimed. ‘Frank Parker’s passed away!’
‘Frank Parker?’ repeated Jerry, surprised. ‘When?’
‘A week or so ago. It happened while he was at bingo…’
Mrs Mulligan’s eyes suddenly dampened; she struggled to compose herself.
‘They thought…’ she said slowly, ‘they thought he was… asleep. It was the cleaners who discovered he was dead...’
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Jerry sympathetically, although he considered that the old boy must have been ninety if he was a day, and that shuffling off the mortal coil while playing a game of bingo wasn’t really such a bad way to go.
‘Anyway,’ said Mrs Mulligan, moving her mind determinedly back to the present. ‘What have you been doing to now be panting on my doorstep?’
‘I’ve brought you a birthday present,’ said Jerry, moving back slightly into her front garden and gesturing for her to see something that was just out of view of the door.
‘God bless you,’ exclaimed the widow, stepping out from her front door and so seeing the gift. ‘It’s all I ever wanted!’
Trying to disguise his pleasure at her words, Jerry picked up the pot with tremendous difficulty and triumphantly bore it through her house and out into the back garden. His spine informed him that he should really have enlisted Martin’s help in carrying the object from his home to here, but he’d wanted to bask in Mrs Mulligan’s praise and delight alone.
It had all been worth it, he decided, even though he’d come close to dying two days previously.
One moment, he recalled, he’d been stood on the edge of the roof with that ridiculously heavy chimneypot slowly tipping forward – and in the next the pot had slipped off its stack and Jerry had felt himself falling. But not backwards – somehow, miraculously, the pot had crashed through the roof, rather than just bouncing off it.
A ceiling-beam had curtailed Jerry’s descent, knocking the wind out of him and very nearly breaking a few ribs in the process. And the pot had smashed into just three pieces on the floor below, signifying, as much as anything else, its unusual thickness and strength.
‘And if you think that you’re staying there,’ Jerry had murmured, clambering painfully down from the ceiling-beam, ‘then you’ve another thing coming.’
With some difficulty, he’d carried the pieces out of the house and through the overgrown back garden, before leaving them by the crumbling brick wall.
Then he’d climbed over and awoken Martin.
‘Ready to go?’ yawned Mrs Mulligan’s neighbour, as Jerry shook his head in disbelief.
‘Ah,’ said Martin a few moments later, as Jerry passed the three pieces of pot over the wall. ‘I thought you wouldn’t manage to get it down intact.’
‘And how right you were,’ said Jerry tightly, heaving himself back over and onto the pavement. What he needed now, more than anything else in the world, was a hot bath, a stiff drink and a relaxing cigarette.
The two men were about to depart, when a woman came hurrying across from the other side of the road.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, belligerently, ‘but what on Earth do you think you’re doing?’
‘It’s okay,’ said Jerr
y after a moment’s hesitation. ‘We’re from NBL Construction.’
“NBL Construction’?’ repeated the woman with a doubtful expression.
‘Yes,’ replied Jerry, motioning for Martin to pull away. ‘Nick it, Break it and Leg it.’
The woman stared after the converted ambulance, too surprised to take note of its ancient registration. And as the strange vehicle neared the end of the road and indicated right, the faint sound of laughter came floating back to her through the still summer’s afternoon...
*
Jerry spent almost half an hour dragging the chimneypot (reassembled with wood glue, which Jerry found ideal for that sort of thing) around Mrs Mulligan’s garden, before the widow finally agreed with his initial suggestion that it was best situated by the sliding glass doors of her living room. And she offered the sweaty Irishman a glass of cold lemonade, explaining, ‘It’s the best thing for a hot summer’s day.’
She stared shrewdly at him as she gave him his drink, saying, ‘You know – you’ve yet to tell me where you got this weird and wonderful pot from…’
‘Does it matter?’ returned Jerry plaintively. ‘It’s a present, after all.’
Mrs Mulligan appeared strangely amused for a moment; then she said, ‘No, I don’t suppose it matters a jot – but only so long as I don’t get the police knocking down my door…’
‘If you do,’ said Jerry cheekily, ‘it’ll have nothing to do with me or that pot.’
‘You know, I’ve got a confession to make…’
‘About what?’
‘I do know where you got that chimneypot from.’
‘Martin, right?’ said Jerry despondently. ‘I trusted him to secrecy, and this is what happens…’
‘You’ve no call to be blaming the simpleton,’ said Mrs Mulligan smartly. ‘Only one man was mentioned.’
Jerry felt thoroughly confused.
‘I don’t understand…’
“Idiot Dices with Death’,’ declared Mrs Mulligan cryptically.
Jerry stared at her in utter bewilderment, wondering if she’d gone quite mad.
‘You should try reading the local paper from time-to-time,’ she said with exasperation.
‘You mean…?’
‘Congratulations,’ she said – ‘You’ve made the front page.’
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