Bricking It

by Nick Spalding

  What the hell do I do now? Shuffle out of the house and hope I don’t have an accident while walking down the road?

  No bloody chance.

  Think, Daley, think!

  Wait a minute . . . Wait just a damn minute!

  I look around the loft at the detritus surrounding me. There’s not much up here apart from the work tools and lights Fred’s team have brought with them. But over in one corner, pushed out of the way so they don’t interfere with the workspace are all those empty wooden boxes I first spied on my initial – and disastrous – trip up here.

  One of them is even about the same height as a toilet seat. And there’s old shredded paper in it that if you squint hard enough, you could mistake for a load of discarded Andrex . . .

  I am immediately disgusted by the idea. What kind of lunatic would rather have a poo into a loft box, than act like an adult and make a run for the toilet down in the village?

  This kind of lunatic, unfortunately.

  If I can just get this out of the way, I can cover it up with some more of the paper and tuck it away in one corner, get the joist fixed, and do away with the box later tonight when everyone else has left the building.

  It’s the perfect crime.

  Oh, good Lord above.

  I shuffle over to the most appropriate box for the task and peer into it. A closer look at the paper inside reveals that it is in fact a lot of torn up newspaper from the 1960s, yellowed with age. Some of the pieces are large enough for me to still just about be able to decipher the story. The newspaper must have been a local rag, as there are stories about places in the area I recognise. Somebody grew a prize-winning marrow in the village, another person narrowly avoided being run over by a man in a Wolseley Hornet on the High Street, and scandal rocked the community when a ‘gentlemen’s club’ was discovered close by.

  I start to wonder why anyone would want to run a knocking shop out here in the sticks, but am cut short by another roll from my bowels. I’m going to have to make my mind up right now over whether to put my disgusting plan into action or not.

  Gritting my teeth and praying to whatever gods of home renovation might be listening, I unbuckle my jeans and perch myself over the box, lowering my backside gently down onto it.

  Success! The thing takes my weight. Now to just relax and let nature take its course.

  Nature does indeed take its course, very rapidly. I’ve always been a man blessed with a strong digestive system, unlike poor old Spider and his IBS.

  Within moments I am finished and am just about to clean myself up with what remains of the letters page. All has gone well. I can now get back to work safe in the knowledge that—

  I freeze. Voices are filtering up to me from below.

  ‘Is anything going on in the loft today?’ I hear someone ask. I have to think for a moment as to who it is, but then I remember – the voice belongs to Pete, the BBC cameraman. A chubby, balding fellow, who favours a black leather waistcoat and worn-out BBC T-shirt, Pete only transferred onto the Great Locations crew a few months ago, and is a man determined to prove his worth. To that end, he’s spent two days with us here already, poking his lens into every nook and cranny. I’m led to believe that Daley Farmhouse will be featured in four half-hour shows across the renovation, but Pete seems to be recording enough material to fill a thirty-six-hour miniseries.

  ‘Yep, Danny is up there doing the joists,’ I hear Fred reply. ‘Come to think of it, he should be done by now. Are you alright up there, captain?’ he hollers.

  Fuck.

  What do I do? What do I do? What do I bloody do?

  I elect to remain silent, hoping that both men will just go away and leave me be. My thighs grip the sides of the cardboard box as I try my hardest not to move a bloody muscle.

  ‘He must have finished up and come back down again,’ Fred says. ‘Here, Hayley?’ he calls downstairs.

  I hear my sister’s faint reply.

  ‘Have you seen your brother? I thought he was doing the joists? Pete here could get a good shot of him at work!’

  Oh yes, he can get a good shot of him at work, alright.

  Hayley’s reply drifts up the stairs, but is too mumbled for me to hear properly.

  ‘He must have finished, I guess,’ Fred says to Pete.

  ‘Okay. Can I pop up there and get a shot of the new joists anyway? It might make a good cutaway.’

  Say no, Fred. Say no, Fred. Say NO, Fred!

  ‘Sure! Take as long as you like!’

  Aaaarrghh!

  I hear Pete’s foot on the first rung of the ladder, and my heart rate shoots up. I have nowhere to hide. The loft is more or less empty, and the only thing big enough for me to hide behind is currently underneath me, and full of my effluence.

  Pete continues to climb the ladder, and I see the camera lens poke into the loft.

  In absolute terror I look around, searching for something that might help me. I could throw another box at Pete’s head, or maybe dazzle him with one of the lights—

  The lights!

  That’s it!

  If I can put the lights out, Pete won’t be able to see me!

  I bend down and pick up the extension cable that the lights are all plugged into. With one swift movement I grab the end in my sweaty hand and hammer the cut-off switch.

  The loft is instantly plunged into darkness, other than a few thin shafts of light from the various holes about the place. Luckily, I am not in one of them. Instead, I am now shrouded in complete darkness.

  ‘Oh!’ Pete exclaims, his head popping through the loft hatch. ‘The lights have all gone out, Fred!’

  ‘Must be a fuse gone, mate. Sorry, not much I can do from down here.’

  ‘No worries,’ Pete says. ‘I can use the light on the camera to get around. Maybe I can see what the problem is using that.’

  My blood runs cold again. Pete presses a button on the side of the camera, and a bright, white lamp flicks on at the top of the machine, bathing a large circle of the roof above his head in light.

  ‘Maybe I’ll do a bit of filming like this,’ Pete adds. ‘Get a bit of spooky atmospherics on the go!’

  ‘You do whatever makes you happy, Pete,’ Fred replies, trying not to sound patronising.

  Pete laughs, climbs into the loft, and starts to wave his camera around the place.

  As the beam of light goes over my head I hold my breath. He still hasn’t seen me! If I stay very, very quiet, he might not shine the light over here again.

  Then Pete starts to do something very strange: an unconvincing impression of David Attenborough.

  ‘And up here, in the eaves of the house,’ he says in a raspy voice, reminiscent of the legendary documentary presenter, ‘what kinds of interesting specimens might we encounter?’

  The impression isn’t that bad, to be honest. It seems like Pete is the kind of BBC cameraman who wishes he were on location somewhere tropical, filming Sir David as he stands next to a rare species of bee, talking about its fascinating abdominal striping.

  ‘The heat is stifling,’ he continues, ‘the humidity is high. Only certain creatures can survive in such a harsh climate.’

  Okay now, Pete. You’ve had your fun. Why not fuck off back downstairs?’

  Pete sniffs the air. ‘Here, Fred?’ he bellows back down the ladder, breaking character for the moment. ‘It doesn’t half stink up here!’

  ‘Probably where the fuse has gone! See if you can spot the extension cable!’

  ‘Okay, but it doesn’t really smell of burning, more like something’s taken a shit up here!’

  The camera swings around again, tracking across the floor a mere few metres in front of me.

  ‘The environment could not be more extreme,’ Fake Attenborough says. ‘The heat, the smell, the darkness. What kind of strange and bizarre creature could possibly want to make this place its hom—JESUS CHRIST!’

  My eyes close reflexively in the glare of the camera’s light. One hand cups my genitals, while the
other is thrown up to protect myself from Pete’s prying electronic eye.

  ‘Danny?’ Pete exclaims in horror. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Composing a bloody symphony, Pete! What does it look like?’

  ‘It looks like your pooing in a box!’

  ‘Does it? Does it really? Well, that must be what I’m doing then!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ I repeat, incredulous. ‘Because there’s nothing I like more than defecating in the pitch black where its boiling hot. I would have climbed into the airing cupboard if it wasn’t too small.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, not fucking really! I got caught short and didn’t have much of a choice!’

  ‘But there’s a Portaloo downstairs.’

  I don’t have an answer for that. Well I do, but it’s a ridiculous one.

  ‘What’s going on up here, then?’ Fred Babidge says, poking his head into the loft. ‘I can hear a load of commotion—’ Fred spots me in the corner. His eyes widen. ‘Aha ha haha ha haha ahha ah.’

  Much as I hope and pray that the ladder gives way under Fred’s shaking body, I fear that it probably won’t.

  ‘Oh, give it a bloody rest,’ I tell him and point my finger back at Pete. ‘Could you stop waving that thing in my face?’ I notice that the little red light is on. ‘Are you recording this?’ I wail.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I hear Hayley ask someone from below.

  ‘Don’t know. We only came here to ask the boss something,’ Baz says.

  ‘But we think he’s having some kind of fit,’ Spider adds.

  I now have an audience, each no doubt lining up to stick their heads through the hatch to see the amazing Loft Poo Man in action.

  I give Pete my best ‘I will come over there and crap on you too if you don’t do what I say’ look. ‘Turn the camera off Pete, and go away. See if you can calm Fred down before he has a hernia.’

  ‘But I wanted to get a shot of the joists!’ he complains.

  The scowl deepens. ‘Pete, if you don’t sod off that camera’s getting shoved where the sun doesn’t shine.’

  Pete grumbles something about being sick of people threatening him like that, but does switch the bloody machine off, once again plunging me into darkness. He climbs back down the ladder, leaving me gratefully alone, but with my untenable position more or less unchanged.

  ‘Are you okay, Danny?’ Hayley calls up.

  ‘Yes! Just get everyone downstairs please!’ I plead with her. ‘I’ll be down in a minute!’

  I just about hear the shuffling of feet over Fred’s continued hysterical laughter, and take a deep breath.

  Now what?

  I fumble around until I feel the head of the extension cable again and hit the switch. The glare of the lights blinking into existence is so bright I jerk my head backwards, bringing it into sharp contact with the roof beam behind me.

  ‘Oh crap!’ I screech and rock forward again.

  The wooden box, which hasn’t taken too well to all this abuse, having been left to its own devices in a damp loft for fifty years, gives way under me . . . and I find myself sitting in my own crap for the first time since I was a baby.

  I don’t want to discuss the details of the clean-up operation. Suffice to say it involved a bucket full of cold water, and an ocean full of cold humiliation.

  I’ve read stories about people who have embarrassing episodes involving the toilet. Hayley had some trashy comedy book that I scanned through a couple of years ago, which had a guy accidentally crapping into a pedal bin thanks to a bout of food poisoning. It seemed pretty awful at the time.

  I would like to find the guy who wrote it and reassure him that his mortification at ruining a date thanks to some dodgy chicken, is nothing compared to holding out a ball of ripped-up newspaper from the 1960s at arm’s length, and parading it past your sister, a team of beefy workmen and a BBC cameraman, on the way to the wheelie bin.

  I slam the lid down and look back at everyone, trying not to burst out crying.

  ‘I once got the shits on a job,’ Spider says in a thoughtful voice.

  ‘Oh yeah!’ Baz laughs and points at him. ‘You was up the scaffold, wasn’t you? I could see skid marks from the ground! What was it we called you for the rest of the month?’

  ‘Brown Spider,’ Spider says, possibly highlighting why brickies don’t have alternate careers as stand-up comedians.

  ‘That’s right! Brown Spider!’ This sends Baz off into a gale of laughter. Then he sees the glum look on Spider’s face and instantly sticks an arm round his friend’s shoulder to make him feel better.

  ‘I followed through in the truck once,’ Fred says. ‘Three-hour journey up to Lincolnshire for a new stove, as I recall. Dad wasn’t best pleased, I can tell you.’

  ‘I peed over Trevor McDonald once,’ Pete pipes up. We all turn to look at him aghast. ‘Yep. Got pissed at a wrap party and fell over at the urinal. He never knew what hit him. Some of it went in his eye.’

  I try for a moment to work out the logistics of such a feat, but it eludes me.

  I know what they’re trying to do, but it’s not helping. I’m fully aware that other people have highly embarrassing episodes in their lives, but I’m the one who’s just had to walk past a group of people carrying my own shit in a scrunched-up roll of paper, so unless one of them wants to squat here in front of all of us, I’m just going to carry on feeling epically sorry for myself.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I tell them in a flat tone of voice. Nobody puts up an argument. And who can blame them?

  ‘I got caught kissing Claire Wright at university!’ Hayley squeaks.

  Now it’s everyone’s turn to look at her.

  I’m aghast, but everyone else is suddenly smiling. Hayley looks at us nervously, realising that sharing this kind of information isn’t quite the same thing as letting people in on your embarrassing episodes of public incontinence. ‘We were only experimenting a bit in the common room after everyone else had left. Gav the Chav came back to get his coat and saw us over by the Space Invaders machine.’ Hayley sees my expression, stops talking and looks down at her feet.

  ‘I’m definitely going home,’ I repeat and stalk off towards the motorbike, hoping to Christ that nobody else is going to let me in on one of their past humiliations just to try and make me feel better. Then, a thought strikes me, and I’m striding back towards Pete in a split second.

  ‘Hand it over,’ I tell him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hand it over, Pete!’ I snap.

  He sighs and pops the digital tape out of the camera, handing it to me reluctantly. ‘Those things are expensive, you know,’ he moans.

  ‘I’ll buy you another one,’ I reply, trying to resist the urge to hit him over the head with it.

  This time there are no interruptions to my walk of shame, and I manage to get on the bike and ride away without doing further injury to both my body and my sense of self-worth.

  I think today has taught me a very valuable lesson. Don’t get ideas above your station, because the chances are you’ll just end up burning the station down, with hoards of screaming commuters inside.

  From now on I think I’ll stop trying to integrate myself into the Daley Farmhouse workforce, and just be content to be the client paying for them to do a better job than I can.

  On my way home I stop to get some petrol – and a variety pack of Monster Munch. It’ll save time tomorrow.

  HAYLEY

  July

  £59,327.92 spent

  I mean, come on, how hard can it possibly be to use a nail gun?

  ‘Miss Daley? Can you hear me, Miss Daley?’

  I can feel someone pinching my earlobe. It hurts.

  My eyes flutter open as I hear my brother’s tremulous voice. ‘Is she going to be alright?’

  ‘Have I got this done up alright?’ I ask Spider, showing him my efforts to get into the dark blue overalls.

  ‘I dunno, Hayles. I never wore
one of those things before.’

  My brow creases. ‘You’ve never worn overalls to work?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘But the bloke in B&Q told me that if I was going to do some DIY, I should wear them.’

  Spider smiles thinly and rubs his bald head. ‘Yeah, I bet he did.’

  I catch the tone. ‘So, you’re saying I got ripped off?’

  Spider holds up his hands. ‘I ain’t saying that, Hayles, but I never saw no one wearing one of those things on site before. Not when you can just wear your hi-vis over your T-shirt and jeans.’

  Well, I don’t care what Spider thinks. I reckon I look smart in my overalls. I particularly like the shiny cuffs and bright white piping going down both sides. I feel like a Power Ranger who’s lost a lot of weight recently.

  If I’m going to have a go at some DIY, I want to look the part, don’t I?’

  And that’s been the problem. All I’ve been doing is looking. Looking at other people doing all of the hard work. I’ve stood around and done bugger all, except fill out countless spreadsheets, and make phone calls to people who want to take all of my money away from me.

  For the first few weeks the idea of doing any manual labour turned my stomach, but as time has gone by and I’ve spent more time on the site, I’ve become more and more aware that I have an itch that I really want to scratch.

  It’s quite fascinating to see Daley Farmhouse change for the better in front of my eyes, and when it’s complete I want to be able to say that I contributed to that change. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?

  Danny’s having no problems. Okay, it took him a good fortnight to return to the renovation after that incident in the loft, but since then he’s got on with the job alongside the rest of Fred’s team quite well. If anything, I think they all actually like him more since he took a shit in the loft. It’s almost as if that one act of disgusting behaviour has integrated him into their ranks more than any actual contribution to the build.

  I will never understand men as long as I live.

  This has left me as the only person involved in the build that hasn’t actually done anything yet, other than push paper about and stand around feeling awkward in wellies. Even Gerard O’Keefe mucked in a couple of days ago on one of his occasional visits. One minute he’s standing there delivering an update into Pete’s camera, the next he’s trowelling mortar next to Fred, and slapping bricks onto the back wall of the new extension.