Simply Heaven (19 page)

‘Yeah,’ I say, turning back to him. ‘It’s beaut. But it won’t be much good to you when you catch your death, nothing on and all sweaty.’

‘Sturdy stock,’ he says. ‘We’ve been getting cold and wet for hundreds of years. For pleasure.’

‘So what’s the deal?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I need to get this sheeting over the gable and then run it down so it covers the hole. Only the roof-beam’s a bit spongy and my nails just slip out the minute I bang them in.’

‘Spongy?’

‘Spongy.’

‘Rufus,’ I’m suddenly feeling just a little bit insecure up here in the wind, ‘if the roof-beam’s spongy, isn’t it time you just got the whole roof replaced?’

‘Batman,’ says Rufus, ‘if I didn’t have your brainpower to back me up, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.’

‘Smartarse.’

‘Back atcha,’ he says. ‘Have you seen the size of this roof?’

I look about me. From the ground, I haven’t been able to take in just how much roof the house has, but now I see that the central mansard on which we’re sitting has another mansarded wing sticking out at each point of the compass. That’s a lot of square footage, what with the doubling up. ‘Well, OK. But it’s not like it’s a cosmetic operation. How long has this hole been here?’

‘Um,’ says Rufus.

‘Go on.’

‘Well, since I was in the sixth form. It wasn’t always this big, of course.’

‘Sixth form. That’s, like, ten–twelve years ago, yes?’

‘Don’t look at me like that. That’s not all that long in the life of the house.’

‘Well … have you ever heard of the stitch-in-time thing?’

‘That presumes that you have a needle and thread.’

‘Well, I don’t want to do the I-told-you-so routine, but do you know how much that ruined table down there’s probably worth?’

‘Mel,’ he picks up a loose tile, brandishes it at me, ‘do you know how much one of these is worth?’

‘Nuh-uh.’

‘Around about two thousand pounds a ton.’

‘Means nothing.’

‘We need around six hundred tons to replace the whole roof. Obviously, some of them can be recycled, but most of them are on their way out. Plus, of course, because the ancestors have been making-do just like us, most of the rafters need replacing. Which means that the whole roof will have to come off at some point.’

I love the way he talks about The Ancestors. There’s something very Japanese about it.

‘Surely you could get cheaper tiles than that?’

‘Listed building. We can’t
move
without inspectors swarming all over us.’

‘But if the house is falling down?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t work like that. They’d rather you let the whole place rot into the ground than let you use a material that’s not in keeping with the vernacular. The whole place is a hodgepodge of jerry-built fashion, but it’s got to be preserved in amber from now on.’

‘How much are we talking, then?’

‘Mmm? Hold on to your hat. We’re not talking change from two million. Probably more.’

I suck air in through my teeth. ‘Right-ho,’ I say, thinking: you could probably sell half a dozen of those houses in the village, even in the state they’re in, and raise the money, and still have another forty or so left over to rent to tourists. ‘I guess I’ll have to change your name to Roofless.’

‘Ha ha.’

‘It’s a shame your nan had to go and lose that emerald, really, isn’t it?’

Rufus sighs. ‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘You have no idea how many times over the last decade or so I’ve thought that. Mind you, I’d’ve had to prise it from her cold, dead fingers.’

I toy with the idea of offering him some help in that department, think, no, killing off old ladies is probably not a subject for flippancy. ‘Think it’ll ever be found?’

‘Probably not in any of our lifetimes. There are an awful lot of sofas for it to have gone down the back of.’

‘Oh, well. Guess we’ll have to go for plan B, then.’

‘Guess so,’ he says distractedly.

I give the hole another look-see. Moss. Lichen. The slow drip-drip-drip of the roof-beams. ‘Course,’ I tell him, ‘back where I come from, we’d get the whole thing sorted with a couple of sheets of corrugated iron and a staple gun.’

‘Plastic sheeting is so much more sophisticated. And so much prettier.’

‘And so handy in case of a dirty bomb,’ I tell him. ‘So if I shimmy backwards, do you think that beam’ll hold me?’

‘Wouldn’t rely on it.’

‘OK. I’ll go round the long way.’

Down at parapet level, I have an idea. A bit of a blinder, though I say it myself. I love it when you realise you can use the stuff you’ve got to hand. It’s the Aussie Battler in me. I call up to Rufus: ‘Hey, mate, have you got some rope up here?’

His voice drifts down. ‘Yuh.’

‘Well, get down here, then. And bring the hammer with you.’

I hear him slide down the tiles, and his head appears at the hole in the roof. ‘What?’

I’ve already dragged one end of the tree trunk across the floor. ‘Take this. Let’s get it out.’

‘Oo-K. You’re the boss.’

He takes the end and we feed it, between us, out over the parapet and back down until it lies lengthways along the gutter.

‘Well?’

‘What we do,’ I explain, ‘is nail one end of the sheeting on to this, and the other end to the underside of the roof overhang, if it’ll hold. Then we can just sling the tree over the other side for weight.’

‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘You married me for my sturdy artisan blood, didn’t you?’

One of those little moments passes between us. Rufus smiles.

‘Down, boy,’ I say, but I can’t stop myself smiling back.

It’s only a bodge job, but the nails slip in sweet as a nut through the double layer of sheeting we’ve wrapped around the tree trunk. While he’s doing that, I crawl around him, monkey-like, and hammer the other end of the sheeting into the lead lining under the tiles. I use an old jack I’ve found in a corner behind a mangle. I show him how to make a cradle out of the rope to hold the two ends and we clamber up opposite sides of the hole to the top.

‘They don’t teach you
that
at public school,’ I tease.

The log reaches the apex of the roof. Rufus starts to unwrap his end of the rope.

‘Don’t do that, dingbat! We’ve got to lower it down, unless you want it to hit bottom and rip the nails straight through the other end.’

‘Ah. How do you know these things?’

‘You can’t make a habit of slapping your man down without something to base it on.’

‘And you do it so well.’

‘Ph.D. in it. Lower away, stupid.’

‘You’ve got good muscles, for a girl.’

‘Well, you’ve got a pretty good brain, for a man.’

‘Not sure about the dress sense, though.’

I glance down over my chunky sweater with the grass stain on the front. His sweater.

‘We’re going to have to go shopping, I grant you.’

‘We’ll go soon. I’ll take you on a spree.’

Spree. With tea and cakes and hard-boiled eggs thrown in?

‘Like, when might “soon” be?’

‘I don’t know. There’s a lot of catching-up to do. Soon, I promise.’

‘I was rather thinking in terms of today …?’

‘No can do, darling. We’ll have to go to London.’

‘You’re yanking my chain. Surely there must be somewhere …’

‘Well, yes, for jumpers and things like that. We could go really local and kit you out with half a dozen shirtwaisters and some corduroy pants.’

‘Tell me you’re joking.’

‘Well, there are a few yummy mummy shops about the place, I suppose. Fleecy things that wash like rags, darling.’

‘Sometimes you can be too camp for your own good.’

‘Thank you. Can’t you get the rest of your stuff sent from home?’

‘That would make a lot of sense. ’Cause, like, even if I hadn’t sold everything I had when I took off, it was all designed for wearing in sub-zero temperatures, naturally.’

‘You sold
everything
?’

‘Apart from what I could fit in the backpack.’

‘Weird. Just getting rid of your past like that.’

‘Bit of a family habit, I guess. Your family hangs on to history like it’s a magic charm. Mine’s had more fresh starts than a fish market.’

‘I can’t imagine it. Not knowing where you come from. Just – forgetting about all the stuff that went before.’

‘Yeah, well,’ I say, practising my British understatement ‘I don’t think my family’s got quite as much to be proud of as yours. I guess if I had a thousand illustrious years of sheep farming in my background, I might feel differently.’

He sits back and takes a breather. ‘It’s quite sexy, in a way. Sometimes I look around all the …
stuff
here, and wonder what the point of it all is. What would it be like not to have all this baggage hanging round one’s neck? Just to be free to do what I wanted.’

‘Darl, you take your baggage with you, believe me.’

‘Yes, but. I don’t know. What if I just let it all go hang, and went off and lived on an island somewhere with nothing but a couple of coconut shells for company?’

‘So, babe, if you
had
had a choice about it, what would you have done?’

He pauses, reflects. ‘I think I’d’ve liked to have been an architect,’ he says.

‘Crikey. That’s a bit coals-to-Newcastle, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘The opposite. I spend my life fantasising about lean white flat-roofed Araby buildings. All smooth and sleek and full of glass. No buttresses, no wings, no period clashes. Somewhere warm. Tiled roof terraces, that’s what I want. Covered in pots of citrus.’

I shiver suddenly in the November wind. ‘Nothing to stop us,’ I say.

‘Just a thousand years of history.’

‘History can be overrated. Most of it wasn’t particularly glorious.’

‘Don’t let anyone hear you say that around here. History’s pretty much all they live for.’

‘But not you?’

He thinks for a minute. ‘It has to be taken into account,’ he says eventually. ‘And you’ve got to give it some respect, especially as it matters so much to the old, but on the whole, no, not really. History’s an albatross slung round the necks of the aristocracy. It gives the worthless ones a sense of worth that saves them having to justify their own existence, and it manacles the talented. Traps them at the homestead.’

‘And you?’

He glances up at me. ‘Me, I don’t know. I’m nothing special, but at least I know it. I’m sort of hoping you’ll help me find out.’

‘Bit of a tall order, darling.’

‘You know what? I think you’ve got the steel to see it through.’

The sheeting reaches full stretch. I let go of my end of the rope, rub my aching hands together.

‘There you go, matey,’ I say. ‘All snug and watertight for the winter. I don’t know if I’m going to sort your head out for you, but at least I can keep it dry.’

‘Excellent,’ says Rufus. ‘Now all you need to do is sort out the flooding in the cellar.’

‘Hi, it’s me,’ I say.

‘O!’ roars my dad. ‘’ow you doin’?’

‘Great!’ I tell him, endeavouring to sound like a happy honeymooner. ‘All settled in!’

‘Great! Good! We’ve been waiting to hear from you. What’s it like, then?’

‘Amazing,’ I tell him. I always find that, if you’re going to tell a lie, you’re best to keep it as close to the truth as you can. ‘It’s really … old,’ I say, ‘and huge. Huge and rambling and full of history.’

‘Just like your yaya, then,’ he says, and chokes on his own laughter.

‘Even older than her.’

‘Wow. Thass pretty old. Bet it doesn’t smell of piss, though.’

My father’s attitude to my grandmother is fairly outrageous, all told. He extracts the Michael whenever he gets the opportunity. Something to do with having reached the age of fifty-seven while still expecting to be socked over the back of the neck with a wooden spoon at any moment.

‘Parts of it. They have quite a few dogs. And a Granny who’s even older than Yaya.’

‘She living at home?’

‘Yeah. She has a nurse.’

He makes approving noises. ‘So what they like, then? Your new family?’

‘Interesting.’

‘Interesting.’ He interprets this, correctly, with the Australian meaning of the word.

‘Yeah.’

‘What do they do?’

‘Um … nothing, really.’

‘Nothing? How can they do nothing?’

‘Well, they have this property, and—’

‘OK. So, what? If they do nothing, I guess they must be worth a few dollars. This husband of yours – he don’t do nothing either?’

‘Yeah – yeah, he does. He sort of runs things. His dad’s largely retired.’

‘Ah. So they’re farmers.’

‘No. Not really. It’s really historic, like I said. It’s open to the public in the summer.’

‘Like a hotel?’

‘No. Not really. More like a theme park, only no rides.’

‘They got food?’

‘Sort of. Scones. Those sort of bready buns with the raisins in. Oh, and fruit cake. Things called Melton Mowbray pork pies. Tell you something. British food is every bit as good as they say it is.’ Says the girl from the land of the lamington.

‘What, they don’t do any hot food?’

‘You know what, Dad? It’s out of season. I don’t really know.’

I hear him take time to digest this. To my father, a place of entertainment that doesn’t also sell meaty treats is an opportunity wasted. My new family has just plummeted in his estimation to somewhere roughly on the level of The Vegetarian Society of Australia.

‘So how,’ he asks, ‘are you getting on with the family? What are they like?’

I’m cautious. ‘I’ve not been here long enough to get to know them. They’re OK.’

I can tell he’s not convinced.

‘Well, OK. I think the mother-in-law’s got a bit of a problem.’

A sigh, and a chomp on the cigar. ‘Don’t they all?’

‘I guess,’ I say doubtfully.

‘If you think it’s bad now, just wait till you have children.’

‘Thanks, Dad. That’s a great help.’

He does one of his cough-laughs. ‘I know my girl. She ain’t going to put up with no shit from nobody.’

‘Glad I’ve got your confidence, old man.’

‘Give ’em hell, Melody.’

‘I’ll do my best. Hey, where’s Mum?’