Scared witless
Jeremy Clarke
My boy's mother's boyfriend has been labouring for a team of builders doing up an old rectory for a retired magazine publisher. He must have a few bob, this ex-publisher, because money has been no object. The carpenter, for example, has used nothing but seasoned oak. Six weeks were dedicated to fashioning a spiral staircase out of the trunk of an oak tree. My boy's mother's boyfriend was occupied with less glamorous work like cleaning flagstones and repainting the brickwork. But he was pleased as punch to be back at work after six months recuperating at home after falling off a ladder.
The amount of money lavished on the renovation has been a constant source of amazement to my boy's mother's boyfriend. Another thing that greatly surprised him was that, in spite of his wealth, the ex-publisher wasn't in the least bit stand-offish. It wasn't unusual for the expublisher to make the tea for the lads, apparently. For weeks now my boy's mother's boyfriend has entertained us with the latest examples of this ex-publisher's tasteful extravagances and obeisances toward democracy.
There has been an engaging sub-plot, too, in his saga of prodigality. While he was repointing a chimney, my boy's mother's boyfriend uncovered a pair of abandoned baby squirrels. My boy's mother's fear that she might be taken into custody for keeping a wild animal was overruled and the next day my boy's mother's boyfriend brought them home for the children. Gutsy and Nutsy have pride of place in a cage on the sitting-room floor. They are remarkably clean little animals, their appetites astonishing, and their play is strikingly similar, we all think, to that of ferrets. My boy's mother's boyfriend, who's eaten just about everything, says he's eaten squirrel and that it tastes surprisingly good.
The ex-publisher and his wife were due to move in to their new home last Monday. My boy's mother's boyfriend worked right through the preceding weekend, finishing off and tidying up. By Sunday evening the painter still had several walls and ceilings to cover and he decided to work on through the night. Around 11 o'clock he was painting away when he noticed a figure pass the kitchen window. Someone with a stoop wearing a black overcoat. He laid down his brush and went outside to see who was walking about on the property at that time of night, but saw no one. He went back inside and resumed work. Five minutes later, there was a terrific hammering on the front door. He ran to the door assuming that there had been an accident or something and that somebody wanted help. The pounding was powerful and urgent and he thought they were trying to kick the door in. The hammering continued even as he turned the handle. But when he pulled open the door there was nobody there.
Though scared witless, the painter returned to his brush and continued painting. But when the hammering on the door occurred for a second time, he carefully wrapped his roller in clingfilm and fled the house via the back door.
The painter told my boy's mother's boyfriend what had happened during their lunch break on the Monday. My boy's mother's boyfriend told us when he came home from work. He wouldn't have believed a word of it, he said, except that the painter is a stickler for the truth. And because my boy's mother's boyfriend is also something of a pedant about the truth, and once ate a squirrel, I too believed. Thrilled to the marrow, and knowing that tonight was the night the open-handed ex-publisher took full possession of the fruit of his dreams, and that the fruit was tainted, we awaited further developments.
Although a friend of the working man, the ex-publisher didn't tell his builders, who were still finishing off, if anything odd had occurred during his first night alone in the house. And neither did the builders ask. But towards evening an overheard remark from the painter — something about wanting to get away before nightfall — prompted a conversation that led to the ex-publisher revealing that something inexplicable, not to mention extremely unsettling, had indeed happened.
He'd worked on his PC for a while before going to bed. Three times in the night he'd been roused from his bed by someone banging at the door. Three times he'd gone downstairs and found nobody there. In the morning he'd gone downstairs and found all the windows and doors flung wide open. And on top of his PC there was a curiously neat little pile of sand, extremely fine sand of the kind one sees in hourglasses, as if to tell him, it seemed to him, he said, that time was running out.
Since then my boy's mother's boyfriend has been reroofing a bungalow in the next county, so regrettably we've had no further news. Gutsy and Nutsy are in rude health.
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