a ladder up to the ceiling trapdoor in the hall and plugged the lamp from Wendy’s side of the bed into an extension lead. Then I spent half an hour hauling the bulky mattresses of fibreglass out of the car and up into the roof cavity. From outside, the roof looked sound enough. But in the confined gloom of the cavity, the sheets of corrugated iron revealed themselves to be a filigree of rust held tenuously in place by inertia and ancient cobwebs.
Squatting low on the dusty rafters, I began sidling along, cutting sections of the insulation and stuffing them into place in the irregular gaps between the timbers as I went. Working at a constant crouch was harder and slower work than I had anticipated, and I soon had a sweat up. Minute particles of fibreglass worked themselves up my sleeves and under my collar, sticking to my skin. In case they were carcinogenic I breathed through my nose. Little fragments of pink lodged in my nostril hairs.
That’s the problem with working for yourself. The pay is lousy, the conditions suck, and the boss couldn’t give a flying continental about safety. The job should only have taken an hour but with all the fiddling around I must have lost track of the time. Down below the television droned on, constant and indistinct.
It was just as I was reaching over to jam the last batt into place in the tight angle beneath the eaves that something cold and hard struck me on the back of the head. A wave of nauseating giddiness roared in my ears and I toppled forwards, arms scrabbling uselessly in the air. A vice of jagged metal clamped hard around my neck, pinning me so I could neither sit nor stand. Everything went black.
The next thing I knew, a cool clamminess was washing over my face. I blinked rapidly and opened my eyes. Everything was still black. I felt panic surge, then abate as I realised what had happened. I had lost my balance and punched my head clear through the metal roof, jamming my neck in the hole. The darkness was the night which had fallen unnoticed around me. From the shoulders down I was locked in a painful crouch. From the chin up I was John the Baptist on a platter. By twisting my neck against my rough iron collar, I could just make out the street below, deserted but for a handful of parked cars. Far off on the horizon, the illuminated cranes and rising tower blocks of the city winked and glistened, mocking me.
‘Red,’ I screamed at the top of my lungs. At exactly that moment a lashing torrent of rain descended, a pitiless wintry surf. Water cascaded down the corrugations of the iron and ran down the imperfect seal formed by my neck. I crouched helpless, feeling it gushing into my overalls. Over the pounding din I could just hear the ‘Dr Who’ theme seeping upwards, and above that a higher, more insistent sound, the impatient ringing of the telephone.
The choice was between drowning and cutting my own throat. I took the second option. Screwing my eyes shut and gripping a timber cross-piece, I jerked downwards with all my might, nearly ripping my ears off and wincing as I felt my cheeks raked with sharp edges of metal.
The minor haemorrhage that resulted was nothing, however, compared with the cataract that descended onto the newly laid insulation once my head was no longer plugging the hole in the roof. I quickly stripped of my overalls, rolled them into a makeshift plug and stuffed up the hole.
Stuffed up being the operative expression.
When eventually I had staunched the flow of water I climbed down the ladder, bleeding, goose-pimpled and draped with cobwebs. Red glanced up from the idiot box for the merest second, then turned his eyes back to the screen. He had seen his father Do It Yourself before.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ I shouted above the rain pummelling the windows.
Red shrugged and flipped channels. ‘When’s tea?’ he said, crescent moons of sandwich crusts on his lap. ‘I’m starving.’
The refrigerator yielded up a carton of milk, five
Squatting low on the dusty rafters, I began sidling along, cutting sections of the insulation and stuffing them into place in the irregular gaps between the timbers as I went. Working at a constant crouch was harder and slower work than I had anticipated, and I soon had a sweat up. Minute particles of fibreglass worked themselves up my sleeves and under my collar, sticking to my skin. In case they were carcinogenic I breathed through my nose. Little fragments of pink lodged in my nostril hairs.
That’s the problem with working for yourself. The pay is lousy, the conditions suck, and the boss couldn’t give a flying continental about safety. The job should only have taken an hour but with all the fiddling around I must have lost track of the time. Down below the television droned on, constant and indistinct.
It was just as I was reaching over to jam the last batt into place in the tight angle beneath the eaves that something cold and hard struck me on the back of the head. A wave of nauseating giddiness roared in my ears and I toppled forwards, arms scrabbling uselessly in the air. A vice of jagged metal clamped hard around my neck, pinning me so I could neither sit nor stand. Everything went black.
The next thing I knew, a cool clamminess was washing over my face. I blinked rapidly and opened my eyes. Everything was still black. I felt panic surge, then abate as I realised what had happened. I had lost my balance and punched my head clear through the metal roof, jamming my neck in the hole. The darkness was the night which had fallen unnoticed around me. From the shoulders down I was locked in a painful crouch. From the chin up I was John the Baptist on a platter. By twisting my neck against my rough iron collar, I could just make out the street below, deserted but for a handful of parked cars. Far off on the horizon, the illuminated cranes and rising tower blocks of the city winked and glistened, mocking me.
‘Red,’ I screamed at the top of my lungs. At exactly that moment a lashing torrent of rain descended, a pitiless wintry surf. Water cascaded down the corrugations of the iron and ran down the imperfect seal formed by my neck. I crouched helpless, feeling it gushing into my overalls. Over the pounding din I could just hear the ‘Dr Who’ theme seeping upwards, and above that a higher, more insistent sound, the impatient ringing of the telephone.
The choice was between drowning and cutting my own throat. I took the second option. Screwing my eyes shut and gripping a timber cross-piece, I jerked downwards with all my might, nearly ripping my ears off and wincing as I felt my cheeks raked with sharp edges of metal.
The minor haemorrhage that resulted was nothing, however, compared with the cataract that descended onto the newly laid insulation once my head was no longer plugging the hole in the roof. I quickly stripped of my overalls, rolled them into a makeshift plug and stuffed up the hole.
Stuffed up being the operative expression.
When eventually I had staunched the flow of water I climbed down the ladder, bleeding, goose-pimpled and draped with cobwebs. Red glanced up from the idiot box for the merest second, then turned his eyes back to the screen. He had seen his father Do It Yourself before.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ I shouted above the rain pummelling the windows.
Red shrugged and flipped channels. ‘When’s tea?’ he said, crescent moons of sandwich crusts on his lap. ‘I’m starving.’
The refrigerator yielded up a carton of milk, five
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