A NEW BEGINNING
by Richard Banks
It
was Sarah’s idea to buy the Old House. She had had enough of
It was, I told myself, the price to be
paid for a salary that allowed us to reside in a part of
The Old House has definitely seen
better days. Sarah says that when her grandmother was a girl it was the
grandest house in the hundred, a mile out of town and with well tended gardens
the size of three or four fields; but that was then, and many years of decline
have reduced it to the near ruin it is today. The main advantage in buying a
ruin, probably the only one, is that the asking price goes down rather than up. Already low enough to be within our
price range I learned that the local council was considering compulsory
purchase with a view to replacing the house with a housing estate. There was no
time to lose, and when I offered a sum well below the advertised price, the
owners - a distant offshoot of the minor nobility that once lived there -
realised that a low offer was better than an even lower one they couldn’t say no
to.
On completion we put our furniture in
storage and moved into a caravan in the front garden. From there we would sally
out and do everything that was needed. At least that was the plan, but when it
became obvious that the roof was letting in almost as much rain as it was
keeping out we had no choice but to pay a roofer to replace it with a new one.
Unsurprisingly our next discovery was wet rot, and another job for local
industry. But after that it was us, all us, learning the skills that were
needed to do everything else that had to be done.
Even our slow start had not been time
wasted. While the professionals were at work so were we, clearing the long
neglected gardens of chest high brambles, nettles and every other weed known to
man. We slew all before us, including a half dead birch tree which I felled
within a foot of the spot I was aiming at.
Sarah was nervous seeing me, axe in
hand, but she had nothing to be concerned about. As I have told her, the
destruction of my desk was a symbolic act of defiance, nothing more. No harm
was meant, not even to that vulgar, little Yank who was taking my place. I
couldn’t stop him taking my job but he wasn’t having the desk I had sat at for
fifteen years. Some of the old guard cheered me. They stood well back when they
saw what I was about to do, only the Yank came running over and tried to stop
me. Did I mean to hit him when I swung the axe back over my head? Of course
not. I was looking at the desk, not him.
It was all hushed up, of course, for
the sake of the firm, and I received the severance pay that had been agreed,
but the Yank put it about that I was unfit for future employment, and that
ended my career in financial services. But what do I care. Like every man worth
his salt I won’t be kept down; I will come again, reinvent myself, find a new
niche in life. Until then I will restore this house, make it better than ever,
no effort spared, and with new hydraulics throughout the house we were now
ready to install the new kitchen that Sarah had seen, and just couldn’t do
without. Us, just us. Who would have thought it. Even the builder who came
round touting for business could find no fault with what we had done.
It was on returning from Wickes one
afternoon that we came across the new Volvo of my former employer parked at the
top of the driveway outside the conservatory. Any thoughts I had that he had
come with a job offer were soon put to rest. This was a social visit; he was in
the area and thought he would drop by to see if I was, “all right”. Better than
him, I was tempted to say, but didn’t. Even he could see how fit I was, how I
had shed the corporate flab for a leaner, more active me. Sir, or JT as he
likes to be called by senior management, once had a brief fling with my wife.
At least that’s what he thinks happened. The truth is somewhat different.
I first noticed he was attracted to
Sarah at the firm’s annual dinner and dance. It was while I was dancing with
his wife, Lady Yiewsley – surely a sign that I was under serious consideration
to replace my old boss in accounts – that they discovered a mutual interest in
the opera. He had a pair of tickets for Figaro at Covent Garden, and as his
dear wife was out of town that evening and unable to attend, he wondered
whether Sarah would like to fill a seat that otherwise would be unused. Knowing
his reputation Sarah played for time. She would, she told him, have to check
her diary and promised to get back to him on the mobile number he gave her.
Having reported all this to me we
thought a night at the opera was not an unreasonable price to pay for what
would hopefully be another step up the greasy pole. With the promotion still
not decided the opera was followed by dinner at the Ritz when Lady Yiewsley was
again out of town and I was in
So, what is he doing here unchaperoned
- not to see me I wager? Does he really think that after all these years he can
rekindle their imagined affair? What a pathetic, deluded little bore he is and
yet Sarah’s surprise at seeing him has no trace of the deep distain she should
be feeling. Indeed she appears perfectly at ease in his company. Has she
forgotten all that happened; how when the merger was agreed he abandoned me,
cast me aside like I was of no value or use, while he stayed on as Chairman.
Betrayal it was, brutal betrayal!
Sarah casts an anxious glance in my
direction. This is dragging me back when I was doing so well. I take a deep
breath. Sarah slips a pill into my hand and suggests that I show JT the garden.
She knows I’m better outside. More deep breaths. It’s going to be OK I tell
myself. Inadvertently I say this out loud. He thinks I’m referring to the
garden. He raises an eyebrow at the pyramid of wood and other combustibles
towering over what was once the
The door is open and I invite him in
for a glass of the double malt I say is inside. There is no malt, nothing
inside but my garden tools and the axe.
*****
Sarah says that I must steady myself,
that it wasn’t my fault. He had no right to be here. What has happened is
unfortunate, a setback, but nothing that need do us any harm. No one heard him
scream and, more than likely, no one saw him turn into the driveway. It will be
our secret and, if we don’t panic, no one will ever know but ourselves.
She has already moved his car into the
garage where it can’t be seen and checked his mobile to make sure there’s
nothing on it about us. With luck he will have told no one of his intention to
visit. If the police should come we will say that JT paid us a courtesy call
and departed within an hour. If they don’t, we do nothing, nothing at all but
enjoy our new life. Anyway, what can they do without a body?
Already we have doused it with petrol
and pushed it into the mounting tip of rubbish that will be his funeral pyre.
Tomorrow we will set it on fire and reduce everything to dust and ashes. It
will be yet another step in our new beginning. In death, as in life, we triumph
yet again.
Copyright Richard Banks
Another Fiendishly clever plot Richard. Well written!
ReplyDeleteA very good read, perhaps I will invite my boss to ispect my garden shed!
ReplyDelete