Darkmans

Volume…uh…

Up

Were our ancestors all just thoroughly unadventurous? Were they obstinately – neurotically, even – attached to mounds and to hillocks? Was it merely a question of safety (of finding the best site to defend against the marauding invader)? Or was the population so tiny back then that they never felt the urge (there was simply no call) to build in these left-over places?

Finally (and here’s the rub) did they perhaps know something about the kinds of environments best suited for human habitation? Had they worked out this equation themselves, over time, through a system of trial and error? Did they have more respect for the pitfalls of nature? Did they understand the land? And then did we –

Those damn politicians –

And those evil-bastard, money-grabbing contractors –

– just conveniently resolve not to understand? To forget all the lessons they’d learned, and to build on these marginalised sites anyway (while offering a swift –

arrogant

– but mechanical nod to that delightfully infallible modern double-act of ‘progress’ and ‘technology’?

Infallible, that is, until they’ve got your damn money).

The bottom line (the programme stated) was that available sites were often empty for perfectly good reasons. If there wasn’t landfill somewhere in the general vicinity (oozing a terrifying cocktail of poisonous gases out into the stratosphere), then there would definitely be water.

That horrible, interminable drip, drip, drip…

Elen and Isidore lived in a New Build. It was set in a slight dip (a little saucer), and she absolutely hated it. She’d always loathed New Builds (she’d never made any bones about this fact. At root – Isidore carped – she was a snob. ‘So are you,’ she’d say, ‘but just of a different kind.’).

Of course a tiny part of her quite liked the idea of something new, something virgin, but it was only a very small part, and it was dramatically overshadowed by the general thrust of her opinion –

Unfashionable, maybe…

– that something’s intrinsic value was inversely proportional to its longevity –

The blackened frying-pan

The antique, diamond cuff-links

The family Bible

It’d been a sacrifice, but she’d made it in all good faith. She’d moved there for Isidore –

Clean slate,

New broom

– but it rapidly came between them. And the reasons? So far she’d tabulated 77 –

77 flaws

And while she knew that it was unhelpful, she simply couldn’t stop herself. She kept an on-going list, in chalk, on a small blackboard in the kitchen –

Day sixty-four:

The garage door is sticking…

– and every entry (in tinier and tinier writing, towards the bottom) caused her husband immeasurable suffering. But she kept on tabulating.

73 had just been insignificant things (a chip in the woodwork, a cracked tile, the oven grill not wired-in properly). Four had been fundamental:

1. The dip (obviously). The autumn after they’d moved in, the entire front garden had flooded. And it didn’t drain properly. And this had affected the front fascia. There was a great deal of mould. Black, dark green.

2. A crack in the kitchen. It wasn’t horizontal (like all good cracks should be). It zig-zagged, like a child’s drawing of lightning, and Isidore now thought –

Oh, great…

– that there might be a problem with one of the supporting walls.

3. The window-sills on the front of the house hadn’t been fixed in properly (hadn’t been made good). If you pulled at them, they either wobbled alarmingly or simply came away –

Actually came off

– in your hand.

4. The roof. It didn’t work. If you stood in the attic, craned your neck and looked up, you could see shafts of light shining in. Dozens of them. And the problem was especially severe around the chimney where the damp had spread lower, had entered the plaster. In Fleet’s room, the wall on the chimney-breast side felt as soft as icing sugar (you could push your fingers straight through the panelling) and the ceiling was starting to mould-up and to sag.

Power and Higson Ltd, the contractors –

All credit to them

– had been very sympathetic. They’d promptly sent around an independent surveyor, and he’d posited the precise sum they’d be willing to invest on ‘making good’. But they were well behind schedule, and it was winter, and their workers were all fully occupied in maintaining the build elsewhere –

Oh. Dear.

So they provided Isidore with a list of approved contacts for local firms who might – they believed – be able to do a good job. He left about thirty messages. He received only two responses. In both instances nobody was available to come over and even assess the job for the following two months.

He grew desperate. He pulled out the Yellow Pages and thumbed his way through the relevant section –

Uh…

A Priori Builders Ltd –

Okay…Uh…So that’s…

He tapped in the digits, and waited…

Damn.

Engaged.

His finger hovered – for the briefest of moments – over the redial button, but his eyes scanned onward…