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Franz Schubert - March Militaire
Woody has arrived for a glass of red and a peek at the dollhouse. At first, he doesn’t see it, even though he nearly tripped over it; the thing takes up half the kitchen.
“Well, would you look at this,” says Woody, giving the roof a dad-shake. “You’ve really got a project going here. The roof is nearly done. What are these, tongue-depressors you cut down to make shingles? What is it with roofs being a theme in your life?”
“You remember! We don’t know why, but the fact that you remember makes us so happy, we could cry.”
“Jiminy Cricket on a cracker, Kettlecorn! How could I forget? I feel I was there when the TV antenna crashed down on your childhood house and scraped a bunch of shingles off the roof. You could see daylight when you went into the attic, you said. There’s more, but I like it better when you tell the story.”
“This part I like to tell people when they’ve had too much to drink. They’re incredulous, as they should be, but by the time they’ve keeled over for the night and have woken the next day, they have a hazy sense of a story that they can’t quite recall. And then we’re off the hook.”
“YTA, Kettlecorn.”
“AITA, or do you want to hear the story again? Drink up.”
“NTA.”
We pour Woody another glass – it’s Lambrusco, cheap by some standards but trendy by others.
“We went up into the attic, which was an adjunct to our bedroom. We both loved and hated that room. It looked charming, really, wallpapered in giant cabbage roses. To the right of the bed, if you were lying in it, was an inset bookcase. And if you pushed the bookcase, it opened into an attic. Auld Owny promised us that he’d turn that attic into a secret playroom.
It never happened, as you know. What happened instead was a thunderstorm, a lightning strike, a high wind, the crash of the antenna, and the loss of several roof shingles. It bothers us that some of the details are missing, but we know how to embellish to our favour. We like to say we were able to see daylight when we went in the attic, and we certainly know that Auld Owny never repaired the roof, even when Ruth begged him. ‘There’s no money for that,’ he’d scowled. When she mentioned it again, he walked out of the room. So – was he planning his retreat already? Some say yes. Bram does, but Bram likes to be the one who figures out nefarious behaviour and the path towards doom.
Here’s the part you enjoy, the addendum. We realised that Auld Owny was never going to repair the roof and was planning to fly the coop with a mistress. The two events are intrinsically linked. We saw pain etched on Ruth’s face. Shock. We were impatient with her, like any decent teen, but our impatience suffered into fury. We took a tire iron and poked holes in the attic ceiling so that the question of seeing the glint of daylight was no longer a question. We poked holes that were so -shall we say - generous, that water streamed down the living-room windows when it rained. At the sound of the first pattering of raindrops, Ruth and I ran to the kitchen to retrieve our collection of ice-cream buckets and line the windowsills. We will never forget the sound, the insistent plunking into the plastic tubs. And when the tubs overflowed, puddles formed and a small lake filled the room. We bought paddles, telling the salesman at Aikenhead’s that we’d be back for a canoe later.
It’s a nice twist, you must admit: a brazen lass flinging open the attic door – a hidden room behind a bookcase, no less! – then with studied deliberation: poke, poke, poking between the rafters until she could see stars shining back at her. And on rainy days, she had a lake.
No one questions us. They do not dare. That a tire iron could push beyond layers of roofing material and shingles is ludicrous, but it makes for a wonderful example of tenacity. Braveheart revisited.
Who wants to hear of the rolling of eyes and quiet resignation? We prefer the alternate universe to the real one in which Ruth nudges us, sighs, ‘If I could buy him out, honey, I would. Our time here is done. By the time the roof is ready to drop, we’ll have moved to a new home.’ If she was unhappy about the inevitability of moving, she did not show it. She saw the departure as a new and exciting adventure. ‘We might find a nice little place on the Island. I’ve heard of a building where tenants have dinner parties together on the weekends. We’ll have fun, and believe me, we could use a little fun.’
