It was one of those jobs that a young tradie like me dreamed of when he first started his own business, a renovation of an old family home in an affluent suburb. I knew the house and its owner because I'd worked there before when my old boss did the maintenance on it before he retired.
The Sampson family had lived here since the current owner's great-grandfather built it some hundred years ago, its federation styled gable ends either side of the veranda that lead to the heavy wooden front door with diamond lead lined windows either side. A paved agapanthus lined driveway led from the wrought-iron front gates to the garage set just behind the rear corner of the house. There was a covered walkway linking the two buildings. The garage was the focus of this job, a victim of the ever-widening vehicles of today. It was a tight squeeze getting the car into the garage let alone that once inside the doors wouldn't open far enough for the driver or passengers to get out of it, so the old garage was coming down and in its place a new one in the same style as the old one, but wider.
Roland Sampson occupied this house with his second decorative wife, his first decorative having grown tired of doing not a lot in the leafy serenity of this affluent suburb, having found herself not accepted by the 'old money' ladies whose tennis days, bridge afternoons and morning teas occupied their time fully. The fact that she was young, decorative and not from an 'old money' family was against her from the very beginning, the general rule being that one is not advised to marry outside one's class. The current and decorative Juliette Sampson had not been around long enough to become ostracized, but she was getting there.
There was only one car in the driveway, her Mazda MX5, so I parked my truck out front and walked to the front door. The Westminster chimes echoed through the house on my pushing the button and eventually the image of a wavy figured became visible through the diamond glass. The door opened revealing the robe clad figure of the lady of the house. "Oh it's you, I wasn't expecting you for hours."
"It's going to be a hot one today so I thought that I'd get an early start." The Weather Bureau had predicted forty degrees with a hot northerly wind, it was going to be uncomfortable.
"Oh," she grabbed her car keys from the hall stand and handed them to me, "could you move it for me, I can't be seen outside dressed in my robe, what would the neighbours think?" I detected a note of cynicism in her voice. It felt strange sitting in her little sports car after driving my truck. I parked it out front and reversed my truck up the driveway before returning her keys.
My first task was to remove the timber double doors and they stubbornly refused to co-operate. There were several coats of paint covering the heads of the screws holding the hinges and it took several minutes to clear this out before I could unscrew them and even this was a problem, the screws had lived in the timber for a long time and my reversing electric drill wouldn't even start to move them so it was back to the old methods and this was to prove to be the rule rather than the exception so it was after lunch before the roof was off and the brick walls and the skeletal roof frame were all that was left.
I was sitting in the shade, my back against a large tree munching on my brought from home sandwich when she came out the back door carrying a jug of cold drink and a couple of glasses. "Do you mind if I join you? It looks pleasant out here in the shade."
"Sure, pull up a tree." I didn't expect her to, there being an outdoor setting a couple of metres away but she did, and she sat next to me her shoulder touching mine. I heard the sound of her pouring a glass of drink from the jug and her hand moved across as she handed it to me. "Thank you, I need something like this, I was starting to think about water from the tap."
"I couldn't allow that to happen. How long will you be here today?"
"A couple of hours, all I have to do is to knock down the frame and then I can load the timber onto my truck and take it to the recycle yard on my way home."
"Would you like some help?" Wow! This was a bolt from the blue, I would never expect someone in her position to offer to help, the most that I would have expected, given past experience, was the offer of a cup of tea for smoko. (That is what the mid-morning break is called in Australia)
"Thanks for the offer but I couldn't allow you, I wouldn't like to see you hurt." I had visions of her trying to explain to her husband the blistered hands or the splinters that are common when people who aren't used to this work attempt it.
"I've done this sort of thing before, do you have a spare hard hat?"
"I have to insist that you can't do this."
"And I have to insist that I want to help." What could I say, I grabbed a spare hard hat and tossed it to her, and she surprised me by deftly catching it by the chinstrap and putting it on. "How do I look?" She said, striking a pose.
"Like a contestant in one of those reality TV shows where they get rank amateurs and get them to carry out a renovation project for our amusement."
She threw the hard hat at me and headed indoors to return minutes later in an old pair of jeans and tee shirt, pulling on a pair of gloves as she strode across the lawn. She grabbed the hard hat, adjusted it to fit her head and plonked it on. "Okay boss, where do we start?"
"For the moment just stand back, I'm going to knock the rafters from the top plate and with a bit of luck the whole lot will collapse in a heap inside the garage and the nails will be rusty enough that the timber will separate and make it easy for us." I climbed the ladder I had placed against the outside wall and began to prize the rafters free. As I worked my way along the wall, the roof rafters, without the joists to keep them together, began to sag in the middle until with a crash the whole lot collapsed in a cloud of dust into the garage. Juliette emerged from the dust cloud coughing and spluttering and trying to wipe the grime from her face. "Don't rub your eyes."
"But I can't see."
"If you rub them you'll make them worse, come with me." I led her to the hose tap. I turned it on and ran the water until the heated water in the hose had cooled down. "Now try to keep your eyes open." I ran water into them to flush out the dust. "How does that feel?"
"Better thank you." I took a clean handkerchief from my pocket and passed it to her, she dried her face and smiled at me. "Apart from the dust that was fun."
"Just wait until we get to knock down the brick walls, now that'll be fun." I realized after I had said this that I had included her.
"I can't wait!" She looked down at her soaked tee shirt, it was fairly obvious that she wasn't wearing a bra because her nipples were standing out and there was no sign of any means of support. "Oops," she caught me looking at them, "I didn't mean for that to happen." She made no attempt to cover up.
"Do you want to change?"
"No, it'll dry out soon enough. Now what do we do?"
"We pick up this timber and load it onto the truck so I can drop it off on my way home and if there's time I want to make a start on the brick walls, they should come down easy enough. I want to clean the bricks and re-use them for the new garage and I can pick up some second hand clinkers to match so that the new garage will look like the old one and blend in with the house." (Clinker bricks are clay bricks that were closest to the walls of the kiln so they were over-baked and very hard, dark in colour with an almost glazed appearance with some irregularities that gave them character)
I began picking up the roof timbers and pulling any nails out of them and stacking them ready to load. Juliette was picking up timbers and bringing them to me to save me gathering them myself and in about half an hour we were ready to load. I showed her how to lift one end of the timber onto the tray of the truck and then pick up the other end and slide it in. By the time we had finished loading and tying the load down we were both sweaty and covered in dust. I picked up the hose and turned it on pouring water over my head and over my shoulders, it felt good and cooling. "Okay stud, when you've finished showing off your six pack I'm sweaty and dirty too." I turned the hose on her expecting her to squeal and turn away but she stood there as I hosed her hair and shirt until she was clean.
I turned the hose off and while I was coiling it up I felt her hand on my shoulder. I stood to face her not knowing what to expect but I guess I was hoping for. . . . "I'm going to get us a drink so that we can cool down, I don't know about you but I was getting a little hot there, not that it bothered me." She touched my face with a hand and reached up to kiss me. Now that's what I was hoping for. When she returned it wasn't with the expected soft drink, she had a stubby (375ml bottle) of beer in each hand and was still wearing her wet tee shirt. Hell man what's happening here, I'm doing this job for her husband who I know from previous jobs and here's his new wife coming on to me big time. I took the bottle from her and poured a generous amount of amber down my parched throat. "You like beer do you?"
"Not all the time but at a time like this beer is as good as anything. When's Roland due home?"
"Not for hours, he plays squash on the way home Mondays so I won't see him until late, I'll probably be in bed asleep when he gets in after today's effort, I haven't worked this hard for a long time, not since high school when I helped my father when he was busy."
"Your father's a builder?"
"No, he was a plumber but he died in an accident, someone hadn't slung a load properly and it dropped about twenty metres onto him, he wouldn't have felt anything."
"I'm sorry." I didn't know what else to say to her.
"It's alright now. I'm just about over it but I did miss him there for a long while, we were close, I was the nearest thing to the son he never had, and I probably would have gone into the trade if it hadn't been for his accident. How long have you been doing this?"
"I did my apprenticeship with the builder that did work here for years and a couple of years ago he decided to retire so I sort of inherited his customers."
"So you would have known my predecessor then?"
"I met her only once, just before she left your husband, she wasn't a happy little vegemite (this comes from the advertising slogan for a yeast spread beloved by Australians but nowhere else) ."
"I can understand that, the ladies of this district can be a little standoffish but it doesn't bother me, if they have a problem associating with a plumber's daughter that's their problem."
"Doesn't it bother your husband that you aren't accepted by the in crowd?"
"Nothing bothers him he's a world unto himself. I guess when you have as much money as he has people have to respect him."
"So money doesn't do it for you?" I was getting the feeling that she wasn't happy in her marriage.
