Chapter 45
‘The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.’
The first hammer struck the wall at eight o’clock on a grey Monday morning, and with it the quiet life of The Black Horse officially ended.
For years the old pub had sat at the edge of the village, abandoned. Now it shuddered awake under the mallets and shovels of Igor and his team, who seemed to relish the catharsis of demolition before the careful work of renovation could begin.
The noise was deafening and relentless. Layers of rot were ripped away, nails screeching under the crowbar’s pressure as they were prised from wood and stone. Dust rose in billowing clouds that drifted through the frigid air.
I stood in the middle of it all wearing a hard hat, a mug of coffee in my hand.
Across the room, Igor stood with his hands on his hips, studying the dividing wall between the old snug and the bar.
He tapped at the plaster with the handle of his hammer, frowned, then stepped back to examine the ceiling above.
Running a hand slowly along the cracked plaster, he gave the wall a thoughtful shove.
A shower of plaster rained down from the beam overhead.
Maybe I’d made a catastrophic mistake in starting all this.
He walked over to me, wiping his hands on his overalls with the calm air of a surgeon preparing to deliver unwelcome news. He had worked on one of Dom’s London pubs recently, and after surviving that experience he had ended up here.
‘We have small situation,’ he said.
‘That sounds ominous.’
He nodded towards the wall. ‘This one is not just wall.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah.’
‘Plans say non-structural. But old buildings lie.’
He crouched down and pointed upward with his hammer.
‘It is helping hold up floor above. If we take it out like this…’ He made a gentle collapsing motion with both hands.
‘And the upstairs…?’ I prompted.
He considered the correct English word.
‘Shift.’
A beat. A further furrow of a frown across his forehead.
‘Fall. Bam!’ He clapped his hands together. ‘We reinforce beam,’ he added. ‘Steel support.’
‘How much work?’
He told me. I felt the first cold stirrings of financial dread settle somewhere behind my ribs.
‘Old buildings,’ he said. ‘They like surprises.’
A window slammed shut in the wind, as if agreeing with him.
I took a long sip of coffee and tried to do the mental arithmetic that had become my constant companion over the past weeks. The budget sat neatly inside a spreadsheet on my laptop in clean columns. My contingency allowance was going to need padding.
By lunchtime the village had begun to notice what we were doing. Cars slowed as they passed. A man walking his spaniel paused for several minutes pretending to examine a hedge. Someone on a bicycle nearly lost their balance doing a double take.
I was in need of a sandwich, so I put Rocky on his lead and headed up the road to the café.
Instead of the young woman who owned it, a woman in her sixties wearing a flowery cardigan stood behind the counter. She had the alert expression of someone who had spent decades observing village life unfold at close range.
She looked up as I entered. ‘Well,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘You must be the one.’
I paused.
‘The one?’
‘The girl with the pub.’
‘Yes. Florence,’ I said, extending my hand. ‘Florence Elliot. Is Lisa having a day off?’
She shook my hand firmly. ‘I’m her mother. Helping out today.’ Her eyes flicked briefly towards the door. ‘I see the builders have started.’
‘Yes. We’re underway.’ I smiled. ‘Please could I get an egg sandwich?’
She reached into the refrigerated counter. ‘Someone said you were in America.’
That stopped me in my train of thought. ‘That’s right. California. I’m glad to be home.’
She nodded slowly, filing the information away for future circulation.
‘Well,’ she said, slipping the sandwich into a bag, ‘running a pub will be different.’
‘I’m counting on it.’
She slid the sandwich across the counter. ‘You sound determined.’
‘Should I be worried?’
‘Not at all,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Villages run on curiosity.’
She leaned slightly closer. ‘You’ll just have to give them something worth talking about.’
Rocky and I walked back with the sandwich bag swinging lightly in my hand, passing the village houses and the locals who would now be watching every move we made. I could almost the feel the weight of their curiosity trailing behind us.
When the pub came back into view the sound of hammering had stopped. That alone was enough to make my stomach tighten. Builders rarely stopped hammering unless something had gone wrong.
I pushed open the temporary plywood door and stepped inside.
The air was thick with debris, the smell of damp timber and plaster hanging heavily in the room.
Igor stood in the middle of the bar with two of his men beside him, all three staring down at the floor where one of the floorboards had been prised up.
‘Please don’t tell me there’s another small situation,’ I said.
Igor looked up. ‘This one… bigger.’
I walked over and looked down.
The joists beneath the floorboards looked like lacework. Pale tunnels ran through the timber and in places the wood had crumbled away entirely.
Igor tapped one gently with the end of his hammer.
The joist disintegrated like foam.
‘Woodworm?’ I asked.
‘And rot.’
‘How much of it?’
He nudged another section with his boot.
The wood crumbled.
‘We replace all of it?’
Igor nodded. ‘Better now than when bar is full of people.’
That was true. It was also several thousand pounds I had not planned to spend.
I took a slow breath and stared down into the floor cavity. Somewhere in the back of my mind the spreadsheet on my laptop quietly rearranged itself again.
Steel beam.
New joists.
Renovation, I was reminded, meant peeling back layers of history and discovering everything that had been quietly holding things together. Or failing to.
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘We fix it?’
I nodded.
‘I order timber,’ he said.
I stepped out into the overgrown garden, sat down on an overturned bucket, and opened my sandwich.
I wolfed it down, uncertain whether it was stress or hunger driving my appetite.
I shared the last bit with Rocky and looked out at the verdant grass, the hedgerows shifting gently in the wind.
It was peaceful out here in the natural world.
The sound of hammering came ringing through the windows again, interrupting my brief moment of solitude. The architect was coming later that week to go over his revisions. Judging by the day so far, he was about to discover they were the least of our problems.