Apr 25, 2008
The houses that the more prosperous settlers built for themselves were modelled after the English country mansion style with two storeys, dormer windows and steep gables. In England the steepness was perhaps necessary in a roof composed of slates, and it would also have helped to shed the snow. Here, where snow was a rarity, and where corrugated iron was the universal roofing material it made no sense except in terms of style. However, corrugated iron had to be painted, and as the pitch was too steep even for a chimpanzee to cling to, recourse was had to a “roof ladder” to support the painter and his paint. The roof ladder consisted of a broad plank across which were nailed cleats of three by two to stand on. and to rest the tin of paint on. At the top end of the plank a piece of four by two was nailed to its underside so that it could hook over the roof ridge. Roof ladders were usually made of scrap timber, and were often built without great care or precision. Painters were not carpenters.
Skip was a rather reticent botany student in the days in the 1950’s when education was free. That is to say that the government paid for the universities, except for a modest fee of twenty pounds or so to discourage the frivolous poor, and unless you were scholarship material, which Skip wasn’t, you found casual work during the vacations to earn enough to keep you alive through the term. Skip got a job working for a painter of stately homes.
Professional painters are often inclined to be rather defensive, particularly when confronted by those they imagine to be better educated than themselves. They are therefore suspicious of students, preferring to write them off as idle and unskilled wasters. Students don’t think much of painters either. Skip had enough sense to keep his opinion of painters to himself, but relations between employer and employee were less than cordial from the beginning. They weren’t helped by the fact that Skip had been blessed with a patch of high colour on each cheekbone, and this, in combination with his intense pale blue eyes, gave him the appearance of being either acutely embarrassed, or on the verge of saying something smart Alec. The boss inclined to the smart Alec interpretation.
Anyway it came about that Skip found himself on a bright summer morning, on a roof ladder with a tin of red paint, atop a stately home, painting and whistling and generally at peace with life. The boss had found something that needed doing in town and sound of his little truck departing down the gravel drive only added to the air of wellbeing. Skipwas making good progress, the paint was going on well, and he was only slightly put out when a seabird flew over and cast offensive matter on his fresh paintwork. In a playfull mood he expressed his disapproval by making an ineffectual swipe with his paintbrush at the departing bird. And in that he made an error of judgement. One of the nails holding the top four by two pulled out in response to the sudden movement, and the roof ladder swivelled sideways, casting the tin of paint, and Skip, onto the new paintwork. Even without having the tin of paint tipped over it, the roof was much too slippery to cling to, and Skip only avoided a thirty foot fall to the ground by grasping the spouting as he went over the edge. It cut his fingers somewhat, but it arrested his flight.
His momentum however, was more than the spouting could support, and he heard the ping, ping as the spouting pulled out of its brackets and formed a V which collected the spilt paint and poured it onto the top of his head. He hung there for a while, waving his legs and descending by degrees. He was getting pretty desperate, when his sandshoe touched something solid. It proved to be the handrail around an upstairs balcony. With a sigh he released his hold on the spouting and, grasping instead the ancient virginia creeper that graced the old house, he let himself down onto the balcony.
The balcony opened onto an upstairs sitting room, occupied at that time by the dowager widow of the household. She was a wiry little woman in her eighties, fond of dogs and some children. But she had in her time fought fire and flood, cattle stampedes and plagues of mice, and she was still a force to be reckoned with. The sight of this scarlet apparition with the pale blue eyes, entering from the balcony as if to make his way downstairs shocked her but did not defeat her. She put down her needlework and rose to her feet, shouting and shooing fearlessly, as she would have done had she been confronted by a maverick steer. Skip, already shaken, retreated to the balcony, but she followed him, hurling objurgations and threatening him with a darning needle.
He retreated further, over the balcony rail and down the virginia creeper. Alas! It came away in his hands, and as he fell to the driveway it came completely adrift and fell in a great swathe around and over him. He was still extricating himself when he heard the sound of tyres on the gravel, announcing the boss’s return.
“You’re sacked!” screamed the boss, bounding out of his truck as soon as it had stopped.
Skip said he had been thinking of leaving anyway.