Meaningful Short Stories
The House of Stone
Picture a small stone cottage with half the thatch missing, heat haze and dragonflies over the weed-filled, stagnant pond, in the undulating, slate- and granite-strewn hills of north-west England.
A smallish removals van has parked by the cottage and two men are unloading furniture and tea chests into an outbuilding. Finally they remove three bicycles from the roof rack, lean them against the wall of the shed and heave a sigh of relief.
'Another job done,' said the driver.
'True. Mind you, it's the smallest removals we've done for a long time.'
'Smallest ever, probably. Biggest bikes though. Must be a circus.'
The bicycles, all featuring a lowered crossbar suitable for women cyclists, were indeed huge.
'Their regular proportions don't suggest any connection to a circus, to my mind,' replied the driver's mate.
A car toiled up the steep, rough drive from the road and a woman in a suit emerged. She pulled up the 'Sold' sign, knocked the soil from the spiky end and put it in the boot of her car.
'Have you any idea who bought the place? Where they're from?' she asked the men. The phone code on the side of their van didn't ring any bells.
'We were about to ask you the same thing. Nobody at our end has even seen them. They don't have much, that's for sure,' said one.
'And it's derelict! No one can live here. There's no mains of any description. Not even electricity,' added the other.
'No ideas then?' she persevered. You don't sell houses without learning to persevere.
'Nope. That's the weird thing. All this gear was in a warehouse and no-one there could find any paperwork or remember how long it had been in store.'
After double-checking that they'd unloaded everything, the two men got into their van, scanned the ordnance survey map for the most promising site for a lunch break, and departed. Lunch overlooking a lake and real ale with their sandwiches seemed a bright enough prospect.
As she drove away, the estate agent saw a taxi arriving with three women in the back seat. The blonde one nearest to her looked out and smiled. There were several bags in the taxi with them, and the blonde woman seemed so high in the seat that she must have been sitting on a suitcase. The most surprising component of their luggage was a cage that appeared to contain several hens. The taxi driver stopped by the gate and made tutting noises as he surveyed the steep rough drive up to the house.
'Here's fine,' said Pearl from the back seat.
*
Crystal, the shortest of the three sisters, returned from feeding her hens singing happily. Annie was coming to meet her.
'Hi Crystal. Pearl has finished clearing up the inside of the Circle and needs our help to hang the door. Any eggs today?'
'Yes. Since the chicks started laying we get at least two every day, sometimes as many as five. Their parents - I mean the older hens - still lay a few, but they must be due a break soon. I do wonder if we could keep some ducks; especially now the pond's cleared of weeds and running fresh water. Ducks don't stop and start like hens, and we'd likely have some fresh eggs nearly all the year round.'
'Good idea. No doubt there'll be a market nearby, or a notice in a local shop. People with ducks always have fertile eggs for sale, I think.'
'We could ask Cheerful Chas!' suggested Crystal.
Annie grimaced. It seemed to be her lot to deal with visits from Chas, a middle-aged man from nearby who called in to check they were doing things 'proper' and then inform Annie that they weren't.
'You could ask Pearl about Chas! She'll know what to do,' suggested Crystal.
'I will.'
They peered inside the Circle - their name for the circular livestock house that Pearl was transforming into a tiny hall. Pearl was singing one of Annie's songs while she absent-mindedly dusted.
Annie was always spellbound when she entered the Circle. The light inside was calming and atmospheric. Pearl had fitted four stained glass windows of her own design and multihued beams of sunlight shone at an angle down onto the floor. At some stage in the last century or so dark red brick tiles had been laid on the floor, when the building had changed use from a cattle shed to a store, and these had cleaned up surprisingly well. Even these sturdy tiles were worn around the doorway where several generations of people had carried crops to and fro. Mainly apples, Annie thought, judging by the size of the overgrown orchard.
Pearl's sculpting materials, paints and an easel were arranged for the most suitable light, and the space felt pregnant with possibilities.
'Do you call this work?' Crystal quipped.
Pearl stopped to consider, and smiled.
'If I called it work, do you think it would answer?'
Annie and Crystal both laughed.
'I doubt it,' said Crystal.
'The door, being several inches thick and solid, ancient oak, is rather heavy,' Pearl explained.
'You're telling me,' said Annie. Pearl had finished sanding it down and removing traces of its bovine history, but it was huge. No doubt a bull had been secure behind this door and had no trouble leaving the building once it was open. About five feet by seven, Annie estimated.
They carried it outside and levered it upwards a bit at a time using blocks as resting points, and slipped the hinges onto the bolts. The bolts were driven into ancient timber door posts set into the walls of whitewashed cob - a mixture of clay, small stones and straw that was often used for livestock dwellings in times gone by. Then Chas arrived.
Pearl slipped away to the cottage as she heard him coughing his way up the slope towards the circle.