Floors were his business. Wooden floors. He prepared them. He restored them. He laid, sanded and varnished them. And he had a sideline in wooden decks, and sheds and verandahs, all of which he designed and then built himself, single-handedly.
He worked hard. Like a demon. He worked until his shoulders locked, until his knees buckled, until his feet swelled and his palms blistered. He believed in work and his work sustained him. It gave him purpose. It gave him nourishment. It gave him reason. And he, in turn, gave it everything.
He embraced activity the way a hungry man embraces his first cup of tepid soup in too many days: with both hands and great satisfaction. He took what he could and was always grateful for it. He had been raised that way: to be proud yet never haughty; to be particular yet never fussy.
He was an old-fashioned creature, by and large, but with exquisitely modern parameters. He liked to do things simply and well, using the same traditional techniques his father had taught him, but twisted, very gently, into the realm of the contemporary. His father had been a boat-builder, just west of Rhyl. His grandfather, too, before him.
He understood wood completely: sheathing, siding, clapboard, cord; walnut, ebony, hickory, beam. He understood wood.
He liked to recycle. He could rip the back and the belly out of an old house (he had deals with local demolition men; they knew his number), the doors, the bannisters, the stairs, the pelmets even (he’d pick the corpse clean and leave it shining –he was meticulous as an ant), and then he’d transform what he’d retrieved into something new.
He tolerated the fashions in flooring, the fads: the pale finishes, the beeswax, the crazy veneers. He was no wood snob, although he knew perfectly well what he preferred, what his tastes were. But he kept his opinions to himself. He was subtle and enigmatic; as discreet as a shadow.
He did not smile secretly over the things people did or said, desired or demanded. He could not sneer. He had mouth and cheeks and chin, like other folk, but no spare space on his face for duplicity. He was straight as the shortest distance between two points.
And yet, for all of his sensitivity, he was not an especially sad or bleak or ruminative character (although others might well consider he had reason to be). He did not mull or muse or muddle miserably through. He was quiet, often. He was calm yet never vacant. He was as sweet and clear as pure rainwater in an ancient well. But it took a special little pail, a strong rope, care, steadfastness, persistence and an awful, long, deep, hard drop before you might finally discover him.
Occasionally, others’ voices echoed down his walls, their cries reverberated, and sometimes pebbles or pennies disturbed the still calm of his surface, made him ripple, briefly. But true and natural light never reflected on his heart. Not a glimpse of it. Not even a glimmer.
He was dark inside, although not in a bad way. He was plain, brown and clean; like peat or coya bark, or fine, rich, fertilizer.
He was just a man, in other words, and nothing less.
They’d been joined by a fourth. The third had been a boy who –Jo couldn’t help thinking –had dramatically overstepped the mark by strolling into the small paved garden, ringing on the bell and then repeatedly hammering with his fist at the window. She’d been alarmed by this behaviour. She’d presumed some invisible rule-book. She’d anticipated complex codes of practice, margins, restrictions, limitations. She’d expected restraint.
Doc also watched the boy closely –a submissive Dennis sitting morosely at his heels –but said and did nothing. When a fourth man arrived though (in his fifties and looking –Jo couldn’t curb the crassness of her assessment –an absolute bloody Trainspotter with his long, grey face, thick glasses, waterproof beanie bearing a preposterous logo –a little fat koala-like creature with the word Gumble written underneath it –plastic rucksack and binoculars), she finally heard Doc mention the boy’s impropriety, and in tones of fairly severe disapproval. They called the boy Patty.
‘Will you say anything, Doc?’ the fourth man asked, gazing over towards Patty bemusedly. ‘He’s absolutely trashing that hydrangea.’
Doc shrugged, ‘Not my responsibility, Hooch. I’m hardly the boy’s keeper.’
The two of them dumbly ruminated upon Patty’s continuing antics for a while, before, ‘Ay ay!’ the fourth man whispered, clumsily adjusting his glasses on the flat, elongated (almost turtlelike) bridge of his snout and squinting furtively across Doc’s right shoulder blade. ‘It looks like somebody else might be squaring up to take the initiative.’
As he spoke he yanked off his rucksack and shoved his hand deep inside of it. He withdrew a pad and a pen.
The enterprising person to whom Hooch referred had silently emerged from the small, rather scruffy-looking mint-green bungalow behind them. He was a man; stem-seeming, handsome, sallow-skinned. A big, brazen creature. Wide-jawed. Gargantuan. A moose.
As they watched, he emerged fully into the sharp morning light, squinting antagonistically into the high winter sky like some kind of hostile, nocturnal organism, turned and slammed his front door (it clicked shut, then immediately swung back open) clumped rapidly over his large, well-constructed American-style verandah, banged down some thick, wooden steps, marched across his wildly Amazonian front garden, out through his gate (again, although he closed it with a satisfying clatter, only seconds later it was yawning insolently behind him), strode along the pavement –passing literally within inches of the three of them –and dashed straight over the road, narrowly avoiding a scooter and a small, battered yellow Volkswagen (the Volkswagen swerving and sounding its horn) without so much as a word, a squeak, a grunt of acknowledgement.
As he moved, Jo noted, a spray of something chalk-like –a fine, dusty aura –seemed to follow in his wake. When she looked harder, she noticed that he wore ancient trousers and a threadbare jumper, both of which were saturated with a diffuse, pale, powdery substance. Flour? She frowned. No. Not white enough. Grit? Nope. Something infinitely lighter. She sniffed the air, cat-like, after his passing. Ah. That was it. Sawdust.
The man-moose, meanwhile, was entering the bungalow’s garden. He was marching across the brick parquet. He was grabbing Patty by the arm. He was towering above him.
Jo drew a deep, gulping breath –as if she’d just been shoved from a mile-high diving board –then gazed down at her shoes, slowly exhaling. Birkenstocks. Brown plastic leather-look. Square-toed. Lace-ups. Cruelty-free.
She found herself inspecting the heel of her left shoe (abstractly observing how the tread was far more worn on the right hand side), while simultaneously straining her two sharp ears for any vaguely audible scraps of conversation.
What could he possibly be saying?
Initially a couple more cars passed by, drowning out everything, and then –damn him, what timing – Doc started talking.
‘Well that’s certainly gone and done it,’ he murmured, turning to Hooch conspiratorially. ‘Happen to know whose house that is?’
Doc’s voice, Jo felt (perhaps even for her benefit), was slightly louder than it had been previously.
‘I don’t know,’ Hooch answered, staring wide-eyed at his mentor, opening his pad and priming his pen in sweet anticipation. ‘Should I, Doc?’
Jo silently noted the obsequious way in which Hooch repeatedly used the Old Man’s name in conversation.
‘Katherine. Katherine Turpin. Remember her?’
Doc pronounced this feminine appellation only seconds before the huge, dusty, moose-like man echoed the self-same three syllables himself during the course of his own conversation.
Jo glanced up from her shoes.
‘Katherine who?’ Hooch quizzed.
‘Katherine Turpin.’
‘Turpin?’