Bricking It (19 page)

Gerard, on the other hand, is funny, insightful and thoroughly fascinating to talk to.

And did I mention the blue eyes?

They’re quite magnificent as well.

‘Can I say something that you might find a little . . .
persona
l
?’
he says to me, after finishing an anecdote about his elderly mother’s penchant for aerobics that has me guffawing like a madwoman for a good couple of minutes.

‘Yeah, okay.’ I reply a little uncertainly, still chuckling at the image of a rambunctious seventy-three-year-old woman in Lycra at a spinning class.

‘I think you have no idea who you actually are.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’

I wasn’t expecting that. I thought he was going to tell me I had a nice nose – or that I sound like a hyena when I laugh.

‘You think you’re two steps away from a meltdown, and that you’re not a strong person,’ Gerard continues, his deep blue eyes fixed on my face intently. ‘I think that ex of yours did you a lot of damage, and if I ever met him, I think I’d pull his kidneys out.’

I blink a couple of times. No one has ever offered to do brutal and amateur surgery on Simon before. The thought has a definite appeal. ‘Thank you, Gerard,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not sure I’m quite as tough as you think I am, but thanks for saying so anyway.’

Gerard holds a finger up. ‘And beautiful, Miss Daley! You are also quite, quite lovely to look at.’

There go my knees. Traitorous bloody things that they are. It’s a good job I’m sitting down.

I’m also apparently leaning forward in my seat to get closer to Gerard.

This is very strange. I’m not doing it consciously. It’s just happening without my say so. It’s almost as if my body has had quite enough of my timid brain and is taking matters into its own hands.

Gerard’s eyes go a little wide, but then he leans towards me too.

From the outside this all looks astronomically awkward I’m sure. I don’t recommend attempting a first kiss in a foldaway camp chair. There’s an unwholesome amount of straining and lurching involved that doesn’t lend itself to passionate romance in the slightest. Nevertheless, our lips are now almost touching.

‘Er, hello?’ Corporal Smith says from beyond the police tape.

I jump a mile.

Gerard and I both instantly lean back away from the kiss and look up at Smith, who has the good grace to look extremely awkward. ‘Um. Sorry to interrupt. Thought I’d better let you know that we’ve finished with the sweep.’

‘Already?’ I say in disbelief. ‘I thought you said it could take a
week
?’

‘I did, but the land has been easier to scan than I thought it would.’ He smiles. ‘Job’s done!’

Excellent!

For a moment I forget that this man has ruined my first kiss with a man in years. He’s just given me some very good news, after all. ‘You mean we can get back in the house
today
?’ I ask him excitedly.

‘Yep. We can be packed up in an hour.’

‘Thank you, Corporal Smith!’ I turn back to Gerard, who is looking faintly disappointed. ‘Isn’t that great, Gerard?’

‘Yes. That’s wonderful,’ he says, sounding more than a little forced.

‘Er, there’s something else,’ Corporal Smith says. ‘We didn’t find any more shells, but we did find
something
.’

‘What?’ I ask, wondering what the hell he’s on about.

‘I think—I think you should come and look for yourself,’ Smith suggests. ‘We put it in the living room for you.’

I look down at a large black trunk, encrusted with mud.

‘Where did you find it?’ I ask Smith.

‘Down the right-hand side of the house, close to the fence. Private Carmichael picked it up on his detector. We all held our breath for a quite a while before we got it unearthed. Thought it could have been another bomb. Turned out to just be this trunk, though.’

‘People have a habit of hiding things away in this house,’ Gerard remarks from beside me. ‘First all that stuff from up the chimney, and now this.’

He has a point. I still have no idea who secreted all the kinky stuff up that chimney. Maybe the same person is responsible for burying this trunk?

‘Is there anything in it?’ I ask the corporal.

Smith smiles. ‘Oh yes!’

He flips the trunk lid open to reveal a very old projector and four cans of film.

‘Good god!’ Gerard exclaims. ‘It’s an old 8 millimetre! A Bell & Howell if I’m not mistaken!’

‘You know about these things?’ I ask him, gobsmacked.

He rolls his eyes. ‘I work for the BBC, Hayley. We’re pretty much required to be steeped in useless knowledge about this type of stuff. Never ask me to tell you about eight-track recording. You’ll want to kill yourself within five minutes of me opening my mouth.’

He pulls the projector out of the trunk. It looks exactly the way you’d expect an old film projector to look. Two big wheels on top, big camera lens at the front, lots of complicated-looking switches and spindles on the side.

Gerard examines the thing for a few seconds. ‘It’s in very good nick,’ he says at last. ‘That trunk must have been pretty much airtight. Even the power cord still looks fine. I’d have to rewire it with a modern plug, but other than that, it’d be good to go.’

‘Do you think it’ll work?’ Corporal Smith asks, apparently caught up in the excitement of the find.

Gerard shrugs. ‘I have no idea. There’s no electricity here yet, so I don’t think we could get it working anyway.’

‘You could fire the generator up,’ I respond. Even I’m curious to see whether this antique still works or not. ‘There’s an extension cord over there. You could plug it in and have a go.’

Gerard’s eyes light up, as do Corporal Smith’s.

Within a few minutes Fred’s generator is up and running, Gerard has found a modern plug and rewired the power cord, and the projector has been propped up on one of the stepladders that lie around the house.

‘It’s got power!’ Gerard says with excitement, examining the side of the projector. ‘We could actually get this thing working!’

I look through the four round metal cans of film inside the trunk. Two aren’t labelled, and the film looks to have crumbled to dust, but two are in better condition, with the film still intact. They both have scuffed and faded black lettering on the outside of the can. One says ‘A Special Evening’ and means nothing to me, but when I read what’s written on the other, my excitement levels sky rocket. ‘Oh my God,’ I say breathlessly.

‘What is it?’ Gerard asks.

I hold up the film can to show him the title on the side of it.

‘“Genevieve in the Summer Garden”,’ Gerard reads. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Genevieve was my grandma’s name,’ I tell him. ‘This is a film of my grandmother!’

His eyes go wide. ‘Fantastic!’ He holds out a hand. ‘Let’s get it in the projector and see if it runs.’

I hand the film can over with one shaking hand. This is
incredible
. There’s every chance that I am about to see my grandmother fifty years ago, when she wasn’t that much older than I am now.

And the house! I’ll get to see the house before it fell apart!

I stand nervously chewing on one fingernail while Gerard goes through the complicated business of spooling the film into the projector. After ten minutes of swearing and grunting he announces that it’s ready to go. ‘It might not look very bright,’ he warns, ‘but this room is quite dark and the plaster on the walls is white, so we should see something. If the projector works.’

‘What about sound?’ Corporal Smith asks.

‘Oh yes, these old beauties had sound on them as well. But it might be very bad quality.’ He hovers a finger over the on switch and looks at me. ‘Hold your breath,’ he says, and flicks it.

The projector starts to make a loud, rapid ticking noise as the film starts to feed from one spool, through the projector and onto the other. A bright light erupts from the lens and casts a vaguely square image on the plaster wall in front of it. The picture is a bit blurred, but otherwise Gerard has done a fine job getting the old projector to work.

‘Yes!’ he crows triumphantly.

‘Good bloody show!’ Corporal Smith shouts.

I can’t say anything, as I am transfixed.

In the blurry projector’s image is a summer garden, bathed in warm sunlight.

I was
right
, it
is
the garden here at Daley Farmhouse. The back garden to be precise.

Where now stands a cracked and disused patio, covered in weeds and old bits of rusted garden furniture, there once was a wooden gazebo, covered in trailing vines and flowers. The very same rusty garden furniture is in this shot, only looking in much better shape. Not brand new by any means, but still perfectly useable.

This is a description I could use for the whole house, actually – what I can see of it at least, in this shaky, blurred image. There’s a shabby chic quality to it that I rather like. You can tell it was an old Victorian home, even back then, but it was still in good enough shape to be inhabited. It’d take another fifty years of neglect for it to get to the dilapidated state Danny and I found it in.

In one of the patio chairs sits a woman in a light summer dress. It’s my grandmother. A very young version of my grandmother, anyway, with a neat early 1960s bob haircut. She looks
beautiful
.

‘Now I see where you get your looks,’ Gerard murmurs from my side.

My grandmother smiles, waves at the camera and stands up. ‘How long are you going to do that?’ I hear her say. The sound quality is atrocious, but even through its thick layer of static I can hear how strong and vibrant Grandma’s voice was when she was a young woman. I’ve been so used to hearing her at an old age and beyond, that it comes as a pleasant surprise to listen to her light, young and lyrical tone.

The person on the other side of the camera does not respond, but moves the camera towards her. She laughs, crosses her eyes and pokes out her tongue, and ducks out of shot. The camera wobbles for a moment, before the screen goes black.

‘That’s it,’ Gerard says.

‘Play it again,’ I tell him.

He duly obliges and I once again get to spend a few short seconds with the woman who left me this house in her will – and all the problems and complications that have gone with it. I just wish she were still here for me to thank her.

‘There might be more of her on the other reel,’ Corporal Smith points out.

‘Of course!’ Gerard agrees, and starts to replace the first old roll of film with the second.

I wait with bated breath to see if Smith is right.

‘Okay, this one is a bit longer,’ Gerard says. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?’ he adds, and flicks the on switch.

What we have is a bedroom. The master bedroom. I can tell by the position of the fireplace off to the left-hand side, and the height of the skirting boards behind the large four-poster bed.

It’s a little hard to stay concentrated on the room’s décor though, given that there is a fat, sweating man of about sixty lying naked on the bed with his arms and legs strapped to the four posts.

‘Bloody Nora!’ Corporal Smith exclaims.

‘Oh my,’ Gerard adds.

I am speechless.

‘I’ve been a bad boy!’ the fat man says to the camera, his large, distended belly wobbling grotesquely as he does so.

‘Yes, you have,’ a voice says from behind the camera.

My breath catches in my throat. That’s Grandma’s voice again!

Sure enough, from the right of the shot my sainted grandmother appears – but this time she’s not wearing a light summer dress. This time she’s wearing a black basque, and a set of stockings and suspenders that must have taken her an hour to get into.

There are many things in life that can traumatise you. Burying a beloved family pet, for instance. A six-inch nail disappearing into your own foot.

But nothing can quite compete with the vision of your grandmother’s pert 1960s bottom, clad in a lacy pair of knickers and sashaying its way over to where an obese old fart is awaiting his punishment.

Said punishment seems to consist of being lightly whipped on the stomach with a riding crop.

‘Oh yes! I’ve been such a naughty boy!’ the fat man wails.

‘Yes, you have!’ Grandma replies in a husky voice, slapping the riding crop across his gut one more time.

All three of us are transfixed, unable to move.

I’m horrified. Gerard is shocked. I’m hoping and praying Corporal Smith isn’t
turned on
.

‘Yes! Yes! Punish me!’ Fatso continues.

Grandma Genevieve stops slapping the obese pervert and leans over him. ‘You know what I think you should do, Clive?’ she asks her captive.

‘What, Mistress Jenny? What should I do?’

‘I think you should eat my panties!’

Oh good God!

‘Turn it off!’ I snap at Gerard. He doesn’t hear me, so I’m treated to the sight of my grandmother seductively pulling her knickers down over the suspenders to reveal her naked bottom. ‘Turn it off!’ I more or less scream at the TV presenter, who is at last shaken out of his horrified reverie by the volume in my voice.

He lunges forward and flicks the off switch on the projector, mercifully ending the 1960s equivalent of
Fifty Shades of Grey
before I have to watch the woman who gave birth to my father stuffing her used underwear into the mouth of some random grey-haired sex pest.

I catch the look on Corporal Smith’s face. He looks vaguely disappointed. I point a finger at him. ‘You! Out!’ I order.

‘But—’

‘I think you should do as she says,’ Gerard tells him, noting my expression.

The soldier takes one last look at the now blank plastered wall before sloping off out of the living room. He doesn’t seem too bothered by my outburst, but then he does spend most of his time around unexploded bombs of a different kind, I suppose.

I stare into space for a moment, trying to process the horrors I’ve just witnessed.

‘Well,’ Gerard begins carefully. ‘That was unexpected.’

My eyes narrow. ‘Getting a tax rebate is
unexpected
, Gerard,’ I tell him. ‘This . . . This is inconceivably horrid.’