K Parker - Pattern

She wriggled over and hugged him; he managed not to wince at the intrusion into his circle. 'That's so sweet of you,' she said-and for a moment he felt really bad about it, because she was young and beautiful and sweet, and he'd thoroughly enjoyed taking her, in spite of it all. But there was no reason for that, no reason why he shouldn't enjoy his work; mostly it was nasty and unpleasant, and the pleasure he usually got from it was definitely not something to be proud of; something relatively peaceful and normal, like making love to a lovely girl, was definitely an improvement on his usual daily round. Besides, he reassured himself, there's more ways of killing a crow than pulling its neck.

'That's all right,' he said, remembering to play up the part (attention to detail at all times). 'After all, I'm part of the family now, it's worth making the effort.' He yawned. Now he'd got what he wanted, he really would like to get some sleep. 'Come on,' he said, 'snuggle up.' He reached round and started stroking the small of her back, which never failed to put her to sleep. 'Busy day tomorrow,' he added, more to himself than to her. 'With any luck, we'll get the rest of the usable lumber off the old barn, and then we can make a start on the new one.'

She grunted sleepily, while he thought, What was all that about? What old barn? And then he remembered-breaking up the old barn at Colscegsford after the heavy snow caved in the roof, all those years ago. What had put that into his head all of a sudden, he wondered; then he remembered that, too. Same moment, same half-lucid interval between waking and sleep, different girl. Very different girl, but somehow the moment was always the same. He was pleased with himself for thinking that.

'What?' Elja muttered drowsily.

'I was just saying,' Poldarn repeated, 'once we've finished salvaging the lumber, we can make a start on the new barn.'

'Oh,' Elja said, 'right. That's nice. I want to go to sleep now.'

'Sorry.'

'Mphm.' She wriggled away from him, pulling the bedclothes with her. Typical, he thought, as the cold air hit his toes, they all do that (and then he stopped and wondered how he knew that, and who they all had been).

'Elja,' he said.

'Now what?'

'I love you.'

'Love you too,' she mumbled. 'See you in the morning.'

Yes, he thought. And that'll be something to look forward.

Eyvind was up and about early the next morning, still obviously below par but determined to make himself useful. He said good morning amiably enough but didn't stop to talk, and Poldarn was left to guess whether this signified forgiveness, diplomacy or just ingrained good manners.

Of course, Poldarn didn't have a clue how to go about building a barn; but although he'd lost his memory he still had enough common sense to realise that he wouldn't go far wrong if he used the old one as a pattern. So, when nobody was looking, he carefully paced out the distances between the corner posts, cut surreptitious witness marks on the main timbers with his knife and even managed to scratch a ground plan on the back of a bit of broken pot. It wasn't quite the same as having a glorious revelation of how to go about the job, as had been the case with the house itself; but he could see that the shades of his ancestors, while obliged to enable him to put a roof over his head, couldn't be expected to go to the same degree of trouble over a grain store and junk depository.

Dismantling the last few timbers and loading them onto carts took up the morning and most of the afternoon, and they finished unloading in the dark. Next day, it rained hard and if he'd had any say in the matter they'd have stayed indoors, but apparently he didn't; so they had to lay out and mark up with rain in their eyes and water trickling down the backs of their necks. Progress was slow, mistakes were made; Root, one of the Haldersness field hands, slipped in the mud while supporting a cross-beam, which fell and hit Eyrich, the Colscegsford wheelwright, on the point of the shoulder, breaking his collarbone. That held things up for a long time, and although nothing was said, even Poldarn could feel the tension it caused between the two households. Then, just when they'd got back into some sort of a rhythm, Barn contrived to miss a wedge with the big hammer and cracked himself on the ankle. Further delays, reduced manpower, loss of key personnel (not so much Barn himself; but Colsceg and Egil insisted on helping him back to the house, and Colsceg was the best mortice-cutter in either household); the further they fell behind schedule, the more jobs were rushed and therefore botched, resulting in more wasted time as skilled workers were called off what they were supposed to be doing to put right the mistakes, leaving the unskilled crews standing around with nothing to do. That was patently unacceptable, so Poldarn grabbed a chisel and a mallet and cut the mortices himself, only to find that it didn't come quite as naturally as he'd expected. That was embarrassing as well as counter-productive, and ended up with the whole job grinding to a halt until Colsceg came back and patched up the mess Poldarn had made of a particularly complicated step-lapped rafter seat.

'Cheer up,' Boarci said, appearing suddenly behind him. It was an order rather than a suggestion. 'Compared to most barn-raisings I've been on, this one's flowing like warm honey. It's when you've finished and you take a step back, and the whole lot slumps over to the left and flops down in a heap; that's when you want to pack it all in and find a nice dry cave somewhere.'

'Fine,' Poldarn replied. 'I'll bear that in mind when the time comes. Are you any good at single shoulder tenons?'

Boarci laughed. 'Better than you, anyway,' he said. 'Mind you, so's my mother's cat. Here, give me that chisel before you fuck up any more dead trees.'

He turned out to be a very competent joiner, almost as good as Colsceg and considerably quicker. 'Outstanding,' Poldarn said, as the tenon snuggled into the mortice and the dowel slid home. 'Only, if you're so good at this, why've you been wasting your time lugging planks on and off carts? We could've used you here.'

'Not my place,' Boarci replied. 'If you weren't as blind as a bat, you'd have seen that for yourself. I'm not from around here, remember, I can't go pushing a man out of the way and doing his job just because I can do it a bit better than he can. All that'll get you is an open door and a boot up the bum, and serve you right. That's the sort of thing you need to know if you're going to run a house, basic stuff like that. Otherwise you'll only make trouble for yourself.'

Poldarn sighed. 'How about if I ask you to do my job for me?' he said. 'Does that make it all right?'

Boarci shook his head. 'Not really,' he said. 'But if it's that or risk the roof coming down on some poor bugger's head, I suppose you haven't got much choice.'

The closing stages, which should have been the easy part, turned out to be the most difficult of all. Half the boarding planks turned out to be shaken or rotten, but there wasn't enough new material to replace them. Accordingly, they had no alternative but to splice patches into the spoiled timbers, a hatefully fiddly job even for a fresh, dry crew, and nearly impossible for men who were tired, wet and thoroughly out of sorts. When the sun set behind the rain clouds that had been concealing it all day anyway and the light went, it looked like there was only a little bit left to do, so, rather than leave an annoying little tag end of a job unfinished over night, Poldarn sent up to the house for lamps and torches and they carried on, only to find that they'd underestimated the scope of the tiresome odds and ends, which they compounded in turn with a rash of small, stupid mistakes. Then the damp got into the lamp wicks, the rain got worse, and they were forced to drop their tools and run for shelter until it slackened off. By that time, nobody was prepared to carry on, and they trudged back to the house for their dinner of porridge and leeks. A day in the driving rain had made them all too wet to dry out, even if they hadn't been too tired to face the effort of undressing; so they banked up the fire with fuel they couldn't afford to waste and went to sleep in their wet clothes.