A Buyer for the House
‘What’s got you in such a flap?’ asked Mrs Perfect as she moved along the washing line, pegging up a pair of Thunderbirds boxer shorts. It made Ralph cringe to see his ‘designer’ underwear out on show. Honestly, the things his mother bought him for Christmas.
‘There was this man,’ he said, dragging his sleeve across his forehead. He was sweating slightly after rushing through the house.
‘What man?’ said his mother. ‘Bring that basket over here, will you?’ A green plastic linen basket half full of washed clothes was sitting on the stone mushroom by the small garden pond. Ralph went and fetched it.
‘This man,’ he repeated, holding the basket while his mum took out the clothes. ‘He was tall and thin. He had a face like a gravestone.’
‘No one’s got a face like a gravestone, Ralph. Unless he had ‘In Loving Memory’ tattooed on his forehead. Where was he, Mr Cemetery-Face?’
‘Out the front, looking at Annie’s house.’
Penny took a peg from between her teeth. ‘Oh? What sort of looking?’
‘I dunno. Just…looking.’
‘Like what? Like a burglar? Was he snooping around?’
Ralph lifted his shoulders. ‘No, he just looked. He knocked Kyle Salter off his bike.’
Mrs Perfect frowned. ‘With a look?’ she said.
Ralph sighed. Sometimes his mother was absolutely hopeless. He explained what had happened about the cigarette, the van, the yapping dog; everything.
His mother gave a slightly disapproving ‘hmm’. ‘He’ll come to no good, Kyle Salter,’ she predicted. ‘What kind of van? Was there writing on it?’
Now he came to think of it, Ralph remembered there was. He’d seen a sign in black lettering along its side: IT WON’T WILT OR TILT IF IT’S BUILT BY BILT!
That was how it went.
‘Built by Built?’ his mother said.
Ralph explained the difference in the spelling.
‘Ah, Mr Bilt the builder; bit like Mr Wedhem the vicar.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Ralph said, hiding a groan. He watched a cabbage white butterfly dot about the garden. It landed on a vine of ivy leaves. ‘Do you think he wants to buy it?’
Penny shook her head. ‘The sign’s only been up two minutes. She’s probably asked him to do some repairs. People often do when they’re selling up.’
Now it was Ralph’s turn to give a little ‘hmm’. A knot of nervous tension grew in his stomach. If the builder turned up again, things could get lively.
Kyle Salter wasn’t the type to call off a threat.
Half an hour passed. Ralph mooched about. He read another chapter of his dragon book, then went out to post a letter for his mum. On Pear Tree Road he had to hide in the doorway of Frosts the Fishmongers when Jemima Culvery and Daniel Parkin (Jem and Dazza) came hoofing down the pavement playing kick-can, kick-banana skin, kick-anything they liked. They’d kick-Ralph, too, if he got in their way. The Salter gang. Everywhere. Like flies. A plague.
On his way back, he saw the white van again. It was pointing down the Crescent, parked on the opposite side of the road, this time. The brooding figure of Mr Bilt was standing just inside Annie’s gateway, peering up at the front of the house.
To Ralph’s mind, he didn’t look like a builder at all. He was dressed in a shabby pin-striped suit that made him seem even thinner than before. The seaweed hair had been combed straight back and the worst of the straggles hooked back around his ears. He had a pointed chin and snake-like eyes. A cigarette was dripping off his lip. In one hand he was clutching a small brown box, which he held to his hip like a man of God might tote a Bible. In the other was a trilby hat. He was spinning it neatly around one finger.
‘Hello.’
The hat ceased spinning and a dog began to growl. Ralph stopped in his tracks. He hadn’t seen the dog and still couldn’t. It was hidden behind the waist-high party wall between the two houses. He told himself it wasn’t polite to peek over the wall and take a look. Secretly, he was slightly afraid of dogs.
‘Git down, Knocker,’ the man said idly. The cigarette leapt like the needle of a compass. The dog stopped yapping. The trilby switched hands. The visitor plucked the cigarette from his mouth and ground it flat underneath his heel. ‘Well now, what have we here?’ He looked Ralph up and down with the same sort of intensity he’d been giving to the house. It made Ralph shudder, but he wasn’t afraid. He was on home territory. His mum was just a bell push away. He decided to make an effort.
‘I’m Ralph; I live here,’ he said. He pointed at the Number 11 on the carved wooden plaque his mum had bought on holiday in Devon.
‘Oh, do you?’ said the man, raising phlegm from deep within his chest. ‘Well, I’m Jack Bilt, and I’m going to live here.’ He smirked and pointed at Annie’s house.
Jack? Ralph thought. He knew a nursery rhyme about the house that Jack built. But he didn’t dare mention it. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, though he wasn’t at all. He held out his hand for Jack Bilt to shake.
The visitor glanced at the pale pink offering on the end of the pale pink arm. ‘Piano fingers,’ he grunted. ‘Washing-up hands. What they need is a screwdriver blister and a nice few splinters from a piece of two-by-four. Not much fizzing use, at all. Hardly been out of the packet, have those.’
Ralph withdrew his hand and buried it deep inside the pocket of his jeans. It wasn’t the first time he’d been taunted about his physical appearance. There was the incident with Kyle Salter in the mats cupboard at the back of the school gym. But he didn’t want to think about that.
‘You’re a builder, aren’t you?’ he said, straight up.
‘And you’re a clever dick,’ the builder replied.
Ralph frowned, wondering what he’d done to offend the visitor. ‘I can read,’ he sniffed, looking across at the words on the van. For the first time he noticed another piece of writing, in brackets under the original sign.
The whole thing read: IT WON’T WILT OR TILT IF IT’S BUILT BY BILT! (AND HIS MINIONES)
‘I can spell, too,’ Ralph continued.
The visitor eyed him sharply.
‘I don’t think there’s an “e” in ‘minions’.’
Jack Bilt straightened like a long, thin pole. He stuck out his neck like a farmyard chicken. ‘What would you know about minions?’ he sneered.
‘It’s a name for someone’s workers,’ said Ralph.
Jack gave a slightly startled jump. His left eye twitched. He cocked his head.
‘We’ve done it at school,’ Ralph went on. ‘Minions are servants. They run around for the boss. A bit like worker ants do for a queen.’
‘Ants?’ cried Jack, hopping smartly sideways. He got up on his toes and did a little dance, examining the paving stones around his feet.
‘The workers are slaves to the queen,’ Ralph explained, getting a bit carried away with his favourite subject. He frowned again at Jack. He was getting the oddest feeling that his knowledge of ants was making the builder distinctly uneasy. Jack had a finger hooked under his collar, prising it free of his scrawny neck. Ralph went on, ‘Ants are brilliant. Really well organised. Not many people know that ants can carry up to twenty times their own weight—’
‘I KNEW,’ the builder blasted back. The expulsion of air nearly blew Ralph’s hair out. ‘And I don’t need a cabbage like you to tell me.’
At that moment, the letterbox on Annie’s house clattered open. ‘Go away, you boys. I know you’re out there. I shall call the police. I shall have you all arrested.’
Jack Bilt wheeled round.
‘It’s all right, Annie. It’s only me,’ Ralph called. ‘There’s someone here to look at your house.’
‘Oh.’ The letterbox fell shut. There was a rattling cascade of locks and chains.
Jack Bilt adjusted his tie and wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Buzz off,’ he hissed from the corner of his mouth.
‘I told you, I live here,’ Ralph said cu
rtly, stubbing his toe into a drift of leaves. ‘I can do what I like.’
Annie Birdlees opened her door.
‘Madam!’ Jack Bilt leapt forward like a ballet-dancing locust. He plonked his trilby hat on his head and doffed it again, just for Annie’s benefit.
‘Oh,’ said Annie, pulling back, laying one hand across her breast. She looked searchingly at Ralph. He looked helplessly back.
‘Delightful house, Mrs—?’
‘Birdlees,’ Annie said.
‘Exquisite,’ crooned Jack. ‘These Victorian properties. Can’t be beaten. Perfect location. Just what I’m after.’
Annie raised a smile, but her mouth was like a meandering stream. ‘Erm, have you an appointment, Mr—?’
‘Bilt,’ said the builder. ‘Call me Jack, do.’
‘Like the nursery rhyme,’ Ralph put in. This was cheeky, he knew, but it was a sort of test. He didn’t trust Jack Bilt. He was clearly putting on airs and graces (as his mother might say). If the builder turned and said something obnoxious, maybe Annie would see him for what he really was.
But to Ralph’s disappointment, Jack’s tone remained as plain as a cream cracker. ‘Boys,’ he said, with excruciating charm, ‘will have their little jokes, won’t they, Mrs B?’
Ralph winced. At any moment he expected the builder to lean over the wall, give him ten pence and pat him on the head.
Annie pressed on. ‘Did Mr Tattle send you? Only—’
‘Tattle?’ Jack said. Annie pointed at the sign. ‘Ah,’ said the builder, ‘see what you mean.’ He tapped his foot and fed the brim of the trilby quickly through his fingers. ‘No. Not sent. On my way to visit my aunt, I was.’
‘Oh,’ said Annie, quite taken in.
‘She’s sick. In hospital. Liver. Ghastly business. Skin turning yellow. Fingernails dropping off, one by one.’
‘Her fingernails? Oh, how dreadful,’ said Annie.
‘Could be on her way out,’ said Jack.
‘The hospital’s nowhere near here,’ said Ralph.
‘I was taking the scenic route,’ snapped the builder. He directed his cheesy smile back at Annie. ‘Was driving through the Crescent. Saw the sign. Didn’t have time to make an appointment. Wondered if I might have a quick peek round?’
‘Well…’ Annie looked a little uncertain. ‘I suppose you could. But if your aunt is poorly and close to passing on, surely you should go to the hospital first?’
‘She’ll last the weekend,’ the builder said, casting a shady glance up the shady Crescent.
Annie thought about it carefully and made up her mind. ‘No. I’m sorry. I really think you should come back at a more convenient moment. Please make an appointment with the estate agents. I— oh no…’
As Annie’s words tailed off into a mumble, Ralph heard the gentle squeeze of brakes and turned in time to see a cluster of bikes pull up across the road. His body froze.
The Salter gang had arrived in force.
Knocker Makes his Mark
‘That’s him,’ said Kyle to the rest of his ‘crew’: Jem, Dazza, Callum and Luke.
‘Oh,’ Annie quivered, looking as if she might be sick in her hands. ‘Look out, Mr Bilt. They’re pointing at you.’
‘Eh?’ said Jack.
‘This ’iz van?’ Luke said, kicking a tyre.
‘Bend his aerial,’ Dazza whispered.
‘Twist his mirror,’ Callum said.
Kyle Salter thumped the van hard. ‘Oi, this motor’s filthy,’ he shouted.
‘Just like you,’ Jem’s voice added.
A ripple of laughter bubbled across the road.
Jack Bilt slid his eyes to one side. ‘Youths,’ he said calmly, reading Annie’s fear. ‘All this time on their grubby little hands and nothing constructive to do with it, have they?’
‘They’re about to rip your windscreen wipers off,’ said Ralph. He was crouching down behind the low privet hedge that shielded his garden from the street.
‘You’d better come inside, Mr Bilt,’ said Annie. ‘Those boys are quite vicious.’
‘Delighted,’ said Jack, hardly able to believe his luck. ‘First, though, better attend to the van.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘Git up, Knocker.’
Ralph glanced across. He could see the dog now: a white Jack Russell with a light tan face. On its silver studded collar, just under its throat, was some kind of digital bleeper. Jack bent down and fiddled with it a second.
‘Mr Bilt,’ said Annie, sounding rather anxious, ‘you’re not going to send that poor thing across to deal with them, are you? They’ll squash it. They’ll hang it up by its tail.’
‘Never underestimate tiny things,’ said Jack. Ralph couldn’t disagree with that. But a ribby little dog against the entire Salter gang? Kyle would turn it to chunks.
‘Oi, look what I’ve found,’ Kyle shouted, flagging a windscreen wiper above his head. He whipped it down on the bonnet of the van. Two wood pigeons fled up Midfield Crescent, clapping their wings as if applauding the shot.
Jack Bilt drew back the cuff of his jacket. On his arm was the strangest-looking gadget that Ralph had ever seen. It had a wrist band, like a watch, but in place of the watch face was some kind of keypad and what appeared to be two diamond-shaped control knobs, flickering red and green beside a silver dial.
‘Go,’ said Jack. He twisted one diamond. Knocker sped across the road like a furry bullet.
Ralph had never seen a movement like it. There was something very odd about the way the dog ran, something unbalanced. And the noise it made: knockity, knockity, knockity, knock.
Dazza was the first to spot the disability. ‘What’s this?’ he howled, doubling up in laughter as Knocker skidded to a kerb-side stop. ‘Izzat the best you can do? A miniature mutt with a WOODEN LEG?’
Knocker barked and barked. But it didn’t seem to Ralph that he was barking at the gang. The dog’s nose was almost touching the pavement. A few bright rays of sparkling light seemed to spill from the bleeper on his collar. Then something amazing happened: all the Salter gang started to yelp.
‘Ow!’ cried Luke. ‘Something’s bit me foot!’
‘What?’ said Dazza. Then he was scrabbling off his bike, screaming that he’d had an electric shock. Jemima said her heels were on fire. Callum, on his knees, clutching at his ankle, said the wooden-legged dog must have acid in its spit.
Kyle Salter called them ‘ninnies’. He raced towards Knocker with his best boot forward. He was going to have to sort it, as usual, he said. Where dogs and Kyle Salter were concerned, ‘sorting’ equalled a good hard kicking. Ralph closed his eyes as the bully closed in. Knocker barked once. Kyle swung his foot and…
How he got into the hedge of Number 22, nobody could say. One second he was taking aim on the pavement, about to tuck Knocker into the corner of an imaginary goal, next he was looping back through the air. Double pike with twist. Up. Back. Hedge. Crunch.
‘Oh my goodness,’ cried Annie, throwing her hands to her face in horror.
‘Is it dead?’ asked Ralph, opening one eye. To his utter amazement he saw Knocker sitting calmly on the pavement. But where was Kyle?
‘W-why did that boy dive into that hedge?’ Annie twittered.
‘Most odd,’ said Jack, lowering the cuff of his jacket again.
‘Dive?’ said Ralph. ‘No one dives into a hedge.’ But apparently they did. He rubbed his eyes twice to make absolutely sure. Kyle Salter was in a hedge – upside down with his head and chest buried and his legs sticking out like a TV aerial. Ralph winced as the members of the Salter gang struggled to drag their leader out. Kyle emerged, looking as if he’d been – well, pulled out of a hedge, backwards. His arms and face were badly scratched. His T-shirt hung in strips from his shoulders. Not surprisingly, he was a little dazed.
‘What ’appened?’ he groaned. He spat a laurel leaf into the air.
‘Dunno,’ said Luke.
‘It wuz the dog,’ said Jem.
‘It’s a devil dog,’ said Callu
m. ‘I’m getting out of it.’
Knocker bared his teeth at the Salter gang and growled. They backed away like puzzled sheep. Devil dog, someone whispered as they left. Knocker reached back and licked his wooden leg.
‘Wow…’ breathed Ralph.
Jack drew in his lips and gave a ‘here boy’ whistle. Knocker advanced to the kerb, looked right then left, and knocked sedately back across the road.
‘Well,’ gasped Annie. She was stunned but uplifted. (Ralph was just stunned.) ‘Your little chap certainly showed them a thing or two. But whatever happened to his poor back leg?’
Jack wiggled his tie. ‘Dreadful business. Industrial accident. Let’s just say the erm…digit is still in the erm…body of the machine.’
‘Oh,’ squeaked Annie. ‘Poor, poor pooch.’
‘Done what I can, of course,’ Jack said, picking dirt from under his nails. ‘Bit of masking tape, elastic and an old broom handle, cut to size. But it’s not the same as a good paw, is it? I’d normally reward him with one of his biscuits after a skirmish like that, but I don’t always carry them around in the van…’
‘Oh, oh,’ Annie flapped. ‘I think I have a packet of digestives, somewhere.’
‘Lovely,’ brimmed Jack, gaily rubbing his hands. ‘Could manage one myself. While we’re looking round the house, perhaps?’
‘Oh, err, yes,’ said Annie, in a muddled twitter. She looked at Ralph as if to say, ‘Is this all right? Am I doing the right thing?’ But Ralph was just too shell-shocked to speak. ‘I suppose you’d better come in, then, Mr Bilt. I’ll put the kettle on. You’d like a cup of tea with your biscuit, I take it?’
‘No milk, four sugars, and a dash of brandy.’ Jack wiped his feet and swept inside. Knocker barked once and knocked on after him.
Annie, bewildered, blown off course by the rogue gust of wind that was the builder, Bilt, shuffled around and began to close the door. ‘Erm, brandy, yes. I think I might have a little left over from Christmas…’
Clunk. The door closed shut.