TT 8 - A Surprise in the Barn.

To everyone’s surprise, Len has responded with enthusiasm to Alison’s suggestion that he might make use of Douglas’s little workshop. And it is to the barn that he is heading now, a purposeful set to his shoulders, a box full of materials clutched to his chest. Alison watches him as he passes by the kitchen window and she feels a sense of enormous satisfaction. She is sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee, listening to classic FM. She holds her mug between both hands and blows ripples across the surface to cool it slightly. As Len draws level with the back door he stops, but he doesn’t turn and knock. His head turns slightly towards the house but he seems to be hesitating. The light is catching his glasses and Alison can’t be sure whether he is looking in at her or not. She opens the door.

“Hello Mrs Carduggan.” He says.
“Afternoon Len.”
Len says nothing.
“How are you finding the barn? Is it warm enough for you?
“Oh yes thank you, I’ve been very busy.” He puts his hand inside his large quilted brown anorak and scratches his armpit. He pushes his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose but says nothing more.
“Well, yes. We’ve heard you banging away out there.” Alison perseveres.
Len’s shoulders hunch into a spasm of amusement. “Oh well, I don’t know about banging", he sniggers, and a strap of mucus drops down from one nostril. He wipes it away with the cuff of his anorak.
“Well, tapping at least", says Alison, Jauntily.
"I’ve made something. Would you like to come and see it?”

Alison follows Len to the barn. The September sun is low and she can feel a chill in the air as they walk in the shade of the old beech trees. Here and there small clusters of leaves have escaped the shadows and shine a vivid lime-green. Len opens the door to the barn and Alsion follows him inside. Some of the late summer enchantment has slipped in though the windows, setting free the prismatic lights of a spiders web. The walls are dappled with dusty, moth-eaten shadows that gently elongate and contract as the branches of the trees outside lift and drop in the breeze.

Alison looks around. There are tools on the bench, and a mug and a pencil, and everywhere the smell of fresh wood chippings. She finds Len’s progress very satisfying. At one end of the barn a partition has been made by hanging up an old tarpaulin. Clearly the masterpiece is concealed on the other side. Len scurries over to it and shifts his weight nervously from side to side.
“You ready?” He asks.
“Ready as I’ll ever be” Alison answers, cheerfully entering into the spirit of things.

Len pulls down the tarpaulin and reveals a large cage. The frame is made of timber, but the bars have been constructed from various lengths of copper and plastic piping knotted at irregular intervals with an assortment of plumbing joints. In the centre of the cage is an old chrome kitchen stool that looks as though it has been pulled from a skip. A large split in the black vinyl seat reveals the yellow dust of its perished foam rubber interior. Len’s lips part in a furtive grin.
“What do you thin of that, then?”
“Gosh, it’s quite elaborate.”
“Do you like the bars?”
“They’re certainly sturdy” Her guess is that is is a chicken coop. A very, very bad, wholly impractical chicken coop. She can see no merit in it whatsoever and it inspires only unpleasant feelings of pity and embarassment.

“Goodness, you could keep a person in here.” Alison jokes, and to diffuse the awkwardness of the situation she decides to step inside the cage, pull the door closed and hold onto the bars - a caricature of a sad prisoner.
“Let me out” she says, hammily drawing down the corners of her mouth and letting her head drop pitiably to one side.
“Oh well, I don’t know about that.” Len’s breathing is suddenly laboured. “It depends”, he comes up to the side of the cage and presses his body against the bars. His tongue flits between his lips. “Have you been…” he begins to gyrate his pelvis slowly and almost imperceptibly against one of the copper pipes ‘A naughty girl.’
‘Oh well, probably’ the forced jollity pushes Alison’s voice up half an octave. She rapily lets herself out of the coop.

Len meanwhile has come round to the front of the cage forcing her to retreat into the darkened corner of the barn. Len ducks inside the cage and climbs up onto the stool. He wriggles from side to side so that his backside is embedded deep into the dead foam rubber.
“Why don’t you lock me in?’ he suggests.
‘Better not. Might not be able to get you out again.’ Alison has committed herself to a light, bantering tone.
‘That’s OK’ he squirms in his stool, ‘I probably deserve it.’ In the half light it is difficult to see what his hands are doing beneath his anorak but from the sound of his breathing Alison has a pretty good idea.
‘Oh well, I’m sure that’s not true.’ She chirps, pinned into the barn by a force-field of social conditioning that demands that she maintains the fiction of normality at all costs.

‘You’re going to leave, aren’t you?’ Len says, sensing her discomfort.
‘Well, I do have a lot to be getting…’
‘I hate that. You know, when you’re talking to someone and then when you turn round they’ve gone.’
‘It’s not…it’s just that I am rather busy.’
Len hunches down inside his anorak and tilts his head to one side in an attitude of vulnerability. ‘Can I have a hug please?’
There is a long puase and for a time the shadows of the barn weigh infinitely between them.
‘No. No, actually, Len, I don’t feel that would be appropriate.’ Alison turns to go. ‘Thank you for showing me your…construction, but I really must be pressing on.’ She pulls the door behind her leaving Len perched forlornly in his cage like a tattered thrush.