RENOVATION
While the conflict was at its height, we had gutted the entire ground floor. From five rooms, not one of which suited its purpose, we had created two empty caverns. Five tons of quarry dust had been used to fill the voids beneath the original floors. Now, the newly-laid concrete had just about set. The ratio of window to floor area would never be sufficient in either space to provide adequate levels of natural light, but, in my vanity, I had presumed, however incompatible with reality, to bend the Victorian terrace entirely to my will.
So, that Saturday evening, in the late summer of 1975, the last of the day’s sunlight was already struggling to make it into the street, let alone as far as some testament to vanity into which it had never been factored.
I was carefully walking the new floor, feeling in the gloom with my feet for any softness in the concrete that might indicate a further need for delay, when I heard an odd rasping sound outside. It was just after half-past nine. Again the sound, and again, like the scraping of a spade on concrete. The bay-window was curtainless, and, for our personal safety, the electric bulb dangled unlit from the centre of the ceiling. From behind the bay-pillar I peeked outside.
