Paying for the rain

It had been raining for months. Everyday the rain had come, not just
a drizzle but a steady downpour. It might have stopped during the
nights but if it did it wasn't for long. And now we were beginning to
pay the price for God's gift of water.
The place where I live is basically a hill of clay. Other hills around
were quarried for their clay, which made superior bricks but this hill
was chosen to build on. Houses for the workers and the management of
the brickworks were the first to be built then others gradually came to
live here. Shops offices, surgeries and libraries were all built on our
hill of clay. The clay rose from the valley over five hundred foot
below and we would feel pity for the people in the valley as we saw
rainwater rush down our hill and flood into the fields. But now we have
to pity ourselves.

It was about four months ago when I noticed the first crack in the
plaster of my son's bedroom. The surveyor who came to inspect the house
told us that it was probably settlement, though after standing for just
over a hundred years I thought that the house should have settled by
now.
One by one new cracks appeared and each time the surveyor told us not
to worry.
"Surface cracks often appear in plaster," he said.
Then last night there was a sound, the most awful noise I've ever
heard. I ran upstairs to my son's room just in time to see the whole of
the exterior wall fall away from the house. With horror I watched it
drop down onto the driveway. Immediately I phoned the surveyor and then
a builder, luckily my son was away from home and as far as I knew no
one had been hurt by the mass of rubble now lying in a heap.

"I'm afraid that this is due to land slippage," said the new surveyor.
"The whole of this side of the hill is sliding down into the
valley."
"So what can I do about it?" I asked.

"Nothing, there's no point in doing anything to the house. Now that the
clay is on the move nothing cans top it. I'll write a letter confirming
what I've told you." And then he left.

Anxiously I waited for my husband to come home, he was very late home
from a meeting but I wasn't too worried as he sometimes stayed late for
a drink before he came home. Eventually I went to bed, I'd have to tell
him the final verdict in the morning.

This morning dawned and my husband wasn't in the house. I went outside
to look at the pile of rubble, just to check that nothing else had
fallen out of my son's room and it was then I saw it. A shoe was
sticking out from the bricks and plaster. It was my husband's shoe,
with his foot still inside it! I ran to the garage and sure enough
inside it I saw my husband's car.

So here I am, a house sliding down the hill, a crushed husband under
the collapsed wall and the builders on their way to demolish what
remains of the house. I've phoned the insurance company and much to my
surprise they will pay out on the house.
So all I have to do is find a house, somewhere not built on clay,
somewhere not in valley, maybe somewhere where it doesn't rain quite as
much. Maybe I'll have a house built for me and hope that my life will
be re-built as easily.