Sex Lies and Carpet tape

Sex Lies and Carpet Tape

Ged Backland

I first met Erica at a 'Stanley Tools Focus Group'. I caught her eye
after she stunned everyone with her observation that, 'Sometimes in
life you get a heap of shit and no pony'. She had that too many Benson
and Hedges voice, reminding me of a sort of middle aged Bonnie Tyler in
overalls. Several questions; a short interlude when the marketeer
discovered he'd left an important part of the presentation in his car;
and a pointless discussion on the flexibility of the 'Stanley Five
Metre Tape' later and she was gone. We next met duelling for a
cut-price, double brass dimmer switch in the bargain bin at B &;Q.
Our eyes met across the scribbled red price sticker, our rough hands
touched for a moment, the chemistry was stronger than neat Thompsons
Water Seal and that was it - we were in love. Over a 20p machine coffee
and a Twix, I looked for a wedding ring on her left hand. No ring - no
wedding finger. A circular saw accident in 1989,
I was to find out later over a post-coital cigarette. The sun lifted
the smell of putty into the air and the plaster dust settled onto our
two differing shades of french blue overalls, that lay hastily stepped
out of, on the bedsit floor. On the Lloyd Loom wicker chair I'd picked
up for a tenner and apple white, sat the double brass dimmer. After
that afternoon, things seemed to go at the pace of a Bosch 3/4 chuck
reverse bit hammer drill. We'd sometimes just sit and talk long into
the night about linseed
oil, putty and 7mm plate glass. I made her laugh herself nearly sick
with my tale of the time I converted two attic bedrooms back into a
loft.We seemed to just talk and talk. Once we spent six hours wandering
around St George's Hall, soaking up the craftsmanship.We rubbed hands
simultaneously across a fine dovetailed joint,
gazing at each other through marvellously detailed stained glass. I
hugged a Lignum Vitae statuette of Queen Victoria and Erica took a
picture. My admiration for the monarch dwarfed by my awe at the
detailed carving and expertly applied lacquer. Sure, we drew some
strange stares from on looking security guards, but we
didn't care.
However, the joy was short lived and things didn't remain all
sweetness and light fittings - It soon started to all go wrong. It
happened not long after we'd spent a weekend at the N.E.C. for a hand
and bench tool convention. Erica had borrowed my Estwing claw hammer to
slate and baton a large gazebo in a
garden in Southport. She kept the hammer for a week and then to my
absolute horror, returned it in rather poor condition - the leather
grip was severely grazed and a spot of blue paint scarred the bright
steel shaft that I had fondly polished not a week before. I didn't
mention it to Erica, but I made a mental note of it all the same.
"She'll not be borrowing that again!", I affirmed to myself, as I
polished the shaft to its former
brilliance. Another time she borrowed my Stabila spirit level for a
sandstone wall job in Tuebrook. She gave me it back two days later and
there was enough mortar on the thing to point two square metres of
seven inch brick. I registered my displeasure by stamping a moccasined
foot, but it seemed to go unoticed.The final straw came when in good
faith I'd allowed her to borrow my 2 inch Harris 'no loss' hoghair
paint brush. A week later around at her place, after a lovely day
trawling the timber yards for
useable offcuts of mahogany and then a pleasant evening putting a final
coat of Glassurit hi-gloss stain onto a splendidly robust monk's bench
we'd rescued from the back of the bread shop on Shaw Road,

I reached for the Ovaltine in her kitchen cupboard, (which by the way
was secured to the wall with 17mm rawlplugs instead of the usual 22mm),
it was then I caught sight of my beloved brush. It had been shoved,
without love, into a pint glass of turps, the handle, once a gleaming
deep maroon with the words 'Harris Professional', picked out in gold
leaf, was now a Jackson Pollock- esque haze of dribbled, splashed
and
smudged gloss. My hand was shaking with anger as I stirred in another
spoon of sugar. Erica sat in the living room, blissfully unaware,
watching a Black and Decker instructional video on the RC35 Router and
Planer. I took two steps towards the living room and then turned back
and stomped into the kitchen. I slammed the Ovaltine onto the 35mm
double-edged Formica worktop and swung the cupboard door
open again. I had to take a second look. My brush had been bullied,
like a small boy coming home from school with leg bruises, a ripped
blazer and a fat lip, I felt the anger of a failed parent. I took the
glass from out of the cupboard and marched into Erica. I held it behind
my back. "Here you go", I said. Erica reached out for her steaming mug
of Ovaltine. I handed her my abused child. She looked at me like Bambi.
I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt to register my disgust and
exactly thirty nine seconds later, I had hastily thrown on my council
donkey jacket and was out of the 39 and a half inch, six panel,
Brazilian mahogany door. Erica shouted after me, but I was in no mood
for explanation or excuse. "The sooner they bring back hanging, the
better ", I mused, as I tried to make sense of it all. I was that mad,
I didn't even asses the quality of the coachwork on the bus. I was in
no mood to care.
The next morning, on the 30mm quarry tile in the porch, with my
subscription of 'The
Woodworker' sat a full set of Harris 'no loss' brushes in a clear
polythene bag. There was a note attached to the handle of the three
inch. It was simple. It said, 'Sorry - Erica'.'Sorry' was no good, the
damage had been done. She obviously didn't understand how I really
felt. The next day it began, the harassment. She was waiting outside
Wickes, so I got back in the car and drove to B &;Q across the road.
I had to pay 30p a pound more for my 22mm clout nails but sometimes it
just has to be done.
The next day I looked straight ahead, sucked hard on my Victory V and
walked past with the purpose of a man on a mission for six sheets of 8
by 4 particle board and a roll of carpet tape. She followed me in and I
caught glimpses of her in the the plumbing aisle, where she pretended
to be looking at 2 inch Yorkshire elbows. I looked straight at her in
the loft insulation isle, and gave her a sly look as she feigned a
half-hearted interest in a bale of tank lagging. To top it off, she
almost fell on top of me by
the 5 litre tubs of waterproof grout. She shouldn't have bothered, it
was over. I couldn't forgive or forget. Even the tight, 'I Get Laid
With Cemetone' T-shirt, that had on at least three occasions, ,set my
hormones racing like a greek waiter, now looked ordinary. It didn't get
any better. The following weekend when dragging a cwt. bag of cement
off a pallet, there, on a bag underneath, in heavy black marker, were
the words, "I'm sorry - Erica". Yeah, O.K. She knew that I was laying a
mock-Victorian Yorkstone path and
would need at least seven bags, but the messages started to get creepy
and began to pop up in the most unusual and ingenious of places. In the
personal column of Practical Woodworker, she put 'You'll Be Sorry' in
bold type. I found my photocopied and mutilated picture in the 'bargain
bin' at Do It All. I'll give
Erica one thing, she was certainly inventive. It reached new heights
when my two slices

of thick Warburtons popped up out of the toaster and 'sorry' was
indented into them by a shaky finger. Like Tellytubby toast with
sinister overtones. How had she got in? Well thinking about it, she had
access to my keys often enough. The more I thought of it, the more
concerned I was. I found a Brazilian mahogany
shaving in my branflakes, just the one, but it didn't get there by
itself and Erica swore by Brazilian mahogany. She'd refuse to hang a
front door if wasn't made of the stuff. She once ran up a path and
snatched a brush out of the hand of some old bloke who was about to
paint his Brazilian mahogany door pillar box red. So the shaving must
have come from her. Now seeing as I bought a new box of branflakes
after we split, then she must have been in here, my place. I never got
the chance to find out why the shaving was there.You see, things took a
completely unexpected turn. The call came at eight in the morning. I
was wary of answering it, for up till now, Erica had not resorted to
tele
phone harassment. It was a police officer. He'd got my number from a
note book they found on the body. He explained that Erica had really
'Done It Herself' and committed suicide. She'd put a hot air gun on a
dollop of Nitromors paint stripper and with the fumes released, had
died almost immediately. She'd left a note for me. It just said, 'To my
love...Without you, the cement in the bricks of my life, my walls come
crashing down, leaving the rubble of a broken heart.' Well, at least at
the time
I thought the note was for me.You see, at the church, the first seven
aisles resembled a builder's cafe. The church car park was like a
building site. Blue transits with rusty doors parked inconsiderately
next to plaster-covered pick ups with broken tail lights. Dusty
overalled plasterers sat silent, next to rough- handed brickies who
farted and jostled uncomfortably with slate roofers in combat jackets.
From the coarse talk bandied around, I was, it seems, just one of many
rough-handed lovers. Seems she was a bit of a one, you know, -
flattened a bit of grass in her time, or should that be creased a bit
of 5 by 8 plaster
board? She'd have liked the coffin. It was Brazilian mahogany. It had
been well sanded and as far as I could tell, being two plasterers, a
plumber and a seven-fingered bench saw operator away from the aisle,
had at least five coats of international high gloss varnish on it. I
didn't stay long afterwards, just a sausage roll and a cold chicken
drumstick. I had to bite my lip when a short, black-moustached man
began to spout off ignorantly about non-drip emulsion based paint. "
This is not the time to preach", I thought. I had to walk into the
other room though. I couldn't have willingly listened to such
lies about an innovative product.
It arrived by post, about six weeks later. I had put an official claim
on her estate and checked the post each day like a bitch mourning for
it's scruffy pups.The solicitor's letter was short and to the point.
'Dear Sir, further to your recent correspondence and claim on the
estate of Erica Wilminghton, I have the pleasure to enclose one Harris
two inch 'no loss' hoghair paint brush. Yours sincerely, Yaffe, Jackson
and Jackson'. I was ever so pleased. "Come to Daddy," I said. "Let's
see
what the nasty lady done to my lickle one". I've still got the brush.
It cleaned up quite nicely, although it will always bear the scars of
its abuser. They won't let me have it now, not in here. They say I
could harm the other patients on the ward, but that's rubbish. That's
what the 5 inch Black Forge axe I've hidden under the bed is for.

The End.