Ruination
Part Ten
Part Ten
'Thanks Dougie, there's definitely a pint in this for you when we're done.' Karen said apologetically, as the handyman followed sombrely behind her. It wasn't so much that she had put him out, it was more to do with the fact that Dougie was the kind of man, who just didn't do adventures. How he had gotten a job repairing sets in a ghost tour, she would never know. Although his work was always of a high standard, he looked upon each and every task like it were something beamed down from an alien spaceship. Dougie was intelligent, but it was a specific kind of intelligence. Karen couldn't imagine him having vivid dreams, or fantasising about far off mystical realms. He seemed to take life one task thing at a time, one foot in front of the other.
Auk Street had been a dilapidated cowp of a place back in Davis' time, and to be honest, it wasn't a lot better in the present day. Fair enough, there were no frozen lumps of faeces plastered to the pavement, but plenty of club goers had emptied the contents of their stomachs up and down the road in recent decades. The street contained a pub, two establishments which you might loosely term sports bars, and a couple of back doors from the more respectable commercial premises on the other side. At the bottom of the hill, there was another, particularly dingy street, which ran perpendicular, and housed some of the city's less expensive nightclubs. Every building in this area had a kind of aged, blackness to it, which was bordering on grimy. Soot and traffic pollution no doubt played their part in this over the past few decades.
'Here we are,' Karen said brightly, as she pushed the pub door open. 'In you come Dougie.' Of all the bars on this street, the one they were in was probably the best of a bad bunch. It was a little airier than the other two, and served food, even if it were most likely reheated. Karen could tell straight away that Dougie wasn't impressed. Not because it was low-class - the man was no snob - it was because seemed a bit young for him. The place was clearly part of a pub chain, aimed at students on a budget. The decorations, while doing their best to seem artlessly arranged, reeked of mass production. There was a pool table (which Karen would have bet wasn't level), a dart board, and a digitalised jukebox in the corner.
'Hello, me again.' Karen said, marching up to the barman, who already seemed apprehensive. 'I said I was going to bring a friend to help me.'
'Oh.' Was all the man could muster in reply. He looked around in vane for a way out, another customer perhaps, but it was no use, they were only just open.
'Remember we spoke on the phone?' She tilted her head, waiting for a reply. 'If you're busy you can stay here and we can head down to the basement ourselves, it's really no' a problem.' Karen still had no idea as to the man's position here. He seemed too old to be a student barman, yet he lacked any real air of authority. She already had him on the back foot, and gathered it wouldn't take long before he consented.
'Oh, aye.' He nodded, in the middle of a thought. 'Ach, look, I think I might need to speak to the district manager, especially if you're wanting to pull things apart and all that.'
'Look pal,' Karen was just starting to feel like she was losing him, when Dougie spoke up from over her shoulder. 'We work for a museum, ken? We'll no' be ower long.'
Karen looked back and forth quickly between the two men, as something seemed to pass between them. Incredibly, the intervention from Dougie seemed to have the desired effect, and the barman eventually nodded slowly. It seemed, in this instance, for all Karen's forthrightness and charm, all it had taken was a little solidarity to loosen his resolve: The reassurance from someone who spoke his language.
'Thankyoooou.' Karen grinned broadly, as she lead Dougie towards the backroom. The barman didn't say a word.
'I definitely owe you a pint now,' Karen said to her companion, as she lifted the hatch of the trapdoor. 'I'll go down first, I know where the light switch is.'
'That's twice you've said that noo.' He tutted his disapproval as he descended into the basement behind her. 'Does that mean I'm gettin twa?' The groans were more for show, despite the fact that he was in his late fifties, the handyman was fit as a fiddle. It was all part of his demeanour, the sound he would make while easing into a chair. Dougie seemed to revel in the idea of being old, rather than actually being old.
'Absolutely, but not here.' Karen answered without looking back, as she made a b line for the next doorway. 'I don't think I can handle the smell of stale beer and urinal cakes.' Everything was exactly as she remembered it, even the boxes, which the barman had moved the previous week had not yet been put back. It would have been obvious to anyone, that the bar's actual owner (or owners) had nothing to do with the day to day running of the place. It desperately needed someone who cared. Someone who would polish the brass before opening. Someone who gave a shit about the fact that the toilets reeked of piss. Even just someone who cared enough to push a fucking box back into the corner.
'Aye.' Dougie answered looking around, his hands planted on his hips. 'I'll measure this room the'noo, for when I'm putting that set of yours the'gether.' With another audible sigh, he removed a measuring tape from his tool bag.
Karen was quite taken aback. 'Thanks Dougie.' She said sticking her head back through the door from the second chamber. She had always thought him a little disinterested, so this was a welcome intervention. 'Chuck me the crowbar then, I'll go and make a start to the that door.'
The grand reveal had been an enormous disappointment. While Karen had half expected to remove the panel and find the room pristinely preserved from the 17th century; it had in fact been entirely empty. All the same, standing there in the gloom, crouched down low, Karen felt more in common with Margaret Davis than she ever had. She thought back to her own room; cold and cramped, with that rattley windowpane. Both of them had come from a well-to-do background, but had ended up with not very much. Karen didn't particularly want to be stuck working at Ghastly Tours, and she was certain that Davis wouldn't have wanted to spend her days washing clothes. Those were the things they did to get by, what they needed to do to keep a roof over their heads. What they were really passionate about didn't bring in any money; it couldn't keep the wolves from the door.
