Flight of the Gazebo

Chapter 1 - The Gazebo

Like now. Two miles from home and about to be drenched.

Sighing, he mounted his bike and began coasting down the track, tugging at the ineffectual brakes to try to keep to a speed that wouldn't leave him in a crumpled heap at the base of a tree. The track wound down the hill, meandering gently for the most part, but with occasional vicious twists right where unforgiving hard or thorny objects awaited his tender body.

True to form his battered spine keenly felt every bump in the track as he jolted and skidded down the hillside, racing the storm towards his home.

******

Montgomery-Jones adjusted his spectacles and watched the hand-operated crane lifting the last beam of his new gazebo. He was short and stocky, in his mid-forties, his hair turning grey at the temples and his face narrow with close-set eyes. It was one of these that he cocked towards the approaching thunder clouds, daring them to come on before his creation was complete.

"Hilary will love this," he muttered. "Bound to. Just need to get the damn thing finished before she gets back. And before that bloody storm breaks."

Lightning flashed, and thunder boomed.

"Best be getting indoors before we get wet," said Bert, the older of the workmen. His dirty blue boiler suit was open from the waist up, revealing that, despite the warm weather, he was wearing a pullover.

"Never mind the bloody rain. Carry on and get that beam in place. I'll deduct money if you don't finish today," said Montgomery-Jones.

Bert's son, Julian, looked on anxiously. Dressed in a baggy overall several sizes too large, he was the youngest of the workmen and didn't seem suited to the job at all. Whereas Bert was grizzled and tough, with a face that looked like it was used to bang in nails, Julian was pale and thin with a sensitive expression.

The other two workmen had only arrived that morning, hired by Montgomery-Jones to help with the heavy lifting in the final stage of construction.

Bert grunted in derision and turned to the man operating the crane. "All right, Shiner, lower 'er in. And you," - he indicated the other man standing nearby - "er, Red, isn't it? Get up there and bolt in the top end. Look sharp now, we've got to get this monstrosity done before that storm 'its. I'll do up the bolts in the bottom end. Julian, pass me a five-eighths."

Julian looked at him blankly.

Bert sighed. "It's a spanner, Julian. A five-eighths spanner."

Montgomery-Jones stood out of the way as the last wooden beam was lowered into place. That remark about the monstrosity had stung, but he decided not to say anything. It would only result in more delay. As far as he was concerned the gazebo was a thing of beauty. He had designed it himself. Spent many hours flicking through his wife's collection of books looking for inspiration.

Normally he would not touch her books with a barge-pole, what with them being about what he called women's stuff: Wicca and the like, but needs must. The break had come when he had found a small, musty book bound in stiff, cracked leather, each yellowed page littered with arcane symbols. After a great deal of scribbling on sheet after sheet of paper he had succeeded in integrating a collection of the symbols, plus a few other shapes of his own making, into a drawing of a three-dimensional structure: the gazebo which was taking shape before him. A circle of seven beams kinked inwards, arranged in a tall cone like a narrow tepee with a pinched waist, were crisscrossed by patterns of straight and curved lines. Geometric figures fought for dominance over odd organic shapes and peculiar sigils in the spaces between the beams. About a third of the way from the bottom of the cone there was a bracket on each of the seven kinked beams. Six of the brackets already supported decoratively curved metal beams which angled down to the concrete base. It was the final decorative beam - the one which would complete the ensemble - that the crane was lowering into position.