Pardon My Parka by Joan Walker

Author:Joan Walker [Walker, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

“ RING IN THE NEW”

E

ARLY in the New Year, Mr. Boisvert approached Jim on the subject of money.

He had already caught up with the five hundred dollars that Ellis had advanced him, and this had duly been paid into the bank. To date, Jim had paid out $7,500 of the final $8,500, and although there was still the plastering and the plumbing to finish, plus the interior painting and the picket fence, which would cost considerably more than one thousand dollars, Mr. Boisvert’s rickety finances seemed to have straightened themselves out a trifle. Certainly men had been at work on our house and by a subtle amount of careful questioning Jim had found out that they had been paid.

Mr. Boisvert pointed out that it was not his fault that the house had not been finished by Christmas, it was the fault of the plasterers.

There was, at that time, only one firm of plasterers in Val d’Or and this firm serviced various surrounding villages. It seemed that one of these had decided to erect a church and a home for the padre and our plastering firm was at present working on these holy projects to the exclusion of all else.

Until the walls were plastered the plumbing could not be installed. The picket fence could not be built with four feet of snow on the ground. It was not Mr. Boisvert’s fault.

Jim pointed out that it was his damn fault that the snow had come before the fence had been built, and Mr. Boisvert countered magnificently by pointing out that if the lot were encased before the workmen had finished, how would they get their trucks up to the door with all their material ?

Jim gave him a dirty look, but I could see that he was- weakening.

Mr. Boisvert only wanted five hundred dollars to tide him over for a short while until he received two thousand dollars from some other simpleton who was having a cellar dug. And, after all, he was out of pocket. He had already bought our furnace and all the pipes. They were sitting awaiting installation.

He got two hundred and fifty.

In February the plasterers returned from their church work and our hopes soared high. Surely it couldn’t take them more than a week to plaster the inside of such a very small house ?

It could and did.

After two days of intermittent work, they all climbed into a truck and sailed off to a town called Amos, fifty miles away, where a cathedral was being built, leaving us with the livingroom finished, one wall completed in the kitchen and nothing more.

Mr. Boisvert hung the doors in the living-room the wrong way and had to take them down again and put them right, and gave me a quarter-whammy as he did so. Whoever heard of doors in a living-room ? Arches were the things to have. Maybe, but not with temperatures like we got, especially not when you proposed to heat your own premises with oil at more than twenty cents the gallon.

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