The transom, the mullion and the small door

“What the hell is a transom? “

I often wished my mother would just shut up. Her voice was like a squeaking meerkat on steroids.

The builder told her that her transom was crumbling and quoted £8000 to fix it. They would have to take out the four window panels and two of them needed to be rebuilt because the wooden frames had rotted and a stonemason would have to carve another transom.

“The sandstone cross member held in place by the mullions,” he said.

“What the hell is a mullion?”

He pointed to the vertical stone section in the middle of the sixteenth century window frame. The derisive look on his face almost made me laugh out loud. He might as well have said ‘you stupid old woman’. Not that she noticed.

Comeuppance is a dish best served to those who deserve it, and she deserved every dish the world could throw at her. There wasn’t enough abuse in the country to pay her back for her arrogant sense of superiority to everybody and everything she encountered.

“It can’t possibly cost that much to fix a leaking window.”

“Take it up with the heritage people and see how far you get,” he said. “That’s what it will cost to do a good job.”

“Well, we’ll see.” She turned and walked away. Down the side of the old house, the ancient stone wall with the climbing zephirine rose. Zephyrs of fragrance wafted in her wake.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the builder.

“Is she always like that?”

“Always.”

“How do you put up with it?”

“I see her as little as possible.”

“Daughter?”

I nodded, with a what-can-a-person-do smile.

“I’ll call you for a written quote once she’s worked her way through a few more unfortunate builders,” I said.

“She’ll get a reputation round here and then no-one will come and quote.”

I nodded.

“Gabby!” she shrieked.

“Coming…”

He waved and walked to his van, shaking his head. I scuttled up the rose path.

“Coming…”

She’d always been ‘difficult’. Which is a polite way of saying she was a pain in the arse with everyone she ever met.

“That little hidden door at the back of the pantry,” she snapped as she led me through the back door.

“I thought you’d given up trying to open it.”

“I had, but I tried again yesterday. Something moved. Come and help me move the shelves.”

“Mother, I have to go. I told you I needed to go at 3. It’s five past already.”

“It’s not my fault that fellow was dim-witted and ridiculously expensive.”

“I have to pick up the twins from school.”

“Just give me a few minutes. The pre-school won’t let them walk the streets un-accompanied.”

“Just a minute, then I really have to go.”

“For god’s sake girl, stop allowing other people to rule your life. Get in here.”

I don’t think she saw the irony of those two immediately consequent sentences. I try not to refer to her as a nasty old bag because ‘what will people think’, but she was a nasty old bag, even if she was my mother.

The small, ancient door had appeared a week earlier when we moved the massive shelving unit in her pantry so she could sweep behind it.

It was old. Very old. Made of solid lengths of hand-hewn timber and aged almost black with time. It hadn’t been moved in the 30 years she had lived there and probably not for a century or more before that. After my father died she had evicted the tenant family and moved into the Shropshire house her family had owned for generations but never lived in. I was just 10 then and had been sent off to boarding school. I only spent occasional weeks there and then only so she could pretend to be a good mother in front of family or village visitors then toss me back to school and forget about me until the next ungracious demand was sent to the headmistress. “Until Uncle George leaves.” “Until Mildred goes back to Florence.” “After the village fête.” I was an encumbrance soon shifted, soonest gone.

“I have got an old joist so we can lever the shelves a little further out and get to the door.”

“We should have asked the builder to help. He’s big enough.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not having him inside my home in those boots.”

“He’d have to come in to do the work.”

“Well he can forget about that job. Eight thousand pounds! The man must think I’m a bloody fool.”

The shelves clearly hadn’t been moved since we had last tried. She reached behind them and pulled out a heavy length of timber.

“This could move a gravestone,” she said and smiled malevolently. As if she was enjoying a joke about mashing someone’s brains inside their skull with a hand blender.

“Come on then,” I said and took the beam from her.

“In a hurry are you then?” As if I’d never mentioned I needed to leave, like, now.

She shuffled around me as slowly as she could. I pushed past her and set the end of the beam on the floor in the narrow space behind the shelves and heaved. It shifted a few inches.

“God, you always were a weakling. Give it to me.” Said the old woman half my weight with no visible musculature. She pushed me aside.

“Maybe if we both gave a heave,” I suggested with a sigh.

Realising she had over-stepped the bounds of common sense, she sneered and said: ”Take the end.” I squeezed in beside her.

The door had been painted a dark green a long time ago. The paint had mostly peeled. It was dusty, with a heavy blacksmith-made handle, and hinges bolted into the large, ashlar stones of the wall. It looked like something for a medieval castle, not a cupboard for jam jars. It was at chest height and about two feet square. Probably originally had shelves for kitchen produce or herbs, or maybe wine in the cool of the massive old stone wall.

After a few minutes of heaving and complaints about my weakness we had enough space behind the shelves for an adult to walk in.

‘Pity there’s only one adult here’ I thought to myself. But I didn’t say what I was thinking. I learnt that lesson decades previously. No sense lighting the fuse of my mother’s vile temper.

With childlike excitement at what might be behind the door I stepped into the space, but she grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back.

“It’s my cupboard,” she snapped.

Yes, of course, don’t let your only child enjoy a rare moment of pleasure in your company.

The shelves blocked a lot of the light but enough shone round the edges to see. She stood in front of the small door, her back to the broad planks of the rear of the shelving.

A small titter of excitement. She knocked on the door. It sounded heavy, thick with ancient wood. She reached up for the handle and gave it a little tug. Nothing. A stronger tug. Still nothing.

She looked across to me as if to say: ‘Don’t you dare try to step in and take over.’

She turned back to the door, braced herself and gave it a strong jerk.

The door flew open as if pushed from behind. A heavy cast-iron arrow rammed out of the space behind the door and pinned her to the shelving planks.

Her head turned to me as a gurgling sigh escaped her as she died and sank onto the arrow shaft.

…

“We think it was set up in the late 1500s during the reign of Elizabeth the First,” the English Heritage historian said. “It might have been intended to hurt someone looking for a priest hole. People used to have places set up where Roman Catholic priests could hide if Elizabeth’s religious police called.”

“Tough for the person looking for a priest.”

“Tough for you. I am so sorry for your loss.”

I nodded.

Sorry isn’t really the word I would use. But it’s too hard to explain to people who didn’t know her.

I hear that the village is organising a small celebration though. Bless them.