The Ramp Designer

Peter LT
Peter LT
Jul 20, 2017 · 16 min read

SCENE ONE

I must acknowledge receipt of those annoying emails, I thought, as I cycled the last two miles downhill, dodging puddles. I was soon home, tired and drained after a day visiting sites. But what do I write? They’ve clearly no understanding of my financial predicament. I was plain broke and frightened. Why was I so angry? Well, that was easy to understand. I was owed a lot of money. The spiral ramp I had designed was, after several months, still unpaid-for. A tide of spite for these contemptible lottery-millionaire scoundrels that wouldn’t pay for it distracted me. I made up names: should I address them as Glum Gorgon George and Hermione the Horrid Harpie? No. No, that was too childish by far.
I was not as observant as normal. A Uber swerved in front of me, causing me to hop the kerb at the pedestrian crossing. I braked hard, skidded and knocked into a racy looking mobility scooter. I had scratched the faring but the petite driver was unscathed. She smiled up at me as I stopped in a flowing stream and apologised. ‘That was close’
‘It was rather fun, wasn’t it?’ She was unfazed, sprightly, and at ten years older than me, around 65ish, rather radiant. ‘It is a bit scratched?’ I said, peering through splattered glasses at the shiny wet trim where my pedal had just left a six-inch scar.
‘It was nothing dear, don’t worry.’ She wiggled it close to the wall and dismounted. I apologized again for hitting her. I was middle class, It’s what we do — incessantly. She was upper class. It’s what they do — occasionally.
‘Yes, but it’s really not a problem. I’ve had lots of crashes.’
‘Are you okay? I asked, looking down at the leg I had just noticed limping.
‘Yes It’s fine, it’s nothing, normally I’d be walking but I just had my knee done.’ She reached for a stick. Her purply-blue highlights indicating she was from the posher parts of town, probably The Grange, near where I once lived before the recession brought architects crashing to the ground.
‘It’s got terrific brakes.’ she said
I smiled, ‘Yes, it looks nice’
‘I’m so pleased with it and it handles the hills and slopes like nobody’s business. I can get around fast — anywhere, takes me minutes to get from here to Royal Circus.’
It was still drizzling. We were outside a tea shop. I gave her a look. This was Edinburgh; there were hundreds of them. She nodded ‘Sure, why not’ In half a minute we were inside and had ordered.
I’ve seen you before haven’t I?’ I queried as we walked towards an empty table.
‘Yes. Weren’t you in the bar during the interval last week at the Playhouse?’
‘Yes I was.’
‘A very funny play wasn’t it?’
‘Yes and so is the friend you saw me with, He’s very amusing. A writer — Alex, you may know him — Sandy Smith — writes silly stories about Africa.’
‘Not personally, though we have been together in the same room. And funny that I’m an Alex too’ This is typical Edinburgh. One only has to go to any old pub in town to find some composer, artist or playwright tucked into a corner with a half drunk pint at work on a piece or arguing with passionate friends. We sat and I held out my hand, avoiding the stems of chamomile in the glass vase in the centre of the table, ‘I’m really Alex too.’ She looked unsurprised, ‘Not Scottish — my mother was Russian.’
‘You could be half Chinese with a name like Too’, she giggled.
‘No the other part is Scots, Innes’
She took my hand and a cluster of rubies and sapphires sparkled on a finger of her other hand. ‘I’m Irene, so very nice to meet you Alex.’ She paused and added ‘My mother was Greek.’ She said my name softly, almost endearingly. I took out a hanky and wiped my nose and polished my damp glasses, holding myself back as she warm-hearted woman watched.
A bouncy spikey haired small Glaswegian with an animated style of communication was talking art on the table next to us. ‘It’s Muriel’, whispered my new acquaintance as if I was supposed to know who Muriel is. ‘Frocks on the Box’, she hinted. This was lost on me. My partner Giles might have known but I didn’t. I winced at the memory. Such a sad loss to the world of hairdressing by day and jazz sax by night. Oh, why had he shared himself around so generously in the early ’80s? I stopped dreaming and looked up.
A slim, blonde, Latvian, (I guessed), with a yard of ponytail brought us tea and a plate with something sweet and continental. I asked Irene what she did.
‘Well I used to be a rally driver when I wasn’t at work soliciting,’ she winked.
‘Wow! Jim Clark was one of my childhood heroes.’ I smiled, picturing her in a racing overall and crash-helmet flinging a mini-cooper into a snowy hairpin bend on her way to Monte Carlo. ‘What’s its top speed?’ She had a Vita XTC with a lightweight yellow faring.
‘Oh, now you’re getting technical, silly you. Guess.’
‘It’s exactly 8.4 mph, and it can turn in 65 inches,’ I told her gratuitously, thinking she was just of an age that would understand imperial units.
‘Well you are wrong there, she whispered conspiratorially, ’I had it tuned, changed the gearing, it does 16mph!’
’That’s amazing! do you race it?’
‘No I don’t but you must be some kind of nerd scooter specialist with a retentive mind?’ It was said in the kindest of tones.
‘Sort of, but no, Most of my clients use them, I’m just an architect, I have to know about these things.’ I paused before muttering, ‘And lots of others’.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m a disability specialist, I design access ramps mostly for castles, country houses doing Air B&B and grand highland hotels.’ I was exaggerating and smiled conspiratorially so she could guess. She arched an eyebrow. I answered ‘Yes, ramps. I do bespoke ones too for houses about to open to the public -and sometimes I redo their bathrooms, adding showers with folding seats and mirrors and masses of handles, or add stairlifts and rising platforms or cable hoists.’
‘Ah, now I see what you mean,’
‘I’m doing one now for two lottery-winning, SNP voting millionaires.’ I was being indiscrete. She was bound to work out that this was the nefarious pair that had just bought Lochleven Castle. Their application to turn it into a highland Vegas-style Casino had been all over the tabloids, as was their huge donation to the Nationalists. I was not a nationalist, they had asked and they hated me for being an ‘evil Tory’, but were now stuck with the contract.
‘That’s interesting, tell me more.’ POlitical intrigue was not for her.
She wasn’t impressed, and I felt sullied by the association I had with them. Perhaps other associations would work in my favour. Why I felt this sudden need for approval I don’t know but thank heavens I did for out of that conversation came a change of life.
‘The Duke of Menteith has a Vita like yours.’ I jumped tracks.
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes — I had to look up the specification and turning circle — as his ramp is in a tight space but needed a bend. I was working on it only last week.’
‘That’s extraordinary, Oh, we are going to get along well. I knew his father’. Scotland is a small country and landowners all know each other but something in the way she said it touched me and I didn’t like to ask how well.
‘He once gave me this,’ she pointed to a brooch, half hidden behind her headscarf, now wrapped loosely around her neck.
‘Gosh, it’s lovely,’ It must be worth a fortune, how could she dare to wear it. ‘We stepped out together’, she answered my unspoken question, ‘Today is our anniversary.’ I wanted to ask How come you’re not together? But she added poignantly ‘Our families disapproved and I was the wrong religion. They were Catholic. He died many years ago.’
‘I’m so sorry.
‘I’m glad now, as it saved me from having endless babies, but I was heartbroken then.’ I looked at her sympathising. She added holding my eyes and reading my unasked question. ‘I did marry.’
‘Do you have kids?’
‘Just the three. Do you?’
‘Do I look like I have a family?’ I laughed — the floral hanky flopping out of my pink shirt pocket was as gay as a gipsy’s scarf.
‘Darling, I never presume,’ she touched the back of my hand with her fingertips. I watched the small caress with surprise and left my hand there. I was falling in love.
‘Thanks.’ I said. That touch possibly saved my life as I had been struggling with alarming thoughts for such a time. It brought me back, yes, life is worth living. I pulled away reluctantly.
She picked up her cup, cradled it, and perhaps now realising the sadness of her loss, she sipped her Lapsang and fennel tea delicately. We were in The Teazone and they do that kind of weird mix there. It somehow suited the marbled gloom of the stable-like stall under the crystal chandelier. It felt like one of the oldest tea shops in Europe but in fact, it was a recently converted basement of what had been a Victorian butcher’s shop. We were sitting in the slanting late afternoon light directly under where cold meat would once would have been hung. It was a somewhat gloomy reminder of life’s uncertainty and finitude. But I was oblivious, so buoyed in spirit was I by my new acquaintance.
As we got up and adjusted our outdoor clothing to make it impermeable, for it was now pelting, she reached up to offer her cheek. ‘That would be great, Yes, let’s — we’ll meet up for supper at the Horatio. My treat’

SCENE TWO INTO SPACE
Two weeks later we met in the Horatio. This is not just any pub, but a pub up the hill from Stockbridge where folk with red trousers go to celebrate golden weddings or if younger, in banking, and very unlucky, their second engagements. It was lovely, and I knew the chef, (who was muscular, tanned and beautiful). We had once been seated together on the same flight back from Oslo where he had been studying a hundred things to do with marinated moss and elm-smoked elk and I had been hunting at the invitation of old college friends. When I say hunting, I mean strolling around Oslo markets in deck shoes, hunting out treasures of 20th-century Scandinavian design. — But I did fish once, from a small boat, scaring myself by catching a surprised and viciously writhing pike. Henrik the Norse God/Man beat it to instant death with a priest. He grinned. We lost touch, I wasn’t too keen on beards, but meeting Anders had made up for that. We sometimes played poker together with one of his restaurateur friends, especially if I let him win. Anders was now the locally renowned expert in game and indeed ‘Venison Three Ways’ that was what we ordered.

We settled, sipped aperitifs, and attempted small talk, asking after each other but before long the strangeness of my day welled up. I wanted to share it with her, perhaps needing to explain it to myself, but wasn’t sure how. I rambled, trying out the incomprehensible ‘Sometimes the things we know, aren’t valued by those who need it.’ She looked blank. ‘Learning them and sharing them is useless if people don’t pay properly.’ I daren’t say — Like those two annoying, monstrously wealthy but I was now certain, criminal clients.

‘Yes, of course,’ she added wisely.

Instead of sense, or relevant architectural anecdote, out of nowhere, I heard myself saying ‘As is finding out the Space Shuttle might be faked.’ She laughed out loud almost spitting out her ouzo. It was a weird non-sequitur and I was almost trembling, the shock of finding out still resonating around my body. I now needed something stronger than a Negroni.
‘Gracious, are you okay?’ Her tone was kindly. It reassured me.
‘Yes, just about. I found out today.’
The table was small, and our heads were close as the renaissance chamber music was louder than necessary. She reached out her hand again, touching mine. ‘Tell me. We all have our little ideas’.
I took a gulp, hoping she had had psychiatric training, I fiddled with the starter, a tiny Langoustine en Croute, noticed the tightness of my collar.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Anyway it’s why I’m a bit focussed elsewhere. She was looking directly into my eyes. There was tenderness in the depths of bluish-greyness. I stumbled on ‘One of my research students just accidentally discovered it and then pointed it out to me.’
‘Goodness, how did he know?’
‘It’s a she, actually, and it’s rather funny because her father is a professor of astronomy.’
‘Could she see through a telescope it was made from cardboard when it docked with the ISS?’ It was an unusually well-informed question but perhaps a little laden with sarcasm. I ignored the subtext.
‘No. Astrid, my student, worked it out. She’s studying materials for extreme environments. She wanted to explore new forms of construction. So together with her group, she made samples for testing, interleaving products like plasterboard, insulation and ceramics. Puzzled, I asked her “Why the ceramic tiles?”
She replied simply, “Because they were used on the Space-Shuttle to protect it from heat when it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere.”
I hadn’t expected that. This was an architectural technology module, not astrophysics. “Of course,” I said, “I should have guessed”. I flinched, my eyes giving away my thought: naive young woman — so I asked: “Surely they can’t have used the same type of ceramic as a glazed bathroom tile?” I had to suppress a laugh at the ridiculous idea.
”Is there any other?” She had asked
“We’ll have to find out.” I replied.’
‘It does sound very strange even to me, then I know nothing about it’ Irene interjected.
‘Yes, it is. Anyway rebuffed, she told me she hadn’t checked. — So she scurried off, and went on the University’s interplanetary sized information system and in a stroke of inspired research genius checked the Nasa patents. She emailed me “You are right, the tiles are not a normal ceramic at all but a fibrous blown silicide with a glazed surface coating similar to Pyrex glass over an inch or two of insulant. My experiment is useless, what shall I do?”
I emailed her back — “Don’t worry about your project, carry on with it.’’’

‘I didn’t bother with it until today when I had to give her a tutorial. So in preparation, I double checked what she was saying. Indeed she appears to be right. It’s a good insulator but not so spectacular that it can have protected from the intense heat on re-entry, a thousand degrees higher than the melting point of aluminium. I think it would have turned the Shuttle into a fireball.’
I paused, ‘I think the Shuttle flew, of course, but probably never into outer space.’
Her expression had changed. ‘Crikey Alex, you must be wrong.’ I hadn’t heard that expression for a number of years. I loved that she used my name. It was a heart leaping moment. ‘Crikey indeed’ I echoed, shaking my head and smiling somewhat inanely as my pulse increased.
‘I might be of course, but I do heat loss calculations frequently and this is more than weird.’
‘I’m a solicitor — it would need hard evidence to prove. So you have a hunch but how could you prove it?’ She was humouring me.
‘I don’t know but I’m going to have a go.’
‘If one thing isn’t right there must be other factors that don’t stack up too.’ She looked benevolent.
‘You could be right.’ I was getting too energised.
‘I’ll give you a tip — look for the issues where simple maths works against the suggested narrative. They are the issues you can prove.’’
‘Like what?’
‘If it were a car I’d say power to weight ratios,’ braking distance.’ Fuel consumption, turning circle.’ She was some woman.
For a moment I was silent, lost in thought. I gazed at her. Fine unblemished skin. Still fulsome lips, arched eyebrows, faint blue glimmer from the tint above her eyes, long straight nose. Unblemished skin.
‘Of course, I can’t prove anything, I was half joking Irene’. I hadn’t the energy to enter a hazardous minefield and wished I hadn’t told her. But later that evening the thought ‘braking distance’ started to work on me. How had it slowed?
‘You are right Irene I know what I can do, I’ll check the energy required for slowing it.’
‘Excellent, I want to know when you find out.’
Her message was clear, she wanted to meet me again, didn’t mind my foolish conversation. Glancing across the table I knew this was forgiven.
Irene was lovely in her petite sparkly energetic way. Chatting with her too, unexpectedly, eased my troubled mind.
A perfect Chablis accompanied the superb food and an hour and a half later she ordered a taxi and said ‘It’s been a truly lovely first date.’ We had learned a lot about each other’s interests, tastes and experience. So much overlap. So much to ponder over. As the waiter brought us the bill she reached under her scarf, unclipped her broach and passed it to me, with a look which said take it or I will send the ghost of my husband to haunt you. I said ‘No I can’t, I just can’t,’ but I needed to and bowed to the need. I put it in my inside pocket so grateful I could never explain it. It was my salvation. I could rebalance my books and live for another six months. The hug she gave me when we parted on the threshold settled me in a way I hadn’t known since Giles’ untimely death so many years ago.
And that is all it took.

SCENE THREE
I showered, rubbed myself dry, taking care of dabbing gently around my monitor strained eyes. I dressed, switched on the laptop and poured a dram. Irene’s brooch was sparkling on the desk in front of me. We had seen each so often in the intervening months that we agreed it was stupid to be paying two mortgages. I rented my flat out, moved in and in no time had grown to love her. Of course, we slept in separate rooms but now shared everything else. Her love and openness affected me deeply and one time aroused by her teasing I questioned my ‘gayness’. Was I ‘bi’’, I don’t know. And I couldn’t deny she sometimes excited me as we lay on the sofa cuddled up under a blanket watching a wintry late-night thriller. Her hand would stroke me somewhere, a knee or a shoulder. I was sure she was unaware of my cautious responsiveness but I sensed she was not unhappy when she saw me put my hand in my pocket to surreptitiously help rearrange the awakening credentials.
But tonight I must face sorting out the Ramp issue. I went to my desk and moved the piece of paper on which I had drawn a half-parabola and written 3.3 terajoules??? -that's the power output of two of the world’s largest offshore wind farms. I ignored it. I took a deep long sip on the larger than necessary dram and tapped out a short greeting:

Dear George and Hermione,

Re Ramp, Swan Mansion.
I will, of course, respond to the content of your emails and their ill-founded accusations of delay as and when as it suits me… I paused laughing at the humour. and then deleted it.
Your demands are impossible to meet. So I suppose the upshot is I don’t get paid, you don’t get to use the drawings and the whole thing is stuffed…
‘Bye bye little project.’ I said, flinging ramp drawings lightly into a basket, ‘You had such potential.’
‘O please give me another chance,’ cried the little project. ‘I’ll try to work for the Horrid Harridon again and the Grizzly Griffon. Though he does scare me with his demands and assertive demeanour.’
Startled, — I hadn’t expected an A3 sheet of paper to talk, I reach down into the wastepaper basket, picked out the little project.
‘So sorry I discarded you so abruptly — I’ll try to protect you but it’s a mean world out there. Just another few days and I’m sure you’ll be safely off to planning.’
‘That would be so good,’ the little project almost cried.. ‘I want to grow up and be a real ramp, not just an elevation.’
‘I know I know,’ I said sympathetically, brushing a crumb carefully off the now creased paper and sipping the last of my whisky. I looked up, gazed at the Matisse print slightly crooked in the moonlight striking the edge of its frame. ‘We just need a reasonable quote to get things moving,’ I mused, ‘a bit like an enema really.’
‘What’s an enema?’ asked the wee project.
‘It’s what the Grim Gorgon needs,’ I groaned from the slap-slop of annoyance I had shifting around in the deep reservoir I felt since reading their email I was such a procrastinating failure ‘but I can’t really explain it…’
‘How much am I going to cost?’ asked the plucky little project
‘I am hoping it’s going to be at least 2 times less than the ridiculously expensive first quotation. But it’s always such a risk to guess. That’s why we need an agreement whatever the price before I send you away,’ I said.
‘That’s fine, can I go to sleep now, I’ve had a hard day.’
‘You’re worth every bit of £500 I said looking down fondly at the lovely plan and elevation with all its hatching and thoughtful notation.’
‘Thanks, I hope those ugly bastards agree,’ said the project.
‘Now don’t go using language like that’, I said, ‘they are our neighbours — we must respect them.’
‘Sorry, I’ll say a prayer for them tonight,’
‘That’s nice,’ I paused, ‘so will I.’ I added perhaps less than convincingly, for I was no longer a man of faith ‘Then perhaps we can all be friends together.’
‘Goodnight sweet project.’
‘Goodnight mr architect, and don’t forget he who made you loves you.’
That was a very strange thing to hear from a piece of paper. I stood up, straightened the Matisse, took a gulp of the last remaining Glengarioch and stumbled hopefully in the direction of bed.
The whisky bottle clattered into the recycling bin noisily. It joined the bits of broken Pyrex dish that earlier had failed a stress test and needed to go out to the following morning.
It was light again outside when I heard her say ‘Darling, I do think you are drinking a wee bit too much.’ Her slippers skimmed over the polished limestone floor in the direction of the Aga.
‘So sorry I know I do, but now I’ve got this ramp project behind me I’ll be fine.’
‘Good, you better be buster, because I need your help with the lawsuit I’m taking out against the government’ She was ten years younger, fit and full of fire.
‘Heaven’s darling, I thought you were joking.’
‘One hundred per cent serious.’
‘Wow.’
She came towards me, her dressing gown open, firm, still shapely breasts unsupported under the satin nightdress. She reached for me, closed me to herself, I relaxed into the familiar scent of her hair. I thought I heard her say ‘I want you’ but it was muffled and indistinct. She kissed my neck and it was enough. I started to rise. She could feel the faint movement of it like a spring bulb stirred by the April sun against her soft belly. She pressed into me, looked up and said ‘It never goes away’.
‘I love you.’ I reached for her waist and held her.
It had taken me 58 years to find myself.
It was a fantastic find.

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Peter LT

Written by

Peter LT

Designer and Writer. Somewhat Amused.