Roofing in the Time of Corona
Theo Gittens is a Construction Worker and a Writer. In this semi-fictional short story, he reflects on his experiences of working as the pandemic set in.
Images: Saskia Hughes
I work for a roofing company which takes me back after each failed attempt at changing careers, much in the same way an owner opens the door to a dog which has been out chasing rabbits, cats, birds. The door was last reopened only three weeks ago. After a two month probationary period as an assistant in the council library, two months spent stiflingly indoors, I was not asked to come back.
‘A dog’s place is outdoors,’ says my boss as he hands me a pile of slate. ‘What do you want to be cooped up in a library for?’
It’s a fine morning. Today I have to agree.
‘Careful with the corners on those, that’s Welsh slate. Four pound a go.’
I look down at the flakes of dark slate. In the sunlight they shine purple, the hypnotic colour of heather. I don’t miss the library. I tell myself there’s art in roofing, especially if the client has forked out for good materials; real slate mined by hand, or cedar shingles from Norway. They start out a rich orange and fade to an iridescent silver to match the subdued tones of an oak-clad framework. Perhaps not beauty, but a satisfying aestheticism, certainly.
There’s some heat in the March sun. I walk along the scaffold with an upturned face, a foolish eyes-half- closed smile. I blink. Turn the corner of the scaffold. The warm slate in my hands knocks against the cast iron gutter, a corner breaks off and falls to the lawn ten metres below.
‘Twat,’ says my boss, behind me.
At lunch there’s nothing to watch on our grimy little phone screens. Coronavirus has put a stop to all horse racing, football, rugby, boxing, MMA, and snooker.
‘What am I going to bet on then,’ says our chief slater James, dumbfounded, ‘The fucking Grand Prix?’
‘Grand Prix’s off too,’ says Jase.
‘Jesus Christ,’ sighs James, with such a look of hopelessness that I have to laugh. We all look down at our sandwiches. Eternally cheese and pickle.
A week later our second-in-command slater calls in sick. He’s not sick himself, but one of his eight kids is.
‘He’s a ticking time bomb,’ says our boss, ‘He with eight kids.’
I feel bad, the last week we’ve been calling him Super-spreader, partly due to the way he mucks on a stone ridge, the cement dripping messily down the top row of slates. But also because of the eight kids.
The second-in-command is an important member of our outfit, his absence is felt. He’s loud, but loud and funny. The radio fills in the gaps of silence. Every thirty minutes there’s a fresh update. Five
hundred dead in France, one thousand infected in Spain, three hundred tested positive in the UK, eight hundred dead in Italy.
‘Why are the Italians getting hit so hard?’
‘They’re big on close contact, kissing and hugging and such.’
There’s a lot of dubious information going around.
‘They’ve got the biggest aging population in Europe.’
‘Asian population?’
‘AGING population, you deaf prick.’
‘Yeah and you know who’s got the second biggest aging population?’
‘Us.’
We’ve stopped joking about the virus. It’s unusual. Normally no topic, however painful, is exempt from ridicule. Jase’s divorce, the skip man’s prostate cancer and inability to maintain an erection even with Viagra and a pump… my inability to amount to anything other than a base level labourer despite holding a degree from a half-decent university. Debt, debt, debts.
Jase stops coming in. So does James. I enjoy a brief high as I’m promoted to junior slater. I work slowly but I’m pretty neat at cutting around the lead valley. I’m careful not to tread the shards of freshly cut slate through the waterproof felt under the battens. I receive a pay-rise and in a moment of uncharacteristic tenderness my boss tells me that I could make a good Slater one day when all this crap with the corona clears up.
I speak to my parents on the phone. ‘We’re self-isolating,’ says my dad in a dry voice. Ever since they both retired they’ve lived in a cabin in northern Scotland, far away from anyone else. With five goats and a vegetable garden they’re 99% self-sufficient; only their telephone line and dubious internet connection is outsourced. They’ve been self-isolating for five years.
‘What about Gran?’ I ask
‘You’d do more harm going to visit her than you would just staying at home.’
I vow to call her every other day, but she’s always in a hurry to get off the phone when I do. A connection was never really established.
We finish the first side of the roof. The sweat from carrying up half a ton of slate up onto the scaffold has gathered in a slick estuary on my lower back. The wind has turned and I shiver. I pull on my jacket and try to ignore fabric rubbing against my damp skin. The kettle boils in the garage, we stop for coffee. The boss tells us it’s our choice whether we come in for the rest of the week. We exchange guilty glances, none of us wanting to commit to anything which at this point still feels like surrender. We know he’ll carry on regardless; he’ll work through anything to get the roof covered over before the weather breaks. You can’t leave a family home blown wide open like it was hit with a mortar shell.
The next morning I drink my coffee and ignore the breakfast news. I’m self-employed, technically. Our work isn’t classed as essential. The money I don’t make will not find its way back to me when rent is due. Our landlord is a kind person, but so far the government has been reluctant to put anything into legislation. I won’t be protected by their suggestion for kindness. I set off for work and find a skeleton crew. Any pride I have for being one of the last to show up is quickly extinguished once the radio is switched on and the death toll mounts.
The weather is coming in now. The battens are greasy with rain and the piles of slate dust below our feet have slackened into dark grey ooze with the texture of clay. The radio is out of battery, perhaps it’s been turned off. We’re sick of hearing what we already know. We’re idiots to be working, but the roof needs to be finished. We can’t leave it open to the elements. The rain doesn’t care for it’s inconvenience.
‘Slate,’ says my boss. I hand him slate. One by one, straight to his palm so that he doesn’t even have to look up. The next one already waiting, ready to be passed up once the previous is fastened with four taps of the hammer on the bright copper nails.
We move along the row. The batten my boss is standing on sags down the rafter and he falls against the roof with a slate in his hands. He’s not happy.
‘You didn’t nail this batten.’
He’s not laughing. He doesn’t even call me anything; Death-trap or Dimebar or Dipshit.
I scuttle down the battens and reach under the dry of the soffit for the nailgun. It has a satisfying weight as I carry it up to him. He takes it in one hand and pulls the batten up to the line on the felt with the other. As he pulls the trigger the hand on the wet batten slips and he lets out a kind of guttural sigh. The nail has shot through the batten, missed the rafter, but found the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. In an instinctual motion he pulls his hand away from the roof and the nail rips through his skin. He holds it up, and for a moment it is pale white, the wound clean-looking. He cradles it delicately in his other hand. Plumes of red rise across his grip; beginning in the torn hole by his thumb, flowing through the wrinkles in his palm. The radio flickers into life. The number of cases is rising exponentially. Five hundred deaths.
He looks at me with a blank expression. We can’t go to the hospital.
Blood runs merrily down the felt membrane, just as it should. The roof, it seems, is waterproof.
Theo was paid for writing this piece. We are a small voluntary project without external funding, but we believe that our contributors, who all are facing financial uncertainty, should be paid for their work. For our project to continue we are reliant on donations. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider contributing what you can to our fundraiser. All proceeds will go to paying those in vulnerable situations to tell their stories in this time of crisis.
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