During the second week we really started worrying about the lack of progress. One day we arrived at the casa to find Denise standing, doing nothing on the second floor of the house, open to the elements, as although he had finished laying the bricks he had still not started installing the glass blocks. I could see him through the gaping hole where the glass would go; he was wearing a beautiful, pristine, fair isle sweater. In the meantime, Patrick was wheelbarrowing cement down the slope towards the house. The jumper about summed it up – I'd never seen a Spanish builder dressed in his best clothes when he was supposed to be laying bricks and shovelling cement.
Instead of installing the glass blocks as I'd asked Denise had decided to start building up the level of the upstairs room, facing the road. Each day we came the level of the floor seemed to be going higher and higher.
By the second Friday, Benjamin took us aside.
'Mira, I have to tell you that you're making a mistake with that one,' he said. 'The man is very lazy and slow and it is going to cost you a lot of money, having him work for you. He also doesn't know what he's doing.'
Adrian had been going regularly to the house to move the work on but Denise saw these visits as an opportunity to stand and talk about the work, rather than do it. On the other hand, Benjamin told us that if we didn't come Denise would also stand around and not work. We got an insight into the reasons for this level of sloth, later, a year after these events, when Patrick told us that when he’d previously worked with Denise and ‘Sid’ on Martin and Harriet’s house in a nearby village they often knocked off at 2 or 2.30. Denise would say:
'They’ve had their money's worth out of us today. I'm not giving them any more.'
He and the other local British 'builder, 'Sid' reckoned that after four or five hours they had given enough ‘value for money’ for their 80 euros or however much. And because Martin and Harriet were not living in Spain at the time, they had no idea about this modus operandi.
Adrian said, 'Yeah, but when they've achieved bugger all or even made a big cock-up that costs us money, they don't bloody offer to stay late to make sure they've given 'value for money' on those days, do they?'
But I felt sick all the same at the thought that we had to sack yet another builder.
'Why don't we go and see Simon and Charlotte?' Adrian suggested. 'I bet they'll know how to go about it.' Charlotte was a qualified psychologist and Simon was pretty astute.
So we walked down to their little house in the village and when we knocked Charlotte came to the door.
'We're after a bit of advice,' I said and explained the problem. It had actually been their suggestion that we employ Denise, so it would be good if they could help us to extricate ourselves from him, too.
'Simon's not in,' Charlotte said.
'Don't worry. You're the one we really wanted to talk to,' Adrian said.
We both knew that her brain was at least as suited to the task as Simon's was.
'Well, if I were you, I'd say that you're not quite sure which steps you want to take next and exactly what you want to do, so for that reason you'll have to postpone the work until you've decided on the next stage. That way you get rid of him for now and you can then just not bother to ever call him back. He won't dare have a go in case you intend to call him back in a week or a month's time.'
'I just wouldn't have thought of that,' I marvelled at her intelligence and ingenuity. She'd missed her vocation in politics. 'Thanks a lot, Charlotte.'
'Right. Let's bite the bullet then,' Adrian said, 'I want to get it over and done with.' So we walked up to the casa.
'I want us to meet in the bar at 6,' Adrian said to Denise and Patrick. 'We need to talk about the work.'
Patrick looked worried:
'Oh no. I don't like the sound of that.'
We agreed that Adrian would do the dirty deed. Otherwise it would have been overkill with me there too and the children.
In any case I was preoccupied. I'd spoken to my Dad on the 'phone the day before and he hadn't seemed at all well.
'Go and stay with Tony!' I ordered, yelling at him from the village 'phone box, whilst a couple of Romanians waited outside to make their long-distance calls. Adrian was going back to Wales the following Wednesday and would be able to look after him, get him to go to the doctors and so on, but in the meantime I didn't like him being on his own at home. What if he had a heart attack? No-one would know about it, alone in his house. Tony and Marlene wouldn't mind him staying with them until Adrian got back.
'No, dere's no need,' he said. 'I vonts to stay in my own house!'
'Yes, there is a need! Go and stay with Tony!' I tried to bully him.
In the end, I just said it again and again: 'Go and stay with Tony!' and then I hung up. I thought that might work, because it might shock him into going.
But the awful thing was that I was more worried about sacking Denise than I was about my own father and I didn't spend as much time on the 'phone as I should have. I also shouldn't have been so impatient with him. And I shouldn't have given a damn about Denise, who meant nothing to me and my life.
That night, Adrian sacked Denise and Patrick after nine days of working for us.
'I hope I can still go in tomorrow,' Denise said, 'because I was counting on that money.' Adrian reluctantly agreed (during that day the most beautiful of the glass blocks went missing and we never saw them again). Indeed, Denise was so shocked and furious that Adrian thought he might hit him there and then in the bar. (The following month, he deliberately knocked into Adrian as he passed him in the bar, hoping to provoke a fight.)
Whatever. The idiot thought we’d go ahead and lose thousands by letting him stand around and twiddle his thumbs all day. And in fact we didn't have much to show for his 10 days of labour (800 euros for him and 500 for Patrick), as he managed to screw up by using a mountain of cement (which we paid for) building up the upstairs floor so that it was way too high, and we had to put in enormous steps between that room and the adjoining one, and a very tall person probably couldn’t stand in the room now that the tiles had also been put on top of the massive layer of cement.
Also, apart from his dotting and dabbing the electrician’s cables that’s about all he managed to do.
'Thank God he's gone,' we kept saying over that weekend. And it was just as well, as everything was about to take a dramatic turn for the worst. I spoke to Daddy on the Sunday night; he had relented and gone to stay with Tony. Then, two days later, Tony rang:
'I think your father has had a stroke,' he said. 'He's sitting opposite us and about twenty minutes ago his face all went weird on one side. The ambulance is on its way.'
To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636
And also another of our completed projects:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271