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The house on the hill

The house on the hill

TELLING TALES ·

For as long as they could recall, Johnny had been obsessed with the house on the hill situated on the outskirts of town

Friday, 4 March 2022, 12:40

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Little Johnny Jenkins was an odd child, even his own father recognised that fact, although Mrs Jenkins was convinced it was all just a phase that would eventually blow over.

From time to time her husband felt obliged to point out that, with the best will in the world, childhood phases don’t normally last the best part of seven years.

For as long as they could recall, Johnny had been obsessed with the house on the hill situated on the outskirts of town. Every weekend he would beg his father to take him out there on the bus, simply to stare up at it from the road below and then catch another bus home again half an hour later.

The little boy would make sketches of the house at any opportunity, regaling anyone who would listen with details of its extraordinary beauty. Whenever he sensed his parents were feeling the strain of their financial woes, Johnny would clap his hands together and beam at them brightly, waving one of his drawings in the air.

“Don’t worry, everybody. One day we’ll all live in the house on the hill!” Mr and Mrs Jenkins would exchange fleeting glances on these occasions, caught somewhere between pride and pity, believing that Johnny hadn’t noticed their concern.

This particular evening, the boy was even more enthused than usual, stretching his arms out wide as he spoke. “The kitchen’s got a great big, giant enormous oven in the middle of the floor. Like this.” He puffed out his cheeks under the strain which made his mother smile.

“An AGA?”

“Don’t mind if I do. It’s been a long day,” said Mr Jenkins, breezing in from nowhere and smacking his lips in a cartoon fashion. “Oh, sorry, I thought you said a ‘lager?’” Dad and boy chuckled mischievously while Mrs Jenkins rolled her eyes and headed off to get her husband a beer. He’d put in a twelve-hour shift in the factory today and had three more to go before Sunday. Times were hard for the Jenkins family.

One Sunday afternoon, while Johnny was at his grandmother’s practising for his exam on a battered old piano they simply couldn’t afford to have tuned, Mr Jenkins took the opportunity to speak to his wife.

“Time’s passing by, Susan. He’s twelve years old. This isn’t normal and the longer we leave it, the more difficult it will get.”

“What are you going to say to him, Ted? ‘Look, son, there is no house on the hill, there never was, it’s all in your head. Every weekend we go out to the posh side of town just to stare up at a couple of trees and a pylon?’ You can’t say that. He’ll grow out of it eventually, the psychologist said so.”

The years tumbled by and, little by little, things did, indeed, begin to change. Johnny’s requests for his father to take him out to look at the house on the hill became far less frequent although he would still make detailed sketches whenever he could.

By the time he was seventeen, he had plenty of other things on his mind, principally playing keyboard and writing songs for a local band.

Johnny was by far the youngest in the group but they were going great guns; they’d been played fairly frequently on national radio and were all set to embark on an extensive tour of North America.

Early one March morning, Mr and Mrs Jenkins drove their son to the airport, blissfully unaware that it would be the last time they would see him for more than three years, owing to the huge level of success that awaited him in the US.

When he did eventually return, it was totally unannounced and, what’s more, on his mother’s birthday. She answered the door.

“Dear Lord, Johnny! Ted! Ted! It’s Johnny!”

“Happy birthday, mum.” He embraced her tightly, before handing her a large white envelope.

Susan opened it excitedly, pulling out a sky blue folder from within, entitled ‘The House On The Hill’ with one of Johnny’s old sketches on the cover. Inside were pages and pages of architectural plans and all the licences necessary for completion of the project within eighteen months.

“Oh, Johnny, look at the detail on these plans! We’ve even got the AGA!”

Ted strolled in from the kitchen.

“Don’t mind if I do - It’s been a long day.”

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