Chapter 12
The next day started late. The last night had been long. Sleep had to be had and the hangover demanded its tribute. Barbara was the only one not really affected as she knew how to party hard but very carefully, always alternating alcoholic drinks with soft drinks, knowing when it was wiser to nip than to down a glass. So when she went to the mill mid morning she found the place empty. She took the time to have a private tour trying to get a feel for the place to understand what it was that Jenny saw in this place. Yesterday during dinner she had felt it, but it did not convince her. You took a bunch of people who were at least on speaking terms, added food, booze and a common goal and you had yourself a party. No matter where you were. She had seen hundreds of events like these. She could engineer then if the fancy struck her. That was one of her personal little dirty secrets. There were times when she did not earn anything from her job as fairy-godmother to the under-appreciated, but she had to keep up appearances, so she had developed a rather healthy side business in designing and orchestrating parties for the terminally boring who as their only saving grace had money in excess. A victimless crime in her eyes as she did a lot to cultivate these people gently deepening the shallow puddles which reflecting the stars high above they mistook for the infinite sky. This also led to her second dirty secret, the only reason she was now wealthy enough to to have to worry about details like rent or food or bills was that it was among this crowd she found those who knew how to turn a bit of money into a bit more. Yes she had helped many artists to fame, she had taken a little cut from those who were truly successful but mostly she had been paid in art and that was the problem really. If the art was great, and a personal gift at that, how could she ever sell it. And if the art was horrible, it had to be put in a safe place to save everyone from embarrassment. She had a vault in her basement that was protecting the dignity of countless people.
She came to stop in front of the great hole in the third floor looking down to the milling room. Nope. She could not feel it. There was something quaint about the watermill and she had some very nice, private memories connected to this place. She smiled as she relieved a few passionate moments of her distant past, wondering what might have become of the others she had shared them with. But no, this was her just being sentimental. In the end this was a ruin. Repairing it would just turn it into an old watermill. Quaint, yes. But nothing remarkable.
This was intensely frustrating to her. She had watched artists all her life turning nothing into something special. A canvas into a window to new world. A block of stone into a simulacrum so close to real life that she'd expect it to move at any moment, holding her breath as she waited for it to come alive. Or taking random junk sticking it together into strange new forms so that the shadow it would cast would cast the shadow of something whole and beautiful. And never in all those years had she been able to see how the result would feel like until it was almost done. A twist of bitterness flavoured her soul. She grimaced at its taste.
'Don't.' she thought to herself. 'That path leads nowhere.' Unless of course you were her therapists then it lead to a fine big saloon. How ever there was a karmic balance to the universe. Because she knew the people who could turn things like this pile of rubble into something special. She knew when people had the spark or the drive or the vision to be great. Barbara could always get a quick feel what these people needed to grow. What would motivate them to put the work in that was necessary to go from nothing to art. While she did not know what it would become, she always knew how far one still needed to go. And she was there encouraging all these people, now for generations through this whole gruelling ordeal.
The mill was still missing to much for Barbara to get it. She saw the light in Jenny though and she saw how her fire slowly spread to the others. Some easily kindled, like Edmund who was probably pre-emptively on fire and Byron who had eyes who could see things much like Jenny did. But even people like Dan who life had failed to break but at least got him stuck in a perpetual state of cynicism was starting to really enjoy the work he was doing. Barbara had caught him regarding a bit of wall he had saved from potential ruin with gentle pride. People like Jenny who had a spark and were able to share it with others were very rare.
'I'm really sentimental today.' she thought kicking a pebble down the hole, it fell down making a satisfying click sound as it struck the ground, it rebounded once and then rolled away, hiding from the crazy old woman upstairs. Lost in thought she went outside again. 'Maybe I do get it?' Barbara thought, 'Or my age is finally catching up with me. I can't be in my mid-twenties all the time.'
"Excuse me, are you Jenny?" a female said, pulling Barbara out of her thoughts.
"I beg your pardon?" said Barbara.
"I asked if you are Jenny." said the woman. She was the age Barbara had decided to stay in for ever, she was wearing combat boots what probably where sensible trousers, almost completely covered up by a long mint green down coat. "I'm Linda." she added with a voice that made clear that, that should explain everything.
"Ah! You're the engineer girl." Barbara said.
"I'm the engineer woman." Linda corrected.
Barbara was about to tell Linda that from her perspective she was still closer to girl than to woman, but then decided against it, she had been far too old for far too long already today. If she wasn't careful the age would stick. "Sorry. You must be the engineer person." she just couldn't stop herself.
Linda considered this for a moment and then nodded, finding it satisfactory. "So, are you?"
"No. I'm afraid, I'm Barbara."
"But you do know Linda." not quite a statement, not yet suspicion.
"Yes, I know her. I guess you want to talk to her?"
"You assume right." said Linda relaxing.
"I'll just call her and I'll give you the tour while we are waiting for her."
"Fair enough." said Linda shrugging.
Half an hour later Jenny arrived, finding Linda and Barbara in the milling room, sitting on the floor drinking tea. After a short introduction Linda went straight to the point. "So, you need a generator." she said to Jenny.
Jenny pointed into the middle of the room. "About there to be precise. We have the water wheel, it would be a shame to let it go to waste. In a perfect world the generator could produce enough energy to make this place self sufficient."
"You were planning on a café, right?" Lind asked.
"Yes."
"Why don't you give me a tour and tell me what you would put where, and how far the grounds go."
"The grounds?" said Linda a bit surprised. "Sure, but how is that relevant to the generator."
"My situation is a bit complicated but if the right circumstances came together..." she look around again then looked Jenny directly into her eyes. "We could both benefit from the situation."
Jenny was not sure if that was meant to be reassuring. It did feel more like talking to a mob boss. "Let's give you the tour."
While she walked through the watermill pointing out how she imagined how everything here would look once it was done Jenny noticed that by now the whole project was almost done in her mind. She knew where everything would be. There was a certain solidity to the image she had in her mind. Instead of a mason removing things from a stone until the statue appeared, this was a case of adding to the free space until her idea was made manifest.
Another thing she noticed was how everyone reacted differently to the tour. She had now shown the place to several people, everyone reacting differently. Edmund with vocal enthusiasm; Barbara with mostly with a silent intensity only once in while pointing out something that she new about the place or where she saw parallels to past projects where she had helped; while Byron for example was almost instantly adding his own ideas, asking questions wanting to understand the whole project on a deep level. Linda was just silent. She listened, without interrupting, there was hardly any emotional reaction, but her eyes were always focused. She was absorbing everything she heard and while she did not say anything it was obvious that she was thinking about everything she heard.
In the end they stood outside next to Byron's construction trailer where smoke was drifting out of a little chimney on its roof filling the air with the smell of burning wood and breakfast.
"There were the little path leads to that bridge is where western part officially ends." Jenny said.
"OK", said Linda. She faded into deep thought for a while. Jenny decided to wait until she was done with it. While she waited she wondered if she could ask Byron for a coffee. It would help clear her head that was still faintly throbbing and then she would have something war to hold. While it was not exactly cold outside that day it was a damp, The bad weather was crawling beneath her clothes. Something that did not seem to bother Linda to much. Jenny was about to turn around and knock on Byron's door when Linda finally said something.
"I think I might be able to help you." Linda said.
"I'm glad to hear that." Jenny said waiting for the 'but'.
"I might even be able to help you with more than you actually asked for."
OK. This was not what Jenny had expected but now she was really curious where this was going.
"The situation in the mill is interesting, I can use it for my thesis, I had originally thought about something a bit smaller in scale, a proof of concept type thing, but in a way this is even better. There is a direct correlation to real world impact and there is enough room inside the building that we can build it from mostly off the shelve parts. My original plan was something going more in a bespoke direction. But actually, this is better. I'm starting to digress, the take home message here is: I can help you and this will work. OK. I can pay for my work and my materials myself. That is covered by my research grant. However there is more. I was asked by group from another university if I would be interested in a cooperation with them. At the time there wasn't much I could offer them but as it was connected to a pretty sweet grant from the EU I asked them to give me a few days to see if I can find a way to make our projects work as one big project. It did not look good until now." she said with the faintest smile.
"So this other project," said Jenny, "what is it about?"
"It is also about self-sufficient buildings, my project, until now was to small and lacked a suitable location for it. But now... Look at this place." Linda said her hand waving from the bridge to the mill. "This is where you want your watermill café to be right?"
"Yeah..." said Jenny.
"Now imagine how this would look," Linda said now seeing something there that should be real, "if you build something like a green house over it. Covering everything from the place where we are standing including the entire mill. You would have a space with its own micro-climate. The other team would build the green-house and drill some holes deep into the earth to keep it warm. With the river we can generate electricity, cool the place down in summer and regulate the humidity. It would be magnificent."
"A greenhouse?" Jenny asked.
"Pretty much. Inside it, it would be always summer."
"Deal."
"Just one more thing." said Linda.
"Yes?"
"I'd like to try your coffee."
"My coffee?" Jenny asked feeling that she was being led into a trap.
"Well you say you want to open a café and I'm about to stake my PhD thesis on your venture, so before I do that' I'd like to try your coffee. I want to know if I'm backing the right horse here."
"er..." Jenny was completely taken by surprise "I'm more of a tea person myself." she said her smile crumbling from her face. Now that she had a few panic fuelled seconds to consider it, that was a pretty reasonable request, about something she had never really considered but taken as a given. "However," she said, "Byron, our cook can take care of that." her smile still scared by Linda slowly returned.
Linda looked pleasantly intrigued. Jenny turned around and walked towards the door Byron's trailer, hoping that he was not only awake but also in a presentable shape. She knocked at the door.
"One moment please!" called Byron from inside. They heard some shuffling from inside and moments later Byron opened the door. He looked rakishly dishevelled in a way that made Jenny wonder if she had been doing hangovers wrong her entire life or if Byron had gone to a special workshop for that. "Good morning." he said.
"It's 1pm..." said Linda.
"And I just got up." said Byron as if this explained everything.
"Hello Byron," said Jenny choosing to be diplomatic, "may I introduce you to Linda. She is the one that is going to be building our generator."
"Pleased to meet you, Linda. I'm Byron."
"Linda, hi."
"Do you want a coffee? I was just making some."
"With pleasure." said Linda and she meant it.
"Please come in."
Jenny, Linda and Barbara went inside the trailer to find that it actually had just enough space for the four of them. In the middle of the little room was a table with enough space to one side to squeeze past. Behind that was a large book shelve bulging with books, on the other side a shelve full of cooking utensils. At the far end stood a large iron stove in which a fire was happily purring. On top of it stood three small pots, one of containing boiling water, Jenny could not see what was in the other two.
"This is very nice." said Barbara, "Did you do all of this yourself?"
"Most of it. Please take a seat. But I had a lot of help with the design and some of the implementation. The stove here for example is also the radiator. All the hot air goes into metal pipes which run along the floor there and there. I needed some help with the welding and making sure that they are actually air tight, else there would be a significant risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. These things look easy, but they usually turn out to be interesting instead."
"I'm this close to liking you." Linda said holding her thumb and index finger an inch apart. "But you really need to show me your coffee."
"Right, I was experimenting right now with how to get the best result. Does anyone here prefer their coffee with milk?" Jenny and Linda raised their hands while Barbara said, "I prefer mine black."
"Perfect." said Byron turning to the shelve filled with pots, pans, cutlery, glasses and mugs. He took out five mugs and started to pour coffee. "For you Jenny and... Linda, this is a coffee I made using only milk, no water, it should taste better or at list different to coffee made with water and with milk added. I thought that it could be like with chocolate, make it with water and it is watery, but with milk if becomes a creamy miracle. And for you Barbara, I have two different coffees. They are basically the same but one I made with boiling water the other one with water that is a bit cooler. I'm still trying to work out which form of extraction is the best." He poured the coffees, placed them on the table, added two glass containers with sugar, white and brown and enough tea spoons for everyone.
"As you can see," Jenny said trying not to sound smug, "we take our coffee very seriously." she shovelled a prodigious amount of sugar into her coffee, stirred it for a while and then toasted Byron with her cup.
Linda added one spoonful of white sugar to hers, sniffed it with her eyes closed, and only then took a careful sip. She savoured the coffee for a while. "This is very good coffee. And I like how you think.", she turned to Jenny, "With this, we are officially in business."
After they were done with their coffee they returned to the mill. Adrian and his boys had arrived while they had been in the trailer and had started working already. Edmund had texted Jenny informing her that she was helping Claire getting the materials they needed for the ring.
Later that day the skip finally arrived to the great delight of everyone, which quickly turned into well oiled cursing when they discovered how much work it was to get all the rubble that was already outside into the fucking skip. Claire and Edmund arrived after they had just begun work so that Edmund could enjoy it with them. Claire was the only one of the team that could escape shovel duty as she had a lot to discuss with Linda.
The next few days were mostly filled with a lot of work and while someone looking from outside would not have seen much of a difference inside things were moving at a decent pace. All the walls that needed reinforcement were done filling the building with the smell of fresh concrete. New load bearing pillars had been set up so that the week after they could finally start to take out the walls that needed to be removed. And last but not least the two rings holding up the roof and the ceiling of the milling room were done. The new skeleton of the building was done and hardening and by now the main electrical lines and pipes had been lain. The next week would be the one where the big obvious changes would come. The new windows and doors, but more importantly the new drive-shaft for the water wheel and with it, the first generator.
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