The old chimney came down at noon.
People had gathered outside the marked ground to watch, although the contractor had warned them that most of the interesting work had happened before they arrived. The surrounding sheds were cleared. The flue had been stripped of its loose upper cap. Two heavy lines ran to the quarry windlass, and the timber cradle lay ready along the chosen fall.
Iven stood at the base with his coat open and a fine layer of white mortar dust on his sleeves.
The chimney had served an abandoned drying house. Its lower wall crossed the place where the new winter heat main needed a service bay. Keeping it would have meant building around a blind corner and leaving the main’s lowest joint somewhere a keeper could not stand upright.
The housing workers had asked to remove it instead.
Now the hired demolition foreman stood beside Iven, checking the cut line one last time. She had done this work for twenty years. Her right thumb was missing beyond the last joint, and she used the remaining part to steady the measuring string against the brick.
“There,” she said.
Iven looked at the little iron wedge seated in the prepared joint.
