The Importance of Being H.P. (not the company!)

When one is disabled, one is iin a position where often one must seek help in odd places.  It was my Mother who asked a neighbour of ours, nicknamed H.P., if he would be willing to help me.  To my horror (I admit), I hobbled back to the car to find her chatting like a house on fire with him and proclaiming him to be 'an answer to your prayers'.  Well, far be it from me to judge a person solely on his/her past, but two felony convictions and prison sentences as well as a confession from him that he had been a crack addict for years, had made me a little wary...  Nonetheless, beggars and cripples cannot be choosers and I decided to give him a chance.

Thus began a most bizarre year of working with H.P.... and a situation reminiscent of the famous Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer film, 'Gaslight'.

H.P. repeatedly extolled the potential benefits of giving him keys to the mansion (well, dilapidated row home actually) but I had enough sense at least to keep that at bay.  He did have the combination to the lock for the back porch where many of my books and Freya's old toys still remained, some of them damaged by the water leak but others still intact.  Whenever he brought up the key subject, I would remind him gently that he HAD access to the back porch and yet had made no progress placing my books in boxes even though I had told him he would be paid to do it.  So what would be the point of having keys to OTHER rooms as well?

In any event, in a year, H.P. broke a number of lamps, bent and crushed pieces of silver jewelry and otherwise created more damage in certain instances than had existed, but at the same time, could be a tremendous help as well.  He helped me find a number of treasures, often in places where I could have sworn I never would have placed them.  He would hand me objects periodically with a sort of mystical air... a sapphire and gold ring which he claimed he had found on his shoe of all places, a bag of doll jewelry, which he claimed had fallen out of a bag of mine and so on and so forth...

I puzzled over these 'finds' a little, deciding finally that he was playing some sort of arcane mind-game, either to prove how much he could be trusted, show me how much power he had over my belongings or finally, to drive me completely insane as Charles Boyer had attempted in 'Gaslight'.

Then came the instances of arriving at the house to find a door unlocked, when I knew that the door had been locked and bolted before I had left previously.  The first time it was the sliding door in the kitchen.  I myself had locked it and placed the wooden stick in the little track on which it slid, so I knew it had been locked the last time I had left the house.

At first I blamed J., because he is careless with locks, and even left doors unlocked at the new house, but he swore repeatedly he had not been to the old house for months.  I tortured myself with anxiety and doubt but finally let it go as it appeared nothing had been taken.

Then came the day when the front door was left unlocked.  Again, I was well aware of having locked and bolted it properly upon my departure.  This was when H.P. told me that, 'if any one wants to get into a house, a lock won't stop him.'  And then claimed that the lock was faulty.  I happened to know it was NOT weak because some one had fixed it to make certain that it could not pop open after the key had been turned.

Again, though, I finally had to simply count myself fortunate that nothing had been taken, or at least nothing I could see.  H.P. told me that there was so much random stuff that a burgler would not know where to look and moreover, probably would initiate an avalanche of boxes so that when we arrived to work there again, we would find a corpse submerged by dolls and other objets du virtu.  I laughed, a trifle uneasily and the work went on...

Now we come to the point where I found MY bedroom door unlocked.  This always was the weakest link in the house.  My door opened into the back porch, where H.P. did have access.  In fact, I have to admit that when I locked myself out of the house a few times over the years, I broke back into the house by inserting a knife in the space between the door and the lock mechanism and quite easily opened it.  The fact that the person who did this now would LEAVE it unlocked though was a bit perplexing.

... until recently, when J. discovered that an enormous glass bottle filled with coins had disappeared from the back of his wardrobe upstairs.  He claimed that they were worth quite a bit, about two hundred dollars...  Even though he is prone to exaggerate any losses he incurs, it probably was at least one hundred dollars and the entire bottle was gone, having vanished from the premises like a jinn in a puff of smoke.

He discovered the loss a couple of days ago.  At this point in time, H.P. allegedly had a job and no longer offered to work with me.  At the same time that J. discovered his losses, I found a number of items for which I had been searching.  They definitely were NOT where I had left them, however. 

What goes through H.P.'s mind?  Did he simply move things that belonged to me without tampering with them otherwise or did he actually take them and then bring them back only if and when I mentioned them to him?  It's disturbing and the fact that I still am searching for some valuables makes me wonder what the future holds.

I have weird visions of him in the house at night especially, wandeirng about, opening tins, opening wardrobes, searching through things randomly, exploring in a bizarre journey of discovery for which he alone knows the reasons.  I used to think he found things for me to be a sort of hero... for the gratitude and so on.  Now I wonder.  He is a complicated individual with a very chequered past.  I needed his help and he did help me.  Without his help now, I wonder how I will cope with the old house.  It is all very vexing and actually upsetting.  J. keeps threatening to sell the house, to 'clear it out' summarily.  I am incapable physically of moving the heavy boxes and furniture that needs to be moved in order to retrieve items that are behind them.