Free (9/20) Tyler's Row by Miss Read

after the other, with the cheerful cry: 'Where do you want this, sir?'
    Diana's camphor-wood blanket chest, brought back from China by a long-dead seafarer in the family, proved to be too large to go upstairs to the landing which was to have been its resting place.
    'But it must go up,' said Peter distractedly, watching the men twist it and turn it. The stair wall and the banisters were escaping damage by a hair's breadth. 'I measured the thing.'
    'But did you measure these 'ere stairs?' puffed one man.
    'Of course I did,' snapped Peter.
    'Measurements don't help,' said the second man lugubriously. 'When you comes to it, there's always summat as sticks out. Legs, maybe, or an 'andle—or the staircase bulges. I've seen it 'appen time and time again.'
    'We could take it through the bedroom window,' suggested the other, 'if we could get it out of the frame.'
    'And what about the bedroom door?' cried Peter. 'That's about half the width of the window. No, no. It will have to stay downstairs for the time being.'
    'In the 'all?'
    'A fat lot of good that would be,' said Peter, sorely tried. 'We can't move as it is for all these unlabelled boxes. Take the thing into the garden shed for now. At least it's out of the way.'

    Despite his meticulous work with pencil and paper in the preceding weeks, there were other things besides the blanket chest which Peter found to be too large or too wide for the places appointed. The kitchen door opened on to the cooker. The saucepan shelf proved to be just die right height for the handles to jut out into passers' eyes. The hall floor was so uneven that the grandfather clock leant drunkenly this way and that and they were obliged to put it into die drawing room, displacing a bookcase which eventually joined the blanket chest in the limbo of the garden shed.
    But the final straw came when an underfelt was discovered in the van and proved to be the one which should have been put down under the main bedroom carpet, upon which all the heavy furniture was now in position.
    The day had been punctuated by visits from Sergeant Burnaby, loving every minute, who offered cups of tea, coffee and general advice non-stop. At four o'clock, exhausted by his tribulations, Peter reeled next door and partook of a cup of well-stewed tea sweetened with condensed milk, which he drank standing, saying, truly, that if he sat down he felt he would never rise again.
    At five o'clock the men departed, cheerful to the last, and Peter set off to fetch Diana and Tom.
    'I feel about a hundred,' he thought as he drove through Beech Green, dodging a pheasant bent on suicide. 'Talk about preparing for retirement! I doubt if I'll live to see it at this rate.'
    And then his spirits rose. They were actually at Tyler's Row! After all the vicissitudes, it was theirs at last! In a few minutes, he and Diana would be driving away from their old home for the last time.
    He stepped on the accelerator and sped towards Caxley.

    But he had reckoned without Tom. Diana greeted him in some agitation.
    'I went to get Tom a few minutes ago, and I swear the door wasn't open wider than three inches! He shot out through the back door, and he must be about six gardens away. I've called till I'm hoarse. What shall we do?'
    'Tell Kitty next door. He's bound to turn up tonight for his food, or for Charlie's. We'll come over last thing to collect him, or tomorrow morning.'
    Diana departed, and Peter took a look at the empty house. He could understand Diana being upset about the move, he realised suddenly. Such a lot had happened here. Almost all their married life had been spent under this roof. The house had served them well. He hoped the newcomers would be as happy in it.
    Diana returned much relieved.
    'Kitty will look out for him. It's a pity we're not on the phone yet at Tyler's Row, but she says we're not to dream of turning out again tonight after such a day. She'll keep him in her house overnight.'
    They drove slowly down the familiar gravel