Free Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde Page B

Market Cross and we knew we were safely home at last.
    It seemed like the middle of the night, it was so dark, and we had to unload all our packages and cases, and call out to Ivy Bottle and the Woolers. Then we had to go and stand under the chestnut tree outside Waterloo Cottages and wait for Ted Deakin to arrive with his lorry, which he did pretty soon – well, just before we all wanted to be excused. I mean, just in time. His lorry arrived andmade a half-turn under the tree, and he called out to us that we’d be home in a jiffy and jumped down to help load the baggage.
    Flora was a bit worried because she saw
Deakin and Son, Undertakers and General Removers
printed on the side of the lorry, but I told her that it was perfectly all right. This was Deakin’s lorry, not the hearse. She felt a bit better when she was told to go and sit in the front cabin part with Lally while my sister and I had to squat among our baggage in the back.
    It was jolly cold, I can tell you. But what was more frightening in the dark was a huge old sideboard which kept sliding about with its doors flapping open and shut every time we turned a corner.
    â€˜If it falls on us we’ll be squashed flat,’ said my sister. ‘And no one will hear if we scream for help. I think it’s a vile thing to do, all that way from London.’
    That rather worried me: supposing it squashed the Weekend as well?
    â€˜What does he want a terrible old thing like that for in his lorry?’ said my sister, pushing against it with one foot. ‘I can’t hold it back. You push too.’
    So we sat there pushing the sideboard while its doors slammed and opened like clapping hands. We couldn’t really see it because it was so dark, just a shape, but we knew what it was because we had seen it lit up by the lamps in Wood’s the butcher’s, down in the square, where they were just shutting up the shop and scrubbing down the counter and the chopping-block, and Mrs Wood, who was quite fat and sat in the cash desk, was sweeping out the sawdust. That’s how we saw the sideboard, pulling oursuitcases and bags on board. And then suddenly we felt a turn to the left, very swervy, and the sideboard slid across the lorry and we crouched in the corners and then the worst thing happened. We began to climb the hill up to the cottage and the sideboard rattled very fast down to the end of the lorry and crashed against the tailboard, where it stuck with all our bags clustered round it like piglets at a sow.
    It was quite funny in a kind of way, because I knew we were going up all the way, so it wouldn’t slither back and flatten us. And there was the wonderful smell of dung from the sties at Piggy Corner, and I called out to my sister that we were nearly home and she called back that she would have to be excused in a minute, she was ‘terrified’ by the sliding sideboard and had wanted to ‘go’ ever since we left the Market Cross.
    But then we stopped and I heard Lally getting down and calling to Flora and heard her hurrying round to the back of the lorry with her dancing torch.
    â€˜Oh my Lord!’ she cried. ‘Mr Deakin, I declare you’ve killed the children! Or else where are they?’ Then we clambered out into the road.
    â€˜Good riddance!’ he shouted and drove off up the hill towards Milton Street, whistling like anything, leaving us standing at the path up to the cottage with all the luggage. There was a lamp glimmering in Mrs Daukes’s cottage, and pretty soon she came out and we all shook hands and started up the path with bags and cases, everyone carrying something.
    â€˜I laid the fire,’ said Mrs Daukes. ‘All you ‘ave to do is touch ‘im with a match. ‘Ave a nice glow in no time. Igot some nice dry kindling, and there’s half that old apple as fell in October last.’
    Lally used her Extra-Polite voice, which could be a bit dangerous sometimes.