(9/20) Tyler's Row Page 6

  'But they was going to be thrown out,' they told me. 'Them workmen said as these bits was rubbish.'

  'And the putty?' I would persist remorselessly.

  'Jest an odd bit, miss,' they would plead.

  'Who do you think pays for the putty?'

  'Don't know, miss.'

  'Mr and Mrs Hale are paying for it. You are just as bad as the thief who took their copper piping.'

  'But the workmen—'

  'The workmen have no business to give the things away.'

  I made little headway with my arguments. The magpie instinct in children is strong, and they could see endless possibilities in the odds and ends so easily obtained. I have always kept a large box in the classroom filled with such oddments as cotton-reels, matchboxes, odd buttons, scraps of material, lino, off-cuts of wood, corks and so on, in which the children love to rummage. From this flotsam and jetsam of everyday life they produce dozens of playthings for themselves, and prize them more than any 'boughten' toy, as they say.

  One bleak January morning, after prayers had been said and the register marked, there came a crash from the lobby and a loud wail.

  On investigation, I found Joseph Coggs surveying the fragments of a tile scattered over the brick floor of the cloakroom. His dark eyes were shining with tears.

  'And what,' I said sternly, 'makes you so late?'

  'I bin to get this for my mum.' He pointed a filthy finger towards the pieces.

  'From Tyler's Row?'

  'Yes, miss. It's going to be—' He sniffed, and corrected himself. 'It were going to be a teapot stand. For her birthday, miss. Saturday, miss.'

  'I shouldn't think your mother would want a stolen teapot stand,' I said, improving the shining hour.

  'She wouldn't know,' explained Joseph patiently. Despair began to grip me. Should I ever succeed in my battle?

  'You are late. You have been pilfering, despite all I've said, and you've made a mess on Mrs Pringle's clean floor. Sweep it up, and come inside the minute you've finished.'

  'Yes, miss,' said Joseph meekly, setting off for the dustpan and brush.

  He was disconsolate for the rest of the morning. I could see that he was grieving for his lost treasure, and when he refused second helpings of school dinner—minced beef and mashed potato followed by treacle pudding-my hard heart was softened a little.

  When they went out to play, in a biting east wind, I returned to the school house across the playground, and sorted out a number of objects to add to the contents of the rubbish box.

  'You are free to choose,' I told the children when Handwork lesson began that afternoon. 'You can paint a picture, or get on with your knitting, or make something from the rubbish box.'

  Half-a-dozen little girls drew out their garter-stitch scarves and composed themselves happily with their knitting needles. About the same number of both sexes made for the paints and brushes, but the larger proportion of non-knitters rushed excitedly to the box. Some had seen me adding material and were agog to have first pick.

  As I hoped, Joseph was among them. I watched him remove a piece of lino with one hand, and a large wooden lid, once the stopper of a sugar jar—with the other. His expression was one of mingled hope and anxiety. Which, he seemed to be asking himself, would make a replacement for the broken tile?

  He took both objects back to his desk, and studied them closely, stroking them in turn. Around him work began on the construction of dolls' beds, dolls' chests-of-drawers, paper windmills and cardboard spinning tops. There was a hubbub of conversation among the manufacturers, but Joseph remained silent, engrossed in his problem.

  At length, he set aside the lino and put the flat circle of wood in front of him. Then he went to the side table which holds such necessary equipment as nails, paste, gummed paper, string and so on. He selected some squares of gummed paper, yellow, green, and red, returned to his desk and cut out a number of bright stars.

  For the rest of the lesson he stuck them on the lid in ever-diminishing circles. Despite the finger-prints, the result had a primitive gaiety, and it was good to see the child growing happier as the wood was covered. When the last star was in place, he sat and gazed at it enraptured. Then a thought struck him. He came to my desk.

  'Will them stars come off under a teapot?'

  'Not if you varnish them,' I told him. He made his way to the side table again without a word, and tipped a little varnish into the old saucer kept for the purpose. When the lesson ended the teapot stand was put on the piano to dry, with all the other objects.

  'You've made some nice things,' I told the children. 'Are you pleased with your teapot stand, Joseph?'

  'Yes, miss. It's for my mum's birthday, miss. Come Saturday, miss.'

  'And it's honestly come by,' I said meaningly.

  'And all out of bits thrown away,' commented Ernest gleefully.

  'Like my tile,' added Joseph.

  I opened my mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again.

  'There's a fine old mess in my dustpan,' grumbled Mrs Pringle when she arrived after school that afernoon. 'Full of bits of broken tile or something.'

  'Joseph should have tipped that in the dustbin,' I said.

  Mrs Pringle snorted.

  'Been pinching again? Them Coggses is all tarred with the same brush, if you ask me. Tyler's Row, I suppose? Wonder that place isn't gutted by now. Don't know what children are coming to these days. We'd 'ave got a good leathering when I was young, but today—why, the kids don't seem to know right from wrong.'

  'It's not for want of telling,' I told her, with feeling.

  Part Two

  Some Squally Showers

  7. Moving Day

  PROVIDENCE, kindly for once, sent sunshine on April 20th. Diana had dreaded the day of departure from her old home, but when it arrived, the house looked so strange and bare that she felt as though the parting with it were already over.

  Then, too, there was so much to do that there was little time to wax sentimental. Much of the stuff was already at Tyler's Row, for they had been taking over boxes of books, china and cutlery during the last week or so.

  They ate their breakfast in the depleted kitchen, with boxes of kitchen utensils stacked around them. The final stages of packing Diana found completely numbing.

  'What on earth shall I do with this milk?' she asked, looking hunted, as she held up a jug.

  'Chuck it down the sink,' said Peter robustly. 'And throw the rest of the cornflakes and bread to the birds.'

  She obeyed, and then stood, looking bewildered.

  'Suppose we want a drink later on? I ought to have kept out the flasks, you know, and filled them with coffee.'

  'There's a pub at Fairacre, and old Burnaby will be making pots of tea like mad. Don't fret so,' said Peter impatiently.

  Diana moved dumbly about her tasks. Most women, she told herself, would have thought about flasks and sandwiches and all the preparations for a move. She felt decidedly inefficient and slightly despairing. What, for instance, did she do with the last wet teacloth?

  The removal men were due at nine-thirty. Peter was going ahead to let them into Tyler's Row, and Diana was left behind to see the things out. Later, Peter would return to fetch her, and Tom the cat, whose basket stood on the kitchen dresser in readiness.

  'You must leave Tom's saucer,' said Diana, watching Peter cram the last-minute objects into the laundry basket. 'He likes a drink about eleven.'

  'Oh my lord!' moaned Peter, clutching his head. 'Tom'll have to go without today. Anyway we've thrown away the milk.'

  'Oh dear! He'll go next door for Charlie's. You know what he is!'

  'He won't if you shut him in the bedroom,' replied Peter firmly. 'Now, I'm off. Don't panic. Leave it all to the men, and I'll pick you up as soon as I've seen the furniture settled. Probably soon after one.'

  Within minutes of his departure the furniture vans arrived, and from then on four hefty men took over. Diana wandered vaguely from room to room, trying to keep out of t
heir way. They seemed remarkably calm and efficient, with their tea chests and mounds of newspapers, and pieces of sacking and polythene sheeting.

  She watched the largest of the four deftly wrapping her best tea-set in pieces of newspaper, his great red hands handling each piece much more delicately than she could herself.

  There was something very sad about uprooting all these things—worse, in a way, than uprooting oneself. A box of oddments, left for the daily woman, seemed particularly pathetic to Diana. There was the blue and white mixing bowl which Mrs Jones had always admired, and over there, waiting to be packed, was the blue and white flour dredger which had always stood beside it. It seemed wrong that they should be parted after so many years. Somehow, Diana was reminded of a family dispersed, a bond broken, each wrenched from a common home, and scattered afar.

  By mid-morning the upstairs floor was stripped, and Diana's roving feet echoed dismally on the bare boards. In the spare bedroom, a disgusted cat lashed his tail and did his best to escape as the door opened. He was as upset as Diana by this outrageous shattering of routine. No after-breakfast stroll in the garden, no visiting of Charlie, the next-door Siamese, to polish off his breakfast, no mid-morning snack—it was enough to put a cat in a rage, and Tom indulged his fury to the utmost. He repelled Diana's sympathetic advances, wriggling from her arms, and gazing at her malevolently from the window sill. He had noticed the hated cat basket earlier in the day, and knew that something unpleasant was afoot. Another trip to see the vet? Another stay at the kennels? Whatever was planned was not going to be approved by Tom, and he showed his displeasure plainly.

  Diana left him to his sulking, and went from bedroom to bedroom to make sure that nothing had been overlooked. The rooms, without the curtains, were amazingly light, and the walls seemed remarkably dirty. There were grubby lines where the chests of drawers and chair had stood. There was even a patch on the wall above Peter's bed, where his head must have rested when he read at night. Diana had never noticed it before, and thought the rooms looked startlingly seedy without their furnishings.

  The oddest things seemed to have come to light. Whose was this grey hairpin by the skirting board? She had never used a hair-pin in her life, and certainly not a grey one. In the boys' old room, a china bead and the bayonet broken from a lead soldier glinted in the crack of the floorboards. A papery butterfly clung to their window, and in a dark corner were a few minute shreds of paper which looked suspiciously like the work of a mouse.

  It was a good thing that Mrs Jones was going to scrub the place from top to bottom, thought Diana, or the new owners would think that they had lived in absolute squalor. No one, looking at the bare rooms now, would believe that they were thoroughly spring-cleaned each March, and zealously turned out once a week.

  By mid-day the vans were packed, and they rumbled away down the drive. Automatically, Diana looked at the empty mantel shelf to see the time, and even wandered into the kitchen to consult the non-existent wall clock there. Her neighbour had invited her to lunch, and she made her way next door, glad to leave the uncanny silence of her own home.

  'How's it going?' asked her hostess.

  'Very well, I think. But I feel as though I've been put through a wringer.'

  'What you need is a meal,' said her neighbour practically, leading the way.

  Over at Tyler's Row the day grew more hectic as it advanced. Peter knew exactly how he wanted the unloading done, and had given explicit directions about labelling the tea-chests so that they could be taken to the right room without any delay.

  'Carpets down first,' he had told Diana. 'Then cover them where the men will be treading, and simply put each piece of furniture in place as it's unpacked. It shouldn't take much more than an hour.'

  Of course, it did not work out like that. The men had packed the vans with pieces which fitted well together, irrespective of the rooms for which they were intended. A little desultory labelling had been done in the early stages, but most of the tea-chests bore no labels at all. Poor methodical Peter felt his blood-pressure rising as the boxes came into the tiny hall, one 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 fami
liar gravel path.

  'Trust Tom,' said Peter, smiling. 'I thought this would be our final exit, but what's the betting we are back and forth like yoyos fetching that dam' cat?'

  'How's the house?' said Diana.

  'A shambles,' replied her husband happily, 'but I've found the drink and the glasses to celebrate getting in at last. We've made it, my dear!'

  Later, when the celebratory drinks were over, Diana became unusually business-like.

  'Now, the first thing to do is to hang the curtains. Then we must make up the beds and put in hot bottles.'

  'What, in this weather?'

  'The sheets have been packed in a suitcase for the last two days. They may be damp.'

  'Which suitcase?'

  'The red one,' said Diana briskly. 'I put everything we should need for the beds in it. Including the bottles.'

  'Well, where is it?'

  Diana's confidence wavered.

  'Here, somewhere. Upstairs, I should think.'

  There was no sign of it upstairs. Downstairs, a pile of boxes, holdalls, cases and bundles yielded no red suitcase. Diana, by now, was reduced to her more normal state of vagueness.

  'Did you see it go into the van?'

  'No. We brought it over ourselves one day this week.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'I'm not sure of anything now,' cried Diana hopelessly. 'I swear I'll never move again. It's all too exhausting.'

  'Have another drink,' said Peter, watching his wife sink on to the settee between a pile of curtains and a mound of The National Geographical Magazine.

  'No, I'm tiddly enough as it is.'

  She pushed her fingers through her hair distractedly.

  'I know it's here,' she said firmly. 'Think, Peter. You must have seen it during the day.'

  She fixed him with a glittering stare.

  'You frighten the life out of me,' said her husband, 'looking like the Ancient Mariner.'

  He stared back, then put down his glass and left the room. In a moment, he returned carrying the case.