Читать книгу The Woman at the Door - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

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To make a pun of it Luce could say that his entering into possession was a veritable tour de force. A Ford motor-van chartered for the day carried him and his impedimenta down the Portsmouth Road, and diverging by way of West Brandon, picked up the old heath track. The van’s load might have served a Crusoe. Luce had drawn out an elaborate list, though its details were of the simplest. It included a camp bed, and bedding, a hammock, a kitchen table and a shelved dresser, crockery, cutlery, silver of sorts, an old-fashioned hip-bath, two Windsor chairs, two basket chairs, a wash-hand stand, a chest of drawers, one small mirror, two second-hand carpets, a case of books, and an oil cooking-stove. Luce had been very particular about this stove. He was something of a cook, and he had had the stove demonstrated to him by a young lady in the firm’s showroom. Lastly, he had included stores, an assortment of tinned goods, two large boxes of biscuits, jam, marmalade, six tins of Ideal milk, tea, sugar, coffee, bacon, eggs, and a couple of loaves of bread and a pound of butter for immediate use. A stout fellow sat beside the driver, and Luce himself occupied one of the basket chairs inside the van. Beside him stood a five-gallon drum of paraffin, and a faint odour of paraffin graced the spring morning.

All went well until the van took to the rough water of the old trackway. It rolled and pitched and creaked on bottom gear, and Luce, who had abandoned his basket chair and slipped over the tailboard, went ahead to scout for snags. They had another mile to go before they would come within hail of the tower.

“Might be the Menin Road, sir,” said a voice.

The owner-driver was a cheerful cockney who had handled a Ford ambulance during the war. It had been his boast that he could—when the crisis arrived—“shake the old bitch art of a shell-’ole.” He was not to be discouraged. He pulled up and got down to look at his load to assure himself that the goods were playing no monkey-tricks.

“We can do it, guvnor, if we go slow.”

The green slopes and the cedars and Scotch firs of somebody’s park lay behind them. There was still some bottom to the track, and when they came to the heathland the sandy soil was not too loose to hold the wheels. Luce had gone on ahead. The track plunged into a shallow valley thick with woodland and high banks of rhododendron; the soil was moist here, and old wheel furrows were full of water and black slime.

Luce turned back to warn the driver.

“A bad patch ahead.”

The cockney got down to investigate. He was an optimistic soul.

“I can get ’er through that, guvnor.”

But his optimism proved a little previous. The van lurched, wallowed, skidded, stuck. The back wheels spun round in the black mud. Nothing would move her. She assumed indifference when her master addressed her as a ruddy she-dog.

There was nothing for it but to unload a part of the cargo and manhandle it. Luce took off his coat and hung it on a rhododendron bush.

“I’ll take that box of books.”

The two men lugged it to the tailboard.

“You can’t hump it, guvnor. Too bloody ’eavy.”

“Get it on my shoulder,” said Luce.

They did so, and watched the big man go stodging solidly through the muck. “Bit of a surprise-packet,—Bill, what?” Luce got that box of books half-way to the tower, but in the end he was constrained to return it to mother earth. The edge of the box had bitten into his shoulder, and his heart was beating a hundred to the minute.

But with half the cargo removed, the black van seemed to sit up and take notice. The cockney and his mate discovered a stack of faggots, and dumped the wood into the worst of the morass. Luce and the assistant were told to shove behind, and the black van, after some wheel-spinning, consented to go forward. There was drier ground ahead and the thing was done.

By midday the whole load had been carried by the three of them into the tower. The cockney was perspiring and humorous.

“Mind the new paint, Bill. Gawd, I could do with a drink.”

Luce remembered that he had a case of bottled beer, and the three of them sat round the kitchen table and ate bread and cheese, and drank beer.

Luce went down to see the van through the mud-patch. It negotiated the slough successfully.

“Cheeri’o, guvnor.”

Luce had paid them an extra pound for unexpected and additional perspiration, and they were loving him.

Said Mr. Owner-Driver to his mate: “Fancy dossin’ down in that bloody old ruin!”

His mate was lighting a fag.

“A bit balmy, what?”

“Anyway, ’e’s a gent.”

“Gents do funny things. Blimy, that case o’ books!”

“Guess ’e’ll need ’em. Anyway, they’ll do for bumph.”