My wife is bidding on a large kitchen dresser on eBay for the new house, but she’s gone out and left me in front of her computer for the auction’s closing hour. As I try to imagine which would be worse – losing the dresser to someone else, or paying more than our agreed limit to secure it – two words on the screen snag my eye: “collection only”.
“I won!” she says when she rings an hour later.
“How do you know?” I say.
“I got an email,” she says.
“It’s collection only,” I say.
“That’s fine,” she says. “It’s only Aldershot.”
“It won’t fit in the car,” I say.
“Just hire a van,” she says. “It’s fine.”
The seller wants the dresser collected before we actually move. On the appointed morning the youngest one and I pick up the van and head west. The boy is meant to be navigating with my phone, but every time I look over he’s on his own phone.
As we approach a roundabout, my phone speaks.
“What did she just say?” I say.
“Fourth exit M4,” he says, without looking up. “Something like that.”
“M4?” I say. “Not M3?”
“She definitely said M4,” he says.
“M4, M25, M3?” I say. “Is that her plan?”
“Dunno,” he says.
“I’m not entirely at home in a high-sided vehicle,” I say. “I like to know what’s coming next.”
“I’ll look ahead,” he says, scrolling along the map with his thumb.
“Too late – I’m committed now,” I say.
My wife has texted me a picture of the seller’s house that she clearly took off her computer screen with her phone. Her ghostly reflection hovers alongside the garage.
“That’s it,” says the youngest one, pointing. What the photo doesn’t show is that the road is busy, with no place to pull over. We shoot past, following signs for the crematorium.
“Why are we going to the crematorium?” the youngest says.
“Because in my experience,” I say, “they always have lots of room to turn round.”
On our second pass I turn into a side street across from the house, pull over and ring the seller. Someone behind me hoots. “Where are you?” the seller says. Someone else hoots.
“I’m just over the road,” I say. “Causing a certain amount of local fury.”
“I’ll come out,” he says.
“OK, thanks,” I say.
“Local fury,” says the youngest.
“That’s what it is – contempt for the outsider,” I say.
“It’s because you’re blocking the road,” he says.
“They can tell I’m not from round here,” I say.
The seller’s car is parked in front of his house. We switch places, and he lifts the garage door, revealing the dresser in two pieces – top and bottom. I smile, turn my back to him and send my wife a text that says, “It’s HUGE.”
A few minutes later she sends a reply that says, “Uh-oh – too huge?” By this time the seller and I are running a tape measure along the van’s interior.
“It’s close,” he says. “But it should be fine.”
Back in London, the youngest one and I try to remove the dresser from the van, but it’s too heavy.
“Wake up your brother,” I say.
It takes the three of us nearly an hour – of lifting, sliding and swearing – to get the two components up the steps and past the jog in the hall where the staircase sticks out.
“Now comes the worst bit,” I say. “Putting the top on the bottom.”
“Why bother?” says the oldest. “We’ll just be moving it next week.”
“We have to see,” I say.
As we hoist the top above waist height, I have a vision of it tipping over and crashing on its front in a shower of broken glass, possibly killing the youngest one, who is crouched under us to supervise the slotting of components.
Fully assembled, the dresser is a monster: more than two metres tall, and wider still.
“It’s great!” my wife says when she gets home. “Don’t you think it’s great?”
“It’s big,” I say.
“And you did it without making a fuss,” she says.
I think: you have no idea.
