In a moment John Ball came back, Primus in hand. Behind him, Keith balanced bacon and eggs, a packet of tea and a tin of condensed milk. ‘Where’s the frying pan, Bill?’ he said.
‘Same place,’ Mr Jolly said, an awful doubt rising. ‘Along with the kettle.’
‘There’s no kettle,’ John Ball said. ‘And no frying pan.’
‘We could—’ Keith gestured towards the van.
‘We could what?’ Mr Jolly said.
‘I know where the kitchen box is,’ Keith said. ‘We loaded it last. It’s at the back of the van.’
‘No, Keith,’ Mr Jolly said, and John Ball shook his head in something like sorrow.
Everything seemed confusing in the Glovers’ house. Nobody woke Timothy. He got up on his own, washed his face, dressed himself. Downstairs people were talking, quietly. When he came into the dining room for breakfast, nothing was being made ready. His mother and sister were sitting at the table, without even a cloth on it, both dressed, his brother standing looking out of the window. His sister had her hand on his mother’s. That frightened him a little bit. Then he remembered about his dad.
‘I phoned the police,’ his mother said, as he came in. She seemed to be talking to someone else, not to Timothy. ‘They said they can’t do anything until he’s been gone twenty-four hours at least.’
‘Where is he?’ Timothy said.
‘We don’t know,’ Daniel said, not turning from the window. Outside, there was a van; there was some activity.
‘Daniel,’ his mother said. Timothy knew, really, that his father had gone and no one knew where. He was just being silly.
‘Look at that,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘What are you looking at?’ his mother said. ‘Oh, the new people. I’m not—’
‘No,’ Daniel said. ‘Come here.’
As if humouring him, his mother got up and went to the window, followed by Jane. They stood for a moment, watching.
‘Good heavens,’ his mother said.
‘I know,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s so strange.’
The van was in the early stages of unloading: the men had taken out the first of the furniture, some tea-chests, and left them on the pavement. They must have been waiting for someone with a key. There, on the pavement opposite, was the Glovers’ unit. It was exactly the Glovers’ unit, and Timothy did what they all probably wanted to do: he ran out into the hall and made sure that the unit, their unit, was still in the sitting room. It was. He came back into the dining room.
‘That’s extraordinary,’ Katherine said lightly.
‘What is?’ Jane said. ‘What are you all looking at?’
‘That,’ Katherine said. ‘The unit?’
‘What about it?’ Jane said.
Daniel stared at her, astonished, but she seemed genuinely baffled. ‘It’s the same as the one we’ve got,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Oh, yes. I suppose it is quite similar.’
‘It’s exactly the same,’ Katherine said. ‘I hope they take it in soon. I don’t want everyone in the street thinking…’ She tailed off.
Timothy liked the thought of all your furniture outside, arranged, exactly as it was in the house, on a lawn, or maybe on the pavement. ‘Can’t we move?’ he said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Katherine said. ‘We’re hardly going to move just because the new people over the road have the same unit we have. Did you think Cole Brothers had made it just for us?’
‘No,’ Timothy said. ‘I meant—’ He didn’t know what he meant, and then he remembered he hadn’t said hello to Geoffrey that morning. There didn’t seem to be any breakfast.
He went upstairs cheerfully. His father hadn’t come home, but he expected there was a good reason for that. And maybe later that day the police would come, in a car with the lights flashing on top, and maybe they’d take him for a ride, so that would be OK. He went into his room and shut the door. When you came in, there was a bit of a fishy smell. The books hadn’t said. He supposed his mother would find out about Geoffrey soon, though it had been three days now without discovery. Timothy knelt down, and pulled a square, flat glass container from underneath his bed. Geoffrey raised his head and, looking straight at Timothy, flickered his tongue happily. ‘Sssss,’ Timothy said, though of course Geoffrey hadn’t made a noise and wouldn’t. Timothy knew that Geoffrey, flickering his tongue, was sniffing, tasting the air to see what was around, but he liked to think it was a friendly gesture. Geoffrey liked Timothy, Timothy knew that, and Timothy certainly liked Geoffrey. To buy Geoffrey, the glass container and the small objects in it, Timothy had saved all of his pocket money for three years, two months and one week, ever since he had first started being interested in snakes.
But Geoffrey ought to see the world, Timothy thought. He reached into the case, and took Geoffrey out, one hand by his neck, the other holding his tail. He didn’t put him round his own neck, of course. He had once seen a picture in the newspaper of a lady doing that, a lady with not many clothes on. The snake had been a yellow python, and gazed out of the picture with an expression of great sadness. That was an awful thing to do to a snake. So Timothy just carried Geoffrey out, very gently, opening the door with his elbow, and into Jane’s bedroom, to show him the interesting spectacle of a van being unloaded.
Outside, the men had stopped. They were talking to each other surreptitiously, out of the corners of their mouths. Always in this sort of place, you attracted an audience once you started work. Actually, wherever you were, you got one. It was just that when the house got to a certain size, cost a certain amount, once you got to houses with gardens and trees planted in the street, the audience stayed inside. It didn’t gawp on the street, not even the kids. The most they’d do was come out into the garden, pretend to be pruning. It wasn’t you they were watching, it was the chance, which might be the only one, to have a really good look at what the newcomers had got in the way of furniture.
‘Enjoying it?’ John Ball muttered to Keith, as they carried a sofa out, one at each end.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Keith said. ‘I’m loving it.’
‘Not you,’ John Ball said. ‘I meant them. I hope they’re enjoying it. Look at them.’
And, indeed, there was quite a lot of discreet attention. At the kitchen window next door, a lady in a housecoat was doing the washing up very slowly. A woman who had walked up the road with a chocolate Labrador ten minutes before was now walking back again on the other side of the road; you could see the dog hadn’t expected that, and was looking up at his mistress with a baffled expression. And directly over the road, hardly concealing themselves, a woman and two kids were at the downstairs window, really staring, and upstairs in the same house—
‘What’s that kid got?’ Mr Jolly said.
‘What kid?’ John Ball said.
‘The kid in the house over
