Express Delivery

Moving the desk to my flat was easier said than done!

WATCH it!” my brother yells. Too late. My dad, backing out of the door with his end of my great-grandparents’ desk – and a great huge thing it is – has kicked over one of my mum’s tubs of geraniums.

My brother then catches his hand manoeuvring the desk into the back of the van he’s borrowed and both he and my dad, and my mum, too, give me a look.

I suppose it is my fault. It’s me who wants to keep the old desk and, to that end, requires it transported to my flat.

As I get into the van beside my brother and Dad, I mutter an apology, even though I believe I’m doing the right thing. I think my gran will agree. I’ll phone her tonight to tell her.

It was, after all, my gran who told me the desk’s history . . .

In 1937, my greatgrandmother was working in a hardware shop in town, quite a large one, from all accounts.

The chap who would eventually become my great-grandfather was also working there and they fell in love.

My great-grandad was what I suppose you’d call a go-getter. Ambitious. He got the idea of opening his own shop, and my greatgran – his fiancée, for by then they were engaged – was fully behind him.

No-one in either of their families had done anything like that before. Trading on their own account – the excitement! You can imagine it.

So one day my greatgrandmother was walking past a sale room, head full of dreams for their future, and saw the desk being carted in to be sold off.

It wasn’t new even back then, having come with some other stuff from a big manor house outside town.

“It was the lovely warm sheen of the wood that attracted her attention to it,” my gran explained. “She went in to have a better look and was then taken up with the engravings.”

I was about eight when my gran told me this. By then any glow on the wood had long gone – it was scuffed and scratched. But the bit of engraving around the top drawers is still there and has always fascinated me as much as, it seems, it did my forebear.

“She had a vision.” My gran continued the story. “That was how she described it to me. A vision of herself seated at the desk, writing up their business’s accounts, preparing invoices, ordering stock.

“She felt sure it would bring them luck, and even though they were watching every penny, she bought it.”

My great-gran apparently did go on to spend a lot of time sitting at it writing, but not in the circumstances she’d anticipated.

The war came, and her fiancé, as my greatgrandad still was at that time, and her dear brother, went off.

So it was not invoices or orders she composed at the desk over the long nights, but letters to those she loved and was separated from.

For her fiancé, she also kept a diary which she wrote up every night at the desk, outlining the details of her day. Just the little things she’d done that she imagined they would have chatted about if he had been there with her.

“She gave it to him when he came back,” Gran finished with a smile. “Her brother came back, too.”

“Oh, no!” My brother, who’s driving the van, rudely interrupts my thoughts.

I quickly see what he’s complaining about. There’s a road on the way to my flat that’s a bit of a bottleneck, and today the situation is worsened by roadworks.

“This,” my brother declares, “is turning out to be a disaster!”

He gives me another of those looks.

“Why on earth do you want the scruffy old thing anyway?” he asks.

I shrug, unsure quite what to say. But I don’t need to say anything because he’s now talking to my dad.

“If we miss the start of the game . . .” he grumbles.

The game is football – what else? Which is where they’re bound

after they deliver the desk for me.

My great-gran and great-grandad finally married and my gran was born in 1947.

From photos, she was very much a 1960s girl, into all the fashions. She is still very stylish now. She fancied designing clothes, inspired by the likes of Mary Quant, I suppose.

Friends were full of admiration for her creations, to the extent that she opened a little boutique in shop premises now demolished, and apparently dilapidated even then.

The making of the clothes was done in a back room, on the desk which she’d by then claimed.

It’s a huge thing and she used it both for cutting out materials and to house her sewing machine. The drawers, I imagine, were useful, too, for storing buttons, threads and bits of trimming.

Her enterprise was successful. She ran it until she got married and for a short while after, but then the lease on the shop expired and she was pregnant with my mum anyway.

So, though Gran kept the desk, and used it to make clothes for my mum and my aunt when they were little, it was rather hidden away in an attic room, though how they got it up there I’ve no idea.

“Where are you going to put it in your flat?” My dad now returns me to the present with a question which has, frankly, been taxing me.

My flat isn’t big.

“I’m not sure yet,” I say vaguely, as though there are plenty of options for it, which certainly there aren’t!

My brother meanwhile drums his fingers on the steering wheel. We’re still in the traffic queue and kick-off time for the football looms.

Back to my gran. She will admit that she tried to talk my mum out of marrying my dad. But she also admits it would have been a tragedy had she succeeded, for my parents are very happy.

I guess, though, I can understand my gran. Mum and Dad were very young at the time. I was born when Mum was younger than I am now.

And to prove it’s not always like mother, like daughter, I haven’t even come anywhere near anything like that.

She once told me she knew right away from meeting him that my dad was the one for her. Again, I’ve not come anywhere close to experiencing that.

So my mum and dad got married when they were still in their teens. My mum was working by then, but at a junior level and not well-paid, and my dad was still studying.

They rented a little house not too far from where my gran’s boutique had been, and equipped it with wedding gifts and various furniture items passed on by their respective families – including the desk.

And so it was returned to a more conventional use. There’s a photograph showing my dad, looking very young, seated behind it with a pile of books and papers on it.

It was there, at the old desk, pretty battered and chipped by now, that he worked for his exams. And he did brilliantly!

With the qualification behind him, he rose fast in his firm, and within a few years they were able to move into a much better house.

The house itself wasn’t new. They both fell in love with a mid-victorian place, where they still live. But smart new furniture was bought to replace the hand-me-downs.

The desk ended up in an outhouse at the back. That’s my first memory of it, in a dark corner with tools in the drawers and old plant pots on top of it.

Kids like dark corners and I spent a fair bit of time out there in the outhouse with it, sitting dreaming, the way you do at that age.

When I got into boys, I visualised my perfect boyfriend. Tall and dark, I thought.

Now, though, my parents are having an extension built which incorporates the outhouse and means it has to be cleared.

I can’t bear to see the desk thrown out with everything else. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a family treasure.

It occurs to me now, as we turn on to my road, that that’s what I should have said to my brother in reply to his earlier question about why I want to keep the desk. It’s an heirloom.

But I don’t think anyone else – apart from maybe my gran – sees it like that.

We’re now outside my flat.

My brother and Dad heave the desk out of the van all right, but struggle to get it in through the door to the block.

“Do you want a hand?” This isn’t me offering, but a tall, dark-haired chap in jeans who’s walking past.

Without waiting for a reply, he goes to help.

They get it inside and, between the three of them, up the stairs and on to my landing.

Jennifer, who lives in the flat next to me, comes to see what the racket is. It turns out she knows our helper.

His name’s Damian, he’s come to live round the corner and was at school with her nephew.

“Where do you want it?” my brother asks as he, my dad and Damian finally get the desk into my main room.

“Oh, just there.” I point to a space by the window.

He and my dad duly thank Damian for his help, but then go rushing off. That football match, you know.

Jen’s mobile phone rings and she, too, goes out to answer it.

All suddenly seems wonderfully quiet.

In the desk’s new position, with the sunlight on it, you can just about catch a trace of the sheen on the wood that first attracted my great-gran’s attention.

I’m admiring it when I see Damian is looking at it, too.

“It’s rather lovely,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s kind of . . .” I pause.

Does it sound daft? No, I decide. It may be shabby now, but it can be restored and I intend to do so.

“. . . kind of a family heirloom,” I finish.

We stand looking at each other for what feels like ages. But it can’t be, because I can still intermittently hear Jennifer talking into her phone on the communal landing.

“Well, thanks again for your help,” I say. “Would you like a coffee to recover?”

He accepts.

In my little kitchen I’m all fingers and thumbs. I keep remembering what my mum said, how she knew my dad was going to be special to her right away. I think I might be having a similar moment!

Now, I’m sure the circumstances of their meeting were more romantic than carting a desk up two flights of stairs.

On the other hand, what could be more appropriate? It’s clear to me from all I’ve been told that the desk has brought my family luck, and has helped their dreams come true, just like my greatgran predicted it would.

Maybe it’s my turn now. n

Gran was very much a Sixties girl, into all the fashions