Read Online Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country by Tony Hawks - Free Book Online Page B

the strain on his entire body, a horrible thought struck me. What if he had a coronary? Being responsible for the death of the man next door wouldn’t be the best way to establish myself in the locality. I would also have a piano stuck at this dreadful angle and it would be very difficult to play. Worse still, every time I played it, I’d be reminded of my dead neighbour.
    Fortunately I was able to slide the cushions quickly into the correct position and Ken and I were able to complete the lowering without incident. The end of the piano keyboard was now resting on the cushions, with one leg successfully removed.
    ‘There!’ I declared.
    The problem was that this had taken us twenty-five minutes instead of two, and we’d need to speed up this process if I was going to make my appointment.
    ‘Now what?’ asked Ken.
    We both continued to look at the piano – no longer a musical instrument, but instead a giant puzzle. Bewilderment reigned. Utterly. Dictatorially. It had all seemed so straightforward when I’d watched other people doing it.
    ‘I think I know,’ offered Ken, his tone of voice suggesting that he’d had a brainwave. ‘From this position I think we need to lay the cushions in a line and then hoist the piano so it’s lying along them on its side. Then we’ll be able to remove the other two legs.’
    ‘That’s it!’ I said, with great relief. ‘Let’s do it!’
    This is where we learned that not having the correct equipment was indeed a huge disadvantage. Normally, at this stage the piano would rest on its side on a specially designed piano trolley, not cushions just lifted off a sofa. Unfortunately for us, these cushions slipped and moved on the smooth and shiny wooden floor, and we soon had an 800-pound piano resting half on and half off them. The piano didn’t balance as it would have done on a flat trolley either, so I had to hold it in position whilst Ken circled it, assessing whether it would get damaged if we dragged it through from room to room as it was.
    ‘Before we remove the other legs,’ he finally declared, ‘I think we need to get more cushions under it.’
    ‘How do we do that?’
    ‘I think we can get the jack under it enough to wedge a few more cushions in.’
    And so, a further fifteen minutes were lost making use of the car jack and getting the piano in the best position for dragging it along the floor. The first leg came off easily enough. The second one started to prove a problem. Ken twisted hard. Nothing. Something may have gone wrong with the thread. He tried again. Still nothing. He took a deep breath and exerted the kind of pressure that a builder exerts when the whole job depends on it. He started to turn blue. Panicky thoughts about coronaries returned. Ken let out a huge gasp of breath.
    ‘Bugger!’
    The leg hadn’t shifted. We both looked at it.
    Stalemate.
    I let a reasonable amount of time pass, 1 before asking the obvious question.
    ‘What are we going to do?’
    Ken repeated the Stan Laurel head-scratch.
    ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘maybe I could shift it using an oil filter band.’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘It’s a tool I use for removing oil filters on tractors.’
    Oh my. In our novel approach to piano removal we’d now moved from cars to tractors. We were getting further and further away from the Paris conservatoire.
    Bereft of any ideas of my own, I had no option but to declare that this was a good one, regardless of nagging doubts to the contrary.
    ‘Good idea, Ken. I’ll hold the piano here. How long do you think you’ll be?’
    ‘Well, I’ve got to find the tool, but I shouldn’t be longer than ten minutes.’
    Twenty minutes later I was still supporting my grand piano. I’d had ample time to assess what we’d achieved. In just under an hour we had put the piano on its side, removed two of its legs and established that we couldn’t remove the third. Ken was currently lost in some shed or another searching for tractor tools. I now realised that I