Grandpa and the Warm Square

In a tall, narrow house at the end of a lane, the last square of afternoon sunshine never went out at sunset. It went to bed.

Every evening it slid down off the kitchen wall, a gold patch about the size of a tea tray, and crossed the kitchen floor. It went round the rug in the hall, never over it, and nobody knew why. Then it climbed the stairs. On the third stair it always stopped for a moment, as if it were counting, and the whole house waited with it. The clock held its tick. The pipes kept quiet. Then the square went on up and lay down on whichever bed it liked, and whoever was in that bed slept as if it were a summer afternoon.

Grandpa had lived in that house for forty years. In forty years the Warm Square had never once picked him.

He was a tall, creaky grandpa, with knees that clicked on the stairs and feet that were cold from October until May. He took bedtime very seriously. He had a woolly hat for sleeping in, a glass of water with a saucer on top, and three hot-water bottles called Big, Bigger and Mrs. Simmons. Big and Bigger he filled from the kettle without any fuss. Mrs. Simmons was the oldest, and wore a knitted cover with a little collar, and he filled her slowly and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Simmons,” when she was full.

This week his granddaughter Tilly was staying, and the Warm Square went to Tilly every single night. Tilly did not even try. She got into the little bed in the little room. Before she had even decided which way to face, the square had come up the stairs, stopped on the third one, and lain down over her like a cat on a windowsill.

When Tilly wasn’t staying, the square went to Pudding. Pudding was a fat old dog who slept in a basket on the landing, and on Warm Square nights Pudding snored about it, so the whole house knew.

Grandpa was a little bit cross about all this, in a dignified way. He did not stamp or sulk. He only said, at breakfast, “I trust you slept well.” He said it in the voice of a man who had also slept perfectly well, thank you, with his feet like two cold fish at the bottom of the bed.

“I dreamed I was in a field,” said Tilly, and ate her toast.

Now, a grown man ought not to mind very much about a patch of sunshine. But a grown man with cold feet is another matter. Grandpa wanted the Warm Square on his bed. Not every night. Just once.

* * *

On Monday he decided to be ready.

“The trouble is,” he said to Pudding, “I am always the last one up. By the time I get there, it has gone somewhere else.”

So at six o’clock he put on his sleeping hat, filled his glass, put the saucer on top, and went to bed.

The trouble was that at six o’clock the square was still down on the kitchen wall, being afternoon. It lay there next to the calendar, gold and warm and in no hurry at all. Upstairs, Grandpa lay with the covers up to his chin and daylight coming in round the curtains. Somebody in the lane was still mowing. Somebody else was calling a cat in for its tea.

Tilly came and stood in his doorway with a biscuit.

“Is it night?” she said.

“Not yet,” said Grandpa.

“Then why are you in bed?”

“To be ready,” said Grandpa.

Tilly thought about this, and gave him half the biscuit, which was kind of her.

He lay wide awake for three hours, feeling sillier with every one. He counted the roses on the wallpaper twice and got two different answers. At nine o’clock he heard Tilly brush her teeth and put herself to bed, very sensibly. Then the square came up after her. It stopped on the third stair. The house waited. Grandpa waited hardest of all.

Then the square went straight past his door and into Tilly’s room, the way it always did. And Grandpa lay awake until midnight, because he had been in bed so long that he had forgotten how to fall asleep in it.

* * *

On Tuesday he decided to make his bed too lovely to refuse.

He filled Big. He filled Bigger. He filled Mrs. Simmons, slowly, and said, “I’m sorry to ask, Mrs. Simmons, on a weeknight.” Then he put all three into his bed at once: Big at the bottom, Bigger in the middle, and Mrs. Simmons by the pillow, where she would be comfortable.

That night the square came up the stairs and stopped on the third one. The house waited. And then, for the first time in forty years, the square turned in at Grandpa’s door.

Grandpa kept very still. The square climbed the bedpost and stepped onto his quilt. It lay down. It stayed for about as long as it takes to say “Mrs. Simmons.” Then it got up again. The bed was already far too hot. It was like lying down on top of a teapot. The square slid off the quilt and went out along the landing with what looked very much like a sigh, and it lay down on Pudding instead.

Pudding snored about it all night.

Grandpa lay in a bed as hot as the inside of a pie, with his face red and his hat damp. And the strange thing was that his feet, right down at the very bottom, were still cold.

“Pudding had the square,” said Tilly at breakfast.

“I know,” said Grandpa. “I heard.”

* * *

On Wednesday Grandpa gave up.

He put Big and Bigger back in the cupboard. He told Mrs. Simmons she could have the night off. And he noticed, a little ashamed, that he had been so busy being ready that he had not read Tilly a story for two nights running. Halfway through a week away is just when a person starts to miss home. So at bedtime he went into the little room. Tilly was sitting up in bed with her book already open, and he sat down in the little chair beside her.

The book was one Tilly had brought with her. It was about a hen who wanted a new hat, and in the middle of it was a long dull part where the hen tried on every hat in the shop, one at a time. Tilly loved the long dull part. Grandpa did not.

“Mom reads me the hat part,” said Tilly. “All of it.”

He stretched his long legs out across the floor, with his cold feet in their socks, and he read. The hen tried on a straw hat. The hen tried on a bonnet. The hen tried on a hat with one feather, and a hat with two feathers, and a hat with one feather that was a slightly different brown from the first one. Somewhere around the twenty-third hat, Grandpa’s voice went slower, and slower, and stopped.

Tilly looked at him. He was fast asleep in the little chair with the hen open on his chest.

“Grandpa,” said Tilly, very quietly. Grandpa did not answer.

Then the house went still in the way it did, and Tilly knew the square was on the third stair, counting. The house waited. Then the square came on up, along the landing, past Pudding’s basket, and in at Tilly’s door.

There was a rag rug beside Tilly’s bed, and the square went round it, the way it always went round rugs. Tonight that took it the long way, past the little chair, right over Grandpa’s socks. It stopped there for a moment. Then it stretched itself out as far as it would go. It was only the size of a tea tray, and there was rather a lot of Grandpa, but it managed. It lay down over both of them: Tilly in the bed, Grandpa in the chair, and Grandpa’s cold feet as well.

Grandpa slept like a summer afternoon. He dreamed of a deckchair, and a long green field, and somebody shelling peas into a bowl. His feet were warm all the way to the ends of his toes.

Tilly took his big hand and tucked it under her blanket, so it wouldn’t get cold, and went to sleep too.

Out on the landing, Pudding opened one eye, saw where the square had gone, and went back to sleep without a single snore.

Forty years Grandpa had waited for the Warm Square to pick his bed. In the end it picked his chair, halfway through the long dull part, right beside Tilly. And when he woke up with a crick in his neck from the little chair, he said it was the best night’s sleep he had ever had in his life.

The end.