Arranging the Furniture: Ken Gibbs

We were, at the time, living in the mid-row terraced house in Ashford, overlooking a railway cutting that still had tank traps from the Second World War.  The crockery would rattle if we were unwise enough to take tea in the front room when the express thundered through.

It was a Saturday morning and when I came downstairs, Mary was standing in the front room doorway, leaning on one side of it, facing into the room, with arms akimbo.  Her face was serious.  I asked what was the problem ?

“It’s a nice room but something is not quite right,” she said.

“Do you mean that we should repaint it ?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, “the colours are fine – it’s the furniture.”

Inwardly, I shuddered.  We were not in a position to consider any new purchases even on the ‘never-never’ and this included such relatively inexpensive items as curtains.  But how could I put it to her that this might not be the best time to talk about new furniture ?

Luckily, she pre-empted me by muttering that the chair was in the wrong place but that if it were moved there – she pointed to where the sofa already occupied the space – it would be a great improvement.

Perhaps I should explain here that terraced houses such as ours, are very limited in the space they provide.  This meant, for instance, that the piano could not be accommodated in the front (sitting-) room, and there was insufficient space even for a coffee table.  The two easy chairs and a two-seater sofa took up most of the available space.  This meant therefore, that any rearrangement of furniture was going to be a tricky affair.

Accordingly, I suggested that if she felt strongly enough about it, I would undertake the ‘rearrangement’ but that it would be better if I were left alone to do it since my language might not be very delicate.

Mary elected to make me some coffee as a means of saving face all round while I surveyed the scene and planned my moves.  Logic told me that to move the chair to where the sofa now stood would involve lifting it on to the sofa; moving the sofa to the space opened up as a result; and then dropping – ever so gently – the chair that had been riding on the sofa into the area evacuated by the sofa/chair horse and rider.  Happily, I managed the move without dropping anything and, even better, without swearing.

I called Mary to inspect and she arrived complete with a much-needed cup of strong coffee.  Her reaction was as immediate as it was negative.

“No, no !  That will never do !  It is completely unbalanced.  No.  The sofa should go there”, she pointed to the location where the second easy chair stood unmoved and stolid in silence, “and the easy chairs need to be arranged just so.”  She demonstrated by flapping her hands artistically.

This artistic flapping needs a short explanation.  Mary, who trained as an English teacher, has a terrifying capability with her mother tongue.  She is able to reduce anyone in the family to a nervous wreck if she is moved to anger, purely by her use of the language.  Yet, at the same time, there are situations in which she finds the use of body language – particularly the waving of arms – helps in improving the listener’s comprehension of the state of affairs.  Like describing a spiral staircase which ascends clockwise; “You know, it goes like this,” she says as she uses both arms while she turns herself around.

So, here I was standing in the sitting room door having to speak in my second language – body – to ensure that I didn’t misunderstand what I was required to do.  A few flaps later I believed I had ‘got’ what was required of me.

I drank my coffee; suggested to Mary that her place was in the kitchen – anywhere other than where I was working – and set about the task.  This time, because of the shape of the room, while I could make one of the chairs take a piggy-back on the sofa, I had to remove the other easy chair since it was in the way no matter what I did.  I tried to take it out of the door but soon found out why it had taken two men to perform the operation when they brought it in originally.

This new move required careful thought and analytical skills which, early on a Saturday morning, were not yet available to me since I hadn’t yet had my regulation three cups of coffee.  I went in search of the second and, having got it, drank it while I considered my options.

I had a flash of brilliance.  Make both easy chairs take a piggy-back and move the whole lot together.  I tried it.  The ‘pile’ wouldn’t move.  “That figures,” I said to myself, “there are too many splinters in the wooden floor.”  Accordingly I looked for a crowbar to lift the ‘pile’ over the splinters; performed that operation; reached the place where I could un-piggy-back the easy chairs; and placed them where Mary’s flapping arms had indicated.

By this time, I was in a muck sweat.  Remember, I still haven’t had my third cup of coffee yet and here I am already perspiring heavily !  Ah, well !  Marriage is made of such situations, I suppose.

I called Mary to inspect - which she duly did - with an immediate rejection.  

This time I asked her, slightly coolly, if she could try to imagine how it would look before I was required to move it all around so that I didn’t need unnecessarily to strain muscles I never knew I had.  This was like going to the gym without any of the fun of seeing a number of lissome females while I took some exercise, since Mary was fully dressed and always somewhere else while I did the work.

She thought hard about the impending move since even she could get a sense that it was likely to be the last irrespective of how it looked when completed.  She muttered as if in conversation with herself – probably a wise move as conversation with me would have been quite abrupt by now.  Suddenly her eyes lit up – “Yes, I know exactly how it should be !”  With enthusiastically wind-milling arms she told me where, and lest there be any misunderstanding at all, I repeated the instructions in plain English.  She concurred with my interpretation even though her agreement included a hand wafting the position of easy chair number two to a position a couple of inches from where I had believed it to be.  No matter, small adjustments could be easily accomplished.

I ordered the third cup of coffee.  It came with remarkable speed perhaps because the air around me carried a somewhat brittle quality.  Understandable in the circumstances, I suppose.

I won’t bore you with the details of the third – and I trusted final – move since it required just as much work, cursing and swearing as the previous move.  When I finished, I tried to recall the precise location that the wafted hand had indicated and made my last adjustments before calling Mary to her ultimate inspection.

She arrived a little apprehensively I noticed, and looked around the room.  It was apparent that she approved and very strongly at that.  Her face lit up even when passing her eyes over the pictures.  Everything - and I mean everything - was obviously exactly where she wanted it.

I was as pleased as she was because my work for the morning was over.  However, my pleasure had only just begun because of the look on her face when I quietly reminded her that the layout was now exactly how it had been when I came down the stairs an hour earlier.

*****

Ken Gibbs can be contacted via kengibbs1941@gmail.com

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