Ask and you shall receive:
It were a Saturday, which is never a good day to go to Snape Maltings as it’s full of people who think they’re better than you just because they know what tapenade is. Still, it’s either that or garden centre, and I said to Marion, “Let’s make a day of it.” Which, in our house, is code for: “Let’s argue about things somewhere more picturesque.”
Anyway, we got to Snape, parked up, had a coffee that tasted faintly of damp cardboard and something called “single origin.” I didn’t ask what origin, I thought it might be something unpronounceable and I’d only embarrass myself.
Well, she went off to look at scarves. Marion’s got this thing with scarves - she thinks if she finds the right one, she’ll be the sort of important person who walks in important circles.
I hadn’t meant to buy the side table, not really. I’d just admired it; quietly, in the way you might admire a bishop’s handwriting or a well-behaved spaniel. And before I knew it, a young man in a waistcoat the colour of a fresh bruise had appeared and was asking whether I’d like it gift-wrapped or “left in the raw,” which made it sound like a soft cheese.
It was the sort of shop where the furniture is arranged less like stock and more like exhibits in a museum. Quiet music played - Chopin, I think, and the lighting was all very soft, like a dentist’s waiting room that had gone to finishing school. You weren't meant to raise your voice. Or breathe too hard. Not in Suffolk. Certainly not in Snape Maltings.
“Alan.”
I turned, receipt still warm in my hand.
“What have you done?” Marion, arms already folded, which is never a good sign, stood by a lamp shaped like a pineapple and was radiating fury.
“I just, I thought it would go nicely in the hallway.”
“You bought it? Without me? Without so much as a “Oh Alan, please, tell me you’re joking.”
“Lower your voice,” I whispered, attempting martial diplomacy.
“Oh no,” she said, lifting her chin in that way she does when something’s about to become a scene. “No. No, Alan, I will not lower my voice. You’ve just spent nearly two hundred pounds on a table that looks like it’s holding its a reel used in outdoor play at a nursery!”
“It’s a hand crafted table made by artisans in Jaipur,” I muttered.
“It’s a bloody eyesore! And where exactly were you planning to put it? Next to that hideous umbrella stand you brought home from your weekend in Ludlow?”
The assistant, who had clearly realised we were no longer the sort of couple who could be sold matching occasional chairs, began polishing the same corner of a sideboard over and over, his face set in a smile that said I am not here. I do not exist. I have never existed.
“It’s not like I bought a sofa, Marion!”
“No, you bought a table that costs more than your weekly pension!”
A woman near the cashmere throws audibly gasped. One of those gossamer-haired types with fingers like cocktail sticks and a handbag that looked like it hadn’t been touched by human hands since the Thatcher era.
I could feel the side eyes of tourists glancing at me whilst also intently studying the soy candles.
“I don’t understand,” I said, feebly, “why everything has to be a conference. It’s a side table.”
“No, Alan. It’s a betrayal. Inlaid with treachery. You know I have very strong feelings about side tables.”
“I thought you were just being silly.”
“Well now look who’s being evicted from the spare room.”
By this point, I was standing next to the table, the very table, which now seemed to be wilting in shame. If furniture could crawl away from its buyer, this one would have taken up jogging.
We bought it, of course. That is to say, I bought it, and Marion signed the receipt with a pen like it was a declaration of war.
It lives in the hallway now, next to the umbrella stand, where neither of us look it directly in the eye.