At the End of a Room
They took the bed. Wardrobe. Chest of drawers. The low wooden trunk that sat at the bottom of the bed. When mama was alive there were cushions on the trunk – turquoise with gold thread that I traced with my eyes. After she died, the cushions disappeared and there was nothing to sit on but dark polished wood.
The men were nice enough. Two young ones, eighteen or nineteen, clusters of spots disturbing their skin, and the older one in charge, pot-bellied and pink-skinned. They grunted as they shifted the furniture. It was the old, heavy kind, made by hands, not the hard silver edges of machines.
I stood, suddenly extraneous, a woman paying men for their muscle, for the fact that this bed, this wardrobe, this chest of drawers and this low wooden trunk that hasn’t held turquoise cushions for twenty-five years, mean no more to them than any other beds, wardrobes, chests of drawers and trunks.
It is early morning. I am standing on a chair by the broad bay window that used to let light spill onto the bed and the wardrobe and the chest of drawers and the trunk that the men took away. One of the curtains lies on the floor where I have dropped it, like a piece of clothing cast aside because there are more important things to do than put it back where it belongs. The other curtain still hangs, and I can’t quite find the strength to prise the plastic hooks from the plastic hoops, support the surprising weight of it in my arms until it is ready to fall.
The chair I stand on I’ve dragged in from the room that used to be mine. It creaks under the weight of me. The men, who took away the bed and the wardrobe and the chest of drawers and the trunk, turned their noses up at the chair and so it drifts, as I do, through the almost empty house that almost isn’t ours.
The room looks different from up here. I can see a grey trail of cobwebs reaching from the curtain rail to the coving. I can see the line where one piece of wallpaper meets its neighbour. I look down at the carpet. It still holds the memory of the bed and the wardrobe and the chest of drawers and the trunk; marks out their right angles like a floor plan drawn to reassure a buyer that the things they already own will fit into the new space they are about to buy.
There is nothing left but me and the chair and the one curtain. If I leave it, the people who are about to sign the piece of paper, which will mean I have to close the front door of this house for the last time, will take it down. The man – with his nervous hands and careful eyes – might frown, for a moment, look about for a chair to stand on. The woman might tut her neat pink tongue in her neat pink mouth as she fetches a bin bag to bundle it into. They will heave the weight of it down the stairs, leave it out by the bins, next to the acacia bush which mama planted, one of the colours he didn’t get rid of.
And then they will direct the men that they are paying where exactly to put their bed, their wardrobe, their chest of drawers and their trunk.
* Sarah Butler writes novels and short fiction and has been published on www.pulp.net and in several anthologies. See www.sarahbutler.org.uk for more of her writing, and www.urbanwords.org.uk for information about her work with literature and regeneration.
