THE SPARE ROOM

 

The spare room is full of stuff. They have tried to sort it out before, but every attempt seems doomed to failure. Every time they take a step forward they take two back, or sometimes, so it seems to him, three or four. They just have so much stuff. He finds it bewildering how much stuff they have. 

  Every so often, in the kitchen directly beneath the spare room, they hear the sound of something falling or shifting above their heads, as if the objects, piled precariously right up to the ceiling in places, collectively exert some sort of tectonic force. 

  It has been building to this for many years, and the problem has been exacerbated by having children. Now, as well as the rest, the spare room is full of kids’ stuff no longer used or needed: potties, bed guards, booster chairs, a role-play kitchen, and so on. There is something berserk about it all.

“Have you got any plans for the weekend?” she says.

  “No, not really,” he says.

  “You’ve got the whole weekend to yourself. I’m really jealous.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a nice time too.”

  “Yeah, but I’d rather have a weekend to myself.”  

  “Well, you didn’t have to say you’d spend the weekend with your mother.”

  “Yeah, but it would be nice if you, just once in a while ...”

  “If I what?”

  “Well, you never go away, do you? So I never get any time to myself without the kids.”

  “No, but I can if you want me to.”

  “Well, yeah, it might be nice every once in a while.”

  “OK, then, I’ll go and stay in a hut in the mountains, or something.”

  “You’d have to take the kids with you.”

  “Would I? Why?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t get a weekend to myself otherwise, would I?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “You could take them to a holiday village for the weekend, or something.”

  “I hate those places.”

  “Well, sometimes you just have to suck it up when you’ve got kids. Sometimes, you’ve just got to do things for other people.”

  “I do do things for other people.”

  “Well, I mean, like, do things you don’t want to do.”

  “I’m always doing things I don’t want to do.”

  “So, what do you think you’ll do when we’re gone?”

  “I thought I might try and sort out the spare room. It would be nice to be able to use it for something – an office, or a guest room, or something like that.”

  “Who do you think’s going to want to come and stay here?”

  “I don’t know, but it would be nice to have the option, so we could invite people if we wanted to.”

  “Like who?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. People. Friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends.”

  “OK, your friends then.”

  “My friends wouldn’t want to stay in that dingy little pit.”

  “OK, an office then. Or a play room for the kids.”

  “What are you going to do with all the stuff that’s in there now?”

  “I don’t know. Chuck it. Take it to charity.”

  “You better not chuck any of my stuff away.”

  “Well, I might chuck some it away. I’d probably have to chuck some of it away.”

  “You’d better not. Not without asking me first. I’ll kill you if you do.”

  “You’ll kill me?”

  “Well, you know what I mean. I just won’t be very happy.”

It’s nice having the place to himself. He wakes up naturally and lies in bed awhile just thinking and looking at the ceiling. He spends about an hour just lying there doing nothing special. It’s funny, he thinks, but he actually feels a bit lonely, or maybe he just thinks he ought to feel lonely and so duly feels lonely. Then he goes downstairs and listens to some free jazz at high volume while he makes breakfast. He turns the free jazz down while he eats and spends another hour browsing the internet on his laptop, looking at nothing special, but still ends up spending about a hundred pounds on various things. 

  “Right,” he says to himself when he has finished, “let’s get on with the spare room.”

It has got to the stage where it is even a challenge to get into the spare room. It has reached the stage where they have just started opening the door and chucking stuff in, and so even getting into the spare room is a struggle. He really has to squeeze himself in. He has to hold his breath and everything. At one point he even thinks about abandoning the project in despair. But he sticks at it and soon makes it inside. 

  Once inside, he clears a little space for himself in the middle of the room by piling stuff up against the door. He looks around. There is quite an array of stuff, and he thinks that he had, perhaps, underestimated what a big job this is. He had imagined, as he often does with things, that it would be easier than it is actually going to be. 

  He had better not get ahead of himself, he thinks. He had better just take it one box at a time.

  The boxes are piled to the ceiling and cover the only window in the room. The light in the room flickers. He reaches up and grips the highest box with the tips of his fingers. He prizes it free and angles it downwards, so that he can rest it on his head, before bringing it down into his arms. But he has dislodged something. Something large and heavy and made of old, thick glass comes sliding towards him. It hits him on the head and knocks him out. He falls backwards and crashes into a tower of boxes, which collapses upon him. This collapse then precipitates a landslide of baby stuff. An old rug falls across the door. Some more boxes fall.

  A creaking sound can be heard as all the possessions get comfortable in their new positions, and then it goes quiet.

There is a loud knocking, then a banging, then a child’s heedless voice. “Daddy! Let us in! Open up!”

  And then another voice, her voice. “Is he not answering? Try again.”

  “Daddy! Open the door!”

  She puts down all the bags she is carrying and finds the key to open the door. The kids burst in. “Shoes off!” she says. The kids are already inside, walking all over the carpets with their dirty shoes. “Ugh!” she says, looking around. “The place is a mess. There’s shit everywhere. He could at least have tidied up.” She calls his name but he doesn’t answer. “I wonder where he is,” she says. It’s odd. He never goes out. That’s part of the problem. She puts the TV on for the kids. They sit watching, as if drugged. She starts cleaning the house, then breaks for a cigarette. The smell of bleach and cigarette smoke wafts around the house. 

  She is smoking out of the back door. She looks up and notices that the light in the spare room has been left on. 

  The spare room is just above her head. She remembers that he said he was going to try and sort it out, and wonders how he got on.