Tales of the Extraordinary Page 4

final suggestion to his wife, George stood back, watching to see what her reaction might be. At first, Martha showed no reaction, no emotion whatsoever to what he had said. However, as she digested the full details, a hint of a smile crept onto her beautiful face. “Hmm,” she said, “I see what you mean about it being the most peculiar and bizarre of them all.”

  “But you like it?”

  “I haven’t said that, yet.”

  “But you think it has a chance, you know, of working?”

  “I haven’t said that either.”

  “But?” he asked, trying his to tease out her feelings.

  “What I will say,” she said, “despite it being so weird, is that I am prepared to give it a go.”

  “Hurray!” George cheered, flabbergasted that she was actually going along with it.

  “But I must warn you,” she added, trying to curb her husband’s exuberance, “I must warn you that I am still uncertain as to whether or not I can go through with it.”

  “You will, you will!” he replied, more certain of his wife’s sentiments than her.

  Because it was so strange and complicated an idea, it took George a couple of days to gather all the necessary bits and pieces for the contraption, the device he had envisaged, to stop his beloved wife’s snoring. However, imagining something, especially something as odd and peculiar as this, and creating it are two entirely different things. George soon found this out.

  “Is it finished?” Martha asked, poking her head round the door of the garage, where her husband was busy at his workbench tucked away in the corner.

  “No, not yet,” he replied grumpily.

  George, being a stickler for detail, kept his head down, struggling to finish his problematic creation. He knew only too well how strange a contraption it was, so he had no intention of being on the receiving end of any unwanted comments no matter how honest they happened to be until it was finished.

  “A cup of tea?” Martha asked pointing to the kitchen, despite that fact that George was not even looking at her.

  “Yes, that would be nice,” he replied. “Thanks, I’ll be in for it in a couple minutes.”

  Twenty minutes later, George wandered into the kitchen, groaning and grumbling unhappily to himself.

  Ignoring his mood, Martha said, “Sit down, I’ll have your cuppa ready in a jiff.” She did, in little more than a minute his wife had placed a cup of steaming hot tea in front of him.

  “Thanks,” he said, “and sorry for being so grumpy.”

  She smiled.

  “Sometimes I don’t know how you put up with me,” he said, taking a sip of the wonderful imbibe.

  “I thought you might be in need of some sustenance,” she said, placing a plate of hot buttered crumpets next to his cup. Without saying a word, George set about eating the crumpets, with gusto.

  “And you’re no bother at all,” she said encouragingly. “I’d never part with you, not even for a younger model.”

  The tea and crumpets finished, George stood up from the table feeling refreshed, rested and relaxed in mind, body and spirit. Setting off for the garage, he whistled Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

  Finally, the big day arrived. After struggling for seven long days, creating, crafting at his workbench, George was ready to unveil the thing, the apparatus upon which his hopes of getting a good night’s sleep rested.

  “Dear,” he said, tapping the kitchen windowpane, trying to catch his wife’s attention. She was washing the dishes.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s finished!”

  Abandoning the cups and saucers, Martha dashed out of the house. Giving him a hug and a kiss, she congratulated him on achieving it. “I was beginning to think it might never be finished,” she said jokingly.

  “And so was I.”

  “Linking his arm, she said, “Let’s go see it.”

  The happy couple made their way into the garage; Martha so proud of her wonderful, creative husband, and George, while proud of the fact that he had actually finished the contraption, looking forward to a restful night’s sleep from there on.

  Turning the corner, passing through the doorway, into the garage, Martha let out a shriek. “What’s that?” she gasped, horrified by what she saw in front of her.

  “You know very well what it is,” he said, hurt by his wife’s over the top reaction, on seeing it.

  “But...” she said, lost for anything more worthwhile to say.

  “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  “It, it’s just so – different!” she said, shocked at what he had made.

  “I did explain it to you. I even drew you a picture,” he said, “Don’t you remember?”

  “I know, and I do, but – this?” she asked, raising her hands, trying to emphasise just how shocked she was actually feeling.

  “Come on,” said George, pulling his wife’s arm, “I’ll explain how it works.”

  He did, George went over every aspect of his creation. Although he went over its workings repeatedly, Martha found it so difficult to move on from her state of shock.

  In the end, George suggested, “Wait until I have it installed in our bedroom, in situ as they say. I’m sure you’ll see it in a different light, then.”

  Raising an eyebrow, Martha offered no reply.

  Over the next few hours, as George set about installing the device in their bedroom, the sound of drilling, hammering, and moving of furniture permeated the entire house.

  Taking no part in its installation, Martha wondered if she had made the right decision, allowing her husband to create such a thing. Perhaps, she thought, sleeping in different rooms on the worst occasions of her snoring had not been so bad an idea after all. However, things had moved on considerably since then, because inside their bedroom her husband was now drilling the ceiling like his life depended on it.

  “Shan’t be too long, now,” he shouted above the noise of the drill. “Then you’ll see what’s it’s like, that it’s not that bad, you’ll see.” The sound of the drill went on and on...

  Silence, when the hammering, drilling and clattering within the confines of their bedroom finally ended, Martha was hurled into a quandary. Was she to be happy now that it had stopped, or worried that the device was ready for testing?

  “Dear,” George called out to his wife from within the incumbent silence of the bedroom, “you can come in now…”

  She hesitated; standing outside her bedroom door, Martha felt as if she was stepping into the unknown, into what she could only imagine to be a frighteningly new change to her life, to her sleeping experience, which, despite the interruption it had obviously caused to her beloved husband, had always been so restful to her. Turning the door handle, Martha pushed the door open and looked in.

  Grinning from ear to ear, like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, George, proudly waving an arm, presented the finished article to his sceptical wife. “Well?” he asked. “What do you think of it?”

  She had no words. Martha had no words to describe how she felt, staring into the room, at the abomination of a contraption that was hanging, suspended from the ceiling, over her part of the bed.

  When she was eventually able to speak, to bring herself round to saying something – anything – about the snore reducer, as George had come to call it, she whispered, “It’s, it’s – so big…”

  “That’s because of the added ceiling height, in here, compared to the garage,” he explained. “I forgot all about it. That’s why it took me so long to install it. Modifications are always difficult, you know.”

  Feeling braver, Martha entered the room. Approaching their bed, she studied her side. There were some rather unusual mounds where her head rested. “What are they for?” she asked.

  “They are there to keep your head in place,” he explained, lifting the bed sheets to show her the foam pad inserts he had installed into the mattress. “So these,” he took hold of a number of long rubber tubes hanging from a bracket screwed into the ceiling, “wi
ll always be perfectly aligned with your head.”

  “I, I don’t know…” Martha mumbled. “It’s all so scary, so different from how I envisaged it, when you first told me.”

  His face falling, George could see that his plan was in trouble. Thinking fast, he said, “Look, close the curtains and we’ll pretend that it’s bedtime. I will be the guinea pig, taking your place. Then you’ll see there is nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Okay,” she replied, pulling the curtains closed, getting into her nightie.

  “What are you doing, woman?” he asked, eying her actions suspiciously.

  “Getting ready for bed, of course,” she told him. “We want this simulation to be as real as possible, don’t we?”

  “Hmm, I suppose so” he mumbled. “Have you any idea where my pyjamas are?” George was always losing his pyjamas. For some peculiar reason his pyjamas might turn up anywhere within the house (and sometimes without). Like missing socks, they were a mystery.

  Pulling open a drawer in the tallboy, Martha threw him a pair. “Here’s a clean pair,” she said.

  When they were both suitably dressed, Martha lay down on her husband’s side of the bed. George, however, stood staring at her side with almost as much trepidation as his wife had displayed when seeing the invention.

  Noticing this, Martha teased, “Afraid?”

  “He said nothing; George would never admit s to so foolish a thing.”

  “Come on,” she said, “get into bed.”

  He got into bed. Martha’s husband – the inventor – got into their bed, settling his head into the foam pads, directly beneath the long rubber tubes hanging