this was about – a little bit of love talk. However, when next he spoke, when her husband began the talk proper, Martha was in no doubts whatsoever that the nature of the talk was not a simple love-chat.
For the third time, George said, “Martha.”
“Yes?”
Swallowing hard, he continued, “We have a problem with our marriage…”
On hearing those words, Martha burst out crying, sobbing her heart out, for it was the last thing in the world she had imagined her husband would say.
“It’s that woman, at church,” she said, sobbing deeply, “I always thought she was after you.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” said George, taken aback by his wife’s vivid imaginings.
Sobbing, but slower, she asked, “Then what is it? Who is it?”
“It’s no one,” he explained. “I only have eyes for you. That will always be so,” he promised.
She was confused, his wife was confused, because if he did still love her, then what could the problem with their marriage possibly be? All this time, the entire three years of their marriage, she had been sure they were blissfully happy together. “You do still love me?” she asked.
“Yes, of course I do!” he insisted. “You must never doubt that for one moment! Now please hear me out, what I have to say is by no means as bad as you are imagining.”
After his wife’s outburst, George felt a bit more comfortable at the prospect of telling her the reason for their talk. He said, “Martha, the problem, the only problem we have, that I have with our marriage is that you snore.”
She laughed. Martha began laughing; in fact, she laughed so much tears of joy ran down her face.
He watched. George watched his wife, at first in puzzlement, then in amusement, and finally in merriment before laughing along with her.
It took them a whole while to regain their composure, when they had both calmed down enough to begin speaking again, Martha, stroking her husband’s greying hair, said, “My dear, how long have you been feeling this way? Why have you never said anything about my snoring before?”
A rat; George felt like a rat, a dirty rat trying to escape from a sinking ship. “I dunno,” he said, raising his hands contritely, unable to offer any more reasonable an explanation.
Martha began laughing again.
“Please, no more laughing,” he begged. “My sides are still aching.”
“Okay,” she replied. “Let’s talk about it, knock our heads together and see what we can come up with. Do you agree?”
George nodded his agreement.
“But only after breakfast,” she warned, “all this talking has given me one enormous appetite.”
“Smiling, happy that it was out in the open, George said, “Put on a couple of extra eggs, they’re good for the energy, you know.”
After breakfast, George leaned back in his chair, admiring the love of his life – his dearest darling Martha.
After clearing away the breakfast paraphernalia, stowing it safety inside the dishwasher, Martha poured out two cups of tea. “Are we beginning here or in the lounge?”
Fingering his teaspoon, beginning to feel awkward again, George replied, “In here might be best.”
“Do you think a biro and notepad will come in handy?”
“Yes,” he answered. “If we come up with anything useful we can keep a record of it, for later.”
Sifting her way through the contents of the kitchen cabinet drawer, Martha soon found a notepad and biro. Taking them out, waving them, she said, “I’ve got them, but the biro is green. Will it be okay?”
“It will be perfect,” George, replied, smiling kindly. “It matches your beautiful eyes.”
Sitting close to her husband, closer than she would normally sit, she said, “Well, how do we start?”
That question, that one little question stumped George, because up to that moment he thought he had all the answers. Now that she had asked him to make a suggestion, his brain froze, stopped, sat there inside his skull like a big soft walnut.
“George, can you hear me?” Martha asked, waving a hand in front of his face.
George, his eyes glazed over, never saw it.
“Beginning to get worried, she said, “George, snap out of it. GEORGE, I AM TALKING TO YOU!”
As quickly as it had seized, George’s brain began working again. Cranking into action it supplied him with all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas that might be of use to stop his wife’s bothersome snoring. Lifting a finger, he whispered, “I have a few suggestions… Would you like to hear them?”
Giving her husband a strange look (even when you love someone it is still possible to think them a bit weird), she replied, “Yes, go on…”
With his finger still raised, he said, “To be perfectly honest, I have a lot of ideas – some good, some less so. Are you really ready for them?”
Martha nodded.
“Here goes, then, with the first one. Mind you, the jury’s still out as to which category it fits best into.” Having said that, George stopped talking again.
“What is it?” she asked, tapping the biro on the notepad.
“Ah, sorry,” he said, “Got a bit carried away, distracted by other thoughts.” Coughing, clearing his throat, he said, “My first idea...is that I blindfold you each night.”
“What?” she asked, thinking her husband had flipped his lid. “How can that possibly be of any use in helping me to stop snoring?”
“Your brain,” he replied. “The way I figure it...if we put a blindfold over your eyes an hour before you go to bed, your brain will be so confused it won’t realise it’s already night. With your brain, thus, bamboozled you will be incapable of snoring.”
“Bad,” she said. “It’s definitely in the bad category, way down at the very bottom.”
“As bad as all that?” he asked, disappointed that his first suggestion had gone down so badly.
“Yes,” she replied. “What’s the next one?”
After having his first suggestion rejected, so, George was a tad reluctant to continue.
“Come on,” she urged. “Don’t take it personal – I haven’t.”
It was true, if she had been of a different character, his wife might have taken an altogether more negative approach to the snoring situation and its ‘perceived’ problem. “Okay,” he said. “I see your point, here’s my next suggestion. We arrange the sheets and blankets in such a way they allow your feet to stick out beneath them, at the end of the bed.”
Although Martha considered this another candidate for the bad category, for politeness’ sake, she said, “Tell me more.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes, please continue.”
“Okay,” he said, his confidence growing. “We buy an ostrich feather – a big one – like the ones ladies in Victorian times stuck in their hats.”
Although she was trying so hard to hear her husband out, Martha, raising an eyebrow, asked, “A feather?”
“Yes, a big one mind you, the biggest we can possibly find.”
“A feather?” she asked him again.
“Yes,” he replied. “I will attach it to the end of the bed, where it will rest against your feet, tickling them just enough to stop you from sleeping too deep, so stopping your snoring.”
“Bin it, “said Martha, laughing at so ridiculous a suggestion, “in the bad category. It’s ludicrous.”
His confidence on the wane, George said, “Are you sure you want me to continue, because they’re all rather fanciful?”
Feeling, knowing that she was being too hard on her doting husband, Martha said, “Sorry, please do continue. I promise not to laugh at you again. Who knows what fantastic ideas might be lurking somewhere within that wonderful brain of yours.”
Happier, George continued. “My third idea is a bit boring, really,” he explained. “All that it consists of is leaving the window open, allowing plenty of fresh air into the room.”
“That’s a great idea,??
? she said. “The fresher the air the easier it will be for me to breath.” Pouting uncertainly, she added, “Though it is a rather impractical during the winter months. It does get frightfully cold this far inland!”
“The bad bin?” he asked.
“Smiling, she said, “Bad bin for the winter, good bin for the summer.”
Cheering up a bit more, George said, “Halfway there. Want to hear another?”
She nodded again.
George’s next suggestion was simplicity itself; they simply slept in different rooms. During the most difficult times, when her snoring was at its most unbearable, he offered to sleep in the spare room. Martha, however, refused to consider this an option. The suggestion that her husband did not want to sleep with her, even if it was only on a temporary basis, was unacceptable to her. There had to be another solution without the need for separate bedrooms. Casting yet another suggestion into the rejections bin, she said, “Next idea, please.”
During the following minutes, George presented many more ideas that his ingenious mind had produced, such as tilting the bed at an angle, sleeping on the bare floorboards, all the way through to Martha wearing her bra back to front with tennis balls stuck inside it. However, none of these ideas impressed his dear wife. Finally, out of sheer desperation, George said, “I have only the one idea left, and I have deliberately held it back because it’s the most peculiar and bizarre of them all.”
“I’m still here and I’m still listening, Martha answered him, “so let’s be hearing it…”
Coughing, trying to clear away a tickle in his throat, George said, “My idea, my last idea is this…
When George had come to the end of explaining his