Martha’s Chair

When my nan died my dad found a fair few hundred pounds or more stuffed away in a chair.  Her favourite chair.  A chair with a trail of spilled tea leading up to it,  from where my grandad had brought through her cups of tea.  The money was in all the crevices and joins, and down into the chair itself.  In the frame, and in the springs, and in the spaces in between.  Twenty pound notes.  Each one folded and folded and folded once more. Then slipped away.  Hidden and forgotten in all those final months.  She’d even sometimes accuse my dad of stealing her money.    But he hadn’t, it was all just lodged and lost to her.  More were then found.  In her glasses cases. The drawers.  In her bed.  In the walls.  She was only small when she died.  A nervous, timid creature in the end.  And then so was my dad when he died.

 

Shared in a talk given March 2024