The Clothes Sculpture

Friday, September 12 08

A domino effect took place when anything moved in the Bennet household. It brought frustrations similar to those caught up in a long complicated house chain, who were desperate to move and fed up with the hold-ups along the way. As the eldest Bennet daughter was only eight, potential Darcys, even if they were high pocket money earners, weren’t in a financial position to provide a mansion for her. So it fell on the shoulders of Mr and Mrs Bennet.
As the conservatory was being dismantled in the coming week or two, it therefore had to be emptied. In order to do that, room had to be made in the lounge. But in order to do that, key furniture items needed to be moved into storage. And in order to do that, they first had to be relieved from their current job as coat, toy and stuff hider.
Mrs Bennet had been informed on the Tuesday by her husband that these said objects were being moved out of the house on Saturday the 13th. As she was preparing herself for her daughter's first day at school, her mind wasn't on the job. It hadn't helped her nerves or those of Miss Megan Bennet that Mr Bennet flew off to Madrid directly after Miss Bennet had made her sobbing entry into the education system.
"You're really not going out there for work at all are you Mr Bennet? You're going to buy us a house in Spain so we can get some sun or perhaps you're making a drastic escape from the hormones?" she'd asked her husband, who smiled in reply.
So here she was, two days later, awaiting his return, with the lounge literally pulled inside out. The sofa chair hid a multitude of sins - namely 34 coats, four fleece jackets, seven jumpers, three knitted cardigans, a few books, a family of dead spiders, a shoe belonging to a twin and a liquorice sweet which had leaked its black tar over any arms and hoods within its reach.
As Mrs Bennet pulled the chair away, she was expecting the coats to avalanche on top of her. They didn't. Instead they were so moulded into the wall, they formed an impressive clothes sculpture, worthy of the Tate Gallery. Mr Bennet walked in fresh from the land of El Greco and Diego Velázquez to find Mrs Bennet taking a photo of the wall.
"Hello my dear Mr B, lovely to see you. Now what you see in front of you is a masterpiece you'll find nowhere else in the world," she informed him.
"No, you're quite right. There's the jacket I haven't seen for months!" remarked Mr Bennet.
"As it obviously doesn't need the chair to keep it up, I thought it could stay where it is."
"Or failing that, I could always put it on EBay and see how much we get for it!"
With a family of spiders included in the price, Mrs Bennet thought it would prove quite a bargain.