The Table

Early one Sunday morning I was awoken by thunderous knocking and muffled voices at the front door. I clearly could hear my mother’s voice together with those belonging to my father and his younger brother Roy.

‘You said you were coming sometime next week’ said mother.

‘Roy’s busy next week over the mainland and I need him to help me get it down the stairs and out onto the front’ explained my father.

My father was referring to the large white scrubbed pine table that served my mother and me as a dining table in the small front room of our flat. The large pine table had seen better days and had of late developed a wobble due to a loose leg and was urgently in need of some attention or repair.

My mother carefully cleared the table and almost immediately began issuing a stream of instructions to my father and uncle as to how the table should be lifted and thereafter carefully manoeuvred down the turning staircase to the entrance hallway. Once outside this heavy table would need to be manhandled through the overgrown rose arch out into to the open walled terrace area where my father and Roy could begin its repair. The two small cutlery drawers were removed to be varnished whilst the loose leg was attended to. It was past midday when this work had been undertaken. It was a very warm summer’s day and Roy mopping his brow suggested that they should return later to varnish the table.

‘The bugger will be safe enough here Stan till tomorrow,’ said Roy.

‘Tomorrow, repeated my father nodding an enthusiastic agreement…

…Yeah, your right nipper, gasped my father, besides I could murder a bloody pint’.

They walked together down York Avenue laughing as they crossed the rec, they were still wiping their brows when they entered the Victoria Tavern on Clarence Road, they checked the time.

‘A couple of hours won’t hurt’, said Roy.

The following Thursday afternoon the table was still standing smartly to attention on the terrace where my father and Roy had left it the previous Sunday. The two small drawers were still stacked beside the table were now full of rainwater. My mother’s fury and frustration had been spent and she like me assumed that both Roy and my father would return this coming weekend.

‘What’s going on with your table, it’s been outside for days ‘, said Robert Mullet.

Robert Mullet lived in a small flat beneath ours in Kent House, we had been friends for many years albeit he attended a different school to the rest of us, Robert went to the Technical School in Osborne Road.

‘Are you slinging it out then? Could be chopped for firewood’, he suggested.

His sensible practicality shone through, even in those early days.

‘Pity we haven’t got a shed, could be useful as a work bench, Robert rambled on.

I spent the next five minutes explaining the situation to Robert as we walked the short distance together down York Avenue to the bungalow where our mutual friend Ian Sherfield lived.

The three of us were soon over the road making our way through the shrubby bushes and into ‘Bommy Building’, but ‘Sherf’ seemed preoccupied and began by busying himself scanning the upper reaches of the surrounding trees. It was not too long before he had climbed up into one. The tree that he had climbed into was approximately thirty feet tall and the main trunk split into four or more branches. It resembled an open hand with the cupped fingers upstretched.

‘Fancy building a tree camp’ asked ‘Sherf’ as he swung down from the tree into a crash of leaves and twigs that formed the deep undergrowth.

During the past couple of years we had built many camps, some more sophisticated and permanent than others. There had been an underground camp, which really had been no more than a deep trench covered by corrugated metal sheets and lined with sacking. We had also built various bush branches and foliage covered bivouacs with an entrance and ground seating lined with straw and leaves. Many of these camps had been discovered by parents worried about the hazards of camp fires or by other boys who delighted in destroying our gang camp. However, this camp explained ‘Sherf’ was to be vastly different, it was going to be built thirty feet from the ground into the canopy of a tree and, in his opinion, almost impossible to find.

Soon we had rallied some of our other friends, Mike Brinton, Alan Hick and Dave Elliot and whilst ‘Sherf’ was the architect of the undertaking he was also the task master and soon had us all lopping and chopping, sawing and hammering his plan into place. Meanwhile, he had obtained nails, a saw, ropes, and a hammer and was busy constructing a crude pulley. The pulley system enabled us to transfer pieces of wood and asbestos sheeting to those of us in the tree, whereupon we would lash or affix a framework which functioned as a stout and sturdy wall nailed to branches. Over the next week or so we begged and borrowed every bit of spare lumber we could find, the camp was almost complete, its walls were built and there was also a window of sorts and a very adequate roof and entrance. We had even fashioned a short rope ladder by which we were able to make easier access to the camp, albeit after climbing the initial 25 feet or so branch by branch. The only fly in the ointment was the lack of an adequate floor or base. Due to the nature of the tree there was no flat surface, just the jutting stubs of the recently cut boughs. The wind was also a consideration insofar as we did not have corners as such to enable us to lash the side walls tight enough to ensure they were weathertight, they were only timber boards covered over by old pieces of tarpaulin and mineral felt.

‘Ere Gus’ I’ve had an idea’ said ‘Sherf’ suddenly. Next minute ‘Sherf ‘was shaking me by the shoulders and staring earnestly into my face.

‘What about your dad’s old table Gus? It’s been out the front of your place for bloody weeks; I’m sure your dad has forgotten about the bugger’.

‘Sherf’s’ eyes grew wide and bright as he excitedly explained and outlined his plans to us all.

‘Don’t you see, if we had it, if we took that old table, we could hoist the bloody thing up to the top, the underside of the table top would be the floor and we could use the legs as corner posts to lash and tighten everything so the bloody wind don’t get in and under’.

We all stood in absolute silence, mouths agape, as we listened and the realisation of what had just been suggested by ‘Sherf’ was sinking in.

The premise was, we were going to steal my father’s table, and hoist it thirty feet up a tree, and use it as the tree camp floor and main structure, notwithstanding, we were going to undertake this outrageous theft in broad daylight.

‘Sherf’ convinced us all that the effrontery of such a theft was in itself the key to its success and in the unlikely event we were seen it would naturally be accepted that we boys were simply moving Gus’s dad’s table as an errand or task. As the table was positioned directly beneath the projecting bay window of the flat where I lived and completely out of view of my mother, and it would be doubtful that she would be looking out of the high window anyway, the plan was accepted by all as plausible.

The legs of the table were the first items to be removed, they were affixed beneath the table by butterfly nuts in each corner. We quickly made the short journey, carrying the stout table legs under our arms, from Kent House to the trees that edged the fields of ‘Bommy Building’.

Ten minutes later we had returned to carry the tabletop. The six foot by four-foot slab of thick pine was heavy and resulted in several accidental drops as we all weaved our gasping and grunting way back to the base of the intended tree.

This audacious theft was accomplished with no questioning or sight of us ever being reported. The theft of the table had been a complete and utter success.

‘Told ya…, said ‘Sherf’ smirking and puffing out his chest, …no one will ever know it was us’.

The table was truly the answer to the stability and success and eventual longevity of our tree camp, but for now it was complete as it gently swayed high and hidden in the trees above. Prince, the golden Shire horse the only spectator from the field below.

The days and weeks immediately following were however somewhat more stressful, particularly for my father, who searched the area and questioned all and sundry about the missing table.

‘A bloody queer carry on altogether if you ask me’, said my father, pulling his hand through his hair in exasperation. ‘I don’t understand why the buggers left the bloody drawers behind’.

My mother, rolling her eyes to the heavens exclaimed ‘Probably chopped the bugger up for firewood, more like. T’was all it was fit for, bloody thing wobbled anyway, wasn’t safe, it needed to be replaced’.

Their difference of opinions upon the virtues of their table wisped up into the warm evening air, their words spiraling high into the summer sky, alighting as a gentle rustling deep within the canopy of the tree, wherein four boys, their happy faces lit by candle light, sat smoking Woodbines.