Bert and Mabel had been married for 50 years, which sounds like a success but they were not 50 good years. They argued about everything! They disagreed at every opportunity, when Bert said,
“Oh it’s a bit chilly in here love”,
Mabel would reply,
“No its not, its hot”, if Mabel said,
“Oh that were a nice bit of apple pie”, he would say,
“it were disgusting”, and so on, and so forth, no matter what one said the other disagreed with. It was hard to be around them, they had very few friends, people didn’t visit them. Their own children visited them very rarely.
One day as their youngest son was calling on them, he could hear the fighting and the banging and the crashing and the screaming going on behind closed doors, and he thought, this is it, I am at the end of my tether, and as he pushed open the door, he shouted, at the top of his voice,
“MUM, DAD, STOP!”, and they were so shocked, that they did, pause for a moment in the middle of this argument, and turned to face him.
He said, “Look, this has got to end, this constant rowing, this persistent squabbling its wearing me down, its wearing all of us down, why do you think no one ever comes to see you. I want you to, I want you to try and get on, I want you to be nice to each other, I want you to agree, I want you to smile at each other and shake hands and make a fresh start because if you don’t, I actually don’t think I can visit you anymore.”
Bert and Mabel, they heard what he said, and they recognised the truth of what he said, and Bert, he turned to Mabel and she did her very best to smile at him. It was not a great smile, she hadn’t had a lot of practice, but Bert he did his best to smile back, and they shook hands, and they determined that they would get along. But it wasn’t easy, you know, it was a hard habit to break this constant falling out, so Bert might say, “That tea’s gone cold!” and Mabel would say, “NO IT HAS NO ooo………. errrrr, has it my darling I’ll just get some more hot tea for you love. And Mabel might say, “I need my coat and I need it now” and Bert would reply, “Well, get it your… errr, sssit your self down love, and I’ll just get it for you. And they would catch themselves, about to spit venomously, and they just checked themselves and start to make a real effort to be kind and pleasant and helpful to one another, and slowly they relaxed into it and these new habits took hold and they began to be particularly nice to each other and get on very well and the neighbours noticed that it was much quieter and they came round to see what was going on, you know, in case one of them had killed the other and they saw Bert and Mabel sat, drinking a cup of tea and chatting and enjoying the afternoon together and so they joined them and slowly over time they became quite sociable, got quite a gathering of friends, and their family, they came back into their lives with their children and so Bert and Mabel began to really enjoy life together again. They enjoyed Christmas, the whole family there, all the presents, and the Santa thing going on it was great. Then New Year, what a party, neighbours, everybody, it was wonderful. On New Years Day, the two of them took a walk along the banks of the River Trent, arms entwined, walking sticks, chatting away, thinking you know, they should’ve done this year’s ago. Then Bert noticed a bundle of clothes on the side of the river. He poked them with his stick and he said, “Ere, Mabel, look at that, there’s a bundle of clothes there, eh and look! Ah, look ere, they been slashed open with a knife.”
Mabel poked around a bit, and she said “No love, no, they’ve not been slashed open with a knife, its been done with a pair of scissors that has.”
“No, no, if you look really carefully, if you look you can see it were a knife what did that.”
“Bert my darling, my sweet, my lovely, no that weren’t a knife, I’m telling you that, that was a pair of scissors. Alright?”
“Now Mabel, my hunnybun, I don’t want to fall out with you, I will not fall out with you, but I am forced to make you see that it was a knife that made that cut, alright?”
“No Bert it wasn’t, it was a pair of scissors”
“Mabel, it were a knife”
“Bert, it were a pair of scissors”
“Knife!”
“Scissors!”
“Knife!”
“Scissors!”
“KNIFE!”
“SCISSORS!”
“KNIFE!”
“SCISSORS!”
“KNIFE!”
“SCISSORS!” and so it went on and on and on, building until eventually in frustration and anger Bert raised his walking stick and clobbered Mabel on the head. She staggered backwards and fell into the river, SPLASH, and sank to the bottom. She was so livid, she was furious because he’d had the last word, she wasn’t going to let him get away with that, so she scrabbled and fought and clawed her way up to the top of the water and she put her hands together and she shouted, “SCISSORS!” and he called back “KNIFE!”,
“SCISSORS!”
“KNIFE!”
Then she began to sink again, but she could not leave it there, and so she swam, to the top of the river again and she managed to force her head out and called,
“SCISSORS!”
“KNIFE!”
“SCISSORS!”
“KNIFE!”
“SCISSORS!”
“KNIFE!”, and again she sank to the bottom, and she was weak, and almost finished, but with every last ounce of strength, she forced her way up as far as she could, and when she was almost at the surface she forced her hand into the air and made this sign. And then she began to sink, to the bottom, satisfied, that she had had the very last word.
