Everyone loves to get a bargain, but we tend to forget that there are always two parties in the case of any bargain being made, namely the winner and the loser. While the ‘Winner’ is always delighted with the advantage that he has gained over another, he never considers for one moment the reasons as to why the ‘Loser’ has been forced by certain circumstances to accept the highest possible offer that they can get. Yes, we all love a good bargain, but few of us think or care about the person from whom we won the bargain.
Mrs McCourt and her husband lived only a few doors down the street from us. As far as Mr. McCourt was concerned no one could ever have considered him to be a spendthrift. Even my father, who would have walked a mile to save a halfpenny, said that on the rare occasion when McCourt opened his purse the moths would fly out of it in swarms. There was one morning, I recall, when I saw him standing on the street outside the front door of his house loudly giving instructions to two large men who had just carried a large piece of furniture from their vehicle to the pavement. In the middle of the negotiations with the furniture movers Mrs McCourt opened the front door and stared out at the work that was going on. In a loud voice, speaking as ‘posh’ as was possible, so as not to embarrass herself in front of the neighbours, she called out her husband, “In the name of God, Desmond, what have you got there?” Everyone else in the street called him Dessie and it was obvious that he had not told her to expect anything to be parked upon the pavement in front of her house for everyone to see. It was covered in a mysterious dust-sheet and this caused her to become very curious about just what her husband had brought home this time.
“Just hold on a wee minute, woman,” replied Dessie, gruffly. “Have a bit of patience and you’ll discover all.”
Dessie now turned to the workmen who were carrying the object and loudly told them, “Here, John! Henry! bring it in through the front door here.” At this instruction the two men lifted the large heavy object again and breathlessly brought it into the McCourt home. Removing the dust-sheet they revealed a beautifully upholstered sofa that looked as if it was almost brand new.
As the beautiful sofa was revealed Mrs McCourt’s eyes opened wide with delight and with moans of delight she began to gently touch this ‘new’ piece of furniture as it sat in the middle of the living-room floor. “Oh my God, Desmond, that is a beautiful ‘cheese-lang’ (meaning to say chaise-long). You have made me so happy,” she smiled.
“It’s a second-hand sofa, you know? But there is hardly a mark or a broken stitch on it,” explained Dessie, but didn’t notice his wife wince with every word he spoke. “Sure, you could hardly tell it wasn’t a new one,” he assured her.
“For Jaysus sake, Dessie,” she hissed at him, “You don’t have to tell the whole world that we have had to buy a second-hand sofa!”
“But it is as good as new, Mary!”
“Aye! Sure, a blind man could see that it’s just as good as a new sofa. So, you don’t have to tell them it’s not! How much did you give for it?” Mary asked.
“Mary Darling, that’s the best part of it!” Dessie chuckled to himself. “It was a splendid bargain. It didn’t me a penny over fifty pounds. Now, what do you think I got it for?”
“Thirty quid?”
“Not at all, woman! Have another guess.”
“Twenty-five?”
“Have another try!”
“Twenty?”
“No! Do you want another go?”
Mary was getting a little annoyed with the game and sternly told him, “No! Just tell me what you gave for it, for Christ’s sake?”
“Only fifteen pounds! What do you think of that?”
“Well, now, that is a bargain,” she told him.
“Too true! Sure, aren’t I the man that can get things on the cheap,” bragged the prudent Dessie McCourt as he chuckled with great delight.
“But, why, in the name of God, was it so cheap?” asked Mary.
“It is all a matter of skill, my love. It’s not everyone who has the talent to wheel and deal like me. Sure, I’m the dog’s bollocks at that stuff!”
“You’re a buck eejit! Now, just tell me how you managed to get it so cheap, Dessie? I would like to know.”
“Well, Mary, my darling, there were a great many other things there for sale, and among those things were some dirty carpets. Then, before the sale began, I pulled these carpets toward the sofa and threw them over it. Now, my sweet, a good deal of dust fell from those carpets, and made the sofa look a lot worse than it really was. So, when the sale began, there were only a very few people there, and I approached the auctioneer to ask him to sell the sofa first. I told him that I couldn’t stay long and that I would bid for the sofa if he were to sell it immediately. Now, it’s a well-known fact that few people bid freely at the beginning of an auction. Well he began with ‘What’s bid for this splendid sofa?’”
‘I’ll give you fifteen pounds for it,’ said I, ‘Sure, it’s not worth a penny more than that, for it’s in an awful state.’
‘Fifteen pounds! fifteen pounds! only fifteen pounds for this beautiful sofa!’ he went on. Then some clown next to me decided to bid seventeen pounds. So, I let the auctioneer shout the last bid for a few minutes, until I saw he was likely to knock it down. I jumped in and bid Twenty pounds and told him, ‘and that’s as high as I’ll go for it.’
My offer seemed to have confused the other bidder as to the real value of the sofa. He took a closer look at it and, it looked so badly deteriorated by the dust and dirt from the carpets, that he withdrew his bid and the sofa was knocked down to me.”
As Dessie chuckled satisfyingly to himself, his good, lady wife developed a very satisfied smile on her face. “That was well done, wee man!” said Mary well pleased at having obtained such an elegant piece of furniture at so cheap a rate. “Do you know, Dessie. It’s so near a match for the sofa in our front parlour, don’t you think?”
– *** –
This scene that we have just read occurred at the home of smart, street-wise dealer in the city who could count his money in bunches of tens of thousands. But, from the way he dressed you would have thought he didn’t have two pennies to rub together. He didn’t know the story behind the sofa being auctioned and, if he did, would it have made any difference to him? Let us look at what happened….
On the day prior to the sale, a widowed lady with one daughter, a beautiful and interesting girl about seventeen, were seated on the sofa in a neatly furnished parlour of house in an affluent part of the city. In her hand, the mother held a small piece of paper and she stared at it so intently that her consciousness was closed to all else around her. But, although she looked upon that piece paper so intently, she could no longer see the characters that were written upon it.
“Mother, what are we going to do?” the young daughter asked after a prolonged period of silence.
“Oh, my poor girl, I haven’t a clue. The bill is fifty pounds, and it has been due, you know, for several days now. I haven’t even got five pounds in my purse, and your bill for teaching the two Leonard children cannot be presented for payment for another two weeks. Even then it will not come anywhere near this amount.”
“But, can’t we sell something else, mother?” the daughter suggested timidly.
“We have sold all the silver-plate and jewellery, and now I don’t know what we have left that we can afford to get rid of. Everything we have is something that we really need.”
“Well, mother, what would you say to selling the sofa?”
“Really Florence, I don’t know what I would say. It doesn’t seem right to part with it. But, I suppose we could do without it.”
“The sofa is so good that it will certainly bring us the fifty pounds that we need,” said Florence more in hope than in certainty.
“It should do, for it is made from the best wood and its workmanship is second-to-none. Your dear father bought just before he passed away and it cost him one hundred and forty pounds, and that is less than two years past.”
“Well, I think it should bring us at least a hundred pounds,” said Florence, but who knew nothing of auctions and prices that could be expected there. “That would easily give us enough, besides paying this quarter’s rent, to keep us in some comfort until some of my bills come due for payment.”
That same afternoon the sofa was sent to the auction rooms, and on the next afternoon Florence went to the auctioneer’s office to receive the money it had fetched. “Have you sold that sofa yet, sir?” she asked him in a low, hesitating voice.
“What sofa would that be, miss?” the clerk asked as he looked steadily in her face with a bold stare.
“The sofa sent by my mother, Mrs. Benson, sir.”
“When was it to have been sold?”
“Yesterday, sir.”
“Oh, we haven’t got the bill made out yet. You can call the day after to-morrow, and we’ll settle it for you then.”
“Can’t you settle it to-day, sir? We would need the money as soon as possible.”
Without replying to the timid girl’s request, the clerk commenced throwing over the leaves of a large account-book, and in a few minutes had taken off the bill of the sofa. “Here it is, young lady. Eighteen pounds and twelve shillings. Just check that to see if it’s right, and then please sign this receipt.”
“You must be mistaken, sir? It was a beautiful sofa, and it cost one hundred and forty pounds to buy.”
“Well miss, that’s all it brought, I assure you. Furniture is selling very badly at the moment.”
Florence rolled up the notes that the clerk had given her, and with a very heavy heart she returned home to break the news to her mother. “The sofa only brought eighteen pounds and twelve shillings, mother,” she said quietly, and throwing the notes into her mother’s lap, Florence burst into tears.
“Dear God in Heaven,” sighed the widow, clasping her hands together tightly, and looking skyward, “Only you know what we shall do now. Come to our assistance, Lord!” said the widow, clasping her hands together, and looking upwards with tears in her eyes.
