The House of Van Severen or 'Room Service Please'

The House of Van Severen or 'Room Service Please.'

What is 'the house of Van Severen'? Let me explain. Decades ago, an internationally known Dutch/Belgian man named Van Severen became a famous architect and furniture designer. One of his sons, Haans, carries the legacy by designing and selling homewares throughout Europe and the United States. Now, you might be wondering why I'm talking about this. The phrase 'the house of Van Severen' has a special meaning in my family. It's not about the famous architect, but about a series of events that resulted in total humiliation.

Maybe the phrase is about Van Severen's home life. Imagine a gifted architect and designer making a name for himself while making a living. Using the idea that a repairman fixes everyone's things but his own, one imagines Van Severen's home full of half-finished furniture while others' tentative plans are completed and paid for. He is in hot demand to fulfil others' dreams. Maybe his home life became synonymous with chaos and disrepair in contrast with his famous life's work.

At the time, I imagined a scene out of a Charles Dickin's novel. Or a picture by famous artist Anton Pieck, who depicted the custom after a person's death. A huge pile of household possessions and furniture is on the street, and Grandma is still in the rocking chair. The custom is that all the nearest and dearest take what they have been promised or want from the house. Sometimes, the next step takes place before the whole family has made their covetous grab. The first few drag the remaining contents of the house outside and place them in a massive pile for neighbours and passersby to carry away. 'Goodbye, Grandma!' I can imagine a sky-high proliferation of furniture outside the home of Van Severen. Some of it is half-finished.

When Uncle Eddie came from England to visit my mother, who lives in the Southern Hemisphere, down under (New Zealand) and expressed a desire to see his niece and her family, my mother booked them into a motel down the road from our home. We knew accommodation at our humble abode would be beneath him. Still, we doubted my mother's choice would be acceptable to our uncle. He anticipated being booked into a five-star hotel. She explained to us why this would not suit her. She liked being a short distance away from us.

Uncle Eddie couldn't fathom my mother's desire to transport the family cat, Charlie. Did he also require a vacation? The mind boggled. In truth, my mother had been trying to rehouse him, and this seemed to be the best opportunity. An explanation would have baffled our uncle. She did not want it to seem like she was asking for financial assistance, seeing that her reason was primarily economic. You see, our nickname in the family had become 'Home for Cats.' We had several friends we did cat minding for - for example, if they were moving, in between houses, or out on their boat for an extended time. At one stage, we had three of our own, and simultaneous desperate demands from three friends meant we landed with ten cats in residence. One friend eventually left us with a queen and her kittens as she couldn't have them in her new rented abode. This seriously tested our friendship. Thankfully, we found homes for them. The rest were eventually picked up, except our own. Thankfully, before Uncle Eddie's visit. We don't know how many extra bad marks would have been against our reputations or our claims to sanity. We were grateful for the small mercy of being left with only three cats. We couldn't help but find humour in the situation, being dubbed the 'Home for Cats' and laughing at the chaos we had managed to navigate.

Uncle Eddie's impending visit still filled me with apprehension. My husband, a keen man better at pulling things apart than assembling them, was renovating (totally dismantling) our lounge. Please note that millionaire Uncle Eddie, who owned two banks, would send his wife and children to their holiday home in Spain when he assigned basic renovations in their palatial mansion, even though they could have simply chosen a different part of it to live in. We could only imagine his reaction to our less-than-palatial living conditions.

My husband had just removed the lounge's lath and plaster ceiling. For a time, we were literally knee-to-neck-deep in debris. As usual, the job took weeks longer than anticipated.

The enshrouded room was dressed as a ghost for Halloween, with sheets draped on each entry and exit to prevent plaster dust from escaping. This had proved unsuccessful. The open-plan design meant we had to pad through the dust-covered floor to access the stairs and two downstairs bedrooms. All flooring leading to and from sported white footprints, which proved difficult to clean. Where glimmers of light shone in, we could see and taste the floating particles. Every room off it had fine layers of dust on each surface, thickest near the hanging sheets. The children, their fingers attracted like magnets to the talc-like layers, delighted in writing messages therein. Above, a corrugated iron roof and cobwebby rafters overshadowed the dimness. It was a stretch to imagine the ceiling insulated and finished with beautifully stained tongue and groove timber. If a blindfolded individual had been disoriented, brought in, and finally had their eyes uncovered, they would believe the house was uninhabited and uninhabitable. They would fear being tied to a chair and tortured in this room of a derelict house where their secrets would be extracted in horrifying ways, no one hearing their screams for help.

Our lounge room furniture had been stacked to the ceiling of the entranceway just off our unrecognisable lounge, making our front door inaccessible from both sides. Thankfully, we had a back door. Amidst this chaos, our family remained resilient, seeing the funny side.

To our relief, the last wheelbarrow of plaster and dust had been hurriedly removed, and the floor vacuumed, but our hearts sank when we looked at the clock. We would barely get to the airport in time to meet my uncle and my mother. We could not contact them with reassurance that we were on our way. (As luck would have it, cell phones hadn't been invented yet.) The urgency was not just about meeting them on time but also about presenting a decent home to our guests.

We worried Uncle Eddie would simply hail a taxi if we were not at the airport to meet them. Our last instruction to five children of various ages was, "If Oma (Grandma) and Great Uncle Eddie arrive, make them walk down the long driveway to the back of the house. Do NOT open the front door under any circumstances."

Murphy's Law dictates (my interpretation) that once a compounding series of catastrophes begins to roll, there is no room for optimism here; it goes on to its awful conclusion.

After arriving at the airport, searching, and concluding the worst had happened probably within ten minutes of our initial arrival, we returned home, dreading the disgust of our visitors. This, however, was the least of our crimes.

The cost of the taxi rendered my mother apoplectic. Uncle Eddie flatly refused to go to the back door as if it was some entrance for servants only. He demanded that the front door be opened. The children obediently moved the furniture away from the door to allow their Oma, Uncle Eddie, a cat cage, cases, and several items of baggage to enter. Our important visitors pushed past or climbed over piled-up furniture and struggled through a wide arch of hanging sheets, a dusty wooden floor, another swath of sheets, and a dark, narrow hallway set up as our temporary lounge and TV room. They pulled it off after a considerable effort.

This is accompanied by "OMG, the house of Van Severen!" and other less desirable expletives unsuitable for children's ears. Finally, they entered the kitchen and living area, which, though shabby compared to Uncle Eddie's standards, would have seemed like an oasis of sanity compared to the horror he had experienced thus far - all except for the remains of a derelict station wagon parked on the back lawn, exceedingly visible through glass windows and doors.

They were graciously served afternoon tea, though I believe Uncle Eddie would have preferred a stiff whiskey. It never dawned on him that this was the house where his sister intended Charlie-cat to live, not that Charlie could have accompanied them to the 'five-star' accommodation Uncle Eddie expected them to stay at.

On our arrival, we felt mortified that the front entrance had been used. We found everyone in various states of shock. My mother could not believe we had let them down at the airport or the horrendously priced taxi fare paid by impatient Uncle Eddie. The children were upset that they couldn't convince Uncle Eddie to use the back door. My Uncle is less shocked at the state of our home than at my DIY (do-it-yourself) husband, who is subjecting the family to such appalling living conditions.

To this day, I do not know how Uncle Eddie really felt about my husband. I don't know if the chain of events leading him to enter by the front door instead of the back was worth the outcome. My Mother was appalled when my husband said, "Thank you for that," to Uncle Eddie's kind offer. Uncle Eddie offered thousands to help make our house livable.

My Mother believed my husband should be too proud to accept assistance and didn't speak to him for a long time. Uncle Eddie, so appalled with my husband forcing us to live in such a state, fearing he would use the funds on his vehicles instead, forwarded the money to my brother to pay for our needed renovations. These parts of the sorry pantomime were the least of my concerns. The bitter-sweet result justified the means despite the humiliation involved in getting there.

The ultimate insult to Uncle Eddie's senses came later. When we took them to their rustic accommodation down the road, we heard a strangled sigh of relief. Though it was a fact, he sat down at the motel with his eyes rolling.

He said with dismay. "Heavens! Where is the Room Service, please?" He did not laugh, though my mother let a smile escape. Of all the people in the world to endure such a series of mishaps, it had to be Uncle Eddie. The one least likely to comprehend any of it.