Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘He wasn’t foreign,’ I said weakly (and certainly none of the girls I had ever heard of him being connected with could be described as cheap). ‘His father is Italian born – Rocco of Rocco’s restaurant chain, you know – but his mother is Irish and Fergal was born here in London.’

  ‘That’s what I said – foreign,’ Mother said triumphantly, recalling unendearingly to my mind all her tactics to blight my romance with Fergal. Not that it would have lasted anyway: Romeo and Juliet fell in love, grew up, argued, and parted. Juliet became a boring suburban housewife getting her kicks from writing romantic novels, and Romeo became a drug-crazed sex-maniac rock star.

  Shakespeare for the New Era: not many dead. And all water under the bridge now.

  James was still goggling at me as if he’d just noticed for the first time that I’d got two heads, so I smiled rather nervously and hastened to change the subject.

  ‘Are we going to eat this cake now the candle’s gone out? And Top of the Pops is finishing, so perhaps Granny would like to open her presents, Mother?’

  Easily distracted, she began to bustle about, and the subject of Fergal was thankfully dropped.

  In the car James was very quiet, which suited me, since it had made me feel very peculiar seeing the real Fergal in action, as opposed to the fantasy, sanitised version who lives a life of his own in a specially constructed holding-pen in my head, and off whom I’ve been vampirically feeding for several years to fuel my writing.

  Actually, I should be grateful to Fergal for leaving me in that callous way, because it set me on to a really character-forming curve – even though it might have felt like a downward spiral at times – culminating in my having my first romantic novel accepted, and discovering True Worth and Dependability in James’s sturdy and attractive form.

  It was therefore a bit of a shock when Dear Old Dependable James broke the silence by saying sourly, ‘That old boyfriend of yours – what’s his name? Rocca?’ He laughed but it came out as more of a disgusted snort. ‘I suppose they all change their names, but Rocca.’

  ‘Rocco, James. And it’s his real name.’

  ‘Of course you’d know that, wouldn’t you, having been the Great Star’s girlfriend? Funny you never mentioned it before, isn’t it? If your grandmother hadn’t let the cat out of the bag I’d still be in the dark.’

  ‘So would the cat,’ said my unfortunate mouth, which doesn’t always refer to my brain before uttering.

  James’s expression became even more sombre, so I hastened on soothingly, ‘And really, James, there was no cat to let out of the bag, if by that you meant a guilty secret. If I’d thought a detailed list of all my old boyfriends would amuse you I’d have given you one.’

  ‘You didn’t have any other boyfriends. Valerie told me.’

  I felt distinctly ruffled both by the idea of him and Mother discussing my suitability (I mean, she probably assured him I’d only been round the block once, low mileage, practically a born-again virgin), and the fact that it should matter who else I’d been out with (or in with) if he loved me. I bet she also tried to smooth over my unattractive points: i.e. my height (I always wear flat shoes), the cleft chin (Mother calls it a dimple) and the strange colour of my hair (strawberry blond).

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were Fergal Rocco’s type anyway, since he’s so extrovert and wild, and you’re as prissy as Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood rolled into one,’ he added unforgivably.

  ‘Prissy? I am not prissy!’ I exclaimed, hurt and angry. ‘Anyway, when you proposed you said it was my being so reserved and home-loving that attracted you in the first place!’

  And then, with a sudden flash of belated illumination, it occurred to me that prissy was just the sort of wife he’d been looking for and thought he’d found, since I’d been quietly working hard at my course and my writing – and at that time wore sombre clothes, too. I probably seemed exactly the sort of girl his uncle Lionel had told him he ought to marry, since neither of them has the ability to tell ‘good girls’ from ‘bad girls’ (possibly because the distinction no longer exists).

  A nice, quiet, malleable young girl … only he didn’t realise I’d been hardened into quietness by fire.

  James was scowling blackly ahead over the steering wheel. ‘Suddenly discovering that your quiet, librarian wife is the ex-girlfriend of a notorious rock star is a bit unsettling, and I can assure you that Lionel and Honoria wouldn’t have welcomed you into the family as warmly as they did if they’d known.’

  ‘If that was warm I wouldn’t like to see them meeting someone they disapproved of.’

  ‘You may yet do so if they find out about this.’

  ‘I don’t see why they should. Or why their approval should be necessary.’

  ‘Of course it is! A solicitor needs the right kind of wife. They did comment at the time that you had appalling taste in clothes, but it would probably improve with a

  little guidance.’

  ‘How nice of them!’ I said drily.

  Honoria always wears things made out of hairy tweed like sacking, and high-necked shirts.

  I remembered the first time Lionel and Honoria had met Granny, Mother having managed to keep her hidden until then.

  But James must have told them about her, for we had all been bidden to dine at the pretentious and stuffy restaurant they favoured for such jollifications as interrogating future in-laws.

  They had seemed mesmerised both by the size and profusion of Granny’s diamonds, a selection of which had as usual been pinned and hung at random over her billowing bosom. As she often says: if you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em.

  This might have had some bearing on the marked effort to be polite to her they made even after she called the waiter over and demanded, pointing at her soup,‘What do you call this?’

  ‘Chicken soup, madam,’ he’d replied haughtily.

  ‘If that’s chicken, it walked through on stilts.’

  ‘How very droll your dear grandmother is,’ Honoria had remarked in an aside to me. ‘A true original. You are her only grandchild, aren’t you?’

  ‘What? Oh – yes, Dad was her only child.’ I’d replied vaguely, wondering why I found Mother embarrassing whereas I never found Granny so.

  Granny is clever, sharp, kind and loving, and if she doesn’t want to put on airs and graces I don’t see why she should. She says herself that Yorkshire folk are as good as any and better than most.

  I gave a snort as I recalled James’s expression when Granny had written down a recipe for chicken soup and told the waiter to give it to the chef; then I realised he was still burbling on about my dress sense. Lack of, that is.

  It wasn’t doing much for his driving.

  ‘Not that your taste has improved,’ he was saying. ‘All that black you used to wear was a bit gloomy, but you’ve gone too far the other way now.’

  ‘Because I’m happy, and I want to wear bright, cheerful colours while I’m still young enough.’

  ‘I suppose Fergal Rocco liked you in gaudy clothes?’

  He liked me best in no clothes at all.

  I just managed to button my mouth before it got away from me, and after a brief struggle in which my lips writhed silently, managed to say with supreme self-control, ‘Look, I only went out with him for a few months, then Goneril went to America and he dropped me like a hot potato. I never saw or heard from him again after he left. Satisfied?’

  ‘You’ve never seen him since?’

  ‘No!’

  Only in my dreams. And let us hope James doesn’t get a sudden urge to read one of my books (unlikely though it seems) wherein all the romantic heroes are remodelled and transmogrified versions of Fergal.

  Tish the literary vampire.

  Frankenstein Tish, creating a new Fergal each time from the best bits of the old (and there were some choice bits), joined to new parts culled from my imagination. (I’ve got a good one. Lurid, even.)

  Wonder if Fergal gets pale and listless every time
I write a new novel? I wouldn’t like to think I was draining his batteries …

  Who am I kidding? Yes I would! It would serve him right for breaking my heart.

  James pulled up outside the flat with an over-dramatic swerve and stalked silently off without opening my door, one of the little old-world courtesies that first endeared him to me.

  I only hope he’s not going to brood over this. I don’t know why he’s so upset about it, since he knew I hadn’t lived in an ivory tower before he came along. (A concrete university accommodation tower, actually – the urge to escape Mother overcame me.)

  Perhaps it’s just that the type of man I went out with doesn’t match the image of me he’s been cherishing.

  Sometimes lately I’ve thought the image he has of me doesn’t match me very much either.

  You know, even now I’m not quite sure how I came to be married to James!

  I wasn’t actually looking for Mr Right. Not even for

  Mr Will-Do-at-a-Push-if-Desperate.

  I remember telling him quite plainly that my life was blighted and I intended living quietly in the country devoting myself to my writing, and him saying he’d always wanted to live in the country too (his self-sufficiency phase). Then he just sort of sneaked up on me with flowers and chocolates and stuff. While spontaneity was not his middle name, dependability was: he was always there.

  And being older he seemed rather suave and sophisticated. And attractive, even if not exciting, which was a plus point after Fergal: I’d had excitement. In fact James had practically had ‘Good Husband Material, Ready to Settle Down’ stamped on his forehead.

  I don’t know what was stamped on my forehead, but it must have been misleading.

  He was, in many ways, terribly conventional, and I think, looking back, that he thought I was too. I was so quiet and stay-at-home (or stay-at-digs) after Fergal.

  On this reflection the car door was suddenly wrenched open, and I would have fallen out if I hadn’t still been wearing my seat belt.

  ‘Are you going to sit in the car all night daydreaming about your ex-boyfriend, or are you coming into the house?’ demanded James with icy sarcasm.

  Oh dear.

  Over his shoulder I observed something like a giant animated white hearth rug leap the area railing and bound off into outer darkness.

  ‘Bess is out, James,’ I said helpfully.

  Fergal: November, 1998

  ‘ROCCO ROCKS ART WORLD.’

  Sun

  ‘Is this the face of New Renaissance Man?’

  Sunday Times

  The painting is four foot square.

  Step back, she swims out at you from the green depths.

  Step forward, she vanishes.

  The lady vanishes.

  The gallery is crowded, thanks to the papers who have finally made the link between Fergal Rocco (infamous) singer/songwriter, and Rocco the painter.

  At least most of the art critics have been kind. The gallery’s been quietly selling my work since I left the Royal College of Art, so there’s none of this ‘pop singer thinks he can paint’ stuff. That would have really pissed me off.

  There are two things I’m serious about: my painting and my music.

  There used to be three …

  ‘Oh, Fergal, you’re so clever,’ Nerissa sighs, lifting a face like a cream-skinned, innocent flower. ‘All these hidden talents.’

  She’s small, pretty and curvaceous, and, judging from her short, select list of former conquests, finds fame in a man a powerful aphrodisiac. Nineteen going on immoral, and about as determined to get what she wants as Scarlett O’Hara. Sounds like her too, when she’s trying to get round me, all that fake ‘lil’ ol’ me’ stuff.

  Daddy’s bought her everything she’s ever wanted – so far. He’d jib a bit at me, though, even if I were for sale, which I’m not – just available for a short loan.

  She’s about the same age Tish was last time I saw her …

  Tish.

  Swimming out of the green paint like a mermaid; walking hesitantly into the gallery as if summoned by my subconscious.

  For a minute I really do think she’s a figment of my imagination as she pauses in the doorway, gazing around. Her eyes seem dazzled by the lights, then they slide over the painting near me and meet mine, and it’s as if we are falling into each other all over again.

  Someone coming in behind her touches her elbow to get past, breaking the contact, then she turns on her heel and is gone.

  I only realise I’ve taken a stride forward when Nerissa’s weight on my arm brings me up like a sheet anchor.

  ‘What is it? Where are you going?’

  I realise I’ve been holding my breath as though I’ve been swimming underwater for a long distance. ‘Nowhere,’ I sigh. ‘I’m going nowhere.’

  Nerissa’s eyes flick from the painted girl behind me back to the empty doorway. She’s never going to be acclaimed as Intellectual of the Year, but she has her own sharp instinct to guide her.

  ‘That was the one – the girl in the picture, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The girl in the picture doesn’t exist.’

  The lady vanishes.

  Again.

  She was the one.

  Chapter 3: Painted Out

  Oh God! What on earth made me call in to see Fergal’s exhibition? And how could I have known he would be there, days after the show opened?

  It was pure (or impure) curiosity – but I certainly wouldn’t have given in to it if it hadn’t been for James’s constant snide, jealous little remarks since he found out about Fergal. He even shoved the review of the exhibition under my nose, so it is all his fault.

  My heart is still going like the clappers even now I’m safely home, and there’s a feeling like a hot nest of snakes in the pit of my stomach.

  He saw me too. (Oh, damn and blast!) All those people, and the minute I walk through the door they part between us like the Red Sea before Moses. Like some invisible ley line …

  (Wow – that’s just given me a great idea for a novel title – Ley Lines to Love!)

  One glimpse of Fergal, and the pain and hurt feel as fresh as yesterday. But also something else, something I’m ashamed of: lust, I think. All those hot snakes. Very biblical.

  It’s certainly something never stirred in me by James …

  When our eyes met it was just like the first time, when I fell on him from a great height – except then he felt it too, I know he did.

  This time he simply froze, expressionless, with that old painting he did of me right behind him so that I seemed to be swooping out towards myself over his shoulder.

  Like coming face to face with your doppelganger (except that he’s given me red hair, for some reason, though at least it means that no one will recognise me).

  James goes to art galleries only if I force him to, and I certainly won’t be doing that with this exhibition.

  Poor old James, steady as a rock. I can’t let this ridiculous stirring-up of past emotions affect my feelings for him.

  I may be racked with anger, lust, whatever – shaken but not stirred – but it can all be safely bottled up and infused into my next book. Imprisoned by Love between hard covers.

  Dear old James – he’s just as handsome in his own way, and if we have the sort of love that grows steadily rather than bursts instantly into flames and dies quickly, that’s better, isn’t it? And even if he isn’t the world’s best lover (which is something I wouldn’t have realised, I don’t suppose, if I hadn’t had the world’s best lover), that isn’t his fault.

  Is it?

  Perhaps he’s a bit stuck in his ways sometimes, and admittedly he’s been behaving strangely since he found out about my sordid past, pointing out any mention of Fergal in the press or on TV.

  There’s been quite a lot since the press suddenly discovered that he’s been quietly exhibiting paintings and selling them for years. You’d think they’d have connected Rocco the painter with Rocco the singer by now, but apparently n
ot, until he outed himself, as it were, with this one-man exhibition. I always thought he’d abandoned his painting at the same time he’d abandoned me.

  I don’t know why James has to make all these snide remarks about groupies and rock stars. Do I go on and on about his former girlfriend Vanessa, who went off and married someone else after helpfully presenting him with a replacement companion in the form of Bess the Stupid Bitch, and then turned up drunk at our wedding reception, where she peered critically at me through a positively funereal wreath of smoke and remarked blightingly, ‘He was always looking for a virgin to sacrifice to his career. I suppose you’re the next best thing.’

  Cow.

  Small, blonde and bubbly cow, now back to working for Drew, Drune and Tibbs as a secretary … She’s a bit tarty. In my head I call her the secretarty and if I’m not careful, one of these days it’ll slip right out.

  Mind you, one of the things we originally had in common, James and I, was that we’d both been thrown over by someone else.

  We seemed to have a lot in common … only lately we seem to have more not in common, if you see what I mean.

  How did I get home from the gallery? I’ve no recollection of it, so I must have been running on automatic pilot, fired by a need to dive into my dark basement like a scared rabbit into its burrow, and be quiet for a while.

  Quiet, that is, except for the muffled thumps and howls as Bess alternately throws herself at the kitchen door and vociferates her desire to be with me, and the deafening silence from Toby the parrot, building himself up for the wild eldritch shrieks my eventual appearance will generate.

  I can deal with Toby. He can – and often does – manage to open his cage door and escape, but let me see him fight his way out of two layers of candlewick bedspread, that’s all I can say.

  As for Bess, her idea of silent sympathy is to stuff her wet, germy black nose into my hand, which breaks up the train of thought, since I then have to go and wash the said hand. A dog’s nose is so unsanitary: if they haven’t got it stuck up another dog’s rear they’ve got it stuck up their own.