Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Ah, yes, for your Writing,’ she said reverently. ‘How is it coming along, dear?’

  ‘It isn’t, there’s been too much to do. But at least I can have a room to myself here, and I’m about to start the next book.’

  ‘All my friends are so impressed when I tell them my little girl is a Writer!’

  I winced, even though I get this sort of thing all the time. Then I braced myself to ask, ‘You haven’t been – well – drinking again, have you, Mummy?’

  ‘Oh, there’s the doorbell!’ she said brightly. ‘Must go, darling. I’ll let you know if I can arrange anything for Granny so that I can come and take a little holiday with you. Bye-ee!’ And the line went dead.

  I hadn’t heard any doorbell, and I replaced the receiver with a feeling of deep depression. Mother generally has that effect on me.

  James was immersed in his paper, oblivious both to me and to Bess, who was staring fixedly at the door. (Normal dogs whine.)

  ‘Bess wants to go out, James!’ I said loudly, but he pretended not to hear, so with a sigh of resignation I took the lead off the door.

  Standing in the icy darkness of the lane waiting for Bess to perform, I thought: What a day!

  ‘You have remembered that I’ll be late home tonight, haven’t you?’ James said casually about a week later, preparing to dash out after breakfast.

  He looked pretty good in his natty dark suiting, but I always think he would look even better striding about the heather in a kilt like his forebears did. He has that sort of look. Rugged. (Which he isn’t, really.)

  ‘Remember? How can I remember when you never told me in the first place?’ I exclaimed in surprise.

  ‘I told you days ago.’

  ‘But what about dinner? Just how late will you be?’

  He looked annoyed at my perfectly reasonable question: ‘Don’t wait for me – I’ll pick something up.’

  ‘Eating junk food on the run isn’t healthy, James.’

  ‘Then I’ll go and eat at Howard’s afterwards, and stay overnight!’

  ‘Eating at Howard’s is even more of a health hazard. It’s all takeaways, and too dark to see what’s in them, because the electricity’s always cut off.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Howard!’

  ‘You mean, apart from him being a drug-crazed, free-loading ageing hippie who’s never worked in his life?’

  ‘Howard’s all right – we were at school together,’ he protested, as if that qualified Howard as a member of the human race. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided: I’m staying there tonight.’

  I didn’t say anything more, because if I hadn’t nagged him about junk food he probably would have come home instead. I don’t think I handled that too well.

  After James had gone (with overnight bag, though Flit gun would have been more to the point) I went into the front garden and hammered the spike of the rotary dryer with unnecessary force into the rough grass. I can’t afford to keep using the tumble dryer all the time, although when you hang clothes out in March it’s a toss-up whether they are going to dry or be glazed like mutant frozen prawns.

  With the first load of washing churning away I went up to my little writing room. I’d been working on the floorboards, which were not good enough to sand and seal, so I’d painted them cream and stencilled roses round the border.

  Piled in one corner were light cardboard boxes filled with some of my varnished leaves. (James says two baskets of dead leaves are more than enough in one sitting room.) I had a brain wave, and soon there were drifts of golden leaves along the walls and piled in the corner opposite the door, where they whispered at the least small draught. It looked lovely, though I am very sure that James will say it is a weird idea. He is so stick-in-the-mud and staid about everything I do, yet he can go off and stay with Horrible Howard who really is weird.

  By then the washing was done and, as I was hanging it out, the vicar called: a tall, thin, middle-aged man radiating an air of youthful enthusiasm, and wearing a bright purple T-shirt with his dog collar.

  As he shambled up the drive with that strange gait some men have – knees turned out as though they have been kicked in the naughty bits and never recovered – I hastily swivelled the rotating dryer round to hide the more ancient and tatty items of my underwear. (I always put my undies in the middle with the shirts and so on round them, but I’d only just started.) The sooner we’ve tackled the back garden, so that the washing can be hung in decent obscurity, the better! However, the vicar came charging right round, stretching out his hand while still several yards away and, seizing my cold wet one in his, pumped it energetically up and down.

  ‘Strange lady!’ he exclaimed, excitedly.

  ‘Oh!’ I said doubtfully, taken aback. But it seemed that this was his name – rather an unfortunate one for a vicar.

  ‘Strangelady! And very pleased indeed to welcome you to our little parish. Ah! washing day, I see!’ he added, and bestowed a benevolent smile upon my black bra and shabby knickers. I went red as a beetroot.

  ‘Er … come in, er … Vicar?’ I invited, hastily backing away from the washing and opening the front door. (How do you address a vicar?)

  Still, I recovered my equilibrium over coffee and biscuits while he admired a mercifully silent Toby, and The Bitch drooled adoringly over his knee, shedding long white hairs. (‘The Borzoi is devoted to one person, showing only aloof attention to others.’) She placed her paw on his knee whenever he stopped patting her, and assumed her best Starving Russian Aristocrat look at the sight of the biscuit tin.

  (Yes, she really is the lost Anastasia.)

  The vicar didn’t press me to attend church, which I rather expected, though he left me a copy of the times of the services and said we would be very welcome, and a copy of the parish magazine.

  Just as he was about to leave, a florist’s van pulled up and delivered a bunch of cream roses. I didn’t need to read the card to know that it said: ‘To my lovely wife, from James,’ since he always does this when he’s got his own way or upset me. It makes him feel better.

  ‘Your birthday perhaps? An anniversary?’ hinted the vicar. ‘What lovely roses!’

  ‘Just a house-warming present,’ I muttered ungraciously, seeing him off. And the sort of gesture we couldn’t afford now – it must have cost a fortune to have them delivered all the way out here, and why cream roses? They would be invisible against all the pale walls.

  If he wanted to give me a present I’d have preferred that brass stencil of vine leaves from Homebase.

  You know, I used to think James’s profligacy with posies romantic, but really it’s easy enough to phone up a Teleflorist and read your credit card number. Feeling dissatisfied, I rammed the scentless and useless roses into a cream vase and stood them on a cream table against the cream wall, where they vanished.

  Fergal: March 1999

  ‘GONERIL: FAREWELL TO ALL THAT?

  Fergal Rocco says his next tour really is his last.’

  Trendsetter magazine

  Not only me – we’re all saying it, though no one outside the band seems to believe we really mean it. We’re not breaking up, we’ll still record together and do the odd gig, but we all have other parts of our lives we want to develop.

  And we’re sick to death of touring.

  Mike and Col want to spend more time with their families, Carlo’s getting married, and I want to concentrate on the song-writing and painting for a while.

  Funnily enough, it was seeing Tish so suddenly at the gallery that made me really stop and take stock of myself: where I was going with my life. (And where I’d been. When I could remember where I’d been.)

  She sparked off a whole new series of songs, too, but that’s by the bye.

  She still looked good …

  Can I be the only man who finds fiery-haired, militant Pre-Raphaelite angels a big turn on?

  Chapter 7: Drained

  James came home next day exhausted: some kind of party had developed at H
oward’s and he had hardly had a wink’s sleep all night.

  I refrained from comment with some effort (apart from suggesting he go for a shower, since Howard usually lives in some squalid squat fermenting germs), but later I wished I’d let rip when he looked up from the paper and sneered, ‘I see your boyfriend’s band are going on a farewell tour of seven countries – he must be getting a bit old for all that touring!’

  ‘He’s quite a bit younger than you,’ I pointed out. (‘Your boyfriend’ indeed!) ‘And age doesn’t seem to hinder the Rolling Stones much, does it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t have your musical interests.’

  He doesn’t have any musical interests, but that doesn’t excuse the cheap gibe.

  ‘Never mind, James,’ I said sweetly, ‘at least being tone-deaf makes you able to appreciate that busty blonde country singer with the nasal whine.’

  He let the subject drop then, but I wish he’d forget it altogether. I’m getting very tired of all these snide little remarks.

  Later I had a sneaky look at the paper, and there was Fergal at an airport, looking jetlagged, unshaven and mildly dangerous. I hope the photographer didn’t get too close.

  I debated whether to cut the article out in case it set James off again, then thought that perhaps a hole where it had been might be even worse, since he’d think I’d cut it out to keep. Besides, why should I pander to his warped imaginings?

  Speaking of warped imaginings, I had a dream last night about Fergal: one of those blush-making ones. I know a wholesome drink of water is what I need, but once you’ve had champagne, part of you still thirsts for it, even if you know it doesn’t agree with you. (And I’m not even getting the water lately!)

  Usually I feel guilty the morning after, but this time I was still miffed with James and decided he didn’t deserve it. I gave him a kiss of the tight-lipped variety and, after he’d gone, retired to the bathroom with the crossword, where, enthroned and mid-clue, I was startled by the sound of men’s voices from the garden right beneath the window.

  Hastily flushing the loo I went out only to discover, to my complete embarrassment, three men in fluorescent orange waistcoats staring down into the swirling sewage trap from which they had just removed the lid.

  I wanted to curl up and die, but they’d seen me, so I brazened it out with a cheery ‘Good morning!’

  You could have roasted chestnuts on my cheeks (all of them).

  The men wore uniformly blank expressions and after an answering chorus of ‘Good morning’ resumed their absorbed study.

  ‘Blockage isn’t here, then?’ said one, after some ten minutes of silent scrutiny.

  ‘No, must be further along,’ said Second Workman.

  ‘Yes. Must be somewhere else,’ said Third Workman.

  ‘Perhaps it’s further along,’ said the first. ‘Funny – I thought it was sure to be this one.’

  ‘Never mind, Dan – it’ll be further along.’

  And so on until, after another ten or fifteen minutes of this tediously Beckett-like dialogue, they dropped the manhole cover and went off into Mrs Peach’s garden to try their luck.

  It took copious amounts of coffee to soothe my shattered nerves, and even then I still wanted to cringe. I kept remembering the workmen’s blank faces as they peered into the manhole.

  Later, the most stupendous thunderstorm broke over the cottage and the Wrath of God in the form of a bolt of lightning flashed down the telephone cable and blasted the answerphone into little melted pieces.

  I don’t know what I did to deserve that.

  Nothing like this ever happened when we lived in the flat.

  Chapter 8: Busted Flush

  We’ve been here a whole month now, and I’ve settled into a more professional working schedule: mornings for the book, afternoons for the house. How nice it is not to feel guilty about writing instead of doing housework, and being able to do it without James’s constant interruptions. I don’t know how Jane Austen ever managed to write a word with her family coming and going like yo-yos.

  My little room is very inviting, with walls of palest pink (not any kind of cream!) though it needs a touch or two of a strong colour – lime green, possibly. When I’d said as much to James, he’d replied, ‘Why spoil a good colour scheme?’

  He hasn’t seen the leaves yet. Or the patchwork curtains.

  My desk is set in the little window, with everything neat and tidy: pile of manuscript on one side of the typewriter, unused paper on the other. James says I should be fully computerised, seeing we’re hovering on the brink of a new century, but I’m quite happy as I am: I type my first draft, then rewrite it onto my Amstrad word processor and print it out. I suppose publishers will soon refuse to accept typewritten manuscripts, as they do now with handwritten ones, but I bet if your name is something bestselling like Archer, they’d accept them written in lipstick on slices of bread.

  The present book is going well. The heroine is about to meet the radio ham who heard her distress call when her yacht was sinking and so saved her life, and he’s going to be terribly handsome and exciting, although scarred in some way and hiding himself away because of it, only communicating through his radio messages.

  I thought Love on the Waves would be a good title, but I don’t know if Thripp, Thripp and Jameson, my publishers, will like it. Mr Thripp – Mr H. Thripp – has appalling taste in titles and book covers.

  I need to go into town and find some books on radio-hamming in the library, since I don’t know enough details for even a sketchy outline. It’s very tedious not being able to drive, because the bus service isn’t all that good, besides being very expensive and taking ages.

  Fergal tried to teach me to drive once, but he got so furious when I inadvertently reversed into a bush and got a tiny scratch on his beloved sports car, that I refused to try again. He had a thing about that car; he even got cross just because I rubbed Leather Food all over the seats so they made rude raspberry noises when he was being romantic.

  As soon as the cottage is sorted out I’ll book lessons. Sometimes I feel quite marooned out here, especially since James has now stayed overnight with Howard three times when he’s had to work late. When I protested, he said, ‘Well, that’s the price you have to pay for living in the country!’ He always comes back next day with chocolates or flowers, but I’d rather he came home, however late.

  Really, I don’t know what’s got into him since we moved here. He used to talk about growing vegetables and things like that, but he hasn’t even started planning the garden yet. I’m not sure he’s been in the garden! And as for helping me with the house – it takes constant badgering just to get him to put up a simple shelf or two.

  He says his work is serious and very exhausting, and he needs to relax in his spare time; but he even neglects taking Bess for her daily walk, which would do him good.

  I can only hope he’s adjusting and will show some interest in the garden once the weather bucks up a bit. And he still has to drive to the supermarket once a week for the shopping, that’s something.

  If I need any extras, Mrs Deakin at the village shop is very good, and I don’t really mind paying a few pence more to save the trek into town, except that she’s very persuasive, so I often come out with stuff I never intended to get.

  Some things, like natural soya sauce, bran and lentils, I have to buy at the health food shop in Bedford: I’m determined we’ll have a Natural Healthy Diet, whatever James says. I bought some recycled paper loo rolls there, too, which were not a complete success since it took three flushes before it was vanquished. And I didn’t like the horrible chewing gum colour, even if they did assure me it was all totally hygienic. But there’s no point in saving trees if I’m not saving water.

  Mrs Peach now delivers our eggs, which she calls ‘free-range’. Certainly the hen-runs are free-range, since they’re on little wheels so she can move them up and down her garden.

  The very day after complaining about Toby screaming she c
ame toiling up the drive pulling a little cart behind her made up of a set of pram wheels with an ark-like wooden structure on top. She wore a black cloth coat, very shiny, and a strange pointed woollen hat in magenta with ear flaps that tied under the chin and ended in huge pom-poms dangling on her slumping frontage.

  When I reluctantly opened the front door she was licking the end of a pencil attached to a little notebook by a piece of greasy black string.

  ‘You’ll be wanting eggs, then,’ she announced tersely, without looking up. ‘How many a week?’

  Over her shoulder I could see that the Perambulating Ark was stacked with battered egg boxes. ‘I get my eggs in town. Free-range ones.’ (Nice, clean ones, in new boxes!)

  ‘That’s right – free-range brown is what I’ve got. Save you the journey. How many?’

  I capitulated. ‘Half a dozen please.’

  ‘Mondays. Save the boxes.’ And off she stumped, her ark bouncing on the rutted pathway, and that was that.

  Now every Monday she comes, receives her egg boxes and money, hands me the eggs in return and then, with a muttered, ‘Let’s see that cunning old bird, then!’ she stumps right past me into the living room to stare greedily at Toby. Charmed by her attention he invariably runs through his entire repertoire at top speed (and volume).

  Then she silently departs, only betraying her enjoyment by the occasional quiver of her collapsed cheek.

  I expect she regales the entire village with the awful things he says when she does the rest of the egg round, and everyone will think he learned them from us.

  The library did have a couple of radio ham books, although they didn’t look very up to date. But I don’t suppose it changes that much, and I also managed to buy a magazine on the subject, which James seized when he got home. Then he lay on the bed immersed in it, though he’s never shown any interest in that sort of thing before.

  I suppose he just wanted something to read – but why can’t he come downstairs and do it? I tried snuggling up next to him on the bed, but apart from pointing out one or two interesting passages he took no notice of me, so I went back downstairs and read one of the books instead.