Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  Bess woke me with hysterical whining at the crack of dawn next morning – she must have eaten something that disagreed with her. James pulled the sheet over his head and pretended not to hear her, as usual.

  After she’d got the worst of it over I thought we might as well carry on and have our usual little morning walk up the lane. There’s an old, overgrown driveway to the Hall further up, and a rough pathway through the tangle where I can let her off.

  But as I was about to release her I saw a hare, and it’s true what they say about mad March hares, because this one was bouncing all over the place. Then another joined it, and they had just begun a sparring contest when Bess whined and spoiled it; in a flash they were racing off.

  Hare today, and gone tomorrow …

  For some reason they reminded me of the vicar.

  Bess seemed fine later, which was just as well, because I had to go up to Town to meet a literary agent who specialises in romance. Having just reached the end of a three-book contract with Thripp, Thripp and Jameson, I thought it would be interesting to see what an agent could do with my next one.

  I got him out of The Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook, although I must admit that I thought Vivyan Dubois was a woman until I got there. He’s quite young, eager, intelligent and gay. I liked him immediately.

  He’s read some of my books and is sure he can get me a better contract with another publisher, and also that there would be a market for them in America!

  He was very enthusiastic, and delighted that I’m such a fast writer. I’m to send various contracts for him to pore over, and Love on the Waves when it’s completed.

  After this I was dying to impart the glad news to someone, so popped in to see Mother and Granny.

  Granny was in a grumpy mood. ‘If you fell into the Leeds-Liverpool canal you’d come up with a trout in your mouth!’ she said dourly.

  ‘Aren’t you going to give me any credit for hard work, Granny?’

  ‘I’m sure we’re very pleased, dear,’ Mother said. ‘But when you said you had wonderful news I did hope for a moment … I mean, I know how much dear James longs for a son, and I’d love a grandchild.’

  ‘Let the girl alone!’ snapped Granny. ‘She hasn’t been in her new house five seconds.’

  ‘But it isn’t a new house, is it? There are all sorts of hazards in old houses for tiny tots – and they’re always damp and unhygienic. I did so much prefer your last home, darling, because at least you knew that no one else had ever lived in it – or died in it!’

  ‘Thank you for sharing that thought, Mother.’

  ‘Mummy, dear. And I only say these things for your own good, Leticia.’

  ‘Tish,’ I corrected. Fair is fair.

  I set off early for home, calling off to purchase a bottle of inexpensive champagne on the way, then took a taxi from the station (but that was just because my being out for so long puts such a strain on that daft dog’s bladder).

  However, she’d been good, and was rewarded with biscuits and a walk to the village pond, where she chased the four Muscovy ducks until one turned and gave her a hard stare. Then she slunk off with her feathery tail between her legs.

  James was late home, didn’t eat much, and said cheap champagne wasn’t worth buying. ‘Are we celebrating something?’

  ‘Well, we never really celebrated moving in here, darling, and it’s almost April already! And you know I went up to see that agent today?’

  He nodded, and I told him all about it, though he couldn’t seem to grasp the importance of it to me – to us – at all.

  ‘But is it worth it? After all,’ he said, sloshing down the despised cheap champagne like lemonade, ‘once you’ve got a baby to look after you won’t have time for writing, will you? Now I’m a full partner in the firm we can manage without your writing to bring in any little extras.’

  My mouth must have dropped open several inches. It took me a few minutes to get my voice back. ‘It’s more than a little extra! Besides, I like writing, and I can’t just turn it off like a tap. I don’t want to turn it off!’

  ‘You say that now, and I know how much your little hobby means to you, but when you have a baby to look after—’

  ‘There might not be a baby.’

  He smiled indulgently. ‘I don’t see why not; we’re both healthy and I don’t think we should leave it much longer. I want my sons while I’m young enough to play football with them.’

  ‘Sons? They may be girls, James! Or girl – I don’t think I want more than one. And my writing isn’t a hobby, so I’m not going to stop doing it!’

  (I don’t think I could stop, actually. It would all dam up inside me until I burst.)

  We carried on like this for some time, because James couldn’t be persuaded out of his old-fashioned, stupid ideas and just kept repeating, ‘Wait and see!’ in his solicitor’s voice.

  He’ll wait and see for ever, if he keeps this up.

  Although the idea of starting a family once we moved to the country was on the agenda, I find now I’ve got cold feet. I might not – horror of horrors – enjoy motherhood at all! My biological clock seems to have a very quiet tick.

  Thinking back, I felt much the same about pets, before the arrival of Toby and then Bess …

  And just how much of the childcare would James actually be prepared to do?

  Still, I suppose babies sleep a lot, and then I would be able to write. I don’t know, I’ve never so much as held a baby and know nothing of them. They sort of fascinate and frighten me at the same time, so goodness knows what sort of mother I’d make!

  Not one like mine, at any rate, who is so unsure of my love that she is incapable of letting go for a second. It’s pretty sad, really, that she never realises such tactics have the opposite effect to the desired one.

  I wish I had a close female friend I could discuss it all with, only I seem to have lost touch with college friends, and my schoolfriends vanished after I met Fergal – no one else existed for me when he was around.

  I do have a good friend I made when I joined the Society for Women Writing Romance (there are two organisations for romantic novelists, and I chose to join the SFWWR because my favourite author, Tina Devino, is a member), but Peggy, who is older than I am, lives in Cornwall, so mostly we chat on the phone.

  I used to think James and I thought as one on all the important things and that there was nothing we couldn’t discuss, but either he’s changed or I was seeing him through rose-tinted spectacles … He didn’t even seem to be aware of the fundamental chasm opening beneath his feet.

  Just to round the evening off nicely, I had a peculiar phone call. Not peculiar in the sense of being obscene: just silence, although I was convinced there was someone at the other end of the line. The caller withheld their number.

  The Chinese may have the Year of the Rat, but March is clearly Month of the Lavatory.

  The fatal day got off to a good start when James forgot to duck under one of the low beams and gave his head such a crack that he was writhing and swearing for a full five minutes, with Toby listening to every juicy word. One day I expect James will become accustomed to the beams, and react automatically like Pavlov’s dogs. A sharp blow to the head early in life has been the making of a lot of men – Augustus John springs to mind – but unfortunately I think James is too old now for it to make any difference.

  After he’d finally driven off to work, pale, martyred and armed with a whole bottle of paracetamol, I climbed up onto the toilet lid to try to unjam the shower curtains. This proved not to be a great idea, for there was a sudden cracking noise, and I ended up with one very soaked velvet mule and some nasty scratches round my ankle. This was doubly upsetting for, apart from the shock and pain, I’d have all the embarrassment of trying to order a new toilet lid, and since the bathroom is ancient and old-fashioned I’d have to take the remains of the old one with me to ensure I got the right type. I didn’t think I could persuade James to do it for me.

  I at last unj
ammed the shower curtains by fetching the kitchen stool, and was standing under the hot spray in my mules, directing the nozzle at the one that went down the loo, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t examined myself for lumps recently, what with one thing and another.

  So I did, and when I got to that portion of my anatomy where my left breast becomes my armpit, I wished I hadn’t, because I felt something. A lumpy quality. A faint tenderness.

  Fighting down panic, I felt again, and it was still there … The next thing I knew I was sitting on the side of the bath thinking: this sort of thing can’t happen to me!

  Then I pulled myself together and tried comparing the other side, and there was definitely a difference on the left – although surely not that single hard lump you’re supposed to look for? Also, I thought I’d read somewhere that there’s no pain with breast cancer until it’s terminal?

  Of course, once I’d let the dreaded words terminal and breast cancer into my mind, cold, shaky panic crept in too, even though I kept trying to assure myself that I had just pulled a muscle scraping paint or something. I felt perfectly fit and well, after all.

  So there was no need to go to a doctor. If it was – if it didn’t go away – I didn’t want to know …

  I didn’t think I wanted to know.

  Only that was stupid. I decided to wait and see.

  To add to my misery, the fluffy fake fur trimming on my very expensive mules went all stiff and matted like a dead cat, and I didn’t feel the same about them any more.

  One week of pure hell followed.

  James wouldn’t notice if I was dragging myself round on crutches, since he’s begun a new craze: ham radio. This also foiled my attempts to distract myself by getting on with my writing, since he’s cut several things out of my ham radio magazine, and hogs my library books.

  I can only hope it is temporary. It’s bad enough him slipping back into the habit of meeting his cronies after work in the pub (which is turning dinner into supper practically every evening, now he has so far to drive home), or risking arrest by consorting with Howard, without him having his nose glued to my books whenever he is here and I want him to do something.

  Friday morning, the Lump still being present, I went to see my new doctor, which I should have done at the start.

  Not that she – brisk, brusque and overworked – was very reassuring.

  She said she didn’t think it was anything to worry about, but would refer me to the hospital anyway and I’d be sent an appointment.

  This meant another wait, although I knew that if she’d only been pretending not to be worried by the lump I’d be sent for instantly.

  So the longer the wait, the less important she’d found it …

  It didn’t do anything to stop me worrying.

  Fergal: April 1999

  ‘WHO IS BRITAIN’S SEXIEST STAR? YOU VOTE!’

  Trendsetter magazine

  SEXY?

  I’m not about to become celibate for life, but seeing Tish like that … well, if you crave champagne, then water is just something you quench your thirst with when you can’t get what you really want.

  Nerissa – the latest thirst-quencher – is turning tricky now I’m losing interest. I don’t have much respect for women prepared to lie down at the drop of a famous name, but I don’t want to hurt her.

  She was just a girl who threw herself at me, and prettier than most. Only now it turns out she used to go to school with Sara, Carlo’s fiancée, and she’s using that old friendship so that she always knows where I’m going to be next, trying to turn a casual affair into some kind of relationship, though I made sure she knew right from the start that it would never be that.

  Now she’s always there. Especially after a gig, when I’m on a high …

  She always seems to be there whenever the cameras flash, too.

  Chapter 9: Nutthill Nutria

  Two weeks later I found myself sitting in a dingy hospital corridor on a bursting plastic chair, thinking about Life, the Universe, and other more mundane things such as why James hasn’t noticed the state of panic I’ve been in for a fortnight.

  He ought to have guessed something was wrong. But even last night, when I was so nervous and in need of a hug that I wound my arms round his neck and kissed him, he just sort of suffered it, then leaned over and pressed the video play button.

  If he ever touched me these days he might have noticed the lumpiness himself … which is another thing: since the move our love life seems to have pretty well tailed off. (Not that I ever found the sex riveting, but I do miss the cuddles.) Our only physical contact lately seems to be James’s absent-minded goodbye kiss in the mornings – when he isn’t staying at Horrible Howard’s.

  Now I’ve stopped the pill I’m back to the light, erratic periods I had before I started taking it. But I don’t really mind – it’s only the unpredictability that’s irritating, and I’m sure my body is enjoying a holiday from all those chemicals.

  James did notice I wasn’t eating much lately, but thinks I am on a diet. He said if he wanted a wife who looked like a coat hanger with a dress on it, then he would have married one in the first place! I am certainly not that thin – I do go in and out in the appropriate places – but perhaps I have become too thin to attract James any more?

  Mind you, if I am getting thinner, he is putting it on – especially round the waist! And his face seems to be losing some of its craggy good looks under a blur of padding and saggy eye pouches. He always looks worse when he’s spent the night at Howard’s, so he’d be much better off coming home and getting a good night’s sleep when he works late.

  He was a bit miffed when I asked him if he’d weighed himself lately, and muttered that at least he wasn’t a hollow-eyed drug addict like my former boyfriend, which I ignored as beneath contempt. (I mean, have you seen Fergal Rocco? You don’t acquire a body like that through a syringe!)

  With all this to occupy my mind it was some time before I began to resurface and take stock of my fellow sufferers in the waiting room – and a highly unsavoury lot they appeared to be, too, though it could have been the lighting that made everyone look terminally consumptive.

  Some were talking quietly, but no one tried to exchange even a nervous smile with me, and eventually I realised that there was something that made me conspicuous from the other women – the brightness of my clothes.

  I was the only one wearing anything brighter than beige, and in fact most of them looked as if they’d gone into mourning for themselves already.

  James would like me to wear smart Country Casuals-type stuff and little suits, and he often says I should go and have my hair styled.

  What does he mean, styled? It is deep gold, naturally curling, and hasn’t been cut since I was old enough to resist Mother, although the curls ravel it up like knitting. Isn’t that a style?

  By the time I was summoned an hour later I looked more Edith Cavell than the nurse, since I’d been too afraid of missing my turn to go to the ladies.

  She marched me past two men in white coats with their heads together in earnest discussion and threw open the door of a little cell.

  ‘In here,’ she ordered bossily. ‘Undress. Top half only.’

  With the closing of the door the distant rattle of the hospital was abruptly silenced, and I turned to face the narrow room with its couch, washbasin and sliver of frosted window.

  I unfastened the straps of my dungarees, took off my shirt with fingers made clumsy from cold and fear, and laid it on the end of the couch.

  There was a white cellular hospital blanket folded there, clean, but marked with old stains, and I felt so cold that I draped it round my shoulders and huddled on the couch. My legs dangled, and one shoe fell off on to the chewing-gum-coloured lino. I let the other one drop too, realised my hand was pressed firmly to my Lump, and snatched it away.

  After ten interminable minutes a spotty youth in a white coat breezed in. ‘Good morning! I’m a student doctor and, if you don’t mind, I’m go
ing to examine you first,’ he said cheerfully, without looking up from the grubby clipboard he carried, and the nurse materialised from behind him and deftly removed the blanket without waiting for my reply.

  He probed long and deep at both breasts like a child searching for the free plastic toy in a box of cereal. Then he straightened and let his breath go in a long sigh.

  I looked fearfully at him.

  ‘Yes, there does seem to be the hint of a lump there, doesn’t there? I’ll just fetch Mr Thomas, the consultant, now – won’t be a tick.’

  Five minutes later, while I was still visualising my deathbed scene, a small, rotund, elderly doctor with a polka-dot bow tie and an entourage of obsequious nurses swept in.

  He wasted no time on polite preliminaries.

  ‘Lift your arm. Left arm. Higher. So?’ He probed once, fingers flat and unpleasantly warm. ‘Nothing there. You can go.’

  And out he marched again.

  Blankly I stared at the student doctor hovering in his wake: ‘Does that mean – does it mean I’m all right?’

  ‘Yes, if Mr Thomas says so. You can go.’

  I exhaled deeply, and colour, warmth and movement flooded back into the world. ‘My God! I thought he was about to say I had six months to live, or something.’

  ‘Not this time!’ He hurried off after the Master.

  The relief!

  From not wanting to tell anyone about it I swung round to wanting to tell everyone. James just said I was an idiot, and he could have told me there was nothing wrong with me, but since he hasn’t got a medical degree it would hardly have been likely to reassure me.

  Secretly, I’m still hardly convinced of my reprieve, and the lumpy tenderness is still there. But I expect I’ll live with it, since it’s got to be better than the alternative.

  It’s put me right off checking my breasts, though. How can you spot one rogue marble in a bagful?