make gravy,” said Cynthia. “I'll give you a hand.”
Jo's husband popped his head round the door to find all three of them fighting over the wooden spoon that lay in the saucepan of gravy.
“Blimey, it's like Macbeth in here,” he muttered, making a hasty retreat.
“These carrots are too big for my dentures,” said Cynthia, “you'll have to chop them finer than that or I'll choke on them.”
“That would at least give us some peace to enjoy our meal,” observed Jean sourly.
“And where's your mangle?” asked Cynthia. “You can't have a kitchen without a mangle.”
“I can,” seethed Jo, “because it's not nineteen for... never mind.”
“Are these new potatoes?” said Jean, prodding them tentatively with a fork. “You should always use new potatoes for boiled or they just don't taste right.”
“Yes, they're new,” said Jo, making a mental note to be in another country the next time both Grans invited themselves round on a Sunday.
“I see you have one of those newfangled microwaves,” said Jean, peering at the device over her glasses. “At least you haven't tried cooking the joint in there.”
“Well, I wouldn't, would I?” said Jo.
“I wouldn't put anything past you youngsters these days. I saw a young man the other day with his trousers practically dangling around his ankles – what is the world coming to?”
“You've never been up with the latest fashions, though, have you Jean,” said Cynthia, “you stopped at the puffball skirt didn't you dear?”
"A man's trousers should never be buttoned below the ribcage," asserted Jean confidently.
Jo decided that this was definitely an emergency.
"Who fancies a sherry?"
Both women reacted as if they had been injected with a mixture of vitamins and speed.
"Ooo, sherry!" they coed in unison.
"It's in the living room, help yourselves."
Like photons competing in the double slit experiment, they both tried to get through the door at the same time.
Jo visibly relaxed. This should give her ten minutes at least, by the time they had finished haranguing the men and 'educating' the children.
She went to the cupboard and took out her emergency first aid box - a box on Australian Merlot. Pouring herself a glass she went out into the back garden. Everything would be ready in twenty minutes and with a bit of luck she could dish it out without further interference.
After a few minutes she had forgotten all about the mornings stresses when a loud crash alerted her to the presence of the grans in the kitchen. Reluctantly she went back inside to find Joan, Celia and her husband shouting at each other and the saucepan of gravy upside down on the floor.
"It needed stirring," pleaded Joan.
Jo drained the rest of her glass and threw it onto the floor.
"You can clear that up as well," she shouted, barging past the two startled women. "Right, come on kids!" she screamed. "We're going to McDonalds."
SPYING THREE YEARS ON
I looked out of the window at the recalcitrant blizzard. With trepidation, I turned back towards Julia and forced my face into a pleasant expression.
“There are worse places to be stranded than a pub,” I offered.
“'The Dog and Trouserleg' is a stupid name and I have a husband and baby to get back to,” said Julia, very much minus a pleasant expression. “They'll be worried.”
“A one year old baby isn't going to be worried, is it? It'll be happy if its had the shit scrapped off it fairly recently.”
Thankfully, she ignored that one.
“Anyway, Phoebe will...” I couldn't believe it. “You flinched.”
“What?” snapped Julia, her grip on the wine glass threatening to shatter it, almost certainly in the general direction of my face.
“After two years, you still flinch at the mention of my wife. Once and for all, you dumped me, you're not allowed to be angry that I found someone... else.” Phew, that was a close one.
“I'm not angry, your wife doesn't bother me.” She unconsciously tried to make herself look taller and I bit my lip. “I just want to get home,” she added.
“So do I, but you might as well chill out and have another drink.”
“Are you saying I'm frigid?”
I groaned audibly.
“Stop being so bloody defensive, I'm saying you're uptight generally, not in the specific sense of your...”
I turned away and took an enormous gulp of my pint.
We'd broken up not long after the incident which forced me to reveal my real job and double identity to her. To say that she'd taken it badly would be a gross understatement. She obviously wanted a more boring, predictable life but she now had that, with a drippy husband, beige house, scatter cushions and a baby, and looked about as happy as a Tory Cabinet Minister in a chip shop.
This was only the fourth time we'd met since the split and for her it was clearly four too many. She was in a bad mood, at least partly, because her friend had phoned and cancelled their lunch date at the last minute and now she was stuck here because a light snow fall had transformed within an hour into something only a maniac would consider driving in. I was in a bad mood because my leg was hurting and I wanted to go home and crash on my sofa with a DVD box set. Normally I would walk home in any weather but my leg made that impossible and all busses in the area were slowed to a crawl for the time being. To start with I'd also been bothered about the three bags of shopping now defrosting by my feet but I didn't care any more.
“Anyway,” I said, struggling for any subject, “how is Carl?” Bollocks! Anything but that.
“You've never liked my husband,” she almost spat.
“It's him that doesn't like me, I feel nothing towards him. Drink?”
“No.”
I limped over to the bar. Bloody leg, I hope Julia hasn't noticed. Why did I mention Carl? Obviously he's the elephant in the room so I blurted it out.
“Another pint and a large scotch, please.”
“Anything in the scotch?”
“Yes, another scotch.”
I lingered at the bar as long as possible without being rude. Then I stayed for another five minutes, finishing the scotch.
Eventually I hauled myself back to the table, hoping in vain that I was disguising my limp.
“Not that I care, but what have you done to your leg?”
“I had a fight with Carl. Oh, that bloody elephant!”
“Are you saying my husband's fat?”
“No, he's a tiny little squirt of a man who just happens to have a fucking heavy golf club.”
“Why would he hit you?”
“He said you... I can't tell you. Pork scratchings?”
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Ethelbert's Sunday Morning Page 12
