How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints)

by Kathy Lette

  I was not prepared for Studz to open the door.

  It was one of those rare winter days where the sun, low in the cloudless blue sky, slices into your eyes. David Studlands was lit as if in a stage spotlight. And as usual, he dazzled.

  ‘Come in,’ he said in his mellifluous voice, a warm hand on the small of my back. ‘Can I get you a drink? Jasmine’s doing the school run.’

  He steered me into the sitting room. ‘No thanks. I’ll—’

  But Studz was already pouring me a glass of Merlot. In the sunlight he looked suddenly younger. I had a flashback to his student days – all tousled hair, faded jeans, a half-smile playing on his lips. When had he undergone his Bastard Transplant, I wondered. When had he transmogrified into Snidely Whiplash? A surge of fury went through me, overcoming my lack of confidence.

  ‘I’m not going to make small talk with you, Studz – even though I know how much you like talking about your dick . . . not to mention, thinking with it. Why? Why the hell have you hurt Jazz like this?’ I flopped down angrily into the sofa.

  ‘Oh I see. The coven have been consulted around the cauldron.’ Jazz’s husband threw his hands up in the air. ‘Stress. Exhaustion. I’m practically running the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of War single-handedly.’

  ‘Really?’ I looked at him, as unblinking as a lizard. ‘What are you doing with your other hand?’

  But instead of taking umbrage, Studz just laughed. He was Teflon Man. Insults slid right off him.

  ‘You know that Jazz is about to ask you to go down on bended knee and say, “Will you be my ex-wife?”’ I paused and Studz looked down at me with his hooded, slightly bloodshot eyes. ‘How could you do it to her?’ I asked again. ‘You’ve broken her heart.’

  He shrugged. ‘Men go with younger women for a little something extra,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘fearing humiliation and gruesome handbag injuries if we asked for those “extras” at home.’

  Studlands centred me in his gaze once more. His eyes, a tart mix of orange and green, were made even more marmaladey in the afternoon sunlight. As he moved towards the couch I shifted to make room for him, but he sat too close to me. I could feel the warm length of his thigh against mine.

  ‘On the other hand, unlike most wives, I always thought you’d be very creative in bed, Cassandra.’

  ‘Oh yes, I am,’ I replied coldly. ‘I do origami, macramé and needlework.’

  ‘Is there life after infidelity? Of course there is,’ he continued, smoothly. ‘Monogamy as a workable concept is dead.’

  ‘For you blokes maybe. Men being good at fidelity is like saying that . . . I dunno – that Gandhi was good at catering.’

  ‘Come on, Cassandra. How long have you and Rory been married? Wouldn’t you like to feel the thrill of a strange hand on your skin? The heat of another man’s mouth?’

  He was staring at me – no, into me – a certain savagery in his look and then his hand was on my thigh. ‘Aren’t you a little old to be playing doctor?’ I slapped his hand angrily. I would have said more except my best friend had just arrived at the front door.

  Josh strolled in behind her. ‘Mum,’ he waved at me, dumping his bag and heading for the fridge, ‘will you help me with my art assignment?’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  Studz gave a snort of laughter as merciless as a nose blowing. ‘Your mother? Using her brain? She’s been a lady of leisure so long I think it’s rusted, kiddo!’ he condescended, sauntering back towards his study.

  ‘You’re right, I must be stupid,’ she riposted. ‘I mean, look who I married.’

  Once we were alone, Jazz gnawed fretfully on the inside of her left cheek. She poured herself a drink. She was so upset she forgot to light up one of the cigarettes she didn’t really smoke.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Jazz’ I said. ‘You know how you keep asking me what you should do. And you know how, next to shoving a fork into an electrical socket, my least favourite thing to do is give advice to a girlfriend about her marriage? Well, I’ve decided that yes. Yes! You should divorce the scumbag. The man is evil. It’s a wonder he’s not off somewhere tossing virgins into volcanoes.’

  ‘Thanks, Cass.’ She visibly relaxed. ‘The way Rory treats you, you should think about divorcing too. Just remember that, statistically, one hundred per cent of divorces begin with marriage.’

  I looked at her agog. Was she serious? Did she really think I could just put Rory in the cupboard under the stairs with all the other broken domestic appliances?

  ‘I’m going to talk to him. Once Rory realizes how selfish he’s been. . .’

  ‘Talk to him? Ha!’ Jazz hooted. ‘He won’t remember what you say. Men have a carp-like attention span. It’s a kind of empathy amnesia. The only good thing is that you can make cracks in front of them about how inadequate they are, ’cause they’re not listening anyway.’

  ‘Once I explain my feelings, he’ll—’

  ‘Feelings!’ In purple Prada, Hannah was arriving. Josh had let her into the hallway where she was subduing a quarrelsome umbrella. ‘Of course men have feelings! My Pascal is very emotionally inarticulate, dah-ling.’ She expropriated the red wine bottle and air-kissed Jazz with an ‘Are you okay?’ look.

  ‘That’s utter tosh, Hannah. Women spend more time thinking about what men are thinking about, than men spend thinking.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to give Rory a chance to change,’ I decided.

  ‘Change? Ha!’ Jazz scoffed. ‘It won’t ever happen. It’s as likely as the washing-machine repair man turning up at the appointed time on the appointed day.’

  ‘Love can exist in marriage. I mean, you love Pascal – right, Hannah?’ I pleaded.

  ‘Dah-ling. We’re so far above Cloud Nine we have to look down to see it. He’s searing salmon for my dinner as we speak. Proof of how much he loves me!’

  ‘Pascal has to love you,’ Jazz said. ‘You support him. I now pronounce you Man and Mansion.’

  ‘I know you’re anxious about your results, Jasmine, and I should be nice to you, but you can be such a bitch,’ Hannah scorched back.

  ‘No, I can’t.’ Jazz lit up a fag and smoked fakely. ‘If I were a real bitch, I would tell Cassie that her husband is a lazy, misogynistic bastard, and I haven’t, have I?’

  ‘Just because you’re unhappy in your marriage, Jazz, don’t undermine Cassie’s or mine.’ Hannah stubbed out Jazz’s cigarette with vehemence and primly steepled her hands.

  ‘I do still adore Rory, Jazz,’ I added. ‘We aren’t exactly on Cloud Nine. But Cloud Seven and a Half, for sure.’

  ‘Maybe so. But women need emotional intimacy to stay attracted to a bloke. And how can you feel emotionally intimate with a man you resent for not helping around the house?’

  She had a point. Yes, I adored Rory but, of late, my biggest sex fantasy in the bedroom involved me discovering that he’d picked his underpants up off the floor. But divorce? It sounded so scandalous. So satiny underwear and sloe gins. If hostages in Iraq could survive being shackled together to a radiator, surely I could stand a little ball and chain? My parents had been married for nearly forty years. How had they done it?

  Spending time with most family members is like eating brussel sprouts, a dreary duty we endure at Christmas. But I was close to my mum and dad, who divided their time between Sydney and Surrey. So, the next Sunday, as we endured a traditional English barbecue, eating half-raw, carcinogenic sausages made from pigs’ lips and cows’ nipples, while being wind-whipped in the back garden, I cornered my mother.

  ‘Mum, I need advice. Lately with Rory, I dunno, I just feel that I do everything and that I’m totally taken advantage of. He’s so emotionally withdrawn.’

  My mother laughed caustically. ‘Wait until you both retire and he discovers the Internet, dear. Whenever your father gets back from a trip he rushes into the study, embracing his PC crying, “Hi, honey, I’m home.” I mean, he completely ignores me all day, even eats his meals at the computer
, then comes to me for a bit of slap and tickle at night! When we’ve hardly even spoken! It’s bloody infuriating.’

  My heart sank. Is this what I had to look forward to? ‘But haven’t you talked to Dad about it? Haven’t you complained?’

  ‘Talk? Oh no, dear. There’s no point. Wives must just drink gin and bear it,’ she quipped, topping up my glass.

  I may have started to resemble her physically, but did I really want to turn into my mother emotionally? To become acquiescent and compromising? To wander around, endlessly sighing, with my freeze-dried feelings and vaccuum-packed dreams?

  My mother may have pressed Ctrl Alt Delete on her self-esteem, and Jazz’s marriage may have been Brigadoon-ing before her eyes, but mine was not melting into the mist. It was just that Jazz was so unhappy I’d begun to get maritally psychosomatic. Yes, that was it! I’d started to develop divorce symptoms. But Rory was not lazy or misogynistic or emotionally inarticulate. Okay, recently the air had been seeping out of my marriage like a tyre with a slow puncture. But it was time to patch things up.

  My girlfriends warned me I was gullible . . . I only wish I’d believed them.

  8. To Love, Hoover and Obey

  In a marriage, no news is bad news. I therefore determined to talk to my husband on Saturday morning, over breakfast.

  ‘Rory, I don’t seem to remember that my wedding vows were “To Love, Hoover and Obey”.’

  ‘What exactly are those Japanese researching on whales?’ was his answer. He was scrutinizing an Animal Welfare report.

  ‘Rory, are you listening to me?’

  He munched on some cereal, sending milk splattering. ‘I mean, they’ve killed so many and yet made no announcements. Are they suddenly going to reveal that whales can tap dance? Yodel? Do calculus?’

  ‘Great! You can’t even hear me asking if you’re listening!’ (Note to self. Never attempt conversation with man if newspaper, sports programme or work folder is within one-mile radius.)

  ‘Huh?’ Rory was so unused to me shouting at him that he looked up in wounded bewilderment. But for once I was not going to do the traditional Anglo-Saxon thing of bottling it all inside and then finally psychologically imploding one afternoon by the cheese counter of Sainsbury’s.

  ‘YOU NEVER HELP ME AROUND THE HOUSE ANY MORE.’

  ‘Huh?’ A schoolboy head of floppy hair fell into his eyes. ‘That’s not true, puss.’

  ‘Rory, your only contribution to anything domestic of late was when your brother and his new bride were coming to stay and I asked you to get the bedroom in the surgery flat ready and you put the baby monitor under the bed so you could hear them having sex. I mean, how old are you exactly?’

  Grinning cheekily, he answered my query with a melodious belch.

  ‘I had hoped one day that you might grow up and perhaps discover that a burp is not an after-dinner speech,’ I sighed, stacking newspapers into the recycling bin. ‘All I ask of life is a hygienic toilet environment. Peeing on the loo seat, leaving your underwear all over the floor . . . you’re like an animal marking its territory.’

  ‘But we have a cleaner.’

  ‘So? You still have to clean for the cleaner. Besides, she only comes once a week which is not enough to clean up all the mess you make.’

  ‘Where?’ Rory smiled lazily. ‘I can’t see all this mess I’ve allegedly made.’

  ‘My point exactly. Why is it that you can see a naked boob a hundred miles away, but you can’t see a dirty sock in the middle of the floor?’ I snapped, clearing away his breakfast plates. ‘And then there’s the childcare . . .’

  ‘Hey, that’s not fair. I help with the kids. What about Jenny’s last birthday? I brought that retired sheep dog in from the surgery and it had all the kids rounded up into a holding position in the garden for the entire party.’

  ‘Exactly. You do all the fun stuff, making me the ogre who has to bully them into eating vegetables and brushing teeth and—’

  ‘I make them balanced meals!’

  ‘Yeah, you give them dark and white chocolate! Not to mention the nagging over homework.’

  ‘That Lego I bought them was very educational.’

  ‘Yes. You spent six hours building a space craft with rotors and working moon modules while I took the kids to the park. And that was five years ago.’

  ‘But you’re such a great mum, Cass. Of course a dad should have a say in his children’s upbringing and welfare, but what he should say is “Your mother is right”.’

  My anxieties had grown too big for me to laugh. They were sumo anxieties by now. ‘I’m also always the one who has to take a day off when the kids are sick.’ I hated the shrewish tone to my voice, but I couldn’t stop my complaints from piling up on top of each other, like a Chinese acrobatic group. ‘Why am I the only one who can find a lost library book or football boot?’ It was as if someone else had written the words and I was merely miming – a marital karaoke with the banality of a pop song.

  ‘I do things . . .’

  ‘Rore, I’ve been waiting two months for you to put together that new Ikea bed we bought for Jamie.’

  ‘I’ll do it, okay? I’m a man – I love rising to vacuous challenges.’

  I looked at my husband. This was as meaningless as Republicans saying that they were going to do something about global warming.

  ‘But when? Why don’t you do it today? And you could wash up while you’re at it. Plates don’t levitate, clean, into cupboards of their own accord, you know.’

  ‘Boy, it’s so nice to see you so positive this morning.’

  ‘Hey, I like to start out right.’ Once, Rory’s flaws had made me feel more tender towards him, a little ache of attraction and affection. Now these same endearing foibles had my skin crawling with irritation.

  My husband got up from the table and wrapped his muscular arms around me. ‘Of course I’ll help, chicken. You go off and have a nice time.’

  I had been about to forgive him, but these words froze me in my tracks. ‘Nice time? I won’t be having a “nice time”. I’ll be doing the food shopping.’ This was my ‘day off’ so of course I was taking the kids for hair cuts, dropping one off at dance class and the other at tennis, stopping by the dry cleaners, renting videos, buying garden fertilizer, filling up the car with petrol, selecting Rory’s brother’s birthday present, renewing my pill prescription and then depositing the kids at various parties, Ten Pin Bowling and Rock Climbing, and at absolute opposite ends of the city. The thing that drives a mother mad, is driving her offspring everywhere. ‘And I expect you to clean up while I’m away too, okay? I was going to say this house is a pigsty, but no self-respecting pig would set a trotter in here!’

  Judging by the peculiar odour emanating from under the couch, herds of wildebeest had obviously gone there to die. Or maybe it was just the smell of our relationship rotting. But then my husband said a surprising thing. ‘Of course, angel.’ And blew me a kiss goodbye.

  The cockles of my heart, not to mention other parts of my anatomy, warmed. I couldn’t wait to tell Jasmine how wrong she was. Rory wasn’t autistic or emotionally inarticulate. I had complained, he had listened, compromised and changed. He was sensitive and caring and my darling and there was absolutely no need to put this marriage to the sword.

  Three and a half hours later I was back, laden down with bags of groceries. I could hear the music blaring from two blocks away. As I struggled into the house, the throb of the amplifier rattled my bone marrow. I’d dropped the bags in the hall and burst into the sitting room to see Rory gyrating manically. My husband is the Jimi Hendrix of air-guitardom. He knows all the various stances. He can play on his back, behind his head. The man can play with his teeth. He once sold an air guitar on ebay for £50.

  Using my pot-plants as the other band members, a lampstand for a mic, and the mirror as an adoring audience, he was belting out the lyrics to ‘Smoke on the Water’ whilst giving himself a bad case of thrash.

  Needless to say, the house di
d not look like the model home I’d envisaged. It looked more like an SAS training ground. The dirty plates were still underneath the couch and the Ikea bed remained in its flat-pack at his feet. Rory wasn’t even embarrassed when he saw me standing in the door, but just strummed his invisible guitar even more enthusiastically, dropping to his knees at one point for a particularly harrowing solo.

  I felt it might be time to share with him a wife’s most handy household hint: that a husband’s bloodstains can be effectively removed from carpet using a mixture of starch and water.

  Surprise, surprise, a fight ensued. There was quite a lot of incredulity on my part i.e.

  ‘What have you been doing all this time?’

  ‘Well, I have cleaned up a bit.’

  ‘Cleaned . . .? Why is it that there can be rutting rats romping across a coffee table, creating a bacteria colony capable of devouring a small child . . . and a man thinks that’s clean? Hmmm?’

  There was also quite a bit of sarcasm i.e.

  ‘What about a Power-Point presentation on whether empty orange-juice cartons belong in the fridge or the bin? Would that help you?’

  Quite a lot of open hostility i.e.

  ‘Any husband’s ass left here on the couch watching sport on the telly for over four hours will be towed away and impounded at the owner’s expense. Am I making myself clear?’

  And quite a lot of martyrdom i.e.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to do it, just like I do Everything Else.’

  Graduating to full martyr mode, I then ripped the plastic off the wooden slats of Jamie’s Ikea bed and scrutinized the instruction pamphlet. Take a Phillips-head screwdriver. I slammed open the toolbox and surveyed the bewildering contents. Who the hell was Phillip? And why was he such a sadist?

  ‘Oh, all right then.’ Rory begrudgingly turned the music off and cancelled the rest of his imaginary rock concert. ‘If you help me, it shouldn’t take too long.’