Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  It’s odd how the mundane weaves its way in among your thoughts when you’ve had a shock, isn’t it?

  Thoughts of Bess, and not having defrosted anything for dinner, and what time James would arrive back from seeing his client in Worcester, and whether the spirit would move the extremely evangelical born-again Christian girl on the third floor to try once more to convert me tonight, all performed a sort of mournful morris dance through my mind, bells muffled.

  I could always get Bess to drool the girl to death. Death by Drooling would probably make a saint of her. In stained-glass windows she could be depicted dripping, with the sort of wholesome, earnest, sincere expression that makes you want to take pot shots with an air gun …

  After a while I became aware of the flashing light on the answerphone, reached over and pressed the playback button.

  ‘Hi, James, this is Vanessa. You forgot your Filofax. I’ll just drop it in tomorrow morning in case you need it over the weekend. It’s no bother – I’m practically round the corner now. Around ten? Byeee!’

  ‘Find your own husband, you cow!’ I told the answerphone, and it bleeped thoughtfully.

  ‘Merry and Little!’ boasted a gratingly cheery voice.

  ‘Wrong, buster: big and miserable.’

  But the next words made me sit up.

  ‘This is Merry and Little estate agents, regarding your offer for 2 Dower Houses, Nutthill. I’m pleased to say your

  offer has been accepted. Could you call us back at

  your earliest convenience?’

  The cottage?

  My cottage?

  Part of my brain began to function cohesively. The vendor had accepted the offer we’d made for the cottage – an offer James insisted we made ludicrously low, in the hope, I’m sure, of having it rejected out of hand.

  And I had let him, spineless wet object that I am!

  It seems to me that rather than going all out for things I want, I’ve just been passively letting things happen to me. Except for the novels, of course. I’m determined enough there, though I always imagined myself as a writer living in the country, and now the realisation of that ambition is within my grasp.

  A rosy vision of Eden beckons enticingly: James, his interest in gardening rekindled, growing vegetables; myself inside, writing busily by the light of a log fire, and a sleeping baby in an antique wooden cradle at my feet. A clock ticking, distant sounds of cows going to be milked, birdsong …

  A room of my own, even.

  Not just a corner of table to work on in a dark dining room, but a whole room just for me. The little bedroom with the gable window, I think, looking out at the park.

  It’s time to put the past behind me and go forward, with James, towards the future we wanted.

  Only it seems to have taken a hell of a long time to get here.

  Lost as I was in this healing Elysian dream the sudden clicking on of the light was a painfully dazzling intrusion.

  James stood in the doorway, looking almost as startled as I felt.

  ‘Tish? Why are you sitting in the dark? And why is Bess howling in the kitchen?’

  As usual he let his coat and briefcase drop where he stood for the little fairies to come and pick up. They do, too: I must be mad.

  ‘Oh – hello, James. I was just – thinking.’ I attempted to contort my features into some semblance of a pleased smile, since it wasn’t his fault that he suddenly looked sober and unexciting. I’ve had intoxicating and exciting. Been there, seen it, done it, bought the self-igniting T-shirt.

  ‘Do you need darkness for thinking?’ he asked, puzzled,

  ‘You certainly don’t need light – all these magnolia walls may suit you, but they make the inside of my head twice as worth looking at as anything in the room other than my patchwork.’

  Blink! went his sandy lashes, in that ‘I register what she just said but it didn’t make sense’ way of his.

  ‘Has Bess been out? What have you been doing?’

  ‘Bess hasn’t been out yet. Isn’t she supposed to be your dog? You take her out, it’s cold out there.’

  ‘But I haven’t got time – I’m meeting Gerry and Dave in an hour.’

  ‘Oh, you aren’t going out tonight, James! You’ve only just got back.’

  ‘It’s Friday,’ he protested, as though it were some immutable law.

  It is an immutable law: Friday night out with ‘the boys’. Not for very much longer, though! And not for much longer will I have to suffer visitations from James’s friend Horrible Howard, who infested the flat for a couple of hours the other day. (He’s not really one of ‘the boys’, more one on his own.)

  ‘The offer we made for the cottage at Nutthill has been accepted, there was a message on the answerphone.’

  He looked aghast. ‘But—’

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful, darling? Exactly what we want, and at such a low price. You are clever!’ (Only the best butter.)

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘It means we’ll have money to spare for decorating, and sanding the floors and things like that. I’ll phone first thing tomorrow and give the go-ahead.’

  ‘Yes – but, Tish, look, let’s think before we act hastily.’

  ‘I’ve thought. We’re buying it.’

  He was still making stupid objections when he went out, so I spiked his guns by immediately phoning the Rosens, a young couple with whom we’ve conducted an on-off affair re selling our flat for the last year or so. They still hadn’t found anything they could afford that they liked better, and were delighted to hear that Thunderbirds were Go.

  ‘Sweetness is so excited!’ cooed Charlie. (I kid you not – they have to be the most nauseating couple ever.) ‘She’d set her little heart on your flat, the poor darling.’

  There was a murmur of assent from Sweetness. I’d met them a couple of times (too many) and Sweetness had informed me she was a model, though since she was a five-foot anorexic I can only assume she modelled children’s clothes.

  ‘She’s absolutely delighted,’ confided Charlie.

  Girlish cries of glee could indeed be heard in the background.

  ‘Your flat is such a blank canvas for her – she has so many wonderful ideas of what to do with it. We’re both over the moon.’

  Excuse me, I thought, but this blank canvas just happens to be my home! However, it did look very bland and boring except for my patchwork throws, the baskets of dried autumn leaves, and the giant lime-green papier mâché bowl from Ikea.

  James may insist on magnolia paintwork, but I just refuse to have a magnolia life from now on. I’ve been drifting along, thinking I’m going somewhere, and I’ve finally found where I want to go and when: now.

  I must write that book plot down before I forget it: Ley Lines to Love …

  Fergal: December 1998

  ‘Fergal Rocco, pictured with his Frog-eyed Sprite sports car. Although it is his favourite, he also has two Mini Coopers and a Morris Traveller among his rather eccentric collection. He is currently looking for a country house with more room to store them …’

  Drive! magazine

  Mr Rooney was a medium-sized nondescript sort of man, with surprisingly sharp blue eyes behind thick glasses, all important assets to a private eye, I expect. He’d come well recommended, at all events.

  ‘What did you find out?’ I asked, as he seated himself and began thumbing through his notebook to the right place, a process that involved a damp finger and more time than I could spare.

  ‘Well, Mr Rocco,’ he said finally, ‘I did a small check on the lady in question as you requested. She’s married to a solicitor called James Drew – younger member of Drew, Drune and Tibbs – lives in a basement flat. No children. She has a part-time position in a university library.’

  ‘A librarian?’ I repeated. Tish?

  ‘And she writes.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Poetry, I suppose,’ I said, an errant memory flitting through my mind of long afternoons spent in my flat – me painting, Tish wr
estling with a poem, or lying on the rug with her A level books spread around her.

  So I was surprised when he said, ‘Not poetry, Mr Rocco. She writes romantic novels as Marian Plentifold.’

  ‘Romantic novels?’

  ‘She seems to be doing quite well with them, too.’

  ‘Inspired by her husband, no doubt,’ I said, and something in my voice made him cast a doubtful glance my way.

  ‘Mr Drew seems to be a respected member of the firm, which was founded by his grandfather. He’s older than Mrs Drew by about ten years. His father lives in South Africa with his second wife and family.’

  ‘So – happily married then?’

  Mr Rooney emitted a small dry cough. ‘General opinion among the office staff – obtained from one of the secretaries, a Miss Sandra Walker – is that there was some disappointment when he married. Hopes had been cherished, especially by one of the secretaries, who’d been having an on/off affair with him for some considerable time. According to Sandra, Mr Lionel Drew, the senior partner, didn’t think she was the right material for a solicitor’s wife. She married someone else, but she’s now divorced and has recently rejoined the firm. Apparently she’s been making a play for Mr Drew again, but apart from the occasion of the office Christmas party he hasn’t responded.’

  ‘So what did he get up to at the office party?’

  ‘Having drunk a little too much, he retired with Mrs Vanessa Grey into the small photocopier room.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘There are thirty-four blurred photocopies in existence.’ He passed me a folded sheet. ‘I expect in the heat of the moment, as it were, the button …’

  ‘Yes.’ Well, it was a minor peccadillo, I suppose, compared with what I’ve got up to in the past. But then, I’m not a married man.

  ‘He seems to be able to keep his trousers on generally otherwise, then?’

  ‘There was no hint of anything else,’ Mr Rooney said primly, ‘and he’s been trying to distance himself from Mrs Grey ever since – very hangdog and worried his wife will hear.’

  I suppose every dog is allowed one bite. Or one photocopy.

  ‘That was the extent of my brief, sir, but if you’d like me to proceed further?’

  ‘No. No, that’s fine, thanks,’ I assured him.

  ‘Who was that?’ enquired Carlo a few minutes later, passing him in the doorway.

  ‘A private eye. I set him on to find out what became of Tish.’

  Carlo has big, liquid dark eyes, and can look indescribably sad-spaniel sometimes. It goes over well with the girls. He looked like that now.

  ‘Tish? After all this time you still care about her?’

  ‘No, it’s just my curiosity was stirred by seeing her at the gallery – as I suppose hers was in coming to see the show. I just felt I’d like to know how she was, what she was doing.’

  ‘Yeah, and I’m Titania, Queen of the Faeries,’ Carlo said sceptically.

  I grinned. ‘Well, that’s what I thought I wanted, only it seems deep down I wanted to find her miserable, separated, divorced – you know? In need of rescue, anyway. So what does that make me? A complete bastard?’

  ‘Human. Do I take it she’s happily married and living in suburbia with two point five children?’

  ‘All except the children. And she’s turned into a romantic novelist.’

  ‘Really? So, what now? Drop back into her life like a particularly dangerous spider and invite her to jump into your web?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m going to keep well clear. And I don’t think much of your metaphor, though I might just use it. I’ve got this idea for a song …’

  ‘I wonder if she ever feels the drain of you sucking your inspiration from her over so many years? Did the detective comment on whether she looked like the dried-out husk of a woman?’

  ‘Ha, ha!’ I laughed hollowly. ‘Now I’m some sort of vampire.’

  ‘Don’t you find Nerissa something to write about?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘She’s a distraction, admittedly, and she’s got more sticking power than I expected. But Pop’s threatening to cut her allowance off if he sees one more tabloid photo of his daughter with her hands all over me.’

  ‘She’ll be moving in with you before you know what hit you.’

  ‘No she won’t. You know,’ I struck a Garbo-esque pose, ‘I often vant to be alooone.’

  ‘Yes, and you also often say you want to settle down and raise a family. Speaking of which, you haven’t forgotten it’s my engagement party tonight?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten. But I just want to rough out this song while it’s running through my head.’

  Carlo regarded me sombrely. ‘OK, as long as you’re not going to stay here brooding. It’s pointless. You can never go back.’

  ‘Of course not. “That was another country, and besides, the wench is dead?”’ I quoted lightly. ‘Something like that.’

  Dead to me, anyway.

  Chapter 4: Wild in the Country

  While I didn’t quite achieve my dream of having my own country cottage before my thirtieth birthday, we moved in only a couple of weeks later, though early on the very first morning, when I was jerked rudely from the sound sleep of exhaustion by a deep coughing roar like a sick cougar, it struck me that Nutthill, and 2 Dower Houses in particular, was not going to be quite the quiet haven of my imaginings.

  Heart pounding, I started up and stared wildly round the strange room, where James and I lay marooned among the flotsam of our possessions.

  Dismal February light from the uncurtained window greyly furred every outline, but there was no cougar among them, sick or otherwise, and I’d just snuggled thankfully back into the warm embrace of the duvet when the noise was repeated, this time growing ever louder until it rumbled and snarled itself off into the distance.

  Must have been a tractor – or something.

  This was not the first thing to strike me about country living, though: the sliding door between the bathroom and the kitchen had already done that, very painfully, in the night. This extra barrier was due to some legal hygiene quibble about the two being next to each other, and while I’m all for germs being kept out, I don’t see what notice they’ll take of a sliding door.

  Once the roaring had died away I could hear birds twittering, a muted cackling, and a faint, faraway foghorn of mooing. The walls between us and our only neighbour are so thick that yesterday, while we were moving in, I heard nothing from her, though her front curtains were twitching like mad – but now there was the slam of a door and shuffling footsteps going in the direction of the back garden.

  The muted cackling was suddenly released into a cacophony of squawking, clucking and crowing, accompanied by the rattling of a bucket. Then the slow, dragging footsteps retraced their path, the door slammed, and there was silence … apart from the newly released hens, of course, and the cows, and the birds …

  Yes – the birds.

  I’d expected – even looked forward to – waking to the sound of birdsong, but whatever was now performing outside my window was unmelodious in the extreme.

  A rook, perhaps?

  I’ll soon know, because I intend learning how to identify all the wild birds, flowers, trees and little woodland creatures … except insects. I’ve absolutely no intention of being At One with Nature in the form of insects.

  Snug again, I tried, half-guiltily, to recapture the dream I’d been having when the cougar woke me (back to the usual dreams again, you see) in which I was lying in a woodland glade with a dark, handsome gamekeeper next to me. His warm, lithe body pressed to mine was entirely na—

  ‘Urgh!’

  There was a sudden jerk, a porcine grunt, and a sandy head appeared from a tangle of duvet.

  ‘Get up, James,’ I snapped crossly, even though it isn’t his fault that he’s not tall, dark and romantic, those not being the qualities I married him for, after all. (And I’m determined to concentrate on the qualities I did marry him for –
those that come under the heading of Good Husband Material, like a length of hard-wearing Dralon.) ‘We’ve a lot to do.’

  ‘Whaa?’ He briefly exposed a sliver of bright blue eye. Some women get a ‘Good morning, darling’ or even a cuddle from their husbands first thing, but James is not a morning person.

  Come to think of it, he’s not even an evening person either lately, but the poor thing has been under a lot of pressure at work, and with the house moving and everything, and he’s still sulking about the cottage even though we got it so cheaply that it’s a positive investment.

  He’s also been convinced for the last couple of months that he’s been followed by a small, anonymous-looking man, sometimes driving a red hatchback. When I soothingly pointed out that, a) every other car on the road is a red hatchback, b) how could he know it was the same man if he was so nondescript?, and c) who on earth would want to dog his boring footsteps unless it was a member of the Drugs Squad investigating Horrible Howard’s cronies anyway? he went all huffy. You’d almost think he wanted to be followed.

  So I snuggled up against him and murmured, ‘Oh, darling – the first morning in our very own little country cottage.’

  ‘Mmph,’ he muttered, and turned over.

  The bedside coffee-maker not having yet been unpacked, I’d no excuse to lie there any longer. As I gingerly lowered my feet on to the icy bare floor Bess scuttled across with a clatter of claws, heaved herself into my warmly vacated half of the bed and lay staring smugly at me from feminine, long-lashed eyes.

  ‘Bitch!’

  Retrieving my clothes from the top of a carton I vowed that this time I would not give in to James about the dog. From tonight she’s sleeping in the kitchen. Dogs in bedrooms are unhygienic, and anyway, three is a crowd.

  Without a bedroom curtain I felt exposed, even though our cottage only backs on to the park of the local big house and we can’t see even a chimney of that from here. I just can’t suppress a mental image of Hardyesque farmhands draped along our back fence, all clutching anachronistic binoculars focused on my goose-pimpled and shivering flesh.