Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  Funnily enough, he made no objection when I had poetry published, probably because no one he knew read that sort of magazine. (Sometimes I suspect that only poets and aspiring poets read them: all very incestuous.)

  He might be a bit jealous, too, since he has trouble signing his name on documents, and reads James Bond. Impure escapism.

  He’s unfortunately not much of a New Man (more of an Old Man lately) and the only help he really gives me is to do the weekly large shop at the supermarket.

  I was glad when he’d gone, so I could savour the feeling of being alone in the cottage, now looking amazingly different – light and spacious, with stripped and sealed mellow golden-yellow floors and freshly painted walls and paintwork. Once all my brightly coloured vases, bowls, patchwork cushions and throws are scattered about, it will look a lot livelier. And a basket or two of leaves, and later some bright rugs …

  It’s surprising how little furniture we have considering we’ve been married for six years but, as I’ve mentioned, I hate second-hand furniture, except antique. There’s something very antiseptic about the expensive gloss of an antique piece.

  My dresser and table are scrubbed and sealed, and I at least know where they came from. The commode has had a Total Baptism by stripping solution, and I don’t think many germs could stand up to that. James has now waxed and polished it, and I must admit that it looks very nice in the hall.

  I got him to remove the bowl and screw down the lid (he suggested seriously that we keep our gloves in it!) and have told him not to mention to anyone what it was. I neither know nor care what he’s done with the bowl, except that it isn’t in the house.

  Later I measured up our bedroom window and made out the order for some bright curtains (tough luck, James!), then set out with an ecstatic and panting Bess to look for the postbox. I wouldn’t have taken the stupid dog except that she can’t be trusted not to Do Something in a fit of pique if left behind.

  Strangely enough it was the first time I’d walked into the village. All our journeys have been in the car: the supermarket, the DIY centre, the common to give Bess a run. We know that Nutthill has a village shop, infants’ school and bus service, and is quite pretty and peaceful, but that’s about it.

  I can’t imagine why it’s called Nutthill, either, because it’s pretty flat around here.

  It was with an unusually exposed feeling that I closed the door and strode off down to the lane, and, glancing across the jungle of our front garden, I was just in time to see next door’s curtains twitch and a pallid, moon-shaped face retreat behind the glass.

  Bess immediately squatted in an unladylike posture on the narrow country road and assumed a determined expression, so I got as far upwind as the lead would allow and looked around the countryside with its dotting of picture-postcard cottages.

  February is perhaps not a time of year when the countryside looks its best – there’s a sort of fuzzy greyness over everything, like mould.

  In the distance a small squat church tower appeared over the top of some dark and gloomy trees, which might be yew, but little more of it could be glimpsed even when we walked past the churchyard, because the high wall and trees conspired to shut out any further view.

  There were some interestingly ancient-looking monuments set among the short green turf, which I would have explored despite the biting wind if I hadn’t had Bess with me.

  After some searching I spotted the postbox nestling inside a carefully clipped niche in the holly hedge. Gleaming with newly replenished paint, it looked as small and insubstantial as a bird-box on a post, but I pushed the letter in and walked on to look at the shop.

  It was one of a row of little cottages, but the original window had been replaced by larger panes of thick greenish glass, and the displaying space was added to by an overflow of assorted goods over the concrete frontage: boxes of vegetables and sacks of potatoes jostled with hoes, rakes and spades, and a large and garishly painted selection of garden gnomes.

  The low doorway was festooned with wellingtons on strings, and it all looked a bit Enid Blyton: by rights there ought to have been an elf behind the counter in a long striped apron.

  It was dark and, as I halted on the threshold to let my eyes adjust, a voice from the murk instructed briskly, ‘No dogs, please! There’s a hook outside to tie it to.’

  There was, too, half hidden by the onions and potatoes. A little wooden plaque above it, tastefully executed in poker-work, said ‘DOGS’, with a languorous hand pointing downwards, rather Michelangelo.

  ‘Sit!’ I commanded, tying Bess up. She whined and tried to jump up at me, only the lead was too short and she fell back, puzzled.

  When I ventured in, a small, wrinkled woman had appeared behind the wooden counter. She smiled at me, a smile that stretched from earring to earring, showing teeth set singly and far apart, like rosebushes in gravel, but her eyes were sharp and full of curiosity.

  ‘Sorry about that, dear, but it’s the Law, you know – no dogs in shops what sell food. I’m a dog-lover myself. What sort would yours be, then?’

  ‘Borzoi,’ I replied, taking in the serried ranks of jars and tins and packets jammed from floor to ceiling all round – not to mention all sorts of things hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and the jars of sherbet dabs and other comestibles on the counter.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘Borzoi.’

  ‘Oh – Bourgeois. One of them foreign breeds. Labradors, I like. Nothing like a nice Labrador.’

  ‘She’s “an Aristocrat of the Russian Steppes” actually,’ I told her, quoting from The Borzoi Owner’s Handbook, which I had bought in the hope that it would tell me the stupid creature would acquire brain cells when mature.

  ‘A Bourgeois,’ she murmured, committing it to memory. ‘What can I get you, now?’

  Since I’d been drawn inside by sheer curiosity this momentarily stumped me, but then my eye fell on a basket of tangerines and I said hastily, ‘Four pounds of tangerines, please.’

  Don’t ask me why four pounds – it just came into my head.

  ‘Four pounds it is,’ said the woman. ‘That’ll be a lot of tangerines, then?’

  ‘Yes …’ A picture from my Complete Book of Home Preserving (a recent book club choice) flashed into my brain. ‘I’m making tangerine marmalade.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ she said brightly, measuring out tangerines into a large set of scales and then wrapping them up in a bit of newspaper. ‘Right, then – you’ll be wanting some sugar, I expect? Granulated do?’

  Weakly I agreed, and again when she suggested a lemon (why a lemon?). But when she started hauling out expensive-looking Kilner jars from under the counter I hastily said I had lots of empty jars, which I have. I’ve been collecting them in anticipation of such country pursuits, though I didn’t expect to be doing them quite so soon after moving in!

  Disappointed, she thrust the jars back with her foot.

  ‘That’s all, I think,’ I said firmly, but even so, she managed to add two packets of jar labels and waxed discs to my purchases before I got away, having spent rather more than I intended.

  I was aware of her absorbed gaze through the window as, hampered by the insecurely wrapped tangerines, which threatened to break out of their newspaper bundle at any moment, I untied Bess, frantic and drooling.

  As I made my way along the lane something compelled me to look back; in the distance a small figure stood planted sturdily in front of the shop, staring after me. I gave a kind of half-wave, then, feeling uncomfortably aware of the eyes boring into my back, hurried on.

  Even before I turned into our garden gate I could hear faint shouting, high-pitched and very penetrating, and when I got the front door open it revealed the astonishing range and power of a parrot’s lungs to the entire village. Possibly even the whole county.

  How amazing it is that something the size of an over-stuffed budgie can produce so much noise! I lost no time in rushing into the living room and throwing a cloth over the cage. Bloody b
ird.

  Silence reigned. Sometimes I wish that I could leave him permanently covered, but that would be cruel, even if he is the parrot equivalent of a mental defective.

  He was left to me by an elderly neighbour, since I’d looked after the creature once when she was taken into hospital. He came together with a small legacy, and unfortunately I couldn’t keep the money and refuse the parrot.

  He was supposed to be very ancient, but years have passed and, though the legacy has gone, Toby hasn’t. There’s nothing more determined on life than a parrot. He’s a dirty bundle of grey feathers touched with crimson, noisy and vicious – and doesn’t biting the hand that feeds you prove he’s stupid?

  When I came back from the kitchen with a cup of coffee the shrouded, silent cage seemed to reproach me. I uncovered it and cautiously filled up the seed pot with the Super Expensive Parrot Mix he favours, and he rushed up to it on his horrible crinkled grey feet as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. All was peaceful – if you can ignore the ghastly grindings and crackings of a busy beak.

  Sipping my coffee, I looked up tangerine preserve in the book. I’d make the marmalade this very afternoon, before James could return and point an accusing finger at the psychedelic citrus spoil-heap.

  The recipe seemed straightforward enough, and soon I was stirring the bottom half of my pressure cooker, entirely full of liquid with bobbing bags of pips and peel in it. (The book said a muslin bag, but I haven’t got one, so in the end I used the feet of a pair of clean tights.)

  Then, just at the stage where the marmalade was going critical, Toby decided to treat the world to his full repertoire: Concerto for One Parrot.

  I began to feel a bit fraught. Marmalade-making is a surprisingly messy business, and both I and the kitchen seemed to have become horribly sticky. And Bess. Do other dogs eat tangerine peel?

  As I thankfully slapped the lid on the last jar the doorbell jangled out its vulgar ‘Oranges and Lemons’ tune (it’s got to go!) and, with a muttered curse, I washed my hands and went to answer it.

  On the doorstep was a diminutive old lady, ill-dressed against the cold in a cotton dress covered by a flowered pinny, and with long, draggled grey hair tied up in a skittish ponytail with red-spotted ribbon.

  Her pink, dough-like face, set with beady black eyes, had an expression of belligerence that seemed natural to it, and which was not helped by the minor landslide that had reshaped the left side of her face, dragging the eye and corner of her mouth with it.

  I’ve seen more attractive old ladies.

  ‘I’ve come about The Child!’ she hissed accusingly out of the good corner of her mouth.

  Chapter 6: The Posy Profligate

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I answered politely, in case she should prove to be the local lunatic. ‘What child?’

  ‘What child! What child!’ uttered the old lady scathingly. ‘Why, the one I hear screaming and crying night and morning! Morning and night! Hark at it now, the poor thing! It’s a disgrace to neglect a child like that – besides going out and leaving it alone in the house, which I seen you do this morning! If it doesn’t stop I’m going to complain to the authorities, and so I warn you!’

  My mind swung into gear with an almost audible click as I grasped the truth of the matter, for even now there was a raucous screaming coming from the living room.

  And this must be the quiet, sweet little old lady from next door! Hardly what the estate agent led us to expect.

  ‘It isn’t a child screaming, it’s my parrot,’ I explained. ‘I’m very sorry if it disturbed you.’

  She turned on me a look of indescribable contempt. ‘A parrot? The child was screaming and sobbing for its mother!’

  ‘Where’s Mummy, then? Toby want biccy!’ pleaded the feathered encumbrance from the other room.

  ‘Parrot, indeed!’

  There was nothing for it but to invite her in to view the wretched bird, and of course Toby immediately shut up and eyed us with malevolence through the bars, turning his head doubtfully from side to side. Then he scratched the back of his head with one foot, before excreting copiously with a horrid ‘glop’.

  I averted my eyes. He makes me feel quite ill, sometimes.

  ‘He’s not very big to be making all that noise, is he?’ said my neighbour, unconvinced. ‘I thought parrots were them big, colourful birds with curved beaks.’

  ‘I expect you mean macaws, but he is a parrot – a South African Grey – and it’s surprising just how much noise he can make. I have to cover him up sometimes, just to get a bit of peace, but I can’t cover him up all the time.’ (Unfortunately.)

  ‘He’s not saying anything now, is he?’

  We both stared at the silent cage, and Toby stared inimi-cally back.

  ‘But if you really haven’t got a child, I suppose it must be him I heard.’

  ‘I haven’t got a child hidden away, and I’m really terribly busy just now …’

  She gave one last, doubtful look at Toby and turned to go.

  ‘Shut that bloody door!’ screeched an eldritch voice, and she whirled round as fast as her game leg allowed her.

  Toby blinked innocently at her, then gave a fruity chuckle that slowly worked its way up to an evil cackle.

  Backing out, still staring, she fell over the chair in the hall. ‘I never would have believed it!’ she muttered, hauling herself up by the chair back. Then she looked down and added absently, ‘Nice commode!’

  ‘We like it,’ I replied coldly. How on earth did she know? ‘Well, I’m glad to have met you at last, Mrs … er?’

  ‘Peach.’ And the dumpy figure limped away down the drive without another word.

  Feeling even more ruffled than before, I closed the door and discovered a long, thin brown envelope lying by the wall, which must have come earlier. Quite a stiff envelope – probably one of the garage brochures we’d sent for.

  Ripping open the end, I pulled out the enclosure – and then, with a sharp ‘twang!’ something brick red sprang out and hit me sharply on the nose. I recoiled backwards onto the commode and wept overwrought tears.

  I soon had myself back under control, of course, and discovered that the flying object was a cardboard garage, ingeniously arranged so that it would fold flat to fit in an envelope. Once opened it sprang back into its garage shape by means of a system of elastic bands. The name of the firm was emblazoned on the side.

  I put it back in its envelope and went back to the kitchen to label my marmalade and clean up myself and the kitchen, and when James returned home he found me arranging the jars proudly on the dresser, where they glowed like amber.

  ‘What a terribly domestic scene for a rock star’s ex-girlfriend!’ he sneered, and I was so cross that I handed him the garage envelope, hoping it would hit him on the nose too.

  No such luck.

  ‘What a promotional brain wave!’ he enthused, playing with it.

  ‘Isn’t it just,’ I said gloomily. ‘But they aren’t such good value as the brochure that came last week. That had a garage with a white finish that would blend with the rest of the house.’

  ‘Perhaps. Let’s wait for the others to arrive before we decide. There’s the phone – bet it’s your mother.’

  With the usual feeling of reluctance – not to mention weariness and a bit of residual stickiness – I picked up the receiver and heard her babbling even before I got it to my ear.

  ‘… and I simply can’t go on. I just can’t carry on like this! She grows more impossible every day!’

  ‘Hello, Mother. What can’t you go on with?’

  ‘Mummy, dear – do call me Mummy! Mother is so ageing. And I’m talking about Granny, of course. I just said. And it’s not as if I ever liked her!’

  ‘But you asked her to come and stay with you after Grandpa died!’

  ‘I felt I had to. And she never thought I was good enough for her precious son either. Really, I can’t see why I should have to like someone just because they happen to be my mother-in-law.’

&
nbsp; ‘No Moth— Mummy.’

  ‘Of course, you and I have always been more like sisters than mother and daughter, haven’t we, darling? But I was such a young mother – little more than a child.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’ A faint, familiar nausea rose in my throat.

  ‘And I need a rest from Granny. I said to the doctor, “I need a rest.” And do you know what he said to me? “Don’t we all, Mrs Norwood!” Then I said, “What about admitting her into hospital for a week?” And he said she wasn’t ill, and besides, there was a waiting list stretching right into next year! Not that I believe him, of course – he’s just afraid that I would refuse to have her back again.’

  ‘And would you?’

  The words were out before I could help myself.

  ‘I hope I know my duty,’ she replied ambiguously after a short pause. ‘If my health was up to it I would, of course, be prepared to have her back whatever the strain.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask that nice district nurse for her advice when she comes to give Granny her injection? Mrs Durwin, isn’t it?’

  There was a snort. ‘I did. I said to her, “I can’t cope any more – it’s too much for me,” and do you know what she said? She said, “Have you tried soap on the stairs, Mrs Norwood?” and then she laughed, positively roared, until the tears ran down her face. And not five minutes later I heard her repeating it to Granny! These West Indians have a strange sense of humour.’

  ‘So has Granny – that’s why they’re such good friends. And it was just a joke, after all.’

  ‘I can’t see anything funny in it. I’m at my wits’ end. I need a holiday. Now, if I could just get her off my hands for a week or two I could come and visit your sweet little cottage, couldn’t I? I’m just dying to see it. You have got a spare bedroom for Mummy, haven’t you?’

  Panic gripped my heart and gave it a squeeze. ‘Oh, yes – two – but I’m afraid one is completely bare at the moment, and the other is going to be my office.’