Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  James’s reaction was such a damp squib that I cast about for someone else to tell, then I thought: why not phone Peggy? She’d understand.

  Peggy Mulvaney, my friend from the Society for Women Writing Romance, writes raunchy books under a variety of unlikely pen names, Desdemona Calthrop being the best known of them.

  She says she spends a lot of time on research.

  I haven’t seen much of her since we moved here because it’s so difficult to get to SFWWR meetings as a non-driver, and I do miss her and my other friends in the Society. Being accepted as a member when my first book was published did wonders for my self-confidence. And, of course, since my books keep on selling, I do feel I’m a success at something.

  Anyway, I phoned her up and we had a lovely long chat. She understood perfectly what I’d been going through, because she had a similar scare in the past and they’d told her it was some sort of benign thing and to ignore it, which she did.

  She said now she’d put on so much weight it would take her a week to do a check, but Gerry, her current lover, was always willing to try.

  I felt much happier after this, and thought Mother might like to know what I’d been through, too. But there was such a very long wait before the phone was picked up that I’d begun to imagine her lying in a pool of cooking sherry in the kitchen before there was a click and a cautious voice quavered, ‘She’s not in!’

  ‘Hello, Granny!’ I shouted. ‘It’s me – Tish.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tish – your granddaughter.’

  ‘Why are you shouting?’

  ‘Sorry. Where’s Mother?’

  ‘Gone to the off-licence. She said the library, but when did she ever go to a library? She doesn’t fool me one bit and never has. I answered the phone.’

  ‘I know, I can hear you. I thought you never answered the phone?’

  ‘Yes, I answered the phone, and I never answer it.’

  ‘Then why did you answer it today, Granny?’

  ‘Don’t whisper, I can’t hear you. I don’t know why I bothered to answer this pesky thing. I won’t do it again.’

  ‘Granny, I went to the hospital today because I thought I had cancer, but I haven’t. Isn’t that wonderful?’

  ‘Cancer? I’m Scorpio. Not that I believe in all that nonsense. Your mother does, more fool her. What have you taken up astrology for? I don’t want my charts read!’

  ‘But I haven’t taken astrology up!’

  ‘Then why did you want to know my birth-sign?’ she demanded reasonably. I gave up.

  ‘How are you, Granny?’

  ‘Your mother is trying to kill me.’

  ‘Kill you? But Granny … !’

  ‘Yes, kill me! Brown sherry bottles left on brown carpets and green wine bottles left on green carpets. She does it on purpose. Soon I’ll be falling over your mother.’

  ‘She’s not that bad, surely?’

  ‘“My daughter-in-law drinks,” I told the doctor, and do you know what he said? “Drink is necessary to sustain human life, Mrs Norwood.” “That may be,” I told him, “but sherry isn’t!” Then I told him where to stick his stethoscope, the patronising fool!’ She cackled evilly, and I winced.

  ‘Oh dear – you really shouldn’t have done that, Granny! And I thought you liked Dr Reevey.’

  ‘Stuffed shirt. Said he wasn’t going to come and see me again. Good riddance!’

  ‘Oh dear!’ I said again, helplessly. ‘You’ll run out of doctors at this rate.’

  ‘No such luck. They breed like flies, and always looking for old people to experiment on. That’s what they do in geriatric wards – experiment on old folk. That’s why you never hear of them coming out again,’ she said darkly.

  ‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Granny!’

  ‘Can’t hear a word you’re saying. Why does everyone whisper at me? Here’s your mother coming – I’m off.’

  And the phone went suddenly dead.

  It rang again almost immediately and I picked it up thinking it would be Mother – only it was just silence.

  ‘That’s funny,’ I told James as he walked into the room. ‘No answer again.’

  ‘Wrong number.’

  ‘N-no … the phone wasn’t put down and I’m sure there was someone there. That makes four I’ve had like that, and they always withhold their number.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Tish: it’s just a fault on the line! But if it will make you feel better I’ll phone British Telecom from work tomorrow and get it checked out. OK? I mean, it wasn’t like it was a rude message, or heavy breathing, or anything, was it?’

  ‘No,’ I conceded, feeling silly. ‘You’re right – I’m getting in a state about nothing.’ (Mind you, it wasn’t me who was imagining they were being followed everywhere, though he does seem to have dropped that idea pretty quickly.)

  I managed a smile, since he was looking a bit impatient, but later, when I was standing in the dark lane with Bess, the silent caller gnawed away in the back of my mind like a rat.

  I want everything in my Eden to be perfect – no worms in this apple!

  As I quietly let myself back in I heard James exclaim crossly, ‘Just stop doing it!’

  ‘Stop doing what?’ I demanded indignantly, sticking my head round the door, only to find him holding the telephone receiver.

  ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow,’ he added, putting the phone down.

  ‘Sorry – I thought you were speaking to me,’ I explained. ‘Who was that?’

  He stared blankly for a moment, then said: ‘Howard.’

  ‘What did he want? You sounded a bit terse with him. Stop doing what?’

  ‘Oh, you know Howard! He’s been moonlighting behind some pub bar and the Social Security have found out about it. Told him either to stop working or stop claiming benefit.’

  I lost interest (except for a faint surprise that Howard’s phone wasn’t cut off as usual for non-payment of bills) and went to bed, where I had another of those dreams that made me too guilty to look my husband in the face next day. Fergal featured largely in it.

  I am not responsible for my subconscious.

  Later, I bethought myself of another person I could tell about the Lump who would enter into the spirit of the thing: Mrs Deakin.

  She responded to the sordid details of my examination and reprieve with comfortingly horrific mastectomy tales and harrowing deathbed scenes she’d personally witnessed. All her relatives (female) must be either lopsided or dead. Strangely, I felt much better after this.

  Then she imparted the astonishing news that wife-swapping is rife in the village on the new estate! While personally disapproving of such goings-on, as a novelist I feel that I should know all about Life, so I pumped her for more details. (I hope the rumour never reaches James’s ears – men are so strange about that sort of thing.)

  Running out of wife-swapping stories at last, she changed gear and added a lengthy run of village history for good measure.

  ‘There was a man …’ she began, resting her elbows and bosom on a stack of sugar bags. Most of her best village stories start like that, or, ‘There was a woman …’

  ‘There was a man,’ she continued now, ‘lived at Rose Cottage down the other end of the village. His wife, Polly, she died two year ago. Used to teach leatherwork at the WI – a dab hand at making gloves and bags and such, she were, though a strange sort of woman.

  ‘Her husband, Reg, his hobby were breeding fancy guinea pigs, out in the garden shed. A farm worker, and a steady sort of man, you’d have said. Not over-bright, mind, but good-looking in a big, bullish sort of way.

  ‘Then Polly gets suspicious, like, that he was seeing someone else, so one night she creeps out after him when he goes down to the Dog and Duck.’

  ‘What made her suspicious?’

  ‘Clean underpants! Yes, every day he was demanding a clean pair!’

  ‘R-really?’

  ‘She was right, too – he was carrying on with a London widow what had just moved
into one of they bungalows. But, as I say, Polly were a strange sort of woman and she didn’t say anything at first, thinking this smart London lady would get tired of her Reg soon, and then she could make him suffer for it at her leisure. Only one day she finds all their Post Office saving taken out, and spots the widow swanning along in a new fur jacket, and put two and two together.’

  ‘How awful! What did she do?’

  ‘Threw his traps out into the street and locked the doors against him. A fine row he made when he come back, too! But after a bit he picks his stuff up and goes over to the widow’s.

  ‘Next day he comes back for his guinea pigs, but Polly says she sold ’em. He was fair murderous since they was some fancy kind he’d been breeding for years, but that was that.’

  Mrs Deakin paused and shifted her weight so that one bosom slid off the sugar bags into the tray of toffee apples.

  ‘But didn’t they ever make it up? What happened?’

  ‘After a bit the widow chucks old Reg out and goes off back where she come from, and he moves in with another farm worker in a tied cottage.

  ‘No one seen much of Polly for a long time – preoccupied, she was. Then one day she startles the whole village by appearing in a new fur jacket. Sumptuous it were, the fur all long and glossy and a mighty unusual colour. I never seen one like it. “What sort of fur would that be, Polly?” I asked her, and she give me a strange smile.

  ‘“Nutthill Nutria,” she says.’

  ‘B-but surely …?’ I stammered, startled.

  ‘Just goes to show what weak, untrustworthy creatures men be.’ Mrs Deakin fixed me with her bright eye. ‘Even the ones what look most steady, like Reg.’

  ‘Not all, though!’ I assured her, smiling, for even if he had the time, James would not have the inclination. If you sliced him up you would probably find ‘Good Husband Material’ running all the way through, like a stick of rock.

  ‘You have to watch them all the time,’ she assured me darkly. ‘Even if the spirit’s willing, the flesh is weak!’

  I thought with sudden unease of Vanessa the secretarty, then firmly pushed the idea out of my head.

  Mrs Peach would be very bored if she watched James all the time now he’s hooked on amateur radio. All sorts of stuff arrives for him with each post. He must have answered every ad in the ham radio magazine, hence all the holes I found cut out of it. He has also joined a nationwide club for enthusiasts and is going to a meeting of the local branch next week, plus some sort of evening class.

  If he is so busy that he can’t even take me out for a meal, how come he can fit this in? And what about the cost?

  Still, perhaps it will be one of his shorter crazes. Photography lasted ten hellish weeks, during which I couldn’t move a muscle without appearing in deathless, glossy colour. And he wanted to take pictures of me without my clothes on! But I soon told him what I thought of that and added that if he wanted a hobby he should start getting the garden straight, though I have come to the conclusion that he only enjoyed reading about self-sufficiency. When it comes down to rain and muddy wellies he isn’t interested.

  But we’re well into April, after all, and someone has to make a start, so on the first reasonably clement day I went out, notebook in hand, to draw up a plan of campaign.

  The front garden didn’t take long:

  1) Cut hedge.

  2) Dig over front garden and returf, I wrote and then, as I turned for a last look, it struck me that what the front of the cottage cried out for (besides repainting) was:

  3) Rose, climbing.

  Satisfied, I went round the side of the house, soon to be partially blocked by an Instant Garage, and stood, daunted, on the brink of the waist-deep sea of weeds that formed the back garden, already springing back to life after a short winter’s nap.

  No trace remained of the path I had once beaten to the fence, and I never had found the dustbin. A new plastic one stood forlornly on the edge of the wilderness like the Last Outpost of Civilisation.

  I could hear the cackling of Mrs Peach’s hens, and when the breeze changed direction, smell them.

  Girding up my wellies, I waded out to the garden shed and found it surprisingly complete apart from one cracked and starred window. Inside was a great quantity of cobwebs, with and without occupants, a heap of broken plant pots, a rake with three prongs missing, a heap of mouldering sacking that might contain anything, and the china pot out of the commode. Clearly a job for James.

  4) Clear out shed, mend window (James).

  5) Scythe weeds. (Or sickle weeds? Is there a difference?)

  The long, fenced sides of the garden are covered by small, flattened, spreading trees, forming a dense mass of intertwining branches, which look a bit like the espaliered fruit trees I’ve seen in books. If so, I only hope they aren’t as ancient and dead as they look.

  It was all very daunting and would take a lot of hard work and yet more money before it became the pretty cottage garden I longed for.

  The contrast with the smooth, well-nibbled turf of the park was revolting.

  A few days later, when I popped into Mrs Deakin’s to buy dried figs, she told me that the Hall had finally been sold, but she hadn’t managed to find out who to. Workmen have moved in, but they’re not local, and she’s further hampered in her investigations by the main entrance and lodge to the house being on the far side of the park in Lower Nutthill. I suppose I’ll soon have to stop exercising Bess in the over-grown rear drive, which is a nuisance.

  The house is called Greatness Hall, though Mrs Deakin says it was once Great Ness (which makes even less sense to me).

  ‘Some say it’s been bought by one of them foreign opera singers,’ suggested Mrs Deakin hopefully. ‘That Monster Rat Cavaliero.’

  ‘Greatness Hall would certainly sound like the right address,’ I agreed, puzzling over who the Monster Rat could be. Then it clicked: Montserrat Caballé.

  ‘They say the Dower House once stood where your cottages are, but the lady what lived there went mad and set fire to it and perished,’ she was blithely continuing.

  ‘How exciting! The surveyor did say that one or two parts of the house walls looked much older than the rest.’

  ‘A touch of Greatness!’ she giggled. ‘Now, dear, here’s your dried figs. Do your insides a world of good.’

  ‘Actually, I’m making fig and sesame seed chewy bars.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter what you do with them – clean your tubes out a treat, these will.’

  The fig and sesame bars are tasty, but not only do they have the texture of sand-filled sandwiches, they look like something Bess does when she’s constipated. I gave Toby a bit and he loved it, but Bess gulped a dropped piece down and then looked as if she wished she hadn’t. I sincerely hope they don’t clean her tubes out.

  James came home even later than usual, smelling of beer, and admitted he’d called in at the Dog and Duck for a quick pint.

  ‘If I’d known, I could have met you there!’ I said, hurt.

  ‘I didn’t plan it,’ he said irritably, ‘I just felt like a pint on my way past.’ He poked around in his curry, then looked up, frowning. ‘I can’t seem to find the meat in this.’

  ‘There isn’t any – it’s vegetable.’

  He put the fork down. ‘Is there any cheese?’

  ‘Don’t you like the curry? I thought it came out rather well. And there’s protein in the peas and the brown rice, you know.’

  He pushed back his chair. ‘Never mind, I’m just not hungry. I had a pasty at the pub – corned beef and onion.’

  ‘There doesn’t seem much point in my cooking dinner if you are going to spoil your appetite before you even get home!’ I snapped. ‘Not that I ever know when you’re going to deign to arrive these days anyway.’

  ‘I can’t help having to work late,’ he said sulkily.

  ‘You can help stopping off at pubs on the way home, though!’

  ‘I need to unwind after a hard day at work. And if there was someth
ing more appetising than vegetable curry waiting for me when I got back, it might give me a bit more incentive to rush home.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with vegetable curry! And how do you expect me to cook anything Cordon Bleu when it’s got to be kept hot for hours on end waiting for you to get back? I— Where are you going?’

  ‘Out for another pasty!’ he said, and slammed off before I could even mention the fresh fruit salad.

  I’d gone to bed (with a headache) before he returned, and when I came down next morning discovered that he’d been brewing beer in the kitchen from a kit he’d bought from the supermarket months ago. From the look of it, he’d been drunk when he got the idea.

  The top of the cooker was covered in sticky brown goo, with about a pound of coagulated sugar heaped and drifted all over it. In the sink were two of my best, expensive, cast-iron enamelled casseroles in which the goo had hardened to a tight, brown skin, and coiled around them was the run-out hose of the washing machine, also sticky and revolting.

  The place smelled like a brewery and the floor stuck to my slippers.

  Why doesn’t he ever clear up after himself? And when I complained about the mess he went all hurt, and said he thought I’d be pleased that he was making home brew since I didn’t like him going out to drink beer.

  ‘When you used to make beer before, it didn’t stop you going out drinking as well!’ I said without thinking, and he slammed off to work in a rage, and without kissing me. (And God knows, it’s our only physical contact these days!)

  It took me ages to clean everything up, and I’d only just finished and was sitting down with a cup of coffee before finally going upstairs to get on with my writing, when Bess decided to empty her entire stomach contents in the middle of the clean kitchen floor.

  Mornings never used to be like this.

  Later, the inevitable flowers arrived, but this time a spring arrangement of daffodils in a basket, which was actually quite nice.

  It probably smelled good too, except that the mingled scents of burned malt and dog vomit had permanently invaded my nostrils.

  Fergal: April,1999

  ‘IN THIS ISSUE: an exclusive pin-up of the man you all voted for –