Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  It’s on Friday night at eight thirty. ‘Come and meet your neighbours,’ she’d written, and I do think it’s very nice of them to invite us. Perhaps we’ll meet lots of nice local people and have a (joint) social life again.

  Then a workman appeared at the end of the garden and started measuring up the fence, and it seems Fergal has ordered a curved, white-painted metal paling to be installed, one strong enough to keep the cows out but not impede my view (of his park).

  It was thoughtful of Fergal, because if he just wished to put a barrier between us he could simply have had a high wall built, and I wished I hadn’t been quite so rude to him (though he started it). But James went all jealous and peculiar, as he does at any mention of the dreaded name.

  I don’t know what this dog-in-the-manger attitude is all about – he may be guarding the bone, but he doesn’t seem very interested in it otherwise.

  Is the Right Wife just a possession like the Right House, Right Friends and Right School?

  While chatting to the workman at the bottom of the garden I discovered that Bob had dug up all the pretty pinkish-purple flowers that I’d been training up the fence, but he told me that it was bindweed and very persistent. Well, not in those words he didn’t, just said it was ‘turrible stuff’ and ground it under his heel. I looked it up in my wildflower book. Gardener’s Bane.

  I’ll have sweet peas next year.

  I finally made an appointment to see the doctor, where I told her about stopping the pill, and how my periods have been sporadic and slight ever since, just like they used to be before I started taking it. I mean, my last one lasted two days and was hardly worth mentioning! (Perhaps drinking to excess the night of the SFWWR dinner affected it? But I didn’t like to ask that.)

  ‘Perfectly normal. They’ll settle down in time.’

  ‘Oh – right. Er …’

  Actually, what I really wanted to ask was whether my ambiguous feelings about motherhood were normal. And is James entirely normal in wanting only sons? Where does he get such feudal notions? He seems to be slowly reverting to some horribly chauvinistic ancestor. Possession, perhaps?

  ‘Anything else?’ she asked briskly.

  ‘I – I was thinking of having a baby, doctor, but—’

  ‘Well, you don’t need my help for that, do you?’

  I tried to explain my confused feelings, but she was looking down all the time and writing, and after a bit I petered out, without even mentioning James’s lack of libido.

  ‘All perfectly natural. Balanced diet. Relax. Good luck.’ Then she went back to her writing.

  I leaned over as I left to see what it was: The Times crossword.

  This was all highly unsatisfactory, so I attempted to discuss how I felt with James, and he looked so shocked that he obviously felt I was unnatural, if not actually insane.

  Nor did he want to discuss why our sex life has gone from being a series of reconciliations with longer and longer gaps in between, to non-existent, except to say that he’s always tired since we moved here, working such late hours, and then the commuting, and doing things to the house. (What things? I do them all.)

  Perhaps a baby would bring us closer together. I’ve never seen James with a baby – perhaps he’d love it, since he goes on about it so much, and share in looking after it.

  Or am I deluding myself? At any rate, you can’t ignore a baby, can you?

  I made the long journey in to see Mother, since we missed Sunday, but she was on her way out when I arrived, accompanied by a man I only managed, after a struggle, to identify as Dr Reevey, one of Granny’s discarded medicos.

  Duncan (as he jovially invited me to call him) was attired in checked shirt, denim jeans and Cuban-heeled boots, which had the merit only of making Mother’s garb not look quite so odd.

  No, I’m wrong, they both looked very odd.

  ‘We’re just going line dancing, dear,’ Mother explained. ‘So we can’t stop. Such good exercise!’

  They teetered off together. Dr Reevey is a short man, so I suppose he quite relishes the chance to put on the high heels occasionally. Perhaps Mother being so tiny is also part of her attraction for him.

  Could this be lurve?

  ‘It’s me, Granny!’ I called as I went in.

  ‘She’s not in,’ Granny greeted me, offering me a chocolate from a small gilt and white box. ‘Gone to a hoe-down or some such with that doctor, and dressed like an extra from Oklahoma!’

  ‘Line dancing.’

  Granny had lost interest. ‘What have you got on? Makes you look like an Avon lady.’

  ‘It’s the suit James bought me for my birthday as a surprise. I don’t like it either, but I thought I’d just try it and see if I could sort of get used to the idea of Smart. Only going out in a skirt above my knees makes me feel like a Transvestite after all these years of long skirts and jeans.’

  ‘Always look perfectly all right to me,’ Granny said decidedly. ‘Wouldn’t bother, if I were you.’

  I threw my arms around her and gave her a big hug. ‘Granny, I do love you!’

  ‘Eh, well, you big daft ha’porth. Maybe there’s some Thorpe in you after all,’ she said, pleased.

  ‘There must be – though I don’t look like Dad, do I?’

  ‘No, though sometimes I think there’s a look … but there, even a dog and its master look alike.’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t look like Mother, as she’s always reminding me,’ I said ruefully.

  ‘You’re very well as you are, so stop trying to be what other people want, especially that big girl’s blouse you married. Wear bright colours – I like a bit of colour now I’m over yer grandpa’s death – and if I see one more taupe twinset I’m going to puke.’

  Granny herself that day was wearing a shiny, deep green shift of tubular construction, with a black velvet coatee and a bracelet of tiny Fabergé eggs.

  On her feet were tartan slippers with gay red pompoms, and her legs were encased in matching Black Watch tartan.

  ‘I like your stockings, Granny.’

  ‘Tights, they are. Only a masochist would wear a suspender belt when they could wear tights.’

  ‘Are suspender belts uncomfortable?’

  ‘Contraption of the Devil. In the war I painted my legs with gravy browning, only the family dog kept trying to lick it off. He had a warm tongue.’

  That reminded me to tell her about James and the cod-liver oil ointment, which made her laugh.

  Two of us against the sartorial world isn’t bad, so I have given up my half-hearted attempts to be alluring, which were not working anyway, and reverted to type. (Slob, I think.)

  Fergal: July 1999

  FURIOUS FERGAL IN PATERNITY ROW AFTER NUN FUN!

  Sun

  That I’m furious is the only true thing about the story: she wasn’t a nun, we didn’t have fun, and if she’s pregnant, it’s nothing to do with me.

  Things have been quiet lately, so perhaps it’s another of Hywel’s schemes, but if so then he can damned well pay for the DNA check, or pay her off, because I’m not.

  Nerissa seems to believe it. Unfortunately, the worse I’m painted, the more attractive she seems to find me, and living near her parents’ house doesn’t help, because she’s always on the damned doorstep.

  I only hope Tish doesn’t see the nun story …

  Have I any infectious diseases, indeed!

  That’s Tish.

  Chapter 19: One Big Ham

  I never thought James would get permission to put that enormous, unsightly radio aerial up on the house, but he did. He said his uncle Lionel knew someone in the planning department, or somewhere. He would. It looks awful, really awful.

  Now his radio equipment is functioning (I’m glad something is!) he spends most evenings in the Shack, and his friends visit him there, bypassing the house completely. They do say ‘Hi!’ if they happen to catch sight of me in the garden, except Horrible Howard, who just smirks.

  If I’m very lucky I get to give James
an evening meal between his arrival home (at an undisclosed time), and his going over to the Shack: this is what my married life has degenerated into. Not quite how I envisaged our rural idyll, I must admit.

  Sometimes ghostly-sounding voices waft over on the night air from the little hut, and crackling noises, but when it all goes silent I know they’ve adjourned to the pub.

  I don’t know what Mrs Peach is making of all this. She hasn’t said anything when she comes round with the eggs and to see Toby. He increasingly avidly anticipates her arrival, and gets very excited – as soon as he hears the doorbell he starts to scream hello. It’s a true communion of souls. (Pity I can’t give her the bloody bird, but I’m not sure that I wouldn’t forfeit the legacy, which has long since been spent … and I suppose I am sort of used to having him around after all this time.)

  One evening James actually came home early, but it was only because he was in a panic and wanted to ring the doctor up for reassurance. One of the junior partners has gone down with mumps.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll get it anyway,’ I consoled him. ‘It sounds such a childish sort of ailment.’

  ‘You can kiss goodbye to any chance of having children if I do!’ he retorted melodramatically.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It often leaves men infertile.’ Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  I didn’t know that, although something about mumps did ring a bell somewhere at the back of my mind. Then I remembered: ‘It can’t always have that effect, James, because Granny told me once that Dad had it just after he married Mother, and they still had me!’

  ‘They didn’t have any more, though, did they?’ he pointed out unarguably, but actually, I’ve always thought that was because Mother disliked the whole messy, undignified business.

  ‘And I’ve got this rash under my arms,’ he added as a clincher.

  ‘You know very well that’s heat rash, James,’ I said unsympathetically. ‘You always get it in the summer.’

  Fortunately the first flush of fear (and the rash) had worn off by the night of the Wrekins’ barbecue on the ninth of July.

  I wore a new pair of designer-label jeans, a short-sleeved silk blouse, and my one and only cashmere cardigan (twenty-first birthday present from Mother), in case it got chilly when the sun went down. Also the sandals with high heels that James hates, because they make me nearly as tall as he is – but nuts to him.

  When I came downstairs ready he was dressed in a lumberjack shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a very old pair of corduroy trousers.

  ‘Good God, Tish! You aren’t going to a Garden Party, you know!’

  ‘At least I don’t look as if I’ve spent the evening cleaning the sewers!’ I retorted, annoyed. He goes from one sartorial extreme to another.

  We walked there in silence (once we were out of earshot of Bess’s anguished howls.)

  The Wrekins’ doorbell plays ‘Oranges and Lemons’ like the one I just got rid of.

  A head popped over the garden wall. It had a beaky nose set between chubby cheeks and a tonsure of hair. Rather like a squished-up André Previn.

  ‘Hi! Come round the back – there’s a gate here. Like the doorbell? Amusing, isn’t it? Hear it at the bottom of the garden!’ He gave a snort and vanished.

  Our host, presumably.

  He proved to be a very small Welshman, and had been standing on a beer crate to look over the wall. I was glad he wasn’t one of those extremely tall, thin people with very small heads, because I find that type physically very repulsive, like spiders.

  There were about twenty other people there on an enormous patio with an assortment of swinging seats and lounging chairs. Margaret emerged briefly from behind the barbecue and introduced us generally as ‘Marian Plentifold, the novelist – I told you all she was coming – and her husband, of course …?’

  ‘James,’ I said, not daring to look at him. ‘I’m really Tish Drew. Marian Plentifold is only my pen name.’

  James hissed furiously at me, ‘Now look what you’ve done! Everyone here knows your name and the sort of drivel you write.’

  ‘I don’t write drivel!’ I hissed back, equally furiously, and then was drawn away from him by the interested questions of all the other women there who could, of course, have written novels every bit as good, ‘if only they had the time’.

  I expect some of them could, but several looked as if they had abandoned such minor skills as writing (other than cheques) once they’d acquired a husband.

  But I’d misjudged them, for it transpired that they’d all read at least one of my books, which was gratifying. One haggard older woman said that there ought to be more sex in them – they were too tame – and I wondered if she’d enrolled in the Wife Swappers yet. But her husband is a desiccated shrimp of a man with glasses an inch thick, so I don’t think there would be much call to swap anyone’s husband for him.

  Once we’d divided up into male and female camps, the women got down to grilling me about Fergal Rocco, and seemed a bit disappointed when I told them that I knew him only briefly years ago.

  ‘He’s so sexy!’ sighed the haggard woman.

  ‘He certainly is! He can leave his slippers under my bed any time,’ agreed a horsy-looking girl. ‘Do you think it’s true about those six nuns in Rome? You know, when they said he—’

  ‘I’ve absolutely no idea,’ I said shortly. ‘And, what’s more, I’m not very interested.’

  They eventually gave up in disgust.

  There was an enormous bowl of punch and all the ladies had been automatically handed great tumblers of the stuff as they arrived, which were constantly replenished by the Welsh gnome. It contained fruit salad, and a Sargasso of strange purple flowers floated on top.

  I was just wondering what the flowers were, and whether they were supposed to be eaten or not, when James lost his footing and fell into a prickly bush and I inadvertently swallowed one.

  He was not so terribly drunk that the shock of being picked out of the prickly bush and dusted down didn’t sober him quite a bit. Then the kebabs and pitta bread were handed round, which gave his stomach a respite from an almost totally fluid diet.

  Margaret wandered up with a plate of little sausages on sticks and, to my horror and embarrassment, James suddenly said in an all-too-audible aside to me, ‘Pricks on sticks!’

  Luckily Margaret burst out laughing, then told everyone else, as though it was the most amusing thing she’d heard for years. (Maybe it was.)

  After that everyone went round offering each other ‘a prick on a stick’ and being very vulgar about comparing length and width, and telling James how frightfully witty he was.

  I expect he might seem to be, if you’re not married to him, and I do seem vaguely to recall his exerting his charm on me in the way he now does only with other women, too.

  ‘You are lucky being married to such a handsome, romantic man!’ sighed the haggard woman, whose one-strap trousered garment was in danger of becoming a no-strap one at any minute, since there wasn’t much up-front to stop its downward progress, as it were. ‘It’s easy to see what inspires you to write your novels.’

  Romance? There isn’t a drop in his veins! (There may have been, once, but it has all been well flushed out since.)

  Margaret’s husband insisted on taking me for a tour of the garden in the half dark, where I floundered reluctantly about in the loose earth in my high heels with Ray hanging off my arm like a folded raincoat. I was glad to get back to the light and solidity of the patio, particularly since he is the sort of man who must touch women if he is near one – the hand on the arm, the pat on the rear, the hand sliding round the waist. Ugh!

  (Though come to think of it, that’s better than the ones who check their crotches right in front of you every five minutes, as though afraid something might have fallen off.)More kebabs were circulated and, as it was getting really dark, flares on sticks were lit all round the garden, which looked very pretty. I couldn’t see what was in this kebab,
and I suspect I got some grease on my silk blouse. I hope not.

  My glass had been refilled to brimming point, and the trouble with punch is that you don’t know what’s in it: it always tastes innocuous, even when it isn’t.

  Ray Wrekin had an inexhaustible fund of ghastly jokes with which to bore the assembled throng between rushing in and out of the house changing records. (Why did he bother? One Barry Manilow sounds very like another.) Everyone else laughed at the jokes just before the punch line, so they’d probably been just as amused last time he told them.

  Margaret, tall and stately, towered fondly above him, reminding me of a picture I’d once seen of a zoo giraffe whose favoured and inseparable companion was a pygmy goat.

  I felt a sudden need to sit down, and fortunately there was an empty swinging seat behind me. It rocked dangerously, and I hastily drained my glass before it spilled, then put my feet up and sat drowsily listening to all the murmuring voices.

  James was nowhere to be seen. The Welsh comedian hadn’t been in evidence for a bit either … and I had definitely had more than enough to drink without intending to. I closed my eyes.

  ‘Oh, there you are!’ said James, and I woke with a start, feeling stiff and a bit sick.

  ‘Where have you been, James? I haven’t seen you for ages.’

  ‘Oh, Ray wanted to see my radio set-up. I wasn’t away very long. He’s coming round tomorrow too. Come on – everyone’s going.’

  And indeed, the garden was emptying fast and the flares were beginning to gutter.

  We thanked our hosts and tottered out (well, I tottered, but that was the high heels rather than anything) into the night, where the sound of voices in inebriated conversation and the slamming of car doors enlivened the previously peaceful and sleeping village.

  As we walked, he put his arm round me and we talked to each other as we haven’t done for ages about all kinds of things, like what Bob had done in the garden, and whether to have wrought-iron furniture or wooden on the patio (when we have a patio), and whether Bess was capable of being obedience-trained, and things like that.