Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘He has?’ Strange James hadn’t mentioned that. ‘Doesn’t everyone stare at him? He’s quite well known, you know.’

  Notorious might be a better word!

  ‘Funny – I asked him the very same thing. He said everyone would soon get used to seeing him about, being boring and ordinary.’

  Boring? Ordinary? Fergal used to turn heads in the street long before he was famous. (Or infamous!)

  ‘Hitting someone can’t be that ordinary,’ I said drily, having seen the local paper.

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, these young men – flare up in a minute, they do, when the sap’s rising. No one took much notice.’

  I bought some tomatoes and then suddenly succumbed to the lure of a jar of sherbet dips. I can’t think what got into me, for I was never keen on them as a child, but today I was dying for one. I could practically taste it.

  ‘I didn’t know you fancied that sort of thing?’ said Mrs Deakin curiously. ‘You’ve never bought sweets before.’

  ‘Oh – just a sudden whim, you know,’ I said, feeling stupid.

  ‘Oh, yes? I like a bit of sherbet myself, but I prefer the Rainbow Crystals.’ She gestured to a large jar filled with poisonously colourful layers of extremely large granules, like washing soda. ‘Lovely stuff. Like to try a bit?’

  ‘Oh – no, thanks, I think I’ll stick to the sherbet dips.’

  ‘Stick to the sherbet dips!’ she cackled. ‘You are a one for a joke, aren’t you?’

  I smiled half-heartedly. I don’t know why she thinks I’m witty, but she usually finds something funny in what I say to her. ‘I think that’ll be everything.’

  ‘Right you are. Mrs Wrekin come in this morning – well, calls herself Mrs, though she’s no more a Mrs than my cat is!’

  ‘What!’ I was so startled I dropped ten pence and it rolled under a sack of potatoes.

  ‘Over there – I can see it,’ she gestured helpfully.

  I stooped, and she continued where she’d left off in a comfortable, chatty voice: ‘Yes, her calls herself Mrs Wrekin, but she’s not married to him.’

  ‘But she must be! I mean, she doesn’t look the type – and they’ve got two children!’ (And an epergne.)

  ‘Not his. They’re from her first marriage, and her divorce hasn’t come through yet. Suppose they might get married when it does, but till then – well, it’s like I said – she’s no better than my cat.’

  This was all very surprising, but Mrs Deakin is usually right.

  ‘She’s got the money, you know,’ she approved. ‘Not that he hasn’t got a good job himself, but it’s her as pays for the icing on the cake – and the cherry too!’

  ‘Really?’

  But she’d exhausted that topic. ‘I’ve got some of your books in,’ she informed me, pointing to a heap of paperbacks on the corner of the counter.

  I went pink. ‘But surely they won’t sell? I mean, you can’t have much demand for books, can you?’

  ‘They sell all right when I tells them they was written by you. Full of curiosity, they are then. I read one myself.’

  ‘Did you? Did you – like it?’

  ‘Yes, I like a good romance, so long as the ending’s happy. I read it, and then I sold it, but I had to let it go reduced because I got cocoa on it.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I apologised, although I don’t know why. It wasn’t me who spilled the cocoa.

  ‘Vicar bought it. He said it were for his wife, but I know better. He can’t keep his hands off a good love story, can’t Vicar.’

  ‘The vicar? Our vicar? I really wouldn’t have thought it to look at him! How do you know?’

  ‘Mobile library van,’ she said succinctly. ‘Mr Rocco bought a copy of all of your books that I had, too.’

  ‘What! Which ones?’

  She enumerated on her fingers: ‘Love Is on the Outside, Love Goes West …’

  ‘Not Love Goes West!’ I wailed. That was one of my earliest ones, and the hero is tall, black-haired and green-eyed. My only hope is that whatever curiosity drove him to buy them peters out before the end of the first page.

  I felt out of sorts this morning again, but that was explained when my period started. Then it stopped again almost immediately. Really, I seem to be getting all sorts of funny little symptoms lately – I hope they don’t all add up to some horrible disease.

  And James went off to work without even mentioning our anniversary, so he must have forgotten. Mother, of course, sent a big soppy card listing them all, like Ruby, Silver, etc., but the seventh was something boring like tin or cork – or maybe it was lino. Mundane and non-precious, anyway.

  Margaret popped in after lunch and we had coffee in the kitchen because I wanted to keep an eye on the man laying the patio. (Cash on completion – some kind of tax dodge, I think.)

  Bob was also keeping a fascinated eye on him, but I’ve come to the conclusion that he’ll watch any event with the same avid interest, including paint drying.

  Margaret and I chatted about all kinds of things and the time just flew by. Although she seems to have a lot of local acquaintances, she is, I think, probably as in need of a good friend as I am.

  I offered her a home-made fig bar (the same recipe as before, but with sunflower seeds instead of sesame, which made them much less gritty), and she asked me to write down the recipe.

  Just after she left James phoned to say he would definitely be home for six tonight – so he has remembered our anniversary! I decided to make a special effort and took steak out of the freezer to defrost, which I will grill with garlic butter. The only snag is that he likes his steak bloody on the inside, and it’s awfully hard to gauge when it’s like that. And he has to have chips with it.

  I’m going to set it all out on the dining table, with candles and low music, and we can have a nice, relaxed evening and talk over everything when we’re feeling a bit more mellow.

  I’ll even put a (sober!) dress on.

  Surely our differences can be resolved, with a bit of effort and mutual co-operation?

  I am in an absolute rage!

  The candles have long since guttered and gone out, I’ve played the same CD six times, and the steaks are lying in a bloody pool in the kitchen. The red wine has had so long to breathe, it’s probably hyperventilated.

  I’m so angry and miserable, so frustrated with rage, I really feel like smashing something. I must have been mad to think I could cram all our problems back into the Pandora’s box they escaped from! Why hasn’t he at least phoned, to say he’ll be late? Where the hell is he?

  I’m going to bed. I’ll leave the table and the food and everything, the wilting salad, dead candles and the CD player switched on, so he’ll know what he’s done when he comes in.

  If he comes in.

  Fergal: August 1999

  ‘Now available from Nutthill Home Stores!

  Novels by famous local author Marian Plentifold!’

  Advert, Nutthill District Advertiser

  I couldn’t resist buying them, though I don’t know if I’ll read them.

  Still, there’s one in my luggage – Love Goes West – in case the urge comes over me.

  That probably makes me a very, very sad man.

  Chapter 24: Reciprocations

  Woke up to find James in bed next to me wearing only a loosely knotted tie, which I was tempted to tighten.

  How did he get his shirt off?

  He looked dreadfully green, unshaven and baggy-eyed by the light of the Teasmade, and groaned, ‘Put that light out!’ as I poured my coffee.

  I ignored him. Frankly. I don’t feel that I ever want to speak to him again, and I don’t particularly mind if I never see him again, either.

  As I got up I trod on Bess, who must have come up with him, and she yelped loudly, causing James to groan again and put his head under the pillow.

  I apologised to Bess and she watched me dolefully as I put on my dressing gown, because she knows I don’t go for walks wearing that. ‘Come on down,
Bess.’

  I let her out into the garden and as I stumbled rather blearily into the bathroom, I thought I heard a rather un-Toby-like noise from the living room.

  On my return, slightly more alert, I heard it again and opened the door, revealing Horrible Howard, in a pair of sordid, once-white underpants, sitting on my lovely pale cream sofa with his head in his hands.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I demanded, in quite reasonable tones considering that I wanted to kick him off my sofa and have it fumigated.

  ‘Don’t shout, man!’ he whimpered.

  ‘I’m not a man, and I wasn’t shouting. I just asked why you’re here. Why are you here?’

  ‘Oh God!’ he groaned and, turning his spindly shanks, clambered back into the crumpled pink sleeping bag behind him, like a snail returning to its shell, and didn’t reply to anything else I said.

  It was my sleeping bag.

  Upstairs I shook James until he was awake enough to answer my demands as to where he was last night, and what Howard was doing in my sleeping bag, on my sofa, in my house.

  ‘We had a drink … came back here, had some whisky …’ he muttered blearily. ‘I lent Howard a sleeping bag – too late to go home … anyway, he came in my car. Look, Tish, I feel awful! Get me an Alka-Seltzer, will you?’

  ‘Get your own bloody Alka-Seltzer!’ I screamed, and slammed out of the room, a gesture only spoiled by my having to go back in to get my clothes.

  James seemed to have lost consciousness again. (Wish it was permanent.)

  I dressed hurriedly and then took Bess for a long walk. I was so angry that I just went on and on, mulling everything over and feeling very reluctant to go back and see James ever again. Not to mention my cream sofa.

  And he even gave Howard my sleeping bag to put his grimy body and disgusting underpants into!

  ‘This is the end!’ I told Bess, who wagged her tail with vague approval. ‘Positively the end! I’m sick of James.’

  I mean it: this has made me realise that I really don’t feel anything for him any more except anger – and boredom – and frustration! And distaste. He’s tiresome, and I’m thoroughly tired of him. And if he really cared about me he wouldn’t behave the way he does.

  If only he’d said he was sorry for once, and meant it. Or showed me, even occasionally, some signs of tenderness or affection – not just sex or nothing (mostly nothing, since we moved here).

  Can this be love? Can this ever truly have been love?

  And when I did try to save our marriage by conforming to his idea of a good wife, all he said was that he was glad I’d come out of the dumps because I was becoming a real pain in the fundament.

  But he hasn’t even tried, just carried on as usual, treating the house like a hotel and me as its housekeeper.

  Even when I’ve practically prostituted myself to get his attention it had no result, except to make me feel ashamed.

  ‘He for God only, she for God in him …’ How that annoyed me when I read it for A level! Stuff Milton: Paradise is definitely lost.

  I feel so used …

  Are all men the same underneath? Cheap pine carcasses and fancy veneers?

  James’s must be Bog Oak.

  Large, cold splashes of rain eventually woke me to the realisation that I was miles from home under a black sky, with an exhausted and complaining dog.

  By the time we got back my sodden anorak clung to me and my jeans hung dark and heavy round my legs. Rivulets ran down my nose and dripped off the end like loathsome dewdrops, and I felt utterly cold and miserable.

  Stumbling into the empty kitchen I pulled off my jacket and the equally sodden sweatshirt underneath came with it, leaving me standing under the fluorescent strip light exposed to the world (usually only the herd of cows at the bottom of the garden) in my new Near-Nude bra.

  Something – an innate feeling that I was being watched – made me look up: Howard’s pallid face was goggling at me through the rain from the Shack’s window.

  Clutching my soggy rags and the shreds of my dignity I ran upstairs and locked myself in the bedroom, then sobbed with misery as I towelled myself dry.

  Bess, who I’d shut into the garage to shake off the worst of the rain, howled dismally and I felt like joining in.

  And who would have thought rain could be so icily cold in August?

  This is really The End.

  I didn’t go downstairs until James had driven away, presumably to return Howard to his lair. He’d let Bess back into the kitchen and she was so exhausted she barely raised an eyelid when I went in. I must have walked an awfully long way.

  Everything else was just as I’d left it the previous night, so I cleaned up and put my sleeping bag in a bin liner: I don’t fancy it any more.

  Toby was still asleep, with his head under his wing, groaning – his water pot had been strongly spiked with whisky.

  There’s nothing you can give a parrot for a hangover.

  My communications with James since our anniversary have been terse, to say the least. He’s preserving an air of hurt innocence, and has never once mentioned the remains of that ruined dinner. What does he expect? That I will apologise for his behaviour?

  I used to think we had so much in common, and now I can’t think of a single thing.

  We can’t go on like this. The worry’s really affecting my health. I was sleeping poorly before, but now I lie awake for several hours every night, turning it all over in my mind.

  So it was that I neither felt nor looked my best when I opened my door early one sultry dog day (or bitch day, as it turned out), to find Nerissa, fresh as the dawn of Creation, on the doorstep.

  ‘Hi! Remember me?’ she cooed, all her perfect little straight white teeth bared in a friendly smile. ‘Hope you don’t mind me dropping in, but when Fergal told me how you’d grown up together, I just couldn’t resist a little girl-to-girl chat.’

  Barbie speaks!

  What could I do but let her in? (Other than wish I was wearing something other than old jeans and a lumberjack shirt that used to belong to James.)

  ‘How … nice! Do come in. I was just about to make some coffee.’

  ‘Great. I’ll come with you, shall I? I just love your little old house! And I hope you’ll say if I’m a nuisance. I was so excited when I found out you were Marian Plentifold! My stepmom is a big fan of yours.’

  That put me firmly in the Oldies bracket! ‘Oh, good …’ I muttered ungraciously.

  Bess oozed out from behind the Aga and fixed my visitor with the aloof, slightly puzzled stare that signifies an attempt to connect her two brain cells.

  Nerissa gave a gasp and backed away. ‘I – I’m not real keen on dogs!’

  ‘She’s quite harmless,’ I assured her. But when I turned back with the (best) coffee mugs she was still staring at Bess like a mesmerised rabbit, so I had to put her into the garden, where Bob would talk to her. (Bess, I mean, though Bob isn’t fussy.)

  ‘Oh thank you! I guess you must think me a real coward.’

  ‘It’s difficult when you have a phobia about something. I’ve one about spiders,’ I said, warming to her just a fraction, from below zero, to nearly tepid.

  ‘It’s not real bad – my analyst’s helping me overcome it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I had to do something because poor Fergal’s holding back from getting a dog just because of Silly Little Ol’ Me.’ She fluttered incredibly long, dark eyelashes. ‘I thought I’d surprise him with a puppy for a wedding present.’

  ‘You’re getting married?’ I don’t know why I felt so stunned and I only hoped it didn’t register on my face. ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘Why, thanks! But I really shouldn’t have said anything, because we haven’t set a date yet. To tell the truth, Pop isn’t too keen on the idea – but when he knows Fergal like I do he’ll soon change his mind.’

  Her big brown eyes didn’t quite meet mine, so it did cross my mind that this might be just a way of telling me th
at she’d staked a claim on Fergal. But no, she can’t see all his old girlfriends as a threat, surely?

  ‘I promise not to tell anyone until it’s all official,’ I assured her, wondering cynically if she would still want him if he were not rich and famous. But then, he has obvious charms (and obvious defects, too, like a terrible temper) and Nerissa has Rich Man’s Daughter stamped all over her peach suede suit.

  ‘And what do you do?’ I enquired politely, pouring out more coffee.

  ‘Do?’ Her eyes looked blank. ‘Oh – do. Well, charity work, you know,’ she said vaguely. ‘But I don’t suppose I’ll be able to carry on with that after I’m married. Fergal may think now he wants to quit touring and vegetate down here, but he’ll soon be bored and itching to be off again.’

  ‘Oh? But he’s making his own recording studio at Greatness, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes – he’s been so occupied with it I’ve hardly seen him for weeks, but once it’s finished I just know he’ll find it too dull stuck down here all the time.’

  Certainly I got the feeling it would be too dull for Nerissa! I wondered how old she was. Despite her sophisticated veneer it wouldn’t surprise me if she wasn’t much more than twenty. I wondered about something else, too, and before I knew it, it was out.

  ‘Nerissa, your accent – I mean, sometimes you sound all Southern Belle, and other times, quite English …?’

  She gave me the very same look of feminine complicity that I’ve surprised on Bess’s face before now. ‘Oh, you know, all that “little ol’ me” Scarlett O’Hara stuff goes down with the men, and I kind of forget I’m doing it.’ She shrugged. ‘It makes my stepmom mad.’

  She changed tack. ‘Fergal told me all about your cute little boy-and-girl romance!’

  If he has I’ll be wearing his guts for garters.

  I smiled back guilelessly. ‘Did he? The boy next door! What ages ago it all seems.’

  ‘And now here you are, living next door again! It’s a real strange coincidence.’