Good Husband Material

by Trisha Ashley

  She paused breathlessly and smiled. ‘So I’ll stay here with you until the birth. You need me more than you realise.’

  Like a hole in the head.

  ‘Mother, I like living alone, and if I need any help I’ll arrange for it. But thank you for offering. And you haven’t considered Dr Reevey – he’s missing you already, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes … but no sacrifice is too great for my little girlie!’

  ‘I don’t want your sacrifice, Mother. Now, I’d better ring for the taxi, hadn’t I? Or you’ll miss the next train, too. Hadn’t you better bring your things down?’

  She plumped down into a chair and, as I dialled, dabbed her eyes cautiously with a lace-edged handkerchief. ‘Unfeeling child!’

  I put down the receiver: ‘The taxi’s coming. I won’t come to the station with you, if you don’t mind – I’m feeling rather tired.’

  ‘A taxi when James would have taken me for nothing! And after all, it’s a lot of money, and—’

  ‘I’ll pay for the taxi. Now, have you got your things together? What about your suitcase?’

  ‘I haven’t brought it down – it’s so heavy!’

  ‘You managed to carry it up there all right, and it should be easier coming down. Now, do you need a carrier bag for your other bits and pieces? I’ve got an enormous one somewhere. I’ll go round and see what you’ve forgotten.’

  She dragged her suitcase down while I tossed various odds and ends into the bag. She’d managed to scatter her belongings into every corner of the house.

  When I’d finished I found her wrapping up a bottle and some sandwiches in the kitchen. ‘Just a little something for me to eat in my cold, empty house tonight!’ she explained with a brave smile and I added another bottle of sherry and a large box of chocolate biscuits to the bag, with tears in my eyes, even though I’d just overheard her making a telephone assignation with the Laughing Cowboy.

  It was unfortunate for her that the taxi arrived just then, for in my weakened state she might have worked on me to let her stay a bit longer from sheer guilt, the creation of which is her speciality.

  I tucked her into the back of the taxi and gave her the fare, then guilt struck again I pressed another note I could ill afford into her hand and begged her to have a proper meal en route. You’d think she was journeying to Siberia, not the London suburbs.

  The taxi finally vanished with Mother sobbing into the money, and I trudged back up the path with guilty tears rolling down my face and thankfully closed the front door.

  But once I’d tidied the house and stripped the bed I felt much happier and settled down to pig out on the last of the Christmas cake and satsumas.

  It was just as well I’d decided to have an early night, because Bob was knocking at the door at the crack of dawn, wanting to see his pup. I yelled down at him from the window to go away until a decent hour of the morning.

  His face fell and he wandered off. He didn’t go home, though, because I heard the sound of a spade crashing into the frozen earth at the bottom of the garden. He seemed to be trying to dig a trench, perhaps to dispose of my enormous bulk in (but if so, he will have to wait for the thaw).

  I called him in later and gave him a cup of tea while he played with the puppies. He has four spoons of sugar in his tea and can eat a whole packet of biscuits in five minutes by putting two in his mouth at once and swallowing them with a gulp of tea.

  He informed me that four of the puppies are girls, and two boys, and I didn’t ask how he could tell.

  ‘Is yours a little boy or a little girl puppy, Bob?’

  ‘Un’s a bitch,’ he replied, holding the chosen puppy nose to nose until they both went cross-eyed.

  ‘Oh. And what are you going to call her?’

  ‘Maggie.’

  His huge hands held the squirming puppy quite gently and she seemed to have taken to him.

  ‘Maggie? That’s nice. I’ve never met a dog called Maggie before.’ After Goldie the goldfish I’d been expecting something more like Doggo or Bitchie.

  ‘Dad said …’ He wrinkled his brow in an effort of recollection. ‘Dad said Maggie was a good name for a bitch.’

  Maggie peed down his jumper at this point, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  I might put a notice in Mrs D.’s window about the rest of the litter: ‘Free to good homes. Peculiar and potentially huge puppies, who will demolish your home and eat all your money in Half-breed Chum.’

  I’m terribly tempted to keep my favourite … so I’ll just have to go on reminding myself it’ll probably grow up into an even bigger fool than Bess.

  Fergal: December 1999

  Fergal Rocco’s Christmas Wish List!

  Trendsetter magazine

  If I’d been able to put what I really, really wanted on that list, it would have set a few cats among the pigeons!

  Number one would have been that Nerissa’d finally get the message that our relationship – such as it was – came to an end a long time ago.

  You can probably guess the rest of the list …

  My sister Lucia was in Italy with her husband and children, so I visited her (and got some excellent sisterly advice) before going on to Rome to collect my aunt Maria and bring her back to Greatness: I intend living a sober and respectable life from now on, and with Aunt Maria around there won’t be much chance to stray back into my old habits, even if I’m tempted to.

  And since meeting Tish again, that hasn’t happened.

  Maybe I’m just getting old.

  Chapter 37: The Sweet Wine of Love

  The Sweet Wine of Love progresses very well since Christmas, considering the disruption of Mother’s visit and the fact that all my mental functions want to lie down and hibernate. (Also, I keep getting the urge to transform the little bedroom with bunny stencils.)

  I saw Margaret in the village, and she was making tentative overtures, though it is very difficult with James practically living in her house … but anyway, after some thought, I phoned her up and invited her round for coffee tomorrow. Knowing her Guilty Secret sort of makes me even.

  I wonder if Wendy has dropped her bombshell and moved in permanently? But I don’t think she can have or Mrs D. would have known by now. Was she lying?

  There were to be fireworks on the village green at midnight on New Year’s Eve, not to mention a broadcast to the nation from London on TV (had I still had one), but I felt profoundly uninterested.

  Instead, I celebrated the advent of the new millennium by half-guiltily drinking a small bottle of Guinness and then retiring to bed with a box of hazelnut whirls and a good book. I’d already unplugged the phone, to avoid any possibility of drunk and maudlin midnight calls from Mother or James, and, apart from the occasional pop of fireworks in the distance, was undisturbed.

  Oh, the joys of living alone – or almost alone, for of course the Incubus dictates my taste in foods, my internal capacity for consumption, and the length of time between trips to the loo.

  Margaret came round as arranged next morning, looking a little jaded after her party, and I took her into the living room, where Toby still slept with his head under one wing, groaning gently.

  There was a difficult silence once we’d wished each other a Happy New Year, until she suddenly said she was sorry for her previous attitude and confessed that she’d been deceived by James and wouldn’t have been his Peace Envoy if she’d known the full extent of his infidelity.

  She understood how I felt because she’d been through it herself: apparently her first husband had thought that a ménage à trois consisting of Margaret, himself and his pretty young secretary, Sharon, was quite a sensible proposition.

  Unfortunately Sharon also thought so, and when she moved in, Margaret moved out. Men have some very strange ideas.

  She and Ray are going to get married when her divorce becomes absolute in March.

  ‘Ray has taught me that there are Good Men,’ she explained, in her Awfully Nice Golden Syrup voice. ‘You may feel bitter now, but M
r Right is still out there somewhere.’

  ‘Then I hope he’s got a tent, because he’ll be out there a long time.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, I’m sure James is sorry he’s lost you – he doesn’t really care for Wendy at all.’

  ‘He may not care for her, but it doesn’t stop her spending most nights in the flat.’

  She flushed. ‘Oh dear, that sort of thing does get noticed! But it’s not the way it seems – he told her he didn’t want to see her any more, but she just turns up anyway. I didn’t bargain for all this when I let him have the flat.’

  ‘Throw him out!’ I suggested helpfully.

  ‘You don’t mean that. And he isn’t really any bother – it’s just this Wendy.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Only twenty, but a bit hard. And she isn’t interested in women at all – if there aren’t any men about she just slumps and looks bored.’

  ‘Polite!’

  ‘Mmm … and she eats and drinks anything that comes within reach. I don’t think she’s pretty really, either. If you cut off all that blonde hair she’d look just like a Pug.’

  ‘That’s funny, I thought she looked like a Pekinese! It’s the nose and the slight pop eyes. And a bit tarty, with those little short leather skirts.’

  ‘She always wears that sort of thing, and when she sits down her thighs merge into one fatty blob.’

  ‘I heard about the scene she made outside the flat when James didn’t come back over Christmas.’

  ‘I think all Nutthill heard it – it was certainly in the Nutthill Advertiser! The police came, though by then Wendy had gone off in her car – but she’s back again now.’

  ‘She phoned me late on Boxing Day to ask if James was still here.’

  ‘How incredibly brass-faced of her!’

  ‘Not one of Nature’s more sensitive little plants,’ I agreed. ‘I wonder where he was. I only hope he hasn’t got another girlfriend somewhere.’

  ‘Someone did say they’d seen him get into a red sports car like that one Fergal Rocco’s girlfriend has – Nerissa,’ she suggested tentatively.

  ‘Well, they have met, and I did wonder … Only it seems a bit unlikely. If she’s set her sights on Fergal Rocco, she’s not going to settle for James! But he might have someone else; he’s probably bored with Wendy. What puzzles me is what Wendy sees in him. Her sister, Alice, who lives with one of James’s oldest friends, asked me to meet her a few weeks ago, to talk it all over.’

  ‘No! Does she look like Wendy?’ Margaret leaned forward eagerly. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Alice looks like something you might find under a rock if you were particularly unlucky, and she said that Wendy wants to marry James. She must be mad!’

  ‘But I’m sure James doesn’t want to marry her.’

  ‘He’ll have to sort his own problems out – I’ve got enough of my own. I suppose you don’t want a puppy?’

  The din from the kitchen was now reaching ear-splitting proportions, and I took Margaret in and showed her the brood: it was just as noisy in the living room, since Toby had woken up and decided to treat us to his impersonation of my Amstrad printer.

  I don’t think Margaret is a bird person, going by the nervous glances she’d given Toby even while he was harmlessly asleep, but she was certainly a doggy one.

  ‘Oh, what darlings!’ she cried, plumping down onto her knees among the damp newspapers, heedless of her immaculate navy wool skirt. ‘Particularly this one. Look at her cute little face!’

  ‘His cute little face, according to Bob. There are six, but one is spoken for already.’

  She cuddled the little monstrosity in her arms. ‘I’m surprised this one hasn’t gone – it’s so adorable! I wonder if the children would like a dear little puppy.’

  My conscience prompted me. ‘I think the father was an Old English sheepdog … and they aren’t house-trained yet.’

  ‘May can cope, I’m sure,’ she said confidently.

  ‘You think about it and let me know in a day or two, Margaret. You can’t take it until it’s eight weeks, anyway.’

  She clutched the acquiescent bundle to her bosom. ‘But someone else might see him! I will have him! You’ll keep him for me, won’t you?’

  ‘If you’re quite sure. Will you know which is which?’

  ‘Yes – mine has that funny black patch over one eye, and a kink in its tail.’

  ‘So it has, that will be easy to remember, and I’ll make a note of it, too. Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone else have him.’

  That decided, we adjourned back to the living room with more coffee (Margaret said she thought the health version ‘interesting’ – she has such lovely manners), where I bribed Toby into silence with a biscuit.

  There, she regaled me with a couple of the usual gynaecological horror stories, to which I’m becoming immune, and enquired after my health.

  I said I was quite well, considering the strain on my system, and then she asked me if I’d started buying baby things yet. ‘Only one of my friends wants to get rid of all hers, and it’s like new.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know really …’ I began doubtfully.

  ‘Everything came from Harrods. She wasn’t very well during the pregnancy so she just ordered everything the sales assistant recommended on the phone.’

  ‘Really?’ Harrods second-hand seems somehow different! ‘I expect she’ll want a lot of money, though?’

  ‘Only a hundred pounds – she needs the space more than the cash. There’s a cot, high chair, crib, lots of clothes …’

  ‘I’m definitely interested,’ I said firmly, because I wouldn’t even get a new cot with a hundred pounds!

  ‘I almost said I’d have it myself,’ she confided, ‘only really, I’ve got everything.’

  ‘Are you …?’ (Is everybody?)

  She nodded happily. ‘In June! But don’t tell anyone yet – Ray and I want to get married first. So I’ll tell my friend you’d like the things, shall I? After all, if there’s anything you don’t want you can resell it, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said.

  This agreed, we had some further chat about pregnancy’s more undesirable aspects (though actually, I haven’t come across any desirable ones yet) and then she gave me her no-fail recipe for Hasty Buns, which are a sort of little no-knead bread rolls that even I could make successfully (though she tactfully didn’t put it like that). Then off she went, leaving me feeling better for having had a good talk to someone other than Mrs Deakin.

  And I’m sure she would have mentioned it if Wendy had announced her pregnancy; so that was either a lie or a threat.

  But there’s already a lot of it going round …

  Another year, another antenatal check-up.

  The doctor said all was well and asked me if I’d been attending the antenatal classes. When I confessed that I hadn’t, she advised me to go to at least one, and I suppose I really ought to – but later. First I must turn the spare bedroom into a nursery, book extra driving lessons … and time is marching along.

  I’m just into the last trimester of pregnancy; soon the baby will be here and I’ll be A Mother. Do all children love their mothers, and all mothers their children? I think mine would have been just as happy with a Tiny Tears doll!

  I expect I’ll feel the correct emotions because, after all, I’ve grown to love Bess (and even Toby, despite his attempts to bite the hand that feeds him), and I didn’t like dogs very much. Or I thought I didn’t, because Mother never let me have one, so I’d had no experience of them.

  I’ll be glad to get the birth over with. I’d like to feel energetic again, and see my feet when I look down. I’d like to lie back without heartburn and stand without my legs aching and my back going numb. I’d like to get in the bath without the water damming up behind me.

  I’d like the feeling of someone’s loving arms around me.

  I’d like to drink alcohol.

  I’m reaching straight for the bot
tle after the birth. With Mother’s example before me I’ll never be an alcoholic, it’s just I keep having this craving for champagne.

  I’d also like to know Mother’s guilty secret (which, if it is a skeleton in the cupboard, is likely to be that of a very small rodent). But I need to know it, for my baby’s sake.

  Peggy lives in Cornwall. Could I ask her to dig around a bit? Time I brought her up to date with the situation, anyway!

  Fergal: January 2000

  ‘TOO MUCH CHRISTMAS CHEER?

  Police called out to dawn village disturbance.’

  Nutthill District Advertiser

  The local paper had been delivered along with the rest of the mail, and that front-page headline caught my eye. At least it wasn’t me making the scandals this time …

  I wanted to rush right round and check that Tish was OK, and not upset by all this, but I restrained myself. Leaving Aunt Maria unpacking, I went down to the village shop to get all the news from Mrs Deakin first.

  The gardener, who’d been looking after the cat, brought Twinkletoes back just as I was on my way out, and I was halfway to the shop before I realised I hadn’t warned Aunt Maria about the cat’s strange feet …

  Chapter 38: Unlicensed Behaviour

  Lumbered up to the postbox today with Bess. I hadn’t been out very far for a few days because it’s been so icy and I was afraid of falling. What’s happened to my centre of gravity?

  Mrs Deakin updated me with the current gossip, including that Fergal had arrived back the previous afternoon, bringing his auntie with him. I felt strangely miffed that he hadn’t rung me to tell me he was back … though why on earth should he?

  When I got home, I had to squeeze past a van parked right across the drive, and found a strange man peering through my letter box.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I enquired coldly, restraining Bess from giving him an effusive and messy greeting.

  He straightened abruptly and turned a sharp, vole-like face towards me. His whiskers practically twitched.