Good Husband Material

Snug again, I tried, half-guiltily, to recapture the dream I’d been having when the cougar woke me (back to the usual dreams again, you see) in which I was lying in a woodland glade with a dark, handsome gamekeeper next to me. His warm, lithe body pressed to mine was entirely na—

‘Urgh!’

There was a sudden jerk, a porcine grunt, and a sandy head appeared from a tangle of duvet.

‘Get up, James,’ I snapped crossly, even though it isn’t his fault that he’s not tall, dark and romantic, those not being the qualities I married him for, after all. (And I’m determined to concentrate on the qualities I did marry him for – those that come under the heading of Good Husband Material, like a length of hard-wearing Dralon.) ‘We’ve a lot to do.’

‘Whaa?’ He briefly exposed a sliver of bright blue eye. Some women get a ‘Good morning, darling’ or even a cuddle from their husbands first thing, but James is not a morning person.

Come to think of it, he’s not even an evening person either lately, but the poor thing has been under a lot of pressure at work, and with the house moving and everything, and he’s still sulking about the cottage even though we got it so cheaply that it’s a positive investment.

He’s also been convinced for the last couple of months that he’s been followed by a small, anonymous-looking man, sometimes driving a red hatchback. When I soothingly pointed out that, a) every other car on the road is a red hatchback, b) how could he know it was the same man if he was so nondescript?, and c) who on earth would want to dog his boring footsteps unless it was a member of the Drugs Squad investigating Horrible Howard’s cronies anyway? he went all huffy. You’d almost think he wanted to be followed.

So I snuggled up against him and murmured, ‘Oh, darling – the first morning in our very own little country cottage.’

‘Mmph,’ he muttered, and turned over.

The bedside coffee-maker not having yet been unpacked, I’d no excuse to lie there any longer. As I gingerly lowered my feet on to the icy bare floor Bess scuttled across with a clatter of claws, heaved herself into my warmly vacated half of the bed and lay staring smugly at me from feminine, long-lashed eyes.

‘Bitch!’

Retrieving my clothes from the top of a carton I vowed that this time I would not give in to James about the dog. From tonight she’s sleeping in the kitchen. Dogs in bedrooms are unhygienic, and anyway, three is a crowd.

Without a bedroom curtain I felt exposed, even though our cottage only backs on to the park of the local big house and we can’t see even a chimney of that from here. I just can’t suppress a mental image of Hardyesque farmhands draped along our back fence, all clutching anachronistic binoculars focused on my goose-pimpled and shivering flesh.

It’s not easy getting jeans and jumper on under your nightie, but I managed it, then went creaking down the steep stairs that complained at every step – and sometimes for no reason at all – to the bathroom.

As I passed through the kitchen, Toby, whose cage had been dumped unceremoniously on the kitchen table, opened one kaleidoscopic eye and began to scream in a crescendo, ‘Hello! HEllo! HELLo! HELLO!’

Horrible bird. Even with both doors shut (and I remembered the sliding one this time) I could still hear him. The whole village could probably hear him.

The bathroom has a certain nightmare fascination: peeling, garish vinyl wallpaper, pebble-effect lino floor, and a plastic shower curtain patterned with bulging-eyed gold-fish hanging in tatters from a rail round the bath.

I’ve already disinfected everything, of course, but it will have to wait its turn for further attention, since it’s only one of the many things that need to be done before the cottage looks and feels like the country home of our dreams. Or my dreams, now I’ve realised that James’s run more to Bloggs’ Tudor-style Executive Country Home standards. But he’ll change his mind when he sees how nice the cottage looks when we’ve finished.

It does look a lot bigger without the previous occupant’s furniture. All those chairs …

After a quick wash – icy, since we await the arrival of a missing Vital Spark for the gas boiler – I metaphorically rolled up my sleeves and went out to get on with things.

After all, James has got only a few days off work, most grudgingly given by Uncle Lionel, and we intend to sand and seal all the floorboards and emulsion the walls. (I have persuaded James into ‘Linen’, a soft, warm white, rather than magnolia – a small but important change – and I intend the insidious introduction of colour later.)

Toby paused in mid-scream on seeing me again, clinging to the side of his cage and staring at me with mad eyes. Then he gave the lunatic chuckle he usually saves for those glorious moments when he manages to bite someone and that always remind me of the time he took a chunk out of Fergal’s ear.

I hastily threw the old bedspread over the cage and silence, except for the annoyed grinding of a beak, reigned over the kitchen.

The sad, cold, cream-coloured Aga seemed to reproach me from the chimney breast, but I’m not messing about with buckets of dirty, spider-infested coal. I’ll wait for my nice new gas cooker, due to arrive today. Perhaps the Aga could be converted to gas later, but in the meantime I could make quite a nice feature of it, with copper pans and bunches of dried flowers hanging from the towel rail.

All was quiet and peaceful again, the way I always thought it would be, and while drinking coffee and eating biscuits I listed the most urgent things that need doing in my little red notebook. It’s a diary really, but I’m no Pepys (his poor wife!), and James gave it to me at Christmas in a gift set with woolly hat and gloves.

It seemed a strange combination, but one that must appeal to the Great Last-Minute Present-Buying Male, like scratchy red satin and black lace underwear, which all the recipients immediately exchange in the New Year for something less cystitis-inducing.

At least James knows me better than to present me with any of that (though now I come to think of it, when did he ever know me to wear a woolly hat?), and the poor old thing compares favourably with Pepys.

The rattle of the letterbox signalled the surprising arrival of a tabloid newspaper (an error, I presume, since we haven’t yet arranged for one to be delivered, and even if we had it would be The Times). The whole front cover, I saw to my disgust, was devoted to Fergal Rocco’s latest exploits, which seemed at a hasty glance to involve a fountain and several wet nuns.

Fearing it would spark off more sulks from James, I hastily stuffed it into the Aga, sure he would never open it.

After this excitement I rousted James out and we got to work.

Later, after a scratch lunch of bread and cheese, he went out to buy some more paint and collect the floor sander, and I made my way into the back garden to look for a dustbin.

I had to force my way through a tangle of waist-high dead weeds, and if the dustbin was out there I must have missed it. But the view of the park over the rickety fence was worth beating a trail for: black and white cows grazed the rolling green turf like Noah’s Ark toys. Some fine big trees were dotted about, and the occasional copse. (I think I mean copse … Thick clumps of trees, anyway.) It all rolled up and down into the distance like best Axminster.

It was too penetratingly cold to stand there for long, so when I got back to the house I was amazed to find a note stuck through the front door saying that the gas men had been and, not getting any answer, left my ‘appliance’ in the front garden.

Sure enough, my lovely new cooker stood forlornly in the sleety drizzle, inadequately draped in a sheet of plastic like a hippie at a wet festival.

They can barely have tapped at the door once, for Bess barks like a hysterical hyena at the least noise, so as soon as I’d covered the cooker up with a bigger plastic sheet I rang to complain.

My temper was not improved by being passed from person to person until I completely snapped and screamed that they’d better come back immediately and put my oven in, or I would take legal action.

What did I mean by that? What could I do against a big utility company?

It certainly did the trick, though, for the man on the other end of the line suddenly capitulated from his previous truculent stance and promised to send someone round to install it that afternoon.

‘And tell them to knock properly at the door this time,’ I added as a parting shot before slamming the phone down with hands trembling with rage.

My temper was not improved when, noticing the message button was flashing, I listened to Vanessa the secretarty ringing with the news that the big office photocopier was in good working order again.

So what?

Strangely enough, James was cross with me for not having stayed in the house all the time to listen for the gas men. But if radar-ears bitch didn’t hear them I wouldn’t have either, unless I’d been standing on the doorstep.

But I forgave him, because he brought back chocolates, flowers and wine – the latter two a conjunction of gifts usually signifying Interesting Intentions …

Only an hour later two rather sheepish workmen returned and installed the stove in the kitchen, mangling the quarry tiles in the process. However, I’m thankful to have a

stove that works.

As a bonus and, I suspect, as a spin-off from my telephone tantrum, a completely different man came and brought the missing Vital Spark for the boiler not half an hour later, and after some swearing and awful glugging noises, the central heating system became operational.

Who says it doesn’t pay to lose your temper?

The first person to phone us in our new home – unless you count Vanessa’s message, duly passed on to James, who looked pleased about it. Sad really! – was, of course, Mother, who has very clingfilm ways.

You know, it was such a wonderful relief when I first discovered that James’s father, stepmother and several smaller half-siblings lived in South Africa, and that he didn’t seem to care if I ever met them, because Mother is family enough. More than enough.

She was not, she now informed me, deeply hurt by my failure to call her for weeks, and she and Granny were managing very well despite this neglect.

‘Don’t be such a Wet Nellie, Valerie,’ Granny screeched in the background. ‘The girl’s moving house!’

Mother put her hand over the phone – the wrong end, unfortunately – and hissed: ‘She can still phone, can’t she?’

‘I’m sorry I haven’t phoned this week, Mother, but I’ve been so busy with the move.’

‘So far away!’ she mourned.

It isn’t really, but as neither Mother nor I drive it would make the journey a little difficult.

I was going to miss Granny, though.

‘I haven’t seen my little girlie for months!’

‘Two weeks, actually, Mother – my birthday – and yours, too, just before that.’ These celebrations come thick and fast in my family. ‘And don’t forget we’re coming over for tea on Sunday as usual. James wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

‘Dear boy! Such a good, hard-working husband.’

‘Namby-pamby!’ shouted Granny, and I grinned. James is too polite and even-tempered for her taste. If he was just as rude back to her she’d like him a lot better, but he

just carries on being urbane and forgiving.

And if James had had any romantic inclinations for our second night at the cottage, he was too exhausted to do anything about it by the time we went to bed.

The next few days were a blur of paint smells, sawdust and aching muscles, though I did let James off on the Wednesday afternoon to go to an auction.

The former contents of the cottage were to be sold, and although I’m not keen on second-hand furniture (unless

it’s antique, which is different) I had liked the big kitchen table and dresser. Our little table from the flat looked way too small and quite wrong.

I gave him strict instructions about not going beyond our agreed limit, or buying anything else, but I knew he had when he returned wearing a sheepish expression.

Since he was accompanied by a Man with a Van bearing the dresser and table I was forced to restrain myself until they’d carried the furniture in, and the last thing to come out of the van was an old chair in carved, golden-coloured wood, with an intricately woven cane seat and back. It was rather nice.

‘Where do you want the commode?’ enquired the Man.

‘Commode?’ I echoed blankly.

He flipped the seat up to reveal a white china pot painted with posies. ‘See? Save many a long and draughty journey, this will!’

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ James said defiantly, coming back out of the house. ‘And only five pounds, too.’

‘But it’s a commode, James. People have been using it for years!’

‘Oh, don’t be squeamish, Tish. I’ll clean it up, and we can use the china pot to put a plant in.’

‘Over my dead body!’

I paid the Man with a Van, who went off grinning, and returned to the battle, but James was quite determined on the thing and went all stubborn and sulky.

Still, he didn’t entirely get his own way, for it is to go into the rickety garden shed until it’s cleaned and disinfected. Once that’s been done and the lid screwed down I don’t suppose anyone will ever know that it was once a commode except me, but I’ll always see the ghosts of hundreds of former users sitting there with their germy hands resting on the arms. Hygiene wasn’t up to much then.

Although by Sunday we’d broken the back of the work (and possibly our own), we were totally exhausted and the last thing we had the time or inclination for was to drive all the way over to Mother’s for tea.

As we were getting ready James, brushing his hair at the mirror, suddenly exclaimed, ‘Damn, I’ve still got paint in my hair – look.’

‘Don’t be silly, James, that’s not paint, it’s grey hair,’ I informed him after a casual glance.

‘Grey hair!’ He blanched, aghast. ‘It can’t be. Are there any more? Oh my God – I’m too young to go grey!’

‘There’s only a sprinkling here and there,’ I assured him, amused. ‘It’ll just make you look distinguished – and look on the bright side, at least you aren’t going bald.’

He didn’t seem very comforted, and I caught him examining his hair in the driving mirror a couple of times on the way to Mother’s, which certainly didn’t do much for his already limited driving skills.

Fergal: February 1999

‘ROCKER IN UNFROCKED NUN SHOCK!

Does Rocking Rocco have dirty habits?’

Sun

Our publicity’s always been outrageous. That first tour in America, after I found out about Tish seeing someone else, I did everything they said I did and more. We all did. That’s probably what sobered me – realising my younger brother Carlo, also in the band, was going to Hell with me.

Hywel, our manager, who also does our publicity, played up on the wild image from the beginning and made it part of our hype, and on the whole we all still go along with it even if in real life we’re pretty sober types now.

But sometimes Hywel goes just that little bit too far.

At that photo shoot in Rome he really excelled himself, plumbing whole new depths of taste, and it took him some very fast talking and more than a few lire to get me out of gaol after that set-up with the nuns and the fountain.

Of course, they weren’t real nuns, and yes, they did have dirty habits. (I’m going to sock the next person who asks me that.) Perhaps that’s why they all jumped into the fountain with me.

It was supposed to be a reversal of the wet T-shirt shoot – me in the fountain wearing clinging wet clothes – only I ended up wearing six wet nuns.

Do you know what nuns wear under their habits?

Neither do I, but I know what these street-scrapings were wearing under theirs, and it’s what the Scotsman’s supposed to wear under his kilt. Nothing.

Ma was a bit upset about it all, and half my Italian relatives weren’t speaking to me, so I told Hywel if he didn’t cool it down I’d be looking for a new manager.

Ma knows Carlo and I aren’t as bad as we’re painted, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t get hurt by seeing all this sex ’n’ drugs ’n’ rock ’n’ roll publicity about her sons.

The rumour that quickly spread that I’d engaged in sexual misconduct with one (or even several) of the ‘nuns’ in the fountain particularly upset her, but Hy swore he’d had nothing to do with that.

And just think a minute – was it likely? That water was ball-shrivellingly cold, even if I’d had the urge, which I certainly didn’t.

What I’ve never understood is why sexual misconduct is so irresistible to a lot of women?

You wouldn’t believe the mail I got.

Chapter 5: The Bourgeois Bitch

After our brief debauch at Mother’s we resumed our back-breaking toil until James returned to work.

‘It’s all right for some people who can stay at home all day doing nothing,’ he grumbled at breakfast, before setting off for his office.

This was, as usual, a full cooked breakfast prepared by Yours Truly. It’s amazing really that, if carried out by mere wives, cooking isn’t real work, nor is laundering, nor cleaning, nor painting and decorating, gardening, childcare, shopping or … well, ad infinitum.

Why isn’t there a minimum wage for housewives? Or a maximum working week?

So it was with something of a snap that I said, ‘I’ve already told you, James, that after this week spent finishing off jobs around the house I’ll be writing every morning and most afternoons, so I will in fact be working harder than ever.’

His expression remained disgruntled, since, in his opinion, a nice safe job should be seamlessly followed at the right time by a nice safe pregnancy.

I decided that this was not the moment to inform him that I forgot to take my pill for a couple of days in the bustle of moving and haven’t bothered since. You really never know how these things are going to affect men.

It could spur him on (but I don’t want to get pregnant too soon) or put him off, so I need to invest in some other form of contraception, though all the alternatives are revolting. But if I conceive I’d like it to be a conscious decision, not a sort of Russian roulette.

I must register with a female doctor locally too. I’m not having some man examining my credentials. What good would that do if I get pregnant? His only experience would be from books and we all know that they inform medical students that women feel no pain between the knees and the navel.

Mal de merde.

‘… charity work,’ James was saying. ‘Are you listening?’

‘What?’ I said hastily, sitting up.

‘Noelle doesn’t go out to work, but she runs a charity and is a Hospital Visitor.’

‘Like being visited by the Angel of Death,’ I shuddered, conjuring up the awful vision of the severely tailored wife of one of James’s drinking acquaintances (otherwise known as ‘friends’).

‘That isn’t funny,’ he said stiffly.

‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ I assured him. ‘Besides, if you think I should be out there doing charity work, I can tell you now that the only charity I’m interested in right now is the Make Tish Drew a Rich and Famous Author Society.’

‘I know you aren’t serious. When you find how much time you have on your hands you might like to ring Noelle up for a chat.’

Time on my hands? The man is mad! But then, I’ve never managed to convince him that writing is serious work and not some dubious hobby that got out of hand, like the patchwork and leaves, and once he gets an idea into his head it’s set there for all time like a fly in amber. Writing is my career.

He says I’m only an author with a little ‘a’ because I write short romantic novels. I suspect he thinks you have to be a man to be a real Author, an attitude he only allowed to come out of hiding after we were married, when he seemed to think I wouldn’t need to write any more.

I discovered I had the knack of writing romances in my last year of university, after comfort-reading so many other people’s (the literary equivalent of a Mars bar), where the hero wasn’t quite right, and certainly didn’t suffer enough before the heroine relented and let him marry her.

Fergal Rocco may have been too much for one woman, but he provides a rich vein to draw on: distilled essence of sex appeal. Just as well James has never read any of my novels! I may be a sort of literary vampire, but Fergal owes it to me after treating me like that, and anyway, slapping a series of his clones into shape is rather fun.

My pen name is Marian Plentifold and I’ve been turning out two novels a year ever since college. James annoyingly refers to the money I make from them as ‘your pin money’ and doesn’t like me to tell anyone about them because of their being romance. But I’d like to tell everyone, and anyway, Mother knows, which is the same thing.

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.