Good Husband Material (21 page)

It would certainly make me feel better about running into Fergal, if James and I were presenting a United Marital Front, even though it may be a bit hollow at the heart.

That made me remember some queen who wanted her heart buried at Calais, of all places. It’s probably under a hypermarket by now.

Fergal: June 1999

    ‘
I’M JUST LOOKING FOR A QUIET LIFE,’

    
says rocker. Seen talking to an old friend,

    
Mrs Leticia Drew, at the Nutthill Church Fête.’

Nutthill District Advertiser

Life is stranger than fiction, they say. Mine certainly is.

I wouldn’t have chosen a house here if I’d known – and yet …

Is she happy? She looked thin and tired, with dark circles under her eyes. Has she forgiven her husband for his lapse with the secretary? Does she regret sleeping with me?

She must – she looked so horrified when she saw me and, perversely, it made me feel angry, because if I can’t have her, I don’t want to see her around all the time.

But I’ll have to, and pretend what happened meant nothing to me, that
she
means nothing to me. I’m no marriage wrecker.

Nerissa, who tagged along, recognised Tish from the gallery and is busy putting two and two together and making ten or more.

Life’s a bugger sometimes.

Had a terse note in Fergal’s instantly familiar scrawly handwriting, saying he would look into the matter of the boundary fence as soon as he could, ‘Yours, F. Rocco’.

Up yours too, buster.

I now know all about his girlfriend courtesy of Mrs D., and it sounds like they were made for each other.

‘Her dad’s a Yank, and they live over at Lavingham. Rolling in it, they are. “Bright’s Computers Are the Best” and all that, you know?’ she informed me.

I nodded, which was all the encouragement she needed.

‘She – this Nerissa they called her – she’s a handful. Ran off from school when she was just sixteen with a fairground worker and her dad didn’t find her for a fortnight. School wouldn’t have her back, so she had to go to a different, stricter one, and then she was finished.’

‘Finished?’

From the sound of it, she’d barely begun!

‘Went abroad somewhere to learn the language and cook fancy foreign food. When she came back she was in the mags every week with a different man, and none of them what you might call a nice, steady boy. All actors and pop singers, and that footballer – well, his last girlfriend may say she walked into a door, but it was one with a fist attached to it if I’m any judge. But there, I don’t suppose she’ll listen to any advice, for she’s proper wild, for all she looks such a sweet, innocent young thing.’

‘She should suit Fergal Rocco very well then,’ I told her, slightly tartly. ‘They can compare their misspent pasts on long, dark, winter evenings.’

‘I suppose she may be settling down,’ Mrs D. suggested doubtfully. ‘After all, it’s been going on for quite a while now, and if he’s bought the Hall I expect he may be thinking of marrying? But I don’t suppose her dad will like him any better than the others, and he’s quite a bit older than she is, too. You know,’ she added, resting her bosom comfortably on the sugar bags, ‘it’s funny, but it’s a bit hard to believe those stories about Mr Rocco when you’re talking to him. He’s ever so pleasant. Sort of – warm.’

Hot, more like.

‘A man can smile and smile yet still be a villain,’ I quoted. (Or misquoted. It was probably Shakespeare, most quotations seem to be.)

‘Oh, yes, that’s true, dear, as I well know. And it must have been right about those nuns in the fountain because I saw the photos myself in
Exposé
magazine.’

She gave me one of those oblique glances, sharp enough to lance a boil at fifty paces, and added, ‘I still can’t get over you knowing him.’

I tried to look bored with the subject. (Practice makes perfect.) ‘Oh – it’s so many years ago that I’m surprised he recognised me again.’

After this conversation I went home and gave the kitchen the sort of thorough cleaning that includes scraping between the tiles with a toothpick. I was in that sort of mood.

Maybe it’s because I can never quite cleanse myself of the taint of adultery. I’m a walking Whited Sepulchre.

Speaking of Whited Sepulchres, James got awful sunburn through spending the first really hot Sunday of the year lying on a garden chair wearing his squash shorts, thus exposing a pair of corpse-like white legs. Anyone with a modicum of common sense would at least have basted them before going out and roasting them: but not James!

Now he blames me for not telling him to put oil on. Am I my husband’s keeper? (Apparently, yes!)

Soon after he came in his legs started to turn strawberry-coloured and sore, and he vanished for ages into the bathroom, where he smeared nearly a whole pot of my expensive face cream over them.

At bedtime he was annoyed when I laughed at him because he looked as though he was wearing scarlet leg warmers – though that was before I found out about the face cream.

Today he’s lying on the bed moaning that his legs hurt too much for him to move. I had to call Lionel and explain why he wasn’t coming in, which didn’t go down too well, Uncle obviously considering that anything short of amputation shouldn’t stop business.

However, I seized the opportunity to inform him that James could do with a rest anyway, working all these late nights and Saturdays, and that seemed to silence him. Perhaps he’ll be a bit more considerate of the workload he asks him to take on.

Then I had to dash into town (having already run up and down the stairs for hours with drinks, cigars and food) to find something a bit less expensive and more effective than face cream for the invalid to anoint himself with.
And
some more face cream for me, since he’s now had the lot.

But unfortunately for James, no sooner had he smeared on the cod-liver oil ointment recommended by the chemist, than Bess leaped on him with loud cries of delight and began frantically licking it off again, making him scream with pain. He insisted that I shut her out of the bedroom (as though it was me who allowed her upstairs in the first place).

This was the high spot of an otherwise very tedious day. The bedroom was so unbearably full of cigar smoke at bedtime that I had to open all the windows, letting horrible flying things in. Then, after a night largely spent listening to Nature’s Wonderful Creations slaughter each other in the garden, I was woken at dawn as usual by the tractor starting up, followed by Mrs Peach’s hen chorus.

Oh, the joys of country living!

Still, on the upside, there was a hand-delivered invitation to a barbecue on the mat from Margaret Wrekin, addressed to ‘Marian Plentifold and husband’, which made James a bit sour.

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!