Good Husband Material (6 page)

Once the roaring had died away I could hear birds twittering, a muted cackling, and a faint, faraway foghorn of mooing. The walls between us and our only neighbour are so thick that yesterday, while we were moving in, I heard nothing from her, though her front curtains were twitching like mad – but now there was the slam of a door and shuffling footsteps going in the direction of the back garden.

The muted cackling was suddenly released into a cacophony of squawking, clucking and crowing, accompanied by the rattling of a bucket. Then the slow, dragging footsteps retraced their path, the door slammed, and there was silence … apart from the newly released hens, of course, and the cows, and the birds …

Yes – the birds.

I’d expected – even looked forward to – waking to the sound of birdsong, but whatever was now performing outside my window was unmelodious in the extreme.

A rook, perhaps?

I’ll soon know, because I intend learning how to identify all the wild birds, flowers, trees and little woodland creatures … except insects. I’ve absolutely no intention of being At One with Nature in the form of insects.

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.