Good Husband Material

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.