Good Husband Material

‘You mean, apart from him being a drug-crazed, free-loading ageing hippie who’s never worked in his life?’

‘Howard’s all right – we were at school together,’ he protested, as if that qualified Howard as a member of the human race. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided: I’m staying there tonight.’

I didn’t say anything more, because if I hadn’t nagged him about junk food he probably would have come home instead. I don’t think I handled that too well.

After James had gone (with overnight bag, though Flit gun would have been more to the point) I went into the front garden and hammered the spike of the rotary dryer with unnecessary force into the rough grass. I can’t afford to keep using the tumble dryer all the time, although when you hang clothes out in March it’s a toss-up whether they are going to dry or be glazed like mutant frozen prawns.

With the first load of washing churning away I went up to my little writing room. I’d been working on the floorboards, which were not good enough to sand and seal, so I’d painted them cream and stencilled roses round the border.

Piled in one corner were light cardboard boxes filled with some of my varnished leaves. (James says two baskets of dead leaves are more than enough in one sitting room.) I had a brain wave, and soon there were drifts of golden leaves along the walls and piled in the corner opposite the door, where they whispered at the least small draught. It looked lovely, though I am very sure that James will say it is a weird idea. He is so stick-in-the-mud and staid about everything I do, yet he can go off and stay with Horrible Howard who really is weird.

By then the washing was done and, as I was hanging it out, the vicar called: a tall, thin, middle-aged man radiating an air of youthful enthusiasm, and wearing a bright purple T-shirt with his dog collar.

As he shambled up the drive with that strange gait some men have – knees turned out as though they have been kicked in the naughty bits and never recovered – I hastily swivelled the rotating dryer round to hide the more ancient and tatty items of my underwear. (I always put my undies in the middle with the shirts and so on round them, but I’d only just started.) The sooner we’ve tackled the back garden, so that the washing can be hung in decent obscurity, the better! However, the vicar came charging right round, stretching out his hand while still several yards away and, seizing my cold wet one in his, pumped it energetically up and down.

‘Strange lady!’ he exclaimed, excitedly.

‘Oh!’ I said doubtfully, taken aback. But it seemed that this was his name – rather an unfortunate one for a vicar.

‘Strangelady! And very pleased indeed to welcome you to our little parish. Ah! washing day, I see!’ he added, and bestowed a benevolent smile upon my black bra and shabby knickers. I went red as a beetroot.

‘Er … come in, er … Vicar?’ I invited, hastily backing away from the washing and opening the front door. (How do you address a vicar?)

Still, I recovered my equilibrium over coffee and biscuits while he admired a mercifully silent Toby, and The Bitch drooled adoringly over his knee, shedding long white hairs. (‘The Borzoi is devoted to one person, showing only aloof attention to others.’) She placed her paw on his knee whenever he stopped patting her, and assumed her best Starving Russian Aristocrat look at the sight of the biscuit tin.

(Yes, she really is the lost Anastasia.)

The vicar didn’t press me to attend church, which I rather expected, though he left me a copy of the times of the services and said we would be very welcome, and a copy of the parish magazine.

Just as he was about to leave, a florist’s van pulled up and delivered a bunch of cream roses. I didn’t need to read the card to know that it said: ‘To my lovely wife, from James,’ since he always does this when he’s got his own way or upset me. It makes him feel better.

‘Your birthday perhaps? An anniversary?’ hinted the vicar. ‘What lovely roses!’

‘Just a house-warming present,’ I muttered ungraciously, seeing him off. And the sort of gesture we couldn’t afford now – it must have cost a fortune to have them delivered all the way out here, and why cream roses? They would be invisible against all the pale walls.

If he wanted to give me a present I’d have preferred that brass stencil of vine leaves from Homebase.

You know, I used to think James’s profligacy with posies romantic, but really it’s easy enough to phone up a Teleflorist and read your credit card number. Feeling dissatisfied, I rammed the scentless and useless roses into a cream vase and stood them on a cream table against the cream wall, where they vanished.

Fergal: March 1999

‘GONERIL: FAREWELL TO ALL THAT?

Fergal Rocco says his next tour really is his last.’

Trendsetter magazine

Not only me – we’re all saying it, though no one outside the band seems to believe we really mean it. We’re not breaking up, we’ll still record together and do the odd gig, but we all have other parts of our lives we want to develop.

And we’re sick to death of touring.

Mike and Col want to spend more time with their families, Carlo’s getting married, and I want to concentrate on the song-writing and painting for a while.

Funnily enough, it was seeing Tish so suddenly at the gallery that made me really stop and take stock of myself: where I was going with my life. (And where I’d been. When I could remember where I’d been.)

She sparked off a whole new series of songs, too, but that’s by the bye.

She still looked good …

Can I be the only man who finds fiery-haired, militant Pre-Raphaelite angels a big turn on?

Chapter 7: Drained

James came home next day exhausted: some kind of party had developed at Howard’s and he had hardly had a wink’s sleep all night.

I refrained from comment with some effort (apart from suggesting he go for a shower, since Howard usually lives in some squalid squat fermenting germs), but later I wished I’d let rip when he looked up from the paper and sneered, ‘I see your boyfriend’s band are going on a farewell tour of seven countries – he must be getting a bit old for all that touring!’

‘He’s quite a bit younger than you,’ I pointed out. (‘Your boyfriend’ indeed!) ‘And age doesn’t seem to hinder the Rolling Stones much, does it?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t have your musical interests.’

He doesn’t have any musical interests, but that doesn’t excuse the cheap gibe.

‘Never mind, James,’ I said sweetly, ‘at least being tone-deaf makes you able to appreciate that busty blonde country singer with the nasal whine.’

He let the subject drop then, but I wish he’d forget it altogether. I’m getting very tired of all these snide little remarks.

Later I had a sneaky look at the paper, and there was Fergal at an airport, looking jetlagged, unshaven and mildly dangerous. I hope the photographer didn’t get too close.

I debated whether to cut the article out in case it set James off again, then thought that perhaps a hole where it had been might be even worse, since he’d think I’d cut it out to keep. Besides, why should I pander to his warped imaginings?

Speaking of warped imaginings, I had a dream last night about Fergal: one of those blush-making ones. I know a wholesome drink of water is what I need, but once you’ve had champagne, part of you still thirsts for it, even if you know it doesn’t agree with you. (And I’m not even getting the water lately!)

Usually I feel guilty the morning after, but this time I was still miffed with James and decided he didn’t deserve it. I gave him a kiss of the tight-lipped variety and, after he’d gone, retired to the bathroom with the crossword, where, enthroned and mid-clue, I was startled by the sound of men’s voices from the garden right beneath the window.

Hastily flushing the loo I went out only to discover, to my complete embarrassment, three men in fluorescent orange waistcoats staring down into the swirling sewage trap from which they had just removed the lid.

I wanted to curl up and die, but they’d seen me, so I brazened it out with a cheery ‘Good morning!’

You could have roasted chestnuts on my cheeks (all of them).

The men wore uniformly blank expressions and after an answering chorus of ‘Good morning’ resumed their absorbed study.

‘Blockage isn’t here, then?’ said one, after some ten minutes of silent scrutiny.

‘No, must be further along,’ said Second Workman.

‘Yes. Must be somewhere else,’ said Third Workman.