Good Husband Material

He pushed back his chair. ‘Never mind, I’m just not hungry. I had a pasty at the pub – corned beef and onion.’

‘There doesn’t seem much point in my cooking dinner if you are going to spoil your appetite before you even get home!’ I snapped. ‘Not that I ever know when you’re going to deign to arrive these days anyway.’

‘I can’t help having to work late,’ he said sulkily.

‘You can help stopping off at pubs on the way home, though!’

‘I need to unwind after a hard day at work. And if there was something more appetising than vegetable curry waiting for me when I got back, it might give me a bit more incentive to rush home.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with vegetable curry! And how do you expect me to cook anything Cordon Bleu when it’s got to be kept hot for hours on end waiting for you to get back? I— Where are you going?’

‘Out for another pasty!’ he said, and slammed off before I could even mention the fresh fruit salad.

I’d gone to bed (with a headache) before he returned, and when I came down next morning discovered that he’d been brewing beer in the kitchen from a kit he’d bought from the supermarket months ago. From the look of it, he’d been drunk when he got the idea.

The top of the cooker was covered in sticky brown goo, with about a pound of coagulated sugar heaped and drifted all over it. In the sink were two of my best, expensive, cast-iron enamelled casseroles in which the goo had hardened to a tight, brown skin, and coiled around them was the run-out hose of the washing machine, also sticky and revolting.

The place smelled like a brewery and the floor stuck to my slippers.

Why doesn’t he ever clear up after himself? And when I complained about the mess he went all hurt, and said he thought I’d be pleased that he was making home brew since I didn’t like him going out to drink beer.

‘When you used to make beer before, it didn’t stop you going out drinking as well!’ I said without thinking, and he slammed off to work in a rage, and without kissing me. (And God knows, it’s our only physical contact these days!)

It took me ages to clean everything up, and I’d only just finished and was sitting down with a cup of coffee before finally going upstairs to get on with my writing, when Bess decided to empty her entire stomach contents in the middle of the clean kitchen floor.

Mornings never used to be like this.

Later, the inevitable flowers arrived, but this time a spring arrangement of daffodils in a basket, which was actually quite nice.

It probably smelled good too, except that the mingled scents of burned malt and dog vomit had permanently invaded my nostrils.

Fergal: April,1999

‘IN THIS ISSUE: an exclusive pin-up of the man you all voted for –

as you’ve never seen him before!’

Trendsetter magazine

I’ve never seen me like that before, either. Where did they dig that one up from? I don’t have any hang-ups about nudity, but still!

Maybe it’s an old picture from my early days with Goneril? I can’t honestly say I remember everything I did during that first tour. Or maybe it’s some clever computer mock-up?

And that bear rug’s a definite cliché. I’m not surprised it’s wearing an anguished expression.

Chapter 10: Just Award

James seems to be making more of an effort to come home earlier, or at least tell me when he is going to be late, so I’m rewarding him with boring old meat and two veg meals with apple crumble and custard to follow, the kind of thing he really likes. I can see I will have to introduce Healthy Eating more gradually.

He’s taken me down to the pub a couple of times, too, for Dogfish Tail in a Basket. (Scampi, according to the menu – isn’t that illegal?)

But he still needs kick-starting before he helps me do anything to the house, and I began to feel like a prize nag before I got him to agree to spend all of the long Easter weekend sorting out the front garden, but it had to be done.

In a moment of inspiration I hired a mini skip and had it delivered to the front of the house, where it proved a magnet for the whole village.

Although we never saw anyone, for they moved under cover of darkness, strange rubbish appeared in the skip every morning – though, to be fair, all sorts of things disappeared as well, from lengths of rotting timber to clapped-out wellies.

We hacked down the privet to a reasonable, though still private (privetcy?) height, and cleared the front garden for returfing.

It was back-breaking work, and I have blistered hands, but the difference already is amazing!

James spent hours afterwards soaking himself in the bath, because he said he would be permanently fixed into a Hunchback of Notre-Dame posture otherwise. He used all my expensive pine bath oil and all the hot water, leaving me to wait nearly an hour for it to heat up again. I tried pointing this out through the bathroom door, but he had the radio on in there full blast and pretended not to hear me, the selfish pig.

Although I’m glad the garden is taking shape, James turned something that should have been hard work but fun into a kind of penance I forced on him, and even when I assured him that all that would be needed when it was finished was a little lawn-mowing and some hedge-trimming, he didn’t seem much cheered, so I haven’t dared to mention the back garden.

While he was still marinating there was another of the silent phone calls, too – the first for quite a while. It never seems to be James who answers them.

On the Tuesday morning James was still hobbling about groaning, and said work would be a nice rest after all that digging, but I felt quite invigorated by the fresh air and exercise.