Good Husband Material

She’s had to bail Mother out of major financial difficulties at least twice, and even the house itself now belongs to her, so it’s fortunate that Grandpa was a jeweller and had lots of what Granny calls ‘brass’. He was a warm man, she always says, though she won’t say precisely what his thermostat was set to.

Mother has entirely failed to see that she is Granny’s pensioner, not vice versa, and tells everyone she’s trying to make her declining years a joy to her.

Granny hasn’t shown much sign of declining yet, and not much joy either.

So Mother now squeezed James’s hand with sincere gratitude and batted long mascara-lagged eyelashes at him: ‘Dear James – so understanding. So very wise.’

Granny’s deafness has an astonishingly intermittent quality about it unrelated to whether her hearing aid is switched on or off (or even which ear she happens to have plugged it into).

She now remarked without turning her head, ‘Dearest James knows which side his bread is buttered on, and so do you. He—’

She broke off so suddenly that I swivelled round in my chair in alarm, only to find her attention riveted by the appearance on the screen of a dark, extremely angular face: a familiar, very masculine face, framed in long, jet-black hair and with eyes as green as shamrocks.

‘Well, I never did, Tish!’ she gasped. ‘It’s that Fergus who used to live next door – the one you were sweet on. Now that’s what I call a man!’

‘Fergal,’ I corrected automatically. And he’d been what I called a man, too, until fame and fortune had beckoned and he’d gone off without a backward look. It’s not what I call him now.

Still, it gave me a peculiar feeling to see him on screen moodily singing, bright eyes remote and hooded. And even more of a funny feeling in the stomach when the guitars crashed in and he started throwing his lithe body about the stage.

Age does not appear to have withered him or staled his infinite variety.

Top of the Pops seemed an unlikely venue, since Goneril has more of a cult following than a mainstream pop one. They sort of blend Celtic folk music and heavy metal and … and I’m sounding like a groupie, which I never was.

I became slowly aware that conversation at the tea-table was suspended, and I could feel James’s gaze swivelling suspiciously from the TV to me and back again, like some strange radar dish, but until Fergal vanished from the screen to be replaced by shots of the audience, drooling, I couldn’t somehow detach my eyes.

The surprise, I suppose.

‘You went out with him?’ demanded James incredulously. ‘You never said!’

It was a relief to find I could turn my head again. ‘Didn’t I? I’m sure I told you I’d been out with someone who let me down badly, and—’

‘Yes – but you never said it was him.’

‘Well, does it matter? It was all ages before I met you. His parents were renting the house next door and I met him when he came to visit them. We … sort of bumped into each other. But in the end he got famous and went off, and I went to university and then met you, darling.’

‘At least he was a man, and not a big girl’s blouse masquerading as one,’ Granny said with a scathing look at poor James. ‘First time I thought the girl might have some Thorpe blood in her after all, when she took up with him.’

James’s outraged stare almost made me giggle.

‘So foreign – I never liked him,’ Mother said, primly ignoring Granny’s remark, although her cheeks had grown slightly pink. ‘The whole family was volatile. You could hear his parents shouting six houses away. And look how he’s turned out – always in the papers over some scandal, and with a dreadfully cheap girl in tow.’

‘He wasn’t foreign,’ I said weakly (and certainly none of the girls I had ever heard of him being connected with could be described as cheap). ‘His father is Italian born – Rocco of Rocco’s restaurant chain, you know – but his mother is Irish and Fergal was born here in London.’

‘That’s what I said – foreign,’ Mother said triumphantly, recalling unendearingly to my mind all her tactics to blight my romance with Fergal. Not that it would have lasted anyway: Romeo and Juliet fell in love, grew up, argued, and parted. Juliet became a boring suburban housewife getting her kicks from writing romantic novels, and Romeo became a drug-crazed sex-maniac rock star.

Shakespeare for the New Era: not many dead. And all water under the bridge now.

James was still goggling at me as if he’d just noticed for the first time that I’d got two heads, so I smiled rather nervously and hastened to change the subject.

‘Are we going to eat this cake now the candle’s gone out? And Top of the Pops is finishing, so perhaps Granny would like to open her presents, Mother?’

Easily distracted, she began to bustle about, and the subject of Fergal was thankfully dropped.

In the car James was very quiet, which suited me, since it had made me feel very peculiar seeing the real Fergal in action, as opposed to the fantasy, sanitised version who lives a life of his own in a specially constructed holding-pen in my head, and off whom I’ve been vampirically feeding for several years to fuel my writing.

Actually, I should be grateful to Fergal for leaving me in that callous way, because it set me on to a really character-forming curve – even though it might have felt like a downward spiral at times – culminating in my having my first romantic novel accepted, and discovering True Worth and Dependability in James’s sturdy and attractive form.

It was therefore a bit of a shock when Dear Old Dependable James broke the silence by saying sourly, ‘That old boyfriend of yours – what’s his name? Rocca?’ He laughed but it came out as more of a disgusted snort. ‘I suppose they all change their names, but Rocca.’

‘Rocco, James. And it’s his real name.’

‘Of course you’d know that, wouldn’t you, having been the Great Star’s girlfriend? Funny you never mentioned it before, isn’t it? If your grandmother hadn’t let the cat out of the bag I’d still be in the dark.’

‘So would the cat,’ said my unfortunate mouth, which doesn’t always refer to my brain before uttering.

James’s expression became even more sombre, so I hastened on soothingly, ‘And really, James, there was no cat to let out of the bag, if by that you meant a guilty secret. If I’d thought a detailed list of all my old boyfriends would amuse you I’d have given you one.’

‘You didn’t have any other boyfriends. Valerie told me.’

I felt distinctly ruffled both by the idea of him and Mother discussing my suitability (I mean, she probably assured him I’d only been round the block once, low mileage, practically a born-again virgin), and the fact that it should matter who else I’d been out with (or in with) if he loved me. I bet she also tried to smooth over my unattractive points: i.e. my height (I always wear flat shoes), the cleft chin (Mother calls it a dimple) and the strange colour of my hair (strawberry blond).

‘I wouldn’t have thought you were Fergal Rocco’s type anyway, since he’s so extrovert and wild, and you’re as prissy as Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood rolled into one,’ he added unforgivably.

‘Prissy? I am not prissy!’ I exclaimed, hurt and angry. ‘Anyway, when you proposed you said it was my being so reserved and home-loving that attracted you in the first place!’

And then, with a sudden flash of belated illumination, it occurred to me that prissy was just the sort of wife he’d been looking for and thought he’d found, since I’d been quietly working hard at my course and my writing – and at that time wore sombre clothes, too. I probably seemed exactly the sort of girl his uncle Lionel had told him he ought to marry, since neither of them has the ability to tell ‘good girls’ from ‘bad girls’ (possibly because the distinction no longer exists).

A nice, quiet, malleable young girl … only he didn’t realise I’d been hardened into quietness by fire.

James was scowling blackly ahead over the steering wheel. ‘Suddenly discovering that your quiet, librarian wife is the ex-girlfriend of a notorious rock star is a bit unsettling, and I can assure you that Lionel and Honoria wouldn’t have welcomed you into the family as warmly as they did if they’d known.’

‘If that was warm I wouldn’t like to see them meeting someone they disapproved of.’

‘You may yet do so if they find out about this.’

‘I don’t see why they should. Or why their approval should be necessary.’

‘Of course it is! A solicitor needs the right kind of wife. They did comment at the time that you had appalling taste in clothes, but it would probably improve with a

little guidance.’

‘How nice of them!’ I said drily.

Honoria always wears things made out of hairy tweed like sacking, and high-necked shirts.

I remembered the first time Lionel and Honoria had met Granny, Mother having managed to keep her hidden until then.

But James must have told them about her, for we had all been bidden to dine at the pretentious and stuffy restaurant they favoured for such jollifications as interrogating future in-laws.