Good Husband Material

Chapter 2: Home, James

‘This is it,’ I said, with conviction. ‘This is my cottage!’

‘What?’ muttered James absently, peering through a grubby windowpane at the small, blonde and bubbly estate agent, who was hovering tactfully outside despite the arctic November wind. Her legs below the short skirt were an interesting shade of blue.

He always gets a bit silly over that type, which makes you wonder why he married me: tall, reserved, and as effervescent as flat Guinness.

Come to that, why didn’t he just marry my mother, who is small, determinedly blonde and, if not precisely bubbly, sparkles a bit after the second Martini?

I gave him a nudge with my elbow. ‘Concentrate on the house, James. The estate agent is only being charming to you because she hopes to make a sale.’

He looked hurt. ‘Don’t be silly, darling – I was just thinking about the case I’ve got on. I really shouldn’t have taken a day off to look at houses, and I think I’d better pop into the office for an hour or two after I’ve dropped you at your mother’s.’

The mystery of why he’d chosen to wear one of his natty dark suits to go house-hunting was now clear. (Though admittedly they do set off his sandy-haired rugged-Highlander good looks a treat, a fact he knows very well.)

‘I’m sure Drew, Drune and Tibbs can solicit away without you for one day, James. Especially when it means we’ve at last found the right cottage.’

‘What? You don’t mean this one do you, Tish?’ His bright blue eyes widened in astonishment. ‘I can’t imagine why you wanted to view it in the first place – it’s too small, and it isn’t even detached.’

‘It’s twice as big as the flat: all these chairs make it look smaller. There are thirty-two.’

‘Thirty-two what?’

‘Chairs.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything? Look at the garden – it’s a wilderness.’

‘A big wilderness. There’s some sort of shed out there, too, and plenty of room for a garage at the side of the house.’

‘But the house is old, dark and probably unsanitary,’ he suggested cunningly. ‘It belonged to an old man who didn’t do anything to it for years, and probably died in it.’

‘From an overdose of chairs, perhaps?’ I suggested. ‘People have died in most old houses. Of course I’d have to scrub it from top to bottom before we brought any of our things in, and all the walls and ceilings need painting, and perhaps the floors sanding down and sealing if they’re good enough. Roses round the door … pretty curtains … And just look at the situation! Only one neighbour – and the agent says that’s a sweet little old lady – and the back garden overlooks the parkland of the local big house, so it’ll be very peaceful …’

I tailed off. James was looking stubborn and sulky, one of his limited repertoire of expressions. (And now I come to think of it, ‘indulgent affection’ hasn’t made many appearances lately, or ‘extreme solicitousness denoting a single-minded determination to have sex’.)

‘You know, Tish, I’ve been thinking lately that perhaps we should just look for a small weekend place near the sea instead. Jack’s promised to teach us to sail and—’

‘No. Absolutely not,’ I interrupted firmly. ‘My idea of a fun weekend does not entail sitting with my bottom in icy water, while being alternately hit over the head with a piece of wood and slapped by a bit of wet canvas. Besides,’ I added, hurt, ‘didn’t we always plan to move to the country once we could afford it?’

‘Well … yes, but—’

‘And then I can give up working in the library for

peanuts – which really makes no sense when you think that I could earn just as much from writing, if I had more

time – and we can start a family, and you could commute to work, and get lots of fresh air and exercise in the garden growing our own fruit and vegetables. Isn’t that what we’ve both dreamed of?’

He closed his mouth and said hastily, ‘Yes, darling, of course it is. That is, it sounds wonderful, but perhaps we ought to wait for something detached to come up and—’

‘We’ve been married six years, James. I can see the big three-0 coming up, and you were forty last birthday.’

He winced.

‘We can afford this house, it’s near enough to commute – only about eleven miles to Bedford station. I’ll come off the pill as soon as we move, and we’ll eat a healthy diet and take long walks to get fit.’

James looked slightly punch-drunk. ‘I suppose it might be quite nice here,’ he conceded reluctantly. ‘And,’ he added brightening, ‘Gerry and Viola live only a few miles away, and I’m sure he drives into work. Must leave pretty early. I’ll ask him what it’s like.’ He put his arm around me. ‘I can see you like this place, darling, but don’t set your heart on it. I think we ought to look at a few more first, and once I’m a senior partner we could afford something detached.’

‘I want this one, a real country cottage, not a detached mock-Tudor somewhere. I want to be a country dweller, with muddy wellingtons and a cottage garden. And you used to like the idea of being self-sufficient – you had all those books about it. I think they’re in the back bedroom cupboard. I’ll look them out when we get home.’

He didn’t look too enthusiastic, but he’s a man of short-lived crazes, as I’ve learned the hard way. While I would have expected someone to warn me had I been about to marry a serial killer, no one felt it necessary to inform me that I was about to marry a serial hobbyist. Perhaps it should be written into the marriage ceremony? Thou Shalt Not Become A Serial Hobbyist. Still, I don’t see why he can’t have the same one twice, like the measles, with a bit of exposure to the germ.

He was rather dampening when I enumerated the cottage’s many advantages on the way back to Mother’s house in darkest suburbia for Granny’s birthday tea. I’ll have to work on him; but I’m in love with my cottage, and am beginning to have distinctly now- or-never feelings about making the move.

I think it’s something to do with thirty looming ahead (my birthday is in February) and so few of my ambitions realised. And if I’m going to take the plunge and have a baby, then my sell-by date is just peeping up on the horizon.

One definite plus point to living in the cottage at Nutthill would be that James wouldn’t be so tempted to call in at the pub on his way home from work in the evenings if he had such a long drive ahead of him. (Networking, this is called, apparently.) And with so much to do to the house and garden he won’t have either the time or the money for his Friday night sessions out with ‘the boys’, or our regular show or film and restaurant on Saturday nights.

I never feel relaxed in big, pretentious, expensive restaurants anyway, and would always have preferred to save the money towards the cottage. I’m not much of a social animal, in fact. I like a quiet life and time to write after work, and I enjoy a trip to a museum or art gallery more than anything else.

James’s friends are all about ten years older than I am, with self-assured, well-dressed, boring wives, against whom I stand out like a macaw among a lot of sparrows. They’re all so well-groomed and taupe. If they mix two colours together in a scarf they think they’re daring.

Living so far out into the country would also distance us from James’s appalling old school chum Howard, ageing hippie extraordinaire, who has recently moved back to London after a brief spell crewing on a yacht, where I should think he was as much use as a twist of rotten rope.

He managed to acquire a rich girlfriend in the interval between jumping ship in Capri and being deported. (I hadn’t realised that he knew Comrades came in two sexes, but there you are. She must be deranged.)

James may not immediately see all the cottage’s

advantages …

He dropped me at Mother’s in mid-afternoon (and I can hardly wait to put some distance between myself and Mother – another plus) and drove off to the office to pick up some papers (allegedly) though I did tell him that if he wasn’t back within the hour I’d kill him.

I stifled the ignoble thought that perhaps he just wanted to see his ex-girlfriend Vanessa, recently reinstalled as secretary. When she got divorced and had to find a job, she pleaded with James to put a word in for her, and he felt so sorry for her he persuaded his uncle Lionel to take her on again.

He explained how it was, so I’m not in the least bit worried or jealous about her being there every day, even though she’s another bubbly blonde. From the sound of it, her bubbles may have gone a bit flat; James said her husband was a brute and she’s looking very worn and years older.

Mother was a bit pensive and hurt when he drove off, and nearly as dismal as James when I described the cottage. She only really cheered up again when he returned and fell like a famished wolf on the rather nursery spread of food she associates with birthdays.

Then the cake was brought out and we had to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ with James and Mother trying to harmonise, slightly hampered by Granny, who had already loudly announced that she didn’t want any fuss made about birthdays at her time of life, ignoring us and turning the TV up loudly, so that a repeat of Top of the Pops drowned us out.

Mother keeps trying to persuade everyone that Granny is losing her marbles, but I think anyone who can learn to preset a video recorder deserves Mensa membership, because I’ve never managed it.

‘You can’t possibly want to watch that, Maud!’ Mother broke off to exclaim crossly.

Granny briefly unglued her boot-button eyes from the screen. ‘Why not?’ she demanded belligerently. ‘All them funny clothes and lewd dancing. Best entertainment on the box.’

She returned her avid gaze to the gyrating row of young men clad in enormously baggy trousers and no tops. ‘Eh! There’s more hair on the back of my hands than there is on them poor boys’ chests. And call that a beard? Bum fluff!’

Mother sighed long-sufferingly and cast her baby-blue eyes heavenwards. ‘So vulgar,’ she whispered. ‘Dear James, she’s such a trial to me – and getting more senile by the day.’

I wouldn’t agree with that, though she certainly seems to be reverting to her Yorkshire roots at a gallop!

James squeezed Mother’s hand. ‘At least she has you to look after her, Valerie,’ he said, which I thought was pretty rich considering he knows Mother is the giddy, spendthrift widow of the two. But Mother is the tiny, fluffy fragile sort who seems to appeal to a certain type of man. (She’s tough as old boots really.) She spends large amounts of money she doesn’t have on beauty treatments, make-up and clothes, which is mainly why Granny decided to move in and take over.

I’m sure she thought she could sort Mother out and then leave things running smoothly while she moved to the retirement bungalow she’d set her mind on. Only, as she soon discovered, you can’t organise fluff, it just drifts away with every passing breath of wind.

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.

They had seemed mesmerised both by the size and profusion of Granny’s diamonds, a selection of which had as usual been pinned and hung at random over her billowing bosom. As she often says: if you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em.

This might have had some bearing on the marked effort to be polite to her they made even after she called the waiter over and demanded, pointing at her soup,‘What do you call this?’

‘Chicken soup, madam,’ he’d replied haughtily.

‘If that’s chicken, it walked through on stilts.’

‘How very droll your dear grandmother is,’ Honoria had remarked in an aside to me. ‘A true original. You are her only grandchild, aren’t you?’

‘What? Oh – yes, Dad was her only child.’ I’d replied vaguely, wondering why I found Mother embarrassing whereas I never found Granny so.

Granny is clever, sharp, kind and loving, and if she doesn’t want to put on airs and graces I don’t see why she should. She says herself that Yorkshire folk are as good as any and better than most.

I gave a snort as I recalled James’s expression when Granny had written down a recipe for chicken soup and told the waiter to give it to the chef; then I realised he was still burbling on about my dress sense. Lack of, that is.

It wasn’t doing much for his driving.

‘Not that your taste has improved,’ he was saying. ‘All that black you used to wear was a bit gloomy, but you’ve gone too far the other way now.’

‘Because I’m happy, and I want to wear bright, cheerful colours while I’m still young enough.’

‘I suppose Fergal Rocco liked you in gaudy clothes?’

He liked me best in no clothes at all.

I just managed to button my mouth before it got away from me, and after a brief struggle in which my lips writhed silently, managed to say with supreme self-control, ‘Look, I only went out with him for a few months, then Goneril went to America and he dropped me like a hot potato. I never saw or heard from him again after he left. Satisfied?’

‘You’ve never seen him since?’

‘No!’

Only in my dreams. And let us hope James doesn’t get a sudden urge to read one of my books (unlikely though it seems) wherein all the romantic heroes are remodelled and transmogrified versions of Fergal.

Tish the literary vampire.

Frankenstein Tish, creating a new Fergal each time from the best bits of the old (and there were some choice bits), joined to new parts culled from my imagination. (I’ve got a good one. Lurid, even.)

Wonder if Fergal gets pale and listless every time I write a new novel? I wouldn’t like to think I was draining his batteries …

Who am I kidding? Yes I would! It would serve him right for breaking my heart.

James pulled up outside the flat with an over-dramatic swerve and stalked silently off without opening my door, one of the little old-world courtesies that first endeared him to me.

I only hope he’s not going to brood over this. I don’t know why he’s so upset about it, since he knew I hadn’t lived in an ivory tower before he came along. (A concrete university accommodation tower, actually – the urge to escape Mother overcame me.)

Perhaps it’s just that the type of man I went out with doesn’t match the image of me he’s been cherishing.

Sometimes lately I’ve thought the image he has of me doesn’t match me very much either.

You know, even now I’m not quite sure how I came to be married to James!

I wasn’t actually looking for Mr Right. Not even for

Mr Will-Do-at-a-Push-if-Desperate.

I remember telling him quite plainly that my life was blighted and I intended living quietly in the country devoting myself to my writing, and him saying he’d always wanted to live in the country too (his self-sufficiency phase). Then he just sort of sneaked up on me with flowers and chocolates and stuff. While spontaneity was not his middle name, dependability was: he was always there.