Good Husband Material (16 page)

In some small retaliation (petty but satisfying) I finally informed him that I would be staying the night at the hotel after the Awards dinner, which nearly scuttled the reconciliation, but I don’t care.

Mother has been snivelly on the subject of ‘when will I ever be a grandmother?’. She says all her friends have grandchildren, but I didn’t think she had any friends outside Transylvania. James must have put her up to it, as he tends to phone her from the office when displeased with me (another sneaky habit).

Since I’m now convinced that the baby would be left entirely to me to look after, as well as everything else, and provide another excuse for James to leave me behind when he goes out, it doesn’t inspire me to reproduce.

Mother also revealed her hopes of having Granny declared senile or something, so that she can get at her cash and jewellery, using some of it to incarcerate her in an old people’s home … Power of attorney, that’s it.

Of the two, Granny is definitely the saner and more competent, so Mother’s scheme is clearly doomed to fail. Even Granny’s diabetes doesn’t noticeably impede her, and there’s really nothing wrong with her mind – it was always like that.

Her only mistake was moving in to look after Mother after Grandpa died, out of some grim Northern sense of duty.

I wonder if I could get power of attorney over James.

The Hobby Home and garage were erected in a day, and he’s already run electricity across to his palatial shed, bought curtains and even ordered carpet. I’m saying nothing any more about the expense; if he gets into difficulties, it’s not my affair any longer.

He then graciously informed me that he’s going to have an enormous aerial fixed to the house, which will look dreadful, and surely they won’t allow such an eyesore in a nice village like this? But he still has to pass some sort of exam or test before they let him loose on the airwaves, so I can only hope he fails dismally and takes up something more reasonable, like stamp collecting.

On my next duty visit to Deepest Suburbia I entertained Granny with an account of the May Day revels, which sent her off into a spate of reminiscence, her accent even more infused with Yorkshire.

‘May Day? I were Keighley Queen of the May. My Bernard were passing through and he said to me: “What’s a pretty lass like you doing in a daft hat like that?” Only he put it a bit different, being posh and from down South.’

Mother rolled her eyes up and went out to put the kettle on.

‘Was it love at first sight, Granny?’

‘Aye, but I made him wait!’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Well, we had a good life even if we did just have the one child, and that without the backbone of a gnat!’

‘Dad wasn’t—’

‘Your father was a soft, easy-going fool – took after Bernard’s side more than mine. Not that he wasn’t a loving, good-hearted soul, mind, and a good son, though Bernard was disappointed that he didn’t want to go into the business. But there – he was happy enough in his bank.’

‘Who do I take after?’ I asked curiously.

‘Lord knows! And your father had the mumps bad right after he got married, so we didn’t think …’

She tailed off into silence and I thought that was it until she suddenly added, ‘I said to Valerie when I saw you: “If that’s yours it’s a changeling – there’s no red hair in my family!”’

‘I haven’t got red hair! It’s deep gold.’

‘Then that Vanessa Redgrave was blonde, too. Valerie was light-haired, mind – real pale blonde.’

‘She still is,’ I said, as Mother reappeared with a tray.

‘Comes out of a bottle.’

‘What does?’ enquired Mother brightly.

‘Never mind,’ I said quickly. ‘Did you make these lovely scones?’

Easily distracted, she preened. ‘Yes, I made lots because Dr Reevey came to call earlier.’

‘You aren’t ill, are you?’

‘Oh, no!’ She smiled smugly. ‘He’s not
my
doctor. That would be quite unsuitable! It was Granny who used to be his patient. This was just a little social visit. We were arranging to go out line dancing.’

‘Line dancing?’

I looked at her with more attention than usual. She’s a little fluffy blonde with big blue eyes and is pretty well preserved for forty-nine. But her rather fairy-off-the-tree appearance hides a will of iron and a rigid adherence to respectability (whatever that is). She’s always had one or two devoted admirers, usually elderly. Dr Reevey isn’t much older than she is. I noticed she was looking a bit different – heavier on the eye make-up, for one thing.

‘
I
went out!’ Granny declared rather thickly through a mouthful of scone. ‘Didn’t want to play gooseberry, so I called a taxi and went to visit that old rogue Herries. Calls himself a solicitor!’

‘But didn’t Mr Herries retire ages ago?’

‘Climbs out of his crypt especially for me!’

‘So that’s where you went!’ Mother exclaimed, and added more casually as she poured tea into delicate, fluted cups, ‘What did you need to see him about?’

I took the cup of horridly pallid coffee she’d made me.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’ rejoined Granny crudely.

‘Not really; I’m sure I’ve no interest in your affairs.’ Mother tossed her head. ‘I only thought that I could have taken a message for you if I’d known you wanted to tell him something, and saved you a journey.’

‘Enjoyed the visit, it did me good. I’m in better shape than he is, diabetes or no!’

I drank the coffee quickly, to get it over with, then ate the last bit of my scone, which was excellent.

If there’s one thing Mother is good at, other than interfering, it’s baking.

‘I’d better be off, or I’ll miss the train. I really must find a driving instructor. I keep saying I will, and then not getting round to it.’

‘Can’t dear James come and collect you? It’s ages since I saw him.’

‘No, he’s gone to see a client in Bradford.’

‘Ah, the Jewel of the North!’ said Granny cheerily, and Mother gave her a dirty look. She’s never been further north than Luton.

As she was letting me out I remembered what Granny had been saying earlier, and asked, ‘Who do I get my shade of hair from, Mother, and my grey eyes? Is it your side of the family?’

For a moment her baby-blue eyes were startled, then with a light laugh she said, ‘Oh, I expect so. My mother died when I was a small child, but I think she had your shade of hair.’

‘You never talk about when you were growing up or say much about your sister. Did she look like me?’

‘Really, Leticia darling! If you want to delve into the family history we can’t do it on the doorstep. And Glenda looked very much like me, as I recall – though, after all, it’s over twenty years since I last saw her.’

You don’t forget what your only sister looks like, though, surely? However, poor Glenda blotted her copy-book at sixteen by running off with someone else’s husband, and Mother is always reluctant to acknowledge her existence.

I was about to ask her if she had a photograph of Glenda, but seeing she was looking ruffled I left the subject and, pressing a kiss on the powdered surface of her cheek (like kissing a floury bap, only scented) set off on the circuitous route home.

Definitely
driving lessons.

James spent the weekend making his shed into a luxury home from home, while I papered the bathroom, having finished the tongue-and-grooving. (Wouldn’t Tongue and Grooving make a good name for a pop group?)

Then, on the Monday, something strange and wondrous happened that cheered me up no end – I discovered that Mrs Peach is a sun worshipper!

I was looking idly out of the bedroom window, noting that since pruning the pear trees I can partly see in to the next-door garden. It stretches further than ours and has an orchard at the bottom as well as all the peripatetic hen coops.

There was the slam of a door and Mrs Peach appeared, back from her egg round, in her woollen hat and sombre cloth coat.

Wandering slowly down the garden on her stumpy little legs she first tugged off her coat and threw it over the nearest bush, which happened to be lavender, kicked off her shoes, and then kept on toddling down the pathway shedding items of clothing as she went.

When I lost sight of her she was clad only in voluminous shiny pink bloomers, and was tugging at the fastenings of a monumental bra as she headed for the orchard.

I sank down on the bed in amazement, hardly able to believe my own eyes. But when I looked out again the clothes were still scattered on the bushes like a gypsy washday, and the extra-wide-fitting glacé leather shoes lay abandoned in the grass.

Of the elderly dryad there was no sign.

Fancy Mrs P. communing with Nature in the raw! I expect the hens are used to it.

I could hardly wait to tell James, but he was disappointingly unamused.

I still can’t believe it when I see her dumpy little figure stumping down the pathway with her trolley of eggs. Can this be the same person as the porcine nymph who threw off her clothes like confetti in the garden? But she did it again next morning when she got back from her round, so evidently it’s a habit – unless May’s brought her out, like blossom?

Mrs Deakin can’t know about it or she would surely have told me. It’s a strange thing knowing something about the village she doesn’t, but I couldn’t possibly tell her. It would be a sort of betrayal.

I wish I had someone to share it with, though, who’d appreciate it.

Mrs Deakin persuaded me into buying the ingredients for making pickled beetroot when I called in after lunch for mineral water, and I emerged carrying pickling vinegar, peppercorns and a large and insecurely wrapped parcel of beetroot, which came undone halfway home. I was impeded in picking them up by the Bourgeois Bitch whom I’d rashly taken with me, and the beetroot acquired even more mud than they were originally coated with. (I noticed that Mrs Deakin made no allowance for that caked mud when she weighed them.)

I was just staring down at the newspaper wrapping, which had a picture of Fergal Rocco and a pretty girl on it (partly obscured by mud – quite appropriate), when a smartly dressed woman coming out of a nearby cottage very kindly stopped to help me, and we fell into conversation.

Her name is Margaret Wrekin, and she sounds Awfully County, but is very pleasant. Her clothes were the sort of thing James would like me to wear – a straight skirt and long jacket, with low-heeled court shoes, and her dark hair sort of straight and angular. She’s about my age.

Her cottage is one of those thatched ones without a hair out of place – indeed, the thatch is covered in a sort of wire hairnet – but when I said how Olde Worlde and charming it was, she revealed that it was just a façade since the rest had fallen down and at the back it was a big modern house.

She admired the Bourgeois Bitch, who fawned, and invited me to go for coffee tomorrow to meet some of her friends, which was very nice of her, but I explained that I wrote every morning.

She was very interested and said I must tell her all about it, only just now she had to dash to Mrs Deakin’s for a tin of artichoke hearts.

It was very heartening meeting someone here at last.

The beetroot pickling was awful – the ghastly red juice and the awful smell of vinegar – and my rubber gloves had vanished.

It took hours, and by the time I’d filled up the last jar I was covered from head to foot in splashes of bright red, with matching hands and wrists: never again!

Before I could clean myself up, the doorbell went. Why do doorbells invariably ring at moments like this? I answered it with my hands cupped in front of me like a surgeon.

The vicar recoiled.

I suppose I did look rather gory, dripping on the step. Hastily wiping my hands on my apron I smiled reassurance: ‘Just pickling beetroot, Vicar! Won’t you come in?’

‘Ah – beetroot!’ he breathed, visibly relaxing. ‘Yes indeed – beetroot.’ He straightened his collar nervously. ‘No, I won’t come in just now, thank you. The fact of the matter is that I’m collecting items for the church bazaar and fête. It’s on June the twenty-sixth – by the church if fine, in the church hall if wet.’

‘Church bazaar?’

‘And fête. Proceeds towards renovating the east window this year. I always ask everyone to contribute, even if not regular attenders. I think a church in a village like Nutthill is a heritage for all the people, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said vaguely. ‘Er … what sort of things did you have in mind?’

‘Well, there’s the raffle. Any tins of food, and so on. And the bottle stall – any sort of bottle. Or the white elephant—’

‘Any sort of elephant?’ I suggested and he gave me a weak smile.

‘Ha, ha! Very good.’

In the end I donated a bottle of the ghastly, expensive French perfume Mother gives me every Christmas. He was highly pleased with this, and the packet of wrapped guest soaps left over from Christmas presents.

When I told James later about meeting Margaret Wrekin, he said he thought he’d seen her husband in the Dog and Duck once or twice when he’d stopped on the way home for a quick pint.

I don’t know why he does that, when he could come home and take me for a quick pint. (Well, not a
pint
perhaps, but a drink.)

He added, ‘The Wrekins are the type of people we want to make friends with here. Suitable people.’

‘Suitable for what?’ I enquired, astounded. ‘I don’t choose my friends for their accents, social status or wealth, James! I just thought she was nice.’

‘You don’t want to get on close terms with any Tom, Dick or Harry when you live in a small village, like you are with that shopkeeper woman. When we have children we’ll have to be more fussy about who we know.’

‘Why? She’ll go to the village school and mix with everyone anyway.’

‘
He
,’ corrected James firmly, ‘will go to a good school – though the village one might do for the first year or two.’

‘I hope by “good” you don’t mean boarding school,’ I said, astonished, ‘because if so I can tell you now that if I go through childbirth it will not be so I can shuffle my offspring away from home at the first available opportunity. Not that we could afford it anyway!’

‘Lionel would help.’