Good Husband Material (23 page)

Mother has been labouring under the misapprehension that James has taken up amateur theatricals. I thought her reaction to my telling her he’d become a ham was strange, but then, so is Mother.

She is stupid (but cunning). Where can I have got my brains from? Dad can’t have been all that bright, or he wouldn’t have married her.

Fortunately she hasn’t found a hospital geriatric ward willing to take Granny for a ‘holiday’. I’m not surprised, since there’s nothing wrong with her except the diabetes and an unpleasant sense of humour, and there’s no way in which Mother could have got her into hospital other than in a straitjacket.

Nor was it a good move to try to get power of attorney, either.

‘Is that you, Leticia darling?’ she screeched wildly down the phone on her return from her latest abortive foray. ‘Oh, I’ve been so humiliated! That terrible Mr Herries! I’m going to move my affairs to a respectable firm of solicitors, and so I told him. Calling me unfit to have the care of a “delicate old lady”! Delicate as old boots!’

‘Mother, why should Mr Herries insult you?’ I enquired, keeping my voice calm. ‘I thought you got on well with him.’

‘I didn’t know his true nature. I went to see him this morning about Granny – you know how strange she has been getting lately – quite senile, poor thing …’

Do I?

‘And I told him he had better arrange for me to have control of her affairs, since she was obviously incapable; and he said that she was as sane as he was, and not much older, and only needed the sort of caring attention any daughter-in-law should be glad to give! What cheek!’

She paused to gulp down something – probably sherry.

‘Where was I? Oh, yes! I asked Granny as soon as I got back when she had been in to see him again, and she told me that she’d called a taxi last week while I was out and gone to make a new will. Secretive! It’s all part of the process of senility, though Mr Herries is obviously going the same way himself.’

Mr Herries, who is indeed a near contemporary of Granny’s, has known her since her marriage, so it was not startlingly tactful of Mother to approach him in this way.

Any legal adviser worth his salt would also realise that, with Mother managing her affairs, Granny would be destitute within a year.

Not that any of us knows exactly what she has stashed away in the bank because she isn’t telling, and she has been fighting Mother off her jewellery box for years. Mother’s latest ploy was to offer to take it all to be cleaned at her own expense, but Granny is too fly to be taken in by that one.

‘Are you still there?’ demanded Mother peevishly.

‘Yes. I’m still here, Mother—’

‘Mummy, dear – Mummy.’

‘Sorry, Mummy. Look here, why don’t you explain to Granny that you would like a little rest, and see if she’ll hire a nurse to stay with her while you go away somewhere?’ (Anywhere but here!)

‘I have. She says she doesn’t need a nurse, and she doesn’t need me, and I can go whenever I like!’

‘Well, she isn’t exactly helpless, is she? Though she does need someone to keep an eye on her in case she falls and can’t get up, or anything, and to make sure she gets a proper diet. Look, if you really can’t stand it any more, why don’t you move into a little flat of your own, where you could pop in and see her every day?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t do that! And anyway, I couldn’t afford it … we have an arrangement about the bills.’

Yes, I thought, Granny pays them!

‘But what’s really annoying, Leticia darling, is that when I phoned Mr Herries to tell him a few home truths I thought up on the way home, Granny was listening in on the extension, and now she won’t speak to me except to give me orders as if I were the housekeeper!’

‘Never mind, Mother, she’ll get over it.’

‘Mummy, dear – you keep calling me Mother again, and it sounds so hard and unfeeling from my little girlie.’

‘Sorry, Mummy. But I really don’t think you should have approached Mr Herries about Granny, because she isn’t that bad, is she? I mean, she’s always been a bit strange in her ways, though it must be very trying for you, of course.’

‘You just can’t understand my feelings, dear, can you? I gave James a ring at his office earlier, and he was so sympathetic, though he said he couldn’t do anything personally to help, because of being family. Professional etiquette, I expect. And he hardly said a word against you, though you’ve been a trial to him lately, haven’t you? Jealous of the little bit of time he spends with his radio thing and his friends. And I do so agree with him that children are more important to a woman than a career.’

‘Then it may interest you and dear, sweet, understanding James to know that I’m never going to stop writing novels so long as they sell!’ And I slammed the phone down and stood positively trembling with rage.

Of course, this conversation totally destroyed any faint increase in amity between James and me since the barbecue, though that wasn’t much anyway. More a
laissez-faire
policy. And it was mostly me who’d been doing the trying – I’d conscientiously not been snarling at him when he came in at dawn after being out with his friends all evening, and then boring the world into the early hours through the miracle of radio waves.

But
he
has asked after the progress of my book! (Devious pig.)

Obviously he doesn’t intend to change and, after hearing what he has been saying to Mother, I find myself almost – yes –
disliking
him!

I sat in the hall on the commode (it will always be a commode to me) and the tears came into my eyes. We should be so happy – we’re both young and healthy, and doing well in our respective careers. Any other man would be proud of having a wife who, if not a famous literary name, at least sold vast numbers of books.

And until we moved here, to the cottage we’d dreamed of (though did we both dream of living in the country, or did James just agree with me because he didn’t care where he lived?), we
were
happy.

We never quarrelled, possibly because I gave in all the time to please James, because I loved and admired him – or the man I thought he was.

Everything we planned for our future, the sort of things we wanted, were the same. Except for my secret misgivings about motherhood, and James’s assumption that I would give up my ‘hobby’ of writing once he was earning enough money, and I thought time would allay the one and alter the second.

How differently I feel now! My most overwhelming feeling towards him at the moment seems to be resentment. He treats me like a housekeeper. And all his habits have begun to annoy me.

Do I really love this selfish, chauvinistic idiot? Did I ever? The old Tish certainly thought she did: what happened to her?

I wonder if he still loves me. I can’t recall the last time he said anything even remotely affectionate. I’m afraid to ask, in case he says ‘no’.

What if he asked me? I really don’t know what I’d answer, but probably ‘yes’ from sheer panic. How would I manage alone?

Alone … but when do I have his company now? For a few hours of the night, so late that I’m usually asleep before he comes to bed, and at breakfast, which I’m expected to produce punctually and without thanks, and at which he reads the paper and says nothing except, ‘Where are the aspirins?’ or ‘Isn’t there any more coffee?’

Our evening meal together is a thing of the past. He often stays out with friends after work, then comes home and doesn’t understand why I didn’t know exactly the time of his arrival and so haven’t got a meal ready and waiting, when I’ve given him up and had beans on toast hours before.

If I complain he goes off to his Shack with a sandwich, or down to the pub with Ray Wrekin, who has now decided to become a fellow ham and is busily setting himself up in a Shack of his own, far more palatial than James’s.

Margaret (we’re becoming quite friendly) says she is so glad he has a little hobby, because it keeps him from getting under her feet all the time.

James keeps throwing her into the conversation as a glowing example of motherhood, because she has two children and an immaculate house and garden. (An Immaculate Concept?) She also has a gardener and a live-in mother’s help, so I don’t see how he can compare our situations. Come to that, I don’t remember ever seeing her with the children.

I am really fed up.

That’s put the lid on it! James discovered I’d complained to Lionel about his expecting too many late nights and weekends, and more or less told me to keep my nose out of his business. If it isn’t my business too, I don’t know what that makes me.

Slave?

So we are now back to pre-barbecue status, only worse.

Added to this, I feel thoroughly off-colour and bloated, and I haven’t had a period since the scanty one just after the SFWWR dinner. But it would be silly to start imagining I am pregnant just because of one rather inconclusive encounter with James.

Perhaps I am a little run down? I must get some multivitamins-and-minerals from the health food shop.

Fergal’s workmen have started replacing the garden fence with an elegant metal railing, and one of them is going to come and make me a little patio, very cheaply.

I’ve only seen Fergal once or twice in the distance, and each time he has turned and walked away.

I don’t want a baby.

Surely
I can’t be pregnant.

This is the moment of truth, isn’t it, to know for certain I don’t want to be pregnant, when there’s the possibility I might be?

Feeling very guilty I had a hot bath and drank a lot of whisky. But apart from looking like a lobster and smelling like a distillery when James came home, it made no difference.
He
didn’t notice.

After this panic-induced episode I gave myself a good talking-to, for all the symptoms I have – bloated tummy, tension round the forehead, general feeling of being not quite well – are all those I’ve had once or twice before when overdue and the doctor did say it might take a while for my system to settle down again after stopping the pill.

As soon as I relax and try to put my worries out of my mind, everything will be just as usual.

Those untraceable silent phone calls have started again! James must have been giving our ex-directory number out to all and sundry, though he says he only gives it to clients who might need to reach him at home. However, he’s hardly ever here, so it might be more practical if he just handed out his radio frequency.

At least he’s stopped checking himself daily for signs of mumps. I was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

This mumps thing has been niggling at my mind too, but in a different way. So I phoned Granny at a time when I knew Mother would be out lunching with Dr Reevey (an affair that seems to be advancing, though I’m not sure where to).

I had to let it ring for ages, of course, before she reluctantly answered it, and then we had to establish who I was, who she was, and where Mother was.

‘Granny,’ I said finally, ‘do you remember telling me about Dad having the mumps just after he married Mother?’

‘I might have!’ she agreed cautiously.

‘Well, did he?’

‘Yes – he were took very bad. Valerie was in a state – as much use as a wet lettuce.’

‘Someone told me recently that having mumps at that age can – can lead to not having children.’

‘It can,’ she admitted, with what sounded like reluctance, but was probably just her usual dislike of the telephone.

‘But obviously it can’t have affected Dad, can it, because I came along afterwards.’

There was a short pause, and then just as I was preparing to repeat my remark in a louder voice she spoke. ‘We were that surprised when we got back from Russia and saw you!’

‘Did you say Russia, Granny? You and Grandpa were in Russia when I was born?’

‘Grand tour! Bernard – your grandpa – were that romantic! Wanted to tread the streets where that Fabergé lived. We did, too, and there were a lot of them. The food’s something dreadful over there, and the signs aren’t written in any Christian language.’

There was a pause.

‘It was what they call a “fate acumply”.’

‘What was?’ I was still trying to picture Granny, small, dark and determined, in Russia.

‘You were. We got back, and Valerie was as slim as a lath just like she was when we went. “Sometimes it happens like that,” I said to Bernard, “but it was funny it happened when she was on holiday, like, and why did she go alone?” He said: “Desmond’s happy, leave well alone.” He always liked you.’

‘Do you mean I was a surprise? You didn’t know Mother was preg—’

Granny’s voice rolled relentlessly on. ‘And, after all, there was the certificate for all to see, and no point in worrying about it at this late date.’

‘Worrying about what? Granny!’

‘Though I would have liked to know.’

‘Know what? Granny! If I come when Mother isn’t there, will you tell me all about it?’

‘About what?’

‘When I was born!’

‘I wasn’t there. I just said, I was in Russia, and bloody cold it is there too! I bought a fur hat.’

‘But you could—’

‘I’ve got photos!’

‘What of?’ I enquired, with more patience than I felt.

‘Russia. I’ve got an album. I’ll show you.’

‘Thank you, Granny!’

It was like trying to grasp an eel, following the thread of a conversation with Granny, but she really had seemed to suspect something odd about my birth …

Though, as she said, she wasn’t there! If I saw the birth certificate perhaps I’d stop having such very strange thoughts?

Perhaps.

I was still sitting on the commode half an hour later when Mother rang to tell me all about her date with the doctor.

I’m making too much of Granny’s hints.

Mother hadn’t been married to Dad all that long when she had me … but mumps doesn’t always lead to infertility, and people do have babies without realising they’re pregnant.

Speaking of which,
I’m
not pregnant after all. The loss was amazingly slight and lasted only a day or so, but what a relief! And I feel suddenly so much better all round, in fact – it must be the vitamins.