Good Husband Material (24 page)

Every morning, as soon as James has gone, I sit down at my desk with the window open so that all the delicious warm, scented grassy smells of summer can waft around me as I write.

Having completed
Love on the Waves
I’ve begun a new book about a female explorer missing in the desert while searching for a lost city. She’s rescued by a handsome safari tour operator, who turns out to be in the Secret Service (or whatever they call it these days – I’ll have to find out).

Vivyan is delighted with
Love on the Waves
, but I’ve taken a dislike to it since it caused James to become a ham. Maybe when I start getting books on deserts he will become a Nomad, fold up his tent and steal away? That’s quite an appealing thought.

Margaret brought one of my books round for me to sign, for her mother’s birthday present. I do think she could have afforded the hardback but she said she was a bit broke, because she’d just bought a marvellous epergne.

I was a bit guarded in my response, since I didn’t know whether you ate, drank or wore an epergne, but when I looked it up in the dictionary it was a table centrepiece. I was so glad I hadn’t said, ‘That should be tasty, then,’ or something else equally stupid.

Fancy getting all excited over a table decoration! And I expect Margaret’s idea of being broke is not as we know it in real life.

After she’d gone I thought I’d ask Bob to teach me the names of the local wild birds, but when I pointed to one hopping around the strawberry bed and asked, ‘What do you call that, Bob?’ he just said, ‘Little bleeder!’ and threw a stone at it, so I cleaned out the cellar instead.

Mrs Deakin (who’d known about my ‘secret’ cellar and was surprised that I hadn’t) sent an amiable, pony-tailed youth called Gary round to run electricity to it, and it now looks a lot less spooky.

I made two discoveries down there. The first was that Bess thinks spiders are Snacks on Legs, which is the first useful quality I’ve ever discovered in her.

The second caused me to pounce excitedly on James the minute he got home, shoving my treasure-trove under his nose. ‘Look – I found this while I was cleaning out the cellar!’

‘You might let me get through the door first!’ he grumbled, taking the bent, battered and dirt-encrusted object reluctantly from my hand.

‘It’s a ring. And it was wedged right down into a crack in the floor, so it’s probably been there for centuries!’

James was unimpressed. ‘More likely to have come out of a cracker.’

‘But I’m sure it’s old!’

‘All right – a very
old
Christmas cracker. What’s for dinner?’

Rather deflated, I went to put on the casserole. (Here’s One I Made Earlier.)

But I took the ring to the museum anyway, for an expert opinion.

The bus ride made me feel quite nauseous, so I think I must have some sort of tummy bug. James seems all right, and he hasn’t noticed that I’m feeling seedy and off my food. Nor am I sleeping very well, either, so I’ve got these interesting dark circles round my eyes like a marmoset.

He phoned at lunchtime to say we’ve been invited by Horrible Howard to a party tonight, but he didn’t suppose I would want to go, so he would only be home long enough to grab a bite to eat and change.

He was right – I didn’t want to go. It must be evident even to James that I loathe Howard, who is very Red, hasn’t stopped being a hippie yet, despite balding and developing a paunch, and insists on wearing the remains of his hair in long oily wisps and buying flared Levi jeans that flap round his spindly legs.

Also they smoke pot, which smells disgusting, and then lose all interest in good conversation or anything else, just sitting around looking glazed. James will be struck off or something if he’s ever caught in a house where that sort of thing goes on. He should think about these things, but he’ll do anything to be one of the boys, regardless of who ‘the boys’ happen to be at the time.

When I reminded James about being struck off and all that, he said I was fast becoming a middle-class reactionary bore. I thought a middle-class reactionary bore was just the kind of wife he did want.

‘You might make an occasional effort to take me somewhere I do want to go,’ I said crossly.

‘I often want to take you out, but you never want to go.’

‘No you don’t! I don’t want to tag along when you go to pubs with the boys, I want us to go out together somewhere nice, like we used to.’

‘I thought you might want to see Alice’s new baby.’

‘Who’s Alice?’ I asked, confused by this sudden change of front.

‘Howard’s girlfriend. I told you she was living with him, ages ago.’

‘No, you didn’t. It’s a complete surprise to me!’

‘It’s the girl he met while he was crewing that yacht off Capri.’

That did ring a bell, but it was astounding that they were still together. ‘Are they getting married?’

‘No. Why should they? The party is to celebrate the baby’s birth. Alice is nice – you’d like her.’

That’s what he said about Vanessa.

I don’t place much faith in James’s ideas of the sort of people I’ll like – especially women – but I admit my curiosity was stirred. Not stirred enough to go through with one of Howard’s interminable parties, though, so I said I wouldn’t go.

‘Please yourself,’ he replied, not sounding bothered. ‘I’ll be home about seven to change.’

The fact that he really didn’t care if I went with him or not was worrying. What if he met Someone Else, or did something silly? And I’ve always gone to these things and pretended to enjoy myself. But why should I, when he never makes the same effort for me?

At six thirty I suddenly decided, in the interests of marriage-preservation, to make the effort, and dashed down to Mrs Deakin’s.

‘Have you got anything I could give as a present to a new baby?’ I gasped hopefully. (He? She? It? With Howard for a father, probably an It.)

‘Certainly. Hang on while I pop into the stockroom.’

This is the cupboard under the stairs, which is crammed full of cardboard boxes.

‘Plastic pants … potties … dummies … Here we are!’ She held up a card of brightly coloured rattles. ‘One of these and a packet of terry bibs would make a good present, dear.’

The dreadfully garish rattles were shaped like no animals I’d ever seen. ‘They’re very bright,’ I began dubiously.

‘That’s what babies like – the brighter the better. You take my word,’ she added firmly.

So I did. I expect she’s right, she usually is. I bought one with a vague resemblance to a lamb (or a llama) and a pack of three Mickey Mouse bibs. Then she found me some wrapping paper and a gift tag, though I’d already got a sheet of tissue paper at home that would have done.

When James got back he seemed pretty stunned that I’d changed my mind, but I expect he was pleased really. While he went to the pub to get a bottle to take with us, I went up to change.

I’d probably have to sit on a dog-hairy (or worse) floor, or at best a grimy floor cushion, and most of Howard’s friends are closet hippies who emerge draped in nostalgia and limp cheesecloth at the word ‘party’, so anything light-coloured or smart was out.

My paint-stained jeans, old Indian cotton embroidered blouse, and a pair of thonged sandals seemed about right.

James changed his pinstripes for the Levi’s I keep trying to put in the jumble, and a washed-out T-shirt, ditto, printed with the slogan, ‘The only safe fast breeder is a rabbit.’

We arrived at a tall, thin mid-terraced house in a slummy part of town, bigger inside than it looked, since it went back and back in a series of little rooms. The last time I’d visited Howard he was living in a bedsit in a run-down house full of very peculiar people, but James said that this house belonged to Alice’s father.

We walked straight in through the open front door, exchanging Miasma of Hot, Dirty July Pavement for Odour of Hot, Dark, Dirty House, then wandered in and out of the dimly lit rooms like everyone else, looking for Howard or Alice (or the baby). The only illumination came from candles in green glass tubes made from chopped-off bottles.

All the rooms contained people sitting about in corners holding glasses, cups and/or cigarettes, and not saying much. Probably because the walls were throbbing with music so loudly that it would take a pair of lip-readers with night sight to hold a decent conversation.

We went back into the hall and through a door right at the back. Here the music was even louder, and a couple were standing in the middle of the room shaking their heads up and down wildly in time to it. There was also a suspicious smell and the red glowing circle of a joint being passed from hand to hand.

Disgusting – you could catch
anything
.

James plonked our bottle of wine on to a table loaded with various kinds of booze, mostly cheap wine, and paper cups. It also bore a large, pink and obscene candle, which grew even more obscene and revolting as it burned and rivers of pink wax began to flow downwards.

Howard lurched out of the darkness as I was examining the paper cups to make sure I had a new one.

‘Hi!’ he said vaguely, reaching over my shoulder to pick up the good bottle of wine we’d brought, and that I was about to pour into my cup.

He was holding a pint glass tankard half-full of something, and he filled it to the brim with wine. It frothed.

I took the bottle from his hand before he could go off with it, though he seemed disinclined to do anything except goggle down at his frothing glass.

He’s tall and lugubrious, with a nose like an aubergine, and had tied a long floating scarf in a band round his head. The end kept trailing dangerously near the candle.

‘Congratulations!’ I shouted.

He smiled into his glass.

‘Where’s Alice?’ mouthed James.

‘Alice?’ muttered Howard, then looked up and suddenly shouted, ‘Hey! Great to see you! How’s life? Long time, no see, Tish! Have a drink – there’s all sorts of booze there – no, not that one, Tish, it tastes kind of weird …’

‘That’s because you poured it onto beer,’ I pointed out coldly, but he was already on his way out of the room with James in tow. I’m long accustomed to being abandoned at parties. I was lucky James hadn’t gone off at the front door.

Making out the outline of a sofa against one wall, I went and sat on the end of it. A girl was sitting on the other, leaning back with her eyes closed; but as I sat down with rather more force than I intended to, there being a deceptive lack of springs or padding under the sofa cover, she opened them and looked at me.

My eyes were now accustomed to the darkness, and I smiled at her nervously. She had large, dull eyes set deeply under bony brows in a haggard face, and hair parted in the middle and draped like seaweed over her shoulders and into her lap.

She examined me incuriously, and I half-expected a lizard-tongue to dart out from between those thin lips. Someone passed the glowing red eye of the joint to her and she bent forward, cupping her hands to it, before passing it to me.

I took it more to stop her setting me on fire than anything and, gingerly holding it at arm’s length, passed it on to more willing hands.

After I had done this for the second time the girl’s opaque eyes examined me again and she said perceptively: ‘You don’t smoke.’

It was not a question.

‘Do you like cake?’

‘What?’ I said, confused. Was this a new name for some other unspeakable substance?

‘Seed cake. I’ve made a nice seed cake,’ said the girl, coming closer and hissing the remark down my ear.

‘Lovely,’ I said, pushing a slither of dank hair from my face and edging back. ‘But perhaps not just at the moment, thanks …’

She extricated herself from the sofa’s clutches in a flutter of cheesecloth and a reek of patchouli.

Could she really have said that she’d made a seed cake? It seemed an unlikely, Victorian high-tea sort of thing for her to offer. And, of course, she must be Alice.

She bore down on me again carrying a plate on which reposed an enormous cake with a single flickering candle, and passed me a slice with her hand. Thank God the lights were off, because I don’t suppose she washes her hands more than once a week. But I’m probably being uncharitable.

I nibbled the edge, and it was seed cake – but a very dry, peculiar sort. I’d have hidden it somewhere, if she hadn’t reseated herself next to me and watched me eat, while devouring a large slice herself. The plate with the remains vanished on unseen hands into the Greater Darkness.

James reappeared suddenly at my elbow, bearing a bottle, and tried to refill my cup, which was already full.

‘Hi, Alice! I see you found Alice, Tish,’ he said in a slurry voice, swaying slightly.

‘Are you James’s wife?’ she screamed, sounding surprised. (I don’t know why.)

‘Yes – congratulations about the baby. Oh …’ I remembered the present and fished it out of my bag. ‘Here.’

She seemed inordinately pleased with the rattle and bibs, peering at them in the gloom and murmuring brokenly, ‘Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse!’ Finally, still muttering ‘Mickey Mmmmouse …’ she fell back against the sofa, apparently asleep.

James had disappeared again and, although I thought of trying to find him to tell him not to drink any more or take anything he shouldn’t, I began to feel a little strange … but then, I’ve had this funny tummy for ages now. I ought to see the doctor about it. It wasn’t the wine, because I only took a few sips to take the taste of the horrible seed cake out of my mouth.

Strange how the candle flames seemed to grow larger and larger and dance with a strange vitality of their own! I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Then someone put on George Melly singing ‘The Joint Is Jumpin’’ and it struck me as so funny that I laughed until I cried, though no one heard me since the music was too loud.

I must have closed my eyes for a minute then, because when I opened them there was a Pekinese dog with long blond ears glaring down at me.

I blinked, and the Pekinese resolved itself hazily into a snub-nosed girl with long, light hair who straightened and, still with her eyes fixed on me, began to back slowly away until she vanished into the blackness beyond the candle flame.