Trisha Ashley - Good Husband Material

Fergal Rocco may have been too much for one woman, but he provides a rich vein to draw on: distilled essence of sex appeal. Just as well James has never read any of my novels! I may be a sort of literary vampire, but Fergal owes it to me after treating me like that, and anyway, slapping a series of his clones into shape is rather fun.

My pen name is Marian Plentifold and I’ve been turning out two novels a year ever since college. James annoyingly refers to the money I make from them as ‘your pin money’ and doesn’t like me to tell anyone about them because of their being romance. But I’d like to tell everyone , and anyway, Mother knows, which is the same thing.

Funnily enough, he made no objection when I had poetry published, probably because no one he knew read that sort of magazine. (Sometimes I suspect that only poets and aspiring poets read them: all very incestuous.)

He might be a bit jealous, too, since he has trouble signing his name on documents, and reads James Bond. Impure escapism.

He’s unfortunately not much of a New Man (more of an Old Man lately) and the only help he really gives me is to do the weekly large shop at the supermarket.

I was glad when he’d gone, so I could savour the feeling of being alone in the cottage, now looking amazingly different – light and spacious, with stripped and sealed mellow golden-yellow floors and freshly painted walls and paintwork. Once all my brightly coloured vases, bowls, patchwork cushions and throws are scattered about, it will look a lot livelier. And a basket or two of leaves, and later some bright rugs …

It’s surprising how little furniture we have considering we’ve been married for six years but, as I’ve mentioned, I hate second-hand furniture, except antique. There’s something very antiseptic about the expensive gloss of an antique piece.

My dresser and table are scrubbed and sealed, and I at least know where they came from. The commode has had a Total Baptism by stripping solution, and I don’t think many germs could stand up to that. James has now waxed and polished it, and I must admit that it looks very nice in the hall.

I got him to remove the bowl and screw down the lid (he suggested seriously that we keep our gloves in it!) and have told him not to mention to anyone what it was. I neither know nor care what he’s done with the bowl, except that it isn’t in the house.

Later I measured up our bedroom window and made out the order for some bright curtains (tough luck, James!), then set out with an ecstatic and panting Bess to look for the postbox. I wouldn’t have taken the stupid dog except that she can’t be trusted not to Do Something in a fit of pique if left behind.

Strangely enough it was the first time I’d walked into the village. All our journeys have been in the car: the supermarket, the DIY centre, the common to give Bess a run. We know that Nutthill has a village shop, infants’ school and bus service, and is quite pretty and peaceful, but that’s about it.

I can’t imagine why it’s called Nutthill, either, because it’s pretty flat around here.

It was with an unusually exposed feeling that I closed the door and strode off down to the lane, and, glancing across the jungle of our front garden, I was just in time to see next door’s curtains twitch and a pallid, moon-shaped face retreat behind the glass.

Bess immediately squatted in an unladylike posture on the narrow country road and assumed a determined expression, so I got as far upwind as the lead would allow and looked around the countryside with its dotting of picture-postcard cottages.

February is perhaps not a time of year when the countryside looks its best – there’s a sort of fuzzy greyness over everything, like mould.

In the distance a small squat church tower appeared over the top of some dark and gloomy trees, which might be yew, but little more of it could be glimpsed even when we walked past the churchyard, because the high wall and trees conspired to shut out any further view.

There were some interestingly ancient-looking monuments set among the short green turf, which I would have explored despite the biting wind if I hadn’t had Bess with me.

After some searching I spotted the postbox nestling inside a carefully clipped niche in the holly hedge. Gleaming with newly replenished paint, it looked as small and insubstantial as a bird-box on a post, but I pushed the letter in and walked on to look at the shop.

It was one of a row of little cottages, but the original window had been replaced by larger panes of thick greenish glass, and the displaying space was added to by an overflow of assorted goods over the concrete frontage: boxes of vegetables and sacks of potatoes jostled with hoes, rakes and spades, and a large and garishly painted selection of garden gnomes.

The low doorway was festooned with wellingtons on strings, and it all looked a bit Enid Blyton: by rights there ought to have been an elf behind the counter in a long striped apron.

It was dark and, as I halted on the threshold to let my eyes adjust, a voice from the murk instructed briskly, ‘No dogs, please! There’s a hook outside to tie it to.’

There was, too, half hidden by the onions and potatoes. A little wooden plaque above it, tastefully executed in poker-work, said ‘DOGS’, with a languorous hand pointing downwards, rather Michelangelo.

‘Sit!’ I commanded, tying Bess up. She whined and tried to jump up at me, only the lead was too short and she fell back, puzzled.

When I ventured in, a small, wrinkled woman had appeared behind the wooden counter. She smiled at me, a smile that stretched from earring to earring, showing teeth set singly and far apart, like rosebushes in gravel, but her eyes were sharp and full of curiosity.

‘Sorry about that, dear, but it’s the Law, you know – no dogs in shops what sell food. I’m a dog-lover myself. What sort would yours be, then?’

‘Borzoi,’ I replied, taking in the serried ranks of jars and tins and packets jammed from floor to ceiling all round – not to mention all sorts of things hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and the jars of sherbet dabs and other comestibles on the counter.

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Borzoi.’

‘Oh – Bourgeois . One of them foreign breeds. Labradors, I like. Nothing like a nice Labrador.’

‘She’s “an Aristocrat of the Russian Steppes” actually,’ I told her, quoting from The Borzoi Owner’s Handbook , which I had bought in the hope that it would tell me the stupid creature would acquire brain cells when mature.

‘A Bourgeois,’ she murmured, committing it to memory. ‘What can I get you, now?’

Since I’d been drawn inside by sheer curiosity this momentarily stumped me, but then my eye fell on a basket of tangerines and I said hastily, ‘Four pounds of tangerines, please.’

Don’t ask me why four pounds – it just came into my head.

‘Four pounds it is,’ said the woman. ‘That’ll be a lot of tangerines, then?’

‘Yes …’ A picture from my Complete Book of Home Preserving (a recent book club choice) flashed into my brain. ‘I’m making tangerine marmalade.’

‘Oh, yes?’ she said brightly, measuring out tangerines into a large set of scales and then wrapping them up in a bit of newspaper. ‘Right, then – you’ll be wanting some sugar, I expect? Granulated do?’

Weakly I agreed, and again when she suggested a lemon (why a lemon?). But when she started hauling out expensive-looking Kilner jars from under the counter I hastily said I had lots of empty jars, which I have. I’ve been collecting them in anticipation of such country pursuits, though I didn’t expect to be doing them quite so soon after moving in!

Disappointed, she thrust the jars back with her foot.