Trisha Ashley - Good Husband Material

Dear old James – he’s just as handsome in his own way, and if we have the sort of love that grows steadily rather than bursts instantly into flames and dies quickly, that’s better, isn’t it? And even if he isn’t the world’s best lover (which is something I wouldn’t have realised, I don’t suppose, if I hadn’t had the world’s best lover), that isn’t his fault.

Is it?

Perhaps he’s a bit stuck in his ways sometimes, and admittedly he’s been behaving strangely since he found out about my sordid past, pointing out any mention of Fergal in the press or on TV.

There’s been quite a lot since the press suddenly discovered that he’s been quietly exhibiting paintings and selling them for years. You’d think they’d have connected Rocco the painter with Rocco the singer by now, but apparently not, until he outed himself, as it were, with this one-man exhibition. I always thought he’d abandoned his painting at the same time he’d abandoned me.

I don’t know why James has to make all these snide remarks about groupies and rock stars. Do I go on and on about his former girlfriend Vanessa, who went off and married someone else after helpfully presenting him with a replacement companion in the form of Bess the Stupid Bitch, and then turned up drunk at our wedding reception, where she peered critically at me through a positively funereal wreath of smoke and remarked blightingly, ‘He was always looking for a virgin to sacrifice to his career. I suppose you’re the next best thing.’

Cow.

Small, blonde and bubbly cow, now back to working for Drew, Drune and Tibbs as a secretary … She’s a bit tarty. In my head I call her the secretarty and if I’m not careful, one of these days it’ll slip right out.

Mind you, one of the things we originally had in common, James and I, was that we’d both been thrown over by someone else.

We seemed to have a lot in common … only lately we seem to have more not in common, if you see what I mean.

How did I get home from the gallery? I’ve no recollection of it, so I must have been running on automatic pilot, fired by a need to dive into my dark basement like a scared rabbit into its burrow, and be quiet for a while.

Quiet, that is, except for the muffled thumps and howls as Bess alternately throws herself at the kitchen door and vociferates her desire to be with me, and the deafening silence from Toby the parrot, building himself up for the wild eldritch shrieks my eventual appearance will generate.

I can deal with Toby. He can – and often does – manage to open his cage door and escape, but let me see him fight his way out of two layers of candlewick bedspread, that’s all I can say.

As for Bess, her idea of silent sympathy is to stuff her wet, germy black nose into my hand, which breaks up the train of thought, since I then have to go and wash the said hand. A dog’s nose is so unsanitary: if they haven’t got it stuck up another dog’s rear they’ve got it stuck up their own.

It’s odd how the mundane weaves its way in among your thoughts when you’ve had a shock, isn’t it?

Thoughts of Bess, and not having defrosted anything for dinner, and what time James would arrive back from seeing his client in Worcester, and whether the spirit would move the extremely evangelical born-again Christian girl on the third floor to try once more to convert me tonight, all performed a sort of mournful morris dance through my mind, bells muffled.

I could always get Bess to drool the girl to death. Death by Drooling would probably make a saint of her. In stained-glass windows she could be depicted dripping, with the sort of wholesome, earnest, sincere expression that makes you want to take pot shots with an air gun …

After a while I became aware of the flashing light on the answerphone, reached over and pressed the playback button.

‘Hi, James, this is Vanessa. You forgot your Filofax. I’ll just drop it in tomorrow morning in case you need it over the weekend. It’s no bother – I’m practically round the corner now. Around ten? Byeee!’

‘Find your own husband, you cow!’ I told the answerphone, and it bleeped thoughtfully.

‘Merry and Little!’ boasted a gratingly cheery voice.

‘Wrong, buster: big and miserable.’

But the next words made me sit up.

‘This is Merry and Little estate agents, regarding your offer for 2 Dower Houses, Nutthill. I’m pleased to say your offer has been accepted. Could you call us back at your earliest convenience?’

The cottage?

My cottage?

Part of my brain began to function cohesively. The vendor had accepted the offer we’d made for the cottage – an offer James insisted we made ludicrously low, in the hope, I’m sure, of having it rejected out of hand.

And I had let him, spineless wet object that I am!

It seems to me that rather than going all out for things I want, I’ve just been passively letting things happen to me. Except for the novels, of course. I’m determined enough there, though I always imagined myself as a writer living in the country, and now the realisation of that ambition is within my grasp.

A rosy vision of Eden beckons enticingly: James, his interest in gardening rekindled, growing vegetables; myself inside, writing busily by the light of a log fire, and a sleeping baby in an antique wooden cradle at my feet. A clock ticking, distant sounds of cows going to be milked, birdsong …

A room of my own, even.

Not just a corner of table to work on in a dark dining room, but a whole room just for me. The little bedroom with the gable window, I think, looking out at the park.

It’s time to put the past behind me and go forward, with James, towards the future we wanted.

Only it seems to have taken a hell of a long time to get here.

Lost as I was in this healing Elysian dream the sudden clicking on of the light was a painfully dazzling intrusion.

James stood in the doorway, looking almost as startled as I felt.

‘Tish? Why are you sitting in the dark? And why is Bess howling in the kitchen?’

As usual he let his coat and briefcase drop where he stood for the little fairies to come and pick up. They do, too: I must be mad.

‘Oh – hello, James. I was just – thinking.’ I attempted to contort my features into some semblance of a pleased smile, since it wasn’t his fault that he suddenly looked sober and unexciting. I’ve had intoxicating and exciting. Been there, seen it, done it, bought the self-igniting T-shirt.

‘Do you need darkness for thinking?’ he asked, puzzled,

‘You certainly don’t need light – all these magnolia walls may suit you, but they make the inside of my head twice as worth looking at as anything in the room other than my patchwork.’

Blink! went his sandy lashes, in that ‘I register what she just said but it didn’t make sense’ way of his.

‘Has Bess been out? What have you been doing?’

‘Bess hasn’t been out yet. Isn’t she supposed to be your dog? You take her out, it’s cold out there.’

‘But I haven’t got time – I’m meeting Gerry and Dave in an hour.’

‘Oh, you aren’t going out tonight, James! You’ve only just got back.’

‘It’s Friday,’ he protested, as though it were some immutable law.

It is an immutable law: Friday night out with ‘the boys’. Not for very much longer, though! And not for much longer will I have to suffer visitations from James’s friend Horrible Howard, who infested the flat for a couple of hours the other day. (He’s not really one of ‘the boys’, more one on his own.)

‘The offer we made for the cottage at Nutthill has been accepted, there was a message on the answerphone.’