Good Husband Material (32 page)

‘No, I certainly won’t!’ I assured him, thinking that in a few months I will be quite incapable of running anywhere! ‘And I’m glad you’ve taken it so well, James.’

He gave a snort. ‘How on earth do you think you’re going to manage? What about the mortgage, the practical arrangements? I don’t think you realise just how much is involved. And what am I supposed to do about somewhere to live? I can’t stay in the flat for ever.’

‘I do realise what’s involved, and I can manage very well as long as I don’t have to give you any lump sums immediately. We can get the furniture, and car and your radio equipment and everything valued, and make an equal division. That is – I suppose you
are
going to let me have the house?’

‘I suppose so,’ he replied sulkily. I don’t expect he thought I’d have worked it all out, and was hoping I wouldn’t be able to manage financially without him.

He cast a disparaging glance around the kitchen. ‘Since I’ve been living in the flat I’ve rediscovered how much more comfortable modern houses are. If we’d got back together I was going to suggest we move to a big modern, detached house in a couple of years, maybe on that new estate at Lower Nutthill.’

Move to a horrible modern box, just when I’d got my little cottage how I wanted it? Is he mad?

He continued on, oblivious. ‘I suppose we can work it out to be fair to both of us – but I hope you’re right about being able to manage.’

I could see he didn’t really expect me to be able to, and was perhaps even counting on my running back to him soon and begging him to return.

‘As long as I keep writing I won’t starve to death, James,’ I assured him cheerfully. ‘This American contract is going to be very lucrative. Do you want any of the furniture and things? What about the wedding presents?’

He said he didn’t want to burden himself with a lot of junk (our wedding presents were not junk – I wrote the list myself!) but he would like the CD player, TV, video, etc. I said that was fine (I can always rent a little TV), so long as they all came out of his share at the Reckoning – along with the car, which of course he’s still got.

I insisted we go to see a solicitor I’ve heard of to get everything in writing and set the divorce in motion and he reluctantly agreed, then said, very seriously, ‘There’s just one more thing!’

I wondered what on earth could be coming. I knew that mood of sweet reason wouldn’t last!

‘The Shack – I can’t move all that stuff until I’ve bought another house. Can I come here in the evenings and use it? I won’t bother you. I’ll use the side gate.’

I didn’t really want him trailing in and out, but equally I didn’t want to spoil the
entente cordiale
(such as it was) either, so I said reluctantly, ‘I suppose so – though I want the whole lot moved as soon as possible
, especially
the aerial.’

He got up to go, relieved of his most pressing worry. He’d been more grieved at the idea of being parted from his radio than from me. Bess looked relieved, too. I’m glad the stupid bitch is staying. I’ll get her made mine in writing, while James is still in Reasonable Mode.

I escorted him off the premises, wondering why on earth he didn’t just move in with Howard and Alice and dear little Wendy. They could be one big happy family.

As I closed the gate, Nerissa skimmed to a halt in one of those flat thin sports cars, like a red credit card on wheels.

‘Hi, Tish!’ she called gaily, but her huge brown eyes were on James, who was transfixed, though that might have been by the car.

‘Is this your husband? You didn’t tell me he was
sooo
handsome!’

‘Didn’t I?’ I said. ‘Yes, this is James – James, Nerissa.’

‘Actually, I wondered if I might persuade you down to the pub for a drink, Tish,’ she cooed. ‘Only Fergal’s just so busy at the moment, and I did enjoy our little chat. But maybe you and James were just going out?’

‘James is going out – I’m staying in,’ I said concisely. Becoming bosom friends with Fergal’s fiancée was too masochistic a prospect for me. ‘Some other time, perhaps.’

‘Actually, I was thinking of having a quick one at the Dog and Duck myself, if you’d settle for my company?’ James offered eagerly.

‘Love to,’ she said promptly, then added with a glance at me, ‘If Tish doesn’t mind my hijacking her gorgeous husband!’

Only the best butter, I thought. But it was certainly working on James, who was halfway into the car already.

‘That’s all right – I’ve finished with him,’ I told her. ‘You can have him.’

As they drove off I read the expression on James’s face clearly: he thought I’d be raging with jealousy, and he was also doing Fergal one in the eye by going off with his girl.

I’m not sure what Nerissa was thinking. Or
if
she was thinking.

I haven’t seen James to speak to since the night he went off with Nerissa, but he pops round to the Shack most evenings. I could watch him unobserved from the bedroom, but it would be pointless because he’s totally uninteresting.

Bess is now afraid of being left alone in the house in case James or the Wrekins come to drag her off again, but conversely, Toby seems much more laid-back and less snappy without James about the place.

Of course, I had Mother sobbing and incoherent on the phone, saying she’d done her best for me, and it wasn’t her fault if I’d turned out a mess and ruined my life. Anyone would think I was a heroin addict turned prostitute the way she went on.

If she hadn’t interfered I would probably have had a happier – if shorter – relationship with Fergal than I found in my marriage.

I love Mother, but I like her less and less as I get older …

However, I at last feel calm enough to go and ask her face to face why she lied about Fergal’s letters and calls, without physically assaulting her (I think), and I could combine the visit with a quick look at maternity clothes.

In loose things you wouldn’t know I was pregnant yet, but I don’t have many loose things. The maternity clothes in magazines are all very strange, though I suppose you can’t do much with something shaped like a blancmange except put a frill round it.

What
am
I going to do about the Incubus?

Come to think of it, there is nothing I can do.

I’ve noticed some funny sensations lately, which might be the Incubus stirring …

This can’t be happening to me!

The hospital has pressingly invited me to go for an antenatal check-up and a scan on 26 October. I’m to drink gallons of water and not go to the loo beforehand, but also to take an early morning sample, mid-flow, for the clinic.

Aren’t these two directions somewhat conflicting? Ought I to read up on what horrors are in store? I’m dreading it.

James and I had a fairly painless meeting last week in front of a strange solicitor who seemed to find it all very amusing. A separation is being drawn up, as complicated as the division of Siamese twins, and we’re going in for the quickest quickie divorce possible. (James balked a bit at this point, but mention of Little Snookums Wendy’s letters seemed to work wonders.)

Just as we were about to part, James remarked out of the blue that I was looking rather fat.

I told him I’d put on weight, but thought it suited me (ho, ho!), and he said I shouldn’t let myself go just because I was living alone now.

Pig!

Fergal: October 1999

    
‘Nympho Nordic blondes in sexy sauna scandal reveal all!’

Sun

Thought they already had.

The papers must be having a Bad News Day.

Wonder why these articles never seem to bear any resemblance to events as I and the rest of the band remember them. Their fiction is always stranger than the truth.

Maybe we’re inhabiting a parallel universe but not, despite what the newspapers may say, a permanently horizontal one.

Carlo’s fiancée is giving him hell.

Felt really sick this morning, but it was just nerves about going to the hospital. I wish I hadn’t read the books and was still in a state of (semi) blissful ignorance.

First I had the scan, in a sort of grimy little Portakabin round the back of the hospital.

I was bursting, because after the mid-stream sample I thought I’d better top up a bit, as it were.

I had to strip off to my undies behind an inadequate curtain and put on a funny cotton gown. I wasn’t sure if it tied at the front or the back, but mine had lost its tapes so it didn’t much matter.

Then I lay on a table and had hot oil rubbed into my stomach, like a sacrificial Bride of Frankenstein, before the girl ran a probe thing over my bump. A picture formed on a TV screen, but she said nothing while she pushed it to and fro, until I eventually demanded to know whether she’d found it, or wasn’t I pregnant after all?

She laughed, the heartless hag. ‘Of course I’ve found it! Look.’ And she pointed to what looked like some alien creature crawling along a sea bottom – and I have a blurry grey photo to prove it.

When I was dressed again (oily enough to stir-fry, but dressed), and had – oh joy! – been to the loo, it was time for the antenatal clinic which is, of course, miles away.

There was another long wait before I was ushered off with six others into a cubicle room where I had to strip off yet again and put on another little dressing gown.

We emerged into an inner holding pen clutching plastic bags with our clothes in, like prison camp inmates and, since the dressing gowns were all very short midget length, the only sound in the room was that of thighs unpeeling from plastic chairs.

Finally it was my turn, and I suppose the doctor spoke English, because the nurse seemed to understand what he was saying. He smiled a lot and I felt like telling him it was nothing to smile about.

After the unspeakable examination I stood in humiliated silence on the scales, had my blood pressure taken, and answered questions, some downright insulting. Do I look as if I change my bed partners every night and twice on Saturday? I don’t even change my library books that often!

I was assured that everything seemed normal, and asked whether my dates were right, but unless this was the Second Coming, they had to be.

I was not to worry about that early light bleeding.

I was not to worry.

(Well, that’s all right then, I thought – I’ll just stop.)

On the way out, the nurse handed me about fifty leaflets on things like smoking during pregnancy, diet and sterilisation (bottles, not people – too late). Two were in Urdu.

How wonderful to emerge free into the weak October sunshine! I don’t ever want to go there again. Still, most of my appointments are with my doctor.

I suppose I could just turn up at the maternity ward when I was in labour without all this? They could hardly refuse me! I don’t feel any inclination to tell anyone about the baby yet, either.

When I got home I had a long soak in the bath.

The iron pills they gave me have led to ingrowing constipation. I must get some more figs. I’m supposed to eat a balanced diet, and Bess had better have one too – since she was either expecting, or swelling in sympathy, I had the vet look at her and it’s the former. How could she do this to me?

He says the puppies should arrive about the end of November, since I know when it happened, though not which awful mutt is the father!

I thought it best to descend on Mother without warning, so it was something of an anti-climax to find her out lunching again with Dr Reevey. What happened to run-off-their-feet GPs?

Granny says he specialises in diseases of the rich, but likes to practise on the National Health patients first.

She’d been watching
Gone With the Wind
on video, while eating chocolate creams, which she said was the perfect combination. To get her full attention I had to stand between her and Rhett Butler and raise my voice.

‘Granny, you know when I came to stay with you that time, the summer before I started university?’

Sighing, she turned down the sound. ‘Course I do. I’m not daft! You’d split up with that nice, dark boy – the singer – Freddy.’

‘Fergal. He wanted me to go on tour with him to America, and I wanted to do my degree and wait for him to come back.’ I paused, puzzled. ‘The degree seemed important at the time.’

‘Well, didn’t ask you to marry him, did he? You’d have been a hanger-on. One of them gropies.’

‘Groupies. And no, he never mentioned marriage. But the thing is, Granny – I mean, I don’t know if Mother’s told you, but I met him again recently. He’s bought the big house in the park right behind the cottage.’

‘I don’t hold with carryings-on and such,’ she said severely, giving me her full attention.

‘It’s nothing like that! But we got talking and it turns out that after we split up he sent me lots of letters and even phoned me, but I never heard anything about it. Do you think Mother purposely hid them?’

‘Of course she did! Didn’t think he was good enough for you. She wanted a big wedding, grandchildren and you living nearby. Wouldn’t have had all that if you’d gone off with Fergus, would she?’

‘Fergal. No, I don’t suppose she would. But thanks to her, I never got the chance to find out! I came today to have it out with her.’

‘Pointless: she doesn’t know the truth from fairy tales half the time. That doctor had better watch himself.’

‘He isn’t serious, is he?’

‘Looking that way. Of course, he doesn’t know she’s the next thing to an alcoholic.’

‘She isn’t that bad!’

‘I’ve got my photos,’ Granny said, with one of her sudden, baffling changes of subject.

‘What? Which photos?’

‘Yes, I’ve got my photos. You wanted to see them. Fetch that album from the table.’

Puzzled, I did so, and she riffled through the pages until she found what she wanted.

‘Here we are: Bernard and me in Russia.’

‘Oh – it’s what you were telling me about on the phone! You were in Russia when I was born.’

‘Yes. You wanted to see them.’

‘I wanted to know—’

‘This is us outside the hotel. Funny people, the Russkies – seemed to think we wanted to see a lot of modern factories and hospitals, but I soon put them right.’