Good Husband Material. Trisha Ashley

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      It was one of a row of little cottages, but the original window had been replaced by larger panes of thick greenish glass, and the displaying space was added to by an overflow of assorted goods over the concrete frontage: boxes of vegetables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.

      ‘That’s all, I think,’ I said firmly, but even so, she managed to add two packets of jar labels and waxed discs to my purchases before I got away, having spent rather more than I intended.

      I was aware of her absorbed gaze through the window as, hampered by the insecurely wrapped tangerines, which threatened to break out of their newspaper bundle at any moment, I untied Bess, frantic and drooling.

      As I made my way along the lane something compelled me to look back; in the distance a small figure stood planted sturdily in front of the shop, staring after me. I gave a kind of half-wave, then, feeling uncomfortably aware of the eyes boring into my back, hurried on.

      Even before I turned into our garden gate I could hear faint shouting, high-pitched and very penetrating, and when I got the front door open it revealed the astonishing range and power of a parrot’s lungs to the entire village. Possibly even the whole county.

      How amazing it is that something the size of an over-stuffed budgie can produce so much noise! I lost no time in rushing into the living room and throwing a cloth over the cage. Bloody bird.

      Silence reigned. Sometimes I wish that I could leave him permanently covered, but that would be cruel, even if he is the parrot equivalent of a mental defective.

      He was left to me by an elderly neighbour, since I’d looked after the creature once when she was taken into hospital. He came together with a small legacy, and unfortunately I couldn’t keep the money and refuse the parrot.

      He was supposed to be very ancient, but years have passed and, though the legacy has gone, Toby hasn’t. There’s nothing more determined on life than a parrot. He’s a dirty bundle of grey feathers touched with crimson, noisy and vicious – and doesn’t biting the hand that feeds you prove he’s stupid?

      When I came back from the kitchen with a cup of coffee the shrouded, silent cage seemed to reproach me. I uncovered it and cautiously filled up the seed pot with the Super Expensive Parrot Mix he favours, and he rushed up to it on his horrible crinkled grey feet as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. All was peaceful – if you can ignore the ghastly grindings and crackings of a busy beak.

      Sipping my coffee, I looked up tangerine preserve in the book. I’d make the marmalade this very afternoon, before James could return and point an accusing finger at the psychedelic citrus spoil-heap.

      The recipe seemed straightforward enough, and soon I was stirring the bottom half of my pressure cooker, entirely full of liquid with bobbing bags of pips and peel in it. (The book said a muslin bag, but I haven’t got one, so in the end I used the feet of a pair of clean tights.)

      Then, just at the stage where the marmalade was going critical,