Good Husband Material. Trisha Ashley

      ‘Sorry. Where’s Mother?’

      ‘Gone to the off-licence. She said the library, but when did she ever go to a library? She doesn’t fool me one bit and never has. I answered the phone.’

      ‘I know, I can hear you. I thought you never answered the phone?’

      ‘Yes, I answered the phone, and I never answer it.’

      ‘Then why did you answer it today, Granny?’

      ‘Don’t whisper, I can’t hear you. I don’t know why I bothered to answer this pesky thing. I won’t do it again.’

      ‘Granny, I went to the hospital today because I thought I had cancer, but I haven’t. Isn’t that wonderful?’

      ‘Cancer? I’m Scorpio. Not that I believe in all that nonsense. Your mother does, more fool her. What have you taken up astrology for? I don’t want my charts read!’

      ‘But I haven’t taken astrology up!’

      ‘Then why did you want to know my birth-sign?’ she demanded reasonably. I gave up.

      ‘How are you, Granny?’

      ‘Your mother is trying to kill me.’

      ‘Kill you? But Granny … !’

      ‘Yes, kill me! Brown sherry bottles left on brown carpets and green wine bottles left on green carpets. She does it on purpose. Soon I’ll be falling over your mother.’

      ‘She’s not that bad, surely?’

      ‘“My daughter-in-law drinks,” I told the doctor, and do you know what he said? “Drink is necessary to sustain human life, Mrs Norwood.” “That may be,” I told him, “but sherry isn’t!” Then I told him where to stick his stethoscope, the patronising fool!’ She cackled evilly, and I winced.

      ‘Oh dear – you really shouldn’t have done that, Granny! And I thought you liked Dr Reevey.’

      ‘Stuffed shirt. Said he wasn’t going to come and see me again. Good riddance!’

      ‘Oh dear!’ I said again, helplessly. ‘You’ll run out of doctors at this rate.’

      ‘No such luck. They breed like flies, and always looking for old people to experiment on. That’s what they do in geriatric wards – experiment on old folk. That’s why you never hear of them coming out again,’ she said darkly.

      ‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Granny!’

      ‘Can’t hear a word you’re saying. Why does everyone whisper at me? Here’s your mother coming – I’m off.’

      And the phone went suddenly dead.

      It rang again almost immediately and I picked it up thinking it would be Mother – only it was just silence.

      ‘That’s funny,’ I told James as he walked into the room. ‘No answer again.’

      ‘Wrong number.’

      ‘N-no … the phone wasn’t put down and I’m sure there was someone there. That makes four I’ve had like that, and they always withhold their number.’

      ‘Oh, come on, Tish: it’s just a fault on the line! But if it will make you feel better I’ll phone British Telecom from work tomorrow and get it checked out. OK? I mean, it wasn’t like it was a rude message, or heavy breathing, or anything, was it?’

      ‘No,’ I conceded, feeling silly. ‘You’re right – I’m getting in a state about nothing.’ (Mind you, it wasn’t me who was imagining they were being followed everywhere, though he does seem to have dropped that idea pretty quickly.)

      I managed a smile, since he was looking a bit impatient, but later, when I was standing in the dark lane with Bess, the silent caller gnawed away in the back of my mind like a rat.

      I want everything in my Eden to be perfect – no worms in this apple!

      As I quietly let myself back in I heard James exclaim crossly, ‘Just stop doing it!’

      ‘Stop doing what?’ I demanded indignantly, sticking my head round the door, only to find him holding the telephone receiver.

      ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow,’ he added, putting the phone down.

      ‘Sorry – I thought you were speaking to me,’ I explained. ‘Who was that?’

      He stared blankly for a moment, then said: ‘Howard.’

      ‘What did he want? You sounded a bit terse with him. Stop doing what?’

      ‘Oh, you know Howard! He’s been moonlighting behind some pub bar and the Social Security have found out about it. Told him either to stop working or stop claiming benefit.’

      I lost interest (except for a faint surprise that Howard’s phone wasn’t cut off as usual for non-payment of bills) and went to bed, where I had another of those dreams that made me too guilty to look my husband in the face next day. Fergal featured largely in it.

      I am not responsible for my subconscious.

      Later, I bethought myself of another person I could tell about the Lump who would enter into the spirit of the thing: Mrs Deakin.

      She responded to the sordid details of my examination and reprieve with comfortingly horrific mastectomy tales and harrowing deathbed scenes she’d personally witnessed. All her relatives (female) must be either lopsided or dead. Strangely, I felt much better after this.

      Then she imparted the astonishing news that wife-swapping is rife in the village on the new estate! While personally disapproving of such goings-on, as a novelist I feel that I should know all about Life, so I pumped her for more details. (I hope the rumour never reaches James’s ears – men are so strange about that sort of thing.)

      Running out of wife-swapping stories at last, she changed gear and added a lengthy run of village history for good measure.

      ‘There was a man …’ she began, resting her elbows and bosom on a stack of sugar bags. Most of her best village stories start like that, or, ‘There was a woman …’

      ‘There was a man,’ she continued now, ‘lived at Rose Cottage down the other end of the village. His wife, Polly, she died two year ago. Used to teach leatherwork at the WI – a dab hand at making gloves and bags and such, she were, though a strange sort of woman.

      ‘Her husband, Reg, his hobby were breeding fancy guinea pigs, out in the garden shed. A farm worker, and a steady sort of man, you’d have said. Not over-bright, mind, but good-looking in a big, bullish sort of way.

      ‘Then Polly gets suspicious, like, that he was seeing someone else, so one night she creeps out after him when he goes down to the Dog and Duck.’

      ‘What made her suspicious?’

      ‘Clean underpants! Yes, every day he was demanding a clean pair!’

      ‘R-really?’

      ‘She was right, too – he was carrying on with a London widow what had just moved into one of they bungalows. But, as I say, Polly were a strange sort of woman and she didn’t say anything at first, thinking this smart London lady would get tired of her Reg soon, and then she could make him suffer for it at her leisure. Only one day she finds all their Post Office saving taken out, and spots the widow swanning along in a new fur jacket, and put two and two together.’

      ‘How awful! What did she do?’

      ‘Threw his traps out into the street and locked the doors against him. A fine row he made when he come back, too! But after a bit he picks his stuff up and goes over to the widow’s.

      ‘Next day he comes back for his guinea pigs, but Polly says she sold ’em. He was fair murderous since they was some fancy kind he’d been breeding for years, but that was that.’