Good Husband Material. Trisha Ashley

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.’

      Mrs Deakin paused and shifted her weight so that one bosom slid off the sugar bags into the tray of toffee apples.

      ‘But didn’t they ever make it up? What happened?’

      ‘After a bit the widow chucks old Reg out and goes off back where she come from, and he moves in with another farm worker in a tied cottage.

      ‘No one seen much of Polly for a long time – preoccupied, she was. Then one day she startles the whole village by appearing in a new fur jacket. Sumptuous it were, the fur all long and glossy and a mighty unusual colour. I never seen one like it. “What sort of fur would that be, Polly?” I asked her, and she give me a strange smile.

      ‘“Nutthill Nutria,” she says.’

      ‘B-but surely …?’ I stammered, startled.

      ‘Just goes to show what weak, untrustworthy creatures men be.’ Mrs Deakin fixed me with her bright eye. ‘Even the ones what look most steady, like Reg.’

      ‘Not all, though!’ I assured her, smiling, for even if he had the time, James would not have the inclination. If you sliced him up you would probably find ‘Good Husband Material’ running all the way through, like a stick of rock.

      ‘You have to watch them all the time,’ she assured me darkly. ‘Even if the spirit’s willing, the flesh is weak!’

      I thought with sudden unease of Vanessa the secretarty, then firmly pushed the idea out of my head.

      Mrs Peach would be very bored if she watched James all the time now he’s hooked on amateur radio. All sorts of stuff arrives for him with each post. He must have answered every ad in the ham radio magazine, hence all the holes I found cut out of it. He has also joined a nationwide club for enthusiasts and is going to a meeting of the local branch next week, plus some sort of evening class.

      If he is so busy that he can’t even take me out for a meal, how come he can fit this in? And what about the cost?

      Still, perhaps it will be one of his shorter crazes. Photography lasted ten hellish weeks, during which I couldn’t move a muscle without appearing in deathless, glossy colour. And he wanted to take pictures of me without my clothes on! But I soon told him what I thought of that and added that if he wanted a hobby he should start getting the garden straight, though I have come to the conclusion that he only enjoyed reading about self-sufficiency. When it comes down to rain and muddy wellies he isn’t interested.

      But we’re well into April, after all, and someone has to make a start, so on the first reasonably clement day I went out, notebook in hand, to draw up a plan of campaign.

      The front garden didn’t take long:

      1) Cut hedge.

      2) Dig over front garden and returf, I wrote and then, as I turned for a last look, it struck me that what the front of the cottage cried out for (besides repainting) was:

      3) Rose, climbing.

      Satisfied, I went round the side of the house, soon to be partially blocked by an Instant Garage, and stood, daunted, on the brink of the waist-deep sea of weeds that formed the back garden, already springing back to life after a short winter’s nap.

      No trace remained of the path I had once beaten to the fence, and I never had found the dustbin. A new plastic one stood forlornly on the edge of the wilderness like the Last Outpost of Civilisation.

      I could hear the cackling of Mrs Peach’s hens, and when the breeze changed direction, smell them.

      Girding up my wellies, I waded out to the garden shed and found it surprisingly complete apart from one cracked and starred window. Inside was a great quantity of cobwebs, with and without occupants, a heap of broken plant pots, a rake with three prongs missing, a heap of mouldering sacking that might contain anything, and the china pot out of the commode. Clearly a job for James.

       4) Clear out shed, mend window (James).

       5) Scythe weeds. (Or sickle weeds? Is there a difference?)

      The long, fenced sides of the garden are covered by small, flattened, spreading trees, forming a dense mass of intertwining branches, which look a bit like the espaliered fruit trees I’ve seen in books. If so, I only hope they aren’t as ancient and dead as they look.

      It was all very daunting and would take a lot of hard work and yet more money before it became the pretty cottage garden I longed for.

      The contrast with the smooth, well-nibbled turf of the park was revolting.

      A few days later, when I popped into Mrs Deakin’s to buy dried figs, she told me that the Hall had finally been sold, but she hadn’t managed to find out who to. Workmen have moved in, but they’re not local, and she’s further hampered in her investigations by the main entrance and lodge to the house being on the far side of the park in Lower Nutthill. I suppose I’ll soon have to stop exercising Bess in the over-grown rear drive, which is a nuisance.

      The house is called Greatness Hall, though Mrs Deakin says it was once Great Ness (which makes even less sense to me).

      ‘Some say it’s been bought by one of them foreign opera singers,’ suggested Mrs Deakin hopefully. ‘That Monster Rat Cavaliero.’

      ‘Greatness Hall would certainly sound like the right address,’ I agreed, puzzling over who the Monster Rat could be. Then it clicked: Montserrat Caballé.

      ‘They say the Dower House once stood where your cottages are, but the lady what lived there went mad and set fire to it and perished,’ she was blithely continuing.

      ‘How exciting! The surveyor did say that one or two parts of the house walls looked much older than the rest.’

      ‘A touch of Greatness!’ she giggled. ‘Now, dear, here’s your dried figs. Do your insides a world of good.’

      ‘Actually, I’m making fig and sesame seed chewy bars.’

      ‘Doesn’t matter what you do with them – clean your tubes out a treat, these will.’

      The fig and sesame bars are tasty, but not only do they have the texture of sand-filled sandwiches, they look like something Bess does when she’s constipated. I gave Toby a bit and he loved it, but Bess gulped a dropped piece down and then looked as if she wished she hadn’t. I sincerely hope they don’t clean her tubes out.

      James came home even later than usual, smelling of beer, and admitted he’d called in at the Dog and Duck for a quick pint.

      ‘If I’d known, I could have met you there!’ I said, hurt.

      ‘I didn’t plan it,’ he said irritably, ‘I just felt like a pint on my way past.’ He poked around in his curry, then looked up, frowning. ‘I can’t seem to find the meat in this.’

      ‘There isn’t any – it’s vegetable.’

      He put the fork down. ‘Is there any cheese?’

      ‘Don’t you like the curry? I thought it came out rather well. And there’s protein in the peas and the brown rice, you know.’

      He pushed back his chair. ‘Never mind, I’m just not hungry. I had a pasty at the pub – corned beef and onion.’

      ‘There