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 doesn’t seem much point in my cooking dinner if you are going to spoil your appetite before you even get home!’ I snapped. ‘Not that I ever know when you’re going to deign to arrive these days anyway.’
‘I can’t help having to work late,’ he said sulkily.
‘You can help stopping off at pubs on the way home, though!’
‘I need to unwind after a hard day at work. And if there was something more appetising than vegetable curry waiting for me when I got back, it might give me a bit more incentive to rush home.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with vegetable curry! And how do you expect me to cook anything Cordon Bleu when it’s got to be kept hot for hours on end waiting for you to get back? I— Where are you going?’
‘Out for another pasty!’ he said, and slammed off before I could even mention the fresh fruit salad.
I’d gone to bed (with a headache) before he returned, and when I came down next morning discovered that he’d been brewing beer in the kitchen from a kit he’d bought from the supermarket months ago. From the look of it, he’d been drunk when he got the idea.
The top of the cooker was covered in sticky brown goo, with about a pound of coagulated sugar heaped and drifted all over it. In the sink were two of my best, expensive, cast-iron enamelled casseroles in which the goo had hardened to a tight, brown skin, and coiled around them was the run-out hose of the washing machine, also sticky and revolting.
The place smelled like a brewery and the floor stuck to my slippers.
Why doesn’t he ever clear up after himself? And when I complained about the mess he went all hurt, and said he thought I’d be pleased that he was making home brew since I didn’t like him going out to drink beer.
‘When you used to make beer before, it didn’t stop you going out drinking as well!’ I said without thinking, and he slammed off to work in a rage, and without kissing me. (And God knows, it’s our only physical contact these days!)
It took me ages to clean everything up, and I’d only just finished and was sitting down with a cup of coffee before finally going upstairs to get on with my writing, when Bess decided to empty her entire stomach contents in the middle of the clean kitchen floor.
Mornings never used to be like this.
Later, the inevitable flowers arrived, but this time a spring arrangement of daffodils in a basket, which was actually quite nice.
It probably smelled good too, except that the mingled scents of burned malt and dog vomit had permanently invaded my nostrils.
Fergal: April,1999
‘IN THIS ISSUE: an exclusive pin-up of the man you all voted for –
as you’ve never seen him before!’
Trendsetter magazine
I’ve never seen me like that before, either. Where did they dig that one up from? I don’t have any hang-ups about nudity, but still!
Maybe it’s an old picture from my early days with Goneril? I can’t honestly say I remember everything I did during that first tour. Or maybe it’s some clever computer mock-up?
And that bear rug’s a definite cliché. I’m not surprised it’s wearing an anguished expression.
Chapter 10: Just Award
James seems to be making more of an effort to come home earlier, or at least tell me when he is going to be late, so I’m rewarding him with boring old meat and two veg meals with apple crumble and custard to follow, the kind of thing he really likes. I can see I will have to introduce Healthy Eating more gradually.
He’s taken me down to the pub a couple of times, too, for Dogfish Tail in a Basket. (Scampi, according to the menu – isn’t that illegal?)
But he still needs kick-starting before he helps me do anything to the house, and I began to feel like a prize nag before I got him to agree to spend all of the long Easter weekend sorting out the front garden, but it had to be done.
In
