positively roared, until the tears ran down her face. And not five minutes later I heard her repeating it to Granny! These West Indians have a strange sense of humour.’
‘So has Granny – that’s why they’re such good friends. And it was just a joke, after all.’
‘I can’t see anything funny in it. I’m at my wits’ end. I need a holiday. Now, if I could just get her off my hands for a week or two I could come and visit your sweet little cottage, couldn’t I? I’m just dying to see it. You have got a spare bedroom for Mummy, haven’t you?’
Panic gripped my heart and gave it a squeeze. ‘Oh, yes – two – but I’m afraid one is completely bare at the moment, and the other is going to be my office.’
‘Ah, yes, for your Writing,’ she said reverently. ‘How is it coming along, dear?’
‘It isn’t, there’s been too much to do. But at least I can have a room to myself here, and I’m about to start the next book.’
‘All my friends are so impressed when I tell them my little girl is a Writer!’
I winced, even though I get this sort of thing all the time. Then I braced myself to ask, ‘You haven’t been – well – drinking again, have you, Mummy?’
‘Oh, there’s the doorbell!’ she said brightly. ‘Must go, darling. I’ll let you know if I can arrange anything for Granny so that I can come and take a little holiday with you. Bye-ee!’ And the line went dead.
I hadn’t heard any doorbell, and I replaced the receiver with a feeling of deep depression. Mother generally has that effect on me.
James was immersed in his paper, oblivious both to me and to Bess, who was staring fixedly at the door. (Normal dogs whine.)
‘Bess wants to go out, James!’ I said loudly, but he pretended not to hear, so with a sigh of resignation I took the lead off the door.
Standing in the icy darkness of the lane waiting for Bess to perform, I thought: What a day!
‘You have remembered that I’ll be late home tonight, haven’t you?’ James said casually about a week later, preparing to dash out after breakfast.
He looked pretty good in his natty dark suiting, but I always think he would look even better striding about the heather in a kilt like his forebears did. He has that sort of look. Rugged. (Which he isn’t, really.)
‘Remember? How can I remember when you never told me in the first place?’ I exclaimed in surprise.
‘I told you days ago.’
‘But what about dinner? Just how late will you be?’
He looked annoyed at my perfectly reasonable question: ‘Don’t wait for me – I’ll pick something up.’
‘Eating junk food on the run isn’t healthy, James.’
‘Then I’ll go and eat at Howard’s afterwards, and stay overnight!’
‘Eating at Howard’s is even more of a health hazard. It’s all takeaways, and too dark to see what’s in them, because the electricity’s always cut off.’
‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Howard!’
‘You mean, apart from him being a drug-crazed, free-loading ageing hippie who’s never worked in his life?’
‘Howard’s all right – we were at school together,’ he protested, as if that qualified Howard as a member of the human race. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided: I’m staying there tonight.’
I didn’t say anything more, because if I hadn’t nagged him about junk food he probably would have come home instead. I don’t think I handled that too well.
After James had gone (with overnight bag, though Flit gun would have been more to the point) I went into the front garden and hammered the spike of the rotary dryer with unnecessary force into the rough grass. I can’t afford to keep using the tumble dryer all the time, although when you hang clothes out in March it’s a toss-up whether they are going to dry or be glazed like mutant frozen prawns.
With the first load of washing churning away I went up to my little writing room. I’d been working on the floorboards, which were not good enough to sand and seal, so I’d painted them cream and stencilled roses round the border.
Piled in one corner were light cardboard boxes filled with some of my varnished leaves. (James says two baskets of dead leaves are more than enough in one sitting room.) I had a brain wave, and soon there were drifts of golden leaves along the walls and piled in the corner opposite the door, where they whispered at the least small draught. It looked lovely, though I am very sure that James will say it is a weird idea. He is so stick-in-the-mud and staid about everything I do, yet he can go off and stay with Horrible Howard who really is weird.
By then the washing was done and, as I was hanging it out, the vicar called: a tall, thin, middle-aged man radiating an air of youthful enthusiasm, and wearing a bright purple T-shirt with his dog collar.
As he shambled up the drive with that strange gait some men have – knees turned out as though they have been kicked in the naughty bits and never recovered – I hastily swivelled the rotating dryer round to hide the more ancient and tatty items of my underwear. (I always put my undies in the middle with the shirts and so on round them, but I’d only just started.) The sooner we’ve tackled the back garden, so that the washing can be hung in decent obscurity, the better! However, the vicar came charging right round, stretching out his hand while still several yards away and, seizing my cold wet one in his, pumped it energetically up and down.
‘Strange lady!’ he exclaimed, excitedly.
‘Oh!’ I said doubtfully, taken aback. But it seemed that this was his name – rather an unfortunate one for a vicar.
‘Strangelady! And very pleased indeed to welcome you to our little parish. Ah! washing day, I see!’ he added, and bestowed a benevolent smile upon my black bra and shabby knickers. I went red as a beetroot.
‘Er … come in, er … Vicar?’ I invited, hastily backing away from the washing and opening the front door. (How do you address a vicar?)
Still, I recovered my equilibrium over coffee and biscuits while he admired a mercifully silent Toby, and The Bitch drooled adoringly over his knee, shedding long white hairs. (‘The Borzoi is devoted to one person, showing only aloof attention to others.’) She placed her paw on his knee whenever he stopped patting her, and assumed her best Starving Russian Aristocrat look at the sight of the biscuit tin.
(Yes, she really is the lost Anastasia.)
The vicar didn’t press me to attend church, which I rather expected, though he left me a copy of the times of the services and said we would be very welcome, and a copy of the parish magazine.
Just as he was about to leave, a florist’s van pulled up and delivered a bunch of cream roses. I didn’t need to read the card to know that it said: ‘To my lovely wife, from James,’ since he always does this when he’s got his own way or upset me. It makes him feel better.
‘Your birthday perhaps? An anniversary?’ hinted the vicar. ‘What lovely roses!’
‘Just a house-warming present,’ I muttered ungraciously, seeing him off. And the sort of gesture we couldn’t afford now – it must have cost a fortune to have them delivered all the way out here, and why cream roses? They would be invisible against all the pale walls.
If he wanted to give me a present I’d have preferred that brass stencil of vine leaves from Homebase.
You know, I used to think James’s profligacy with posies romantic, but really it’s easy enough to phone up a Teleflorist and read your credit card number. Feeling dissatisfied, I rammed the scentless and useless roses into a cream vase and stood them on a cream table against the cream wall, where they