Strained Relations

Episode 17: Strained Relations

    At last the longed-for Saturday has arrived! Jack took his truck up to London at crack of dawn this morning and by afternoon tea-time Yvonne’s all moved in.

    “She’s unpacked all her little spice jars,” he comes to report: “she said those little shelves I put in the pantry were just the thing; and she’s putting her feet up.”

    “That’s good. But you should of let me help.” –I’ve been relegated to baby-sitting duty and tea-making duty. Like, in the wings. If I was really into the rôle I’d make some scones. I can make scones, actually. Not as good as Mum’s and not nearly as good as Aunty Kate’s, so why bother to reveal the fact?

    “Hardly enough room to swing a cat with all the boxes and that, Rosie. We managed okay. She’s got a funny-looking lot of furniture, there,” he notes dubiously. “Half of it’s unpainted.”

    “Um, well, um, you mean the bedroom furniture, Jack? What she does, see, she puts these layers of, um, tablecloths, on those little bedside tables, um, boxes,” I concede limply as he corrects me, “and like, on the dressing-table,” I wait for him to correct that but he doesn’t, so what was under the layers of cloths must of been a table, all right, “and she’s got this nice piece of glass cut to size that she puts on top of the dressing-table.”

    “Ye-ah… That sofa’s passed its use-by date, I’d of said.”

    “No, um, the thing is, she drapes a lovely, um, I’m not sure if its a rug, anyway, a lovely cloth over it. And over the armchairs: she ties those up round the legs,” I explain clearly.

    “Nothing wrong with the armchairs. Nice dark green leather-look,” he objects.

    “Um, well, she got them at a garage sale,” I say weakly. “You’ll see, it’ll all look really pretty.”

    “If you say so.” He scratches his head. “Shoulda made John put body carpet in the main room. Those rugs of hers aren’t much.”

    This is true, especially when compared to John’s ancestral Persian ones. They are pretty, though, and they tone beautifully with the covers on the sofa and chairs. “She likes the vanished wood floors, Jack.”

    Dubiously he agrees, and since it’s time for a cuppa, I make one. John’s in the boathouse, working on the sailing dinghy again, that thing’s bottom need more attention than mine does! No, Jack, don’t let’s give him one of the fucking walkie-talkies so as I can fail to call him up because the thing’s on the blink and none of us has realised it— Too late, he's doing it.

    Isabel Potter sniffs. Fair warning. “What?” I croak.

    Isabel lowers her voice. There’s no need: there’s no-one in Potter, Ironmonger, on a blowy April day mid-week except us and, over by the hoes and rakes, a sulking Cora Potter, home with a wisdom tooth that she’s gonna have out before she’s a week older or Jim Potter’s name isn’t Jim Potter. Either that or she can put up with it and GO TO SCHOOL.

    “He said that the place looks like she’s got a family of Humpty Dumptys in there, all tied up in pudding cloths.”

    I wouldn’t of thought that Jack Powell could be so graphic. My jaw drops.

    “Exactly!” she says, misinterpreting the jaw.

    “Y— Uh, no, Isabel, I know he thinks her interior décor’s weird. Well, she got the idea out of a mag: it was all the rage a bit back, wasn’t it? Bows round everything. A lady down the street from Mum’s, well, she even tied her dining-chairs up in coloured—uh, they looked like pillowcases,” I admit weakly. “But the total effect’s very pretty!” I assure her on a desperate note.

    “You’ll never convince him of that,” she notes drily. “You know what they are, once they’ve got a notion in their heads. –Cora! Have you finished labelling those tools?”

    Cora approaches very, very slowly, horrible pout an’ all. “No. My tooth hurts,” she whines.

    “Then go up to bed.”

    “It’s boring,” she whines.

    “Well, that’s the option. You’re not going out in this wind, so it’s bed or give me a hand in the shop.”

    “Can’t I watch—”

    “No! If you’re fit enough to watch telly, you’re fit enough to label those tools!”

    “Then I’ll go to bed!” she roars, bursting into tears and rushing out.

    “I think that tooth really is sore, Isabel,” I say fairly.

    “Yes, but it’s been going on for nearly a year, now, off and on, and she’s refusing point-blank to go to the dentist!”

    “Yeah. Um, you putting the prices of your garden tools up?”

    “Jim decided that if they’d pay the prices the Garden Centre charges without blinking, they could ruddy well throw a bit of it our way. There’s more out the back at the old prices, though, if Greg needs—”

    I utter a hasty disclaimer, though noting he might need some in the future, and she says comfortably they’ll still be out the back, and we return to the gripping topic of Yvonne and/or Jack Powell. Li’s not offering to help with the move has to be gone over for the fourteenth time, of course, and Isabel has to know exactly how many times Jack’s showed his nose round the place in the last week.

    “He’s been finishing off the Thwaites’s cottage, mainly, Isabel,” I bleat pathetically. “Um, well, Yvonne’s usually with me during the day so, um—”

    “You can’t tell which of you he’s come to see,” she concludes glumly. And not inaccurately. Bugger it.

    Pauline Stout from Sloane Square Salon gives me the dinkum oil. Explaining that the reason Isabel Potter’s never told me is that it’s her sister, Julie Grigg, that was the lady in Jack’s life for some time, and Isabel doesn’t know. Being as how there is a Mr Grigg, not to say several little Griggs, and they don’t know, either.

    “My God, I had no idea! I’d put him down as a lonely widower, Pauline!”

    “I suppose he is. But he’s quite attractive, isn’t he?” She turns the water hose on and tests it carefully before rinsing the shampoo out.

    “Um, yeah!” I gasp as she drenches me. It’s very difficult to talk when your neck’s almost broken leaning back into a hairdresser’s pink basin so I wait until I’m upright and she’s rubbing me viciously with a big pink towel before croaking: “So, um, is it still going on?”

    “No, that’s it, you see!” she hisses. No need to hiss: on a cold, blowy April morning with rain threatening there’s only me and a blue-rinsed retiree, at present deaf to everything under the dryer and to boot buried in a mag, in Sloane Square Salon having our hair done. And Georgia’s not here, she’s doing a supplementary course in Portsmouth, on colouring, and today’s her day for it. “They broke it off about six months ago. Well, they weren’t managing to get together all that often, anyway, because Joe Grigg gave up the long-distance lorry-driving about three years back.”—Goddit, goddit. I thought maybe he was in the Navy, but it’s the same syndrome.—“And then Kimberly Grigg, that’s their eldest, she got engaged, and what with all the arrangements for the wedding and everything, um, well, I don’t know the absolute ins and outs of it,”—she does surprise me—“but Julie decided to give it away.”

    “Yeah, she’d found other hobbies,” I agree on a sour note.

    Pauline gives a snicker. “Something like that! Were you wanting a trim, Rosie?”

    “Um, well, is that included in the Special, Pauline?”

    “Not for them!” she hisses, eyeing the oblivious form under the dryer cautiously. “But I can give you the full shampoo, trim and set for half the price, yeah.”

    “Good, then I’ll have it, thanks, Pauline.”

    “It needs it,” she says happily, grabbing up the long scissors.

    Yeah, doesn’t it? Or so Yvonne’s told me. She could have done it for me, she is a qualified hairdresser, but I explained I’d better let Pauline do it because trade’s been slow over winter and she quite understood. I didn’t explain about wanting to get all the latest goss.’ from Pauline, but she probably understood that, too.

    “So how’s she getting on?” asks Pauline happily as she snips.

    “Mm?” I’m squinting at myself in the mirror: how much is she taking off, for God’s sake? “Who?”

    “Yvonne, of course!” Amazed that this wasn’t immediately apparent. The woman’s name hasn’t even been mentioned! Well, I did know the village was like that, didn’t I? Feebly I give my report. She tells me all about Jack thinking her furniture looks weird, down to the Humpty Dumptys in pudding cloths bit, but by now I’m not even mildly surprised.

    “We’re not going to the pub!”

    “I just thought it would be nice—”

    “John, we’re not going to the wanking pub, you know me and Greg can’t afford to get offside with the villagers!”

    “Very well,” the poor man says with a sigh. “I just thought it would be nice to go out for a drink.”

    “What about Baby Bunting?” I retort brilliantly.

    His father blinks. “Oh. Damn. Forgot. Sorry, darling. Um, well, perhaps Yvonne—”

    “I should think she’d quite like to have a drink, too, she is human, ya know!:”

    He doesn’t say anything about he’s paying her a fair sum to look after Baby Bunting what she hasn’t as yet done much of, and letting her have the cottage rent-free besides (did anyone think he wouldn’t win that one?), he’s too nice to. He does sigh, though, since he’s not a saint.

    On the whole a hubby that’s spent all day slaving over his boat (yep, again, he’s still on leave, this is what he does in his time off, apparently) and then eats up his frozen peas, instant mash and hamburgers consisting of steak mince from Tom Hopgood without even looking a word of complaint, and happily proposes going out for a nice drink and is then reduced to sighing because he’s married to a clot of a sociologist, not a wee wifey, is probably not a very happy hubby, so I croak: “Um, get a baby-sitter, drive over to Portsmouth, have a drink over there?”

    He brightens. “Of course, darling! Would you like to?”

    I would, and I think we might take Greg, only we discover he’s not in his flat, so he’s probably over at Jack’s or down at the Workingmen’s Club (they think he’s a jobbing gardener, right?), so we ring Katie and she is at Quince Tree Cottage, and so is Bridget. Funnily enough Euan’s not there. Hard to nip down for a night at the cottage mid-week when you’re performing and/or rehearsing wanking history plays at Stratford—right.

    Katie, on the other hand, isn’t either filming or rehearsing just at the moment. What she probably is doing is hiding, actually, because the fifth series of The Captain’s Daughter is currently going to air and is a roaring success. The punters love her American accent, and the American joint venture partners or whatever the Hell they officially are, the mob Brian’s got on hand to sop up half the cost of hiring all those stately ’omes and vintage cars, are thrilled by it. And she’s slated to appear on Parkinson next week as ever was in order to explain how she got the part and whether she really is an American (though the tabloids have already explained it all at length), and to tell the Great Viewing Public how she loves filming in all those stately ’omes. (She’s filmed inside one, count it, one, the rest are either sets or outside shots from a discreet distance, most of them using a double because it’s cheaper than using the actual Katie.)

    Exactly what Bridget’s doing at the cottage isn’t revealed. And I’ve taken John’s advice, for once, and haven’t asked. She immediately offers to baby-sit Baby Bunting but though we now know she’s besotted by him, we don’t think this is fair and I tell her I’ll see if one of the Potter kids can do it, but Georgia Carter’s right there, doing what, unspecified, and immediately volunteers.

    After I’ve accepted rapturously and hung up, the baby’s father croaks: “Is she reliable?”

    “John, just because she wears a lilac smock over a red miniskirt and black tights and a label on one tit that says ‘Georgia’ and her hair in spikes, doesn’t mean she’s not reliable.”

    “You’re forgetting the nose ring,” he says glumly. –He’s made great strides, though: when I first came to the cottage he didn’t even know who Georgia was.

    “Actually it’s a nose clip, Christine Carter won that round. She’s very reliable: she’s got little brothers and sisters and loads of nephews and nieces that she’s baby-sat forever.”

    He gives in and asks me what the logistics are. I don’t smile, it’s a serious enquiry: the Herlihy sisters came down on the train. No, Perry Horton didn’t give them another lift, and we still don't know how or why he gave them the lift the first time and I haven’t asked, okay? At least Bridget hasn’t been seen around the village on his arm. And Mrs Carter hasn’t spotted her heading up Upper Mill Lane, either.

    So Yvonne keeps an eye on Baby Bunting while John and I drive over to the village to pick Georgia, Bridget and Katie up. And to make sure Georgia’s mum knows where she’s gonna be. When we get back to the cottage Georgia asks a lot of sensible questions about where the fresh nappies are and does he get a sip of rosehip if he's roaring and like that, so John’s mollified.

    And off we go for a lovely night in Portsmouth! Some men would feel like a nana being in charge of four younger women but John not only doesn’t appear to, he’s genuinely unconscious that there’s anything to feel like a nana about. And we go to a really nice pub and a lovely time is had by all. Up until about now.

    John comes back from the bar with a funny look on his face.

    “What’s up? Um, the idea of salt and vinegar crisps with Jamaican coffee revolts you?”

    “No, I’ve got used to it!” he says, smiling, but with that funny look still hovering.

    “Then what’s up?”

     Yvonne and the Herlihy sisters are looking at him anxiously.

    “Er, well, bumped into Perry Horton. Didn’t expect to see him here.”

    “Shit, no! I wouldn’t of thought this was his stamping gr—” Light dawns. I avoid Yvonne’s eye while at the same time I’m aware she’s trying to avoid mine: she knows my speculations about Bridget and Perry Horton.

    “No, it’s far too genteel!” agrees the innocent Katie with a blithe laugh. “What is he doing here?” She peers round the bar. “And is he wearing those antique jeans and that sanctified sweater?” she wonders with a loud snigger. –She wouldn’t haven’t thought of the last herself, she got it off Euan and he got it off one of the super-pseuds at Stratford. Holey, geddit?

    “Have some peanuts, Katie,” I croak.

    “Varley’s forbidden me to eat peanuts on pain of instant excommunication from the series!” she says with a laugh. Boy, have those margaritas gone to her head. (She was copying Yvonne: still too young to know much about drinks.) “Ooh, there he is! Goodness, he’s wearing a tweed jack— Look! That must be her!” she gasps.

    “Er—presumably,” says John weakly. “Don’t stare, Katie, my dear. I suppose he’s as entitled as any man.”

    “She looks as neat as a new pin! I wonder if she’s ever seen his awful house?” she wonders with relish.

    “It’s a lovely house,” I object, possibly in the faint hope that it’ll all fade away; Bridget’s as white as a sheet.

    “I meant the inside,” she says, craning her neck.

    “P’r’aps she has. That could be why she makes him come over here,” I croak.

    “Yes,” croaks Yvonne.

    “Mm. Well, I’m glad he’s got someone in his life,” says John, light but firm.

    “What did you think of her, John?” asks Katie eagerly.

    He clears his throat. “Well, he didn’t actually introduce her, Katie.”

    Her jaw drops, at the same time my jaw drops and Yvonne’s jaw drops and she croaks: “Why not?”

    “I don’t know, Yvonne,” he says lightly, but not looking Bridget's way. “Perhaps he wants to keep his village life separate from—”

    “His amours,” croaks Katie, her eyes as big as saucers. “Gosh, it’s like something out of the nineteenth century!”

    “Perry is,” he says on a note of finality. “Will Varley allow you to eat crisps, Katie?”

    “Of course not!” she says with a laugh, taking some. “But the salt and vinegar ones are irresistible!”

    “Yes, Rosie thinks so, too.” Hurriedly he tells them about the last month of my pregnancy, where salt and vinegar crisps featured largely in the diet. I’m damn sure he’s noticed that Bridget’s still white as a sheet and her hands are shaking.

    … Sure enough, the minute he comes into the bedroom after delivering Georgia to her mum, he says: “Was I misreading her, or was Bridget in a damned bad way when we saw Perry with that woman?”

    “Mrs Anne Leaman. I thought so, yeah.”

    He passes his hand across his bald pate. “I’d hoped you were exaggerating it, Rosie.”

    “I know. Only it looks as if Perry’s thought better of it, don’t you think?”

    Shit, he’s hesitating. “Uh—Well, the thing is,” he says, suddenly sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed, “I thought it was damned odd that he didn’t introduce his woman friend, but looking back, I think he was about to, but he looked over at our table and changed his mind.”

    “Ye-es…”

    “Sweetheart, the usual thing would be for me then to ask them over to our table to say hullo.”

    “Oh! Goddit! …Oh, shit.” Glumly I report in horrid detail Perry’s reaction to Bridget’s spotting his Spode saucer, and John winces.

    Yeah, well, there you are. When we’re in bed I add: “I wasn’t gonna bring this up, but he's got Greg doing the complete make-over on his garden.”

    He’s reached for me, but he stops. There’s a short silence. Then he says, in a very even voice: “Run that by me again, Rosie.”

    “Perry. He’s got Greg doing up his garden. Well, compared to the retirees it isn’t a make-over, of course, but he’s completely cleared the path and, um, he took a rotary hoe to that stubbly paddock of a so-called front lawn and sowed it with new grass seed, and he’s done all the edges.”

    “Not the edges!” he says in a mad, high voice.

    “Very funny.” However, I can feel he’s lying there thinking it over.

    “When one thinks of the women who’ve imagined they’re going to clean up that place of his, and clean him up... Well, most of the unattached females of the village, young or old, have flung themselves at Perry over the past ten years, you know. God knows what he’s got, but they seem to go for it!”

    “John, it’s not funny!”

    “Not really, no. I gather you’ve concluded that he must be doing it for Bridget’s sake?’

    “Um, no. I’d say there’s three possibilities, specially after tonight. One, he is doing it for Bridget and he’ll dump Mrs Leaman. Two, he’s gonna sell the place and give it all away, which giving his record on emotional entanglements, isn’t at all unlikely. And three, he’s gonna bring her there. Mrs Leaman. ’Cos he can see that Bridget’d only break her heart over him, and he’s gonna settle it once and for all.”

    “That’s very clear,” he says ruefully. “Though there is the possibility that he hasn’t fallen for Bridget as hard as you seem to think.”

    “Yes, it’s possible, but not likely.”

    He sighs. After a bit he says: “And Katie? Is she still seeing Keel?”

    “She hasn't told me all that much, but she is seeing him on an on-again, off-again basis, yeah. And he is genuinely very busy, um, though he isn’t on every night. But it is far too far to just pop down for the night.”

    “Darling, if the man was keen he’d be down here every weekend! For God’s sake, he could make it by— Well, depending on the roads, I’d say before midnight, easy.”

    I now know, thanks to Terence Wanking Haworth’s big mouth, that John drives like a bat out of Hell when he’s alone. Sure, he’s had crash bags put into the thing and he does up his seatbelt real tight, but gee, somehow that doesn’t make me feel all that much better about it. “Not everybody drives like a fucking maniac, you maniac.”

    “Terence,” he diagnoses heavily. “I don’t drive dangerously, Rosie.”

    And the rest. I’m not gonna argue, it’s a male thing, arguing is pointless. “I dare say.”

    “If it was you and me, wild horses wouldn’t keep me in Stratford!” he says with a smile in his voice, cuddling up. “Come here! Mmm….”

    “I see. It’s another male thing.”

    “It certainly is!” He puts my hand on it to prove it.

    Ooh, nice! “Not that! Driving for hours at the end of the working week to make it to your girlfriend’s place by the middle of the night.”

    “I’ll say! One is—uh—spurred on by the thought of getting into the warm girlfriend at the end of the journey!”

    Boy, does that sound circumstantial or does that sound circumstantial! “I get it,” I concede.

    “No, but you will in a moment!” he promises, chuckling. “Mmm…”

    … Much later. He’s not all bad, the macho clot, I gotta admit it. And if he thinks that a bloke that was keen would definitely be down here every weekend, well, he’s the expert.

    Well, it’s all go in Bellingford on the romantic entanglements side, isn’t it? So much for your peaceful English village.

    Aw, gee, leave isn’t for taking it easy in your cottage with your wife you’ve hardly seen, it’s for organised activity. Not just boat-scraping, caulking, and revarnishing, by no means. We’ve also been on the threatened trip down the Loire Valley. So I can now reliably report that even if Ronsard and Du Bellay did come from that general area, you can totally forget all that Renaissance crap, it was bloody freezing. Likewise I never saw nothing that looked like no rambling roses, neither, though admittedly it was still only April, only Yvonne reckons there were some but I’d nodded off. Well, châteaux are bloody hard on the feet. It was lovely, I’ll admit that, even in the rain, or especially in the rain and mist. (Like, “quand l”Aube de ses pleurs au poinct du jour l’arrose”—yeah, right.) And Baby Bunting was happy, the motion of the car only seems to lull him, thank God he doesn’t seem to have inherited my stomach. And John and Yvonne both had a lovely time and he reckons, poor deluded man, that having seen a couple of smiling Françaises demonstrate their way with omelettes (April isn’t all that busy in those parts, especially when you’re off the beaten track in quest of some dump he remembers from his early twenties, back-packing), that she’ll be whipping them up for us like nobody’s business now we’re home. Anything Yvonne cooks turns into a rock, she admits it herself. Oh, well, sufficient unto the day. Anyway, the two of them coulda gone on forever, but speaking personally I’m bloody glad to be home. No, I didn’t feel sick in the car except once when he was going too fast round all these wanking bends and I hadda make him pull in. But it’s the strain of thinking you might be, see? He reckons I don’t trust him and all I gotta do is relax and trust him, which only shows that, sympathetic though he is, the iron-stomached macho clot doesn’t have a clue what it’s like to be a person that gets travel-sick. Not a clue.

    So today John and me and Baby Bunting have breakfast together in perfect harmony, which’ll last until Daddy’s back’s turned, and then, five’ll get ya ten, he’ll start up the spoon biffing.

    John reminds me that it’s this coming weekend that his accountant’s coming down. What? He did tell me, and he has reminded me several times… Yeah, yeah. He can have the raw taxi receipts, unsorted, in that case. And does a hairdo at Sloane Square Salon count? John’s not sure, I’ll have to ask him. (Bob, his name is, and he’s a very up-market accountant indeed, and guess what, him and John were at school—Yeah.) But on the whole he’d say, may he have the last piece of toast—Honestly, John! Yes! Don’t ask!—taking the last piece of toast, a trim at the village hairdresser doesn’t count: it wasn’t for Henny Penny, was it, darling? Er, cough, that half-price job before we went away wasn’t and anyway I forgot to get a receipt— Yesterday’s, he means, Rosie. (Note of steel creeping into the dialogue here, folks.) Aw, gee, does he? Not taken in by the tone of artless surprise, he wants to know what I’m not telling him. Me? Not tell my darling hubby-wubby—I can drop that. So I drop that and glumly fetch the dreaded official letter from Derry Dawlish inviting me to star in The Captain’s Daughter The Movie Downunder plus and including the dates of the film tests for it. That the hairdo could be for, ya see. If he lets me.

    “What?”

    “Um, well, see, Henny Penny won’t need me after they shoot the cottage bits: see, Brian’s found the perfect cottage for Rupy’s and my cottage in Michael’s village, not only exteriorly perfect but inside as well, they’re gonna be paying the owner megabucks to put all their lights— No, right, that isn’t relevant. But it’ll be in the can by the end of May, if they can get just a couple of days of good weather.”

    Oh, gee, folks, none of this explains why I hadn’t mentioned before that Dawlish had made me a film offer. He’s right, there, it sure doesn’t. And yep, that’d be the date on it, all right, John.

    “Thought it’d ruin the trip to France. And your leave as a whole.”

    “Rosie, I warn you, I’m starting to get seriously annoyed about this.”

    Thoughtcha might of been, yeah. “Um, well, it’ll be the uni holidays, and you’ll be back at work, won’t you?”—He just gives me a hard look.—“I could of told Derry to shove it without showing you this,” I note.

    “Then why didn’t you?”

    “Because I like doing it!” I shout. “There! Ya made me admit it, are ya satisfied?”

    He might or might not be satisfied, but he’s sure as Hell mad as anything, because the nostrils have flared and there’s nasty little pleats at the sides of his mouth that make him look like bloody Lady Mother in icy person. Yikes. After quite some time, during which he entirely ignores the fact that Baby Bunting’s gurgling happily and spooning Farex and stewed apple onto the kitchen floor, normally he’d be leaping up to get the designated floor squeegee, he says: “I always thought you enjoyed it. And I wasn’t aware that you were labouring under the delusion that you were making a secret of the fact.”—Ouch!—“What I’d like to know is why you saw fit to conceal the fact that you’ve had this letter for over a month.”

    “Um, I already said, John,” I say miserably. –I was gonna be real jaunty and pat myself on the back for consulting him at all. Well, I might of been. Well, I thought it was just possible I could bring it off. No, you’re right: I’m a total nit.

    He just gives me a very, very hard look. Now I know exactly what those sailors that used to be up on Captain’s Report all the time felt like and believe you me, cutting their throats and leaving the Navy forever, in that order, ain’t the half of it.

    “Anyway I honestly didn’t think you’d be wild if I consulted you before I got back to Derry.”

    “So why the delay?” he says through his teeth.

    I’m opening my mouth to reply, dunno with what, when Baby Bunting gives a happy crow and hurls his spoon to the floor.

    “Do NOT give that back to him without washing it!” he shouts as I pick it up.

    “Oh—shit.” Hastily I rinse it under the— “HOT water!” Under the hot tap, right.

    Baby Bunting’s now bawling, I betcha saw that one coming, eh? This is the routine, see, the minute Daddy’s back’s out the door: One. Biff the spoon at the floor. Two. Aw, gee, terrific consternation, that leaves one without a spoon to play with! Three. Bawl like blazes.

    “Yes. Here we are, lovely spoon! Spoon, see—here’s ya spoon! Spoon!”

    “Rosie, there’s no need to shout at him,” John says heavily.

    “Not much. Just you wait.”

    Biff!

    Grimly I retrieve the spoon, rinse it under the hot tap, and shove it back at him just as the first fat tear rolls down the rosy cheek. “If you don’t want a divorce, John Haworth, wait.”

    We don’t have long to wait, folks. Biff!

   “Wait,” I warn.

    We wait another five seconds.

    “Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo-hoo! Waa-aaa!”

    This time John gets up, rinses the spoon and gives it back to him. “Here we are, fellow! Lovely sp—”

    Biff!

    “See? See? He can’t grasp the point that if ya biff ya spoon away, ya haven’t got a spoon!”

    “Mm.” He picks it up and rinses it carefully. “But he’s barely old enough to sit up, let alone, uh, reason,” he says weakly as the wailing starts up again. He wipes the smeary face carefully on the feeder and then, expression of distaste in place, removes the feeder and drops it into the sink rather quickly, the roars are rising to a crescendo. “Come on, then, Baby Bunting, come to Daddy.”

    After a bit the junior male moron realises that Daddy’s picked him up and stops bawling.

    “Did you make this point in order to side-track me?” the senior male moron says with a sigh.

    “No! The minute you go outside, he starts up, it’s like a signal or something! And if ya think that not giving him a spoon’s gonna be the logical solution, think again! And I didn’t tell you about the film because I thought you’d be mad I didn’t tell ya before, see, and I don’t care if it’s illogical!”

    “I see,” he says tightly, shifting Baby Bunting to the other shoulder, he was starting in on the medal ribbons. –Yes, folks, Daddy has to go into Portsmouth this morning. For what, precisely, hasn’t been revealed. It’s not improving my mood, no.

    I just glare and concentrate very hard on not breaking down and bawling.

    “Why are you determined to turn me into a monster?” he asks grimly. “No, scrub that. Into a cross between a monster and a damned authority figure.”

    “I don’t know! Possibly because you’re so bloody perfect and I can never live up to your standards!” I shout.

    “That’s rubbish,” he says tiredly. “I thought we agreed to try to be honest with each other?”

    “I agreed, but I knew I could never DO it!” I shout.

    “Stop shouting, you’ll upset him,” he says tiredly.

    I just glare sulkily.

    “If you knew you could never do it, why didn’t you at least say something?”

    “Because I kept hoping I could be as good as you are, only I knew all the time I couldn’t, and this proves it!”

    “This proves it? Rosie, this is a standard psychological trap—”

    “I’ve read that stupid TA book of yours, I read it yonks back, Joslynne’s Mum’s got it, too, and anyway, I don’t care! Knowing it’s a psychological trap doesn’t stop normal people falling into it, whaddareya?”

    “Abnormal, apparently;” he says tiredly, putting Baby Bunting back into his highchair. “I’ve got to go, can’t be late for this meeting.”—Right, it’s a meeting, now, is it?—“If there’s anything else you’re concealing from me, Rosie, though after his, God knows what there could be, perhaps you’d better think about letting on. I’ll see you at—”

    Before he can finish the sentence Yvonne comes in, smiling. “Sorry I’m a bit late, Lily R— Oh, no!” she gasps as, you goddit, folks, Baby Bunting spots the spoon his deluded Daddy left on the tray of the chair and chucks it onto the floor. “Has he started already?”

    “Some time back. Good morning, Yvonne,” says John grimly. “The spoon thing’s another instance, Rosie. Why didn’t you let on he was driving the pair of you mad?”

    “Because it seemed insignificant in the face of the defence of the REALM! And don’t dare to drive that stupid car too FAST!” I scream.

    “No,” he says with a sigh. “Come here.” I don’t come but he comes over to me and pulls me bodily against him. “I don’t drive dangerously,” he says in a muffled voice into my curls.

    “Bullshit,” I say in an even more muffled voice into his ruddy ribbons.

    “Don’t bawl on the ribbons: if the ‘poisonous dye’ isn’t already starting to run, with his dribble, it’ll be a miracle.”

    “Mm,” I say, sniffing a bit but inspecting the ribbons. “They’re all right. There’s dribble on your other shoulder, though. Gimme ya hanky.” I dry his shoulder off carefully with his pristine hanky.

    “Thanks,” he says, giving me a quick kiss. “Think about it, Rosie. Must run. ’Bye!”

    We say bye-bye, glumly on the part of one, and I sink down onto my chair and let Yvonne pick up the spoon, rinse it and momentarily stem the floods of my dim-witted offspring’s tears.

    “What’s up?” she asks baldly.

    “I told him about Derry’s film offer.”

    “You mean you hadn’t— You idiot, Lily Rose!”

    No argument there.

    “Now he’s accusing me of turning him into a cross between a monster and an authority figure,” I reveal dully.

    After a stunned moment she notes feebly: “He is an authority figure.”

    “Well, exactly! But he gets all hurt if I try to point that out.”

    “Help. I don’t know what to suggest,” she admits lamely.

    That makes two of us. “Not concealing things from him ’ud be the go,” I concede.

    “I'd say so. And if I was you”—Yvonne isn’t the type to ask herself if maybe the person doesn’t want the good advice, or if she's qualified to give the good advice, she’s a very straightforward person: it’s very restful because you always know exactly where you are with her—“I’d remind myself now and then what it was like this time—um, two years back. Before we went down to film at Portsmouth and you met him on the train and he said it was you he wanted, after all, and not the puce and magenta hags,” she spells it out.

    “Mm. I do try, only sometimes things get on top of me,” I mutter.

    She goes over to the sink and rinses the mucky feeder. “Yeah. I remember that day as if it was yesterday,” she admits with a sigh.

    “Uh—which day?

    “The day we all went on Dauntless, of course!”

    Oh. I was thinking of the day before it, actually. “Um, yeah.”

    “Wasn’t he lovely, in his uniform?” she sighs.

    “Yeah. You have seen him in it since, Yvonne.”

    “Yes, but that was the first time. Remember when you reviewed the men?”

    I remember the fog of testosterone with all those guys lined up in their bell-bottoms to gawp at Lily Rose Rayne in a ruddy pink suit, yeah. Not sure where she’s going with this. “Um, ye-ah...”

    “I thought he looked so tender, when he took your arm,” she sighs.

    Ulp, didja? Yeah. “Um, I’m not arguing with you. I was only mad with him, um, because I was full of guilt, actually. I should of told him the minute he got home but… I chickened out.”

    “Yes, well, just don’t do it again,” she orders severely.

    “No, ma’am!”

    “I’m not joking, Lily Rose.”

    Nor she is. “Sorry, Yvonne. I do appreciate him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

    “Appreciate him but don’t deserve him,” she notes severely.

    Jesus, Yvonne, we’ve both known that ever since the moment we set eyes on him! Did it need spelling out? (Don’t say it, on second thoughts. Apparently it did.) “Yeah, but you see, that’s making it worse.”

    “It might not if you tried a bit harder to live up to his standards.”—Ouch, was that below the belt! That or on the nose, yeah.—“What was all that about poisonous ribbons?”

    “Eh? Oh! It’s the dye, they’re so lurid that they’ve gotta be poisonous.”

    She agrees that they certainly look it, announces capably that she’ll give Baby Bunting his bath, and dispatches me to my computer.

    Well, bugger. I ballsed that one up good and proper. …Only what’s he going in to Portsmouth for?

    “Rosie! Rosie!”

    I don’t open my eyes: it’s the middle of the night, and if Baby Bunting’s whingeing, he can go. “Whassup?”

    “Nothing. It’s nearly dinnertime.”

    Groggily I open my eyes. “Uh—’s’it still today?”

    John’s standing there holding him. Uh—was he wearing that pale green creeper-suit before? “Just. I’m reliably informed you’ve been overdoing it.”

    What he means is, Yeoman Yvonne’s made her report to the Captain. “Bullshit. I been working, that’s all.” Oh, God. I’ve just remembered this morning’s row! I stare at him with my mouth open.

    “What is it, darling?”

    Gulp. “I just remembered this morning.”

    “Uh—yes. I went a bit overboard,” he admits, grimacing. “Sorry.”

    “No, ya didn’t, John. I hurt your feelings, and I’m sorry. I know I should’ve told you, but I honestly didn’t want you to have to make decisions when you'd just got back from the Gulf. Then the cowardice took over.”

    He sighs, oh, lawks.

    “Be fair, you’re a lot older than me and taller than me, and male, and I’m as culturally brainwashed as the next woman. And even Yvonne pointed out that you are an authority figure! Well, what captain isn’t?”

    “Rosie,” he says limply, “you’re not my part-time nanny, for God’s sake, you’re my wife.”

    “Yeah, and I am fighting the brainwashing, but the thing is, you are.”

    “All right, I am,” he says, sitting down heavily on the dressing-table stool.

    “Yeah. Only I’ve decided I’m gonna tell you everything.”

    The lips twitch. “My God, is there any need to go that far?”

    “Yeah, ya wanker. If I start editing, I’ll be in the pooh again. Lessee. Uh—oh, yeah: the gate latch.”—The poor man’s gaping at me.—“I know I’m the world’s greatest klutz, but it’s hellishly stiff, John. I hate it. You and Jack are the only ones that can really work it.”

    “Rubbish,” he says feebly.

    “Do ya want me to tell you or not?”

    “Yes. –Mm, Dada’s nose!” he agrees as Baby Bunting grabs at it. “Well, uh, shall I get Jack to replace the thing?”

    “Not with something that’s an equal male mystery, thank.”

    “It’s a perfectly ordinary— All right. I’ll see if Potter’s got anything suitable.”

    “Out the back,” I warn.

    “Eh?”

    I tell him about the prices being put up for them, and he goes into a frightful sniggering fit, though acknowledging that it’s more than understandable: only this afternoon there was a cretin in a fawn Volvo— Etcetera and so forth, he oughta know by now they're always triple-parked in front of the fucking Garden Centre and fucking Dimity’s, so I don’t listen.

    “Yeah, little Melanie Porter was nearly run down by one only last weekend,” I agree tolerantly. “She looked both ways, too, only her version of looking is awfully slow, so by the time the poor little creature had finished looking right again, the bloody thing was just about on her. Luckily Sly Hopgood was doing Mrs Fanshaw-no-E’s Beamer at the kerb and he grabbed her just in time. –Whaddare ya grinning at? It’s not funny!”

    “No. You are, though, darling,” he admits, grinning even more. “It’s so… circumstantial,” he decides thoughtfully.

    “Everyone is, except you, you cut-and-dried Navy person. –Yeah, Dada’s mouf!” I chirp encouragingly. “Say ‘Dada! Da-da!’ –He won’t,” I sigh.

    “No, well, Terence didn’t talk until he was two.”

    “We KNOW! Shit, didn’t mean to shout. –And ya not as dumb as Uncle Terence, are ya, Baby Bunting?” I chirp.

    Smiling, John reveals: “He said he’d drop in on Saturday.”

    “Him plus and Bob?” I retort pointedly.

    “Mm? Oh, well, shove two pizzas in the microwave instead of one,” he advises airily.

    “Don’t think I won’t.” I’m overtaken by a huge yawn. “S’cuse me. There was something else I promised myself I’d tell ya, hang on… Oh, yeah, I popped over to the village and I was talking to old Mr Timms—you know, P.O. Timms’s Dad. He asked how ya were. I said I’d tell ya.”

    “Did he? Thank you, darling,” he says nicely. “And how is he?”

    “Good: not letting the buggers grind him down, like usual! But that wasn’t it. It was birth control.”

    He just stares at me with his mouth slightly open, poor joker.

    “Birth con-trol,” I say carefully

    “I heard you. I think I heard you. You’re not telling me that you and old Timms… Does he even know what it is?”

    “Yes, he does, unlike some,” I note, looking hard at the product of his father’s ignorance.

    “This is the product of haste rather than ignorance,” he immediately notes, hugging him gently. “Do I dare ask whose birth control you and he were discussing?”

    “Ours, for Pete’s sake, ya think he wants Alan to practise it, with his grandchildren off in bloody New Zealand for the last seventeen years?”

    He looks at me limply. “Why?”

    “Dunno. It just came up.”

    “Inevitable,” he recognises, rolling his eyes. “Yes, Dada’s eyes! Ow, no, don’t do that, Baby Bunting.” He transfers the tiny pink hand to the nose and for some strange reason I have to grab a tissue—they’re blue, long since used up all those pink ones of Imelda’s.

    “It’s impossible to believe that one day his nose’ll be the size of that schnozz,” I own, sniffing.

    “Thanks! –Are you going to tell me, or not?”

    “What? Oh! Ya mean what we actually said? Um, well, we thought maybe I better go on the Pill for a bit, that's all. Mr Timms doesn’t think you like condoms and before you say anything, he’s right.”

    He swallows, but manages to say: “Not if you don’t like the thought of all those chemicals in your body, darling.”

    “Well, I don’t, but at least the things don’t lower my libido to the point of extinction, like Joslynne.”

    “Do they?”

    “Not all brands, no, but she hadda try three different sorts before she even started to feel like her old randy self, after Rowan. –I can see you’re thinking it wouldn’t be an entirely good thing if it was extinct, don’t say it. Mum thinks she’s breaking up with that Porsche-clone-driving creep, by the way.”

    “Good.”

    “Something like that,” I agree. He can’t see that, though the creep’s highly undesirable in himself, getting rid won’t strike Joslynne as good. “And she’s stopped dyeing her hair that purplish-red, dunno whether there’s a causal relationship there or not.”

    “Well, that can’t be bad. Are you deliberately side-tracking me?”

    “No, just blahing on.”

    “Birth control?” he says clearly.

    “Oh—yeah. Just for a year, maybe. See how this one grows up, eh? Might turn out so dumb and demanding neither of us’ll want another.”

    “Rubbish! –You’re not dumb and demanding, are you?” he says in a silly voice to the offspring. “No, ’oo’s not! No, ’oo’s n— Ow! Pretty dumb,” he concedes, removing the fist from the eye again. “No, well, for a while, if you’re sure, Rosie?”

    “Yeah, definitely. –He’s pretty demanding, too, he gave Yvonne a pretty hard time today with the spoon-biffing crappola. –Didn’tcha, ya little pest?”

    “Who’s a little pest?” his doting daddy crows, lifting him up very high in a big swoop. “Who’s a little pest? Who’s a little pest?” Baby Bunting gurgles like anything and the said doting daddy beams and I have to take another blue tissue…

    Then he reveals that he’s given him his dinner, since I was dead to the world, and he did do the spoon biffing again, and what do I think about chaining it to the chair? My jaw drops.

    “Well, tying it—string!” he amends, grinning. “It’d certainly be more hygienic.”

    “John, the frustration of trying to biff it and finding it wouldn’t hit the floor ’ud kill the poor little bugger!” I gasp.

    “Oh? Do you think that’s part of the enjoyment, then? Not merely the motion of throwing?”

    I nod numbly.

    “But does he even realise it’s hitting the floor?” he wonders.

    I nod numbly, not even up to mentioning noise and vibrations.

    “Then possibly he’s not so dumb, after all.” But he looks at me hopefully, nevertheless, and says: “Try it?”

    Cough. Far be it from me to prevent boys from indulging in their innocent games— “Uh, think the enjoyment of the spoon hitting the floor might be replaced by the enjoyment of the spoon going clack against the side of the chair, John.”

    “Try a plastic spoon?” the naval brain offers. “The noise wouldn’t be so irritating for you, and he might get bored with it. And at least you and Yvonne wouldn’t be continually leaping to pick the thing up.”

    “John, you’ve gone into tactical mode, for God’s sake,” I say weakly.

    “Yes. The Battle of the Spoon, isn’t it, Baby Bunting?”

    Oh, for Pete’s sake! I’ll let him. He’ll see it fail and hopefully forget all about it—lose interest. So I concede he might as well try it out at breakfast tomorrow and he beams happily. Honestly! Authority figures? Folks, at this minute the two of them might as well be sitting there in stretch-towelling creeper-suits gurgling and blowing bub—

    “Why’s he in a clean creeper-suit?””

    “Muck all over the other one,” he says calmly.

    “That’s the third one today.”

    “They are washable, darling,” he offers.

    “Yeah. And we have got a washing-machine and dryer. Well, it’s your power bill. Whatcha want for dinner?”

    “Rosie, are you sure about going on the Pill?”

    “Yeah. Just for a few months, ya know? Could go to the doc next week, I gotta go up to town anyway,” I admit glumly.

    “For?”

    “Staff meeting at the uni, Prof. does call them once in a blue moon, and rehearsal for the guest spot.”

    “Mm. Filming when?”

    “I said!”

    “No: when exactly, darling?”

    “May and early June. It’s in the Diary.” Might not’ve mentioned the Diary before, folks, largely because I couldn’t bear to. It sits on his desk. Need I say more?

    He needs to check something, yeah, yeah…

    “What?” I croak as we get downstairs and he reveals the point. Apparently these rellies are keen to have us, blah, blah, and if we can work in a weekend or two— Jesus! Hasn’t it sunk in that I gotta film in fucking English upper-clawss country houses in May and June, I don’t wanna follow that up with yer actual visits to yer fucking upper-clawss— “All right, John, if you insist.” He doesn’t insist, he just thought it might be rather pleasant and etcetera. Yeah, well, I knew what his background was when I married him, didn’t I? Well, before that, actually. Before I got preggers by him. “Yeah, okay, so long as you don’t drive too fast on bendy back roads—” Is that what I was worrying about! Of course he won’t! –Let him think it, no skin off my nose. Which reminds me.

    “Talking of never telling anybody anything—” I say as we head for the kitchen.

    “I never said that, Rosie!”

    Not much. “No, well, what’s all this about a ruddy yacht club where ya know, uh, forget his name, be something Dillon. Mr Dillon’s brother.”

    “David Dillon?” he says dazedly.

    “Think it had a ‘sir’ in it,” I note.

    “Mm. Sir David Dillon. What about him?”

    “Not him. This yacht club. Why’d ya never mention it? And kindly don’t refer to my weak stomach in your answer.” I open the freezing compartment, investigate an unlabelled package and put it back. Um, frozen pizza—“Go on!”—frozen cheesecakes—“I’m listening!”

    He explains: boredom factor, Navy wives in floral frocks factor, hah, hah, very amusing. The sailing set can be very— Blah, blah; we got sailing sets in Sidney, too, it is on a whacking great harbour, ya nana. The first qualification is solid concrete between the ears, followed closely by the iron stomach, natch. The third being total inability to talk about anything but boats. I just let him go on and on until finally my silence gets to him and he admits they do have dances and, um, dinner-dances, he supposes, and if I’d like to, we could go.

    I wouldn’t like to, but if there’s food in it, it can’t be altogether bad. And I don’t intend setting up a situation, stop me if you’ve already guessed this, where he can claim I’ve curtailed all his activities from his old bachelor life. All right, I shoulda stopped yonks back, it is self-evident, yeah. And I wouldn’t actually mind dancing with my own husband, for Christ’s sake. We never have danced, actually: you don’t go through that stage if, after months of apparently ignoring the fact of the party of the second part’s existence, ya clean up ya life, get rid of the puce and magenta hags and without warning corner her on a train coming down to Portsmouth and drag her off to ya lair. And when we were in D.C. Christmas before last none of them Goddawful diplomatic junkets he dragged me to included dancing. “Can you dance?”

    Of course he can dance, if he does date back to the Twist, very funny. I’m not much of a ballroom dancer but they made me learn up Fifties-type dances for the show, excuse to stuff me into low-cut princess-length crap, ya see. Right. We’ll go to the next one. Uneasily he warns me not to expect to be able to bring Yvonne: she’d be a fish out of— I’M NOT THAT THICK! Ssh, I’ll frighten Baby Bunting. Fish fingers? he suggests nicely.

    “Mm… What’s this?”

    Oh, that’s a few trout Daisy and Alan sent down, darling— Who? What? Apparently they’re the posh pair that live not far from blah, blah, blah, don’t listen. Dare say the microwave’ll defrost trout same as anything else. He was planning to have the trout this weekend, actually, darling, Bob’ll appreciate— Blah, blah. I’ve just remembered that this ruddy up-market accountant of his is divorced. Well, divorced and very much on the prowl, geddit? So would it be better to throw Bridget at him and hope he can divert her from Perry, or Katie and hope he can divert her from Euan, do I mean divert or distract, or Yvonne, since ruddy Jack Powell seems to be a wash-out…

    “Eh? Oh—yeah, could if ya reckon that’s the way to go, John. Only who’s gonna remind you to take them out of the freezer on the Friday? Baby Bunting? –’Es, ’oo would, too, wouldn’tcha? ’Es, ’oo would, too!”

    Of course he won’t forget. No, in ya former life ya wouldn’t of forgotten, John, only what if we have another Grate Breakfast Row? Or Baby Bunting’s got a cough? Or, well, loads of things, actually. (Don’t say any of it.) “No, well, don’t blame us if ya don’t remember, that’s all. Um, there’s a steak pie, here. So-called.”

    “Why not?” he says amiably. So, as Baby Bunting’s starting to nod off he puts him to bed while I get on with the dinner. Instant mash with the ersatz steak pie—think it’s TVP flavoured with steak flavour, well, better than Mad Cow Disease or Foot and Mouth, eh? and frozen carrots, they’re not that bad if ya remember to put a bit of honey and lemon juice and butter on them after you’ve drained the pan. Scrub that, no lemons. Oops, no honey: sugar and— Shit. All right, sugar and marg, butter’s bad for his cholesterol level anyway.

    However, there’s a really nice apple pie for pudding and he praises it dazedly, poor John, and asks where it came from and I can’t remember, blast! Hastily I rescue the packet from the bin: maybe Belinda’ll be able to tell me if it was one of theirs, and if it wasn’t… Scour Portsmouth? We’re eating in the kitchen like normal people since Greg’s decided he ought to feed himself in his flat, and Yvonne’s gone home, she’s appointed herself to go home firmly every evening. I sink down onto my chair again and watch him eating.

    “What, Rosie?”

    “Nothing. Brooding over my culinary ineptitude.”

    “Stop brooding over it, I didn’t marry you because I wanted a cook.”

    Gee, that’s just as well, isn’t it? But I do stop brooding. We don’t discuss the filming with Derry Dawlish bit, he’ll be thinking it over and deciding what tack he wants to take, see? It’s all right, I know he’s like that.

    I’m past doing any work this evening so we go to bed early and a pleasant time is had by all. Marred only by the discovery that the reason that Tim was reluctant to come in for his dinner was that he’s excavated a GIANT hole in the middle of Jack’s beautiful veggie patch. And I’m right: something will have to be done. Garden wall? John, we don’t want a six-foot brick wall round the flaming vegige garden! He agrees that some sort of trellis effect might be pleasant and— Damn! Baby Bunting’s grizzling. Gets up and changes him. Where were we? Oh, yes, he’ll speak to Jack. Not that he imagines he needs an excuse to come over here.

    Very funny. But I give him the Dinkum Oil on Jack’s busted relationship with Whatsername. Don’t think he really wanted to know but he listens amiably enough.

    “Sleepy?” he says, since I’m yawning my head off.

    “Not too sleepy,” I protest as he turns off the lights…

    “Rosie! Rosie!”

    I don’t open my eyes: it’s the middle of the night, and if Baby Bunting’s whingeing, he can go. “Whassup?”

    “Nothing. It’s time to get up, darling.”

    It can’t be! Weren’t we gonna do it again? Blast, it is, he’s dressed, musta let me sleep in. No, he hasn’t had his breakfast, he doesn’t want to be screamed at for breakfasting in solitary splendour! Very funny. And he’s got Baby Bunting up, did he have to? Oh—roaring in his cradle, right, right. Shit, never heard a murmur, them X chromosomes musta been turned off. But it is getting on, darling, so—

    Groggily I totter downstairs in my winter dressing-gown. The bright pink quilted nylon one that Mum forced on me before I left Oz because of the terrible British winters, and good on her. It may be hideous but it does its job. He wanted to buy me a much posher one, but I wouldn’t let him, no point, it wasn’t as warm as this one.

    Porridge? Oh, figured out how to make it in the microwave, good on ya, you obsessive Naval thing, you. Go on, ya forced me, I’ll have it with milk and lots of sugar, please… Gee, not bad. Might eventually get through all them own-brand bags and bags and bags of it that supermarket forced on me that time I opened it for them in my Lily Rose Rayne persona. He’s waiting for something.

    “Not bad.”

    “You said that,” he murmurs.

    Did I? Can’t be awake yet, then, can I? Uh… I give in. “What, you obsessive Naval personality?”

    He nods proudly at the highchair. At least Baby Bunting’s wearing the pale green creeper-suit he changed him into after his tea last night, I’ve got him trained up to that extent. Uh… Oh, good grief!

    “Bungee spooning?” he suggests as Baby Bunting goes biff! and the plastic spoon, yep, folks, P,L,A,S,T,I,C, goes sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!

    He’s fixed a piece of elastic to the spoon, and any minute now he’ll be pointing out that elastic is washab— He is.

    “Geddouda here before I crown ya,” I groan. Yes, folks, he is in the uniform. Though officially he's still on leave. Oh, don't ask.

    “I’ll have to,” he admits, looking at the watch and getting up quickly. “But don’t you think it’s brilliant?” he says. Grinning, only I can see he’s waiting for Mummy to say Yes.

    “Yes, Mummy thinks you’re brilliant,” I groan.

    Laughs, terrific joke, only very pleased all the same, gives me a very wet kiss, mmm, what a Helluva waste. Rushes off to clean the teeth. Comes back, another very warm, wet kiss—not only the spoon, folks, the eating up all the microwaved porridge like a good wee wifey as well—drops a kiss on Baby Bunting’s head, he’ll be back this afternoon, Rosie, rushes out.

    “And DRIVE CAREFULLY! –Naval nong.”

    “Waa-aaa—”

    “Don’t start that, for cripes’ sake, just when he’s got ya sorted! Come on, we’ll go and see Daddy go, eh?”

    So I pick him up and we go out to the front path, not neglecting to drape a parka round the pair of us on top of the dressing-gown, the mornings are still brass monkeys at this time of the year in this neck of the Pommy woods. “Look, there goes Dada! Car-car! Dada! Bye-bye, Dada!—Drive the wanking thing carefully, ya Naval nong.—Yes: bye-bye! BYE-BYE, JOHN!”

    He’s got out to close the wanking gates. If ya didn’t close them so conscientiously then poor Yvonne wouldn’t have to fight with them every morning, ya great Naval nong! (Don’t say it.) “I won’t forget about the latch, Rosie!”

    No, ya never do. –Huh? Oh! “Yeah, great! Thanks, John! SEE YA!”

    “See you, darling! See you, Baby Bunting! Bye-bye!”

    “Yeah, there he goes,” I sigh as the black Jag turns carefully up the track, pardon me, leine, this is Planet Nayce, and drives sedately up it, that pace’ll last until he’s out of the village and then he’ll put his foot down on that awful road into Portsmouth. Oh, well. At least the anal facets of the personality mean that he straps himself in tight as billyo. “Yeah, Daddy’s a Naval nong, eh? Can you say Naval nong? Dada? Da-da?” Not a sausage.

    We go in and contemplate the wreck of the kitchen. What the fuck did he feed you on? Oh, don’t ask. And the whole point of a microwave is that one puts the pudding dish in with the porridge in it, not a separate porridge-cooking dish that then has to be soaked and— Forget it. At least he got the bloody breakfast and woke me up in time to have it with him. “Daddy’s not all bad, is he? Daddy’s not all bad, is he?” I bung the stuff in the dish-washer.

    Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!

    Gee, that works good.

    “Waa-aaa! Waa—”

    And that. “Here you are. Bungee spoon!”

    Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!

    Yeah, right. Pity the great naval brain couldn’t dream up a bungee spoon that’d put itself back on the tray of the highchair.

    When Yvonne comes in she points that out, too, thought she would. Nevertheless she concedes, once she’s over the giggling fit, that it does save an awful lot of bending—creak, groan—well, some. And it does save washing the spoon each time!

    She’s not wrong, there. Uh—why is she sniffing him. “He pongy?”

    “No: baby powder. Did you give him his bath already?”

    Me? I’m barely awake. Uh—oh. “John. Got up at crack of dawn,” I sigh.

    “Um, why?”

    “God kn— Oh. Well, we did go up to bed very early last night.”—She’s very pink and giggly, nods madly.—“Yeah. Only I passed out at—uh—nineish? So he musta just laid down and closed his eyes like a good little boy, too.”

    She nods, in considerable awe.

    “He’s like that,” I sigh.

    “Yes. You’re so lucky, Lily Rose!” she says fervently.

    Actually, Yvonne, there’s no argument there. I sure am.

    Of course, now that Saturday has rolled round with the inevitability of death and taxes, I don’t feel quite so lucky. He’s up at daybreak making sure the cottage looks tidy. I can have another forty winks, quote unquote. Yeah, thanks, only not with you crashing round like that, mate! The place is spotless, for God’s sake: Yvonne tidies it up every day and Lynne Carter cleans it properly twice a week. Oh, let him. Well, no way of stopping him, more like.

    We get porridge for breakfast again, but by now one of us was expecting that. Baby Bunting’s too young for it, lucky little sod. Why in God’s name did he get him up? Now he’ll be gurgling and splattering and spoon-biffing— Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce! Is it my paranoid imagination or is the recoil of that thing stronger than ever, because he’s throwing it harder in order to make it go clack against the chair much louder? The twit’s handing him back the spoon, biff, sproing-g-g, clack, bounce, hands it back, silly twit, don’t leap to it, biff, sproing-g-g, clack, bounce, hands it back, same story, hands it—

    “John! For Pete’s sake, you’re going overboard! Don’t encourage him!”

    “I’m not—”

    “Can’t you hear the difference? Before it was Pause, thinks about biffing, then good hard Biff! Sproing, really long recoil, then clack, bounce; has to think about it, has to think about it… Gee, where’s my spoon? Has to think about it; gee, I haven’t got my spoon! Waa! Then ya hand the fucking thing to him.”

    “Darling,” he says, trying not to laugh, “that’s teaching him that if he roars, he gets what he wants.”

    “You’re right; only the alternative’s to leap to it like a trained seal.”

    We stare at each other in consternation. We’re both right.

    “Uh—strike a balance? Not leaping to it but, um, handing him the spoon just before he roars?” he ventures.

    “Yeah. Try judging it.” –Needless to say during this exchange the thing’s gone biff, sproing, clack, bounce five times and each time John’s automatically handed it straight back to him like a trained seal.

    Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce! “Wait,” I warn.

    “Waa—”

    “Blast! Here you are, fellow.”

    Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!

    “Wait—now!”

    “Here you are, Baby Bunting! Nice bungee spoon!”

    “That worked,” I note as he gurgles over it, thinking, thinking… “Only which of us is gonna sit here all morning like a nana judging the split second to hand it back before”—Biff! Sproing, clack, bounce!—“he starts bawling?”

    “Quite. Uh—dump him in his playpen? –Here!” he gasps, shoving it at him as the lip wobbles ominously.

    “Yeah, like poor little Kiefer Deane Jennings. I begin to see method in Ms Deane Jennings’s hard-heartedness. All right, I’ll give him his bath and shove him in the thing, but he doesn’t like it, he’s not that good at sitting up without a chair-back and he gets bored.”

    He’s pointing out that the effort of trying to maintain a seated position without support is good for his back muscles only I’m not listening, I’m grabbing the last of the coffee and fortifying myself before our latest game, tentatively named Big Splashing. Though Drowning Mummy and Yvonne would also be a good name for it. We’re gonna have to institute plastic raincoats, I kid you not. “Come on, Big Splasher, ya Mighty Moron.” And off we go!

    … Some time later. “Rosie, you’re soaking!”

    “John, for the last three days he’s splashed wildly in his bath, I mean wildly.” In that case I’d better wear a plastic apron. Yeah, yeah… Dump. “Lovely playpen! Now can I have a shower, please? If you’ve left Mummy any water.” Pant, pant, he’s trying to sit up and looking round the playpen, hasn’t registered yet it’s boring old playpen, John’s right here mucking round in the fireplace, I get out of it quick. I’m just going into the ensuite when I think I hear a wail but too bad, this time it’s Daddy’s turn.

    By the time I stagger downstairs dressed and almost refreshed, the fireplace has been cleaned out and the fire is going, Baby Bunting’s examining a pile of toys in the playpen that I certainly didn’t bung in there, plus an old newspaper, mauling them can keep him occupied for hours on a good day, and John is carefully dusting the desks.

    “John, Lynne did those on Monday.”

    “Mm? Yes, I’m sure she did, darling. I’ll just—”

    “All right, only don’t disturb them anally neat piles of paper of Greg’s.” Of course he won’t. (One’s as bad as the other: right.) “And don’t disturb that mess on my desk, either, I know where—” Finishes the sentence for me. “Very funny. So whatcha want me to do? Polish the wainscoting by hand?” By God, I think the answer’s yes, only he hasn’t, I’m glad to say, got the guts to say so. He’ll just run a duster over it. Will he? All right, then, but I’m having nothing to do with it. (Don’t say it.)

    “Maybe you could do the washing, Rosie? It’s piling up.”

    Maybe I could, and it sure is, because someone keeps discarding only slightly grubby creeper-suits— Forget it. It’ll shut him up and with luck by the time he’s discovered I’ve bunged a bloody navy blue towel in with his white underdaks and Baby Bunting’s pale lemon creeper-suit Jack will have arrived with the wrong sort of trellising for the veggie garden and that’ll distract him from it and whatever other anal, neatnik obsessions he’s discovered to focus on before the guests arrive. One accountant he’s known since school and one brother he’s known all his (the brother’s) life, I ask you!

    So now the washing-machine’s chugging nicely (peer through the round glass door: yep, think the water is rather blue, too bloody bad, I never noticed it) and the back door is heard to burst open and a very angry voice shouts: “That bloody brute’s been in the parsnip bed!”

    Ooh, has he? Good on him! I go out to the back door. “Yeah, that’s why we think we need a fence round it. Hi, Jack.”

    “Can’t you control him?” he says furiously from the back step. Doesn’t come in, the boots are filthy.

    “Manifestly not.” I keep my gumboots just here by the back door, and yes, they do clutter up the minute and once ship-shape back passage, don’t they? I haul them on and since my parka’s not where I left it, to wit, on the hook on the back door on top of the old Burberry (raincoat to youse yobs) that officially lives on that hook, huddle the coat on over the giant daggy black sweater that’s over the tight, fuzzy grey-blue sweater that’s over the pink high-necked tee, and go out to inspect the damage. Yep, that’s another huge hole, all right. Gee, those plants lying round the edges of it look real dead. Limp, y’know? Their poor little roots are all exp— Oh, parsnips, huh? Yeah, it was gonna be a great crop, Jack. Uh—dunno where the brute is, no. (He’ll be hiding under the boathouse, folks, wouldn’t you?)

    The trellising? Yeah, love to. …I inspect the trellising. Yep, uh-huh, that’s genuine wooden lattice, all rightee. Just like what every scungy Sydney dump has on its broken-down back porch, like my Grandma Leach used to have before she went gaga. (Don’t say it, haven’t got a death-wish). Oh, treated, huh? Great. Yeah, it’ll look lovely with those huge great heavy posts ya can hardly lift, Jack—painted royal blue, eh? Good one, then ya might be persuaded to paint over the wanking faded green our cottage sports on its windowsills and front door, because for why? Because for it’s always been like that. A nice bright vulgar blue, bit bluer than royal blue, ’ud be just the ticket, for mine. And ya know them fiddly bits round the actual panes? Especially round them seventeenth-century ones accidentally left by the angel that did bits of it up in the Thirties, yeah—them. A bloke could spend half the summer happily painting them bright white like what normal people have round their windows, couldn’t ya, Jack? At John’s expense, natch. By the hour, very slowly and lovingly. No, well, put it like this: some of them might be leaded crap and I don’t particularly care if they stay black, but if I have to live another four years being greeted by dull never-was-shiny green—mangrove green, I’d call it, only these wanking Northerners won’t know what I mean—if I have to live another four solid years with that looking at me every time I trudge down the hill and fetch up panting at our front door, I will go stark, raving— Huh?

    “Oh—yeah, blue’d be totally great, Jack! Um,”—very wistful—“do ya think the same shade of blue might suit our windowsills?”

    Blimey, he’s off and running: always thought blue’d look good, maybe once the Captain—sometimes forgets to call him John, he’s known the family since Lady Mother’s day—once the Captain sees how good the garden fence looks— Exactly. Yes, and the cottage is starting to look quite shabby next to Yvonne’s and the Thwaites’s! The latter being due to move in next weekend as ever was, and Mrs Thwaites has chosen a nice pale lilac for her front door and windowsills, John nearly passed out when he copped a gander at it.. And she’s planted two small lilac trees in the front garden. Misguidedly, the wind’ll flatten them the minute she takes the sacking off, but never mind, it shows willing. And certainly proves she is a genuine admirer of those shades, yep. Yvonne’s front door and windowsills and the window-boxes Jack’s added for her are a nice bright daffodil yellow. John thought that was pretty bad, until Mrs Thwaites did her thing, heh, heh.

    So now Jack’s feeling much, much better and we go back amiably to the back door and he agrees he might as well have a cup of coffee before he starts and we both pull our gumboots off and go into the kitchen. Gee, the coffee-pot’s been washed (hot water, no detergent) and dried, did you ever meet anybody that actually dries— Never mind. And restored to its exact place on the bench. Jack eyes it warily.

    “Instant?” I suggest.

    “Ta, Rosie,” he says, not hiding the relief.

    When he’s got most of it down him I suggest he might need a hand with those huge sheets of trellising, they looked very unwieldy. –Never tell a male it’s too heavy for him, the word’s like a red rag to a bull, they immediately rush off and put the back out. Oh, ya knew that, huh? Yeah. So he admits they are a bit awkward—that’s a good word, I’ll have to remember that one—only Greg doesn’t seem to be in. That’d be right, he’s got five Saturday clients that don’t trust him to do their gardens right during the week when they’re away and it’d be convenient for all concerned. He would have more, only how many lots of tidying fallen leaves, clipping the edges that ya clipped last Saturday, and shaving the already micro-shaven lawn can one bloke fit in per Saturday morning? Given that they’re not all right next-door to one another.

    “JOHN!” I bellow.

    He shoots in, looking anxious. “Yes, darling?”

    “Calm down, the place isn’t on fire.”

    “I thought you might be having trouble with the washing-machine again. Morning, Jack.”

    “Morning, John. Did she?” he asks with a gleam in his eye.

    “It was nothing electrical!” I say loudly.

    “Don’t take it out on poor Jack. The machine started making some very odd metallic noises and Rosie panicked.”

    “I didn’t! I switched it off, you said to switch off anything that even looked like going wrong!”

    “That’s true, I did. Better safe than sorry. But the thing is, Yvonne was here too, and neither of them paused for so much as an instant to examine the precise quality of these metallic noises.” He eyes him pointedly. Then he puts his hands in his pockets and jingles his change and Jack explodes in mirth.

    “Stop it! Shut up!” Now they’re both spluttering helplessly. “Shut UP, you pair of male wankers! What sort of cretin puts loose money in his POCKETS, for God’s sake?”

    “Everybody does,” says Jack feebly, wiping his eyes. “Boy, that’s done me good.”

    “Only male cretins do,” I say evilly. “And next time, wash yer own bloody jeans.”

    “It’s true, you know,” says John, recovering himself, except that these little dints keep popping out by the corners of his mouth, once upon a time I thought that was fascinating, silly me. “She keeps her change in a tiny pink beaded purse.”

    “I only use it because Davey and Rowan gave it to me for a birthday present!” I shout.

    “Eh?” says Jack limply to his peer.

    “Joslynne’s kids.”

    “Oh—right.”

    “I've got a perfectly normal leather wallet!” I shout angrily.

    “Yes, but as well, Rosie, you can’t deny that you carefully put your spare change into your tiny pink—”

    “All RIGHT!”

    They’re both grinning like anything, the pair of male cretins. And why did he have to mention it’s pink? I never even chose it! And come to think of it, Davey and Rowan are male, too. Look, I tell ya— “What? Oh: Jack wants you to help heave the big floppy sheets of trellising round,” I admit feebly.

    Yep, that’s side-tracked him, all right. They head eagerly outside and I just sag where I sit. Of course next thing ya know they’ll be calling me to come and admire it—if they think I'm so funny why do they sit up and beg for me to admire the crap they build? Oh, forget it.

    … Crackle, crackle, there? Over. Oh, no!

    “WHAT?” I bellow into the thing.

    “Oh, good, it’s working. Darling, could you possibly come and drag Tim off?”

    Gulp. Yeah, I could. I’m out there in double-quick time. Shit. Giant sheets of trellising all over the shop, huge posts stuck in here and there, piles of this, that, and the other crap, is that that fucking concrete mixer I thought I’d seen the last of?

    Just to the right of the veggie garden Jack’s holding a big sheet of lattice with both hands and nearer to me John’s holding the other end of it with one hand and putting the walkie-talkie back into the parka pocket. And to the right of that Tim’s stiff as bejasus, legs slightly splayed, the teeth showing—

    “What on earth’s he on about?” I gasp, hurrying to grab his collar.

    “Unfortunately Jack stumbled on a cache of his bones. I have tried calling him off.”

    “Here,” the cretin says, nodding at his left boot.

    “You idiot, Jack! Just move away!”

    “I can’t: John can’t back up, the concrete mixer and the gravel—”

    Yeah. I can now see that Jack himself is backed up against a very new post and between it and the garage wall, where there oughta be space, is this huge great pile of bags. Dunno what, they weren’t there yesterday. “Then put that sheet of stuff down!” –In fact, drop it to ya right and it’ll flatten the fucking veggie garden.

    “Darling, Tim’s right in the way, that’s what I—”

    “All right, edge sideways. Edge SIDEWAYS, JOHN!”

    “But the lettuces—”

    “Do it or I’ll flatten the fucking lettuces myself!”

    He edges onto the flaming garden and backs down through the lettuces, not managing not to tread on several of them, and Jack can now edge round the very new post and edge onto that part of the garden. Think it’s cabbages he’s flattening, good, I hate the bloody things.

    And I urge Tim forward and he grabs up a big bone, yes, good boy! And makes off lickety-split for underneath-the-boatshed with it.

    “You pair of stupid wankers,” I note conversationally.

    “Look,” begins my own one heatedly, “if we’d let it drop in that direction we’d’ve hit the stupid brute with it, there was nothing that was going to make him—”

    Yeah, yeah. I retreat to the house, trying not to actually hum. Though I’m grinning pretty broadly.

    Baby Bunting’s just crumpling paper placidly in his playpen, good on him. I sit down beside him on the Persian rug and start helping him. “Yeah, more sense than the pair of them rolled into one, haven’tcha? It’ll be when the balls drop and the hair starts to grow, shortly before the other hair starts to fall out, that that Y chromosome starts impeding ya common sense, eh?”

    Gurgle, gurgle, crumple, crumple. Right.

    … A bit later. “Hul-lo! What’ve we got here, eh?” –Terence.

    “Shut that door, there’s a perishing draught.”

    He shuts the glass doors to the lobby and come over to us, grinning like anything. “I see! John’s carefully built a fire, so you and Baby Bunting are over here with the electric fire on!”

    “Very funny. The sun comes in here in the mornings, when we started this game the playpen was in it. It lasts about five mins., this being southern England. So then I put the heater on.”

    “Of course!” he says grin, grin, bending to kiss my cheek. “Huwwo, Baby Bunting!” he says in a silly voice. “Who’s a big fewwow, then? Who’s a big fewwow? My, he’s grown,” he says admiringly. “Um, brought a little something for him, hope that’s all right.”

    It’s a giant squashy parcel. Well, Baby Bunting’ll love the paper, that’s for sure. So I let him bung it in the playpen with him and after some urging he starts mauling at it.

    “It’s a Tigger, hasn’t got one, has he? –No, good. The woman swore its eyes were childproof,” he assures me anxiously. Yeah, well, he isn’t all bad. Not when it comes to nephews and unsuitable sisters-in-law, anyway.

    Baby Bunting’s not gonna get that paper off by himself so we help him and the Tigger is revealed in all its glory and I give the eyes a ruddy good tug, Terence looks a bit horrified, but they don’t come off. It’s got the provisional nod, then, only I'll ask Yvonne’s opinion before I trust it in there with him when no-one’s watching them. Naturally its new owner is far more interested in the paper that’s been ripped off it but Terence doesn’t seem to mind, in fact he asks if he can pick him up?

    “Pick him up all ya like.” He’s picking him up, grinning like anything, sits back on the rug very carefully with him, ya can tell he’s not used to kids. “He won’t break, Terence.”

    “Possibly not, but I’m not risking it!” he says with a smile, kissing his hair very, very softly. “The hair’s a lot thicker, Rosie.”

    It’s very, very soft, with a slight wave in it: a very pale brown with what Yvonne and me tell each other are golden lights in it. “Yeah, and at least he hasn’t got my ruddy yellow curls.”

    “What in God’s name was that macho peer group in the back garden?” he asks after a bit.

    “Ya don’t wanna know.” But I tell him all about the episode of bailed-up-by-Tim-unable-to-move and he sniggers madly, so then I warn: “Wait for it,” and explain it came right on top of the superiority over Rosie’s feminine pink change purse and feminine inability to recognise the sound of male coins in the washing-machine and he just about sniggers himself sick.

    “Mind you never let them live it down!” he urges.

    “You better believe it! Wanna a cuppa?”

    He thought I’d never ask. So we go into the kitchen, Terence volunteering to bring Baby Bunting, and make one and don’t tell them we’re having it. But on one of those five thousand trips between the new garden fence and the top end of the drive where they’ve got these mounds of God knows what, John spots us. So I more or less give in completely, the more so as the minute he pokes his nose into the kitchen Terence asks solicitously if he’s been bailed up by any more big, fierce dogs, and make a fresh pot and open Battersea Power Station and grab another frozen sultana cake— Ulp.

    “John,” I note, getting out the package. “Hullo-oh!”

    The misguided Terence begins: “Oh, dear, Rosie: did you forget—”

    “No. He did, this is his trout. He was never gonna forget to take it out yesterday, so much so that I wasn’t even asked to remind him and it never even got put in the Diary!”

    “You could have reminded me, though,” he says, very crestfallen.

    “I hadn’t made a mental note to think of it, so I didn’t.”

    “No. What was I doing yesterday morning?” he mutters.

    “It’ll be Rosie’s frozen pizza for lunch, then!” Terence discerns with a laugh.

    “Could defrost the trout in the microwave?” offers Jack helpfully.

    “No, because these are sacred up-market trout from a real stream,” I explain carefully.

    “I’d drop that, if I was you!” he recommends with a grin. Then he tells them all about this English fish he had, one of those names like turbot or halibut—is that a real name?—anyway he put it in at blah, blah, they’ve gone into a male huddle, I’ve stopped listening…

    “All right, darling?”

    “Eh? Don’t ask me! If you wanna risk it, it’s up to you. Ya can’t do worse than me, that’s for sure. I crisped a slice of pizza the other day,” I explain to Terence. “I was reheating it, you see,”—he winces, though trying not to, nayce manners—“and I thought I was doing it for ten seconds, only I set it at ten minutes. It kind of took all the moisture out of it.”

    “It would have done,” he says faintly.

    “Never mind, at least I don’t get bailed up in the garden by big, fierce dogs and have to radio for—” I don’t need to finish, he’s in hysterics already.

    After that I don’t really mind all that much when John suggests very nicely that perhaps I’d better change into something pretty, darling. Pretty but warm, of course. In any case, I was expecting it. So I replace the daggy black sweater and the fuzzy blue-grey one underneath it with the big fuzzy black sweater with the twinkly stars round the neck, and the tired jeans with a tight pair of black pedal-pushers scored off Henny Penny, theatrical, right, and I’m still wearing the pink tee-shirt, and that shows at the neck. Then I cunningly put on the Fifties pearl screw-on earrings that he likes and a bit of pink lippy and comb the curls. And when I go back into the kitchen they’re still conferring over the trout but they all look up and beam at me with identical fatuous expressions on their male mugs, oh, deary, deary me.

    And I rescue Baby Bunting from the peer group, it’s time for his nap, and put him down and then grab my parka and nip next-door to see if I can talk Yvonne into lunch with an up-market accountant and a submarine commander that she doesn’t know. Both divorced. And in her shoes, believe you me, I’d of leapt at the chance.

    “No, really, Lily Rose.”

    “But there’ll be stacks, even if his silly fish doesn’t come off! And ten to one Jack’ll stay for it, he’s in the peer group boots an’ all, that’ll be two out of four ya know! And ya met Terence at our wedding!”

    He won’t remember her, though.

    No, but he might remember the bust. “He won’t eat you, even if he doesn’t remember you.”

    She wouldn’t know what to say to him.

    “Ask him about his work, for cripes’ sakes, Yvonne, they’re all the same! Plus and ruddy Bob, he’s capable of boring on for hours about his flaming City clients.”

    No, really. Plaintive look.

    “Look, Yvonne, how are we ever gonna break down the fucking English class barriers if ya won’t make an effort?”

    “I didn’t know we were intending to break them down,” she says, trying to smile.

    “Well, shit, why not? Seeing as how I've already made a start,” I note grimly.

    “You’ve been to university and everything,” she mutters.

    “So what? My dad’s a bookie and my mum’s dad was a wharfie, for Pete’s sake!”

    “Was he? I don’t think I knew that, um—but I couldn’t, really.”

    “They’re just blokes,” I offer feebly.

    She gnaws on her lip. “Not really. And I’m not used to talking to that sort of man.”

    I give in, I’ve gotta get back and monitor the male peer group in the kitchen in case they do something really potty. Well, don’t ask me what, but anything connected with the ruddy Aga, for a start.

    Turns out Jack’s gone home, promised his daughter he’d be back for lunch, but the Haworths reckon they’ve got it all sussed out. Right, so why’s the Aga on? Gonna bake it next. All right, on their heads be it. I’ll go and lay the table.—No, John, Yvonne isn’t coming. I know ya thought she was, only she isn’t.—Follows me out to the dinette. Why not?

    “Why’d ya think?”

    “Damn. Well, what about tonight?” –He’s found out that there’s a wanking Yacht Club dinner-dance on, folks. Well, I did bring it on myself, eh?

    “She wants to baby-sit. And you said yourself—”

    “Darling, if you’d managed to get her over for lunch, then she could have gone as Terence’s partner, and felt quite at home.”

    Give over. Ya ruddy brother never made a woman feel quite at home in his life! Flattered—yes. Excited—I won’t argue. Furious—too right. But at home? However, I’m not gonna say so: pointless. “Yeah. But she was adamant. But Bridget and Katie said they’ll come tonight.”

    That’s good and is Keel down here?

    I eye him drily. “Your guess is as good as mine. I won’t say better, because as we both know, he isn’t the type that’d drive madly through the night to be with his girlfriend for a whole weekend.”

    “Whole dirty weekend!” he corrects with a laugh, hugging me, mmm… “He must be mad or unnatural,” he concludes into my curls.

    Yeah, one of those, John. Too right.

    Very much later. Put it like this, the afternoon went okay. Well, Bob arrived in good time for lunch. He’s one of those rather hearty, rather beefy characters, grins a lot, I wouldn’t have said he and John had a thing in common, but he’s very musical, he’s a Bach nut and a Wagner nut. Shows ya can’t always tell by appearances. Also was a great spin bowler in their mutual Bob Of The Remove days—like that. Played for what? Oh, can ya play for ya college? Thought ya, like, played for Oxford? Like the rowing. (Didn’t say it.) The fish was good. John thought it was a trifle dry but the other two assured him it wasn’t, though squeezing lots of lemon onto it. –Yes, you’re quite right, earlier in the week we didn’t have no lemons to mix with the non-existent butter and honey on those frozen carrots, only Guess Who got some during the week. Didn’t make him remember to take the bloody fish out of the freezer, though, did it? Heh, heh.

    Terence was a bit left out of the Bach and Wagner talk, he likes Mozart and loathes Wagner, also likes modern jazz (ugh), but kept his end up with the Old So-and-So crap and cricket crap and blah-blah. I just ate, and passed the salt, and answered when spoken to. And smiled a lot. Not deliberately, no! I’m not that bad. Only sitting in a warm dinette with three nice, big, hetero men eating a nice lunch ya didn’t have to cook yaself is enough to make any red-blooded female of the opposite sex smile, isn’t it?

    Jack came back in the arvo and after only a token show of looking at the accounts while Terence went out and made an even more token show of holding things for him, Joh and Bob gave it away and went outside to play with the other boys. And a lovely time was had by all. Me and Baby Bunting kept well out of it. Tim came in and kept me company by the fire for a bit but when the blokes trooped in hopefully looking for afternoon tea he took one look at Jack and shot out with his tail between his legs. Then there was a silly sort of silence and I realised that Terence was trying not to laugh and two other hetero blokes were looking at me with sheepish expressions on their faces, so I heroically refrained from telling Bob the big, fierce dog story, wasn’t I good?

    After afternoon tea they went back to it for a while so I just watched telly. And felt very glad that I’m not the sort of female that has an irresistible urge to grab up hammer and nails, and rush out and show the male wankers what they’re doing wrong, incidentally alienating them forever and a day. I do recognise that the syndrome exists, yes, only to tell you the truth I can’t relate to it in any way whatsoever. Oh, self-evident, eh?

    We had to be very careful about hot water, but we all managed a shower and then we all hadda change into our dinner-dance clobber and it went like this.

    “I dunno what to wear.”

    “That looks good!” Cuddle, cuddle. (White lacy undies.)

    “Ooh! Um, no, stop, John, you’ll get me all hot and bothered. Um, well, what’s suitable for a Yacht Club dinner-dance? Are they gonna recognise me?”

    “Yes. Put it like this, those that don’t know you’re my wife and aren’t therefore expecting to see you will instantly recognise you, yes.” Inspects the wardrobe. “Rosie, where are all your pretty dresses?” –Shock, horror, dismay.

    “Mostly in town, still. I still couldn’t get into most of them when we come d—”

    Check, check, reject, reject… “This!” Beaming smile.

    Oh, God! What’s that doing there? I haven’t worn that since— Hang on. Goddit. Wore it at the wanking Chipping Ditter Festival 2000 that first summer me and John were together, where me and Rupy and Gray hadda perform as accredited representatives of Henny Penny Productions. John came for the week, he had a lot of leave, largely because of having spent most of the previous year hanging about off the coast of Bosnia—guns trained, you goddit. I may have mentioned it before: it dates from The Captain’s Daughter’s most feverishly New Millennium Monroe period: a dead ringer for that pale blue frilly thing she wore in Let’s Make Love. The big set-piece where Yves Montand’s watching the rehearsal and imagining it’s him rolling about on the bed with her? Well, you either know it or ya don’t. And I seem to recollect that in the dim, distant past Someone thought those rows of tiny frills on the tits were funny.

    Oh, thinks it’s ridiculous but adorable—zat so? The upper-clawss nits at ya flaming Yacht Club dinner-dance’ll think it’s ludicrous, but. And what about a certain changing of the image that a certain deluded Navy wife thought might be on the agenda? Okay, I was wrong, he wants the upper-clawss wankers to gawp at his wife in Fifties-style princess-length pale blue nylon frills. On his arm. Get the picture? Thought ya had.

    Folks, I didn’t even bother to argue, the face spoke vols. So I got into it and we went.

    He’d already jacked up where and when to meet the contingent from Quince Tree Cottage. Given that Euan had turned up for the weekend, like around mid-afternoon, he and Katie took the Morris Minor, and Terence and Bob were very happy to let Bridget squeeze into the back of the Jag with them. Since she’s very slim and wasn’t wearing huge billows of pale blue froth there was plenty of room for her. What she was wearing was that Goddawful dark brown waify thing, gauze over a satin slip—she bought it, come to think of it, for the same bloody festival. Terence already knows her, did I say he came to the States with us that Christmas? The time I failed to get Bridget and Matt Haworth together, right. Very fortunately for all concerned, or so I thought at the time, he behaves like a kindly uncle when in her vicinity. Only of course now I can’t help thinking that even being Mrs Terence Haworth Number Three might be better than any sort of involvement with Perry Horton.

    Since John was in uniform and looking totally fab it wasn’t just Lily Rose Rayne in pale blue froth that the ladies were gawping at as we went in. Well, like, imagining themselves in my shoes on his arm, kind of thing? Yeah. Everyone was delighted to meet me, and I was delighted to find that the place has got central heating, so I did let John divest me of Miss Hammersley’s brown mink coat, yeah. No, well, of course they weren’t delighted, but they were loving the sensation: So it’s true that John Haworth married that actress person— Good Heavens, what is the creature wearing? I always said it must be mid-life crisis, my dear! What does she think she’s got up as? And what his poor Mother— Etcetera, geddit?

    We eventually got dinner, though not before five thousand eager males with not-so-eager partners in tow had come up and greeted John like a long-lost brother. I had the cold vichyssoise because hot soup always makes my nose run, ignoring Terence’s kind information that it had cream in it. It did, too, it was yummy. Then the lamb chops. No, not the point—right.

    Well, part of the point was that Katie was looking radiant in deep blue satin: cut on the bias, shoe-string straps, reasonably tight around the bust, very tight around the bottom, strangely cut away as to the skirt to show one knee and not the other. Plus the gold wire necklaces and bangles Euan got her, wouldn’t you expect any natural man to be really, really pleased?

    So first off, once the long-lost brothers had done their bit and we’d sat down and ordered, he said to me: “Rosie, darling, surely that’s the divine frock you had at the Chipping Ditter Festival 2000? Too totally Marilyn!”

    All I said was yeah, Euan, it was one of Henny Penny’s, but that didn’t discourage him.

    “Of course. I must say, it manages to make every other woman in the room look boringly conformist.“—Several jaws dropped, they don’t know him as well as I do, ya see.—“Though I admit Katie’s looking very sweet tonight, isn’t she? That shade of blue does suit her.”

    At this point several older men managed to croak that she looked lovely, gamely seconded by Bridget.

    “Yes, just your colour, Katie, darling,” he said, awarding her a blinding smile and not meeting her eye. “But now don’t you see my point that it’s terribly off-the-peggy?”

    Poor Katie was bright red, mostly anger but also embarrassment. After all, most of the other people present were old enough to be her father, for God’s sake! “He means I bought it with my own money, and so what?”

    “Katie, ma wee pet, I’ve told you, I can afford to buy you much nicer—”

    At this point Terence got up and smoothly asked Katie to dance and led her red-faced form away. So Bob immediately asked Bridget, and John, his mouth very tight, said: “Come on, darling.” And danced me away. Leaving Mr Up-Himself, Big-Mouth Keel sitting there alone.

    “See?” I said glumly.

    “Mm. Bloody fool,” he muttered, holding me tight.

    And for a few moments I forgot everything else… Only then we turned a corner and our table swam back into view and Jesus! Seven, yes, seven Yacht Club girls had already clustered round Euan and you could hear that silly laugh he does when he’s being totally artificial all the way across the room.

    “Well, that’s it for tonight, John. The shit’s doing his Big Star bit.”

    And that was more or less it. Apart from the fact that Series Five is a roaring success and the GBP loves Katie, and more especially the hetero under-thirties percentile loves her. And this was a yacht club in the middle of a Navy-infested area of southern England. So for every Yacht Club bimbo in over-tight pastel satin telling Euan he was marvellous there were three eager young naval officers in spiffing uniforms telling Katie they’d adored her as the Captain’s Stepdaughter, and was it true they were actually going to film down here? Pant, pant.

    Going home Bob said in a dazed voice: “What in God’s name’s wrong with that Keel chap? Just swollen head, or have he and the little thing had a row, or what?”

    After a bit Bridget admitted in a small voice: “Um, he’s been sort of, um, chipping at her ever since he got here. And—and she was so pleased with that dress—”

    Terence and Bob made comforting noises and offered her their hankies and she blew her nose and squeaked: “Maybe he’s trying to dump her. Rosie did warn us… And she’s put all her money into that cottage of his: I don’t know what Dad’ll say!”

    Slightly stunned silence from the back seat, don’t think Bob had realised they’re sisters. Plus you could hear the two of them—well, three, John was, too—thinking that they could make a bloody good guess at what Katie’s dad was gonna say.

    And that was that. It was pretty obvious that Bob thought Katie was luscious but in the far-too-young, hands-off percentile, and that Bridget was very sweet, same avuncular smile on his mug as there was on Terence’s, but not fanciable bird as such. Bugger.

    The accounts did get done, they been at them all day today, Sunday. And it would help if I’d try and remember to write what the cheques were for— Yeah, yeah.

    The veggie garden’s all fenced off, and Terence has pointed out to John that the cottage would look good with blue trims, good on him. If that counts for anything, in the face of— Oh, what’s the use. Euan doesn’t know what’s good for him, in fact has an urge to self-destruct, I’ve known that forever, and I knew Bridget wouldn’t look twice at Bob, and I might’ve known Yvonne wouldn’t go near him.

    John’s right: I did oughta give up this plotting and planning, it only gets me all steamed up to no effect, and I can’t run other people’s lives for them: no.

    The film for Dawlish? He’s still thinking…