Good Husband Material by Trisha Ashley

rotating dryer round to hide the more ancient and tatty items of my underwear. (I always put my undies in the middle with the shirts and so on round them, but I’d only just started.) The sooner we’ve tackled the back garden, so that the washing can be hung in decent obscurity, the better! However, the vicar came charging right round, stretching out his hand while still several yards away and, seizing my cold wet one in his, pumped it energetically up and down.
    ‘Strange lady!’ he exclaimed, excitedly.
    ‘Oh!’ I said doubtfully, taken aback. But it seemed that this was his name – rather an unfortunate one for a vicar.
    ‘Strangelady! And very pleased indeed to welcome you to our little parish. Ah! washing day, I see!’ he added, and bestowed a benevolent smile upon my black bra and shabby knickers. I went red as a beetroot.
    ‘Er … come in, er … Vicar?’ I invited, hastily backing away from the washing and opening the front door. (How
do
you address a vicar?)
    Still, I recovered my equilibrium over coffee and biscuits while he admired a mercifully silent Toby, and The Bitch drooled adoringly over his knee, shedding long white hairs. (‘
The Borzoi is devoted to one person, showing only aloof attention to others
.’) She placed her paw on his knee whenever he stopped patting her, and assumed her best Starving Russian Aristocrat look at the sight of the biscuit tin.
    (Yes, she really
is
the lost Anastasia.)
    The vicar didn’t press me to attend church, which I rather expected, though he left me a copy of the times of the services and said we would be very welcome, and a copy of the parish magazine.
    Just as he was about to leave, a florist’s van pulled up and delivered a bunch of cream roses. I didn’t need to read the card to know that it said: ‘To my lovely wife, from James,’ since he always does this when he’s got his own way or upset me. It makes him feel better.
    ‘Your birthday perhaps? An anniversary?’ hinted the vicar. ‘What lovely roses!’
    ‘Just a house-warming present,’ I muttered ungraciously, seeing him off. And the sort of gesture we couldn’t afford now – it must have cost a fortune to have them delivered all the way out here, and why
cream
roses? They would be invisible against all the pale walls.
    If he wanted to give me a present I’d have preferred that brass stencil of vine leaves from Homebase.
    You know, I used to think James’s profligacy with posies romantic, but really it’s easy enough to phone up a Teleflorist and read your credit card number. Feeling dissatisfied, I rammed the scentless and useless roses into a cream vase and stood them on a cream table against the cream wall, where they vanished.
    Fergal: March 1999
        
‘GONERIL: FAREWELL TO ALL THAT?
        
Fergal Rocco says his next tour really is his last.’
    Trendsetter
magazine
    Not only me – we’re all saying it, though no one outside the band seems to believe we really mean it. We’re not breaking up, we’ll still record together and do the odd gig, but we all have other parts of our lives we want to develop.
    And we’re sick to death of touring.
    Mike and Col want to spend more time with their families, Carlo’s getting married, and I want to concentrate on the song-writing and painting for a while.
    Funnily enough, it was seeing Tish so suddenly at the gallery that made me really stop and take stock of myself: where I was going with my life. (
And
where I’d been. When I could remember where I’d been.)
    She sparked off a whole new series of songs, too, but that’s by the bye.
    She still looked good …
    Can I be the only man who finds fiery-haired, militant Pre-Raphaelite angels a big turn on?

Chapter 7: Drained
    James came home next day exhausted: some kind of party had developed at Howard’s and he had hardly had a wink’s sleep all night.
    I refrained from comment with some effort (apart from suggesting he go for a shower, since Howard usually lives in some squalid