Good Husband Material by Trisha Ashley

hippie at a wet festival.
    They can barely have tapped at the door once, for Bess barks like a hysterical hyena at the least noise, so as soon as I’d covered the cooker up with a bigger plastic sheet I rang to complain.
    My temper was not improved by being passed from person to person until I completely snapped and screamed that they’d better come back immediately and put my oven in, or I would take legal action.
    What did I mean by that? What could
I
do against a big utility company?
    It certainly did the trick, though, for the man on the other end of the line suddenly capitulated from his previous truculent stance and promised to send someone round to install it that afternoon.
    ‘And tell them to knock properly at the door this time,’ I added as a parting shot before slamming the phone down with hands trembling with rage.
    My temper was not improved when, noticing the message button was flashing, I listened to Vanessa the secretarty ringing with the news that the big office photocopier was in good working order again.
    So what?
    Strangely enough, James was cross with
me
for not having stayed in the house all the time to listen for the gas men. But if radar-ears bitch didn’t hear them I wouldn’t have either, unless I’d been standing on the doorstep.
    But I forgave him, because he brought back chocolates, flowers and wine – the latter two a conjunction of gifts usually signifying Interesting Intentions …
    Only an hour later two rather sheepish workmen returned and installed the stove in the kitchen, mangling the quarry tiles in the process. However, I’m thankful to have a
stove that works.
    As a bonus and, I suspect, as a spin-off from my telephone tantrum, a completely different man came and brought the missing Vital Spark for the boiler not half an hour later, and after some swearing and awful glugging noises, the central heating system became operational.
    Who says it doesn’t pay to lose your temper?
    The first person to phone us in our new home – unless you count Vanessa’s message, duly passed on to James, who looked pleased about it. Sad really! – was, of course, Mother, who has very clingfilm ways.
    You know, it was such a wonderful relief when I first discovered that James’s father, stepmother and several smaller half-siblings lived in South Africa, and that he didn’t seem to care if I ever met them, because Mother is family enough. More than enough.
    She was not, she now informed me, deeply hurt by my failure to call her for weeks, and she and Granny were managing very well despite this neglect.
    ‘Don’t be such a Wet Nellie, Valerie,’ Granny screeched in the background. ‘The girl’s moving house!’
    Mother put her hand over the phone – the wrong end, unfortunately – and hissed: ‘She can still phone, can’t she?’
    ‘I’m sorry I haven’t phoned this week, Mother, but I’ve been so busy with the move.’
    ‘So far away!’ she mourned.
    It isn’t really, but as neither Mother nor I drive it would make the journey a little difficult.
    I was going to miss Granny, though.
    ‘I haven’t seen my little girlie for months!’
    ‘Two weeks, actually, Mother – my birthday – and yours, too, just before that.’ These celebrations come thick and fast in my family. ‘And don’t forget we’re coming over for tea on Sunday as usual. James wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
    ‘Dear boy! Such a good, hard-working husband.’
    ‘Namby-pamby!’ shouted Granny, and I grinned. James is too polite and even-tempered for her taste. If he was just as rude back to her she’d like him a lot better, but he
just carries on being urbane and forgiving.
    And if James had had any romantic inclinations for our second night at the cottage, he was too exhausted to do anything about it by the time we went to bed.
    The next few days were a blur of paint smells, sawdust and aching muscles, though I did let James off on the Wednesday afternoon to go to an auction.
    The former contents of