How to be a Husband by Tim Dowling Page A

huge windows and a fresco covering the whole ceiling, apart from a bit in the corner where they cut into the plaster to installa shower cubicle. We sit in the window and take a picture of ourselves with a timer, looking out onto the street at dusk. When I want to remember that I had a romantic honeymoon in Naples with the woman I love, that’s the one I look at.
    In a lot of ways it does not feel as if we’re genuinely married until we turn up at passport control with our paperwork. There are a few more questions, a bit of a wait, some instructions I am too nervous to take in, and finally, a stamp in my passport that grants me a full year to sort out my new status. At last, I’m an immigrant.
    â€œNow you just have to see the doctor,” says the official.
    â€œThe what?” I say.
    I am led to a little examination room in a weird backstage area, where I remove my shirt for Dr. Gatwick, a weary-looking man with a mildly sinister bearing.
    â€œAny diseases worth mentioning?” he asks. If I had any, I think, I wouldn’t mention them to you.
    â€œNo,” I say.
    He listens to my chest, takes my blood pressure, and asks me a few more questions. Then I am allowed to put my shirt back on and rejoin my wife on British soil. Dr. Gatwick’s seal of approval is the final hurdle to married life, or at least that’s how it seems until we are safely on the train to London, and I realize that virtually all the hurdles are still ahead of us.

4.
    How to Be Wrong
    T ake a moment to cast your eyes around my domain: this blasted promontory, wracked by foul winds, devoid of life, of cheer, of comfort. This is my special place—my fortress of solitude. I’ve been coming here on and off for the last twenty years. Welcome, my friend, to the moral high ground.
    Sit down. Do you want some tea? I’m afraid they only do oat milk up here. It’s the moral high ground—what did you expect? There are some salt-free rice cakes on the shelf there. They’re a bit joyless, but help yourself—just make sure you put tenpence in the honesty box.
    What were we talking about? Oh yeah: so, earlier today my wife was giving me a hard time about not putting the ladder back in the shed. I told her it was pointless keeping the ladder in the shed because I use it all the time, almost exclusively in the house, and that it was much more convenient and sensible to store it at the back of the cupboard under the stairs, like weused to before we got the shed. And by the way: Why wasn’t I consulted about the switch in the first place?
    My wife responded by saying that, at any rate, the ladder didn’t live in the middle of the sitting room, where it had been all weekend, and went on to imply that I was just being lazy and also, quite possibly, a twat. Then I said: Okay, this is not about the ladder anymore. This is about the proper way to conduct discourse between adults. I refuse on principle—on principle!—to engage with a person who would resort to such a personal attack. Someone has to make a stand against this sort of thing, I said, and for that reason no ladders will be moved today. And that’s how I ended up here, on the moral high ground. It’s like a VIP room for idiots.
    I don’t remember the subject of the first big argument I had with my wife, only its aftermath. I’m sure it began, as in the example above, with some trivial domestic dispute—a failure to do something on my part, let’s assume—which quickly escalated into a frank exploration of my inadequacies.
    It is perhaps a year before we are married. At some point during the argument I decide my character is being assailed in a manner incompatible with my dignity. I say as much, and storm out of her flat, slamming the door as hard as I can behind me, heading straight for the moral high ground. I stomp downstairs and slam the front door, not quite as hard, because its maintenance is covered by a