Husbands Read online

  ‘Bloody builders,’ he echoes, which makes me think I ought to look for someone else with whom I can discuss the trials and tribulations of having building work done.

  The builders arrive just as I am dragging a comb through Eddie’s hair and trying to close the deal on the contents of his lunch box. He wants to pack jam sandwiches, biscuits and a slice of chocolate fudge cake. I open my pitch with ham sandwiches, an apple and a yogurt. I already know that we’ll settle on ham sandwiches, biscuits and the fudge cake. He’s by far the better negotiator.

  They arrive at exactly 8.30 every morning. This is half an hour later than we agreed the preceding evening. As soon as they arrive, Henryk the foreman reiterates his all-too-familiar lecture on the importance of punctuality. This immediately disarms me and I lose my ability to point out that he’s late, which is of course his intention.

  I shrug mentally, and reason that 8.30 a.m. is early for the appearance of a builder, no matter what time we agreed. Besides, they defy stereotype by being clean-ish, tidy-ish and very thorough. They do, however, revert to type in so much as they have now camped with me for a total of three months when initially I thought I’d be enjoying their company for four weeks, tops. Henryk likes to chat to me; he’s Polish and enjoys practising his English and because I’m short on adult company I encouraged this for a while. But, it transpires, Henryk can chatter for an Olympic sport, which is one of the reasons that the job is taking longer than estimated.

  The second reason is there are plenty of things to fix in my dilapidated two-bedroom flat, and Henryk and his team keep finding them. ‘Builders’ is a catch-all phrase; they are electricians/plumbers/decorators/general ‘all-rounders’. When I mentioned as much to my father, on my bi-weekly telephone call to Wollongong, he said the phrase that came to mind was ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. I didn’t find this helpful. Then he asked if I was paying them by the hour, as if I were some sort of an idiot. Dad also questioned whether all the work was strictly necessary. Annoyingly, the answer is yes. Henryk is not a cowboy. The things that he points out as ugly, dysfunctional or impractical in my home are just that.

  I think Dad was just a bit jealous because I described Henryk as the bane and saviour of my life. Clearly, a parental role. Dad pointed out that as a qualified plumber, he could do all the jobs for free. I reminded him that, while this was excellent in theory, we live on separate continents and the flight would cost more than Henryk’s bill. Sadly, I doubt this to be the case and besides, both my father and I know that he doesn’t want to fly to the UK, he and my mum want me to fly home. They’ve wanted this since they saw me disappear through passport control back in 1993. The ferocity of their desire increased when Eddie was born and again when Oscar split. As they are not especially demanding parents I feel all the more mean for denying them this one thing.

  Henryk is in his early fifties. He has a moustache and a paunch. I mention this immediately not because I’m particularly shallow and judge people by the way they look but because Bella is and does. I was verbose in my praise of Henryk, so delighted was I to find someone who could and would stop my leaking shower and unblock my toilet, and Bella became convinced that I fancied him when I started to refer to him as ‘Big H’. She said my giving him a nickname was proof positive that I fancied him. I found this very depressing. No disrespect, he’s fair dinkum but I think of him as a father figure. Clearly, my best mate sees me as a sad divorcee who fancies her tradesmen. Bleak moment.

  Henryk is clever. He has about a dozen degrees, as most Eastern Europeans seem to, and over the months of chatting I’ve learnt that he has an understanding of literature, art and history that would allow him to hold an intelligent debate with the guys at Sotheby’s. He’s cheerful and has a twinkle in his eye. OK, he might have been fun in another century, even attractive, but I don’t, don’t, don’t fancy him.

  Clear?

  I make him and his team a cup of tea and give in to the inevitability of being late dropping Eddie off at kindie. Henryk is complaining about the stupidity of some housewife or other, who has three times changed her mind about the tiles she wants in her bathroom. I already resent the woman, assuming that she’ll be choosing between phenomenally expensive textured slate, classy marble or criminally priced mosaic. I went for bog-standard white ceramic with a blue trim which looks quite pretty but I ached for mosaics like you see in the loo of really trendy pubs. Or at least, I think you do. It’s been a while since I went to a really trendy pub. The loo might be decorated with oak panels again for all I know, mosaic might be passé.

  Suddenly Big H changes tack, ‘You’re happy with that door?’ We both stare at my front door, the one that opens out on to the corridor of my apartment block.

  ‘Yes,’ I mutter defensively, sure that admitting as much has exposed some appalling ignorance or at the very least a frightening lapse in taste.

  Big H shakes his head and tuts. I look at the door again.

  ‘Maybe it could do with a lick of paint,’ I concede. Henryk is not comforted.

  ‘You’re happy with gap, causing draught? Heat escaping?’ he asks with incredulity.

  ‘The gap?’ I ask.

  ‘Gap under letter box and at the top of door. It’s been hung incorrectly. Monkeys. Look at your floor.’

  It’s horribly scratched. I’d noticed it before but blithely accepted it just as I accept so many imperfections in the way I run my life. I don’t floss on a daily basis. Neither Eddie nor I eat five portions of fruit and veg every day; we average about four every other day. I’m only human.

  I look at the letter box. The gap is growing in front of my very eyes. Suddenly, I am ambushed by a vision of my hard-earned cash flying out. Ten-, twenty-, fifty-pound notes fluttering away down the stairwell.

  I sigh and ask him if he can fix it. He says he can and will. He has the sense not to scare me by telling me what it will cost. Nor have I any idea how much it cost me for him to fix the banging radiator or the flickering lights in Eddie’s room. I wonder when he will present the bill and how much cash selling my body would raise (we have no family silver). I doubt it would cover it so I instantly decide against it. Besides, I’d rather do overtime than show anyone my naked body. It’s a long time since it was exposed to anything more radical than the communal showers at the swimming pool.

  I break free from Henryk and dash to drop Eddie off at kindie. He goes there Monday mornings and all day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, so that I can work as a receptionist at the local doctor’s surgery for three days a week and act like a normal, independent human being on one morning; Monday – when I meet Bella for coffee. It kicks off my week with a high point and gives her something to get out of bed for; without our date she’d probably be languishing there on a Friday.

  Big H’s chatter means that there is no chance of my running a comb through my hair or dabbing on some lipstick. It is probably a good thing that my only dates are with girlfriends to drink coffee. Messy hair and a harassed expression are hardly this season’s ‘must-haves’.

  5. How’s the World Treating You?

  Bella

  Laura is late but only forty-five minutes, which for her isn’t too bad. What do I care? The treadmill at the gym won’t get arsey if I don’t turn up.

  She bursts into Starbucks with more enthusiasm than the venue deserves. I know some nice Starbucks, which have managed to remain intimate despite the cookie-cut approach to decor; this isn’t one of them. This building used to be a butcher’s and I am sure I can still smell the blood. It isn’t the right shape to accommodate a long bar and leave space for clusters of tables and chairs; necessary to facilitate gossip and giggles. The chairs fall into an awkward line and always need shuffling.

  ‘Morning,’ says Laura. She bends and kisses my cheek. One not two because we don’t work in the media and neither of us is French.

  ‘You look lovely,’ I say.

  ‘I look terrible,’ she states with no self-pity.

  Neither of us is
accurate. She looks OK. She could look lovely. She could be a total babe but usually she looks like what she is, a fraught mum. Her babe status would be immediately more attainable if she stood up straight. She’s tall, about five ten. I’m not quite five two. Clearly, God gave her the extra four inches that were supposed to come my way. A clerical error among the angels, no doubt. She doesn’t know how wonderful it is to be tall. She doesn’t understand the frustration of not being able to see your way to the bar in a busy club or having to lop a good four inches off every pair of trousers purchased.

  I’d love it if she was able to somehow recapture the magnificence I have seen evidence of. Old photos of Laura in her early twenties show a curvy woman, with big breasts, strong shoulders and thighs. I think Laura started to shrink after Eddie was born. By the time he was two years old he weighed three stone and Laura had lost the same amount. Every spare scrap of fat and flesh seemed to fall and melt from her. When Oscar left she seemed to lose height too. She stoops so badly now that her shoulders almost meet in the middle of her chest.

  Laura also has lovely hair; naturally blonde and curly. She generally scrapes it back into a functional, no-nonsense ponytail. On the rare occasion when she lets it escape it bounces energetically around her face, in a mass of intoxicating ringlets which bring her sprinkling of freckles to life. Her curls defy the truth of her life as they insist everything is fun and merriment, one long crazy giggle. I think this is why she keeps her hair tied up; she doesn’t like to be sardonic. Today she is wearing a T-shirt I haven’t seen before and I feel it’s polite to acknowledge it. ‘Nice top.’

  Laura grins, ‘It is, isn’t it? I got it in Top Shop. You know how cool their stuff is.’

  I do. We used to shop there together. Saturday mornings would be spent pawing over the messy rails of disposable fashion. We would arm-wrestle for the last pair of (deeply unsuitable) purple hot pants. We’d take turns at guarding Eddie’s pushchair and trying on shimmery, flimsy tops and pretty embroidered skirts. It was a fun way to spend thirty quid.

  We don’t see as much of each other at weekends now. Laura and Eddie sometimes pop by on a Sunday morning but Saturdays are for me and Philip. I sometimes feel a bit guilty about this but Laura assures me there is nothing to feel bad about. She insists that I should spend time with my husband, that it is ‘only right’. I love being with Phil so in that sense it is ‘only right’ but somehow, when Laura says as much, she manages to sound more traditional than Mary Whitehouse.

  ‘Why do we meet here?’ asks Laura. ‘There are dozens of lovely little coffee shops in Wimbledon or Shepherd’s Bush and Starbucks is so soulless.’

  ‘Because it’s central for us both and we’ve tried the wee independents and they sell tepid instant coffee,’ I remind her.

  ‘Oh yes, why aren’t things like I imagine them to be?’ She grins.

  ‘Rough morning?’ I ask sympathetically. Despite the new T-shirt and almost permanent smile both Laura and I know that her lot is not a carefree one. It would be patronizing if I totally bought into her cheery persona.

  ‘Not especially. Except when I dropped Eddie off at kindie he clung to me and sobbed.’

  ‘I thought he was settled.’

  ‘He was. He is. He’s probably just playing me.’ Laura carries more Catholic guilt than the Pope and she’s not even Catholic. ‘When he sobs I forget that his kindie is a perfectly pleasant place and that the carers do actually care. I imagine it to be a fascist dictatorship, where tearing out fingernails is an acceptable response to a four-year-old refusing to eat his carrots.’

  I pat her hand.

  ‘He seemed so distraught this morning that I seriously considered making a run for it.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. Eddie’s key care worker, Linda, scooped him into her large breasts.’

  ‘Did he smile appreciatively?’ I ask.

  ‘No, he’s about twelve years too young. He just looked at me with his sad, blue eyes. Linda firmly and fairly declared that it is “silly to be clingy”.’

  ‘Bit harsh, he’s only a tot,’ I comment sympathetically.

  ‘She was talking to me,’ explains Laura with a grin.

  I go to the counter and buy two more coffees and a blueberry muffin each. We always wait until our second coffee before we eat cake. Our ritual puts me in mind of my mum, who would never let alcohol pass her lips until after 7 p.m. She insisted it was important to have ‘standards’. Her approach was rare. Like me, she was born and bred in Kirkspey, a small village in a colourless, dreary corner of the north-east of Scotland: a community that historically had been dependent on the fishing industry. In Kirkspey whisky was known as ‘the water of life’ and was as appreciated as mother’s milk. I guess it dulled the pain and terror of the ever-present threat of injury or death. Events that were dreaded but not unexpected in a fishing town. Now, the area is blighted by drug addiction, high unemployment and incurable economic decline. You can’t spit without hitting a forsaken boatyard but the passion for ‘the water of life’ is unabated. If anything it’s more ferocious. I mean, I enjoy a glass or two with friends (well, three or four sometimes) but in Kirkspey I’d be regarded as pretty much teetotal.

  In Kirkspey, riotous mood swings, unjustified insult, physical and verbal invective against strangers, vomiting and urinating in the streets, self-harm, lewd exposure, memory blackout and insolvency are rife. All because too many people worship ‘the water of life’ and don’t have my mum’s ‘standards’. Blueberry muffins, of course, are a lot less damaging.

  ‘You know what you need?’ I ask Laura, pushing all thoughts of Kirkspey from my head, not a difficult task as I’m practised at doing so.

  ‘A six-foot-two, handsome millionaire, who dotes on my every word and wants to make an honest woman of me,’ answers Laura succinctly.

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’

  ‘Good thing – you got the last one of those. Lucky bint.’

  ‘I was going to suggest a night out.’

  ‘I can’t afford it.’

  I am used to Laura’s stock answers: she has been reeling them out for all of the three years I have known her and has recited them with increased vigour since I married Philip. When we were both on the pull she was prepared to launch herself into bars, pubs and clubs every second Friday but she is much more reluctant now. Who can blame her? It’s a disaster movie out there.

  ‘We don’t have to go anywhere expensive,’ I counter.

  ‘But even if the venue is cheapo I have to pay a babysitter, that’s if I can find one who doesn’t come with a million terms and conditions. The last babysitter specified which takeaway pizza supplier she wanted and she wouldn’t let me record Footballers’ Wives because she wanted to watch it and tape the other side!’

  I’ve heard this before; it is shocking.

  ‘You could come to my place, bring Eddie. We could open a couple of bottles of wine.’

  ‘But the cost of a cab home.’

  ‘Stay.’

  ‘I’d be in the way. Philip works hard – he doesn’t want to come home to a house full.’

  ‘Philip is away most of this week and won’t be back until very late Friday night. I could do with the company.’ I can see that she is tempted. She’s probably thinking how delightful it will be to live in a dust and power-tool-free environment for twenty-four hours. I seal the deal by adding, ‘I think Amelie could do with a night out too.’

  Laura looks at once thrilled and stricken but agrees immediately. She’s thrilled at the idea of a girls’ night in/out and stricken at the mention of Amelie’s name. Amelie’s loss has that effect on everyone. In our heads we both refer to her as ‘poor Amelie’ and occasionally we slip up and do so out loud, although Amelie would be outraged to know we feel like this.

  We agree to meet on Friday and then I pull a copy of Heat from my bag. We dive into it, hungry for our gossip fix. I buy this mag religiously on the day of publication, and, in a unique act of friendship, I don�
��t even peek inside it until I see Laura so that we can take a virgin look together. This isn’t a completely unselfish act as she always comes up with the most amusing and scathing comments. The conversation turns to the rash of B-list celebrities exposing their pregnancy bumps.

  ‘Hers is nice,’ comments Laura.

  ‘It turns my stomach. Not just because they’ll use their fertility to secure a few column inches, but because they look so gross and don’t seem to know it.’

  ‘You’ll feel differently when it’s you,’ grins Laura and then she does that thing that so many people have started to do since I married Philip. She gives me a knowing wink.

  I bite into my muffin and concentrate on the sweetness because unaccountably I can suddenly taste fear.

  6. Guitar Man

  Laura

  Bella and I leave Starbucks together and stop for a minute or two to look in the window of a shop that sells children’s T-shirts with funny slogans such as ‘Granny Target’ and ‘Been Inside for Nine Months’. I resist buying Eddie the one with ‘Mummy’s Little Man’ emblazoned across the front. Mostly because it is true and therefore seriously unfunny.

  Eddie is my utter love and the only reason I don’t completely hate Oscar is that he had something to do with Eddie’s existence, although I don’t dwell on exactly what that involvement entailed. I sometimes worry that I love my child too much. It might have been better if Oscar had left me with two children (a girl, perhaps) so I could have spread my love a little more evenly and Eddie would not grow up thinking that the world revolves around him. But then, imagine the extra washing and the increased chances of standing on those tiny little bits of Lego in bare feet (there is no pain like it).