Finding out who our most recent nocturnal intruder was didn’t make me feel any easier, even if it was someone as completely under whelming as old Purple Velvet Trousers. This was largely down to the fact that neither of us could figure out how the hell he had got in the house, particularly as I am downright fanatical about locking all the doors and windows before turning in. The only possible thing I could think of was that he had a set of skeleton keys.
So as a consequence we still kept the radio or the TV turned on low all night. The led to me on one occasion waking up suddenly at 2:30 one morning to find an old black-and-white shot of Reg Varney (circa 1968 I think) staring at me. I hadn’t finished with PVT by any means. I fully intended to go and have it out with Andrea one day soon, on the grounds that not only do I suspect that she wears the trousers in that relationship, but that she’s the one who possess the brain!
In the meantime the accumulated stress of all this had left me with a bad doze of eczema, which was so bad sometimes that it felt as though my skin was on fire.
They say there is no news so joyous in Heaven as a sinner who repenteth, and I was doing that big time during the Party Conference season. Listening to the Tories in action, I was appalled that I had voted for a party that was preparing to sledgehammer the sick, the elderly, and the unemployed into the gutter, whilst at the same time quaffing on £120 a time bottles of Champagne! My disgust with myself got so great that Misty began to be quite concerned.
“And listening to them blithering on endlessly about families as though the rest of us don’t have a vote!” I raged.
“Well WE’RE a family”, he said, sweetly “A family of two”.
“Not as far as those ballast-brained neo-fascists are concerned!” I said “At least Jason’ll be pleased I’ve repented, and that it wasn’t a general election I voted in!”
The doorbell rang. I answered it to find a skinny, dark-haired woman of about 30, whom I had never seen before in my life.
“Is my mum in here?” she asked.
“Who is your mum?” I said, which was a pointless question as there was currently nobody that could be remotely classed as anybody’s “mum” inside ’Barnacles’.
She gave a sigh of impatience.
“Kristy”, she said “Your neighbour”.
(I should’ve known!).
“I haven’t seen Kristy in weeks“, I said “I don’t know where she is”.
“You don’t know?” she sneered, in a manner so rude and insufferable that I really got quite annoyed.
“No”, I said, fiercely “I don’t know!”
This at least pricked her bubble. She mumbled a surly apology, and skulked off.
“What was all that about?” said Misty.
“One of those wonderful families the Tories get so dewy-eyed about”, I said.
At the beginning of October I finally got enough courage together to go and confront Andrea about her husband’s dubious nocturnal habits. I asked Misty to stay at home, which he was none too pleased about, and he was right, it did concern him too, but I felt it would be better if I didn’t turn up mob-handed.
It was an awful dialogue I had with her. The only good thing about it was that PVT was out, so I didn’t have to listen to his usual imaginative slant on things. Andrea denied her husband had any queer leanings at all. Well she would wouldn’t she! I might have had a lot more sympathy for her if I had felt I was delivering a genuine bolt from the blue. After all, I can’t imagine it’s the sort of news most women really want to hear. But my strong suspicion was that she knew all about him, had always known all about him in fact.
“Why on earth should he be like that?” she said “He has women falling over themselves to get his attention”.
“Even if that were the case”, I said “It doesn’t alter matters”.
“You know Hazel Clare?” she said, taking me completely by surprise.
“Well I’ve met her”, I said.
“He was saying to me only the other day that he thought she had great breasts”, said Andrea “A gay man is hardly like to say that! He loves women!”
“Things aren’t as simple as that”, I said.
“He is a charmer with women”, she went on “He would never even LOOK at a MAN! And he has always, ALWAYS, adored me. He worships the ground I walk upon. He treats me like a queen”.
By this time I really did feel sorry for her, and I wanted to terminate this pathetic conversation as quickly as I had started it. Andrea, with her painted doll face, her tiara, and her twee mannerisms, lived in her own little fantasy land. One where she was royalty, a queen with her very own dashing knight in attendance. It was awful.
“I’d better go“, I said “All I really wanted to say was that if he comes anywhere near our house again, I WILL call the police. And that’ll get talked about in an area like this, where everybody gossips too much. I’m sure you don’t want that”.
Taken on the surface, this could mean she didn’t want embarrassing publicity or her business, but I really meant I suppose that she didn’t want this fantasy world she had so carefully built up to come crashing down around her. And the truth was that her charming, devoted husband was a grubby little stalker. And one who stalked other men.
I was quite down and emotional for a few days after this. There are times I get so angry at the world that I think I’m in danger of doing myself an injury. When I get so damn bitter about all the crass stupidity and ignorance there is around. But occasionally I just feel so bloody sorry for all of us, and this was one such time.
I could see Misty felt out of his depth with my latest emotional meltdown. He tried to distract me any way he could, and one such attempt was to send me outside to marvel at the October sunshine. I was in the middle of doing this (marvelling) when Mrs Jackson hove into view down Beach Lane, wearing a fringed white poncho. She looked like a hearth-rug that had decided to get up and go for a walk all by itself. I stood watching her in a sort of mesmerised awe.
“I’ve just been reading about that Vlad The Impaler“, she said “Apparently, in his country in his day, you could leave a bag of gold by the roadside and no one would dare touch it, because the penalties were so severe. Makes you think doesn’t it?”
Thankfully, she moved on before I could think of an answer to this.