Half life

There is only one man for me

Carole Morin

Betty the Maid is finally back from her binge around the mid-West with Wild John. 'I had the time of my life,' Betty said, wobbling on a ladder while unpinning my polluted curtain so that she could give it a good long soak in a bath of bleach, tut I'm glad it's over. John and I made an odd cou- ple.' Resisting temptation, I held the ladder steady. 'Folk gave us funny looks when we checked into motels.'

Since she's 4'11" and he's 6'7" I'm sure they attract funny looks even when they're not on holiday together. But the odd thing about couples is not why they decide to call it a day, but why they fornicate in the first place. Can you think of a couple that isn't odd? Grant and Michelle in Eastenders seem like a good match compared to grin- ning Tony Blair and his muppet wife. Dear Cherie may be — as rumoured — cleverer than Big Tony, but she looks as if she has just escaped from a sedating aromatherapy weekend. Tony may be as sincere as every- one would like him to be, but he can't con- ceal that crocodile smile of his. It's about as seductive as Grant Mitchell's seedy smirks at mouldy Michelle.

`It all came to a head,' Betty went on, coming down the ladder with a corner of the curtain in her mouth, 'when John acci- dentally bashed me on the noggin with that hammer he travels with.'

`Don't tell me any more,' I begged. Hear- ing about someone's holiday is as awful as listening to a really detailed nightmare over the phone at 7 in the morning.

`It seems like yesterday that we were drinking a Vodka Collins together. And yet,' she sat on my bed to help her think, `it's as if it never happened.'

`Dangerous Donald will take a stick to you if you don't get off that bed,' I warned her.

`Does he have any good-looking friends who want a clean wife?' None that would look at her. Then again, lots of ugly women attract husbands. You see them being inti- mate with each other in Oddbins. Even Maddie has had her unfair share of marital disasters, and she always does well out of the divorce. Dangerous Donald says any man in his right mind would pay a fortune to be rid of my mother once and for all.

`You'll get a disease standing around in your bare feet,' Betty said, grabbing my crumpled satin sleeve. 'Whip those pyjamas off and I'll take an iron to them.' They're still recovering from the last time she ironed them.

`Maybe later.' I said in my tactful but bossy voice, 'Clean my bathroom first.' Betty always leaves the bath stained with Flash, but at least it gets her out of my hair for a while.

`Of course I'm on tranks since losing John,' she called through the door. She had literally lost Wild John who checked out of a motel in Colorado while she was passed out. 'In my line of work you have to be calm and raring to go.' It can't be that exciting washing curtains and snooping through the cosmetics in other people's bathrooms. It must beat being accidentally knocked on the head with Wild John's hammer.

Lying back down, I flicked through Al Alvarez's Life After Marriage. Impatient Al married a lovely virgin without shagging her first, and spent four years plotting the divorce. Since Dangerous Donald is the only man in London worth marrying, I'm glad we met in that elevator. He'd rather lose a football match than divorce me.

`Can you live without me for a minute?' Betty asked. 'I need some more pills. I'm going to pop down and see the sour-faced grump downstairs.'

`He's an Ophthalmologist.'

`Cut the falderall,' she said, 'I'm sure he has a prescription pad like the rest of them.'