21 WOMAN TROUBLE

Ivan thinks his troubles might be over....

Maybe his confusing troubles were over and maybe they weren’t. Ivan Bramble wasn’t sure of the state of play. He’d been sent home by a grumpy Inspector Piggott, for the second time, he was suspended from teaching at the comprehensive school where he hoped to make a difference, and all because because he’d given the lout Toothbalm a taste of what he deserved, and it seemed that just about all of his world had fallen to pieces.

At least, he thought, he’d stopped being a woman. If he’d carried on needing to wear a bra he’d probably have gone mad by now. He’d respect women from now on, what with having to tolerate childbirth and wear bras.

The doorbell rang. Persistently. And that could only mean trouble. He didn’t know anyone likely to ring his doorbell who wasn’t intent on trouble. He would have loved to ignore it, but knew all that would do is postpone the inevitable.

Maybe the inevitable should be postponed.

The doorbell rang again, even more insistently.

Reluctantly he went to open it.

Maureen stood there, looking as if she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. At least that’s what he thought. He sighed. He’d loved her once and then Gerald had come along. Gerald with his university degree and published text book. Gerald with his allegedly good looks and deep pockets. Gerald with his big house but needing to take over the Bramble home and the Bramble wife when he reckoned to own half the kingdom.

She looked at him. Her eyes were large like they’d always been, her lips were full and luscious, her face was pale and sickly, her demeanour was lost.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

How could he refuse her? She looked done in. She looked like she’d done six rounds in the ring with Tyson, and lost.

“Of course.” His reply was curt, short, contained no more than the two words it was made of. Then he softened slightly. “Tea?” he asked.

She smiled, a watery sort of smile, “if you haven’t got anything stronger,” she said.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning! Eleven o’clock in the A.M and she was asking for something stronger!

“Coffee?” he asked, half teasing, half serious.

“If that’s the best you can do.”

It wasn’t but it better had be.

“Gerald not with you?” he asked, pouring a spot of whiskey into her coffee.

“What? That pig!” She looked as if she might explode, suddenly, at any moment.

“He’s obviously better company than me,” sighed Ivan, remembering how she’d told him she’d found a better partner in life less than a year earlier and after goodness knows how many years of marriage. It’s not that I don’t love you, she had said, but I love him more… he’s interesting, got important opinions… and he’d good in bed. It was the last bit that had done it. A man’s only told that an opponent is good in bed if he isn’t.

“He’s a womaniser,” she said, tartly. “I wouldn’t have … you know what I did, if I’d known.”

“You mean you wouldn’t have thrown me into the gutter and forced me to live on my own, like a monk in a monastery...”

“You didn’t have to live like that! You could have lived at...” her voice trailed off.

“At the home I bought with you, sharing it with your porcine lover… living in the same small house as that treacherous creature? One of us would have committed murder within a week!”

It had been suggested. That he stayed there with the two of them, wife and lover,, having the spare bedroom, whilst Gerald took his place with Maureen, in their bed, the one they’d shared together for a couple of decades, the one where all sorts of interesting things had been done and said over the years.

“I saw that solicitor woman of yours,” she said.

“Alice?” he asked.

“If that’s her name.”

“I only know one solicitor woman,” he assured her. “Her name’s Alice Laskey and she’s as bright as a button!”

“Are you and her…?”

“What are you asking? Are we what?”

“An item? She spoke fondly of you, as if….”

“As if we spent our off hours between the sheets? I’m old enough to be her father, for goodness’ sake!”

“I did wonder, when she used your Christian name rather than calling you Mr. Bramble, like you’d expect.”

“It all goes to show that you don’t know me very well, then, doesn’t it, after a couple of decades of wedded bliss.”

“It was blissful, wasn’t it?”

“I thought so, while it lasted, until Gerald came along with his promises and no doubt generously proportioned genitals!”

“Don’t talk like that! It isn’t you, not at all, talking dirty.”

“I don’t know what else you expect me to say. Or how you want me to say it, the way you put me through the ringer and even had the cheek to knock my door beg for a bed before Christmas when I was having a really bad day!”

“Your solicitor woman explained about you thinking you’d somehow changed into a woman.”

“Not just thinking, Maureen, but I did! You saw me! And rather than believe me you chose to think I was a w***e living with your ex-husband, which says a lot about what you thought of me and how you saw the kind of man I was. I mean, living with a w***e!”

“Gerald’s in the past, Ivan.”

“And that means we can go back to the way we were? What about the house, our house, our home? Is he still there, lording it over the cat?”

“Basket Case has gone too, Ivan. Gerald didn’t like cats. He had the idea they were part of an alien invasion come to take over the Earth, and he as having none of it.”

“What happened then? To Basket Case?”

“They said it was painless, Ivan, that he just went into an ever-deeper sleep, the sort that ends … you know where.”

“So the b*****d had our cat put down! And where, pray, is that illegitimate son of a w***e?”

“You shouldn’t call him that. He’s at home. He got me to sign a document, saying that in the event of a separation it was his place. I told your solicitor woman and she said it probably isn’t legal, but it might cost a lot in fees to prove it.”

“I paid for that damned house!”

“I’m sorry, Ivan.”

“Look, Maureen, you’re an intelligent woman. How in the name of everything did you let him get away with it? Basket Case … that was evil, I know how you loved that cat, but our home!”

“I loved him, Ivan.”

He looked at his ex wife. Or almost ex wife … they weren’t divorced yet, but he was darned sure they would be as soon as he could put things into motion.

Then the doorbell rang. Again. And even more insistently than last time.

He frowned, and went to answer it.

Today was becoming most confusing and he didn’t really appreciate confusion. He’d had enough of that, enough, indeed, to last a lifetime.

Ivan knew who it was right away, and guessed why he looked the way he did.

It was Gerald, and he was in a dreadful state, with blood running down his face from a cut on his head and a huge tear in jogging bottoms that hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine for ages by the look of them.

“I want Maureen back,” he whimpered, “a very bad man just got a gang onto me, and just because of a woman! I mean, I don’t have any quarrel with anyone and I could tell that he didn’t really like the woman or she wouldn’t have come to me, but the bad man thought he had a quarrel with me over her! Where’s Maureen? I need someone to look after me… I’m in pain...”

© Peter Rogerson 05.01.19