THE OLD, COLD SEASON

Men and women, eh? How different we are!

The kindest thing anyone said about Agnes Hingeworthy was that she was house-proud. And those same people would probably have agreed that Egbert Hingeworthy, her husband of some fifty six years, was a good provider.

Egbert worked on the buses until he was due to retire, being a conductor when they had conductors way back in the pre one-man operated days, and then he trained to be a driver and finally he ended up as an Inspector. Then retirement was foisted on him and he found a job in the primary school round the corner as a care-taker. And during all that time he never had a day off for sickness, not because he was never under the weather because he sometimes was, but because a day off for sickness would have put him in the way of Agnes and her dusters.

Meanwhile, with her spouse at work Agnes did what she was best at and cleaned and polished and dusted and shone until her house was so spotless that nothing larger than a germ could survive in it due to their very visibility and even germs had a hard time dodging her many aerosol cans of toxic chemicals.

Then came Egbert’s forced retirement due to a hacking cough and real longevity and he found himself permanently in the way.

“Why don’t why you join the bowls club?” she asked when he was occupying the same space in the living room that she wanted her vacuum cleaner to occupy, “if it’s fresh air you need you’ll find plenty there.”

“There’s one thing I don’t like about bowls and that is the old fogeys who play the game,” he replied, having no clear idea about either bowls or old fogeys but not wanting to be playing an outdoor game when he could quite comfortably catch up with any of the daytime soaps on the television.

On another occasion when she was cleaning stairs that he wanted to walk down she suggested he found some friends in the snug of their local, The Old Timers, a pub that seemed to exist entirely for the pleasure of aged men.

“You’d like it down there, with other high class pensioners to exchange views with and play dominoes with,” she told him with a tempting smile disguised as a scowl.

“I don’t know anyone who goes there and what’s more I’m not as old as them,” he complained after putting his nose through the door of the pub once and then walking away.. “And,” he added, mentally underlining his words, “I can’t stand dominoes.”

So an uneasy silent war entered the marriage of Mr and Mrs Hingeworthy.

Egbert joined the library, which did take him out of her way for an hour or so one day a fortnight, and he decided to catch up on all of the classical literature something inside him told him he ought to have read but never had the time for due to the pressures of work.

He fell in love with dark corners of Victorian life as portrayed by Charles Dickens and imagined the dusty, dirty corners in which poor little orphans had to scramble in the filth for life, and he almost worshipped the hatred he felt for the lawyers and judiciary whose sole existence seemed to be akin to a serpent eating its own tail, that tail consisting of the poorest wretches any society ever spawned.

This sudden fondness for literature made him sit for hour after hour in the comfort of his armchair (he and Agnes had their own chairs: sharing a settee would be too intimate for her and too close to her for him). He even voluntarily lifted his feet several times a day for her to clean the cleanest patch of carpet anywhere under the known sky.

And she hated it.

“Why,” she challenged him on one occasion, “am I slaving away day in and day out keeping filth away from hearth and home for you to lounge in luxury, putting your feet up and doing nothing?”

“But I’m not doing nothing, best beloved,” he replied, “I’m reading Dickens.”

“What good is reading Dickens when there’s soil and grime everywhere in the world?” she demanded, “when every smudge and speck of dust could harbour horrors beyond your imagination, with disease ever knocking at our door begging to be let in, and only kept away by me?”

“What would you have me do, honey-bunch?” he asked, knowing in his heart there wasn’t an answer to that question because when it came to housework she was a lone soldier in a personal battle against chaos and the absence of pulchritude.

“You can get out for an hour while I see to the germs!” she snapped.

“But, gleam-in-my-eyes, there is nothing but spotlessness in every corner of your paradise,” he told her, “and it would do you good to take a break from your Herculean labours, sit down and have a nice cup of tea which I will gladly manufacture for you.”

“What do you think I am, Egbert? A shallow wastrel? What is a woman’s life for if it wasn’t created to drive away all filth and grime from the world and create something beautiful to share with her man? And anyway, I need to clean the windows in a few minutes, clean them until they are like polished crystal and when her from next door walks by on her way to the Bingo, leaving her own filthy windows to shame her husband with their smears and motes, she can look at mine and know how well I look after you!”

“There’s no answer to that,” grunted Egbert, because he couldn’t think of one, and he frowned and contemplated the manner of his universe and tried to work out what made it tick. And it was Agnes who provided an answer to that, too.

“The trouble is,” she mumbled with her head under the corner cupboard where she suspect there might be a grotesque speck of dust lurking to shame her, “the trouble is, you men were never designed to keep a house liveable in. You were designed to go out into the world and do your own rather grubby thing whilst we women, by dint of nature, have to look after you.”

“You mean,” he grated, “we’re the grubby hunters and gatherers designed to fill your bellies with goodness, and you’re the slave at home?”

“Something like that,” she snapped, “now be a good man for once and go out for an hour! Let me get this place fit to live in, and then, when you come home, I’ll see if I’m left with enough energy for a few minutes sitting and supping that cup of tea you want to make, though I’ll make it because I know how to do it without splashing milk and sugar everywhere!”

“What about when we were younger?” he asked suddenly, “and the bedroom and the fun we had?”

“We’ll have no talk like that!” she snapped, glowering suddenly even more darkly, “nothing like it at all. We’ve had our babies and now it’s time to keep the place clean for our coffins!”

© Peter Rogerson 02.01.21

Reviews

[barleygirl]

That's the problem with clean freaks, they think everyone should have the same standards that they do. Also, I find in your story the best excuse for why I never married in 64 years. You tell of marital retirement woes with persnickety reality & I enjoy your playful ways of making fun of human nature (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie

[Peter Rogerson]

I'm happily married and my wife doens't have to tell me that because I feel it in my bones, but I do understand what you mean.