A COLD AND LONELY BED

A strange marriage...

Lexi rolled herself slowly over in bed in the hope that Ginger would be there besides her. She did that a lot these days, and he never was.

She was all alone in her bed and, she sighed, it was all her own fault.

How long ago had it been, that dreadful argument that she was bound to lose because she was in the wrong and Ginger, as ever, was in the right?

It must be months. And ever since then every time she had woken in her bed she was alone. Winter had been and gone. The bed had been cold and there was never any warm person to cuddle up to, to feel the warmth of when she needed it even though Ginger had been a somewhat petite physical person and never glowed really warm. And if she wanted to say something, like it’s another cold one, isn’t it, love there was nobody to respond, to agree or grunt or merely snore in reply.

And it had all been her fault.

Yet, like all their silly rows it had started over nothing at all.

“That Midsomer Murders didn’t make much sense to me,” she had said with a yawn that was meant to sound like a full stop.

“Maybe not, but the subtext was interesting,” he had replied, “You know, how people with money get all the power and always have their own way in the end, until someone gets too jealous and kills one of them.”

“I didn’t see that at all!” she had snapped, because she hadn’t but didn’t like Ginger showing her up by being more intelligent than she was. He was, of course, but that wasn’t her fault, was it? He could see things that she was barely aware of, and that made her really mad.

And that had been how this last argument had started. Over a daft television murder mystery that she’d only half watched because, in the middle and during a commercial break, she’d nodded off and only woken in time for the next commercial break. She did that quite often, let her eyes slowly close, and with her eyes her mind also closed and went somewhere else.

“It was quite straight forward,” he had continued, and she knew what was coming. He would drone on about this or that element in the story and she would have to listen.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she had told him, and she had meant it. The last thing she wanted as she went to sleep was the long lecture he was brewing up about the social differences that privileges and money give a man.

“It’s just really good social commentary,” he had gone on to say, “how Lord Silkie (and that’s a daft name if ever they made daft names up, which they do on that programme) lorded it over everyone and even owned half their homes, which he’d take back at the drop of a hat if they displeased him. So nobody dared to argue with him even when he was wrong, and in the end someone had to stick a knife into his heart, just to teach him a lesson, and Barnaby was on the case…”

He had droned on like that. He often did, and his voice was monotonous even when he was being agitated and emotional.

Though that last thing, emotional, was a rarity when it came to Ginger. Lexi shuddered. She’d sometimes wanted him to be emotional, to show something more than the bright side of his brain, but all he ever did was drone. That was Ginger to a tee. A droner. A boring, probably self-opinionated, droner.

And that time she had lost it. It had been bound to happen, hadn’t it? She shuddered as she replayed the scene in her mind.

“Don’t go over it all again,” she had said, “I’m tired.”

“The trouble with you is you don’t think about things,” he had said, mildly for him, but the words had come out anyway and they had cut her to the quick. Of course she thought about things! But Midsomer Murders? Why should she think about a television programme when all she wanted to do was get forty winks at the end of a monotonous day?

“Don’t start insulting me,” she had warned him. She might have added or else you’ll get what’s coming, and no messing, but she hadn’t.

“I’m not insulting you, darling,” he had replied, “just wondering why you never seem to pay attention to things that are important.”

Television dramas important? What on Earth was he on about?

So she had done the only thing that came to mind, and killed him.

It had been easy. She was no size ten light-weight but a healthy size twenty lard-ball with a bosom she was proud of, and she had simply sat up (that had been a struggle, but never mind) and pushed her pillow over his face and rolled onto it until he stopped struggling. Rolling over it had been what gave her most satisfaction, using the weight she had and that he criticised so often, and do it to stop that droning voice of his.

And he was dead. She felt his pulse, but it wasn’t there. She blew on his face (he always hated that) but he didn’t so much as flinch. She waited half an hour (or it might have been only ten minutes, time isn't so important when you’re in bed with your husband who’s turned into a corpse that started to get cold almost immediately).

But he was dead. And Lexi suddenly realised what she had done.

Her man, the one she had married twenty four years ago and who had poured so much love on her that she had once considered herself the luckiest woman on Earth, had been murdered by her.

She knew what happened to murderers, even those with a good excuse, like she had when she thought of all that droning which hid a constant stream of criticism that mocked her and made her feel less than adequate all the time.

It was still half-light outside. Or at least, enough light for her to just about tell where the potatoes were growing, next to the bean wigwams. And where there was a space Ginger had cleared ready to plant winter cabbages or something like that.

He had been a great gardener. They always had fresh vegetables, so many of them that she was heartily fed up with them. Sometimes her heart yearned for a tin of tomatoes or a bag of frozen peas. But Ginger loved his garden and grew everything.

Then she went back into the house, into their bedroom and somehow managed to pick him up. She was no lightweight herself, but he didn’t seem to add much because, well, he was the skinny side of thin and she wasn’t.

It hadn’t taken her long to dig a grave for him, deep enough to make sure that any passing foxes (their house was near where she was sure a family of foxes lived) wouldn’t dig him up. And she had rolled him into it and covered him up.

The next day she had planted a bed of potatoes where the soil was disturbed. Potatoes that she knew she’d never have the courage to dig up when they were ready to be harvested. The thole idea that she might one day eat potatoes that had survived in the ground by absorbing Ginger’s juices made her feel sick.

That had all been months ago, and tonight she was feeling depressingly lonely as she tried to get to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come and in the end she knew there was only one thing she must do. She needed Ginger back, and by golly she was going to fetch him. He wasn’t going to escape from her that easily! She even had, at the back of her mind, that it was quite a long time since they had made love. It might be a way of forgiving him, making herself available for his more base appetite.

Like that other night months earlier, she found she could just about see her way to the potato patch she had planted, and she started digging.

Her spade hadn’t gone far before she felt it biting into something she was sure must be bone, and she tried not to look. But she wanted ginger back, and she had to be quite sure it was him and not the dog she had buried near where she had lain him to rest when it died of grief.

“You’re up late, Lexi,” came a voice over the garden fence. It was Armand, the neighbour she barely knew but who was cheeky enough to call her by her Christian name.

“I need some potatoes, to make chips,” she replied, “I love chips and I’m hungry. So go away.”

But he didn’t. Armand was a handyman at Brumpton Police Station, wanted promotion and thought he knew a way to get it. So he stared at where she was digging before making a phone call. He knew bones when he saw them. Especially human bones. There were loads of them on Midsomer Murders.

© Peter Rogerson 23.04.22

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