Living Upside Down. John Hickman

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      “I’ll need to get a part time job.”

      “What! No! Absolutely not!” Roger shouts. “Sue, when we married it was agreed you would be a stay at home wife and mother. I’ll not go back on that. No!”

      “You’d miss me if I went out to work, wouldn’t you?”

      “No more than I would my eyes,” Roger replies tersely.

      Sue had agreed to be a stay home wife and mother, which was not unusual among their other family members. Roger never changed a nappy, nor got up in the middle of the night to attend to Jayne or James, because Sue saw that as her role. Roger is the breadwinner. He works. She feels it only right that he has uninterrupted sleep.

      She breaks away to serve cereals, boiled eggs, and buttered toast for their breakfast.

      “I suppose we could always sell a child.” Roger jokes in a whisper, to lighten the mood.

      Sue is not amused.

      “You wouldn’t mind though, would you?” Sue asks, as Roger clears table.

      “Mind what?”

      “I’d like to know more about Australia. You wouldn’t be too upset if I sent away for their brochures, would you?”

      “Me? Upset? Course not. Why should I get upset? I’ve got balls the size of Planets.”

      Sue pats him on the knee, much as she would pat Fred on the head. “In your dreams, Darling.”

      The continual dull monotony of attempting to keep body and soul together in such a grey and cheerless place as England is getting Sue down. The bags of tiredness and stress under her eyes seem to swell whenever she speaks.

      That night his dream searching for Seal Flipper Pie continues. He is walking through The Lanes in Brighton, every shop is selling Haddock testicles, and no-one knows anything about his pie. His dream ends with him chasing a bikini clad Sue along a sun drenched beach of white sand.

      Monday Roger sets off to greet the start of his working week with lime enthusiasm.

      After he has gone, Sue sits glumly at their dining room table, her temples throbbing from lack of coffee. Sipping some instant, the strength of such she can almost feel her pulse rise with each swallow, she recovers shaking her head at their predicament.

      Looking out the window at the front of the house the view offers little entertainment. Living on one of the quietest streets in the Village of Coxwell, like her life, it was leading nowhere.

      Hugging the cup, she wonders if she should send off for those Australian brochures.

      It is as if her life is unravelling. She can feel it, sense it, like a big ball of string someone has tossed down a long flight of stairs and yet, that post box is just outside the Coxwell shop, and they do sell postage stamps.

      She worries about Roger’s guarantees to the bank for his father’s loans, but as he said, no news is good news.

      Chapter 2

      THE TOILET SEAT DEFENSIVE

      Another working week is done and dusted.

       When Roger arrives home to hilarity HQ Sue is grinning like a prospector who has just struck the mother lode

      “Look!” she cries clutching armfuls of brochures. “The postman had to make two trips.”

      What arrived from Australia House three weeks after Roger’s twenty-fifth birthday, six weeks after James’s birth, sixteen weeks before Jayne’s third birthday, seven months before Sue’s twenty-eighth birthday, and twenty-seven days shy of their fourth wedding anniversary, was far too bulky to pass through any letter box. Sue is almost unable to contain her excitement.

      “I’ll bet the postie was overawed making two trips,” he replies sullenly.

      “He was,” Sue beams, “and he asked if we’re going to Australia?”

      “And what did you say?”

      “I didn’t say anything.”

      Roger plays with Jayne and cuddles James.

      Ignoring the pile on the dining table, he says gently, “He cheers my day with his cooing and grunting.”

      “Let me take him. That’s a changing grunt.”

      It is not long before brochures and pamphlets hinder Roger’s every move. Patiently he moves them from every chair, he turns around, and they are back again. They go from chairs to footstools, then back onto chairs, the kitchen table, the kitchen bench, even their bed.

      Roger’s mutterings of, ‘Musical bloody brochures,’ can be heard around the house.

      Roger finds one on his car windscreen. That makes him more determined than ever as he pries the damp brochure from the glass.

      “That’ll teach you,” he mumbles to himself, “ruining their glossy brochure of their white sandy beaches!”

      The next one he finds on his driver’s seat with a backdrop of mist and flashes of moonlight that escapes through the clouds.

      “They’re your brochures, not mine,” Roger repeats for the umpteenth time. “How’s about you have them close to you? They’re multiplying and I don’t want to look at them! Dodging them is about as easy as swimming the English Channel — and I can’t swim.”

      A stony silence follows. All is not well at Camp Sue.

      At their zoo feeding Sue asks, “Most months here are cold but don’t you think this year seems colder and longer?”

      He sits his lame arse down before saying rather tamely.

      “Yes. I’ve just ordered another load of coal for the central heating system. Damn, the budget’s blown, again!”

      “If we sit any closer to the heaters they’ll become pregnant,” Sue jokes.

      Feeling now that all her ducks may be lined up in a row, Sue is no longer subtle nor as welcoming as an eggy fart at a first date dinner table.

      That afternoon she gives Jayne a quick couple of laps around the bath while adding hot water being careful not to scald her. Her contented sounds and associated crescendos of bath bubbles from under her bottom confirming she is happy with the water temperature. Getting her out and dried off with big fluffy towels before she shivers becomes a military operation, even with the aid of a twin-bar electric fire to warm the room.

      Next morning Roger retreats to the toilet for his morning fart for merry England.

      “I’m going to the library, Sue.”

      His Dad used to take his cup of tea in with him, which always disgusted Sue, but it is far too cold for that.

      Looking at Roger with a practiced glare that would shatter glass Sue hands him the fresh air spray.

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