Fortified

10th November 2012

Today we are using my nephew's gift of our National Trust Membership. We walk around the kitchen gardens at Barrington Court -  a fifthteenth century house which fell into wrack and ruin and was bought and renovated by the Lyle family of the of the Tate and Lyle sugar company. The sun streams onto rows of huge red cabbages, rather slugged leeks and the bright orange papery domes of straggly cape gooseberries. The air is icy in the shade.

In the cafe I send back my horrid butternut squash soup as it’s luke warm  - it comes back hot but still horrid - too much medicinal thyme flavour.

At the entrance desk to the house the woman offers us two printed tour guides. My husband refuses his,

I can’t read, he says

She laughs but I don’t think she knows why.

We wander through the oak panelled corridors and empty echoey rooms with huge arched fireplaces and up and down turret staircases with twisted barley spindles. My husband mostly gazes out of the mullioned windows at the lovely views beyond with all the trees in their soft gold and bronze colours.

On the way home we stop at Tesco’s in Honiton to buy catfood.  We have a row in the middle of the wine aisle. My husband puts 3 huge bottles into the trolley. He says its a good deal, really cheap wine. I read the labels - it’s English fortifed wine. Even when I tell him what it is -  that it’s not wine it’s like sherry, sweet sherry -  he doesn’t believe me and says he wants it anyway. I feel my anger like liquid murder rushing through my heart.

At home I make supper. He drinks a lot of the fortified wine. He asks me why I don’t want any.

Now he’s sleeping and I’m the one with the headache which of course will only be relieved by a dose of forgiveness....but tonight I’d rather fortify myself with draught poison -  killing myself off in the sea of my own rightousness...... diving into the archives of my grievances where I gather the evidence of all those years of believing myself unfairly treated....drowning in poor me.....Uck.