The Times Magazine 7Spinal column Melanie Reid
‘Why a man about the house is no use to me
- especially if it’s my hopeless husband’
t was the sort of noise in
the middle of the night
that doesn’t just wake
you up, it makes you
sit bolt upright crying,
“What was that!” That
is, it made my husband
sit up. For me, sitting up
from lying flat takes five minutes,
floundering and struggling. So
count me out on the rapid
response front.
“It’s in the room,” he hissed.
We’re used to hearing the
occasional scrabbling behind the
walls – that’s life in the country- but when something’s actually
in the room, it’s different. We
lay and listened to the silence.
“I don’t think it’s a rat,” I said
helpfully. Dave, famous for
self-preservation, stayed in bed.
“I’m not risking it,” he said.
In better days I would have
got up and investigated. You know
how, in a long relationship, you
fall into set roles? How certain
jobs become yours, and only
yours, and certain jobs become
theirs? Well, my tasks were
always the messy, blue-collar
ones. Blocked drains. Leaks.
Dead things. Flat tyres. Dave did
all the jobs that required talking
to people. Funny that.
But I had to retire from that
particular stage. Paralysis gives
you no choice. Paralysis, if you
survive long enough, brings
instead its own Zen: a state of
passivity, acceptance and patience.
So that night, instead of moving
the bedroom furniture, I just
fell asleep again. The existential
threats of the night – floods,
fire, ghosts, bats – well, if you’re
immobile in bed there isn’t any
point even in screaming. Fear
has changed its definition.
The next evening, at the other
end of the house, sitting by the
fire watching telly, movement
caught Dave’s eye. There was a
mouse perched on the top rim of
the log basket, looking at him
from 3ft away. They eyeballed
each other for two seconds, then
the mouse disappeared.
Things escalated. In the
kitchen there’s an ancient open
range, unused, its firebasket full of
waste paper. One morning I saw
the papers twitching. Something
was rearranging stuff to its
satisfaction. Then, when the
bin bags were removed from a
drawer, they came out with their
bottoms shredded.
Worst of all, in the bedroom,
when I pulled out my new prize
hoodie, best of outdoor kit,lightweight but warm, a corner of
it crumbled in my hand. There
had been dog biscuits in the
pocket, and a mouse had gnawed
through everything to reach them.
And very cross I was, because it
was the only bit of clothing I’ve
bought this year and I loved it.
Now it was personal.
When it comes to rats and
mice, someone once told me
that if you have one then you
don’t have the other. It’s probably
cobblers, but I’ve always taken
some comfort from it. So we
didn’t have rats. The dog, I should
say at this point, death to small
furry creatures outside, was
uninterested. Plainly, he’s always
lived in more hygienic houses.I
Janice, my carer, brought traps.
I remembered where ours were,
so together we had four. But who
was to play executioner? I’d
always taken total responsibility
for decisions about dispatching
animals, small and large (my son
says his childhood was waymarked
by horses being put down). But
I hadn’t the dexterity to set a trap.
Dave’s well-practised klutz act,
played when faced with anything
nasty or dangerous, ruled him out.
Janice, bless her, who doesn’t do
mousetraps, and is terrified of
mice, manned up. She baited the
traps with a Mars bar and inched
them into mousey corners where
the dog couldn’t reach them.
I regret to say it’s only then
Dave and the dog got interested.
Dave so he could announce
successful kills (but not dispose
of them); the dog because he
smelt the chocolate. The mouse
who’d ruined my hoodie went
first, in the bedroom, in the early
hours, the sound of the sprung
trap waking us up.
Then came the mouse in the
bins – unfortunately still alive and
squirming in the trap. My inner
Zen faltered. Janice was yelping.
Dave suddenly discovered vital
breaking news on telly. There
followed a macabre scene outside,
with a dying mouse spasming
around the decking, and Janice
wailing, “I’m a carer, not a killer!”
Women being practical, however,
we did the humane thing. Well,
she did. I just tried not to identify
with the mouse.
“Well done, girls,” smirked
my husband, emerging when it
was over. n@Mel_ReidTimes
Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after
breaking her neck and back in
MURDO MACLEOD a riding accident in April 2010