'Ask Mairghread' by Clare Girvan

This piece was commended in the Mostly Life Competition.

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Ask Mairghread

(To; ‘Ask Mairghread,’ Dunblane Herald, 50 - 55 Graymalkin Street, Forres.)


Dear Mairghread,

After twenty years of marriage, my husband and I are drifting apart. He hasn’t settled at all well to civilian life since he left the army, and seems to be having some kind of mid-life crisis.

I think we made a mistake moving out to the country. It’s a lovely big old house, and the agent said it had a pleasant seat, but he doesn’t have to live here. We can’t get really good staff and the grounds are going to rack and ruin. There seems to be an infestation of snakes in the flower beds and the wood outside is far too close – it gets very oppressive.

His job means we have to socialise a lot, of course, which I have found very difficult. I’m not used to entertaining on a grand scale, and the servants aren’t always sober. His boss came to stay a while ago, and – well, I won’t go into details, but there was a most unfortunate accident with the cutlery. We tried to hush it up as best we could, but his boss was a very influential man, and I think a lot of people felt we were largely to blame.

Not that we have visitors anymore. My husband’s started having hallucinations and I think he probably has some kind of food allergy that gives him embarrassing fits during meals. At our last dinner party, the guests even got up and went home – utter humiliation. I make allowances, since he isn’t a well man, but I suspect he is also bipolar, and although I’ve tried to hold everything together, I’ve developed an obsessive compulsive disorder and find everything very hard to cope with.

Since he took over the firm, he’s been daggers drawn with his friends, always picking quarrels with them for no reason that I can see. I’ve tried persuading him to invite them round for the evening and bury the hatchet, but he won’t hear of it. The only people he still sees are three of his old girlfriends. We had dinner with them at their commune once, but they were pretty weird, and what was in the casserole they gave us I didn’t dare to think.

Maybe things would have been better if we’d had children, but I never really got the hang of motherhood. We did have a son when we were first married. I loved him, of course, but I wasn’t very good with babies and he died. My husband doesn’t say, but I know he envies one of his old friends who is producing a whole line of heirs, left, right and centre.

I don’t know how much longer we can go on like this. There isn’t a moment’s peace, what with people knocking on the door at all hours, owls screaming, crickets crying, ravens croaking and martlets scratching about and building nests in the roof. It’s absolute murder trying to get a decent night’s sleep.

Please, Mairghread, what can I do? I’m absolutely at my wits’ end.

Yours desperately,

Gruach Macbeth of that ilk.


Clare Girvan