Fish on Friday

Fish on Friday

"What's all this, then?" Mat's rheumy eyes surveyed his plate
suspiciously as his wife bustled red-faced about the kitchen, clearing
things away far more noisily than she usually did.

"Ham salad" she replied nastily.

Her tone took Mat slightly by surprise. He blinked and scratched his
head and thought hard about what she had said.

"Ham salad?" he inspected his plate again as though he had never seen a
ham salad before, at least not in his own kitchen. "What day is it,
then?" he wasn't going to let this go, he decided bravely.

Olive threw down the dish-cloth she had been wiping the surfaces with
and crossed her arms, facing him menacingly.

"It's Friday, Mat. Friday. Is there a problem?"

"We always have a bit of fish on Friday, Ol. What's going on?"

"Bah," she turned away and pulled on her Marigolds, "I fancied a
change."

"We always have fish on Friday," Mat insisted, pushing his plate away
sulkily, "For as long as we've been married we've had fish on Friday.
My old mother always did fish on Friday. I've had fish on Friday all my
life. Now this."

"Well this Friday you've got ham bloody salad" she said and switched on
the little radio she kept by cooker. Radio Two invaded the quiet of the
kitchen. Mat continued to stare moodily at the offending ham
salad.

"How could you do this to me Olive?" he asked, shaking his head sadly,
"All my life - fish on a Friday. I'm too old for this. I can't take it.
I wont take it. I want fish."

She switched the radio off at the mains and spooned sugar into her cup
of tea, tossing the tea-spoon into the sink with an aggression that
alarmed him. He noticed also she had not bothered making him a cup.
What on earth was going on? They'd had problems when she'd gone through
the "change" and he thought they were past the worse. What was it now?
Alzheimer's? He couldn't be doing with it at his time of life.

"You want fish do you Mat?" she spun round to face him, almost
spitting the words out. "Well, there are fish-fingers in the freezer
compartment. I wont be cooking them. For forty-five years I've cooked
you fish on a Friday - stinking the house out for days afterwards. I
can never get rid of the bloody smell. It turns my guts. You've never
thanked me. Not once. Never. Bloody selfish you are, sat there
shovelling it into your mouth. You eat like a pig, by the way. Not one
word of thanks. Not a card on my Birthday, our Anniversary, nor
Valentines Day. Nothing. Not for as long as I can remember. Flowers!"
she threw her arms up in the air quite hysterically, he thought, "What
are flowers anyway? You've never bought me a bunch. Not one bloody
stem. Nought from you. All these years I've wasted on you. You've never
bought me sexy underwear - I would have liked to try things out. No
foreplay. You never gave me an orgasm - women get them on demand these
days. I've read about it all in there&;#8230;" she stabbed a finger
into the woman's magazine on the table, "You can divorce a man for not
giving you an orgasm apparently. And all you've got to complain about
is fish on Friday."

Mat chewed on his piece of ham quietly and decided not to make a fuss
about it after all.