But Mrs Pugh always has the last word, and always wins:
‘‘I know one who can’’.
Mrs Pugh is a very harsh, ill-natured, ‘cold’ woman. Mr Pugh secretly hates and despises his wife. He is always plotting how to kill her – but he never actually does. He is timid, determined and always scheming, but he never wins. He hates Mrs Pugh with a passion:
‘‘Here’s your arsenic dear.
And your weed killer biscuit.
I’ve throttled your parakeet.
I’ve spat in the vases.
I’ve put cheese in the mouse holes.
Here’s your…
…nice tea dear’’.
Neither Mrs Pugh nor Mr Pugh likes each other at all. They have a terrible relationship, and only stay together because without each other, Mrs Pugh would have no one to nag, and Mr Pugh would have no one to plot to kill. So they kind of need each other in a way.
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and Mr Ogmore and Mr Pritchard don’t have a very good relationship either. Mr Ogmore and Mr Pritchard are both dead, but they are still, even in death, obey, and do what Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard tells them to do – and they hate her. They are always cleaning and tidying up for her:
Mr Ogmore – ‘‘I must put on rubber gloves and search the peke for fleas’’.
Mr Pritchard – ‘‘and dust the parlour and spray the canary’’.
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard is very controlling over her dead husbands. She is totally obsessed with cleaning, and everything has to be tidy:
‘‘And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes’’.
She is very clean and hygienic, strict and firm. She doesn’t let her dead husbands rest in peace, she never leaves them alone – she keeps calling them back to her.
Mrs Ogmore Pritchard lives in a guesthouse, but she doesn’t ever let anyone stay in case they mess up her perfect immaculate house:
‘‘I don’t want persons in my nice clean rooms, breathing all over the chairs’’.
Cherry Owen and Mrs Cherry Owen are probably the only couple that are actually happy together. Mrs Cherry Owen is always laughing at her husband. She never minds him being drunk all the time, and talks about the silly things he does when he comes home from the pub:
‘‘Remember last night? In you reeled my boy, as drunk as a deacon’’.
She is a very optimistic and cheerful woman. When Mr Cherry Own says that ‘‘she’s got two husbands, one drunk, and one sober’’, Mrs Cherry Owen simply replies:
‘‘And aren’t I a lucky women? Because I love them both’’. She is a very content woman. And the couple get on very well – they are happy together, and their relationship is a good one.
Miss Myfanwy Price and Mr Mog Edwards are not actually a married couple, but they love each other, they just don’t want to give up all they have for each other. Miss Myfanwy Price works in a ‘sweet shop’, and Mr Mog Edwards works in ‘draper’ shop, and they are both constantly fanaticising about each other, and writing love letters to each other, but they never actually get together. Mr Mog Edwards is obsessed with his shop, and his money. In his love letters, he mainly talks about what he sold at his shop:
‘‘Business is very poorly. Polly Garter bought two garters with roses but she never got stockings so what is the use I say’’.
He is always talking about money and his shop:
‘‘And all the bells of the tills of the town shall ring for our wedding’’.
He loves his money, and Miss Myfanwy Price knows it; she was going to knit him a ‘wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the money to be comfy’.
