A Surrey State of Affairs Page 11

  I have done the right thing. I look at Tanya sitting on my sofa, cradling her expanding bump, and I feel the same warm glow inside that I got when I donated Jeffrey’s old LP collection to the annual Cats in Need jumble sale.

  In Tanya, it is nice to have someone to talk to who talks back, which is more than can reliably be said of either Darcy or Jeffrey.

  The disadvantages:

  Jeffrey is peevish and resentful. He hasn’t stooped to saying as much, of course, but he comes home later, drinks more, and in bed sometimes turns the light out when he can see that I’m still reading Joanna Trollope’s Second Honeymoon.

  Natalia is peevish and resentful. I found a copy of the newspaper Socialist Worker in her room. She has expanded her vocabulary to include the words workload, exploitation, proletariat, and strike.

  Tanya leaves magazines like Heat and Now lying on top of my pile of Ideal Home and Country Life. I can’t help giving them a quick glance, which then makes me feel bad because they are trashy, vapid nonsense and everyone in them is so much younger and thinner than me.

  Mark shows no signs of finding another job and thus putting an end to their stay. While Tanya posts his CV on recruitment Web sites (which reminds me of my own fruitless efforts with Rupert and Internet dating), Mark is devoting his entire time to teaching Darcy to say “buy,” “hold,” and “sell.” He must be missing the trading floor.

  Today I found a half-eaten packet of cheese and onion crisps in the back of the sofa.

  You will see that the cons outweigh the pros, and yet I don’t think I would have done things differently given the chance.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 27

  Tanya came with me to church today. CityJobs.com hadn’t turned up anything for Mark, so she decided to try prayer. The service ended with “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” one of my favorite hymns. Tanya stood up with the rest of the congregation, but while everyone else sang she simply opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. I asked her afterward if she had ever learned the words at school, and she shook her head. I asked her what songs she could remember from school, and she thought for a long time before replying “Puff, the Magic Dragon” and “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” I don’t think either is quite as effective as moral ballast.

  MONDAY, APRIL 28

  A positive sign: this morning I found a half-empty bottle of Johnson’s Holiday Skin self-tanning moisturizer in the main bathroom, along with a few telltale yellowish streaks on the hand towel. Tanya must be getting back to her old self. When I went downstairs, I found that she had neatly spread a cloth over the dining room table and laid out a variety of sequins, vials of brightly colored nail polish, tiny brushes, and what looked like flaked almonds, which she explained were fake nail extensions. Apparently she has always made decorative nails as a sort of hobby, but now she has started making them for friends of friends on Facebook for a small fee. I managed not to smirk at the lines of gaudy end products; at least she is being productive, which is more than can be said for Mark.

  I found him in the conservatory, hands in his pockets, staring intently at Darcy, who hunched up his wings, swiveled his head, and stared back. I watched him for a few minutes from just behind the door. Every now and then, Mark would say something like “BP” or “BATS” or “RBS” and Darcy would quietly caw something back, at which point Mark would smile weakly and scribble in a notebook that I had last seen in Jeffrey’s study. I sighed and walked away. Then I went on Facebook and asked the other Paratweets members if they knew whether birds were likely to be distressed by repeated exposure to an unemployed banker.

  TUESDAY, APRIL 29

  Another visit from Reginald. First he had a very kind chat with Tanya, during which he praised her nail enterprise with the words “Best keep busy—the devil makes work for idle hands,” then he sat down for a cup of tea and a chat about the procedure for our health and safety inspection this evening. After we had arranged who would check the storeroom for dead mice and who would lock Miss Hughes’s handbag away, he got up to leave and I noticed that he had three green sequins stuck to the seat of his cassock. I thought it best not to brush them off. After he had gone, Tanya came bursting into the living room with a smile on her face and said she had decided to call her new business Idle Hands.

  9:45 P.M.

  Dear readers, I am in a panic. Things did not go at all well at bell ringing. There was a spider in the biscuit tin. Miss Hughes was so busy staring at Gerald that she lost hold of her rope and it whipped up and then back down and smacked her in the face. Reginald tripped over his cassock in the rush to check that she was okay. The dust he stirred up gave Gerald a coughing fit. The inspector was scribbling so quickly he snapped the lead in his pencil. To top it all, I have just come home to find Tanya worried because Mark stepped out for some fresh air two hours ago and still hasn’t gotten back, Darcy pacing side to side on his perch shrieking “Sell! Sell! Sell!,” and Jeffrey shut in his study with Golf Monthly and a whole bottle of port.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30

  Mark didn’t come back last night. I have a horrible cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I can’t write for long because I must get back to checking with the police and the hospitals, and force-feeding Tanya Bach Rescue Remedy.

  THURSDAY, MAY 1

  Still no sign of Mark. Tanya is distraught. I’m so worried about her, in her condition. Even Jeffrey didn’t retreat behind The Economist last night, but phoned all his contacts in the City in case anyone had spotted him. Natalia stopped threatening to strike, although I can’t say for sure whether this is out of sympathy or because her workload has been reduced by a quarter. Mark’s parents are flying home tomorrow. I did offer them a bed but they insisted on booking themselves into a Travelodge. How could Mark do this to them? The mattresses aren’t even clean in such places.

  FRIDAY, MAY 2

  Dear readers, mixed news. Mark has been sighted, if this is the appropriate word for the discovery on Facebook of a photo of him at Spearmint Rhinos last night, swigging champagne straight from the bottle with a nipple tassel on his nose. Tanya had alerted her entire network of online friends, including several of his old colleagues, that he was missing, and one of them noticed the picture today and got in touch. Poor, poor Tanya. The good news is that her husband is alive; the bad is that he is an abominable, selfish pig. She has alternated between laughing with relief and crying with anger. He still has not made contact; his BlackBerry is switched off.

  Darcy continues to screech “Sell!” I worry that he is suffering from executive burnout. Paratweets were unable to advise; apparently none of them has experienced anything similar.

  SATURDAY, MAY 3

  Mark is back. I was dusting the wooden blinds in Jeffrey’s study (Natalia never gets into every nook and cranny) when I spotted a lone figure walking up the drive with an odd lopsided stride. I looked closer. It was him, wearing only one shoe.

  After two hours locked in the bedroom talking to him, Tanya emerged and told me everything over a cup of tea. Mark was wretchedly sorry. Needless to say, he hadn’t been able to cope with losing his job. His life had revolved around work to an extent even Tanya hadn’t guessed at: it was where he spent the majority of his waking hours, where he had gotten used to the constant pressure, the buzz, the adrenaline highs and lows, the camaraderie, and the rubber chicken affixed to his monitor. Without it, he told Tanya, he felt like he was lying in a bath of ice getting more and more numb. These are obviously not the words that a wife and expectant mother wishes to hear, but Tanya had at least welcomed his honesty.

  He went on to explain that he had kept a sense of purpose by gambling on his credit cards, but when the funds had dried up and they had to move here he didn’t know how to face the future. He started noting down how he would trade a hypothetical portfolio of stocks that he followed on the London Stock Exchange Web site, but the final straw came when he made Darcy play too and my parrot’s share tips outperformed his own. I managed to suppress a smile of pride at this poi
nt. He had dressed for work, got on a train to the City, and, in his own words, “gone a bit nuts.” Tanya did not elaborate and I didn’t press her.

  Last night, he was lying on the pavement looking up at the streetlamps and the clouds, and realized that the pain he felt all over wasn’t caused by the drink or the drugs or the bits of broken paving stone he was lying on, but by how much he missed her. Tanya’s eyes misted over. I wondered what he meant by drugs and whether he had brought anything illegal into the house and whether, if he had, Jeffrey or I would get arrested and thrown into jail to rot, but once again I bit my lip and patted Tanya on the shoulder. She finished her tea and ate two oatmeal cookies, which I took as a good sign. Poor Tanya. Poor Mark.

  SUNDAY, MAY 4

  Mark is a changed man. Last night he apologized sincerely to me and Jeffrey for being “such a t***,” and vowed that he would do everything he could to earn his keep while he was staying with us. He demonstrated this by loading our best wineglasses into the dishwasher.

  MONDAY, MAY 5

  No sooner had I waved Jeffrey off to work this morning and poured myself a second cup of coffee than I heard Mark on the phone, his voice back to its usual persuasive, bouncy tones, mentioning things like Idle Hands, microfinancing, growth opportunities, and recession-proof niches. This is another good sign. Tanya had left a tube of half-used Great Lash mascara in the bathroom. This is yet another good sign, although it suddenly made me miss Sophie, who uses the same brand. I decided to call her, on a whim.

  I didn’t really expect her to answer, as I presumed she would be in her wellies, knee-deep in the waters of the Ardèche, studiously counting stickleback, but she picked up after just two of those flat Continental bleeps. I could hear laughter and the repetitive thud of electronic “music” in the background. She quickly explained that they were celebrating after recording “s***loads of fish”—I told her off for her language—but that everything was fine, except that her allowance had run out because she had had to buy a special silk fishing net. Having agreed to transfer some more money, and checked that she was wearing sunscreen, wasn’t drinking too much, and was eating enough, I ran out of things to say, so I decided to ask after her best friend, Zac. There was a confused silence before she said, “Zac? Oh, yeah, Zac. He’s all right. Daisy’s my best mate, she’s wicked.” This Daisy, it transpired, was an aspiring “DJ” who “rocked” on her iPod. Sophie declared that she too wanted to be a DJ. I reminded her that she had a deferred place to study sociology at the University of Bristol, which may not be the most relevant qualification, but she said, “Whatever, gotta go, smell ya later,” and hung up.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 7

  I suspected that we had not passed the health and safety inspection at bell ringing with flying colors when I opened the door to the belfry and found it strewn with crash helmets and what looked like sky-diving harnesses. Reginald was there, wandering about, kicking at them with the toe of his scuffed tan loafer, scratching his head so that his hair flopped over his eyes. This was not a good sign. “Reginald, whatever happened?” I asked.

  “That man, that dreadful man,” he replied, picking up a harness and despondently letting it fall to the floor. After some comforting and cajoling, I managed to extract the truth from him: the health and safety inspector had issued a harsh warning. St. Mary’s bell ringers have one more strike and we’re out. If we do not wear the requisite safety gear and comply thoroughly with all aspects of the 2003 Health and Safety Act, we will be disbanded, dispersed, muffled. I breathed in sharply in horror. Then I picked up a helmet, gave it a tentative sniff, and breathed out in horror. It had been requisitioned from the Boy Scouts.

  By this point, the other ringers had assembled and were also eyeing the new equipment with distrust. I looked at them, I looked at the knots of stupidly colored canvas on the ancient gray flagstones, and I saw two worlds colliding. We had to adapt or die. I felt an almost Churchillian impulse rising in my chest. I cleared my throat and called out to my “friends and ringers,” telling them not to fuss, to put on their gear and carry on, declaring that the noble spirit of bell ringing would not be snuffed out, even if we did look like adventure tourists from New Zealand. There were a few murmurs of assent; Reginald thanked me, Gerald had a tear of emotion in his eye, and everyone began donning their equipment. Everyone, that is, except Miss Hughes. She was wearing a dress—a light gray cotton dress with purple embroidery—for the first time in living memory—and her hair was coiffed into two immaculate shining wings of steely gray. She refused to ruin her hairstyle with “that stinking thing,” patting the side of her head coquettishly. I tried to persuade her otherwise, as did Reginald, but to no avail. Thinking on my feet, I elbowed Gerald and whispered to him to have a go. “I’d do anything you ask, Constance,” he whispered back, still clearly awed by my oratory. Then he told Miss Hughes to put the hat on and stop being a silly old bat. She complied, and we began.

  What with the unwieldy harnesses and the strange sensation of being hooked up to one of the overhead beams, our ringing was not quite of its usual high standard, but we did manage to muddle our way through a quick Bob. I felt quite triumphant. At the end of the evening, Miss Hughes took off her helmet, ran a comb with a mother-of-pearl handle through her hair, and asked Gerald if he would be so kind as to pay her a visit at her cottage to help her with some Cats in Need paperwork. As he hesitated, I elbowed him in the ribs and told him what a lovely opportunity it would be to do some good work. The man is incapable of running his own affairs. In any case, it did the trick, and he will be seeing Miss Hughes on Friday afternoon. Inspired by their example, I decided to push forward my plans to bring Ruth and David together, and asked Reginald if he would call in on Church Flowers this week to give the ladies a morale boost. He happily agreed. All is set.

  THURSDAY, MAY 8

  All the ladies were aflutter when I told them that Reginald would be visiting us today. Our dear vicar, with his portly physique, babylike cheeks, and thinning hair, can hardly be described as a pinup, and yet his entrance always causes something of a stir. Flower displays were turned to show off their best angles, two ladies simultaneously rushed to make him a cup of tea, and plump Doris, who keeps eating even though she has had two knee replacements and walks with a stick, offered him all the best shortbread biscuits. Reginald looked slightly ill at ease at this flurry of attention—I could tell by the way he kept running his finger around the inside of his dog collar—so it was easy to draw him off to one side with a query about one of the stained-glass windows. I beckoned Pru over too, and once they were both together, I wasted no time.

  “Reginald, Pru, it seems that you both have something in common,” I began.

  “A shared interest in the history of stained glass?” hazarded Pru, while Reginald nodded thoughtfully.

  “Not quite,” I replied. “Pru, you have a daughter. She’s a lovely girl, but her religious—or shall we say spiritual—tastes are a little, well, eccentric.”

  Pru glared at me defensively for a moment, and then, seeing Reginald’s sympathetic smile, conceded that Ruth had thrown out her collection of porcelain owls because they were “bad feng shui.”

  I turned to Reginald. “And you have a wonderful son whose only vice is a weakness for Scientology.”

  He nodded. “I have to do something before he starts jumping on sofas,” he said. “I heard about what happened on Oprah Winfrey. And I had them reupholstered only last year.”

  “Well, for the sake of your sanity and your soft furnishings, may I make a suggestion,” I continued. “We get Ruth and David together. What they need is a little distraction, which they may well find in each other. And then there’s a decent chance that their odd views will cancel each other’s out.”

  It took a little more work to persuade them—Pru was cautious after the affaire Rupert, Reginald after the affaire Sophie—but eventually they both saw that the potential rewards outweighed the risks. Now all we had to do was engineer an occasion to bring them together
. In the end, we decided that a showing of Top Gun on Jeffrey’s new high-definition television combined with entertainment from the Psychic of Surrey, whom I found in the church’s Yellow Pages, would do the trick. I will make the arrangements for a week from Friday. Pru and Reginald both left with a spring in their step, and I with a smile on my face.

  FRIDAY, MAY 9

  Today I tried on my bathing costume. In just over a week, Jeffrey and I leave for our annual two-week break in the Bahamas. Personally, I am not convinced that idyllic silver beaches, azure seas, and swaying palms can compensate for the ordeal of shoehorning my wobbly bits into a sculpted John Lewis swimsuit. What’s wrong with visiting the ruins of Tuscany, or the relics of the Knights of Malta, or anywhere where a lightweight cotton shirtdress is appropriate attire? Unfortunately for me, Jeffrey insists that if he is going to sleep in a hammock with a Panama hat over his head, nothing but the most perfect tropical views will do.

  As I was turning myself cautiously in front of the long mirror in the bathroom, rather like a turkey on a revolving spit, Tanya burst in. She was totally unperturbed by my seminude appearance, and merely complimented me (rather too kindly) on my figure, suggesting that I try “one of them bathers with the bits missing” along with her Johnson’s Holiday Skin self-tanning moisturizer. I looked at my white, mottled flesh. I looked at Tanya’s new honeylike glow. For a moment I was tempted, but then I thought of orange palms, streaky calves, footballers’ wives, and the indignation of Mother, and I declined.

  SATURDAY, MAY 10

  As if to put us in the mood for a holiday, the weather was glorious today, so we decided to have a barbecue. Jeffrey isn’t exactly the ruddy, outdoorsy type, nor is he interested in cooking, but as soon as the temperature nudges above 19 degrees, something primal rises in his blood and he strides off to find last year’s charcoal briquettes. I invited Harriet and Edward, while Rupert agreed to drive down from Milton Keynes.