A Surrey State of Affairs Page 12

Conversation was a little strained at first—I could tell that Harriet was looking askance at Tanya, whose substantial bump protruded between a vest top and low-slung pink jogging bottoms, while Jeffrey and Edward took pains not to mention the City in front of poor Mark, who kept fetching plates and glasses and napkins. However, once the G&Ts were flowing and the steaks sizzling, everyone relaxed. Rupert arrived late with a nice bottle of Italian red, and spent a long time chatting with Tanya. Will I ever see him talking to a pregnant woman of his own?

  Natalia, meanwhile, sulked inside. She is under no obligation to mingle, but she would nonetheless have been welcome to join us. Her behavior is so odd whenever Jeffrey is at home that it borders on the insolent. Perhaps she just dislikes men. If it were not for the tarty underwear, I would take her for a feminist.

  MONDAY, MAY 12

  Why is it that I can hardly turn on the television or venture forth on the Internet without being bombarded with news of the wedding of a footballer whose name I cannot even be bothered to type, which is taking place in some grandiose Italian villa today? From the level of coverage it is receiving, one would have thought he’s third in line to the throne, and not some pasty-faced game player with perpendicular ears and the air of a convict about him. I resent being bombarded with news bulletins about his nuptials, especially when the prospect of a wedding within my own family remains as faint and far away as ever. His new wife, at least, I have some respect for. She could almost be upper class in the way that, though unexceptional-looking, she has managed to make herself look really very attractive through the power of grooming. I wish Sophie would take note. She has much better raw materials to work with: in fact, she would be quite beautiful if only she would apply a dab of pink blush and blow-dry her hair with a round brush.

  When I went on Facebook, I saw that Bridget had joined a group called “I don’t give a s*** about footballers’ wedding.” Though I disapprove of the language, the underlying sentiment was sound, so I joined anyway.

  TUESDAY, MAY 13

  The Surrey Psychic just called to check the details for Friday, when Ruth and David will finally be brought together. I felt like telling her that if she were really psychic she wouldn’t need to ask for my address, but once again I bit my tongue.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 14

  Everyone seemed to be getting used to the new safety gear at bell ringing last night; even Miss Hughes jammed on the helmet without complaining. Incongruously, Gerald already had a large yellow bruise around his left eye. Perhaps he was set upon by hoodlums on his way home from the tea shop. Nothing would surprise me these days. Miss Hughes was strangely silent, however, and failed to exude any sympathy whatsoever toward the poor man. This does not bode well for their fledgling romance. I decided to invite Gerald for a glass of sherry this afternoon to find out what was going on. He will be here any moment, so I had better dash.

  THURSDAY, MAY 15

  Well, I had a rather dramatic evening last night. Gerald arrived promptly at 5:30 P.M. with a bunch of wilted carnations and a box of Cadbury Milk Tray, which struck me as a simultaneously paltry yet excessive offering. At least Darcy will enjoy the chocolate Brazils.

  His bruise had faded slightly, but he still winced as he lowered himself into an armchair. I asked him if had been beaten up by hoodlums, but he replied that his attacker had been much, much worse. Good God. Did he mean rabid Alsatians or unemployed eastern Europeans? Again he said no, and sighed deeply. “Constance, I don’t know where to begin.” He exhaled, looking at me across the rim of his teacup.

  “Well, you could start by telling me what’s going on with Miss Hughes. I did my best to put in the groundwork for you, and I thought it was going swimmingly until last night. Do you have any idea why she was so frosty? Have you had a lovers’ tiff?”

  He put down his teacup with an abrupt clatter and appeared to be choking. I went over to pat him on the back, but this only exacerbated the situation. Once I had sat back down and he was calm enough to speak, he looked at me with reddened eyes and said, “What you have to understand is that it was, it was—that woman—who did my eye in.”

  It was my turn to put down my teacup in consternation.

  “Whatever do you mean? Why? How? What happened?”

  In a quavering voice, he said that when he went to her cottage at the appointed hour to help with the paperwork, it soon became apparent that distressed cats were not uppermost on her mind.

  “She sat me down, looked me in the eye, and said: ‘You are a man.…I am a woman. Neither of us is getting any younger. It’s about time we dusted off the cobwebs before we both seize up. I want you to come upstairs and—and—’ Dear God, I can’t repeat it, I can’t!”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. She was clearly a bit more forward than I had anticipated, but wasn’t this, ultimately, what Gerald had been wishing for, albeit perhaps with a few more nice dinners and a night out at the Rotary Club dance first?

  Gerald shivered, shook his head, and told me that I’d completely misunderstood him. I was shocked. I like to think that I am a perceptive judge of character. Still, caught up in the drama of his story, I asked him what had happened next.

  “I panicked,” he said. “She had her gnarled fingers on my thigh and was leaning into me. Her breath smelled of Fisherman’s Friends. My mind went blank.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I told her the truth. I said that I could not go upstairs with her because…because I was in love with someone else.”

  “Gerald!”

  “And then she struck me in the shin with her walking stick, belted me in the eye, and left.”

  “But who else do you mean? Who are you in love with?”

  At that moment, the door opened and Jeffrey arrived. He is not the suspicious type—such things are beneath him—but he did look a little disgruntled to see Gerald in a prone and emotional state in his favorite armchair.

  Poor Gerald’s nerves must be shot, because he leaped from his chair like an electrocuted ferret and hurtled to the door, jabbering something about a plumber.

  I cannot bear the suspense. Who has won his heart?

  FRIDAY, MAY 16

  I have to admit that after Gerald’s shocking news yesterday I’m starting to feel a little less confident about my matchmaking skills. David and Sophie ended in disaster. Rupert and Ruth ended in disaster. Gerald and Miss Hughes ended in a livid bruise and a mystery. Yet what can I do? Every time I think I should end my meddling, I think of Reginald’s earnest face as he tells me how he despairs of David, and I feel that it cannot be beyond me to put some things right in the universe. Besides, I’ve already invited Ruth and David to arrive at six o’clock today, and sent Natalia out to pick up Top Gun from Blockbuster. Tanya has been briefed to help, although she did raise her newly tweezered eyebrow when I told her about the plan. I’ve made sure that Jeffrey will be going out for a glass of wine straight after work and Mark is closeted in the study drawing up spreadsheets for Idle Hands. Everything is set. In fact, I can hear something now. It appears that the Psychic of Surrey has arrived, early, in a purple Ford Ka.

  10 P.M.

  Dear readers, triumph! Ruth and David have swapped numbers. Rupert, Ruth, Gerald, Miss Hughes—these are all temporary aberrations in my matchmaking career. I suppose I should also give Tanya some credit, given that she slipped the psychic a ten-pound note to tell Ruth that the man of her dreams would be a pale stranger born under the sign of the cross, currently wearing a green Marks & Spencer polo shirt. But it was, after all, my idea to bring them together. I sent a text message to Reginald and Pru saying Mission accomplished! As soon as I have aired out the house and got rid of the smell of incense my joy will be complete.

  SATURDAY, MAY 17

  Just a quick post to say farewell for two weeks. The Bahamas beckon. I am uneasy at the prospect of leaving home at a time when warfare threatens to erupt between Natalia and Tanya, Gerald is shrouded in romantic mystery, and Ruth and David may need my guidance to progress to th
eir first date, but such is my lot. Rupert has promised to pop around and check on Darcy. Jeffrey has tested out his new snorkel in the bath. I have packed capacious swimwear, SPF 50 sunscreen (Mother always told me I looked like a peasant when my freckles came out), a broad-brimmed hat, beach towels, insect repellent, two Maeve Binchy novels, and a family-sized pack of wet wipes. I cannot bear it when my sunglasses get smeared. We leave first thing in the morning.

  I went on Facebook and updated my status to is off to the Bahamas, but then realized that this might give legions of Internet thieves an open invite to ransack my house, so I went back and changed it to is sitting just behind the front door with a gun.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 21

  I did not expect to be addressing you again for another week and a half, and yet I couldn’t stop myself. My first reaction to the dreadful events of this holiday was to find somewhere to pour my heart out to you. My surroundings are not salubrious. I am writing from a clammy Internet café in Crab Hill, flanked on one side by a youth playing a computer game that appears to involve driving a car and shooting people and on the other by an elderly man studying the Web sites of Japanese secondary schools. The keys are sticky. You will understand that I am in desperate straits.

  The holiday got off to an aggravating, though not a catastrophic, beginning. I had hoped to have a good tête-á-tête with Jeffrey, telling him all about Gerald, Ruth, David, and the preparations for the regional bell-ringing championship. However, he was so busy twiddling on his BlackBerry that even when I stopped midway through a sentence about the Surrey Psychic he did not notice. It took all my wifely duty and restraint not to hurl the accursed gadget into the Caribbean. However, these trials are as nothing compared to what happened next.

  I can scarcely believe this is happening, but the wretched and despicable Ivan the Terrible has intruded upon our holiday. Jeffrey casually mentioned over dinner last night that by a “happy coincidence” (his words, not mine) Ivan and his fourth wife would be arriving at our hotel the following morning. I hid my rage by cracking open my lobster with unusual efficacy.

  And so it came to pass that I spent today on the beach watching Jeffrey and Ivan tear about on noisy, smoke-belching jet skis in the company of Ivanka, who sported a gold thong bikini and truly impertinent breast augmentations. When the two men returned from the sea she giggled and flicked Jeffrey’s bottom with her Versace-logo beach towel.

  How is this to be borne?

  I retired with a headache this afternoon, but this is merely a short-term strategy.

  MONDAY, MAY 26

  I have a dreadful confession to make. Once again, I am back in the Internet café, hitting the yellowing keys as if in purgatory. My conscience will not be silenced.

  As you know, I have been suffering from severe provocation. The headache technique did not work for long; claustrophobia and resentment began to weigh. Why should I be driven from my husband’s side by a would-be oligarch and his surgically enhanced strumpet?

  Lying in my room listening to the drone of the fan going round and round, I formulated a plan. I think the combined effects of the heat and a rum punch may have made me reckless.

  I returned to the beach with a large bottle of coconut oil that I had bought from the hotel boutique. Ivanka has skin the color of baked tangerines, but Ivan’s complexion is the pale, sallow tone of someone whose ancestors have toiled in Ural salt mines, whether he drives an Alfa Romeo sports car or not.

  Ivanka makes sure that he is protected from the sun by spraying him liberally with high SPF sunscreen from a large plastic bottle. I waited until Jeffrey and Ivan had gone to take a dip, and then mentioned to Ivanka that her lip liner looked peculiar. (This was hardly a lie—there is a substantial discrepancy between where her real lips end and where her coral-colored liner does.)

  Once she had fled to the hotel bathroom mirror, I emptied the contents of the sprayer and refilled it with coconut oil. By the end of the day Ivan was scarlet and irate with pain. He and Ivanka left for Moscow the following morning.

  Last night I lay awake, listening to Jeffrey snore and the fan whine, agonizing over a moral and philosophical quagmire. Did the ends justify the means?

  SUNDAY, JUNE 1

  Home, sweet home. Never has that sentiment seemed truer. Here, there are no oligarchs to fry, no sand to get stuck in my sandals. I can savor the gentle beauty of an English summer’s day without being assailed by stinging insects, spicy food, sunstroke, or pangs of guilt. Randolph has done a sterling job on the garden; the borders are bursting with flowers, the lawn is an immaculate, uniform green. Once I have put the breakfast dishes away I think I will make some lemonade and take the newspaper outside to catch up with what’s been going on in the world.

  Here, at least, it appears that no major disasters have occurred over the past fortnight. When we rolled up the familiar curve of our drive late last night, I was anxious about what lay behind the sage-colored front door and closed curtains: had Natalia and Tanya ripped each other’s hair out? Had Natalia gone on strike, leaving piles of stinking rubbish piling up like in that repulsively addictive program How Clean Is Your House?

  I needn’t have worried. The house was no dustier than usual, and the only major difference was that neat cardboard boxes labeled Idle Hands, with a swirly sketch of feminine fingers, stood stacked in the hall. Our mail had also been piled up tidily, and amid all the bills, which I left Jeffrey to deal with, were two postcards.

  One was from Gerald. It had a faded Beatrix Potter illustration of two rabbits walking arm in arm and a tea stain on one edge, and read:

  Dear Constance,

  When will you return?

  Gerald (bereft in the belfry)

  The poor man clearly needs more help with his mystery romance. The second postcard was from Sophie. It had a lovely photograph of the Pont du Gard aqueduct, suggesting that my hopes that she would develop more mature, sophisticated tastes during her year abroad were not unfounded. Strangely, the postal stamp on it was in Spanish—some inept Continental postal worker must have confused Surrey for Spain and sent it on a circular course. Sophie’s handwriting is admittedly dire.

  I was just pinning the cards up on our noticeboard this morning when Natalia emerged, wearing a short pink summery dressing gown. When I saw her nails, I shrieked: they were scarlet at the base, as if she were bleeding, and gangrenous-looking. On closer inspection, however, it emerged that she was wearing a full set of Idle Hands nail extensions, painted in green, yellow, and red—the colors, she told me, of the “Lithuan flag.”

  I could hardly complain, as the odd appendages did not stop her from cooking a full English breakfast for Jeffrey, even though it was her day off. I opted for bran flakes instead, the memories of swimsuits and a whole roasted Caribbean pig sitting squat and pink on a bed of banana leaves still fresh in my mind.

  MONDAY, JUNE 2

  As soon as I had seen Jeffrey off to work this morning, I was distracted by laughter coming from the conservatory. When I went to investigate, I found that Tanya and Natalia had painted Darcy’s claws pink and silver. It appears that Natalia is now a full-fledged friend of Tanya and supporter of Idle Hands.

  Needless to say, I do not approve of this tampering with my parrot’s natural state, and yet it is difficult to remonstrate with a pregnant economic refugee and a capricious Lithuanian—whose recent, and unexpected, alliance has restored a fragile sense of harmony to the household.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 3

  Jeffrey just called from work. This is such a rare occurrence that when I heard his voice on the phone I feared the worst. Had he gotten his hand caught in the photocopier? Had he dropped his onyx paperweight on his foot and crushed a toenail? Alas, the news was almost as bad. He was calling to let me know that he had invited Andrew, the senior partner at Alpha & Omega, and Amanda, the irritatingly enthusiastic skier, for dinner tonight. From the brisk tone of his voice, it was clear that he had no inkling that:

  (a) Four hours is not sufficient time to mak
e an obstinate Lithuanian remove all traces of nail extensions from the dining room, then shop, cook, and serve a meal of a suitable caliber for a senior legal executive and his hoity-toity “girlfriend.”

  (b) With six weeks to go until the bell-ringing championships, I can ill afford to miss practice for the third week in a row.

  Such is a woman’s lot. I suppose duck á l’orange will do.

  11:32 P.M.

  They have gone. Thank heavens, they have gone. I do not wish to dwell on the evening. It was not a resounding success. Suffice it to say that when we sat down around the table, Amanda leaped back up again with a recently painted nail extension dangling from the seat of her cream Nicole Farhi cigarette pants, and this set the tone. She made as if to laugh it off with a tinkling giggle, but I could see that there was ice in her eyes. After watercress soup, I served up the duck, and she said, “Quail, how lovely. It’s my favorite starter—the portions are just the perfect size not to fill you up too much.” Later, she asked me how many grandchildren I had and turned her nose up at my coffee because it wasn’t fair trade.

  How I yearned for the cool, musty calm of the belfry.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4

  Another postcard from Gerald arrived today. It read simply: Constance, I am lovesick. Cure me.

  There was no postal stamp; he must have pushed it through the letterbox. At least he is not too lovesick to walk.

  I am itching to know who he is pining for, so I drafted the following on a plain cream card and sent Natalia off to put it under his door:

  Dear Gerald,

  Please feel free to come round and fill me in,

  Constance

  THURSDAY, JUNE 5

  Dear readers, I have had a terrible shock. Despite the warm weather, I have goose bumps jostling underneath my peach sleeveless top. Perhaps you can guess what I am referring to. Perhaps you share Tanya’s suspiciousness. In case you are of a more naïve and trusting disposition, I had better explain.

  I was tidying the kitchen this morning, wiping the smears of jam from the place mats and sorting through the odds and ends of paperwork that Natalia never manages to keep off the table. Tanya came in just as I held Gerald’s latest postcard in my hand. She caught sight of it over my shoulder and I heard her catch her breath. Presuming that she too was curious about his romantic plight, I began filling her in on the whole story—Rosemary running off with a trapeze artist, my heart-to-heart with Gerald in the tea shop, Miss Hughes and her shrinking skirt, and so forth up until the present state of affairs. Tanya kept saying “But Connie…” and trying to interrupt, but I insisted that she hear me out. Once I had finished, she folded her arms over her bump, shook her head, and said, “Don’t you see?”