A Surrey State of Affairs Read online

  And there was my daughter, sitting on her prison bunk in her strapless purple Topshop minidress, giving a dwarf a foot massage.

  THURSDAY, JULY 10

  For a few soft, swirly moments when I woke up this morning, I forgot that anything was amiss. I wondered if it would be warm enough to go to Church Flowers without a cardigan and whether Jeffrey would have made himself coffee yet or waited for me to do it, as usual. Then I remembered.

  A good night’s sleep is meant to make most things better, but not, alas, all. Sophie was on Dungeon. As I lay there underneath my white cotton summer duvet set, Sophie was lying in a strange, crepuscular cell filled with stranger people, under the blinkless gaze of the television cameras. I got up and ran downstairs. Jeffrey had already left. He took things more calmly than I did last night, sitting ramrod straight on the sofa with a double whiskey while I paced and pulled out my hair; but he must be ruffled to have skimped on breakfast.

  Natalia was emptying the dishwasher as I walked into the kitchen. I am sure she was humming the theme song of the accursed program, as if to mock me. I left the house without talking to her, and hurried straight to the newsagent in the village, counting my paces and breathing in through my nose then out through my mouth in an effort to calm myself down. Rupert had called before the dreaded program had even finished last night, and had told me that I had to brace myself for a lot of publicity in the newspapers, but that it would all blow over in the end. And so, for the first time since the death of Princess Diana, I bought a tabloid. Not just one, but three: the new series had made the front page of the Sun, the Mirror, and the Mail. I couldn’t look Niral, the soft-spoken newsagent whose son is the same age as Sophie, in the eye as I handed over my change.

  Once home, I shut myself in the conservatory, put on my pink rubber gloves, and turned the pages. You can imagine my feelings when I saw that Sophie’s official picture showed her angling her head with a coy look in her eye and sticking her pierced tongue out. With a hammering heart, I learned that her fellow contestants included the dwarf, a transvestite yoga teacher, a lap dancer from Brazil, an eighteen-year-old public school boy with a Brideshead obsession and a teddy bear named Aloysius (or “posh weirdo with Latin cuddly,” as the Sun put it), a lesbian council worker whose job was to fill potholes, a Peter Andre impersonator named Phil, and a physics teacher with a Mussolini mustache.

  It was all too much. The knowledge that my daughter’s picture was being ogled by millions, that she was right now being broadcast via the Internet to perverts from Japan to Gibraltar. It was bad enough that time she wore a miniskirt past the Epsom Common Working Man’s Club. The names and faces swam in front of my eyes. I called Jeffrey. His mobile was turned off. I called his office line; his secretary told me he was in a meeting with Andrew and the CEO of Hubris Consulting. I ordered her to interrupt the meeting and tell him to read the Sun. In desperation, I called the number that Sophie had left me. It rang twice, and a harried voice said, “Golden Noodle Restaurant. How can I help?” I hung up, tears of frustration building in my eyes. I ran up to Jeffrey’s study, logged on to the Internet, and searched for a channel 4 contact number. After an hour of listening to recorded messages and grating music and being passed from pillar to post, I finally got hold of a producer. She sounded about twelve, and told me—in a voice that skipped between Received Pronunciation and Estuary English—that as Sophie was over eighteen there was nothing I could do, and that I should be proud that she’d made the final cut.

  I hung up and spent ten dark minutes with my head in my hands, crying. And then I did what I always do when adversity overwhelms me: I recited Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” ten times, then formed a mental list of people less fortunate than me, beginning with the workers who have to remove roadkill from the side of the motorway, and ending with Miss Hughes.

  10 P.M.

  Jeffrey and I have just watched the latest episode of Dungeon. How could we not? The imagination is a terrible thing; it is worse to guess at what images of one’s daughter are being beamed around the world than it is to confront the mortifying reality head-on. Not that this was an easy task.

  The “cell mates,” as I am apparently meant to think of them, were set a challenge. They were given an enormous hamper of fruit, a white sheet, and a print of Botticelli’s Venus, and told to re-create the painting as best as they could by arranging the fruit on the sheet. An art historian would decide whether they had passed or failed. Jeffrey and I looked at each other. Why had our daughter subjected herself to this circus?

  At least it turned out that her art A-level had not been wasted. Under the flickering light of replica candles, she had the sensible idea of positioning herself on the sheet in the Venus pose while Phil, the Peter Andre impersonator, drew around her in crayon, to give them an outline to work from. I wish he hadn’t stuck to her outline quite so closely. After that, everyone set to work with the fruit, and it all went fairly smoothly until a fierce argument erupted between the council worker, who felt that Venus’s bosom would best be represented by a pair of grapefruits, and the lap dancer, who wanted to use melons. Peter Andre intervened in favor of melons. I was annoyed to see that Jeffrey was silently nodding along with him. The end result, I have to admit, was rather impressive, and I felt certain that they would carry the challenge until, at the very last moment, the transvestite added a most unfortunately positioned banana as a protest against “monolithic Western gender clichés” and the judge shook his head in disgust. There was to be no daylight; and they would eat gruel for dinner. At least Sophie has some practice for this from her grandmother’s porridge.

  FRIDAY, JULY 11

  Dear Lord. The tabloids today are full of photos of Phil, the Peter Andre impersonator, with his crayon next to Sophie’s thigh and headlines like BOTTY-CELLI’SVEN-ARSE. Even the Daily Mail had the same picture, though its caption was the slightly less objectionable “The art of love?”

  Once again, I handed my change over to Niral from a clammy palm, hardly daring to raise my eyes to his. He must know. Everyone must know.

  As if to confirm this impression, as soon as I’d left the newsagent my mobile rang. It was Bridget.

  “God, Constance, are you okay? That is your Sophie, isn’t it?” she said. For a moment I was tempted to lie, to delude her, and myself, that the pierced adolescent in that narcissists’ madhouse bore no relation whatsoever to my cherished daughter.

  “Yes, it’s my Sophie,” I said in a defeated voice instead. It was futile. I listened to Bridget try to cheer me up for a few minutes, then ended the conversation and put my mobile back in my pocket. It rang again, almost immediately. Tanya.

  “Flippin’ ’eck Connie, have you seen the papers today?” she said, before inviting me over for a coffee and a chat. Craving distraction of any sort, I agreed.

  It was my first trip to her new flat, which is a big step down from their old house but nevertheless rather smart. Tanya has taken over the open-plan living room and dining area for Idle Hands, leaving Mark to run the administrative side from the storage room. Next to the vials of varnish and pots of sequins, Tanya had a copy of the Sun open to a Dungeon double spread. I took a gulp of my coffee. My jaw dropped in horror, partly from the Nescafé, partly from the sight of Sophie admiring Peter Andre’s tattoos in the dim glow of a Bic cigarette lighter. Tanya tried to convince me that it was all okay, that she’d be able to make twenty grand “just like that” from talking to the magazines afterward. She is probably right, but it is not for this that Jeffrey has been putting 5 percent of his salary into a trust fund every year.

  10 P.M.

  Jeffrey and I have just finished watching Dungeon. The circumstances are far from ideal, but it’s the first time for as long as I can remember that we’ve shared a pastime in this way. Jeffrey poured himself a whiskey and me a sherry, and we settled companionably on the sofa as the opening sequence of dark corridors lit by fake electric candelabras, with a soundtrack of thumping beats and demonic cackling, began. It was Sophie
’s turn to cook for the group. Her chili con carne was a modest success; if it hadn’t been for the council worker being a vegetarian, and for the dwarf finding a mustache hair in his serving, it would have been a triumph.

  SATURDAY, JULY 12

  Today I ventured onto Facebook and searched for Sophie’s name. I wish I hadn’t. There were 193 results, including many fan clubs, a hate club, and a group called “I would cut off my own balls with a rusty spoon for the pleasure of having Sophie Harding make me chili con carne.”

  I logged back off quickly.

  SUNDAY, JULY 13

  Church today, and Mother, both of whom were thoroughly oblivious to Dungeon.

  The Sunday Telegraph, sadly, was not. There were no lurid photos or suggestive headlines, but there was a substantial article in the comment section by some professor of sociology, which claimed:

  “The reality television genre has reached its apotheosis in Dungeon: the contestants strut through its gaudily lit corridors, they are both manipulated and manipulating; they are the commodities and consumers of voyeurism; their much-vaunted eccentricities are what make them uniform. In her complete unawareness that the only real prison cell she inhabits is one of her own making, Sophie Harding is the new Emma Bovary.”

  I showed it to Jeffrey, and he didn’t know what it meant either.

  MONDAY, JULY 14

  10 P.M.

  Once again, Jeffrey and I have just watched Dungeon. The housemates were set another challenge: to learn how to ride a monocycle, then perform a relay race down the gloomy corridor, with an electric light made to look like a candle (presumably a real one would breach health and safety regulations) serving as a baton. Jeffrey’s hand reached out to mine, and our eyes met, fearfully. We both knew that Sophie would struggle.

  And she did. Even with the Peter Andre impersonator holding her hand, she could not bring herself to make that leap of faith, to peddle on ahead and keep her hands at her sides. “Go on, Sophie!” bellowed Jeffrey, rising from the sofa on her sixth at-tempt. But it was in vain. All the other contestants managed it, even the dwarf, on a custom-made “minicycle,” but not poor Sophie. And because of her, the housemates failed the challenge, and had to face a week without wine.

  Afterward, there was footage of Sophie with her scrawny ankles clasped in plastic replica stocks, weeping mascara down her cheeks, wailing, “It’s all Dad’s fault. He wouldn’t buy me training wheels and I never learned to ride a bike properly and I hate him and you and everyone, it’s not fair!”

  Jeffrey had to physically restrain me from calling the producer again; then he poured us both a double scotch, neat.

  TUESDAY, JULY 15

  It was with a heavy tread that I approached the belfry last night. Was it too much to hope that no one caught a glimpse of Sophie on Dungeon, in one way or another? Alas, it was. No sooner had I put down my handbag and taken up my usual position at my rope than Miss Hughes turned to me and said, “I saw that daughter of yours in the newspaper today.”

  “Oh,” I said, not knowing how else to reply. At that moment I noticed Gerald standing quietly next to his bell rope, his hair neatly combed, listening.

  “I never thought I’d see the day when someone from this village would be caught cavorting on television like that.”

  Just as I was struggling to formulate a response, Gerald intervened.

  “Isn’t it about time we got going?” he said quietly; and we did. The lovely clanging of the bells, and the regular reaching and pulling on my rope, soon managed to erase all thoughts of Sophie, minidresses, monocycles, dwarfs, and Peter Andre impersonators.

  I left feeling calmer, and gave Gerald a grateful smile on the way out.

  The feeling did not last, however. When I got home Jeffrey was sitting in front of the television watching Dungeon, gripping his glass of scotch so tightly his fingers were white; on the screen our daughter was having a screaming match with the Brazilian lap dancer. He explained to me that Renita had accused Sophie of stealing her eyeliner. I would like to have thought her innocent, but my mascara did make a mysterious disappearance at the same time as Sophie, suggesting a certain predilection for helping herself to other people’s cosmetics. I told Jeffrey, and he shook his head, then went to his decanter for a top-up.

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 16

  Once more to the newsagent’s. This time I could no longer avoid Niral’s eye as I paid for my tabloids. “This is your Sophie, isn’t it?” he said, gesturing to the cover of the Sun, which had a close-up of Sophie and Renita screeching at each other with the headline MAKE UP, GIRLS!

  “She has spirit. That Renita girl is a nasty piece of work,” he said in his gentle, undulating voice. “I hope that she will be out on her ear when it comes to parole time.”

  Parole! Of course. Rupert had explained how it worked over the phone only yesterday, but I was too distracted to pay attention. The cell mates must be due to nominate someone soon. I realize it’s unkind to hope that one’s own daughter will be socially ostracized and summarily booted out, and yet I long for it to be so. Our ordeal could be almost over.

  10 P.M.

  Sophie is up for parole! How I hoped I would be writing those words; and how much trouble they have brought. I have had a most alarming sort of surprise.

  Jeffrey and I were settled, as usual, to watch Dungeon. I had told him that I suspected a parole notice was imminent, and he perched on the edge of his sofa, so precariously that I feared he would spill his whiskey onto the carpet. Sure enough, one by one the housemates filed into the “interrogation chamber,” that ludicrous room with medieval implements of torture on the wall, pimp’s furniture, and a voice-over of a young girl pretending to be a George Orwell character. (I never liked Orwell much. Why slum it in Paris and London when he had a perfectly respectable array of relatives to stay with? But I digress.)

  Each cell mate had to say whom they wanted to send home, and things were not looking good for our daughter. Though she had the physics teacher and the Peter Andre impersonator on her side, she seemed to have alienated the entire female contingent, including the transsexual, who said that she had stolen his moisturizer. Once the votes were in, the results were clear: Sophie and Renita were up for eviction. The result would be decided by a public telephone vote. As soon as the numbers to text flashed on the screen, Jeffrey put down his glass and grabbed his BlackBerry from his pocket. I was impressed that he was taking matters into his own hands. Sophie clearly needs to be out of that house for her own good, and the British public cannot be relied on to vote the right way; how else would you explain more than a decade of Labour government?

  I looked over his shoulder as he typed in “RENITA.”

  “You’ve got it the wrong way!” I said. “You have to put in the one you want to send home, not the one you want to stay.” Perhaps, after all, it was similar confusion that accounted for Gordon Brown’s presence at No. 10 Downing Street.

  “What are you talking about, you silly woman?” Jeffrey exclaimed. “Why would I want Sophie to go? This is the most fun I’ve had in years.”

  He hit SEND.

  THURSDAY, JULY 17

  How could he? How could he?

  A phone call from the twelve-year-old Dungeon producer with the oscillating accent. Did we want to go to the television studio this evening as VIP guests to cheer Sophie on and meet her if she is given parole? No, we did not. I told her that we had other plans. If Sophie could find her own way into the house, she could find her own way out. My anger overwhelmed me. Then as soon as I had hung up I called back to make sure that she would be put up somewhere safe for the night and looked after. Then I said, “Good, I should think so too,” and hung up again.

  FRIDAY, JULY 18

  A phone call from Harriet. News of Dungeon has finally percolated through to Weybridge. She was shocked, and appalled. “My niece, Constance, my niece,” she kept repeating, a little insensitively. Lowering my voice to a hiss, I told her about Jeffrey’s vote. She went silent, then hissed bac
k conspiratorially, “How could he? How could he?” In such moments, I can forgive all her bragging over her beautiful baby granddaughter.

  A phone call from Tanya. “Hiya, Connie, how about we bring some pizzas around to your house for parole night, make a party of it?” I didn’t have the energy to refuse. She and Mark will be here at nine. Feeling too fraught to fight the current, I decided to swim along with it, and texted Rupert to invite him too.

  10:30 P.M.

  It’s over. She’s out. What a spectacle; what an evening.

  Mark, Tanya, and Rupert all arrived around nine o’clock, Rupert giving me a hug and a bottle of Chilean red wine, which I hoped Jeffrey would be able to discreetly lose somewhere in the wine rack.

  Mark and Tanya brought take-out pizza; Tanya ate directly from the box, which she balanced on her bump, but I made sure everyone else had plates. The smell was enough to coax Natalia out of her room to join us. She looked a little like a Dungeon contestant herself with her tracksuit bottoms and tiny vest top showing a good few inches of Slavic stomach. As the opening music played, Jeffrey leaped up and started pacing back and forth across the rug. I told him to stop or he would erase the paisley.

  The scene that opened up on the television screen was flabbergasting. I felt like an anthropologist who had stumbled on some mysterious tribe in a clearing in the middle of a rain forest, leaping about in incomprehensible ritual. There were hundreds, thousands of people, crammed around a walkway screaming and waving banners, some of which said “Go go SoHa!!!” It took me several minutes—and Rupert’s explanation—for me to understand that they were there for my daughter. “It’s okay, Mum,” Rupert said, patting me on the shoulder, “they’re just a bit bonkers. And if it wasn’t Sophie it would be a football team or a dancing dog or someone from Girls Aloud.” I nodded and looked back to the screen, where the host was interviewing a teenage girl dressed in the same purple minidress that Sophie was wearing, showing off a tongue piercing, which she’d had done “to look just like So, she’s so hot.” I always wanted my daughter to be a role model, but this wasn’t quite what I had envisaged.