A Surrey State of Affairs Read online

This is what I wrote:

  Dear Sophie,

  I hope you’re well and enjoying the eco lodge.

  Est-ce que tu fais des progrès en français? I always found that conjugating the irregular verbs before bed, while brushing my hair one stroke per word, was the best method of getting on. A fine mind and a fine head of hair will both stand you in good stead later in life.

  We’re all well here. On Friday we had a party for Rupert’s birthday which was good fun, if a little messy. I do worry about your brother sometimes, but we’ll talk about that another time. Perhaps you have some nice young friends, preferably with an interest in information technology and good teeth, who might like to come and stay for the Easter holiday?

  I hope you’re looking forward to the ski trip—Jeffrey tells me he has e-mailed you the travel details. Don’t forget your thermals! I’ve enclosed a 50 euro note so that you can get a nice haircut before you leave. Just because you’re living in a French river for a year doesn’t mean you need to turn into a savage.

  With love,

  Mum

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5

  I decided to buy Natalia some new underwear today. The girl needs cheering up. This morning I saw her standing in the utility room with a half-empty box of dog biscuits in her hand and a tear dripping down her plump cheek, causing a streak in her orange makeup.

  She may still be upset about Poppy, her temperament may be naturally surly, but I’m sure that the constant chafing of her polyester underwear can do nothing to help. After combing through her drawers to find her size (34C, and 10, something I last aspired to in 1983), I went to Marks & Spencer and bought her a box set of T-shirt bras and briefs in beige, white, and pale pink. Mother would no doubt be shocked at the thought of giving a “servant” such a personal present, but times, and cotton/elastane mixes, move on.

  When I got back, I interrupted Natalia as she was flicking a duster slowly back and forth across Jeffrey and my wedding photo with a faraway expression on her face. She has the attention span of a Ritalin-dependant gnat. I told her I had something for her, and she jumped, no doubt feeling guilty for her slapdash dusting. She looked confused as she pulled the boxes out from the shopping bag, but when I explained that it was a present to make up for Poppy she started crying yet again. The poor girl. She must have gotten really attached to that dog. I do hope I haven’t misjudged things. It was so much easier in Mother’s day, when all one had to do was give them a sixpence at Christmas.

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6

  Last night we welcomed a new visitor to bell ringing: Poppy. Gerald, who is clearly the sentimental type, didn’t want to leave her home alone. She may well possess a better innate sense of rhythm than Daphne, but her manners are markedly worse. She started howling as soon as the ringing got under way, pausing only to leap at the fluffy handholds on each rope. I had to feed her all the chocolate biscuits I had brought for our break to distract her. She was not grateful. After gobbling the lot, she trampled on the biscuit crumbs, barked twice, then urinated on Miss Hughes’s handbag. Gerald had to throw himself in front of Poppy and act as a human shield to prevent Miss Hughes from beating her to a pulp with her walking stick. He will not be bringing her next week.

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7

  A text message arrived from Sophie: Yo big momma, got gr8t hair cut, its wikid!! Can u transfur more cash 4 ski jumpa? Luv soph xxx.

  I did not feel that it merited a response, far less a financial transaction.

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8

  The suitcases are packed. Jeffrey’s skis stand in the hallway like a totem pole to the pitiless gods of the piste. There is no escape. We leave for St. Moritz tomorrow at five A.M.

  I have left Natalia with six pages of laminated instructions, including details for sewing the missing buttons back onto Jeffrey’s shirts, polishing the silver, and switching the lights on and off at regular intervals to deter burglars. A week of solitude can’t be an easy prospect, but she is putting such a brave face on things that I even caught her whistling as I was dragging my luggage toward the door. I knew the underwear would help.

  I bid a long and solemn farewell to Darcy. He looked back at me with his glittering black eyes, ducking his head to run a claw rakishly through his emerald feathers. For once, he did not respond to me in Lithuanian. He simply cawed, “Oh, Jeffrey,” in a breathless tone, which I found rather touching. He might have mixed up his owners, but at least he was expressing himself with a proper, and English, sense of loyalty. The memory will give me a warm feeling as I face the frigid slopes of the Alps.

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9

  I have arrived. So has Sophie. Her hair has been cut so that it hangs just below her left ear, then gets gradually longer in a sort of hideous diagonal until it falls to shoulder length on the right side. The nape of her neck has been “undercut,” which appears to be an alternative expression for “shaved to a piglike bristle.” It has been bleached a peroxide blond, annihilating the subtle tones of her natural color and making her look like a barmaid.

  I do not have time to describe my outrage, as the porter is carrying our belongings to our room as I type on the lobby computer and Jeffrey is giving me a puzzled look.

  SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10

  Everything is worse than I thought, and I am not just referring to the aberration that is my daughter’s hairstyle. Do not get me wrong: the hotel is charming, the mattress firm, the hot water piping, the alpine views from our balcony sweeping and majestic. It is the company and the skiing that have proved problematic.

  On previous trips, Jeffrey and I would always team up with Andrew, a senior partner at Alpha & Omega, and his wife, Barbara. Barbara is a woman after my own heart, a retired schoolteacher with firm views about necklines and weak indifference to snow sports. Together we would ski a few leisurely blue runs then stop to drink hot chocolate, take in the fresh air, and discuss the character flaws of our respective children. I looked forward to catching up with her and finding out if her daughter ever did admit that she had cheated on her seventh-grade music theory paper.

  Now I am perhaps never to know. Jeffrey did not feel fit to let me know in advance, but in the space of a year, Andrew has jettisoned Barbara and taken up with Amanda, a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer with a superabundance of glossy black hair and a waist that is offensively small, even in a ski suit. What’s worse, she is an unnaturally zealous skier, zipping past the men with consummate ease. Jeffrey said that it was marvelous to see a woman so good at it, but this did not stop him from poling his way forward in a frenzied fashion every time she overtook him.

  You can imagine that I was not comfortable on the slopes with such company. Sophie insisted on going off for a snowboarding lesson, so she was no help. I held them up on every run, but just as I was about to offer to go back to the hotel and leave them alone, the weather closed in. Amanda carried on unperturbed, her tight black ski suit bobbing and fading in the swirling white fog. Jeffrey and Andrew followed her. As the visibility diminished, so too did my fragile sense of balance. I turned left, and it was as if the slope veered away to the right. I turned right, the piste veered up to greet me. I stopped. An eerie silence descended. Snowflakes gathered in the folds of my ski jacket. I felt dizzy. There was only one thing for it. I did what any Englishwoman would have done in the face of such adversity: I had a cup of tea.

  Luckily, I am always well prepared. I had a flask of Earl Grey and a packet of currant biscuits from the hotel room in my pocket, so I scooted off the side of the piste, patted the snow into the semblance of an armchair, and settled down to wait for the weath-er to lift. To pass the time, I counted snowflakes. Mother always said that patience is a virtue. Just as I got to 5,683, I heard a strange whirring overhead. No sooner had I realized that it was coming from a helicopter than I saw two skiers wearing orange snow patrol vests waving their arms and shouting. It was a horrible moment when I connected the two.

  I do not wish to dwell on the mortifying details of my afternoon, but suffice it to say tha
t Amanda insisted on alerting the mountain rescue team when I failed to appear at the bottom of the mountain. Luckily, Andrew has some business connection with the mayor of St. Moritz, who agreed to write off the expense.

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11

  After the trying events of yesterday, I have decided to spend today enjoying the hotel pool and sitting in front of the fire with a good book. Jeffrey did not spend much time trying to persuade me to do otherwise. He appears more embarrassed by the rescue debacle than I am. Every time he hears anything that sounds like a helicopter he flinches; the distant drone of the chambermaid’s vacuum set him off this morning.

  In any case, a day at the hotel gives me plenty of time to update you on the subject of Sophie. I had hoped that her time away from home would make her grow up a little and teach her how to behave in the company of others. Sadly there is little evidence to support this view.

  Take last night, for example. I knocked on her door for a little chat just before dinner. I had thought that my brush with death (or at least a nasty cold) on the mountain would have stirred up her daughterly concern, but she hardly looked up as I went in, and continued to apply what looked like globules of bright blue ear wax to her hair. I asked her what on earth it was and she replied, “Mirage extra-hold sculpting crème.” She was wearing a white vest top under which a fluorescent pink bra of the sort not stocked by M&S was clearly visible, with a pair of denim hot pants layered over sparkly tights. The one nod to the fact that we were twenty-one thousand feet up in the Swiss Alps in winter, and not in Barbados, or indeed a brothel, was a gigantic pair of faux-fur-lined suede boots. I asked her when she planned to dress for dinner and she merely glanced down at herself and shrugged. I had no luck either persuading her to change or getting her to tell me what she had learned from counting sticklebacks. The only subject that enthused her was her “awesome” snowboard instructor, Jake. Having once glimpsed said instructor on the mountain, holding her hands to keep her upright, dressed in ludicrously baggy trousers and an oversized bobble hat that reminded me of a baby’s bonnet, I struggled to concur with her opinion.

  I was worried about the impression she would create at dinner, particularly because she was seated next to a bright young lawyer named James, who was smartly dressed in a blue shirt and chinos. She regaled him with the story of my “mental” rescue, twirling the long side of her hair through her fingers for emphasis. James did not notice me rolling my eyes and buttering my roll with dismissive energy because he was too busy staring at her bra. I hope that this is because he too noticed that it clashed with her top and tights.

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12

  Little to report today. Stayed at hotel. Finished Heart and Soul, Maeve Binchy’s latest. Jeffrey, meanwhile, looks finished. After a couple of days of skiing he lumbers up the stairs like a grizzly bear that has been shot and stuffed.

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13

  Sophie is still effusive about snowboarding and little else. I asked her if she wanted to spend the morning in the pool with me but she said she felt that she’d just reached an important point with Jake, her instructor. I suppose her determination is to be admired, though I wish she’d find a more appropriate activity: it is hardly very ladylike to spend so much time with her legs spread, even if snowboarding is in fashion.

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14

  Valentine’s Day today. Jeffrey appears to have taken a principled stand against the trite commercialism of the occasion—the last gift he gave me was a pair of silk stockings in 1985. They’re still in the back of my drawer, in between a sewing kit and a lavender cushion. I’m not the mawkish sort—it’s not as if I yearn for teddies clutching hearts or dozens of roses—and yet some small, tastefully wrapped token of affection would make a welcome change.

  With this in mind, I decided to ease my feet back into the vicelike grip of my ski boots and scale the mountain to meet Jeffrey, Andrew, and Amanda for lunch. I managed the one blue piste leading to the rendezvous without mishap and found the two men sitting at a table near the fire, stretching their legs out in contentment, white goggle marks glaring against their scarlet faces. As soon as I had sat down Amanda came over with some drinks. She had drawn a little heart into the foam on top of both Andrew’s and Jeffrey’s beers. Before I could say anything about this she was air-kissing me on both cheeks and telling me loudly how brave I was to get back up here after the helicopter rescue.

  After lunch, just as I was deciding whether a schnapps would help or hinder my descent, there was a noise of chairs scraping back out of the way and four men in dinner jackets appeared, carrying musical instruments. They positioned themselves pointing toward Amanda and began playing Handel’s “Entrance of the Queen of Sheba.” Andrew had hired a string quartet to serenade her at seven thousand feet. I thought this was more than a little outré, and glanced at Jeffrey to see if he would roll his eyes along with me, but he was distracted by the bleeping of his BlackBerry. I wondered who could have been texting him while he was on holiday but he muttered, “Work,” and stuffed it back into his pocket.

  After that I came back to the hotel for a long bath. Tonight there is a Valentine’s gala dinner at the hotel, and because I will be enjoying Jeffrey’s undivided attention, I want to look my best.

  11:05 P.M.

  What a to-do! I don’t know whether to feel ashamed of my daughter or admire her. She certainly provided a little Valentine’s Day drama.

  I had dressed carefully for the occasion, putting on a mauve silk blouse, a black knee-length skirt, a wraparound merino wool cardigan, and black patent leather shoes. I went to Sophie’s room to check that she too was wearing something smart. She opened the door and appeared before me in a pink T-shirt with the words “i look better naked” printed in gold, a pair of black leggings, and gold stilettos. I pulled the door shut and counted to ten. I knocked again and went in. After a small chat on the value of modesty and a threat to stop paying for her snowboarding lessons she gave in, and reluctantly changed into a minidress with spaghetti straps worn under a zip-up hooded pullover. It was not ideal, but it would have to do.

  Her curious outfit didn’t seem to trouble James, however. We were arranged at long tables decked out with tiny paper hearts, candles, and flowers, with couples sitting together and everyone else jumbled up. Sophie was looking well, the fresh air and candlelight making her pale complexion glow. Luckily she was sitting next to James, who was attentive to the point that I started to wonder whether he would agree to a church wedding and what sort of diamond a junior lawyer’s salary would buy. I tried to ask Jeffrey—subtly, of course—but he was no use. He seemed distracted throughout dinner, and failed to give me any opinion whatsoever on whether a marquee would fit in the garden. Perhaps the altitude had gone to his head.

  After dinner, we went through to the bar, and I observed James yawning, stretching, and placing his arm around the back of Sophie’s chair. It was reassuring that however much some things change in the world—public school fees, the color of tights—certain manly stratagems remain the same.

  My reflections were cut short by the entrance of a tanned young man with a hooded top a little like Sophie’s and half an inch of elasticated underpant sticking out from his jeans. He walked up to Sophie, took a disgusted glance at James, pulled her up from her bar stool, and kissed her. Before I could elbow Jeffrey into action to protect our daughter from this brazen and spiky-haired interloper, Sophie kissed him back. I suddenly realized that I recognized him from our first day here—it was Jake, the snowboarding teacher. James jumped up from his chair, spilling his gin and tonic, and shoved him in the chest. There ensued the sort of ungainly tussle that could not be more removed from the traditional idea of a romantic duel. Fists were swung; fists mostly missed their targets. Hair was pulled. At one point, so was Jake’s underpant elastic. Sophie watched with her hands over her cheeks. It wasn’t clear whom she was rooting for, but I hoped it was James. Eventually, the bar staff managed to separate them. Jake took one look at Sophie and stor
med out, scattering chairs in his wake. James said he felt a little shaky and went to lie down. Sophie ordered another drink. She must have inherited her sangfroid from Jeffrey.

  I shall have words with her. A well-brought-up girl should know better than to encourage two young men at the same time. And yet, I can’t deny that it is gratifying to see my daughter admired, despite her disastrous dress sense. And at least, unlike those terrifying news reports one sees about feral girls running wild in the streets, she was only causing the fight, rather than participating in it.

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16

  Back home, at last. It is a welcome refuge of peace, sanity, and temperate weather after such an eventful week in the Alps. The house is fairly clean, Darcy appears sleek and well, even Natalia seems pleased to have us back.

  The farewells in St. Moritz were not straightforward. I managed to stay calm while Amanda air-kissed me once again on both cheeks and simpered that I simply must stay in touch if I knew how to use e-mail, but only just. Before parting from Sophie, I tried to convince her of the relative merits of solvent lawyers versus itinerant antipodean snow-sport in-struct-ors. She conceded that James was “fit,” which I hope means fit for the purpose of a serious relationship with the prospect of marriage.

  8:32 P.M.

  I just went to have a bath, but my bottle of sea minerals bath oil is empty. It was three-quarters full before I left. My fluffy white dressing gown is missing. So is my Estée Lauder moisturizer. Natalia!

  SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17

  Natalia was unrepentant when I questioned her about the missing bathroom items. She merely fixed me with her cold, inscrutable eyes and said, “Not knowing.” I didn’t have the energy to argue. I needed to keep all that for visiting Mother, who was in a testy mood because the new lady in the bedroom next to hers had snaffled the last slice of sponge cake at tea. I muttered something about the importance of sharing and loving one’s neighbor, but from the look in Mother’s eye, I fear that she was in more of an “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” sort of mood. She asked me to bring her a cake tin and a padlock next time I visit.