A Surrey State of Affairs Read online

  As soon as Jeffrey had left for work and Natalia had gone to the supermarket, I shut myself in the study and typed “Facebook” into Google. I followed the instructions to register, pausing when it asked me to select an image. I was torn between wanting to use a holiday photo of myself ten years ago, an image of the queen, an elegant swan, an owl, apple blossom, a church spire, or Miss Moneypenny wearing a pencil skirt suit. However, the dilemma was resolved for me when I realized I didn’t have the faintest idea how to add any sort of picture. I called Rupert, and Sophie, but as neither answered I was forced to accept the default image of a royal-blue question mark, which hardly cuts a dash. At least the rest of the process was easier. For my relationship status I put married; for religious views, Church of England; and for politics, Conservative, but Kenneth Clarke, please, not David Cameron.

  Once I had finished registering, it helpfully asked me if I wished to look up any friends. I am not sure if “friend” is the correct term to describe a husband of thirty-three years, but I typed in Jeffrey’s name, and, sure enough, among all the other unknown and inferior Jeffrey Hardings, there was his little 007 picture. My heart jumped to see it. Being rather new to all this, I was not quite sure exactly what would happen when I got to this stage, but I had presumed that I would be able to access all of Jeffrey’s information, find out who his “friends” were, which fan clubs he had joined, how he described his religious beliefs, how many semi-naked television presenters he was adulating. To my intense disappointment, I could do none of this. The only options were to “add as friend” or “send a message.” After hesitating for a few moments, I clicked on the former. It told me a “friend request” had been sent. Will he say, for a second time, “I do”? Will he be pleased to meet me in cyberspace? Will he be angry? Will he see my name pop up on his screen and feel a sudden stab of shame at his “phwoooooaaar’s”?

  While I pondered these questions, I decided to look for my children too. There were a number of Rupert Hardings, none obviously my son, although one, which featured a picture of Oscar Wilde, did claim to be in Milton Keynes. This could be my Rupert: he always loved English at school.

  It was, alas, easier to find Sophie. She was instantly recognizable, wearing a pink bikini and a sombrero, with a cocktail in one hand and a can of whipped cream in the other, sitting astride what appeared to be a rugby player’s shoulders. I sent her a message saying Never allow anyone to take a picture of you that you would not want your mother to see. Love, Mum. I felt it best not to befriend either her or the potential Rupert. Children do have very firm ideas about privacy these days.

  After that I managed to track down my friend Bridget—who had a very glamorous picture, a side-on shot of her with waved hair and crimson lipstick, smoking a cigarette through an old-fashioned holder—then I joined a group of “fans” of the National Trust and another for parrot owners, called Paratweets. When I heard the scrunch of tires on the gravel indicating that Natalia was back from Waitrose, I was amazed to see how much time had passed. Now I can understand how people can turn into Internet addicts and squander their whole lives wandering aimlessly across the Web. With that in mind, I turned the computer off and went down to help Natalia unpack. Then I went back upstairs, turned the computer back on, and updated my “status” to is annoyed that the housekeeper has once again forgotten the Serrano ham.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 1

  At last, a telephone call from Rupert. “Hi, Mum,” he said, in a cheerful but brittle voice.

  “What did you tell her?” I demanded.

  There was a small silence, and then he said, “Mum, you’ve got to understand. She was freaking me out. She pushed a parcel of homemade cookies through the letter box. She waited outside my flat, hiding behind the recycling bins. She was wearing a mohair beret.”

  I had to concede that, notwithstanding her enthusiasm for home baking, this was not ideal behavior, or dress, for a prospective daughter-in-law. “Very troubling,” I said. “So what did you say?”

  He cleared his throat, then told me. I listened in awed silence.

  Ruth, Pru, and, by extension, half the village are now laboring under the delusion that my son has leprosy. Not just any sort of leprosy: Rupert persuaded Ruth that he had a latent yet virulent form of the disease, which was activated by emotional excitement. He told her he picked it up when he was volunteering at an orphanage in Bangladesh. Apparently, a tear fell from her eye as she said that he was perfect, too perfect, and unreachable, like a perfect sad story. Then she left.

  I hardly knew what to say. I was part appalled, part impressed by his powers of invention. Though of course I detest deceitfulness, I will have to keep it in mind for the next time the Jehovah’s Witnesses call.

  3:27 P.M.

  I logged on to Facebook and changed my status to is alarmed to hear that son has leprosy. Jeffrey has still not added me as a friend. Do I say anything?

  SUNDAY, MARCH 2

  Once again, Jeffrey has shirked both church and visiting Mother for a game of golf. His absence at least gave me a chance to reflect. I studied the faces in the congregation, the white morning light falling equally on taut young foreheads and furrowed old ones, on squirming children and tired-looking mothers, on glasses and mustaches. I wondered how many of them endured the same troubles as I did, how many husbands were Facebook voyeurs, how many sons were wriggling out of relationships. I imagined few would go as far as to feign leprosy. Every now and then Reginald’s sermon—something about the futility of material wealth—distracted me, but I mostly managed to blot him out.

  After that it was onward to The Copse, where Mother was in a better mood because the Antiques Roadshow had featured a silver cow creamer rather like her own. She asked after Jeffrey, Rupert, and Sophie, and I replied noncommittally. Looking at her sitting there, a sturdy old woman crisscrossed with the green wool of her cardigan, chin hanging softly like a turkey’s, wedding band cutting a wedge in her finger, I realized how much of her life was a mystery to me. When I was a little girl in Shipton-under-Wychwood it simply wasn’t the done thing to consider my parents as human beings, much less human beings who had a “relationship” with each other. Father was the village vet, mother came from a wealthy family with aristocratic connections, and together they were an unassailable parental unit. As long as I tied my own shoelaces and washed my hands before tea I was largely left to my own devices. But perhaps it was not too late to find out more about my own mother, to learn from her lifetime’s worth of wisdom and apply it to my own marriage.

  “Mother,” I said. “What was Daddy really like?”

  She paused, put her glasses on, looked at me, and said, “Big feet. Liked mustard. Would snore if he slept on his left side, not his right.”

  This was not quite what I had been angling for. I tried again.

  “You were married to him for fifty years. What’s the secret of being happy for so long?”

  She snorted. “Make sure he slept on his right side. Put his socks and underpants to warm on the Aga on a winter morning. But what do you mean, happy’? What are you asking me all this for?”

  At that point I decided to drop the subject and made some bland remark about the number of daffodils in the nursing home gardens.

  When I got home, Jeffrey still wasn’t back, so I signed on to Facebook. He still had not made me his friend. Bridget had written me a nice note, though, including a startled inquiry into Rupert’s health. I wrote back to reassure her. I had a friend request from a girl at school who used to smell of mothballs, and whom I’ve not seen since our twenty-year reunion. Judging from the hairstyle, her profile picture dated from that period. She certainly looked at least ten years off fifty-three, but I approved her anyway. Then I checked on Paratweets and left a comment advising others that linseed oil was the perfect remedy for dull plumage. After that I changed my status to is pondering the gaping chasm between the generations and logged off.

  MONDAY, MARCH 3

  Today I called on Tanya. It’s been a who
le week since I discovered Jeffrey’s Facebook page, and I’m no closer to deciding what to do beyond waiting for him to reply to my friend request. I need advice from a woman of the world, which I believe Tanya is because she sometimes wears a pink velour Juicy Couture tracksuit. When she answered the door she was red-faced and out of breath, her highlighted hair scraped back in a pastel-pink headband. “Hiya, Connie, don’t mind the state I’m in,” she said, ushering me in. It transpired that she had been exercising to a Girls Aloud dance DVD. I suppose it must burn more calories than gardening, but I can’t help but feel that it is less beneficial to the mind, and herbaceous borders.

  While she went to make coffee, I was left to study her living room. It was vast, cream, and pristine, with a peculiar sort of remote-control fire, chocolate-brown leather sofas that made my hands feel clammy, ethnic vases filled with dead twigs, and a giant painting of oblongs doing battle with triangles, which I took to be modern art. When she got back, she handed me my coffee in a Starbucks mug and asked how I was doing. I decided not to beat about the bush.

  “Tanya,” I said. “I found out that Jeffrey has been eyeing up other women on Facebook. What does it mean? What should I do? Does it matter?”

  She looked at me and laughed. According to her, Jeffrey’s transgression is trivial. She explained that, as a stockbroker, Mark spends half his leisure time “with his face between a lap dancer’s ***s,” and that she wasn’t troubled in the slightest. Such was her insouciance that the two of them would go through her fashion magazines together, giving the girls marks out of ten for their faces and figures.

  “He can look where he likes, but at the end of the day, I’m the one with the wedding ring,” she said, wiggling her elegant fingers. “And besides, he knows that if he does actually cheat, I get the house, I get the car, and I’ll chop his bollocks off with a pair of nail scissors.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say. I have never directly threatened Jeffrey’s genitalia, but I rather hope that the sentiment was implicit.

  In any case, I came away feeling much more cheerful, and at dinner I was emboldened enough to ask Jeffrey how he was enjoying Facebook. He started sawing his steak vigorously and said that he’d closed down his account because he kept getting friend requests from Nigerian spammers.

  TUESDAY, MARCH 4

  I have been grappling with a dilemma. After several days of pondering the wording, and one or two abortive efforts, I had filled in Rupert’s profile for Kindred Spirits. I had persuaded myself that the ends (a wedding, grandchildren) justified the means (impersonation, deceit). And yet, hand hovering above the mouse, ready to click SUBMIT, some small inner voice—perhaps representing God, or my inner conscience, it can be hard to distinguish between the two—persuaded me to stop. I wondered if a different approach wasn’t called for, one less likely to rub him the wrong way and result in him ignoring my text messages. And so, having thoroughly browsed the site, I decided to whittle down a short list of eligible girls to tempt him with before presenting him with a ready-written profile and asking for his permission to proceed. So far I like the sound of the following three:

  Name: Flossie

  Age: 24

  Height: 5 feet 5 inches

  Employment: PR/marketing

  About her: I’m a positive, happy girl whose fun to be around, friends tell me I’m spontaneous and sociable, I like Strictly Come Dancing and take ballroom classes, sure you’d give my slinkey moves a 10!

  Looking for: a nice smiley man to chillax with, maybe a serious relationship, maybe marriage and babies, who knows?!

  (Notes: Nice but dim. Probably pliable. Unlikely to have a career significant enough to impede producing grandchildren. Good height. Query: what does chillax mean?)

  Name: Karen

  Age: 32

  Height: 5 feet 6 inches

  Employment: Arts administrator

  About her: I enjoy the simple things in life: a home-cooked meal, a walk in the park, a good book. I’m shy but if you take the time to get to know me, you won’t be disappointed.

  Looking for: I’ve had my heart broken before so I’m looking for a kind, honest man who won’t dump me for a bimbo with a boob job.

  (Notes: She is 32 and sounds desperate. Would marry quickly. Cheap to maintain.)

  Name: Jackie

  Age: 26

  Height: 5 feet 2 inches

  Employment: Stable hand

  About her: Straightforward country gal. Love horses, dogs, country pubs, proper puddings.

  Looking for: A rustic lad to share long walks and Sunday lunches.

  (Notes: After Ruth, straightforward is good. Likes animals. And perhaps she will drag Rupert out of his flat and put a little color in his cheeks.)

  Now all I have to do is give him a call. Wish me luck!

  6:32 P.M.

  I have called Rupert. It did not go as planned. Everything has been in vain: my research, the little talk I had rehearsed ten times in my head before picking up the phone, the profiles I had printed out. How can one boy be so stubborn, so resistant to either reason or romance?

  The conversation went something like this:

  “Hello, Rupert, how are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “How’s the job?”

  “Fine.”

  “How’s the flat?”

  “Fine.”

  “Now, Rupert, I’ve been thinking. I don’t want to be intrusive, but I keep reading about how hard it can be for young people to find their soul mates in today’s highly pressured environment, and I wondered if you had ever considered online dat—”

  “MUM!”

  “Please don’t interrupt, Rupert. I am sure you could meet a very good sort of girl on the Daily Telegraph Web site. In fact, I’ve already found three. Now, listen to this: ‘Straightforward country gal. Love horses, dogs, country pubs—’”

  “MOTHER!”

  “Now, Rupert, please don’t interrupt. What have you got to lose? You wouldn’t even have to go to the bother of writing your own profile, because I’ve done it for you. Listen to this: ‘Handsome, professional twenty-six-year-old with own flat and teeth seeks respectable lady for companionship and potential marriage—’”

  There was a click. He had hung up. If I didn’t have to hurry off to bell ringing, I would spend the evening wallowing in despondency, visualizing a towering hat aisle whose wares are always positioned just out of reach.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5

  Once again, bell ringing drew me out of myself. I was forced to abandon all mournful thoughts of yawning empty marquees and apply myself to ringing. Bell ringing is a far more intricate and demanding activity than people realize. I feel certain that counting out the complex rhythms has helped Miss Hughes maintain her mental sharpness. She was back last night in her usual form, poking Daphne when she mistimed her entry and asking Reginald why he had failed to make sure the floor was swept. I looked at her, and I looked at Gerald, who was sniffing loudly in between rings, and I wondered.

  Gerald is fifty-nine, shuffling his way toward retirement from the history department of the boys’ school. He is currently an emotional car wreck, but prior to Rosemary’s departure he was a steady, contented sort of man, who collected and pressed rare wildflowers and would take his children on holiday to Hadrian’s Wall. Happiness to him was a rare orchid, or a well-preserved portcullis.

  Miss Hughes, on the other hand, is slightly his senior, retired from a career as a doctor’s receptionist. I believe she used to find happiness in informing patients that there were no available appointments until a week from Thursday. She has substituted this for waving her stick at the village youths for dropping litter. I doubt whether Kindred Spirits would award them a “five heart” compatibility rating, and yet I believe there are reasonable grounds for hope.

  Gerald is now meandering hopelessly through life, threadbare, at a loss; his closest relationship is with a four-month-old black Labrador. Miss Hughes could be just what he needs to whip him back into shape
. And Gerald might be just the project she needs now that she has successfully stripped all the ivy from her privet hedge. With this in mind, during our tea break I decided to ask Miss Hughes some questions designed to cast her in a favorable light for Gerald.

  “Tell me, Miss Hughes,” I said. “Have you ever been tempted to get yourself a dog to keep you company in the cottage?”

  “A dog?” she said, one thin eyebrow arched, before informing us all that the only purpose of dogs was to collect birds that had been shot, and that anything else was just piffle. I watched Gerald closely; rather than attending to Miss Hughes’s words he was staring straight ahead with a distant, dreamy look in his eyes and a piece of lint hovering on his mustache. This may take more work than I had anticipated.

  THURSDAY, MARCH 6

  A horrific thought has occurred to me. I have been dwelling, once again, on Rupert’s failure to bring home a girlfriend, and also on his reluctance to agree to my plan to put his profile on the Telegraph’s dating service.

  I do not wish to countenance such an idea of my own flesh and blood, whom Jeffrey and I have done our best to raise on the straight and narrow, but I can no longer quell my doubts.

  Could Rupert’s preferences and predilections lie in another direction? Could I have been fundamentally mistaken about him all these years?

  Could he, in short—I can scarcely bring myself to type it—could he be a closet Guardian reader?

  I am not sure whether to confront him and demand to know the truth, or whether, in cases such as these, ignorance is bliss.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 7

  A text message from Rupert. It read: Hi Mum, sorry I hung up. Love Rupert.

  Oh, Lord. You know what they say about liberal guilt. Perhaps it is true.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 8

  A strange conversation with Natalia. I suppose, due to her partial grasp of the English language, all conversations with her are strange, but this one was marked by its alarming subject matter as well as its style. I was just taking a stroll in the garden, enjoying the spring sunshine and checking that the new gardener had put enough bulbs down last year, when Natalia appeared. She had been taking sheets down off the line and was carrying them in a big bundle. “Mizziz Harding,” she said. “I want talk to you.” It was like being spoken to by a pillowcase with eyes. I took the laundry hamper from her, and put it on the ground. She looked suddenly exposed, and put one hand in her pocket and used the other to twirl her hair. She said that she had a big, big favor to ask. She said that she had a twin sister, Lydia, who was very sad because her boyfriend was a bad man and he had left her for a blond woman with a job in a bank and a big car. I nodded sympathetically, reflecting on the universal nature of the scoundrel, but wondered when she would get to the point. She said that her sister was studying but had a break for Easter, and that she had saved some money and maybe could buy her Lydia a ticket to come and stay and see some of England and get happy again.