A Surrey State of Affairs (4 page)

Sophie is gone. Jeffrey and I drove her to the airport this afternoon. We stood on the cold tarmac outside Gatwick’s North Terminal, the wind whipping around her overfilled drag-along suitcase. I gave her a firm hug, Jeffrey patted her on the back. She felt very thin and fragile in my arms. For a moment I thought she was crying, but just as I went to comfort her she claimed that her hair had blown into her eyes and swore disgustingly.

When I got home, I tried to distract myself by talking to Darcy, but I fear that Natalia has been teaching him Lithuanian. Either that or he has bird flu. He made a strange, harsh noise when I tried to get him to say “She sells seashells on the seashore.” I called Rupert, who told me that unless Darcy shows other symptoms beyond talking funny I shouldn’t worry. Reassured, I asked him what he’d been up to today and he said he had been “downloading MP3s,” or something even less intelligible than a parrot’s Lithuanian.

  
MONDAY, JANUARY 14

Today, I finally decided to have words with Natalia. I have had enough of her attitude, her cold soups, her collapsed soufflés, her lackluster dusting, her scattered underwear. If she is to give Sophie’s room the deep clean it requires, she will have to raise her standards. I positioned myself in the leather swivel chair in Jeffrey’s study, then summoned her.

She did not present herself with the air of anxious deference I had been expecting. Instead she sauntered in and leaned against the wall, with one hand in her jeans pocket, the other twirling the strange tawny streaks that thread through her long, black hair. I informed her that her cleaning was below par and that she had better buck up, but she merely shrugged and looked baffled. I told her to get her act together, but she just stared. I told her to stop leaving her undergarments on the radiator. Again, she looked flummoxed. In desperation, I drew a diagram. She was wide-eyed, but when I stabbed at the drawing insistently with my pencil, she nodded slowly.

I believe that I have bent her will to mine.

  
TUESDAY, JANUARY 15

My attempt to discipline Natalia has backfired. Yesterday, Jeffrey came home from work and headed upstairs toward his study. I followed him so that I could tell him all about the latest Aga malfunction on the stairway. He opened the door to his study and we were both greeted by the unsettling sight of Natalia cleaning the room in her underwear, which was scant, black, and dotted with little shiny red hearts. It appears that as well as struggling with English, she is incapable of deciphering a simple diagram. Mother never had problems like this in her day. Jeffrey had to lie down to recover from the shock. Englishmen are not accustomed to such spectacles.

  
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16

I bear grim tidings from bell ringing. Last night I opened the door to the belfry at precisely 7:30
P.M.
and was greeted with the usual waft of cold, stony air and the sight of Gerald standing in the shadows. His presence was nothing unusual in itself: the
man is punctual to a fault, a habit instilled by twenty-five years of teaching to the bell at the local boys’ school. And yet he failed to return my cheery “Good evening.” When I said it again, he looked up at me with bloodshot eyes and a morose expression. It was then that I noticed the change to his appearance. Ginger stubble spread across his face like an exotic fungus. His usual crisp checked shirt and lustrous leather loafers were gone, replaced by a muddied sacklike pullover and a pair of slippers. His beige chinos lacked their usual immaculate crease down the front. There were purple shadows under his eyes. Tufts of hair protruded from his ears.

“Dear Gerald!” I said. “What on earth has happened to you?”

“It’s Rosemary,” he said, in a small, cracked voice. “She’s gone.”

“On the Women’s Institute’s away week to Tunbridge Wells? Don’t worry, she’ll soon be back. I’d have gone myself if I could trust Natalia to look after things.”

But she had not gone to admire the architecture of Kent. Rosemary, Brown Owl for the village Brownie group, star fund-raiser of Surrey Conservatives, loyal wife to Gerald and mother of his two grown sons, had run away with a trapeze artist from the visiting circus.

I am summarizing this information so as not to try your patience: it took me, and subsequently the other bell ringers, half an hour to wheedle the truth out of Gerald. At one point, Reginald had to revive him with a shot of the alcohol we keep next to the biscuit tin to clean rust stains off the bells. The man was quite incapacitated with shock. I can’t blame him. None of us saw it coming, although, come to think of it, Rosemary did perform a particularly emotive rendition of Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” at the Rotary Club “dinner and divas’ karaoke” fund-raiser last year. At one point she tore a clump of her hair out for emphasis. I informed Miss Hughes as such when poor
Gerald went to the lavatory, and she agreed that the rot had set in long ago.

  
THURSDAY, JANUARY 17

I wonder if there’s any special technique for persuading an adult son to divulge a little more information about his life. The unsettling events at bell ringing have made me ponder how little we sometimes know about those who are close to us. Given the usual tenor of my conversations with Rupert, I am unlikely to be enlightened anytime soon. Last night’s exchange was typical of its genre. It went something like this:

“Good evening, Rupert. How are you?”

“Hi, Mum. Fine, thanks.”

“So, tell me what’s new!”

“Oh, not a lot.”

“How’s work?”

“Fine.”

“How’s the flat?”

“Fine.”

“Are you warm enough?”

“Yes.”

“Are you wearing that nice scarf I bought you for Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“Have you watered your houseplants?”

“Mum, I told you—they’re cacti.”

And so on and so forth, until eventually I’m compelled to fill the silence by gabbling on about Rosemary, the bell-ringing adulteress, and Natalia’s sluttish underwear.

He is my own flesh and blood, and yet it alarms me sometimes that I know so little about the daily realities of his life. In all his twenty-five years, he has never once brought a girlfriend home, and for the amount of information he voluntarily imparts he could
just as easily be a tap-dancing Martian as a software specialist in Milton Keynes.

  
FRIDAY, JANUARY 18

While lying awake last night pondering my son’s reticence and romantic ineptitude, I was struck by a brilliant idea. I was tempted to jab Jeffrey in the ribs and share it with him immediately, but he was snoring so peacefully I was loath to disturb him. Instead I will share it with you. It runs as follows.

In two weeks’ time, Rupert will celebrate his twenty-sixth birthday. To mark the occasion, I will organize a small party, and I will invite girls, as many girls as I can muster. Once they are assembled, I will present Rupert with gifts that underline his attractiveness to the modern female. These will include:

A rugby ball. For all the newspaper articles I read about the rise of the so-called “metrosexual,” there is no doubt in my mind that most girls still hanker after a good old-fashioned muddied oaf.

A compass. To underscore the rugged, outdoorsy image, and also demonstrate his protective side. Should a young couple lose their way, it is always best for the man to be prepared.

A book by Jeremy Clarkson. Again, this will mark him out as bracingly free of namby-pamby metrosexuality. No woman goes weak at the knees for a liberal democrat.

A puppy. What woman can resist a young man in possession of a suitably doe-eyed hound? Clearly, I am thinking of something in the Labrador direction, not those vicious pit bull creatures that poor people keep, though I can’t fathom why fake gold jewelry would require a guard dog.

  
MONDAY, JANUARY 21

I do not wish to sound remiss in my wifely devotion, but I was almost relieved when Jeffrey returned to work today. I have heard nothing this weekend but ski talk, and frankly it chills me to the marrow, as if I were already stuck on some wretch-ed, blizzard-swept peak. The annual trip to St. Moritz organized by Jeffrey’s law firm looms, and I am duty-bound to accompany him.