A Surrey State of Affairs (12 page)

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 whole 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:

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

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

(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.)

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