A Surrey State of Affairs (25 page)

I can scarcely believe this is happening, but the wretched and
despicable Ivan the Terrible has intruded upon our holiday. Jeffrey casually mentioned over dinner last night that by a “happy coincidence” (his words, not mine) Ivan and his fourth wife would be arriving at our hotel the following morning. I hid my rage by cracking open my lobster with unusual efficacy.

And so it came to pass that I spent today on the beach watching Jeffrey and Ivan tear about on noisy, smoke-belching jet skis in the company of Ivanka, who sported a gold thong bikini and truly impertinent breast augmentations. When the two men returned from the sea she giggled and flicked Jeffrey’s bottom with her Versace-logo beach towel.

How is this to be borne?

I retired with a headache this afternoon, but this is merely a short-term strategy.

  
MONDAY, MAY 26

I have a dreadful confession to make. Once again, I am back in the Internet café, hitting the yellowing keys as if in purgatory. My conscience will not be silenced.

As you know, I have been suffering from severe provocation. The headache technique did not work for long; claustrophobia and resentment began to weigh. Why should I be driven from my husband’s side by a would-be oligarch and his surgically enhanced strumpet?

Lying in my room listening to the drone of the fan going round and round, I formulated a plan. I think the combined effects of the heat and a rum punch may have made me reckless.

I returned to the beach with a large bottle of coconut oil that I had bought from the hotel boutique. Ivanka has skin the color of baked tangerines, but Ivan’s complexion is the pale, sallow tone of someone whose ancestors have toiled in Ural salt mines, whether he drives an Alfa Romeo sports car or not.

Ivanka makes sure that he is protected from the sun by spraying him liberally with high SPF sunscreen from a large plastic bottle. I waited until Jeffrey and Ivan had gone to take a dip, and then mentioned to Ivanka that her lip liner looked peculiar. (This was hardly a lie—there is a substantial discrepancy between where her real lips end and where her coral-colored liner does.)

Once she had fled to the hotel bathroom mirror, I emptied the contents of the sprayer and refilled it with coconut oil. By the end of the day Ivan was scarlet and irate with pain. He and Ivanka left for Moscow the following morning.

Last night I lay awake, listening to Jeffrey snore and the fan whine, agonizing over a moral and philosophical quagmire. Did the ends justify the means?

  
SUNDAY, JUNE 1

Home, sweet home. Never has that sentiment seemed truer. Here, there are no oligarchs to fry, no sand to get stuck in my sandals. I can savor the gentle beauty of an English summer’s day without being assailed by stinging insects, spicy food, sunstroke, or pangs of guilt. Randolph has done a sterling job on the garden; the borders are bursting with flowers, the lawn is an immaculate, uniform green. Once I have put the breakfast dishes away I think I will make some lemonade and take the newspaper outside to catch up with what’s been going on in the world.

Here, at least, it appears that no major disasters have occurred over the past fortnight. When we rolled up the familiar curve of our drive late last night, I was anxious about what lay behind the sage-colored front door and closed curtains: had Natalia and Tanya ripped each other’s hair out? Had Natalia gone on strike,
leaving piles of stinking rubbish piling up like in that repulsively addictive program
How Clean Is Your House?

I needn’t have worried. The house was no dustier than usual, and the only major difference was that neat cardboard boxes labeled Idle Hands, with a swirly sketch of feminine fingers, stood stacked in the hall. Our mail had also been piled up tidily, and amid all the bills, which I left Jeffrey to deal with, were two postcards.

One was from Gerald. It had a faded Beatrix Potter illustration of two rabbits walking arm in arm and a tea stain on one edge, and read:

The poor man clearly needs more help with his mystery romance. The second postcard was from Sophie. It had a lovely photograph of the Pont du Gard aqueduct, suggesting that my hopes that she would develop more mature, sophisticated tastes during her year abroad were not unfounded. Strangely, the postal stamp on it was in Spanish—some inept Continental postal worker must have confused Surrey for Spain and sent it on a circular course. Sophie’s handwriting is admittedly dire.

I was just pinning the cards up on our noticeboard this morning when Natalia emerged, wearing a short pink summery dressing gown. When I saw her nails, I shrieked: they were scarlet at the base, as if she were bleeding, and gangrenous-looking. On closer inspection, however, it emerged that she was wearing a full set of Idle Hands nail extensions, painted in green, yellow, and red—the colors, she told me, of the “Lithuan flag.”

I could hardly complain, as the odd appendages did not stop her from cooking a full English breakfast for Jeffrey, even though it was her day off. I opted for bran flakes instead, the memories of swimsuits and a whole roasted Caribbean pig sitting squat and pink on a bed of banana leaves still fresh in my mind.

  
MONDAY, JUNE 2

As soon as I had seen Jeffrey off to work this morning, I was distracted by laughter coming from the conservatory. When I went to investigate, I found that Tanya and Natalia had painted Darcy’s claws pink and silver. It appears that Natalia is now a full-fledged friend of Tanya and supporter of Idle Hands.

Needless to say, I do not approve of this tampering with my parrot’s natural state, and yet it is difficult to remonstrate with a pregnant economic refugee and a capricious Lithuanian—whose recent, and unexpected, alliance has restored a fragile sense of harmony to the household.

  
TUESDAY, JUNE 3

Jeffrey just called from work. This is such a rare occurrence that when I heard his voice on the phone I feared the worst. Had he gotten his hand caught in the photocopier? Had he dropped his onyx paperweight on his foot and crushed a toenail? Alas, the news was almost as bad. He was calling to let me know that he had invited Andrew, the senior partner at Alpha & Omega, and Amanda, the irritatingly enthusiastic skier, for dinner tonight. From the brisk tone of his voice, it was clear that he had no inkling that:

(a) Four hours is not sufficient time to make an obstinate Lithuanian remove all traces of nail extensions from the dining room, then shop, cook, and serve a meal of a suitable caliber for a senior legal executive and his hoity-toity “girlfriend.”

(b) With six weeks to go until the bell-ringing championships, I can ill afford to miss practice for the third week in a row.

Such is a woman’s lot. I suppose duck á l’orange will do.

11:32 P.M.

They have gone. Thank heavens, they have gone. I do not wish to dwell on the evening. It was not a resounding success. Suffice it to say that when we sat down around the table, Amanda leaped back up again with a recently painted nail extension dangling from the seat of her cream Nicole Farhi cigarette pants, and this set the tone. She made as if to laugh it off with a tinkling giggle, but I could see that there was ice in her eyes. After watercress soup, I served up the duck, and she said, “Quail, how lovely. It’s my favorite starter—the portions are just the perfect size not to fill you up too much.” Later, she asked me how many grandchildren I had and turned her nose up at my coffee because it wasn’t fair trade.

How I yearned for the cool, musty calm of the belfry.

  
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4

Another postcard from Gerald arrived today. It read simply:
Constance, I am lovesick. Cure me.

There was no postal stamp; he must have pushed it through the letterbox. At least he is not too lovesick to walk.

I am itching to know who he is pining for, so I drafted the following on a plain cream card and sent Natalia off to put it under his door:

  
THURSDAY, JUNE 5