A Surrey State of Affairs (42 page)

I am sure you will spare me your harshest judgments if I tell you that I was not unmoved. I value loyalty above all—bar cleanliness—but my patience with Jeffrey has been sorely tested. I think it was only at this moment, with someone else insisting that I had been badly treated, that I truly began to feel it. And it wasn’t just because of Jeffrey’s arrest. Through all the distressing events of this year—Sophie’s escapades, Rupert’s
revelation—he has not exactly been my rock. If I am to be honest—really, ruthlessly honest—I would have to say that he has been more gravel than rock. He spends more time talking to his BlackBerry, or to Ivan, whose name I shudder to type, than to me. He has stopped noticing things: a new dress, a haircut, a few pounds shifted for summer—all these pass him by. Of course I still love him—almost in the same way I love the children, or the garden, even, as part of the fabric of my life, a constant—but our relationship is not quite what I imagined when I studied the Debrett’s guide to homemaking thirty-four years ago.

And there sat Gerald, staring fixedly at my curtains, rigid. In the beginning I was shocked, and rather horrified, when I found out what those notes meant. But after his outburst at Sophie’s birthday party, I admired the way he withdrew, became quiet, dignified, yet always concerned about my feelings. The clock ticked. I studied the pale floral pattern on Gerald’s chair. In the background, Fergie squawked “humps humps humps.” I knew what I had to do. I am not entirely lost. I told Gerald in a gentle voice that I thought he should leave, and escorted him to the door. He paused on the doorstep and said: “Constance, can I still hope?”

I met his eye for a long moment before shutting the door.

  
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

Wonderful news! Jeffrey is free. Simon the hyena-eagle has pulled it off: there is insufficient evidence to press charges, and I can collect him this very afternoon.

Our future is secure, our reputation restored.

Why, then, do I feel a certain heaviness to my tread?

  
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13

Jeffrey is back. He is a changed man. Patient readers, I have turned to you again and again in times of crisis and you have not let me down. Please do not abandon me now. This is my darkest moment.

When I went to collect Jeffrey, I wasn’t immediately troubled by his altered appearance. He may have been pale, rumpled, and dejected, but this could easily be explained away as the strain of an unexpected stint behind bars without hot baths or brandy.

We said little on the way home, beyond a few remarks on the slight chill in the air and the first few autumn leaves on the road. He asked after Sophie and I told him that she was well. Then I said that I had bought steak, his favorite, for dinner.

When we got home, I made him a cup of tea and expected him to slowly resume his old ways: fending off my questions, flicking through the
Financial Times,
sauntering off to his study. Instead, he sat me down, looked me in the eye, and said the words that no man or woman can hear with equanimity, even after thirty-three years of relatively harmonious marriage.

“Constance,” he said, in a quiet voice. “We need to talk.”

He began by apologizing, unreservedly yet unemotionally, for the ordeal he had put me through.

He explained that Ivan had always dabbled in risky business ventures, and that he had long suspected that his latest venture, the “Recruitment Solutions” initiative, had been something of a front for smuggling young eastern Europeans into London. I was shocked. I hadn’t imagined that there were any further available depths for Ivan the Terrible’s execrable character to plumb, or that Jeffrey could possibly have condoned such activities.

Jeffrey apologized, again, for his lack of judgment. He explained that he felt such a deep loyalty toward Ivan, one of his oldest
friends, that he had always willingly turned a blind eye to his faults. He said that spending time with Ivan made him feel young and adventurous again.

This changed when Ivan eloped with Sophie. Jeffrey said that when he finally tracked them down to their hotel in Notting Hill Gate, Ivan refused to let Sophie go. Jeffrey suspects this was due more to Ivan’s stubborn pride than to any sort of genuine affection. The situation was mortifying. Jeffrey pleaded with them to part. Sophie threatened to stab herself with her new stiletto heels.

Jeffrey said that he had no choice but to threaten Ivan with informing the police of his dubious business practices. It had the desired effect. Ivan bundled Sophie, who was bewildered and upset, out of the hotel and into Jeffrey’s car, then sauntered away. Jeffrey is convinced that Ivan, in a staggering display of audacity, turned the tables and went to the police to accuse Jeffrey of exactly the sort of crimes that he himself was implicated in. The police even found incriminating documents in the guest room that belonged to Ivan, but helped to keep Jeffrey in his prison cell until the hyena-eagle persuaded them that the evidence was flawed and insufficient. I could barely believe that we had been so close to disaster.

Despite the shock, I was relieved that Jeffrey had finally decided to open up. It was the longest conversation we had had since he last attempted to explain the rules of cricket to me. I made another cup of tea and sat back down. Jeffrey looked at me with his bloodshot, baleful eyes. He said that his time in his cell had finally given him time to think, alone, without distraction.

He said that he had cried over Rupert, because he would never see him marrying a pretty girl in a white dress, because he would never get to watch him hold his grandchild.

He said that it was all his fault that Sophie had run off with Ivan. He said that he felt that he had failed as a father.

He said he was tired of his job and disillusioned with the endless quest for wealth, the slow accumulation of more and more things that he didn’t need. He said that when he was a boy he read a book about the first European settlers in Latin America, and that he used to dream of galloping across the pampas with the wind in his hair.

He said that he thought he would rather be a gaucho than a corporate lawyer.

He said that he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

He said that that included me.

  
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

Jeffrey and I leave tomorrow at 6:25
A.M.
for Buenos Aires. We may be gone for some time. I have signed a hasty agreement with the cleaning agency so that Boris will be paid a small retainer to look after the house. Sophie will just have to grow up and look after herself. If she doesn’t, then the combined forces of Harriet, Edward, and Rupert should get her to Bristol for the start of term.

I have packed sunblock, insect spray, water-purification tablets, a first aid kit, clean needles, a guide to poisonous snakes, E45 cream, a warm hat, sturdy boots, a travel iron, a book of crosswords, a compass, and Bach Rescue Remedy. Jeffrey has packed a lasso. He has not packed his BlackBerry.

I have considerable reservations about this journey, but it may well be the only chance we get to save our marriage.

I do hope they have flush lavatories throughout Argentina.

  
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17

We are here. Physically, we are safe. Psychologically, I am not so sure. Jeffrey has bought himself a leather cowboy hat, which he insists on wearing at a silly angle that he considers “rakish.”

We are, at least, staying in the Hilton, which has a very smart bank of computers in the lobby. Jeffrey wanted to find some “scruffy local place, somewhere with character and geckos on the walls,” but frankly I felt I had indulged his midlife crisis quite enough already by hauling myself abruptly into the southern hemisphere. For once, I stood firm, although I did compromise a little by settling for a standard double and not a deluxe.

Buenos Aires is sprawling, dirty, chaotic, crowded, and suffused with hotheaded Latin spirit. As we took a stroll in the historical Sal Telmo district yesterday we heard the beating of drums, and before we could duck for cover a colorful, clamorous street parade was upon us. Jeffrey attempted to dance, but his lead-footed shuffling bore little resemblance to the lithe elasticity of the Argentinean girls, who were dressed in shorts as tiny as Sophie’s. I hid in a lace shop. The Latin spirit also shows up in the quick temper of Argentinean waiters. Who would have thought that, after twenty-six years, they would still be so tetchy at a passing mention of the Falklands?

With all the sights and sounds, bustle and business, of the capital, Jeffrey and I have hardly had time to think, or talk, let alone decide anything about the future of our marriage. This will change. In two days we leave for the sierras, and who knows what.

  
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

I am alone in Argentina. I am alone. Jeffrey has gone.

If only I hadn’t refused to take a tango lesson with him. If only my attempts to sympathize with his midlife crisis—for such it no doubt is—had not been overpowered by an aversion to kicking my heels about like a Latina strumpet.

As it is, my refusal to accompany him to a Buenos Aires “milonga” proved the final straw. He has left for the estancia
without me. He said he needed time alone. He did not say when—or whether—he wanted me to join him. He has taken his cowboy hat.