A Surrey State of Affairs (5 page)

While Jeffrey derives an intense, childlike delight from the sport, I view it as nothing more than a likely means of breaking my bones and destroying my dignity.

It is impossible to maintain a tolerable level of decorum while clad in a waterproof duvet with two planks, two poles, hat, gloves, goggles, tissues, sunscreen, ChapStick, emergency snack, wet wipes, and lipstick all attached to one’s person. What’s more, one is always at risk of being crushed by an avalanche or a German snowboarder.

Jeffrey’s brother, Edward, came for dinner on Saturday and the two men spent the entire evening regaling one another with competitive tales of black diamond runs and off-piste derring-do. Harriet, my long-suffering sister-in-law, rolled her eyes at me in sympathy but there was little we could do. I tried to change the subject to my plans for Rupert’s birthday and the rising cost of hot chocolate in the Alps, but it was to no avail.

My one comfort is that Sophie will be joining us for the trip. She will not be able to wriggle out of a constructive tête-á-tête if we are sealed inside a ski lift thirty feet above the ground.

  
TUESDAY, JANUARY 22

Reginald came to see me today. I presumed that he wished to discuss how best to provide Gerald with suitable pastoral care and support ahead of this evening’s bell-ringing practice, but
it turned out that other matters, closer to home, pressed upon him.

As he dunked a biscuit in his tea (an unpleasant habit, but I let it pass), he informed me in his usual timorous voice that David had renounced Kabbalah. Before I could congratulate him, the troubled look in his moist gray eyes silenced me. David, it appears, has renounced his former faith in favor of Islam. He is attempting to cultivate the fluff on his chin into a fist-sized beard. He has renamed himself Abdul Mohammed Ahmed Aziz, and has taken to draping himself in a black-and-white checked neck cloth. He has thrown Reginald’s organic sage and mustard seed sausages in the bin, and gone through today’s
Guardian
scribbling over any exposed female flesh with a black felt-tip pen. (I felt he should have done the same thing for the words, but kept that to myself.)

By the time Reginald had finished mingling his concern for his son’s intolerant zeal with a few paeans to the noble history of the Islamic faith, his biscuit had disintegrated and his tea had gone cold. I did not know what to say. His predicament is alien to me. My family has always attended church but none of us is religious.

Nevertheless, I sincerely wished to help poor Reginald. I told him to bring David along to Rupert’s birthday party. A good party with a few pretty girls and a bowl of rum punch may just shake him out of his stringent beliefs. Or, if it does not, he can sulk in the corner and thus act as a foil to cast Rupert in a more favorable light.

  
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23

Bell ringing last night. Poor Gerald’s condition has deteriorated. His nasal hair is rampant, his slippers encrusted with grime. We tried to carry on as usual, but the poor man just could
not ring his bell with enough vigor. At one point he was so overcome with emotion that he asked me to hold it for him. I made sure I washed my hands afterward.

  
THURSDAY, JANUARY 24

Exciting news! The ladies from Church Flowers are on board for Rupert’s birthday party. Pru has already vouched for her daughter Ruth, a primary school teacher and keen amateur dramatist, being free, and the other ladies are all making similar inquiries of their relations.

One of them has even put me in touch with a Labrador dealer. The more I think about it, the more I congratulate myself on this part of the plan. Rupert was a sensitive, responsible sort of child who, unlike Sophie, never went through a phase of pulling Darcy’s tail feathers, so I’m sure that he will be very well suited to looking after a dog. His landlord won’t have cause to complain—if anything, a watchful pet would be a bonus for the prop-erty. Rupert could train it to snap at any wood pigeons or tramps loitering outside.

  
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25

Today I informed Rupert of my plan for his birthday. I telephoned him at work so that he would be less likely to miss my call. It would be going too far to say that he greeted the news with unmitigated joy; and yet, after half an hour or so of gentle persuasion, he began to see the merits of the scheme and agreed to cancel his reservation at the Brasserie Blanc in Milton Keynes. I offered to send out invitations to the friends who were meant to eat with him, but he could not remember their addresses. It is so sad that the Internet has ruined the memories of the young.

  
SUNDAY, JANUARY 27

Jeffrey has dropped a bombshell on me. Although he is, in general, a most unobjectionable sort of husband, there are moments when he intersperses months of conjugal calm with the sudden announcement that, say, the senior partner at Alpha & Omega will be dining with us that very evening, or that he will be leaving in two hours for a golf weekend in Morocco.

Today’s news was more shattering. In the brief interim between finishing his pudding and picking up
The Economist,
just as Natalia was clattering about with the dishes and I was listing the arrangements for Rupert’s party, he calmly announced that we would have to cater for an extra guest next weekend: Ivan.

Dear readers, you cannot know the dread that these words provoke. Ivan the Terrible, as I think of him, is Jeffrey’s most disreputable friend, a coarse, lumbering, foul-mouthed, foul-breathed, yellow-toothed reminder of a most unfortunate chapter of my husband’s past.

Jeffrey met Ivan at Durham University when he was going through his Communist phase. This was before we were dating, I hasten to add. Deciding at the age of nineteen that progress was repellent, Jeffrey had a fleeting fixation with the Soviet Union, which led to his friendship with Ivan, the son of Russian émigrés, and the stenciling on his dormitory wall of a hammer and sickle. By the time I began dating Jeffrey, he had completed an internship at Alpha & Omega, joined the Young Conservatives, and whited out the offending symbol, so my conscience is clear. Ivan too has long abandoned any semblance of Communist sympathies in favor of the cut and thrust—and Armani suits—of the business world. The only legacy of his past is his reluctance to pay to get his teeth fixed.

And yet you will understand that the arrival of such a man is
by no means a welcome development when one is carefully orchestrating the correct backdrop for one’s son to fall in love with a primary school teacher.

  
MONDAY, JANUARY 28

Today I took Jeffrey’s Land Rover out to pick up Poppy, a very fetching three-month-old black Labrador puppy with a damp nose, a perky tail, and boisterous brown eyes. I am not the sentimental sort—I do not, like Sophie, cry over episodes of
Animal Hospital
—and yet I must admit that I have something of a soft spot for dogs.

I grew up in a rambling old place in the Cotswolds surrounded by collies and horses; if it were not for Jeffrey’s allergies I would have bought myself a chocolate-brown Labrador years ago. In the end Darcy has made a splendid—and allergen-free—substitute, though he is never going to bow down or fetch a stick. He once gnawed his way through a Christmas tree, but it was not the same.

Poppy must remain hidden until Friday. I do not stoop to keeping secrets from my husband as such, but there are some things it is simply better for him not to know. The mere mention of a puppy would doubtless start him off sniffing and sneezing.

I have enlisted Natalia’s help. This is not always a straightforward procedure, but for once the girl has stepped up to the mark. As soon as she saw Poppy she threw her arms around her neck, stroking her ears and wittering away in her odd foreign tongue while I explained about Rupert’s party, Jeffrey’s allergies, and the need for canine concealment. I showed her how to measure out the dog food and top up her water bowl. Her eagerness to help with Poppy impressed me. I may reward her by popping in to Marks & Spencer to buy her some more comfortable underwear.
I am convinced that this would improve her mood, which might have a resulting effect on Jeffrey’s too. Whenever she enters a room, he starts to look uncomfortable, and then leaves it, then once she has left, he comes back again. Her moodiness is obviously too much for him to bear, and I worry that all that coming and going must put a strain on the poor man.