A Surrey State of Affairs (2 page)

  
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2

Forgive me for going on a bit yesterday. I don’t know what got into me. The ease of tip-tapping away on this new LapTop must have gone to my head. I haven’t even introduced my-self yet.

My name is Constance Harding. I am wife to Jeffrey, a senior partner at Alpha & Omega; mother to Rupert, a twenty-five-year-old IT consultant, and to Sophie, a slightly directionless adolescent who will shortly be returning to her gap-year project counting stickleback at an eco lodge in the Ardèche.

I am currently sitting in my favorite cream Regency-style chair in the drawing room, typing on the computer that Jeffrey gave me for Christmas and Rupert obligingly set up with the necessary “software.” While I write, I am attempting to peel off a small, obstinate Alpha & Omega sticker, which Jeffrey must have affixed to my gift in an absentminded moment of corporate loyalty.

Our home is a comfortable five-bedroom Georgian house located on the outskirts of a pleasant village in Surrey. Our community has a green, a pub called The Plucked Pheasant, a church
called St. Mary’s, a florist, a restaurant, and a post office: in short it is quintessentially English, with the exception of the tea shop, which has unfortunately been converted into a faux-Italian, chrome-furnished café selling biscotti and lattes.

This information will have to suffice for now. I will not be more specific lest rampaging hordes of Internet users trample my snowdrops, smash the French windows, and steal the candlesticks. Such things occur. I have read about them in the
Daily Telegraph.

  
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3

Jeffrey was in a funny mood this morning. He hardly paused to kiss me good-bye as he hurried off for the 7:22 to Waterloo, leaving behind two toast crusts smeared with marmalade and half a tepid cup of Earl Grey.

Perhaps he is sad that it is time to return to work after the Christmas break, and that Sophie will be leaving for France soon. Or perhaps he is simply irritated by Natalia’s increasing slovenliness. Despite my reprimands, she keeps leaving her underwear to dry in his study, eschewing the foldaway rack I put in her room expressly for this purpose. Cluttered house, cluttered mind, I have always said. No wonder he looked so distracted. To make matters worse, the undergarments in question are made of some sort of unpleasant, black polyester material. I worry that they might melt and mark the radiators, which I had the handyman regloss only last autumn. I will have to have words with her again.

Anyway, after Jeffrey had left I put the dishes to one side for Natalia, poured myself a coffee, and went to sit in the conservatory to read a magazine. I’m not the idle type, but I don’t believe in denying myself life’s little luxuries either.

I had just finished a good article on the resurgence of floral
wallpaper, of which I approve, when I spotted an advertisement in the classified section that shocked me to the core. It was for something called Illicit Encounters. “Married, but want some excitement back?” it queried, offering “free gold membership for women” and “complete confidentiality.”

Now, I’m not saying we should go back to the days of horsewhipping adulterers, but I do think there’s something very wrong with our society if a service that explicitly promotes infidelity can advertise in a magazine aimed at respectable women.

I felt a little sordid just reading it. But mainly grateful that Jeffrey and I have such a stable, trusting marriage.

  
FRIDAY, JANUARY 4

Why is it that no sooner has Jeffrey taken the Christmas tree down each year than newspapers start haranguing us to lose the weight we presumably gained by following their festive recipes? The newspaper today carried a “New Year, New You” diet feature, which advocated cabbage soup as the means of transformation.

I find the modern attitude to food most alarming. It is all Belgian chocolate torte with panna cotta one day, “detox” diets of hot water and coal the next. Stuff and nonsense, I say. Women of my generation know the simple truth: if you want to lose weight, eat less and move more. I may not be quite the lithe young wraith that I was on my wedding day, but I am still more hourglass than port glass, so Jeffrey has no cause to complain. I do hope Sophie doesn’t succumb to all the mumbo jumbo. She is as thin as a reed—as I was at her age—so certainly doesn’t need to, but, then, she is at a delicate and impressionable age.

Earlier, as she was sprawled across the sofa reading a trashy-looking magazine, I attempted to talk to her about how im-portant it is to keep a healthy attitude toward her figure. Just as
I was getting into my stride on the benefits of light, regular exercise such as brisk walking or gardening, she rolled her eyes, popped a mince pie into her mouth, and turned the television on.

Nine days until she returns to France.

  
SATURDAY, JANUARY 5

Once again I have been lured by the ease of this “blog” writing into saying more than I should. I do not want you to conclude that I am earnestly counting down the days until my daughter’s departure. It is just as well that I changed the title of my blog as soon as Sophie had set me up (“Silver Ringer” has a nice, yet anonymous, ring to it): I certainly would not want her to read it and conclude the same. I shall miss her. The days after she has left always drag; the clock ticks more loudly, Natalia’s singed omelet chafes the palate, I find myself pacing the hallway as I wait for Jeffrey to get home. And yet, as any mother of teenagers will realize, affection and frustration are not mutually exclusive. I can only hope that a year of counting sticklebacks will add some much-needed patience and poise to her character. And that should she happen to meet a respectable young man, he won’t be put off by the sight of her in Wellington boots.

  
SUNDAY, JANUARY 6

The usual activities today: church and a visit to Mother at The Copse. I imagine the name of her retirement home is supposed to evoke a pleasant image of a small group of trees, possibly waving in the breeze, but unfortunately some reprobate keeps spray painting in an extraneous
r.

Much of the day was spent listening to monologues of a moralistic bent, which Reginald delivers as a vocational duty, and
Mother, a hobby. The contrast in their approaches is marked. Whenever our dear vicar speaks, he assumes a look of mild physical pain, as if one of the pins from the parish notice board had been slipped into his vestment, and seeks to involve others as quickly as possible. He insisted on asking each member of the congregation in turn how we would renew our faith this year. I only just managed to elbow Jeffrey awake in time for his turn.

Mother does not share Reginald’s pluralistic zeal. A light goes on in her eyes when she begins to speak, which intensifies to a laserlike fury should anyone interrupt. My small initial question—about how best to stop Natalia from drying her underwear on the radiators—prompted a lengthy discourse on the role of the servant, the decline of morals, the decline of girdles, the importance of hierarchies, the empire, and the penal code. It culminated in the recommendation that I lock Natalia in the larder for two days. This is certainly a tempting prospect, but Jeffrey tells me it would contravene modern employment legislation.

  
MONDAY, JANUARY 7

Today I took Sophie shopping. I had hoped to find her some warm, practical, yet elegant clothing for the winter, which despite global warming is quite chilly this year in the south of France. I had also hoped, perhaps optimistically, for an op-portunity to impart a little valuable advice before she leaves. To these ends, I was prepared to undertake the ultimate maternal sacrifice—much like a lioness hurling herself in the path of a stampeding elephant to save her cubs—and endure both the London Underground and the January sales.

The day did not begin auspiciously. As soon as we sat down on the train into town, Sophie plugged herself into the tiny pink
iPod that I had reluctantly given her for Christmas, making conversation impossible. If only I had not succumbed to her hunger strike and bought her the accursed thing.

When we finally arrived in central London, having been pitched into a roiling bath of malodorous humanity on the Underground, I immediately craved the safe haven of John Lewis. Sophie favored H&M, a shop that resembles a jumble sale held in a hurricane-struck brothel. She prevailed.