A Surrey State of Affairs (21 page)

  
MONDAY, APRIL 21

I cannot write for long. I must buy some casserole steak and give it a good going over with the tenderizing mallet. In doing so, I hope to make amends with Jeffrey. He was manifestly unhappy about the Mark/Tanya situation when I got to bed last night. I could tell by the way he clutched his book so hard that the tips of his fingers went white. It was the most upset I had
seen him since I accidentally decluttered the spare room of his favorite golf clubs.

  
TUESDAY, APRIL 22

The atmosphere in the house is tense. Jeffrey didn’t get home until after eleven last night, by which point my tender steak casserole was a congealed mess. Mark and Tanya must have noticed. He said he had been working on an important case, but when I was carrying his briefcase upstairs it fell open and four back copies of
Golf Monthly
along with an Andy McNab novel spilled out.

  
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23

Bell ringing last night. Although I was anxious about leaving everyone at home to their own devices, I didn’t want to miss practice, especially with the national ringers’ contest coming up in a few months. Such divided loyalties are a woman’s lot. Reginald certainly needs someone to help him focus: he looked quite pale and apprehensive last night. He told me that David showed no signs of relinquishing Scientology, and kept trying to convince him that Jesus—if he existed—came out of a volcano. What’s more, we will have a health and safety inspector poking his nose into our practice next week. Apparently, our form did not reassure him that everything was under control. As if to prove his point, Gerald put his back out. Miss Hughes had asked him to help her pull her rope, feigning a weakness at odds with her oxlike strength. Gerald shuddered with what must have been excitement as he took hold of the rope and Miss Hughes briefly clasped her hands over his. It was too much for him. He yelped and rolled onto the flagstones, like a footballer after a flamboyant tackle. Miss Hughes knelt beside him and stroked his hair, which quickly revived him. He jumped to his feet and left,
muttering his excuses. I do hope he won’t be out of action for long.

When I got home, Jeffrey wasn’t back and Mark and Tanya had gone to bed. There were Chinese take-out cartons and leftover prawn crackers in the bin. Tanya is still clearly not on good terms with “scratch.”

  
THURSDAY, APRIL 24

Once again, I sneaked out of my fractious household to attend one of my regular activities—Church Flowers. It’s just as well that I did. A wonderful thought occurred to me. Pru had not brought Ruth along this week because her daughter was going to a “chakra” class or something at the community center straight after school. I asked Pru what this meant and she said, in a monotonous, downtrodden sort of voice, “Chakra is the study of wheel-like vortices of energy.” I raised one eyebrow, and stared at her in silence for several seconds. She relented. In something like her usual tone, she whispered vituperatively, “It’s mumbo jumbo.” I nodded sympathetically. And then, in my old adversary, I suddenly recognized a kindred spirit to poor dear Reginald, and an opportunity. Was Reginald not going through exactly the same ordeal with his son David? Might two young people forget their odd spiritual hobbies if they got together and focused on normal things, like two-for-one cinema vouchers and dinner at Pizza Express? I can only hope so. As I watched Pru at work with the gladioli, her pink and white polka-dot neck scarf drooping into the flower heads and her worried frown cutting creases into her forehead, I felt a strong urge to tell her my idea, but I held back. I need time to formulate a plan; especially after last time.

  
FRIDAY, APRIL 25

Mark and Tanya have been in the house for five days now. I feel it is time to take stock of this arrangement.

The advantages:

I have done the right thing. I look at Tanya sitting on my sofa, cradling her expanding bump, and I feel the same warm glow inside that I got when I donated Jeffrey’s old LP collection to the annual Cats in Need jumble sale.

In Tanya, it is nice to have someone to talk to who talks back, which is more than can reliably be said of either Darcy or Jeffrey.

The disadvantages:

Jeffrey is peevish and resentful. He hasn’t stooped to saying as much, of course, but he comes home later, drinks more, and in bed sometimes turns the light out when he can see that I’m still reading Joanna Trollope’s
Second Honeymoon.

Natalia is peevish and resentful. I found a copy of the newspaper
Socialist Worker
in her room. She has expanded her vocabulary to include the words
workload, exploitation, proletariat,
and
strike.

Tanya leaves magazines like
Heat
and
Now
lying on top of my pile of
Ideal Home
and
Country Life.
I can’t help giving them a quick glance, which then makes me feel bad because they are trashy, vapid nonsense and everyone in them is so much younger and thinner than me.

Mark shows no signs of finding another job and thus putting an end to their stay. While Tanya posts his CV on recruitment Web sites (which reminds me of my own fruitless efforts with Rupert and Internet dating), Mark is devoting his entire time to teaching Darcy to say “buy,” “hold,” and “sell.” He must be missing the trading floor.

Today I found a half-eaten packet of cheese and onion crisps in the back of the sofa.

You will see that the cons outweigh the pros, and yet I don’t think I would have done things differently given the chance.

  
SUNDAY, APRIL 27

Tanya came with me to church today.
CityJobs.com
hadn’t turned up anything for Mark, so she decided to try prayer. The service ended with “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” one of my favorite hymns. Tanya stood up with the rest of the congregation, but while everyone else sang she simply opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. I asked her afterward if she had ever learned the words at school, and she shook her head. I asked her what songs she could remember from school, and she thought for a long time before replying “Puff, the Magic Dragon” and “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” I don’t think either is quite as effective as moral ballast.

  
MONDAY, APRIL 28

A positive sign: this morning I found a half-empty bottle of Johnson’s Holiday Skin self-tanning moisturizer in the main bathroom, along with a few telltale yellowish streaks on the hand towel. Tanya must be getting back to her old self. When I went downstairs, I found that she had neatly spread a cloth over the dining room table and laid out a variety of sequins, vials of brightly colored nail polish, tiny brushes, and what looked like flaked almonds, which she explained were fake nail extensions. Apparently she has always made decorative nails as a sort of hobby, but now she has started making them for friends of friends on Facebook for a small fee. I managed not to smirk at the lines of gaudy end products; at least she is being productive, which is more than can be said for Mark.

I found him in the conservatory, hands in his pockets, staring intently at Darcy, who hunched up his wings, swiveled his head,
and stared back. I watched him for a few minutes from just behind the door. Every now and then, Mark would say something like “BP” or “BATS” or “RBS” and Darcy would quietly caw something back, at which point Mark would smile weakly and scribble in a notebook that I had last seen in Jeffrey’s study. I sighed and walked away. Then I went on Facebook and asked the other Paratweets members if they knew whether birds were likely to be distressed by repeated exposure to an unemployed banker.