The Three of Us (11 page)

I suspect that Joanna secretly covets a place on the List, if only to call people's attention to the fact by affecting embarrassment at having appeared on it at all.

Friday, 31 July

Joanna

Everything feels on hold.

‘We could tell the Schiffrins I'm pregnant, they should be back from Europe by now,' I say to Peter, as we toy unenthusiastically with eight-dollar ham and salsa sandwiches from Barefoot Contessa – possibly the most expensive deli in the world.

‘Why don't we wait until tomorrow?' Peter replies calmly. ‘Just in case…'

At 4.30 p.m. precisely the phone rings. It is a researcher from the Leeza Gibbons talk show. I am strangely fascinated by the glamorous figure of Leeza Gibbons. The spelling of her name, for one thing, the ostentatiously phonetic ‘Leeza'. And the fact that she was once married to Brian, the famously wooden son of Ivy Tilsley from
Coronation Street.
Like most of Britain, I'd been amazed when Brian, aka Christopher Quentin, announced that he was getting engaged to Leeza, and giving up this prime part to follow her to the USA, there to pursue his own acting ambitions. Sadly, both the marriage and his career quickly foundered.

The researcher wonders if they could fly me to Los Angeles to talk about Princess Diana's legacy. I tell her curtly that I'll call her back.

Peter has emerged from his desk and is sitting silently on the sofa. We agree to wait until 5 p.m. and if we've heard nothing by then we'll go for a walk along the beach. If it's good news we agree to go to the local toy shop and buy a first toy.

At 5.10 p.m. there is still no news. We go to the beach.

AUGUST

The foetus now has a definite chin, a large forehead, and a button nose. His eyelids have begun to develop across his fully formed eyes, and he is beginning to respond to external stimuli – if his mother's abdomen is poked, he will try to wriggle away.

Dr Miriam Stoppard,
Conception, Pregnancy and Birth

Saturday, 1 August

Peter

We have developed a routine of working in the morning and cycling to the beach in the late afternoon on our Hampton Cruisers, old-fashioned sit-up-and-beg bikes with wicker baskets, back-pedal brakes and no gears. Until we purchased these bikes we had been under the impression that the Hamptons were flat. We now know better.

After trying several beaches we favour Two Mile Hollow, a particularly beautiful beach, which curves in a shallow blond crescent in each direction. The light here is magical, soft and refracted, and it's easy to see why the Hamptons were first colonized as a summer resort by New York's painters.

Joanna claims that the adverts for the unisex perfume, Eternity, by Calvin Klein (who lives opposite Georgica beach nearby in a stunning traditional grey shingled house with its own windmill) were shot on this beach, but I'm not sure she can stand this up.

Two Mile Hollow beach is finely calibrated into very particular comfort zones. Gays to the far left, lesbians straight ahead, straights to the right, straights with kids to the far right. By and large these zones are self-enforced, though it is permissible to stroll along the water line through alien zones as long as you do not appear too shocked at anything you may witness there. Most of the potentially shocking stuff takes place to the far left in the male gay zone, but high up in the dunes, well out of casual view. In fact there is little public nudity. What exposure there is, seems to be age determined. The older you are the more likely you are to strip off.

Though the beach regulations state that dogs may only be on the beach before nine and after five, Two Mile Hollow is a popular dog hang-out all day, and the various sexual sub-tribes appear to have quite divergent tastes in canine companionship. The gays favour miniature breeds; Jack Russells, Maltese poodles and fox terriers. Lesbians tend to like bigger dogs, German shepherds, Dobermans and mastiffs. And the straights go for Labradors, the cardigans of the canine world.

Saturday, 1 August

Joanna

The President has taken time off from Monica problems to visit East Hampton for a frenzy of fund-raisers, organized by the local celebs. All week Secret Service helicopters have been hovering over Georgica Pond scoping out the approaches to Steven Spielberg's post-modern barn, where Bill and Hillary are staying. The Spielbergs have even erected a temporary indoor riding arena to provide entertainment in case it rains, though the weather promises to be excellent.

I have spent all week trying to procure an invitation to a Clinton bash, any Clinton bash. The most realistic chance I have is for Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin's event, which is brutally tiered by ticket price. Those who have forked out $5,000 each get to shake hands with Bill and Hillary and sup in the Baldwins' dining room on seared tuna, serenaded by Hootie and the Blowfish.

A thousand bucks gets you into a marquee on the lawn, and a buffet salad, made with ‘local Hamptons potatoes'; and for $250 you can stand in the outer reaches of the garden nibbling a ‘locally baked doughnut' and slurping a paper cup of ‘locally produced cold corn chowder'. If you're lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the President as he arrives and hear the distant strains of Hootie and his Blowfish.

It is the first time a standing President has visited the Hamptons in living memory, and the locals are demonstrating an exaggerated ennui by moaning abut the traffic congestion it is causing. Chief Inspector Stone of the East Hampton Town Police had contributed significantly to local alarm by issuing an apocalyptic warning that this weekend the three-hour journey from New York will take
twelve
hours – in the event the roads are so deserted that the journey time is cut to an hour and a half.

My contact on the Democratic Party committee, a local worthy on the board of the East Hampton Ladies' Village Improvement Society, ultimately fails to come up with the Baldwin tickets. They are in such demand, she apologizes, that she couldn't even secure one for her own daughter, who has come up from Florida specially. I have no joy playing my foreign press card. No one cares what the British media think.

I toy with the idea of gatecrashing another event, Jonathan Sheffer's afternoon cocktails, not least because I am curious to observe his garden. Mr Sheffer is the conductor of the New York chamber orchestra, Eos, and is so excited to be hosting a presidential party, with his partner Christopher, that he has had his entire lawn sprayed green. It was green before, but he wanted it greener.

The real power party was held last night at the $9 million Cranberry Dune, belonging to financier Bruce Wasserstein, who had his ‘16th century Scottish barn' transplanted from Europe, stone by stone.

Kelly has badgered the supposedly secret menu out of the caterer: a starter of smoked salmon in cucumber cup with caviar mousseline, duck prosciutto and white peach chutney on a corn crêpe, followed by lobster and squid salad with Louisiana shrimp, served with avocado, hearts of palm and roasted tuna wrapped in bacon with roasted asparagus.

For this, diners paid a cool $25,000 a throw, slightly outside the
Guardian
's budget.

Sunday, 2 August

Peter

It is the last day of the President's visit to East Hampton and since Joanna has failed to inveigle her way into any of his functions I am trying to be dismissive of his presence, pretending that we are above the hullabaloo. It is my way of being supportive. We stroll into town to pick up provisions from Barefoot Contessa, only to find that Newtown Lane has been cordoned off by the EHTP so that the President can do a walkabout and gladhand the local shopkeepers. I harumpf about it, as though I am a long-time resident.

As we are returning home, waiting to cross Main Street, the presidential cavalcade drives by. Security vehicles pass first and then the convoy slows to a halt just as the President's limo draws opposite us. We are the only pedestrians there and the President leans forward to peer at us. Up close, his grey-flecked head is enormous, as though already carved into Mount Rushmore. His features are marooned in the large puce terrain of his face. He waves tentatively, and Joanna and I look at each other, astonished, and burst out laughing. The President also seems to find some amusement in our sudden traffic-enforced intimacy and he laughs too. For an elastic moment we are suspended in this impromptu one-on-one waving session and then he is borne away by a tide of yowling sirens and strobing lights.

Sunday, 2 August

Joanna

I am beginning to develop a soft spot for Sean Puffy Combs. The ultra-conservative
East Hampton Star
has run a piece blustering with outrage about a recent raucous party he hosted at his mansion. It is reported that guests were served platters of steaming hot marijuana brownies. Apparently the EHTP are on the case. Luckily the President was not on Sean Puffy's guest list, or he'd have to swear that though he might have chewed, he didn't swallow.

Monday, 3 August

Peter

As the wait for the amnio results continues, we are becoming more irritable. We are both finding it difficult to sleep now. And the tiredness is accumulating. After watching a
Seinfeld
repeat, we crawl to bed at midnight fairly weeping with exhaustion, only to lie awake under the gently slapping ceiling fan. In the far distance the horn of the train sounds mournfully, the Long Island Railroad on its way out to Montauk. It sounds romantic, I imagine, like some sad clarion call for an unremembered age, an age before we lost the equilibrium of our existence.

Finally I fall gratefully into a deep, dreamless sleep. Then, as if there has been no perceptible passage of time, I am sitting upright in our cramped double bed – awake. It cannot be morning yet? It isn't, it is still quite dark and we are being bombarded by the big band sounds of wartime favourites. It is insomniac Eunice, the retired estate agent next door, whose entertainment centre is thoughtfully located against our thin, common dry wall. Our bedroom buzzes with the chorus of the ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B'. I check the time on my new luminous Seiko watch. It is 3.30 a.m.

‘This is outrageous,' I say in my best censorious head-masterly voice. ‘Unacceptable,' I add for emphasis.

‘Well, do something about it!' says Joanna crossly, pulling her pillow over her head.

‘I will,' I say defensively. I take up a kneeling position on the bed adjacent to the common wall and after a couple of practice, phantom knocks, I rap urgently on the wall.

‘There,' I mutter. ‘That ought to do it.'

We wait for a response. Is it my imagination, or does the big band sound grow perceptibly bigger? I rap again, but nothing happens.

‘Oh, for God's sake,' says Joanna, emerging from beneath her pillow with all the menace of a scorpion appearing from under a rock, ‘do it properly.' She reaches down to her bedside and retrieves a bulky Birkenstock, which she smashes furiously against the wall half a dozen times. The most immediate effect of this, admittedly, unequivocal communication of disapproval, is the thud of
Flowers on Provençal windowledge by Polly Carter, 1981
upon the sea-grass. The picture bounces and hits the bedstead, smashing its glass into the intricately woven crannies of the matting. Then the big band sound mutes.

In our aural war with Eunice, it is but a small victory. At 6 a.m. I am lying awake listening first to an advert for Saturn cars and then to the NBC early morning news. In the background of the anchorman's pumping newsdrive, I'm pretty sure I can hear Eunice's contented bourbon-fuelled snores. In the weak dawn light I notice what look like black tyre tracks upon the wall. They are Birkenstock treads. I get up to go to the loo and stand on glass shards from
Flowers on a Provençal Windowledge.

Tuesday, 4 August

Joanna

Still no news, though I am feeling less anxious as various friends have been phoning to reassure us that this is just the way the American medical system works. It worries you unnecessarily, then gives you all sorts of tests you don't need.

At 5 p.m. I phone the genetics department. Contrary to my assumption, the receptionist tells me that it actually takes six to eight working days, so today is the earliest we could have heard anyway. I hear her flicking through papers. ‘No, we don't have nothin' for you yet.'

Unable to concentrate on work, I reach for my Filofax to make some distraction calls. It falls open on ‘S' so I try Andrew Solomon, but he is away again. He may be reached, says his message, at numbers in Charlottesville, San Francisco, Davis, LA, Taipei, Kyoto, Beijing, Ulan Bator and Moscow. ‘Until August 13th,' his recording continues, ‘I will be, variously, in the Gobi desert, on the steppe, and sailing up Lake Khövsgöl Nuur with the Mongolian navy. In an emergency it may be possible to reach me via my translator's mother at (976–1) 454.379 or (976–1) 325.723 – but don't count on it.'

Tuesday, 4 August

Peter

To take my mind off the wait I accept an invitation to play tennis at the renowned Meadow Club on First Neck Lane in Southampton, one road back from the sea. Across the street is Woody Allen's beach-front mansion. The Meadow Club has more grass courts than Wimbledon. It is a vast quadrangle of pristine playing lawn, some forty-five courts in all. Today four courts are in use. On the training courts a Serb instructor is trying to teach an elderly American woman to serve. It is not going well.

‘All the coaches are Serbs at the moment,' observes my partner, Henry, the investment banker. We knock up for a while and then he suggests we play for real.

After bouncing the ball expertly up and down on the grass a couple of times, showing admirable hand-eye co-ordination, I toss it high into the famous, ethereal Hamptons' light for my first serve. I am young. I am fit. I have not bothered to warm up. As my raquet head whips down to slap the monogrammed ball in for a certain ace, I feel a rip across the muscles of my back. I am too embarrassed to own up to my pulled muscle and soldier on through two desultory sets, going down 6–2, 6–1. My opponent is exultant.