A Surrey State of Affairs (3 page)

A similar conflict ensued at lunchtime. I wanted to go to the tearoom in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where they do lovely open sandwiches and scones, and Sophie wanted to go to a cramped canteen with an incomprehensible menu called Wagawama. Once again, I complied, in the hope of putting her in the right mood for a nice chat, but the wretched din and clatter of our fellow diners ruled this out. I muttered into my misbegotten noodles that one should never trust boys who don’t own cuff links. Then I requested a knife and fork.

Things did not improve after lunch. My offer to buy her a smart pair of shoes with a low, practical heel was rebuffed. My offer to buy her a cashmere cardigan was rebuffed. In fact, throughout the course of the entire day, our tastes coincided on one single item: a pair of woolen mittens, which I deemed practical, and Sophie, “retro.”

By four
P.M.,
I had resigned myself to a fruitless day. I shepherded Sophie toward the Underground, steering her away from a long-haired vagrant on the street corner. To my horror, she brushed me aside, ran up to the malingerer, and flung her arms around his scrawny, tan-colored neck. It transpired that the young man was Nicolas, the elder brother of her school friend Jessica and a distant cousin of Lady Zara Phillips.

When did the upper classes forget how to dress?

  
TUESDAY, JANUARY 8

There is a circus in the village. First I saw the gaudy pink and yellow posters, then I saw the line of caravans desecrating the village green. I have told Jeffrey to make sure that all our valuables are safely locked away. When I was a little girl, circuses meant candy floss, lions, and clowns. Now, they mean Lycra-clad Latvians and a dramatic spike in local crime rates.

“Gypsies,” Miss Hughes said to me in a loud whisper at the newsagent. “You can’t trust them.”

I crossed my arms and shook my head. One cannot say such things, not in this day and age. It is acceptable to mistrust Latvian performance artists because they are not a racial group, but I am afraid Miss Hughes’s views border on prejudice.

“You can’t generalize like that,” I told her firmly. “Not everyone conforms to a racial stereotype.” I smiled broadly at Mr. Rasheed, the newsagent, but he must have been too busy counting the coppers, with which Miss Hughes always, pays to notice.

In any case, Sophie has gone to the circus, despite my admonitions that her time would be better spent practicing her French or removing her flaking nail polish.

  
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9

Last night was the first bell-ringing practice of the year. Fortunately neither the bells nor we ringers had rusted over during the Christmas break. Everyone was there—Reginald, the vicar; Daphne, the postmistress; the indomitable Miss Hughes; Gerald, the history teacher, and his wife, Rosemary—and everyone was just the same, with the notable exception of Rosemary. She was wearing lipstick. Bright red lipstick. Her hair, which is of the curly brown variety, had been swept up into a high ponytail, lending her the appearance of a muddied poodle. There was
a strange gleam to her eye and flush to her cheek. High heels had replaced orthopedic sandals.

When she visited the ladies during our tea break, I speculated to Miss Hughes that Rosemary had perhaps undergone a “New Year, New You” makeover. Miss Hughes said she thought it was the menopause.

  
THURSDAY, JANUARY 10

Reginald, the vicar, came round for a cup of tea this morning. He wished to talk about his son, David, a pasty-faced nineteen-year-old who drives the van of the visiting library. Poor Reginald has brought up his son according to his liberal beliefs, preaching the importance of tolerance and open-mindedness. As a result, David has converted to Kabbalah, some sort of mystic sect favored by celebrity gym fanatics such as Madonna. Apparently, this explains why he has taken to wearing a red wristband. Last time I saw him, I thought he had simply visited the municipal pool.

Reginald stared pensively at his cup of peppermint tea and asked me for advice, with a little tremor of anxiety in his gentle voice. I suggested that he should either find David a girlfriend or enroll him in the Territorial Army. Both options would dramatically reduce his free time and thus his ability to indulge in unorthodox religious experiments. Reginald pointed out that he was a pacifist, and we both fell silent.

Then I had a sudden moment of inspiration. Sophie! Religious eccentricities aside, David is a very decent sort of young man, with a polite way of talking to his elders and clean fingernails. He could be a positive influence on her. Admittedly, she leaves for the Ardèche on Sunday, but they could always be pen pals. There is something ineffably romantic about penning letters to a dear and
distant acquaintance, about yearning for some-one far away across the seas; besides, it might improve her grammar.

  
FRIDAY, JANUARY 11

Reginald and David have just left, the latter with a slight limp. Sophie has shut herself in her room in disgust. Things did not proceed entirely as planned.

I did my best for poor Reginald. Once the vicar and his son were strategically positioned in the drawing room and had dried themselves off from the tea that Natalia had spilled over their laps, I went to fetch Sophie from her room. I told her that David, a charming, intelligent, and sensitive young man, was waiting downstairs. She asked if I meant “that retard with the gay hair.” This was not a promising beginning.

Nevertheless, I coaxed her downstairs with the offer of a slice of my Madeira cake. I had already hidden most of the chairs in the kitchen, so the only seat available was next to David on the sofa. At the sight of my daughter—dressed, inexplicably, in a ballet tutu and leggings—David’s pale features lit up and his protuberant ears almost waggled in delight. If only he would shave the peachlike fuzz off his upper lip he would be perfectly eligible.

Reginald and I chatted away, subtly alluding to David’s achieve-ments, including his certificate from the council for services to the visiting library. However, Sophie merely stared at a small mark on the wall—perhaps she too has noticed Natalia’s sloppy cleaning standards.

Eventually, Sophie broke her silence and asked why David was wearing a bracelet. He replied with a long-winded and impassioned account of Kabbalah, which concluded with the offer of enjoining her into the faith. Sophie looked blank. David must
have misread her confusion for tacit consent, because he suddenly took her small hand in his large, gangly one, and produced a spare red bracelet from the pocket of his chinos. Sophie leaped to her feet and kicked him in the shin like a mule. I was wholly ashamed of her. If she had to resort to violence, she could at least have slapped him in the face like a lady.

  
SATURDAY, JANUARY 12

Reginald telephoned to apologize today. I told him it was quite unnecessary: he is not responsible for his son’s erratic behavior. If we were to be held to account for our children’s every misdeed, then a certain shop assistant at Selfridges would still want my head on a platter after a six-year-old Sophie kicked over her pyramid of champagne flutes in a fit of pique.

If an apology is due, it is from Sophie. I tapped on her door in order to suggest as much, and was greeted with a very grudging “Yeah, come in.” I did so, and found a scene of devastation. Given that she leaves for France tomorrow, I had been hoping to observe neat stacks of belongings ready to be packed. Instead there were clothes strewn across her unmade bed and unvacuumed carpet willy-nilly, bottles of nail polish tipped over magazines, half-burned candles nesting with chocolate bar wrappers and pots of unidentifiable unguents. Even though Sophie says she wants to save the planet, there were shopping bags of new but unworn clothes from Topshop and Primark, all presumably made in some sweatshop in India or Cambodia then shipped halfway across the world. Much to my chagrin, I even spotted one of my French silk nighties, which had been slashed down one side and pieced back together with a row of large safety pins. I gesticulated toward it and she calmly announced that it was her new dress, but she wasn’t quite sure about the color. This adds insult to injury. Everybody knows that peach is very flattering on the complexion.

It was useless trying to remonstrate with her against such a backdrop. I will instruct Natalia to clean the room from top to bottom on Monday. She could do with the exercise, instead of stretching out on the leather sofa in Jeffrey’s study at every opportunity. She may be slim for now but these Russian types are quick to develop a stout bottom.

  
SUNDAY, JANUARY 13