A Surrey State of Affairs (45 page)

How much do I miss Jeffrey? This is the question I have been pondering all day, as I went for a brisk walk around the perimeter of the estancia in the morning chill, and as I eased myself slowly into the swimming pool this afternoon. It is a question that is hard to dissociate from routine. If I was at home, and it was seven
P.M.
, and I was waiting for him to come home so that I could tell him all about some squabble with Natalia or show him the cushion covers I had bought for the spare room, then I know the answer would have been a great deal. Here I am not so sure.

I swam length after length in the small turquoise pool as the spring sun warmed my hair, feeling the heat of my body overpower the cold of the water, asking myself again and again: “How much do I miss him?” Even after I had gotten out, lain on my lounger, and counted all my goose bumps, I wasn’t sure of the answer.

Now I am sitting in front of the computer in the “ranch house,” a snug lounge lit up with candles and decorated with leather bridles, horseshoes, and old black-and-white photos of gauchos looking stern in their traditional floppy hats and wide trousers. I can still feel a glow from the sun, which brought the freckles out across my shoulders. Or perhaps it is just the excellent Argentinean red that I’m sipping from a glass as wide as a goldfish bowl. In any case, as I thought in Buenos Aires—which already seems like an age ago—I feel strangely detached.

Jeffrey called when I was en route here, staring out at the inky night. I picked up out of instinct, partly because I haven’t figured out whether I’m “talking to” my own husband or not, and partly just to stop the ringing, which had woken up a fierce-looking fellow bus passenger with a prodigious black beard. Jeffrey said, “Hello, old bird,” in a familiar voice, confident, slightly ironic; I made a small cocoon out of my cardigan and traveling blanket and said hello back. He asked if I was okay; I said yes. Then he proceeded to tell me in great detail how he had roped his first calf that day. I told him I was on a bus, waited long enough to register the shocked silence, then hung up. He did not call back.

So you will see that we are in limbo. I don’t know what Jeffrey has told work; I don’t know how long the credit card will last. But while I am here I will make the most of it. I think I shall order steak for dinner, again.

I only hope I don’t end up eating one of the creatures that helps to make the view from my room so picturesque.

  
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8

I have been riding! It was quite a different experience from the last time I sat on a horse, which would have been at a Pony Club gymkhana in 1970. There are no dumpy skewbalds named Daisy, no weaving between stripy poles or jumping over barrels. The horses here are slender but tough, with Roman noses and dense coats. Carlos, one of the gauchos, took me on a trip out from the estancia and across the meadows to a small, limpid river. Those years of Saturday morning lessons have paid off; I still have a secure seat, managing to remain in place when my horse spooked at one of the small hawks that are as commonplace here as pigeons. I think Carlos was impressed. What’s more, I managed this feat in spite of some very unfamiliar equipment: the saddles here are huge and well padded, almost forcing you to slouch with your legs out straight in front, in flagrant contradiction to the diagram in my Pony Club manual, which showed a straight line passing from shoulder to elbow to heel. I can almost hear Mrs. Hough, the riding mistress, bellowing “Toes up, heels down” in vain. When Carlos nudged his horse into a trot and mine followed, I instinctively began rising up and down to the rhythm in the correct style, but it felt most unnatural with the Argentinean saddle. I saw Carlos laughing, then covering his mouth with his hand when he saw that I had seen. By the end of the trip I’d gotten used to a sitting trot and holding two sets of reign in one hand, and was quite convinced that I could give Jeffrey a run for his money.

  
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9

A most unusual occurrence today: Sophie called, and she did not ask for money. Instead, she asked me if I was okay. I thought for a moment, and then I said that I was. Then she asked
what was going on with me and Dad. I thought for another moment, then said: “I don’t know.” This did not seem to satisfy her, but then I suddenly remembered something I had inadvertently read in the problem pages of a trashy magazine while tidying her room, and I said, “We just need a bit of time and space.” She said, “Oh.” Then she said, “
^*
*
*
*
, I’m out of credit,” and we were cut off. I called her back and asked her about Bristol, and she said it was “awesome” and she was having a “wicked” time and she’d made tons of friends and last night was eighties night at the union and they all wore pink leg warmers and sweatbands and they got home at four
A.M.
and decided to make a fry-up out of everything in their cupboards, which was “sick.” Then I asked her how the course was going, and she said, “All right.”

After the call, I swam thirty-four lengths, and tried not to think about Jeffrey.

  
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10

This morning I woke up with tears in my eyes. I had dreamed that Sophie, Rupert, and Jeffrey were all on a cruise liner, and I had cast myself off in a little dinghy with seventeen cans of baked beans and a camping stove, and the waves between us were growing bigger and bigger so that their faces peering over the deck of the ship were getting obscured, and then I couldn’t see them at all, and ten of my cans fell overboard, and I suddenly remembered I’d forgotten my moisturizer. Just as I was rummaging about the boat to see if I could find it after all, everything suddenly shifted and I was peering into the cupboard in the belfry, at the Tupperware tub of biscuits and the half-empty bottle of Dettol and the dead spider. I was suddenly aware of a leaden silence. I turned and all the bell ringers were standing in a line,
looking at me and shaking their heads, even Reginald, with his lips pursed, even Gerald.

It took a long ride out with Carlos to clear my head. Luckily he is easy company, his English being almost as nonexistent as my Spanish. Occasionally, he will point to something—a bird, or a cow—and say what I presume the word for it is in Spanish, and I’ll repeat it, then I’ll say it in English and he’ll repeat it. If he wasn’t so tall and serious-looking, with his molten black eyes and muscular shoulders, his lisp would remind me of Manuel from
Fawlty Towers.
We tried a canter on a lovely little uphill stretch, but I felt so torn between sitting back as the saddle dictated and leaning forward as I had been taught years ago that it was rather bumpy.

  
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11

Although I came here, I suppose, to be by myself, I find that I’ve struck up a few friendships. It is off-peak season, and the only other guests at the estancia are an American couple a few years older than me. They’re called Bob and Rosa, and both have that deep, even honey tan that marks them out as hailing from far sunnier climes than Surrey. It turns out that they live in Miami, where Bob recently retired as a software specialist and Rosa as a dental nurse. At first I thought they were a normal married couple, who had gone through their lives together comfortably clocking up the years, the children and grandchildren, but it transpired that the truth was a little more complicated. After a few brief poolside chats, then some longer conversations over wine in the ranch house, I learned that this was in fact a second marriage, for both of them, and that they had a bewildering array of descendants and divided loyalties between them. “We’re like a walking
Jerry Springer Show,
” said Rosa, laughing and holding
her glass of wine in front of her with a perfect pink lipstick mark on the rim. “Except without the trailers or the sex changes,” added Bob, a touch too quickly.

I found myself warming to them immediately, and they, I think, to me. They must have noticed my wedding ring, but they are sensitive enough not to ask any questions. I wonder what they think. They already appear to view me as a typical English eccentric simply because I insist on swimming every afternoon, even though the pool is still rather chilly. I told them that I spent every summer as a child playing in the sea in Cornwall and building sand castles in the rain, but this appeared only to reinforce their opinion.

Carlos too seems to find my daily swim an entertaining spectacle. Only today, when I stood on the fourth step down, the cold water lapping around my thighs, I looked up and saw him leaning on a fence post, watching me and smiling incredulously. The Argentineans must have a weaker constitution. No wonder we won the war.

  
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12

Today, I galloped. I’m still buzzing. Rosa thinks I’m incredibly brave. I can still hear the thud of hooves beneath me, the rush of speed. Carlos and I had not been making great progress in our daily rides; I enjoyed the views, and our limited conversation, but every time we broke into a canter I tried to lean forward, the saddle stopped me, and I would have to slow down. Today, however, was different. We had just walked the horses through the river, where mine dropped his noble head and drank with a great slurping noise, which made Carlos laugh. It was late afternoon, the sun was throwing long shadows from the thorn trees, the earth smelled warm and mellow. I felt peculiarly relaxed.
We came to a large, open, grassy meadow. Carlos looked at me and smiled, then urged his horse into a trot, then a canter. Mine followed, and I felt the usual imbalance. Carlos kicked his horse on faster, turned around and looked me in the eyes, and gestured for me to sit back. For the first time, I did. He smiled, and urged his horse on faster still. Mine sped up too. I sat back, my hips swaying and absorbing the motion, the ground reeling away beneath me. I felt incredibly free. When we stopped, I was grinning like a lunatic. Miss Hough would have been horrified by my technique, but Carlos looked at me with a broad smile across his tanned, handsome, thirtysomething face, and said,
“Muy bien.”