A Surrey State of Affairs (47 page)

Then she went off on a different tack.

“Do you know what though?” she asked. “I still miss Philip.” This was her ex-husband, whom she had divorced because he had once “economized” by canceling her subscription to the
London Review of Books
and because he clacked his fork against his teeth when he ate. “I still have one of his shirts in my wardrobe. I like the sight of the sleeves. I miss knowing—or thinking that I know—that another life revolves around mine, even if it just means someone knowing that you’ve been to shop to buy the milk or booked the train tickets for the weekend in Bath.”

This was not what I had expected. “What are you saying?” I asked. “That it was a mistake to split up?”

“No,” she said confidently. “It wasn’t a mistake. It’s just sad, that’s all.”

“Where does that leave me? What do I do?” I asked, hearing the note of desperation in my voice.

“That, Constance, is what you and only you can decide.”

Then I heard a suppressed sneeze just to my left, caught a glimpse of cerise-colored chiffon, and realized that Rosa had been listening to the entire conversation, tucked out of sight behind an ornamental nineteenth-century saddle.

  
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22

Oh, God. An e-mail, from Jeffrey:

What am I going to do?

11:05 A.M.

Carlos has resolved the dilemma for me. He has been learning English. Before, he would just look at me and smolder. Today, he opened his mouth and said, “I…like…Britney Shpearsh,” then beamed proudly.

My taxi will arrive in twenty minutes.

  
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24

I am with Jeffrey. He is in a poor state. I found him lying on his bed in his small room, the curtains closed, his arm encased in white, his face the color of corned beef. Why are men congenitally incapable of applying their own sunscreen? When he saw me, he jumped up, then yelped with pain.

He sat back down again, and I perched on the side of the bed, not touching him, just looking at those achingly familiar features turned burgundy under the Argentinean sun. I felt a rush of relief and, I think, love. He told me I looked amazing, that there was something different about me. I blushed. I don’t think I have blushed in front of Jeffrey for more than thirty years.

I changed the topic to the estancia, which had a certain rugged beauty, though it did not compare favorably to the one I had just left. There is no swimming pool here, no dried flower arrangements in the room, no gently rolling hills and whispering streams. In fact, the surest sign of civilization is the large, clunky computer I’m typing on in the lobby right now. Rupert would probably laugh and call it prehistoric. I miss Rupert.

I have come a long way north, and the climate is different. Jeffrey took me for a stroll around the grounds, his arm cradled in a sling, and pointed out the acres of stretching, red, dry soil. The Andes loomed up behind a haze of heat to the west. I felt almost sick and disorientated by the scale.

We have talked about this and that, about food and horses and weather, but we both know we’re skirting the issues that count.

I’m booked into a separate room. Jeffrey didn’t argue; he just gave me one of his long, hard looks.

  
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25

Should I tell him? How can I? How can I not?

Every moment I’m with him, helping him put on his sling, making sympathetic noises as he winces, smearing SPF 30 onto his neck, I feel like a fraud. The guilt has settled in the pit of my stomach. I have the same feeling of nausea that I had when Jeffrey once made me eat oysters.

  
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26

1 A.M.

you knew about natalia, I bet you all knew about natalia, I bet everyone knew except me. How could he? in our own house under our own roof and she has such tacky dyed hair sometimes it looks almost purple how could he? It started last new years eve, the murder mystery I organized just for him, just to cheer him up, she cheered him up in the dark when everyone was looking for clues seeing nothing. its worse than what I did, at least carlos was never in the same room as jeffrey smiling and asking hiim if he wanted a cup of tea like a two-face scheming little snake. and you know what the worst thing is because there is a worst thing, even though its bad enough already, the worst things is that he said he thought it was just
natalia but he didnt know, he wanted to be honest and get it all out in the open to start again afresh, and he didnt know and couldnt say for sure that one night it was natalia and not her twin sister lydia

11 A.M.

I have calmed down, and sobered up. As you will have gathered, last night Jeffrey and I finally had the conversation. It was over dinner, which was served inside the tiny “restaurant,” which is really just the ranch lounge with the wooden sofas pushed back and a few simple tables dragged onto the cold flagstone floor. We ate steak that was so fresh it melted and drank the best part of two bottles of strong, heady local red. Then I looked at him and said the words that he had said to me six long, long weeks ago: “We need to talk.”

I had planned to tell him how much he had upset, frustrated, and disappointed me, then tell him about Carlos and apologize profoundly. I didn’t get the chance. Before I could begin, he took my hand and said, “I want to start again. I want to make things right. But first I’ve got to tell you something and I don’t know if you will forgive me. I should have told you last time, before we came out here, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.”

I squeezed his hand back, and waited nervously. Then he told me. It only ended the day she left the house after that row with Ivan. Looking back, I don’t know how I missed all the signs, but last night I felt so shocked it was as if he’d stood up and slapped me across the face—with his good arm. For the first time in my life, I felt overwhelmed with anger, with pure, sheer rage, a million times stronger than the fury I once felt when Sophie came home drunk and vomited into my Le Creuset skillet pan. I stood up, tipped Jeffrey’s plate onto his lap, and swiped his wineglass
over onto the floor. The waiter gasped and rushed over, which surprised me, because I thought these Latino types were accustomed to histrionic outbursts.

I can clearly remember the sight of Jeffrey, his mouth gaping open, a salad garnish nestled on his shirt, before I marched out and walked, for a long time, under the black sky. The stars, spread out in a vast, glittering array, offered no consolation. I haven’t seen him since.

Last night, I waited until the lounge was empty, then went back in, helped myself to the remains of a bottle of wine from behind the open bar, and wrote my blog. I don’t think Jeffrey has left his room today. His curtains are still drawn.

It had been going on for the best part of a year. How could he? How could he, in our own house, in a room in which I had chosen the curtains, chosen the exact shade of apricot cream for the walls? How can I forgive him?

3 P.M.

Still no sign of Jeffrey. I called Bridget, but to my shame, as soon as she picked up I began crying. It took about ten minutes to get the story out, and when I did she said, “Oh, Constance,” and I could feel the sympathy radiating out across the distance, feel the care in her voice, but it made no difference to me, absolutely none.

How could he?

  
MONDAY, OCTOBER 27

Last night, we had the conversation, round two. He came and tapped on my door at six in the evening, as I was lying propped up on the bed, trying to read my novel and sniffing. When I opened the door and saw him standing there, utter dejection in
his eyes, and one small, wilted purple flower clutched in his hand, I didn’t know what to feel. I let him in. He came and sat on a small stool, I sat on the edge of the bed. He could see the pathetic knots of used tissues on the bedside table. “God, Connie, I’m so sorry, you’ve got to believe me,” he said, and I could see in his eyes that he was, and that, at that moment, he saw me as an object of pity, of helplessness. Something within me rebelled.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said, stiffening my back. And then, without dwelling on the details, I told him about Carlos.

Now, as you will have gathered, I am not what you would call a feminist. The traditional arrangements between man and wife have always suited me just fine. I have never exactly been a firebrand defender of gender equality. And yet, after Jeffrey’s reaction to my disclosure, I’m beginning to feel a little differently. We have both done wrong. I know this. But our situations, I am sure you will agree, are not morally comparable. He cheated on me continuously, for many months, under our own roof, calmly buttering his toast in the morning as if he had not just committed an atrocious act of adultery in the cleaning cupboard. I cheated on him for less than a week, with a strange man, in a strange country in which I had been summarily abandoned. Our situations—our sins, as Reginald would have it—are patently not symmetrical. So why, then, was he quite so outraged? Why did he leap up from his stool and kick it over? Why did he shout that he thought he knew me but didn’t know me at all before running out and slamming the door behind him, then swearing as, presumably, the effort jolted his bad arm?