A Surrey State of Affairs (6 page)

  
TUESDAY, JANUARY 29

My neighbor Tanya stopped by for a coffee this morning. She’s a youngish woman—around the thirty mark, although she dresses more like a girl Sophie’s age—whom I’ve grown rather friendly with over the past year or so. This is despite the fact that she wears hoop earrings and insists on shortening my name to Connie, which sounds vulgar when pronounced by anyone other than Jeffrey, and only then is all right in an intimate setting.

Tanya doesn’t have much to do with her time, and there aren’t many other women her age around here who don’t have little children to look after. She used to be a PA, or whatever they say now for a secretary, on her husband, Mark’s, trading floor, but I suspect that that was only a means to an end. They moved into a new, rather flashy faux-Tudor house with a lawn like a billiard table and regimented little rows of waxy green shrubs, so she can’t even get into renovating or gardening. Which leaves her plenty of time to pop by, sip a cup of black coffee, and lick the cream off one of my scones (she “doesn’t do carbs” or some such nonsense).

I invited her to the party on Friday and she agreed immediately, offering to bring some “nibbles.” She gave me a strange look when I told her all about my plans for Rupert, and seemed to be about to say something when the sound of vigorous barking came
from the utility room. I decided to take her through to meet Poppy, although this was, in retrospect, a mistake. Tanya shrieked in horror as Poppy uncoiled herself like a tightly wound spring and inflicted a flurry of grubby paw prints all over her tight white jeans. I tried to clean them up with the dish cloth, but Natalia must have already used it to wipe Jeffrey’s marmalade off the kitchen table, so I might have made matters worse. After that, Tanya left promptly to go into London for a “St. Tropez and a Brazilian.” I told her she shouldn’t drink too many cocktails if she was driving.

  
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30

Poor Gerald still hasn’t rallied his spirits: he cut a thoroughly miserable and disheveled figure at bell ringing last night. What’s more, he appears to have developed a full-fledged phobia of men in Lycra. He told us that trapeze artists swing through his nightmares, and that he was trapped in his own home for half an hour yesterday morning waiting for a string of cyclists to disappear from view.

I’m not without sympathy, but he does need to stiffen his upper lip, instead of looking at me with that beseeching expression that reminds me of Poppy whenever I walk past the box of dog biscuits. He’s a grown man. It’s time he took matters into his own hands.

I invited him to Rupert’s party, which can’t come around soon enough. Poppy is not easy to hide. Jeffrey started sneezing this morning, but luckily I managed to convince him that he was coming down with a cold, and sent him off to work with a flask of hot lemon and whiskey.

  
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31

Ivan the Terrible is here. I write this late at night, hunched over the computer in the study, the sound of raucous laughter and clinking glasses echoing up the stairway. I had actually attempted to go to bed, but Jeffrey was playing his accursed Led Zeppelin album so loudly it made my bedside table rattle.

It has been a trying evening, from the moment I saw Ivan amble through the door, trample mud into my oatmeal carpet, and clasp Jeffrey in a bear hug. He was dressed in blue jeans, a black suit jacket, and a white T-shirt, above which graying chest hair spooled grotesquely. The smile on his face reminded me of the velociraptors in the film
Jurassic Park,
which made Rupert wet the bed when he was nine. I only just managed not to recoil when he kissed me on the cheek. He is the sort of man who always makes as if he were going to kiss you on the lips, causing you to angle frantically to one side, before swerving at the last moment and laughing throatily.

Throughout dinner I tried to smile serenely, even while Ivan clacked his teeth against his cutlery and scattered bread crumbs willy-nilly across my new damask rose tablecloth. Natalia, however, was not so accommodating. Perhaps there is some lingering, deep-seated animosity between the Lithuanian and the Russian races; perhaps she resented having to work late and miss
Britain’s Got Talent.
I do not condone rudeness toward guests, of course, but I had to dab my napkin to my mouth to stifle a small laugh when she spilled tomato and basil soup all over Ivan’s white Ralph Lauren T-shirt.

Ivan, for his part, responded to her hostility by flirting outrageously. At least, I presume he was flirting: he kept muttering to her in a foreign language with a lascivious expression on his face. It all reached a climax at dessert, when he pinched her
bottom just as she was leaning over to pour cream on Jeffrey’s profiteroles.

Natalia let loose a barrage of what I presume was abuse in what I presume was Lithuanian, Ivan roared with laughter, Darcy started squawking, and Jeffrey went to the drinks cabinet for a whiskey and soda. Then Natalia fled to her room and put on
Britain’s Got Talent
at full volume, while Jeffrey reciprocated with Led Zeppelin.

Every time Ivan visits, Jeffrey attempts to relive his lost youth. What he doesn’t realize is that, much like communism, it is best consigned to the dustbin of history.

  
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1

I wish the laws of hospitality had not compelled me to taste some of Ivan’s foul vodka last night. I need a clear head today to focus on the challenges ahead. Before the party, I must take Poppy for a walk, teach Natalia how to make smoked salmon and cream cheese vol-au-vent, decorate the house with flowers (I thought white lilies would be best—attractive yet not too fussy, which is just the look Rupert should aim for), chill the champagne, wrap the gifts, impinge some basic human decency upon the character of Ivan the Terrible, and pick up my favorite dress—soft gray wool with a cowl neck—from the dry cleaner’s.

  
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2

12:33 A.M.

Once again I find myself hunched over my keyboard late at night, pouring my heart out into the boundless ether of the Internet, gnawing my nails with angst, and ruining all my careful work with the buffing block.

Rupert’s party was not the triumph that I had been anticipating. He is not smitten with Ruth—or any of the other girls in attendance, for that matter—and he is no longer speaking to me.
Jeffrey is sleeping in the spare room. He says this is because he does not wish to wake me with the cough caused by “that wretched mutt,” but I fear this is only partly the truth. Ivan the Terrible enjoyed himself, but this in itself is a sad indictment of my attempts to provide a civilized party.

The evening began well enough. The guests arrived, Pru, Ruth, and Miss Hughes with homemade tarts and fairy cakes, Gerald with a light coating of dandruff, Tanya with a tray of cellophane-wrapped vegetables and hummus from Waitrose. Reginald arrived with David, who wore a black-and-white scarf enveloping half his head. I suppose it did at least disguise his weak chin. Ruth squealed with delight and asked if he was Lawrence of Arabia, adding that if she had known it was fancy dress she would have worn her unicorn outfit.

Once everyone was assembled, I made a brief speech that emphasized Rupert’s many qualities—including his bravery when he recently removed a spider with visible leg hair from the bathtub—and then we moved on to the presents. I gave him the Jeremy Clarkson book, the compass, and the rugby ball, while he managed to contain his joy in his usual understated way. Ruth rushed in with a small package tied with silver ribbons, from which
The Little Book of Clouds
emerged. Rupert thanked her with a shy, restrained sort of half-smile.

Then it was time for what I thought of as my pièce de résistance: Poppy. I signaled to Natalia, and together we went to the utility room. While Natalia held her still, I attached a big blue bow to her neck. Natalia looked puzzled, though not as puzzled as Poppy, who wriggled onto her back, then snapped and pawed at the ribbon. We led her, skittering sideways, into the drawing room. A hush fell across the room. Then Jeffrey and Rupert broke out in unison, Jeffrey crying “What on earth?” and Rupert, something that sounded like “What luck.”

Poppy, overwhelmed by the size of the audience, finally wrenched off her ribbon and galloped about the room in giddy delight, nipping Miss Hughes in the varicose veins and snapping at David’s trailing head scarf. I lost a shoe trying to catch her, and knocked over two vases of lilies, but I thought that the loss of dignity was worth it as I prepared to hand her ceremonially to Rupert. Just as I had planned, Ruth clasped her hands together and sighed tenderly.

And that was the moment when things went sadly awry. Dear readers, it pains me to write this, but my own son refused to accept his gift, pushing Poppy gently but firmly away. What’s more, as soon as Natalia grasped the situation (the girl never listens), she started wailing that she loved Poppy and would not let her go to the cold heart computer man and threw her arms around her neck. She shrieked as I tried to prize her steely fingers off Poppy’s collar, Jeffrey launched into a sneezing fit, and the cacophony was interrupted only when Poppy vomited wetly on the Persian rug. It appeared that Natalia had fed the poor creature half the smoked salmon and cream cheese vol-au-vents. This was perhaps just as well given that she had made such a dreadful fist of them.