by Isabel Wolff
The Trials of Tiffany Trott
Isabel Wolff
AN ONYX BOOK
For my parents.
And in memory of my brother
Simon Paul Wolff
The funniest person I ever knew.
Acknowledgments
Many people helped me get this book off the ground, and I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart. I am grateful, above all, to Clare Conville, probably the best agent in the world; to Amanda Denning for being my willing partner in crime—or rather fun; to Eric Bailey and Kate Summerscale for helping me dream Tiffany up; to Rachel Hore for her editorial guidance, and to the talented team at HarperCollins; I am also indebted to Kim Macroddan and Lynn Gardner for their ideas and constant support; to Elizabeth Mellen for expert advice on babies and art; to Louise Clairmonte who was there through thin and thin; to Marjaana Vanska and Marian Covington of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital; to Lauren Brink and Edip Adanir of the Ritz; to the staff of the Chelsea Arts Club for letting me snoop; to William Hanham for showing me round Albany; and to Richard Beswick for the brass band. For translations I would like to thank Lindis Hallan, Cristina Lerner, Cristina Di Rienzo and Takako Prentis. I am very grateful, too, to Marian McCarthy for her generous enthusiasm, and I am profoundly thankful, as ever, to Matthew Wolff and all my family.
May
OK. Champagne—tick; Cheesy Wotsits—tick; flowers—tick; balloons—tick; streamers—tick; cake—tick; candles—tick—oh God, oh God, where are the candleholders? Blast—I haven’t got thirty-seven, I’ve only got, um . . . eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Blast. Blast. Where’s that list gone? Oh here it is. Right. Where was I? Oh yes . . . candleholders . . . Twiglets—tick; Hula Hoops—tick; assorted mixed nuts—tick; nosh—tick. Oh gosh. Nosh. Rather a lot of that. I mean, how are we going to get through 150 prawn toasts, 200 devils-on-horseback, 350 cocktail sausages glazed with honey and tarragon, 180 oak-smoked salmon appetizers and 223 spinach and cheese miniroulades? How exactly are six people expected to eat all that? Plus the ninety-five chocolate éclairs? Just six of us. Half a dozen. Or precisely twelve percent of the original invitation list. Bit of a disappointment, and I’d had such high hopes for this evening. I’d had the sitting room decorated specially. Terribly pretty Osborne and Little wallpaper and a hand-gilded chandelier. But then I felt like pushing the boat out a bit this year. Going the whole hog. After all, I’ve got something to celebrate—a Very Serious Relationship with a really nice bloke. Alex. My boyfriend. My chap. So nice. Lovely in fact. Really, really lovely. And there are still quite a few people who haven’t met him, and I really wanted to have this party for him as much as for me. And now it’s going to be a damp firecracker. But that’s the really annoying thing about entertaining, isn’t it? The way people cancel at the last minute, when you’ve already done all the shopping. Unfortunately I’ve had quite a lot of cancellations—forty-four actually—which means my big bash for fifty is now going to be rather a discreet little affair. This means it is most unlikely to make the society pages of the Highbury and Islington Express. Blast. But then all my friends are having crises with their babysitters, or their nannies have resigned, or their offspring are off-color or their husbands are unhappy. It’s such a bore when the majority of one’s pals are married and family pressures take precedence over fun. For example, Angus and Alison canceled this morning because Jack’s got “potty trouble”—did she really have to be quite so graphic about it?
“I’m terribly worried, it’s gone all sort of greeny-yellowy-orangey,” she said.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” I replied crisply. Actually, I didn’t say that at all, I simply said, “Poor little thing, what a terrible shame. Anyway, thanks for letting me know.” Then at lunchtime Jane and Peter blew me out because their au pair’s run off with the boy next door, and even Lizzie—my best and oldest friend—even Lizzie can’t come.
“Sorry, darling,” she said when she called me yesterday morning. “I’m, really really sorry, but I’d totally forgotten it’s school vacation, and I want to take the girls away.”
“Oh, well, never mind,” I said, philosophically. “Where are you going?”
“Birdwatching in Botswana. The Okavango’s divine at this time of year.”
Crikey—some vacation treat, I thought, beats a day out at the zoo.
“I’ve just managed to pick up a last-minute package with Cox and Kings,” she said, audibly drawing on a cigarette. “We’re flying to Gabarone tonight.”
“Is Martin going with you?” I inquired.
“Don’t be silly, Tiff,” she said with a loud snort. “He’s working.” Of course. Silly me. Poor Martin. And then Rachel phoned last night to say she couldn’t face the party because she’s got terrible morning sickness (“But my party’s in the evening,” I pointed out); and two hours later Daisy rang to say she’s got funny pains in her lower abdomen and daren’t come out because it’s probably the baby arriving early. Then this morning Robert phoned to say his mother-in-law’s ill, so they can’t come, and then Felicity rang to say that Thomas is teething and won’t stop blubbering and so that’s it—now we are six. Six singles, as it happens: Sally, Kit, Catherine, Frances, Emma, me and, of course, Alex. My boyfriend. My chap. I may not have a husband but at least I’ve got a bloke. Which is more than can be said for my other single women friends. Poor things. Must be so depressing for them. Being single. At our age. Dreadful. And incomprehensible—after all, they’re so eligible. And so attractive. Especially Sally. She’s really gorgeous. And she’s loaded. But even Sally finds it hard to meet decent blokes. Luckily for me I’ve got Alex. Phew. And it’s serious. Actually I’ve been going out with him for quite a long time now—eight months, three weeks and five days. In fact, well, put it this way—I’ve just taken out a subscription to Brides and Setting Up Home.
I’d like to say it was an unforgettable party. And in some ways it was. It started quite promisingly. Sally arrived first, at seven-thirty, which amazed me as she works twenty-nine hours a day in the City, and OK I know she earns a fortune—I mean her half-yearly bonus is probably twice my annual income—but even so, she’s so generous with it—she’d bought me a Hermès scarf. Wow! You don’t spot many of those around here. That should bring the area up a bit. I can see the headline in the local paper now: HERMÈS SCARF SPOTTED IN UNFASHIONABLE END OF ISLINGTON. HOUSE PRICES HIT NEW HIGH.
“It was duty free,” she said with a grin, “I got thirty percent off it at Kennedy Airport. Oh Tiffany, you’ve decorated in here—it looks lovely!” She removed her pale-pink cashmere cardigan, revealing slender, lightly tanned arms.
“God, I’ve had an awful day,” she said, slumping into the sofa. “The dollar dropped ten cents in half an hour this afternoon. It was panic stations. Sheer bloody hell.”
I always find it hard to visualize Sally at work, yelling into her phone in a testosterone-swamped City dealing-room, screaming, “Sell! Sell! Sell!” at the top of her voice. That’s what she does, not every day, but quite often, and it’s hard to imagine because she’s as delicate and fragile-looking as a porcelain doll. Unlike Frances, who arrived next. Now Frances is by contrast rather, well, solid. Handsome, I suppose you’d say. Impressive, distinguished-looking, like a Sheraton sideboard. She’s alarmingly bright too—she got a double first in law at Oxford. I don’t think this endears her much to men.
“Happy birthday, Tiffany!” she exclaimed in her booming, basso profundo voice. It’s an amazing voice, deep and reedy, like a bassoon. She was looking smart in an Episode linen suit, dark of course, for court, her auburn hair cut short and sharp around her fine-boned face. Anyway, she’d brought me this lovely book, Face Facts—the Everywoman Guide to
Plastic Surgery.
“That’s really thoughtful of you, Frances,” I said. “I’m terribly interested in all that, as you know.”
“Yes, that’s why I’ve given it to you,” she said. “In order to put you off. The photos are absolutely beastly.”
And then Catherine arrived, bearing a huge bunch of peonies, her fingers still stained with paint, a faint aroma of turpentine clinging to her long red hair. Catherine restores pictures, painstakingly swabbing at them with cotton buds and tiny brushes, eliminating the grime and dust of decades. Showing them in their true colors, I suppose you’d say.
“Sorry, I haven’t changed, Tiff,” she said. “Hope we’re not too formal.”
“Well no, it’s just the six of us,” I said. “Everyone else has cried off.”
“Oh good,” she said, with a glance at the dining room table, “all the more for us! Gosh those sausages look delicious!”
Catherine is very boyish. She usually wears jeans, and her lightly freckled face is always shining and scrubbed. And I have never, ever, seen her wear makeup. Not even mascara. Not even lip gloss. Whereas I—well, the thing I seem to use most of all these days is concealer. Industrial amounts of it actually, which I carefully apply with a garden trowel, filling in the widening fissures beneath my eyes.
Then at eight Emma turned up with a large box of Godiva chocolates. “School was a nightmare,” she said. “I’ve had the most desperate lot of delinquents all day. TGIF, as they say—Happy birthday, Tiffany—my God, what a lot of food, are you expecting an army?”
“Er no, just a few regular troops, actually.”
Last to arrive was Kit. “Happy birthday, Tiffany!” he said, wrapping me in an enormous hug and planting a noisy kiss on my left cheek. Thank God for Kit. I often think I should forget about Alex—where was Alex, I wondered—and concentrate on Kit. My mother thinks I should marry him. My father thinks I should marry him. Lizzie thinks I should marry him. Everyone thinks I should marry him. Why didn’t I marry him? I suppose because the moment when it might have happened came and went years ago. But he’s still my other half—my creative other half, that is. I do the words, and he does the pictures. He’s my art director, you see. That’s how we met—on the Camay account at Gurgle Gargle and Peggoty. But now he’s my knight chevalier, my best male pal and, quite often, my colleague too. I love working with Kit. He’s freelance, like me, and we still collaborate on campaigns sometimes, though what he really wants is to direct TV commercials.
“Did you get the Kiddimint job?” he asked as we sat sipping champagne in my tiny garden.
“Yes, I did,” I said, picking a few late lilies of the valley to put on the dining room table. “Blow, Coward Spank want the script in three weeks. Haven’t a clue what I’m going to do with it. Never done toothpaste before, let alone kids’ toothpaste. They want a cartoon. I might do something with Macavity, from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”
“You mean something like ‘Use Kiddimint twice a day kids, and Macavity won’t be there!’ ”
“Yes. Something along those lines. That sort of thing. If they’re prepared to pay the royalties. What are you working on?”
He grinned. “I’m going to be—assistant director on a hair-spray commercial!”
“Kit, that’s fantastic.”
“I know.” He could hardly conceal his joy. “Cinema and TV. Big budget. It should look great. Head Start hairspray. For Yellowspanner. We’re shooting it in Pinewood, sci-fi style. We’ve cast this Claudia Schiffer lookalike,” he continued. “She’s rather scrumptious, gorgeous in fact—and the way she tosses her hair to camera is sensational! But I’m not telling Portia that,” he added anxiously. “I wouldn’t do anything to make her feel insecure.”
Pity, I thought. It would do no harm at all for Portia—commonly known as “Porsche”—to feel less than one hundred percent confident in Kit. She walks all over him in her Manolo Blahnik stilettos, leaving a trail of bleeding holes. I don’t know why he bothers. Actually, I do. After all, he’s told me often enough. He bothers because he loves her and has done ever since she tottered onto the set of that vodka commercial eighteen months ago. Portia, you see, is a model, but she’s hardly a model girlfriend. In fact, to be quite honest, she treats Kit like dirt. But he adores her. Isn’t that funny? He worships her. And the more indifferent she appears, the more intense his interest becomes. But then I’m the same. I mean, I’m always incredibly nice to men—and what do they do? Treat me disgustingly. I don’t know why. It’s not as though I don’t make an effort. I listen to them drone on for hours about their problems at work, and then I cook them supper. If there’s a show they want to see, I’ll get tickets for it, often queuing for returns. I buy them birthday cards to send to their mothers, and sew the buttons back onto their coats. And what do they do for me? Not ring when they said they would, then not even remember that they forgot to ring. And sometimes—and this is really annoying—they don’t turn up at all. All the ones I’ve been keenest on have treated me like that. Isn’t that strange? All except Alex, that is. Alex has always been so sweet. So considerate. So thoughtful. For example, he got me a really good discount on my Nina Campbell curtains and he gave me some excellent free advice about paint effects in my kitchen.
“Look, no one rag rolls anymore, Tiffany,” he said. “And sponging is such, well, vieux chapeau. I suggest you go for a very simple colorwash in a pale tone, say eau de nil, with the barest hint of teal. That’s what I’ve just done for Lady Garsington—I could get some mixed for you too.” He also showed me how to accessorize my bathroom properly, with antique stoneware bottles and waffle-weave bath towels and lovely pebble doorknobs—no more ceramic fish and bobbly bath mats. Oh no. I’ve really learned a lot from him. I mean, what he doesn’t know about cracked glazes . . . but where was Alex, I wondered again. He’s usually as reliable as a Rolex. And then I found myself wondering what he’d got me for my birthday—probably a year’s subscription to the World of Interiors, or something tasteful in the soft furnishings lines. He gave me a pair of wonderful velvet cushions in chrysanthemum yellow for Christmas—typically thoughtful. But that’s Alex all over—really, really nice and considerate although . . . now, I don’t want to sound disloyal or anything, but there is just one thing I’d criticize about him, and that is that he doesn’t play tennis—and I love it. In fact he’s not very sporty. Also, I’m not too mad on his button-right-up-to-the-neck pajamas or his habit of playing Scrabble in bed. But then, well, you can’t have everything. It’s all a compromise, isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about. Taking the wider view. And it was so nice to meet someone caring and kind after my miserable time with Phillip. Phil. Commonly known as Phil Anderer. No, Alex was such a refreshing change after all that.
Suddenly Kit stood up and went and leaned against the French windows. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring Portia with me,” he said. A slight frown furrowed his brow. “You see, she’s got one of her headaches. Didn’t feel up to it. But she said she didn’t mind if I came on my own. Didn’t want to spoil my fun. She’s very good like that. Not at all possessive. I offered to come round and look after her,” he added with a rueful smile, “but she said she didn’t need me. Said she could do without me.”
What a surprise, I thought. From inside the dining room we could hear the popping of champagne corks and the squeak of party blowers.
“Wahay—let’s get sloshed,” I heard Frances say.
“Yeah—let’s,” said Emma. “Let’s get really plastered. I mean it’s Friday. We work bloody hard. And this is a party. God these canapés are good. Pass me a mini pizza, would you? I had the most horrible lot of fifth-formers today—thick as pig shit.”
“Sally, please would you put your laptop away?” Frances boomed. “Relax. The weekend starts here.”
“I’m sorry,” I heard Sally reply pleadingly. “I just need to have a quick look at Wall Street to see how the pound closed against the dollar—won’t be a sec.”
“We’re doin
g the Napoleonic wars at the moment,” Emma continued. “I’ve just been supervising their GCSE project and one particularly thick kid managed to get a nuclear submarine into the battle of Waterloo!”
“That’s unbelievable,” said Frances.
“Quite,” Emma replied.
I looked at Kit. His black curly hair was a little long, his face appeared tired and strained. He was fiddling thoughtfully with the stem of his champagne flute. Then he turned to me and said, “I don’t know what to do, Tiff.”
“About what?” I said, though of course I knew. We’d had this conversation many times before.
“About Portia,” he said with a sigh.
“Same problem?” I asked.
He nodded, mutely. “She says she needs more time,” he explained with a shrug. “That she’s just not ready for it. Of course I don’t pressure her,” he added. “I’m just hoping she’ll change her mind. But I’d really love to marry her. I’d love to settle down and have a family. This single life’s a drag.”
“Hear hear!” said Catherine, stepping through the French windows. “But you’re a rare bird, Kit—a man who actively wants to make a commitment. My God, I’d marry you tomorrow!”
“Would you really?” he said.
“Yes. If you asked me. Why don’t you ask me?” she added suddenly. “I’m sure we’d get on.”
“Or me, Kit,” said Sally, following behind. “I’d snap you up in a flash—you’d better watch out, Portia, I’m after your man!” She giggled winsomely, but then an expression of real regret passed across her face. “I wish all men were like you, Kit, ready to bend the knee, then girls like us wouldn’t be crying into our hot chocolate every night.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Frances. “I’m not crying—I’m out clubbing. Much more satisfactory. And the music drowns out the loud tick tock of my biological clock.”
