by Ceri Radford
I expect I shall see more tomorrow, as I start a twenty-hour trip back up to the center of the country and a warmly recommended estancia near Cordoba. I wonder what Miss Hughes would say if she could see me now? I suppose that would very much depend on whether she managed, for once, to locate her spectacles.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 6
This is the life. The air is clear and crisp, the terrain rolls away in gentle, undulating hills; it reminds me a little of a holiday in the Welsh valleys, except with better weather and food, and more thorn trees. I am staying at a small estancia, or working ranch, which is also very comfortably decorated for guests. I have a lovely little bedroom with a wrought-iron bed frame, smooth creamy walls, dried lavender standing in iron pots, and a beautiful French window with blue curtains sweeping down to the floor and a view out onto grazing cattle, trees, and, at night, millions of undimmed stars. There is a sense of space here that quite eludes one in the Cotswolds. We are one hour on a dirt road from the nearest village. There is no human settlement as far as the eye can see, no noise; just green hills, and the fluctuation between silence and birdsong. I am going to rest, read, and think. Then perhaps darn the hole in my hiking socks.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7
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.”
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13
I’ve just been on Facebook for the first time in months. As I was sipping my wine and talking to Bob and Rosa about absent friends, I suddenly felt the urge to find out what my own little online circle had been up to. Once I had logged on, the first thing I saw was a status update from Bridget, which read is wondering if Dita von Teese is an appropriate role model for a 53-year-old publisher. I pondered this for a while. On the one hand, from what I once read in a magazine, she would appear to take her clothes off for money; but on the other hand, it is very artfully done, and the clothes in question are beautiful and vintage. I imagined what Jeffrey would say if I asked him. It would probably be “A tart’s a tart.” I took another sip of wine and typed in the word yes.
Then I saw that Tanya had posted pictures of little Shariah, and I forgot all about the ethics of burlesque stripping. She is indescribably gorgeous. In one photo, she is curled up in a little ball, clutching a white teddy bear, her eyes creased shut and her dark little lashes fanning out onto plump pink cheeks. In another she is looking straight at the camera as if she wants to take it apart and chew it, her eyes blue and wide, a few curls of brown sticking straight up from her head. In the least dignified of the pictures, Tanya has dressed her in a rabbit jumpsuit complete with ears. The bonnet I knitted her, however, is conspicuously absent. She must have outgrown it already.
After a few minutes staring at these pictures and sipping my wine, all the thoughts that had been pushed to the back of my mind by Sophie’s disappearing act, Jeffrey’s arrest, and our sudden trip over here began to gather and loom. I thought about Harriet’s grandchildren, and Rupert, and how he will never hold his own baby in a soft pink blanket in his arms, and then before I knew it there were tears rolling down my cheeks and Bob and Rosa were by my side asking if everything was all right.
I felt incapable of lying. I blurted out everything about Rupert, and then this led to Sophie and Ivan and, finally, Jeffrey. Rosa put a sympathetic arm around my shoulders and said that Jeffrey sounded like a schmuck, which Bob translated for me as “idiot.” Sensing that I wanted to be alone, they got up and quietly left, leaving me free to close down Facebook and pick up a real coffee table book on the history of Argentina’s estancias, immersing myself in a simple world in which women cooked and men rode horses and that was about that.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14
Is Jeffrey a schmuck? The word has a more satisfying resonance than its British counterpart. Schmuck, schmuck, schmuck. Is he, indeed, a cabrón? I am visualizing Jeffrey, sitting in a deck chair in the garden with a gin and tonic and the Sunday paper while I visit Mother, alone.
Rupert called this afternoon, so I asked him: “Do you think your father’s a schmuck?” He asked me if I had been out in the sun without a hat, which did not move things forward one way or the other. We moved on to other matters, and he reassured me that Darcy and Fergie were both well, and that Boris was keeping the house tidy and developing, in his boredom, an unhealthy fixation with vacuum cleaners. He has taken apart both of my models, cleaned them thoroughly, and put them back together again. He asked Rupert for permission to spend some of the housekeeping budget on additional nozzles.
Just then, I noticed the time, and said I had to dash to go riding with Carlos.
“Who’s Carlos?” I heard Rupert ask just as I was hanging up.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15
Today I looked in the mirror for a long time. Matters have improved slightly since the last time I did so. The fresh air is good for my complexion; either that, or it’s the Crème de la Mer face cream I bought from duty-free on Jeffrey’s credit card. I have lost a little weight, probably due to a combination of exercise and the lack of facilities to whip up a quick coffee cake or batch of flapjacks. My stomach is a little flatter, my legs feel more toned. My hair has grown out of its usual gently layered bob, and I’m beginning to think it suits me longer. There are wisps of gray appearing at the roots, but the sun has streaked my auburn color through with caramel, so they don’t stand out too much. All in all, I’m in reasonably good shape, should anyone happen to look at me.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16
Jeffrey called this afternoon as I was lying by the pool reading a crinkled copy of U.S. Vogue and wondering if I should buy myself a new Versace lipstick. The line was bad, but I could just make out that he was asking me to be a bit careful with money before it cut out. I ordered a Sex on the Beach and went back to the magazine. I think Drenched Damson would be just my shade.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20
Dear God. What will you think of me? What have I done?
Looking back over previous postings, if you don’t already know, you are two currants short of a tea cake, as Mother used to say. I feel like I’m drowning in shame, guilt, excitement, and life.
This has been going on for three days and only now have I plucked up the courage to tell you. Except I’m not telling you, because you already know.
I shouldn’t have. I never should have. I have been married faithfully for thirty-four years. We have two children. For thirty-four years I have never allowed myself to seriously consider another man. It would have been ridiculous, the sort of thing I read about in Sophie’s magazines or watched on reality televisi
on until Jeffrey switched to the news. That, and the dandruff, is why I shut the door on Gerald. Thirty-four years together, thirty-four years of being a good wife, thirty-four years of breakfasts and dinners and holidays and family and sleeping with my face ten inches from his.
And those thirty-four years counted for nothing when Carlos took my wineglass from me, drank from it, then gently, knowingly, brushed his fingers against my thigh.
I hate myself. I’m loving this. What am I going to do?
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21
I still don’t know what to do, but I have made a start by calling Bridget. As she lives in London, where standards of behavior are considerably more lax than in east Surrey, she is unlikely to choke on her own tongue with outrage. I felt strangely nervous about talking to her, even though, as students, we used to spend hours in each other’s rooms, sitting on the floor with our backs to the narrow bed, talking about boys when we were meant to be studying Byron. After eight rings, just as I was about to give up, almost with a feeling of relief, she picked up. It was early evening for her, midday with a piercing sun for me; I tried to imagine her curled up on the chair by the phone in her flat wearing her black-ribboned cardigan with the autumn night already darkening around her. “Constance!” she said. “I’ve been wondering what’s happened to you. How come you’ve not been in touch? I was beginning to think you’d been taken hostage by that new Polish housekeeper or something.” And she laughed, her husky laugh that hasn’t changed since she was nineteen.
