A Surrey State of Affairs

by Ceri Radford

  I cleared my own throat. Needless to say, it took a little while to apprise her of the fact that I was marooned on a cattle ranch in the middle of Argentina, without Jeffrey, or even an adequate supply of linen blouses. Once we had gotten past her shock, and once she had asked ten times if I was okay and I had said, without conviction, yes, she seemed to sense that there was something else. So I told her about Carlos. As I was midway through—I think I was telling her about the other day, when he took me to the river and we went skinny-dipping and rode home dripping wet—I noticed that I was looping the telephone cable round my finger so tightly that it had turned white. I dropped it, and carried through to the end, and my current dilemma.

  “Oh, Constance,” she said softly after I had finished.

  “What on earth am I supposed to do now?” I asked, resisting a strong urge to form another telephone cable tourniquet.

  She did not, of course, have the answer. Instead, she told me a little of her life now. She said she has had quite a few “flings,” as she called them, which involve dresses, and dancing, and dinner—a certain retro “scene” that has little to do with antique furniture—and that they were nothing to be ashamed of. She said that I had to get over my hang-ups; she could tell from the tone of my voice that I was imagining my mother standing in front of me tut-tutting and wagging her finger and calling me a hussy. This image has indeed stalked my dreams.

  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:

  conmie peqase come, ive broken my arm my righr one no good typong with left. youre not answering your phone. god I hope youre cjecking your emqil. you need to fly tyo santa rosa, then bus to chacharamendi, then taci to estancia. i am so sorry. i am a cad anq a fool. i miss you. my arm jurts like buggery. can you forhive me?

  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 arr
ay, 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?

  Why has he not come around today, with a flower, seeking forgiveness?

  Why is it so much worse if a woman does what a man does with routine cruelty?

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28

  Stalemate. I am ignoring Jeffrey; Jeffrey is ignoring me.

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29

  Today I finally dug out my adapter and charger and plugged in my phone for the first time since getting here. I had two concerned answerphone messages from Sophie and Rupert, one from Tanya, who said that Shariah sent her love, and one from Harriet, who asked me if everything was all right in a worried voice and then told me that there was a rumor going around that Jeffrey and I had been thrown in jail in Costa Rica for drug smuggling. I deleted that message, but listened to the ones from Sophie and Rupert several times. Their voices made me cry. Perhaps I should go home. Perhaps this is it. For the first time, the strange heat and dust and vast blue sky oppress me. I miss home, I miss my children, I miss drizzle and narrow country lanes and the smell of cakes rising in the oven. Perhaps I should give up on Jeffrey and fly home alone and sell the house and buy a flat and throw myself into whatever divorced women do—take up pottery or stained glass or something, lend Miss Hughes a hand at Cats in Need, start embroidering. Is that what my future holds?

  I knew I should call Sophie and Rupert back but I couldn’t face it. Instead I wrote a text message, and sent it to them both: With Dad, still alive, love Mum x.

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30

  Today Jeffrey smiled at me over breakfast, a weak, flickering, uncertain smile. I smiled back, involuntarily. Then I scowled and went back to picking the burned bits off my bread roll.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31

  I checked my e-mail earlier and found this message from Reginald amid the usual unsolicited junk offering me cheap train tickets or free knitting patterns:

  Dear Constance,

  I don’t know where you are, but I hope you are well. We are all worried about you. There are all sorts of wild rumors flying around that we’re doing our best to ignore. I pray to God every day that you’re sunning yourself on an exotic island and not being used as an unwitting drug mule or anything dreadful like that. If you get this, please let me know that you are safe. I can’t bear the thought of you festering in a prison cell. I know that you would sooner starve than eat a rat. Remember the face you pulled when Miss Hughes brought her homemade savory scones to church and the cheese was a bit off?

  Well, wherever you are, I’m sure that some news from home will cheer you up. Rosemary has come back! Apparently she ditched her acrobat when they were on tour in Estonia and he tried to make her put her head in a lion’s mouth. As I have often observed, dear Constance, the Lord moves in mysterious ways. She has had her hair cut and thrown away the leotards and is back to her good old self. Gerald is delighted. He was a bit shocked at first but then he came to me for a quiet talk and I advised him on the importance of Christian forgiveness.

  I think that is the only news to speak of. The roof continues to leak in the corner, but we’re only £143.76 away from being able to afford the repairs, and I’m hoping to raise that at next month’s cake bake. If only you and your walnut slices were here we’d be home and dry, in more ways than one!

  Warmest wishes,

  Reginald

  The message made me smile. I wrote back to tell him that I was well, but kept the details vague. Then I went for a long walk, and as the dry grass scratched my legs, I thought of Gerald and Rosemary rebuilding their life together, and I wondered.

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  I actually feel happy. The guilt in my stomach has gone, a heavy sadness has lifted off my shoulders. Things are not perfect—I don’t think they will ever really be perfect—but oh, they are better.

  Last night Jeffrey knocked on my door at about six. I threw the tissues in the bin, ran my fingers through my hair, and let him in. He had a picnic hamper and a bottle of wine.

  Once again, he said the words “Constance, we need to talk.” Then he asked if I would come out with him. I agreed, on the condition that I could put on some insect repellent first.

  He led me on a winding path toward the perimeter of the estancia, past cacti and bushes filled with small birds, up onto a little hillock with a view stretching out to the Andes on one side and to the plains melting into a flat horizon on the other. He spread out a blanket, which I noticed from a monogram must have been stolen from Lufthansa on our flight over. I decided not to reprimand him for his lack of morals. Instead I took off my sandals and sat down. He unpacked the food—empanadas, which are a surprisingly edible foreign version of the Cornish pasty; hunks of cheese; and big, rosy apples—and unwrapped two wineglasses from a hand towel. When he opened the bottle, the pop echoed for miles. Then there was silence. I looked down, at the evening sun lighting up the fine hairs on my arms, then I looked up, and I saw that he was watching me with damp, serious eyes.

  “Connie, I am an arse,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied, and smiled. We clinked our glasses; they bumped together, loudly. We drank, and ate, and once we had done that and we were stretched out among the crumbs he told me again that he was sorry, for everything he had done, for how he had reacted, that he wanted to start again.

  He told me that he’d hated himself when he was sleeping with Natali
a, but that he’d felt cut off from me, from home life, from his feelings. He said it was like living in a sort of bubble; he had been contented enough but somehow insulated, nothing had really mattered, nothing had felt real. And then it had been pricked. I raised my eyebrow at his choice of wording, and he laughed. I remembered how much I used to enjoy making him laugh in the old days, when we were first together, and I would describe elaborate caricatures of my English tutors. When had I stopped trying to entertain him? When had he stopped listening?

  He told me that he’d thought he’d already been through his crisis when he was locked in his cell, but it turned out that it was only when he was out here, alone and hurt, that he truly realized what mattered and what didn’t. Then he took my chin between his thumb and forefinger and told me that I mattered.

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2

  A new month, a new beginning. Jeffrey and I are going traveling together. I think we’ll start by heading to the tropical Iguazu waterfalls, and then see where our fancy takes us.

  Do not be alarmed. I’m not naïve enough to think that one picnic has saved our marriage. The hurt runs deeper than that; it will take more. But I am willing to try, and so is Jeffrey: we will be striving together against the odds toward a common goal, for the first time since we lost the remote control for three days and eventually hunted it down to the pocket of Sophie’s dressing gown. Also for the first time in recent memory, we are going on an adventure together. And it will be an adventure in more ways than one: we are on a strict budget. Alpha & Omega has stopped paying Jeffrey’s salary. Before he left, he told them that he needed to take time off for a family emergency, but he has not been in contact since. He says that he has developed a sort of phobia at the thought of his old job, a little like how he used to feel whenever his mother would mention the dentist, except that in this case there are no sticky badges or cups of pink water to coax him back. We have investments, of course, but apparently the accursed recession has taken its toll. No matter. We will cope. I remember a Girl Guide camping trip when I was a child: sleeping on a paper-thin foam mattress, washing in cold water, eating baked beans warmed over a stove. I’m sure two-star hotels can be no worse.