The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife Read online

  Damian writes screenplays for a living. Rather, he writes screenplays. He does about two hours’ work a day, according to Hatt, and never, in all the time she’s known him, earned a single penny from it—or from anything else, either. He spends most of his energy whining about President Bush, and then, when he’s drunk a bit more (which he usually has), whining about the creative strain imposed on him by always having to scrounge off Hatty. Hedge Fund Hatt. She earns a fortune, it has to be said. But still.

  So Damian doesn’t really work, and he doesn’t help much, either. He sat tight on that bony little arse of his the entire weekend. Didn’t lift a buttock. Didn’t clear a coffee cup. He barely spoke at lunch or dinner, and even in between times he didn’t move from the kitchen table. He just sat there silently, occasionally clicking his tongue over the right-wing bias of the newspapers and calling for cups of tea.

  It occurs to me suddenly that he may be suffering from depression. People often get fixated with current affairs when they’re depressed. Or maybe it’s the other way round. In any case, poor guy, I’m sure he didn’t used to be quite so dismal. In fact, when he first came on the scene, and he was still full of ambition and hope and spunk and all, I have a fuzzy memory of his occasionally even being quite attractive.

  As for the three children (‘the Psycho Kids’, as Dora calls them), I’m not sure what their excuse is. They have a nanny with more qualifications than a neurosurgeon during the week, and an adoring mother who dedicates herself to their every need at the weekends—and, truthfully, they’re awful. They refuse to eat anything except bread and ketchup; they won’t address a word to anyone but Hatt; and they never go to bloody bed. On Saturday afternoon Hatty and I took them for a walk by the stream, and Lucia (aged 8) got her boot stuck in a puddle. For some inexplicable reason it sent her into a blood-curdling tantrum, the like of which I have never witnessed. I would have left her there, frankly. We were only a couple of hundred yards from home. But Hatty, who deals with tens of millions of pounds every day, or probably does, and is without doubt the most effective human being I know (as well as being my best friend), was almost in tears about it. Anyone would have thought the girl had trodden on a landmine, not in a puddle. In the end Lucia managed to make life so unpleasant for everyone we all had to turn round and go home.

  …Hard not to feel a bit conceited about Ripley and Dora by comparison. All those years of slapdash, badtempered parenting and intermittent bargain-basement childcare seem to have done them the world of good.

  So. That was our first attempt at weekend entertaining. I discover it’s not quite so easy. Partly, I suppose, because we haven’t really unpacked yet. But mostly because the whole process takes a hell of a lot more work than I’d realised. It’s nobody’s fault—certainly not Fin’s, who more than pulled his weight—but I feel like I’ve been skivvying pretty much solidly since they arrived on Friday night. We spent £200 on food and slightly more on alcohol, I’m exhausted, and not even specially convinced anyone had a very nice time.

  Other news…

  Hatty’s been muttering for ages about raising funds to put one of Damian’s unwanted screenplays into production, and I never really took her seriously. But I forgot: Hatty isn’t like other people. One way or another she’s now pulled together £50,000. She says she’s raised it through her work connections, but I have a feeling she’s saying that to protect Damian’s feelings. I think she’s raised it from her own bank account. In any case, it’s enough to get the script for his five-minute short, called Goodbye Jesus, turned into screen reality, and with Hatty at the helm it looks like it might really get made.

  Not only that, it turns out that Hatty’s sister went to school with somebody who claims to be the best friend of the great Paul Bettany, and Hatty seems convinced that on the strength of that—let’s face it—pretty feeble connection, Paul Bettany is going to play the lead part in Goodbye Jesus, and for free! Under normal circumstances I’d laugh, but knowing Hatty she’ll probably pull it off.

  Anyway she’s been asking Finley for advice about filmmaking all weekend, which—I can’t help noticing—he’s been more than happy to provide. Now she’s asked him over for dinner next week, in London. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said to me, and she was grinning. It was meant to be rhetorical. A joke. Of course.

  ‘Mind? Moi?’ I cried, laughing uproariously.

  But I do mind, actually.

  Two months away from London, and already I’m turning into a neurotic, jealous hausfrau. Too much time surrounded by fields, I suppose. Too much time to think. Hatt’s my oldest friend, for Heaven’s sake.

  Seriously. How pathetic is that?

  November 2nd

  Fin got into London an hour late this morning because the earlier train was cancelled. He’s already called me twice to complain about it. But what am I supposed to do?

  He said it meant he was forced to miss a very important meeting, but—as I so hilariously pointed out to him—he has at least thirty very important meetings every day. Can it really matter if he misses one of them? I was being funny. I think. On second thoughts maybe I was just trying to annoy him. Any case, he didn’t laugh, and now I need to ask him something about scaffolders because a gust of wind just knocked a massive chunk of lead guttering loose and it’s swinging across the front of the house. I keep calling but he’s refusing to pick up his telephone. Either that, of course, or he can’t pick it up because he’s in a meeting.

  Wish I had a few meetings to go to.

  November 7th

  Got a hot date with a new friend called Rachel White. She is the ex-sister-in-law of my London accountant and she and her new husband, who is also an accountant, have invited us over to dinner on the Saturday evening after the Saturday evening after next. Fin’s in New York at the moment, so I haven’t confirmed it with him, but if he’s not around I can just go by myself. I accepted for both of us in any case.

  Our children go to the same school, though they’re in different years, and I suppose my accountant must have mentioned something to her because she came over while I was lingering at the school gate, friendless and hopeful as ever, and very kindly introduced herself.

  She was wearing tweed trousers with sensible brown slip-on shoes underneath, and a burgundy fleece with some sort of financial institution’s logo sewn on above the left knocker. She has mousy grey hair, cut astonishingly badly, and a broad, ruddy, friendly, well-meaning face.

  Christ. It’s hardly Johnny Depp, is it? But we’ve got to start somewhere.

  Talking of Johnny Depp, Clare Gower (of the school gate: her son, Joshie, is in the same class as Ripley; plus she has another, called Tanya, in the year above Dora) says she thinks she saw him in Waitrose on Tuesday! She’s not sure it was him, though. In fact, on closer questioning it became pretty clear that she didn’t really know who Johnny Depp was, nor had the faintest idea what he looked like. Nor much idea of anything else, either, come to that. Nevertheless, she said, and I quote:

  ‘I wouldn’t say I was absolutely certain, of course—wait a minute, Joshie, Mummy’s talking. But, he certainly looked familiar, and if it wasn’t Mr Deppy then it was the other chappie. The fellow in Batman. I mean Spiderman. Oh shoot…What’s he called, Joshie, can you remember? That nice actor-man Mummy saw in Waitrose on Tuesday. Joshie’s like a little fact machine, aren’t you, Joshie? He’s Mummy’s little brainbox…Oh goodness, what’s the fellow called? Leonardo Something. Leonardo Thingamajig.’

  Clare Gower has invited me to a coffee morning next week, and I am happy to say that I have accepted.

  R’s lost his school jersey. Must do the nametags before anything else goes missing.

  November 8th

  Well whatdderyaknow? Just got off the blower with Hattie, who’d just got off the blower with Paul Bettany, who’s apparently in London and ‘at a loose end’ for three days next week. He says that if she and Damian can pull the rest of the cast and crew together in time—and they will, or rather Hatty will—he�
��s agreed to play the lead in her film. For free.

  She says he’s lovely, and I’m sure he is. I told her I’d seen him perform once, before he was famous, in a play at the Bush Theatre. He was brilliant, I said, and I would have been happy to expound a little, or even a lot. But she wasn’t that interested. In any case she was in a rush. She mentioned that Finley was being incredibly helpful: that she’d been calling him up about twenty times a day the last couple of weeks—which is news to me—and that apparently, out of the kindness of his heart, he’s given her the name of a young producer and some hot new director and a whole bunch of other people to help bring the project together. Fantastic. As Fin would say. God, he’s so delightful.

  Anyway, Hatty’s leaving Damian in London to cast the leading girl, and she’s taking time off work and flying out to Los Angeles tomorrow to meet up with Bettany. She giggled when I asked what she was going to talk to him about. She said she hadn’t the foggiest. ‘I’m really just going there to see if I can buy him dinner,’ she said. ‘And to thank him.’ Ho-hum. Lucky thing.

  Fin’s in LA at the moment, of course. I have to admit I toyed with the idea of not mentioning that fact to Hatty. Not sure why. Well. Yes I am. In any case, I did tell her. And she already knew it. She’d just been speaking to him. In fact he’d advised her to check in to the same hotel. ‘If I can’t get Paul Bettany to have dinner with me which I probably can’t…’

  ‘He’s got a very beautiful wife, by the way,’ I said sourly.

  ‘Exactly. Which is why Fin and I are almost certainly going to meet up for dinner tomorrow night. He says he’ll take me to the Ivy to cheer me up.’

  Tuesday November 20th

  Fin’s just called to ask where he should buy a new sofabed. He says the one he has in his office is too lumpy, and given how many nights he’s spending in London at the moment (‘with the trains as they are’) he wants to invest in a new one. He says he won’t be coming down to Paradise before Friday again this week.

  I decided not to kick up a fuss, mostly because, as Fin cleverly reminded me only this morning, it was my idea to move out to Paradise in the first place.

  Doesn’t matter, anyway. Got loads of telly to watch. Plus at some point I seriously ought to do some work. I’m so behind with the novel now it makes me feel sick whenever I think about it. Plus I’ve got an article to write about white wedding dresses (Yes or No?) and, though I distinctly remember injecting enormous amounts of passion into the discussion when the piece was commissioned, I’ve forgotten whether said passion was in favour or against, and since it’s now almost two weeks overdue I’m hesitant to ring up and check. Also, much more excitingly, I have a cunning plan to write a newspaper column all about my strangely adventureless life out here in the sticks. Why not? I’d enjoy it, even if no one else did. It would almost be like having someone to talk to.

  Truth is, though, I’ve slightly lost track of my laptop. This has never happened before. In London I used to write on it every weekday, like a normal person with a job to do. Plus I couldn’t survive twenty minutes without checking my e-mail. In fact I virtually slept with the laptop under my pillow. Now I’m not even sure how many days ago it was that I last saw it. So what the hell’s going on?

  Might this be a first indication of a new unhurried, unworried persona emerging from my desiccated urban shell? I sincerely hope not, actually. Apart from the rest of it (and I’ll need to make a real effort with the journalism if I’m to keep myself from being buried alive down here) there’s the next novel to be delivered in three and a half months, and pretty much everything I’ve written so far looked like complete drivel, last time I read back. I think I’m going to have to start again.

  Thursday November 22nd

  Computer still not turned up. Ditto the nametags. Where did I put them? Ripley tells me he’s lost his blazer, which I bought new for some incredibly stupid reason, also about forty-five sizes too large, so that it was virtually unwearable anyway. I wrote his name in biro on the label while I was waiting for the bloody nametags to arrive, but now he tells me the label was ‘a bit itchy’ and he cut it out.

  £60 down the shit-hole, then.

  I wonder if there’s an agency somewhere that will sew people’s nametags in for them? There must be. If I could find my wretched laptop I might be able to find out.

  Monday November 26th

  It occurs to me that I haven’t laid eyes on my computer since that peculiar carpenter came round to measure up for bookcases over a week ago. I think he may have snuck it out with him when he left. Which explains a lot, actually. At the time he certainly had me fooled. I even felt a little sorry for him. Now, of course, I’m beginning to wonder if he was actually a carpenter at all.

  He spent hours measuring up; literally hours, and then at the end, while he was still blowing gently over a stonecold cup of tea, I asked him, not unreasonably I thought, how long he thought he might need to build the things. And he looked astonished. He looked quite put out. Five minutes passed with him carefully adjusting the position of his mug on the kitchen table, scratching on his fleabites and so on…

  Until finally, very, very slowly, he said: ‘Fact ezzz, Madam [Madam!] I can’t say…Not in so many werrds…I wud if I cud, believe me…Much as I’d love if I cud, see…As the saying goes, How long is a piece of string?’

  And that was it. Beyond that, however many times I asked, whichever way I phrased the question, he simply refused to be drawn.

  I got his name off a card at the launderette, but that’s hardly a solid endorsement, is it? If my laptop doesn’t turn up soon I think I’m going to call the police.

  Friday November 30th

  Called the police. Funny. Ten years in Shepherds Bush and I never bothered to contact them once. Three months down here in Paradise and I’ve already got the number for the local station on speed dial. What does that say? Not at all sure, yet. But it must say something, mustn’t it?

  I had already explained how I wrote novels and magazine articles and so on, and about Ripley and Dora and the new dog called Mabel, and the move down from London. I’d explained that my husband was originally from Quebec but that he didn’t really speak much French any more. I think I told him about my 2.1 in history, my antipathy to the London Olympics, and about my recently deceased great aunt who was allergic to oysters. So I was on the very point of handing over the carpenter’s name and telephone number—when I spotted my precious laptop, nestling happily beneath a large dictionary on my, er, desk.

  Luckily, I managed to get the policeman off the telephone without his suspecting anything. He’s suggested I go down to the station to make an official statement. Which obviously I can’t now, can I?

  Shame.

  Never mind. Tonight I have the mysteriously nonresponsive and familiar-looking babysitter coming round. I’m going to dinner with Rachel White and her husband the accountant and, truth be told, I can’t wait. I’ve not been out for so long now I don’t think I’ve looked forward to an evening so much in years.

  Unfortunately Fin’s not going to be able to make it. He just called. One of his financiers pulled out this morning and the film is on the point of total collapse. So. He has meetings to go to. I hope Rachel doesn’t mind. It’s not his fault. There’s really not much he can do about it, anyway. And she seems very nice. I’m sure she’ll understand.

  !!!!! She CANCELLED me! She bloody CANCELLED me!

  I saw her at the school gate so over I scuttled, all smiley and super. I should have realised that things weren’t going to be simple from the start, because I opened with a friendly-but-casual ‘Hello, Rachel! Still on for tonight?’

  And she definitely looked offended. ‘Goodness, I should hope so,’ she said.

  I ploughed on in any case, friendly-but-casual as before.

  ‘…He’s so sorry,’ I said. ‘He was looking forward to this evening so much, but he’s stuck in these awful meetings the whole night, and it was a choice, really: make the dinner party or save the fi
lm! So I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with just me!’

  She shook her head, and I could tell before she spoke, by the shape her lips were making, that I’d got it wrong. I’d got everything completely wrong.

  ‘Oh, what a shame!’ she cried, almost as if I’d told her I had to amputate the leg. ‘Oh, goodness, what a shame. Oh, that’s such a disappointment!’ The skin around her nostrils went red, and I realised with a chill that she wasn’t looking at me any more.

  I said, ‘Rachel, he’s so sorry. And so am I. But still I’m so looking forward—’

  She said, ‘Don’t be silly. There’s no way we’re dragging you out in the middle of the night on your own. Certainly not.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No. We wouldn’t think of it. We wouldn’t dream of asking such a thing.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But, please—’

  But, no.

  No.

  And that was it. She said she’d make another date ‘when Finley’s schedule is a bit clearer’, and she suggested we meet for ‘a coffee’ one day next week.

  December 14th

  Fin went to the screening of Hatty and Damian’s short film last night. He said it was very, very good. Dying to see it.

  I sent them a bunch of flowers for luck. Wonder if they arrived in time? Any case I’d better take the dog out. She’s making funny coughing noises, and all the chocolate biscuits have gone missing. Got a feeling she’s about to be sick.