Life.
I have been too superstitious to even mention it here but now it is over. All three of my children were flying home on the same plane on Sept. 11th. They have never been all on a plane at the same time without me there before and they told me the date casually as if it had no significance. While they were coming in to land I was actually at a party, (Good god, I hear you cry - oddly I do occasionally leave the house but never write about it here. Why on earth not?), and became totally obsessed with thinking about them and was forced to talk about it several times. Every single person had either forgotten what day it was or looked blank about the idea that there might be some anniversary nastiness. I pointed out that the Madrid att@cks were on March 11 which I had thought meant something and they looked blanker than ever. I suppose living down here, where there is absolutely no chance of anything ever happening, does mean that it all drifts over your head. I still sometimes feel my stomach drop when a serious voice booms out in the local supermarket, because of all those times years ago in London when you had to put down your shopping and run. Though nowadays they are warning you about a spillage in Aisle G.

The party was held in a large house right out in the middle of the moor which was a famous hotel until our friends bought it. It was sold off, short sightedly, in the middle of the f00t and m0uth crisis when no one was allowed near it for several months. As we approached through lashing trees, having seen no other soul for some miles, I said, 'You might think our house is lonely but there is NO way I would spend the night by myself here'. Later, on the way back, my husband said, 'I told P... your remark about being scared to live here but he said it is a really warm and welcoming house'. 'Why the f-ck did you tell him that, it was really tactless?'. My husband leant over, patronisingly, the better to impart a useful social lesson, 'You have to give something in conversation in order to get something back'. 'YES... but you give something about YOURSELF. Not pass on a confidence said by me'. He looked hurt and surprised. I was reminded again of his high score on the QA* t3st.

I noticed a strange phenomenon lately and when I have shared this observation with other people they have been struck by it too - but you have to be there while discussing it for full impact. You enter a room filled scarily with total strangers all talking and laughing. After two drinks you slowly begin to realise that you have met large numbers of them before and occasionally, like the other evening, that you have met ALL of them before and have many things to talk and laugh about yourself. Presenting a frightening picture for the next person who enters the room.

This was epitomised by our drawing up to park at the same time as another couple. Which was particularly annoying as I had been travelling with my trousers undone due to tightness and needed a moment standing up, preferably alone, to drag them around and force the zip closed. So I was staring at the man fiddling with his car keys to force him with the power of my will to bugger straight off into the house and not speak. And he was a complete stranger but of that dull kind who always looks faintly familiar and I had definitely never seen his wife before.

On the phone earlier I had been discussing this party with a local friend and she had said that coincidentally one of the people who would be there was another friends old art teacher from school who had just arrived in the district. He had an incredibly rich American wife and they were restoring some ruined gem at vast expense and thingy hadn't seen him since she was in the 6th form many, many years ago and so it would be weird. Some drinks into the party I remembered to ask her which one the art teacher was and she pointed out the man from the car park. 'I thought he looked familiar', I said, 'but he is just a clone isn't he?' 'God yes. Seen one grey haired middle-aged man, seen them all. T.. W...., Interchangeable Man'. 'What did you say? T.. W...? OMG - I do know him'.

Twelve years before we had shared a villa in Tusc@ny under slightly odd circumstances. We were arranging a holiday in It@ly inefficiently and at the last minute in 'high season'. Everywhere was booked. Then an acquaintance offered us their villa but they had already promised it to some poor and desperate friends, free. So, rather brutally from the friends point of view, they said that we could go there too, paying, if we were prepared to share. It seemed quite a funny idea - so we did. The villa was massive and we are all English and polite and it worked out really well. We even split slightly into two pairs as the wife and my husband both love cooking and the husband and me both love drinking and talking about books while sitting on a shaded terrace. We found that we had been to school in the same city and even had some friends in common, which the wife and my husband didn't. I have to say that I felt a frisson of flirtation in the air. And then we never saw them again..

Until last week. And he now looks much, much older and un-handsome and is divorced and no longer poor as he has a younger, millionaire American wife. When I sprang up, all happy and excited because I love coincidences, he was pleasant but cool. All mention of the old wife was glossed over at top speed and he did not introduce me to the new one nor did he exchange phone numbers or ask us over to inspect his building work and he left without a glance or a goodbye. I was rather drunkenly saying this to the husband of the woman who had been his pupil at school. 'Interesting', he said, 'Of course we can't see them socially as he gives my wife the squiggles. She keeps expecting him to shine a torch on her and tell her to stop smoking. But even apart from that he does have an odd quality'. 'Tell you what', I said, ' He kept reminding me of that Ag@th@ Chr1st13 film with H@yl3y M1lls. Where the man has a rich Amrican wife who loves riding out on the moors and they are idyllically happy but then she falls off her horse and dies. And you find that in fact he killed her and it was all a plot so he could marry his housekeeper and have all the money'. 'Hmmm ... His wife DOES love riding. So that IS a possibility'. 'Aaargh. No it isn't. You aren't going to tell anyone else what I've said, are you?' 'Why on earth not? It was fascinating'. 'OMG. NO, no, no. Pleeease don't. I was joking, obviously'. He smiled, sadistically. When we were leaving he waved from across the room. 'See you at the funeral', he called. Leaving everyone else saying, 'What? .... What?'.



- posted by Iris @ 9/13/2004 08:35:00 AM comment