Thirty-Eight
Two weeks later, it’s still like living with a whole new Sir John. He still has the odd pre-morning coffee bout of crankiness, but generally, he’s still approaching life with his new sunny attitude. I’m in the kitchen having a chat with Mrs Jenkins when he practically skips in, asking if anything needs to be carried into the breakfast room. Mrs Jenkins immediately pales and asks him if she should fetch the thermometer.
“No, my dear girl!” he bellows, “I don’t have a fever! I’m just trying to be helpful. Ophelia tells me I could stand to work on my manners when it comes to people like wait staff and underlings.”
“Oh. Thank you, Sir John,” Mrs Jenkins says cautiously and slightly through gritted teeth before handing him a tray of bacon and his favourite silver coffee pot. He skips off joyfully, and we exchange glances.
“Dropping the word ‘underlings’” would be a start,” I observe as Mrs Jenkins chuckles and hands me the scrambled eggs and a rack of toast, and I follow him through to the breakfast room.
The only downside to Sir John’s new cheerful demeanour is the fact that instead of engrossing himself in his morning paper, he now interrogates me about my life, currently mainly focusing on my relationship (or lack thereof) with Ryan.
“Any word from your bedfellow?” he asks for the seventh time this week before I’ve even sat down.
“None.”
“Shame. He seemed a nice young chap.”
“He is nice,” I say, almost whispering. I take a large swig of coffee so that I can hide behind my mug.
“I was telling my friend Henry all about it, but I couldn’t really remember how the Anastasia bit had happened, so the story sort of lost its punch. He’s coming over for supper tonight, though, so you can tell him yourself then.”
Oh, wonderful. I’m so glad my heartbreak is providing fodder to go alongside Sir John’s drunken MP anecdotes. I’ve long since learned that he has no idea how insensitive he’s being, so I bite my lip hard and try to ignore him, but as he continues, I know I’m fighting a losing battle.
“It’s really quite mad that he believed you were a Russian émigré. Quite, quite, mad. I’ve never met anyone who knows less about Russia than you!” He starts chuckling, and I can’t help but feel it’s slightly unfair to remind me that through my blubbering in the immediate aftermath, I mentioned to him that I wasn’t even 100% sure where Moscow was beyond “by those other cold cities like Stockholm.”
Alongside his increased motivation to bond with waiting staff, he does seem to have developed ever so slightly more emotional intelligence, so when he realises that I’m not chuckling along with him, he stops and says in a somewhat more gentle tone, “Dear girl. You do realise if it is meant to be it will be, don’t you? Relationships have survived worse. If he doesn’t get past this, it just means he wouldn’t have got past a whole host of things that naturally happen during a relationship.”
“Thanks, Sir John, but I’m not sure that things like pretending to be someone you are not is a usual relationship problem…”
“Maybe not,” chuckles Sir John, “But if you bring it back to its basic component, it’s about deception. And deception does happen. And people do get past it. Laura deceived me, and I would have forgiven her and carried on if that was what she had wanted. Arguably, betraying someone in the way she did is worse because we were a family for such a long time. But I have never stopped loving her.”
I’m touched that Sir John has been so open with me, and I manage a watery smile.
“I just don’t know what to do. If he won’t talk to me, I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Just give him time, old bean,” he says gently. “Have you thought about a gesture?”
“A gesture?”
“You know! Like in the films. The hero makes a grand gesture.”
“I think that only works in Hollywood, Sir John.”
“I’m sure we could come up with something if we put our thinking caps on. What does he like?”
“Architecture? His family? Honesty in a girlfriend?”
“Architecture, you say… why don’t you go… on the line …on your gizmo (laptop – a word he knows perfectly well), and we’ll see if we can come up with some ideas.”
I make a hotspot and fire up my laptop. I’m not at all certain about this, but I’m finding Sir John’s interest quite sweet and wanting to indulge it.
He hovers behind me excitedly as I connect and open Google.
“Go to the internet homepage,” he demands.
“This is my homepage,” I explain.
“Oh. It’s different from the ones I’ve seen before.”
Before I know it, plans for romantic gestures have been replaced by a very frustrating half an hour teaching session on search engines and links.
This could go on for a while. I patiently explain to him that hyperlinks are a list of websites or documents connected to his original Googled word and that you click on the one that seems most relevant. He looks entirely lost, so I decide that it’s probably easiest to show him rather than try and explain.
I type in ‘presents for architecture lovers’, ‘architecture ideas’, and ‘presents when you’ve really messed up’. Sir John is staring, open-mouthed, in utter amazement as suggestions magically start popping up. I’m less than impressed by the results, which seem to consist mainly of 3D puzzles, books, and artistically shaped lamps. I’m not sure they particularly scream, “I’m so sorry,” or “I am a nightmare and messed up utterly.”
We Google for another hour, but by the end, even Sir John is jaded and cynical, occasionally muttering, “I wouldn’t wish that footstool on my biggest foe.” My patience is running dangerously low, so we give up and retreat for lunch. I suggest we work on the book after lunch, but Sir John insists on grilling Mrs Jenkins about what she’ll be serving Henry for supper (sea bream and new potatoes with green beans, and then a summer berry trifle) and then taking a nap. I head back to my lair with a pile of Sir John’s papers and continue combing painstakingly through the minutes of parliamentary sessions and highlighting anything remotely interesting so that it’s earmarked for the book. I’m determined to make a success of at least one part of my life, and now, the only likely candidate is this.