The Trials of Tiffany Trott. Isabel Wolff

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       June Continued

      I bet Peter Fitz-Harrod’s wife left him for someone else. I don’t blame her in the slightest. He sounds like a total wimp. Unlike Tall Athletic.

      ‘Lizzie, why are you setting me up with this weedy little man?’ I asked her over the telephone. Actually I didn’t say that. One has to be tactful with friends who are doing their level best to help one up the aisle. What I really said was, ‘Lizzie, what’s this Peter Fitz-doobery man like? I mean it’s very nice of you to think of me, and I do really, really appreciate it, but to be brutally honest, he sounds like a complete and utter jerk.’

      ‘I know the voice is a bit awful, but he’s much better in the flesh,’ she said reassuringly. ‘He’s definitely worth a try. Would I suggest him otherwise?’ I was prepared to take her word for it, though I definitely preferred the sound of Tall Athletic. I bet he’s got a lovely voice. All that lecturing – his students must find him mesmerising. He should have had my letter by now. Sporty and brainy – marvellous! What enticing images this conjures: squash followed by a bit of Schopenhauer; tennis followed by the Tate; swimming whilst discussing Solzhenitsyn; hill-walking with a hint of Hindemith. Golf … hang on a mo. Not golf. Anything but golf. If he plays golf, we’re through. ‘No, no, no, you go and play,’ I’d say to Phillip every Saturday morning. ‘You need to relax. You’ve got a very high-pressure job,’ (unlike me, of course). And by six o’clock he’d be back, having played thirty-six – or was it seventy-two? – holes. And then he’d do the same on Sundays. ‘I had a bloody good game,’ he’d say, as he switched on Sky Sports. ‘Bloody good. Tremendous. What’s for supper, Tiff?’

      No, I’m putting my foot right down. Tall Athletic is not allowed to play golf. He can play tennis, cricket, croquet, football, hockey, squash, rugby, baseball, basketball, badminton, ping-pong, polo, Eton fives, seven-a-side rugger and darts. He can go surfboarding, rollerblading, water-skiing, rallydriving, scuba-diving, ten-pin bowling, white-water rafting and rowing. He can do heli-skiing, parascending, motocross, hang-gliding, parachuting, sky-diving and three-day-eventing, but if he plays golf – we’re through. Phillip’s much-married mother used to say, in her wearying, worldly-wise way, ‘It’s good for men like Phillip to have a regular sport like golf because then at least,’ and here her voice would drop to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘you know exactly what they’re up to.’ And how my heart would sink, as it always did when she gave me advice of this kind; and later on, when I finally knew, well … how ironic it seemed.

      This evening I met Peter Fitz-Harrod for a drink. Here’s what happened. We arranged a rendezvous at the Ritz at six-thirty, and I had planned my escape in the form of a phantom dinner appointment at eight-fifteen. My first blind date for more than fifteen years! What a bizarre thing to do – go to a hotel to have a drink with a man on whom I had never laid eyes before. But having laid ears on him, I wasn’t that excited – just curious to see whether he was as frightful as I imagined. I had described myself to him: ‘fair hair’, I said, deliberately avoiding the word ‘blonde’ – he sounded quite over-excited enough as it was and I knew he wasn’t my type. But I dressed carefully – nothing that Phillip would have made an appalling fuss about, just a pretty little suit and a discreet amount of slap (no foundation – so ageing). As I spun through the swing doors I saw a man in a Burberry raincoat sitting by the night porter’s desk. I looked at him, he looked at me, then he jumped to his feet like a crocodile leaping off the river bank. It was him. Keen as mustard.

      ‘Hello, ha ha ha ha ha! You must be Tiffaneee,’ he squeaked, offering me a clammy hand.

      ‘How did you guess?’ I asked him – the Ritz was stuffed to the rafters with thirty-something blondes.

      ‘Well, ha ha ha ha ha! I don’t know, I suppose you just look like your voice,’ he said.

      ‘Thank God, you don’t,’ I just managed not to say, because actually, Lizzie was right. He really wasn’t too bad. About five foot ten, with curly brown hair. Blue eyes. Medium build. Discreet grey suit. Black lace-up shoes – well polished. Tasteful silver cufflinks. In fact, quite OK-looking-bordering-on-the-almost-acceptable (NB – do not, in future, judge blokes on basis of voices).

      We sat in the bar and ordered drinks. A beer for him, a glass of white wine for me. ‘Sauvignon please, rather than Chardonnay,’ I instructed the waiter in my best ‘girl-about-town’ style. Good God! I suddenly realised I was trying to impress this man. Was I interested? Well, maybe. His ghastly voice had dropped by about an octave, and the nervous machine-gun laughter had stopped. I certainly wasn’t sitting there thinking, You Have Got To Be Joking! In fact, I was smiling quite a bit and I didn’t have my arms defensively crossed. He was really quite nice, I thought, as I nibbled a pistachio. How could his wife have left him? What a cow. Probably led him a merry dance with a string of Latin lovers which she no doubt entertained three at a time in the marital bed, only venturing out in order to blow all his money on Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Poor chap. Obviously been through a hell of a lot. Needs to have his faith in women restored. I asked him about his work, which is scheduling loans to southern African countries. He asked me about mine.

      ‘Oh – advertising, Go To Work On An Egg and all that!’ he exclaimed enthusiastically.

      ‘Yes, that sort of thing,’ I replied, without getting into the intricacies of Kiddimint.

      ‘Vorsprung, Durch Technik!’

      ‘Yes, that’s right.’

      We talked about sport; he hates golf – brilliant! And he likes tennis – even better. I dropped in a strategically sensitive but not at all intrusive question about his children, who he sees every Sunday. Then we ordered another drink. It was all going rather well. Gradually, the conversation СКАЧАТЬ