We're in the middle of a forest but there’s valet parking, we discover after we’ve tucked the car under a tree.
The house is a square with a lot of white clapboard and glass shooting out of the roof at angles so that the windows look like raised eyebrows in an asymmetrical face, but, as in all Island homes, the main rooms face out to the ocean, or in this case a small lake scribbled with an indeterminate mass of trees and bushes, with the flat sea behind it – two wide expanses of water without even a sailboat to break the monotony of it. It’s the sort of view that's like a plain woman, at whom you look again and again, desperately trying to find something attractive in her uniform features, and failing.
There is food laid out on a table, the sort of Academic waspy appetisers I recognise from parties in Cambridge – sliced hot dog with a mustard or ketchup dip, triangles of pitta bread filled with hummous like it’s a sandwich filling, overweight supermarket shrimp with the ubiquitous spicy tomato salsa which weighs down the poor server’s arms as she totes it around the room, then stands there smiling wanly as she patiently waits for each guest to deposit the tail.
A tall man wearing a dragonfly pin on his lapel and introduced as a Middle East Expert who used to be in the State Dept, takes a hearty bite out of a shrimp, then double dips. Don’t they teach etiquette in the State Department? I wonder, as the hostess gushes over across the deck and greets us. She introduces Audrey as her brother’s most brilliant student, me as ‘this beautiful woman who is visiting from England’ and Mr Audrey as ‘involved in global economic matters’. She is dressed in an embroidered caftan, a long necklace made out of shells, and emeralds the size of broad beans.
So far, I’m the youngest person here.
When they talk about old money on this Island they really do mean old.
Most of the other guests are in Island uniform – for the men this means a brightly coloured jacket and/or pants in a lurid shade (or even green/blue Ralph Lauren plain - where do you think he got his inspiration?), often accompanied by an equally garish tie, a cane, sprouting eyebrows, hearing aids inside bristly ears, sunburn and incipient skin cancer.
The women are in jewellery and either slip dresses in 'summery' colours like pink and yellow if they are thin or, if not, they go down the caftan route. I didn’t get the memo, so I’m in a sort of slip dress that only looks like a caftan because it's big and I’m wearing it.
And no jewellery.
A young couple arrive and are pulled over to meet us, and by young, I don’t mean under 40, I mean really young. Well under 30. The woman is called Kelly and is very, very, enthused by it. Her eyes, startlingly blue in a shock of bleached Malibu Barbie blond hair, are wide open and astonished, as though even her name as she introduces herself has come as a total and wonderful surprise about which she just couldn't be happier. She’s wearing an orange frock (slip dress, of course) with a visible bra and lime green shoes. Her husband, who has initials for a name, is bear-big, or ‘husky’ as he gets to call it since he is male and overweight, with a sweet chubby kid’s face, polished with sun, money and good health. He smiles a lot which accentuates his overbite and makes his chin look strong and square, as tells us all about Obama with whose campaign he is involved. My friend Audrey gets very excited and tells us about her recent photo opportunity, and describes how Obama put his arm around her and kissed her.
'He’s very charismatic,' she says.
'He is,' agrees Husky.
'And what do you do, are you part of this Middle Eastern cabal too?' Asks the hostess.
What Middle Eastern cabal? I don’t ask, because just in time I remember Audrey’s masters in Ottoman History (although she was never a student of the hostess's brother any more than I'm beautiful or English), Husky's 'interests' (whatever that means) in Iraq, the man from the State Department who ‘speaks Arabic’ (but doesn’t know not to double dip which must get him into trouble when he's dining in Middle Eastern homes) and his wife Peggy who has skin like corrugated paper on her upper lip. Both Peggy and State Department have recently come back from Egypt where ‘everyone looks like the President’ according to the double-dip husband. 'He's not like us,' he adds before walking off to the ominous silence that greets this remark.
He’s being ironic, says Audrey. 'Everyone here is a Democrat.'
'No,' I reply. 'I’m a food writer.' ( Well, what do you mean 'you're what?' I am. Sort of. I do write about food. Sometimes.)
'Oh,' she says, smiling uncertainly. She obviously doesn’t have a clue what that really means, and neither do I since - okay - I kinda of just made it up.
'So yes, I have travelled to the Middle East a lot, but I’m an expert on the food, not the politics,' I add, which is taking fantasy to new realms so that I should have my own number in the Dewey Decimal System.
'She’s also a novelist,' says Audrey.
And I agree, wholeheartedly. 'I’m also a novelist.' This leads to a local celebrity being pointed out - the parents of Famous Filmaker who wrote a novel about an ice storm.
I look blank.
You know, 'The Famous Film?'
'Oh yes, The Famous Film... I remember, something about wife swapping in the seventies...'
'It's about his father, and...' - someone points at a man whose comfortably matronly wife I met a few minutes ago... 'that is his father there.'
Poor guy. Imagine being introduced as the villain in your son's Hollywood Movie at every party. It suddenly made sense that his wife shook Audrey's hand and called herself, wryly, 'the wicked stepmother'.
I can't imagine her dropping her car keys into the goldfish bowl. Except due to senile dementia.
The conversation then moved another film - this one of a John Irving book - which was shot on a house on the Island, which seems even more unlikely than me as an expert on Middle East Cuisine but is nevertheless true. A film crew was actually allowed on to the Island to film. The summer residents guard their exclusivity so much that they have been arguing for two years about putting in a bike path lest it attract rif-raf from the mainland who might come and sully the place with their proletarian bicycle tires.
We meet someone that Audrey knows on the way out. She is wearing a Caftan but is thin enough to slide out the crack they’ve left in the car window for the dog who is panting inside the vehicle. I can see her nipples like ticktacks poking through the material.
The conversation then moved another film - this one of a John Irving book - which was shot on a house on the Island, which seems even more unlikely than me as an expert on Middle East Cuisine but is nevertheless true. A film crew was actually allowed on to the Island to film. The summer residents guard their exclusivity so much that they have been arguing for two years about putting in a bike path lest it attract rif-raf from the mainland who might come and sully the place with their proletarian bicycle tires.
We meet someone that Audrey knows on the way out. She is wearing a Caftan but is thin enough to slide out the crack they’ve left in the car window for the dog who is panting inside the vehicle. I can see her nipples like ticktacks poking through the material.
So correction, both the fat and the anorectic wear Caftans.
Both have things to cover up. But nipples, apparently, aren’t one of them.
Just as well. As when we left the dinner party I got caught in the full hosepipe crossfire of two freaking sprinklers and if there was an island Matron Wet T Shirt contest, that’s one prize, I would definitely have walked away with.
