I Conquer Britain (10 page)

I reached the Czar and his friends just as the cops had decided they’d had enough of the argument and were trying to get them to move on. I gave the Czar a nod. He was looking right at me, and I know he saw me because he got that shifty, where’s-my-mother look on his face, but he didn’t nod back.

“I’m asking you politely,” the taller of the cops was saying. “Leave now or I’ll have you for creating a public nuisance.”

“I’d like to see you make us,” shouted the girl. “We know our rights.”

(Lesson for today: Life has to be considered really bizarre when someone wearing a tutu and with hair like a traffic light can remind you of your grandmother.)

“So do we,” said the shorter cop. “And we’re not asking you nicely again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said the girl, and she sat down. Just like that – she just dropped like a rock onto the sodden grass.

The first cop grabbed her arm. “That’s enough of that then. You’re coming with us.”

My gran’s saying for this occasion would have been: all hell broke loose.

Somebody pushed, and somebody shoved, and a bunch of other people got involved, and before you could say “Give peace a chance” the whole thing turned into a major scuffle. I saw the Czar and his friends running away at about the same second that the long arm of the law reached out and grabbed
me
.

I said I was really sorry, officer, but I was afraid he’d made a mistake. “I’m not with the protestors,” I explained. “I was just taking a picture of Big Ben. For Mr Scutari back in Brooklyn.”

He gave me a look that didn’t exactly define total belief. “Of course you were.” He seemed to be working on the theory that one girl was as good as another and started pulling me down the block.

“No, really.” I may not have been protesting before, but I was definitely protesting now. “My friends – the Pitt-Turnbulls? You may have heard of him – he’s a famous English writer? Anyway, my friends are waiting for me over by that big building.”

“The Houses of Parliament.”

“Right.” At last there was something we agreed on. “The Houses of Parliament. That’s where they’re waiting for me.”

“But you’re not there,” said the cop. “You’re over here.”

“That’s true. But if you let go of me I’d be over there faster than a squirrel climbs a tree.”

“Only I’m not letting go of you, am I?”

No wonder people talk about the English sense of humour.

I couldn’t believe it. Day three and I was going to be arrested. At least my grandmother would be proud of me.

And then someone shouted, “Cherry!” and I looked around to see Robert striding towards me, and Caroline trotting behind him apologizing to everyone he shoved out of his way.

“Officer! Just what’s going on here?” Robert suddenly sounded like some lord about to throw trespassers off his land. “Could you kindly explain what you think you’re doing with this young lady?”

I stood up a little taller, like a real young lady. “You’re not going to believe this, Ro—”

The officer cut me off to explain. “I’m taking her in for disturbing the peace.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” said Caroline. Her accent had gotten a little more royal-sounding too. “She wasn’t disturbing anything.”

But men in authority often have a one-track mind.

“She was creating a public nuisance,” said the officer of the law.

“What utter rubbish,” snapped Caroline. (Talk about everyone having hidden depths. ‘
And who disguised as Caroline Pitt-Turnbull, a mild-mannered housewife with a love of roses…’
) “She was taking a picture of Big Ben.” Caroline waved at the herds of tourists with their cameras and guidebooks and umbrellas. “Like all those people. Are you planning to arrest all of them for creating a public nuisance, too? I should think you’d be better off catching criminals than harassing innocent tourists.”

“This girl is a visitor to our shores,” chipped in Robert. “And she happens to be our personal guest.”

The cop looked from him to me. Maybe he was just a natural sceptic. Some people are. “Morticia Addams? She’s staying with you?”

“That’s right.” Robert nodded. “I’ll vouch for her unequivocally.”

Officer Keeping the Peace mulled this over while he looked Robert and Caroline up and down.

“Perhaps it would interest you to know that my mother is in a book group with the Chief Constable’s wife,” said Caroline.

“Of course she is,” he muttered, but you could see that because she looked so straight and respectable and everything he pretty much believed her. The officer sighed. “Right then. Seeing as she’s with you.” He took his hand from my arm. “But don’t let it happen again.”

As he shuffled away to bother someone else, I asked Caroline if her mother really was in a book group with the Chief Constable’s wife.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Caroline smiled. “But she might be, mightn’t she?”

T
hat night Robert took us to supper in another old pub (it was a relief to know that all the good pubs weren’t in the country, since it didn’t look like it was ever going to stop raining long enough for us to go there). This one was down by the river.

“It’s a small piece of old, vanishing London,” said Robert.

The pub was on what Robert said used to be a road of warehouses and factories, but all the other original buildings around the pub had been knocked down to make room for big modern offices and apartments (all glass and steel and truly unattractive unless you’re a window cleaner).

It was just brick and wood, and inside it was totally crammed with so many antiques and really old stuff that it reminded me of our house on Herkimer Street (Jake would have loved it – there were even things on the ceiling!), minus the pig and the rooster and the cat (but they did have a dog who liked potato chips). Sitting there all by itself next to empty lots of rubble, the pub reminded me of the way my bags looked in Sophie’s room the day I arrived. Stranded and abandoned. But it hadn’t admitted defeat. It was putting up a fight.

“Should be called the Last of the Mohicans, not the Cat’s Back,” said Robert.

The reason Robert took us out was to celebrate our close brush with the law.

“That was a real stroke of luck, running into the police like that,” said Robert. He raised his glass. “To effortless research.”

“Research?” Sal researches his books, but you’d sort of have to seeing as they’re travel books (especially since the series is called Places You Never Thought of Going to). I wasn’t sure how me nearly getting arrested counted as research for Robert’s novel.

“Well, it would have been better if they’d actually thrown you in the clink.” Robert took a sip of his beer. “But in the normal run of things, I usually only have contact with traffic wardens not coppers, so it counts as a bit of first-hand experience.”

From the way he carried on if you breathed too loudly when he was working, I’d figured Robert was this big shot literary type dealing with the major questions of life with deep psychological insight and poetic prose. But it turned out that he wasn’t writing
War and Peace in Putney
. He was writing a mystery novel. That’s what he writes. Some of them are set in Victorian London (which explains the “something of a historian” thing) and some are set now.

Probably because of the effortless research, Robert was being a regular Chatty Cathy for a change. He went on and on about the history of Putney while we ate, but even though it was pretty interesting I was distracted. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Czar. I mean, what was with him? He was like the invisible boy. The only way you knew he’d been in the house was because he always left dirty plates in the sink or the milk out and stuff like that. It was bound to make a person curious. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t avoiding me. As far as I could tell he had less interest in me than he had in doing the dishes. It was Caroline and Robert he was avoiding. But why? It wasn’t like they were high maintenance (like some mothers I could mention). Caroline didn’t expect anybody else to do anything in the house, and Robert only came out of his attic for meals. But beside being curious, I was also really irritated at him for running off like that and leaving
me
to get busted. I figured it was time that we had a little talk.

So that night I decided to wait up for Putney’s answer to Che Guevara to come home. When I went up to my room instead of going to bed (even though I was totally exhausted from tramping around in the rain all day) I emailed Bachman. He was really impressed that I was almost arrested.
I guess England isn’t as boring as I thought
. He said he’d dropped by Herkimer Street a couple of times, but there was never anyone home. He figured Jake must be keeping Sophie pretty busy.
Sod’s Law
, I wrote back.
Her idea of keeping me busy is making me work, but as soon as I’m out the door she turns into the camp activities’ director
. Bachman wanted to know who Sod was. I said he was related to Murphy. After Bachman signed off, I sat up reading. Eleven … midnight … one … two …

But it wasn’t the stealthy sound of the Pitt-Turnbulls’ only son sneaking up the stairs that alerted me to his arrival. I guess I kind of dozed off because what woke me was the sound of voices in the room next to mine. Had he brought someone home with him?

It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting up for the Czar. It was Caroline who was in his room with him. And from what I could tell she was in laying-down-the-law mode. I grabbed my empty water glass from the bedside table and tiptoed over to the wall. (Which just goes to show you that you can learn
some
things from TV – it’s not all useless yadayadayada.)

“Just what do you think you’re playing at?” Caroline was saying. “So long as you live in this house, young man, you’ll behave like you’re part of this family, not the spy who’s lodging in the spare room.”

“Fine,” growled the Czar. “Brilliant. Anything else you want?”

Caroline said that what she wanted was for him to show some interest in and courtesy to their guest.

(If their guest had pushed any harder on the glass she would have been through the wall.)

The Czar said I wasn’t
his
guest.

Caroline said he was wrong about that. If their food was his food, then he was to consider their guest his guest too. “I think it would be very nice if you’d take Cherry out one day. Show her London. The poor girl’s probably already bored out of her mind.”

The Czar said that not only hadn’t he invited me, but he wasn’t a tour guide – that was the old boy’s job – and he wasn’t a childminder, either. “And anyway,” he summed up for the defence, “I happen to be busy.” (You could see why Caroline and Robert thought he should be a lawyer. He obviously had a gift.)

“Busy?” Caroline’s voice got a little louder. “Busy doing what? Robbing graves? You seem to sleep all day and stay out all night.”

The Czar said he was busy doing things.

“Well, why don’t you take Cherry with you?” said Caroline. “She’d like to do things, too. And I’m certain she’d like to meet your friends.”

The Czar said he didn’t think his friends would like to meet me.

“And why is that?” asked Caroline.

“Because she’s just a kid.” Like I was two or something. “Look, can we continue this episode of the Pitt-Turnbull Family Soap Opera tomorrow? I’m really knackered. I’m turning off the light and going to bed.”

Caroline said, “I haven’t finished yet.”

Caroline had more hidden depths than an iceberg. Because she was always patient and smiling and apologizing for everything I’d more or less had the idea that she never really got mad. Not like people from Brooklyn, who tend to shout even when they’re just having a normal conversation. You know, like she was on a higher, more evolved plane because her family was practically as old as the hills. That wasn’t it, though. Caroline wasn’t any more Zen than Mrs Scutari, she just had really good manners. But now she launched into the Czar like a lioness making a kill. He was disappointing her. He was all the things Jake always says I am (lazy, selfish, self-centred, a major slob) and he was making her lose sleep (
not
something Jake’s ever said to me). Caroline was worried about him. She wanted to know what was going on. Was it drugs? Was that it? Had he become hooked on drugs in India?

All the while Caroline was steaming on like a runaway train, the Czar didn’t say a word. If it was Jake in there huffing and puffing and pawing the ground I might have thought she’d knocked him out, he was so quiet. Then, when Caroline finally stopped all of a sudden like her car was out of gas, the Czar said, “Right. If that’s the way you feel, I’m off.”

Caroline said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The Czar’s answer was to make a lot of noise opening and slamming shut the drawers of his dresser, and then more noise opening the door to his room and slamming that shut. Then he banged down the stairs and out into the night.

I was so surprised by all the un-English drama (wait till I told Angelina’s mom) that I was still standing there with my ear to the wall after he’d gone.

That’s how come I heard Caroline start to cry.

C
aroline was back in fully operational cheerful-wife-and-mother mode the next morning, zooming around the kitchen like a smiling robot without a care in the world.

“Sleep all right?” she asked.

I said just great. I wasn’t sure if I could just come right out and say I heard her fighting with the Czar, so I looked around like I’d only just noticed that something was missing. “Where’s Xar? I thought I heard him come in as I was falling asleep.”

“Did you?” Caroline set a rack of toast on the table with a grim smile. “I expect you were dreaming. I don’t think he came in at all. He’s not in his room.”

So that was the Should I Say Something About What Happened? question answered.

Before I could say anything like I was pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming, Caroline rushed off to her mother’s because Mrs Pain in the Butt had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon and Caroline wanted to get the dogs walked and everything done before then.