I Conquer Britain (11 page)

I figured I could try to get something out of her when she got back, but she brought her mom with her. When Poor Old Mum was around she was pretty much the sun and everyone else just revolved around her. It was all Caroline do this … and Caroline do that … and Don’t you have this… and Don’t you have that.

We’d just finished lunch (late because I had to go down the street twice – once to get the right kind of bread for Poor Old Mum and once because I had to get her the right kind of cheese) and they were finally getting ready to go when Sophie called. What with one thing and another (like her son storming out in the middle of the night and having to wait on her majesty hand and foot) even Caroline had pretty much forgotten about Sophie by then. I heard her mention me a couple of times, but I couldn’t really tell what they were talking about because Mrs Pain in the Butt was complaining to me about her doctor, but I could tell that though Caroline was being really patient she wasn’t apologizing as much as usual, and then she said, “We’ll talk about this later,” and
hung up the phone
.

“That was Sophie.” Caroline turned back to us, smiling. “She’s having a brilliant time.” She focussed her smile on me. “You know, you’re welcome to come along if you’d like, Cherry. I feel terrible leaving you all on your own again.”

I smiled back. “Oh, that’s OK.” It seemed pretty unlikely to me that sitting in a doctor’s waiting room in London was going to be that much more exciting than sitting in a doctor’s waiting room in Brooklyn (which is
not at all
) – not even with Mrs Pain in the Butt there to liven things up by bossing everyone around. “I was thinking I’d walk around the neighbourhood and check things out while you’re gone.”

The idea of me strolling through Putney on my own opened a whole new world of worry for Caroline. “Oh, are you certain that’s wise?”

I said I figured that if I could roam around Brooklyn and Manhattan unscathed I could probably manage Putney.

“Well…” Caroline sighed.

But she wasn’t going to let me out without back-up. She gave me
two
emergency numbers. Just in case.

I said I wasn’t planning to be out that long.

“You can’t be too careful,” said Caroline. “You never know what may happen.”

The woman must have been the poster child for the Girl Scouts when she was a kid. But if it made her feel better, she could give me an armed escort for all I cared – as long as it got me out of the house.

Caroline showed me how to use Sophie’s phone. She told me how to get to the high street where the shops were. Then she gave me a book of maps that covered
every
street in London. In case I got really really lost. She showed me how to use that, too. She took a ten-pound note out of her wallet. In case I had to take a cab home. I said I wasn’t planning to go that far. I said that anyway I had my cash card so I could get some money of my own. Caroline said but what if the machine was empty? What if it was broken? What if it wouldn’t accept my card? I took the money. I couldn’t stand the burden of having her worrying about me not being able to get any money and then being chased by wild chickens through Putney because I couldn’t afford a cab.

The houses around the Pitt-Turnbulls’ were pretty much the same as theirs. Some of them were bigger, and some of them were smaller, and some were older, and some were grey brick instead of red, but they all looked like they came out of the same box, if you know what I mean. There were flowers all over the place. If they weren’t actually growing in front of the house, they were hanging from baskets from balconies. (I figured the good news was that you never had to water them.)

Eventually I got tired of looking in people’s windows (they all had furniture) and at their garden (no rusting cars or broken appliances) and headed for the high street.

I thought maybe it was called the high street because it was on a hill or a bridge or something like that, but it was just the main drag. There were a couple of stores I’d never heard of before so I figured that maybe they were actually “British”, but there was a
McDonald’s
, a
Pizza Hut
, a
Starbuck’s
, a
KFC
, a
Benetton
, and a
Gap
that definitely weren’t.

The people all looked pretty much like they’d come out of the same box as Caroline and Robert, too. You know, like their kitchens all matched and there wasn’t any junk in the backs of their cars.

I got my money out of the machine without being mugged, kidnapped or attacked by wild chickens, and was standing there wondering what to do next when who do I see slouching through the rain but Alexander Pitt-Turnbull in his blue sweatshirt with the hood up. He was carrying a bag so I figured he must’ve gone back to the house to get things he forgot when he stormed out last night.

The Czar was walking in my direction on the other side of the street. He turned into the train station.

There are people (like Caroline) who always think things through. Before they do anything – no matter how big or how small – they imagine every possible outcome of every possible action, and then they decide what to do based on all that thinking because they assume that means that nothing’s going to go wrong. And then there are people (like my mother) who pretty much see thought as the enemy of action. Jake says that things almost always go wrong no matter how much you think about them, so you might as well just go for it and deal with the consequences when they actually happen.

I had money in my pocket, a cell phone and a map of every street in London so I couldn’t see any reason for not following him. This was my chance to see where the Czar slunk off to all the time. I went for it.

There were two or three people hesitating at the kerb because the little green man at the crossing was flashing. I ran past them and straight into the road. I charged into the train station. I could see the back of the Czar’s head going down the staircase on the other side of the turnstiles. The woman in front of me at the ticket booth bought a round trip to someplace called Waterloo. I bought one too. I was a little shocked at how much it cost (I could have had two rides on the subway
and
lunch for that back home!), but I didn’t have time right then to start worrying about my budget.

I more or less vaulted down the stairs and into the train just before it pulled out.

The car was pretty full for the middle of a rainy afternoon – but it wasn’t full of Pitt-Turnbulls. I couldn’t see any reason for marching through every car until I found him, so I stood by the door. Every time the train stopped I stuck my head out to see if the Czar was getting off.

He got off at Waterloo. Since that’s what it said on my ticket, I took this as a sign. I was doing the right thing. I got off too.

In case you think that Waterloo is only a song or a battle, I can tell you that it’s also a railroad station. A really big one.

This was definitely more interesting than the high street. There were people rushing all over the place – and a lot of them looked like they probably didn’t have a kitchen, never mind one where everything matched. I could tell I was really starting to get the hang of being English, because whenever someone walked into me I said I was sorry.

The Czar slipped through the crowds like he slipped through his home (you know, like a ghost), and I trotted after him.

I was so happy, finally out on my own in the middle of the teeming metropolis instead of back in the house like the Prisoner of Putney, that I think if anyone had offered me a cup of tea I would’ve taken it.

There was so much to see that I got a little caught up in my head I guess, the way you do. I started checking out all the different people (talk about a melting pot) and the building (if you looked closely you could see that it used to be really old but it was fixed up to look modern) and stuff like that. I was watching these women all wrapped up in black yashmaks dragging their children through the crowd like we were in some exotic bazaar when, the next thing I knew, I looked around and the Czar had vanished (talk about ghosts). I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t taken my eyes off him for more than a few seconds.

I started running in the direction he’d been going, begging the powers of the cosmos not to let me lose him. The powers of the cosmos don’t always listen to what I say (having a lot of other things to do), but it must have been a slow patch for them because this time they did. There he was! He was at the bottom of a staircase – and with him was the girl with the red hair. She wasn’t wearing the tutu today. They were practically standing on top of each other, talking intensely. The Czar looked at his watch and shook his head. Then they suddenly turned and started towards the street.

I galloped after them. I had to battle my way through about eight hundred people all trying to get up the staircase, so by the time I reached the bottom I was just in time to see the blue hood getting into a bus. It was one of those really long buses that can bend in the middle so they can get around corners. It was a bit sad that my first bus ride in London wasn’t going to be on a double-decker but what can you do? I hurled myself down the street and through yet another set of doors.

My personal experience of bus drivers is that they can often be pretty grumpy. I always assumed that was because they were driving in the insanity that is Brooklyn traffic, but it turns out that it’s what my gran would call a hazard of the occupation. The ones in London can be pretty grumpy too. The driver wouldn’t let me on.

“You have to have a ticket.”

I explained that I didn’t know where to buy a ticket.

He pointed behind me. “At that machine over there.”

“And you’ll wait?” I knew that bus drivers can be tricky as well as grumpy. “You’ll wait while I get a ticket?”

He wouldn’t wait. He had a schedule.

“But I’m a visitor!” I wailed.

He gave me a look. “I don’t care if you’re Dracula’s bride. You’ve got to have a ticket.”

All seemed dark and lost.

Mr Young was right, though – the English really are a civilized people, and some of them are kind and generous too.

The man behind me tapped my shoulder. “Allow me,” he said. “We can’t have our visitors walking in this weather.” And he touched this round thing in front of the driver with a plastic card.

The Czar was standing in the middle of the bus. I couldn’t see the ballerina of the revolution, but the bus was really crowded so I figured she was sitting down further back. I made my way up the aisle so I was near enough to jump off when the Czar did, but not so near that he might look over and see me and think I’d been sent to follow him by his mother.

We splashed through the rain, and I kept one eye on the streets we passed and one on the Czar.

But Jake was right: things always go wrong.

I was really starting to enjoy myself when the blue hood turned towards the front of the bus. It wasn’t Alexander Pitt-Turnbull. It was some dude who was so pale he looked like he’d been living under a rock for the last twenty years.

This is the sort of thing that convinces me that there’s somebody at the controls of the ship of life. I mean, really – what are the chances that two blue-hooded sweatshirts of roughly the same height and build were walking in the same direction in Waterloo Station at the same time on the same day? About twelve trillion to one.

I was still coming to terms with this astounding piece of bad luck when the bus set itself on fire.

There were a few disgruntled shouts of “Oi!” and “Bleedin’ hell!”, but the driver just stopped the bus where it was and told everyone to get off.

After the smoke cleared (more or less literally) I realized I’d lost the map book in the stampede off the bus and had no idea how to get back home. So Jake was right that things always go wrong, and Caroline (otherwise known as Girl Scout of the Millennium) was also right that you shouldn’t leave the house without a back-up plan. I rang her on Sophie’s cell phone to ask for directions and even though I begged her not to she came to get me. (Lesson for the day: Be Prepared!)

As soon as we got in the car I started telling Caroline how sorry I was (at the rate I was going I figured the Queen was going to give me a passport) about getting lost and everything.

“Thank God it wasn’t worse,” said Caroline. “You might have been killed.”

I didn’t think so. “Mr Trainer, he was the man who was standing next to me, said it happens a lot. He said the drivers should be getting combat pay.”

This didn’t really reassure her. “But it could have gone up like a pile of old papers. What then? What if it had turned into a ball of fire?”

“But it didn’t. Mr Trainer figured we were lucky it was raining.”

Caroline sighed. “You poor thing. You must have been terrified.”

I hadn’t been even vaguely scared. Nobody was. Everyone acted like it was the kind of thing you expected. Mr Trainer said London had had the war and then it had the IRA and now it had self-incinerating buses. It wasn’t a big deal.

“But I still don’t understand.” Caroline shook her head sadly at the traffic in front of us. “Why did you go to Waterloo?”

There was no way I could tell her the truth. (I told Bachman, of course. Bachman said he’d had a similar experience with his Pitt-Turnbull, only she knew he was following her and she wouldn’t wait up. She even locked herself in the house and wouldn’t answer the door! There was obviously something genetically wrong with both of them.)

“I told you.” I gave her my most innocent, sincere and trustworthy smile. “I didn’t have a reason. I just saw the train station and I thought: why not have some fun? You know, a little adventure. I mean, it’s not like I knew the bus was going to spontaneously combust, was it?”

“No.” She gave another sigh. “Though I don’t suppose it would have stopped you if you had.”

D
ays passed, but Caroline kept smiling and being bright and cheery like nothing had changed (you know, like the Czar was still sleeping in his room and leaving his dirty dishes in the sink).

“So has Xar gone away?” I finally asked.