I Conquer Britain (14 page)

When we got back to the house, Mrs Payne ushered me into the living room. There was a tray on the coffee table that featured a flowery china pot and a plate of cookies.

“I thought we’d try that tea of yours.”

I pointed to the large maroon book next to the tea tray. “What’s that?”

She looked at it for a few seconds like she’d never seen it before. “Oh. Oh, that. I thought since you’re interested in old things you might like to see some of my photographs.”

The funny thing was that I did. I never had any trouble picturing Sky when she was my age because she’s never totally grown up. I mean, she still wears patchwork overalls and tie-dyed T-shirts and stuff like that. She hadn’t grown up like Mrs Payne. Mrs Payne had obviously been a fully paid up adult for at least sixty years. I was really curious to see if she’d ever been young.

We went through two pots of tea.

The first part of the album was all pictures of London when there were hardly any cars and of Mrs Payne’s parents and brothers and sisters sitting in the garden or at the beach and stuff like that.

I was surprised about the brothers and sisters. “Caroline said she didn’t have any family but you.”

“She meant she doesn’t have them now,” said Mrs Payne.

The second part was all during the war. (It was a lot longer war than Grandpa Gene led me to believe.) There were pictures of her brothers in uniforms and her eldest sister in a nurse’s outfit and the other sister driving an ambulance.

“So what happened to them?” I persisted. “Where are they now?”

“They didn’t make it.” She put a finger on each picture in turn. “George went down over France. Robert was killed in the South Pacific. Beryl was blown up in the cinema. And Margaret married one of your lot and moved to California.” She didn’t exactly make it sound like marrying one of my lot and moving to California was an improvement on death. “Never saw her again.”

Mrs Payne turned to the last page of the album. “And this is our house after the bomb hit it.”

That’s what Jake always says about my half a bedroom, that it looks like a bomb hit it. It doesn’t. It just looks like I’m a slob. But the house Mrs Payne grew up in did look like a bomb hit it. Maybe more than one. It was all rubble except that one of the fireplaces and the front door were still standing, like in some surreal dream.

“Gees…” I stared hard at the photo. There was a woman’s shoe and a doll on the road, as though someone had been running so fast from the planes that they’d dropped them. “It must’ve been horrible.”

“We were lucky. Only the dog died that time.”

The last picture in the album was of Mrs Payne and a really young soldier. He had his arm around her and they were both smiling.

“Who’s the dude?”

“You mean the young chap? That’s Nigel Manders.”

“Who was he? Was he your boyfriend?”

“You’re a very nosy girl, aren’t you?” For a second I thought she wasn’t going to tell me, but then she said, “I suppose one could say he was my first love.”

Oh, Great Earth Goddess! This woman had more hidden depths than the ocean.

“So what happened to him?”

She shut the album so fast I nearly got my finger caught. “He didn’t make it either.”

I said, “I’m sorry, Mrs Payne. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset.” She heaved herself off the sofa to put the album away. “And I should think you could stop calling me Mrs Payne. It sounds as if you’re the maid.”

“Well, what am I supposed to call you, then?”

She shoved the book onto the shelf. “Why, Nana Bea, of course.”

C
aroline’s migraine liked her so much that it decided to hang out with her for nearly a week, and she stayed holed up in her room all that time like a bat in a cave.

Which pretty much left the rest of us to our own devices (as Sky would say).

Jake always says that if you don’t expect things of people then the chances are they’ll never do them, and it looked like she was right. Robert’s whole relationship with the kitchen before had been to eat in it or open a bottle of wine (he never had any trouble finding the corkscrew, that’s for sure). But though he and I lived on take-outs for a couple of days, we both got pretty sick of it and he finally decided to confront the kitchen like an ancient English warrior confronting an invading army. The invading army won the first couple of battles (I’d never thought of canned corn as a salad ingredient before and I’d also never realized that it’s possible to bake a potato until it’s raw), but eventually he not only learned how to slice bread, he discovered a talent for cooking (spaghetti and cheese omelette mainly, but it was a start). Robert said it actually helped him with the novel because ideas would come to him as he was opening the boxes and jars or beating the eggs.

And Nana Bea rose to the challenge, too. She was used to ordering Caroline around and not having to do anything but complain, but that didn’t exactly work with me (I figured I was more like Jake than I thought). (I was even pretty sure she’d been reading the book I got her because she stopped griping about the fish and stuff and started saying that her back was feeling a bit better.) Every afternoon after I’d walked Drake and Raleigh she and I would have tea and go through another of her albums (she had about a hundred of them – you had to wonder when she’d ever found time to do anything else) or just discuss the past (she did the talking and I did the listening).

So things were gong pretty tickity boo (if you weren’t Caroline), in a quiet kind of way.

And then the rain started up again. Which (naturally) coincided with the first day Caroline felt strong enough to take charge of her mother again.

“Sod’s Law,” said Caroline. “If I were still laid up the sun would be burning up the tarmac.”

“Forget it,” I advised. “You can’t go sloshing around in this. You stay home. I’ll walk Drake and Raleigh.”

You couldn’t say she put up much of a fight.

“Well, if you’re certain…”

“Of course I am. I’m practically a professional dog-walker by now.”

(Of course, both Sod and Murphy could have told me that if you feel really confident about something you’re about to fall off a cliff.)

I blame the thunderstorm. Despite their names (which you’d at least think would give them a fondness for water), Drake and Raleigh don’t like thunderstorms. Only I didn’t know that until we were out of the house, me holding them with one hand and Caroline’s umbrella with the other.

Nana Bea (who, you’ll notice, didn’t exactly mention the thing about English spaniels’ sensitivity to sudden loud noises and flashes of light) waved to us from the front window. I waved back.

Which was pretty much the last thing I did of my own free will for the next half-hour.

Just as I opened the gate there was a crack of lightning that made it look as though the sky had been ripped open. It might as well have been the bolt of electricity that gives the monster life. Drake and Raleigh both left the ground like cartoon dogs and then they lurched off in the opposite direction from the one we always took.

At the best of times (like when the sun was shining, I wasn’t carrying an enormous umbrella with flowers all over it and they weren’t in Hitler and Karimov mode), I had my hands pretty full being lead dog, but at the worst of times (which this definitely was) I had less chance of making them do what I wanted then I had of getting the President to.

“Stop!” I shouted as thunder rumbled over Putney. It sounded like the Nazi bombers had returned. Drake and Raleigh started to run.

I pulled on their leashes. They picked up speed.

The wind (which seemed to be on their team) caught the umbrella and we sailed up the block, me shrieking commands and hanging on for all I was worth and them trying to outrun the storm. That didn’t work either. There was another crack of lightning – gold, white and purple – as we hit the corner. The dogs left the ground howling, and the umbrella and I more or less flew after them.

By the time the storm passed and they’d calmed down to their normal level of hysteria, I had no idea where we were. The block we were on looked pretty much like all the other blocks we’d been on, lined on either side by houses that looked pretty much like every other house we’d passed along the way.

Not that I was worried. Drake and Raleigh might be pretty psychotic, but they are dogs. You’re always hearing those stories about dogs that walked for two years through blizzards and monsoons to find their way back home. It’s part of their nature. And at first it seemed like that was what was happening. They dragged me on, stopping every few feet to examine a tyre or a pole or try to get into somebody’s garden, but they did it with determination. You know, like they knew where we were going.

But they didn’t. We trudged on and on in what was by then a discouraged drizzle, but there was still no sign of Nana Bea’s street. Every time we came to an intersection I’d stop and look in all directions.
Concentrate
… I told myself.
Look for landmarks
…
a car or a rose bush or a tricycle left on the sidewalk
… But all I saw was red-brick house after red brick house, each with its tiny front garden and low brick wall. It was like staring at a flock of starlings trying to find the one whose life you saved when it was a baby and called Fred.

And then, way down at the end of an incredibly long street, I saw what looked like a small store. It was worth a chance.

I stared down at the dogs. “OK,” I told them. “We’re going down there to ask directions. And you two are going to wait outside and behave.”

They looked like they understood. Raleigh even wagged his tail.

When we got to the end of the street I tied them under the sign that said Aswani’s Food Store, and went inside.

The only person in the store was a woman wearing a sari who was sitting behind the counter, reading a magazine.

She looked up and smiled in a helpful, friendly way.

I explained that I was visiting a friend and that I’d gotten lost and couldn’t find my way back.

“And what road is it you are looking for?”

It was a reasonable question. It was the question I would have asked. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a question I could answer. I couldn’t remember. My mind was as blank as new snow. I used to know it. But after the first day I knew where to turn automatically and it must have gone into a back file. And by then Drake and Raleigh and I had been up and down so many streets that all the names had kind of mushed together in my mind.

“Gamlen?” asked the woman. “Hotham? Bangalore?”

She somehow managed to make every name sound foreign and unfamiliar.

“Near the river?” she tried. “Away from the river?”

“Well, it’s near the river, but it’s away from the river, too.”

“You are certain it is round here?”

I wasn’t really sure of anything any more. I felt as though I’d been sloshing through the rain for hours, which I pretty much had been. I could have been miles from where we started or just around the corner.

And then, as if the gods had finally decided to take pity on me, I heard someone outside calling Caroline’s mother.

“Mrs Payne! Mrs Payne!”

A girl a couple of years older than I am burst into the store.

“Mrs Payne, your do—” She stopped when she saw me.

“Tiki!” shouted the woman behind the counter. “Tiki? What is wrong?”

I already knew the answer to that question. “Oh my God! The dogs!” I screamed, and ran past her so fast I nearly knocked her down.

Drake and Raleigh were loping down the street as fast as they could go.

I dropped the umbrella by the door and ran after them.

All I needed was to lose those blasted dogs. Nana Bea would make sure they brought back the fine old English tradition of hanging.

It wasn’t until I spotted all this green and trees and other dogs dragging their owners through the rain up ahead that I realized where they were headed. They did know where they were going, after all. They were going to the common. By the time I caught up with them they were chasing each other in circles on the sodden grass.

“What’d I tell you?” I shrieked. “Didn’t I tell you to behave?”

The other dog walkers looked at me like I was nuts.

Drake and Raleigh, dedicated to doing whatever you didn’t think they were going to, came bouncing over as if they’d been looking for me everywhere, and hurled themselves against me. So now we all looked like we’d been rolling in mud.

I was definitely having one of those days. You know, the kind that take all the joy and passion out of life. The kind that make you feel you’d be better off being a pebble or a three-toed sloth than a person. I think it was that and the fact that I was so relieved to see Drake and Raleigh that all of a sudden self-pity rolled over me like a tsunami. Bachman was right. I should never have left Brooklyn. I really liked Caroline, Robert and Nana Bea, but that didn’t make up for the fact that I was pretty lonely and bored. I started to cry.

“You dropped your umbrella.”

It was the girl from the store. She was holding Caroline’s umbrella over my head. “I came in the van. Come on, I’ll take you back to Mrs Payne’s.”

I was too stunned to answer.

“I’m Tiki.” She held out the hand that wasn’t holding the umbrella. “You must be Mrs Payne’s Yank from the Wild West.”

I took her hand. “I’m Cherokee.”

Tiki laughed. “Well, what do you know. We’re both Indians.”

T
iki was in college, studying architecture and urban planning but she was working in her parents’ store for the summer. My gran would have loved her. (Bachman said he pretty much did love her because she wasn’t a boy, so he didn’t have to worry that I was never coming home.) Tiki wanted to design houses that were environmentally positive (solar energy and stuff like that). Besides the planet, the other thing she was into was London. In her free time she liked to ride around the city on her scooter.

“Greater London’s enormous,” said Tiki. “I want to see every bit, so I can piece it all together in my mind. You know, not just what’s here now but the history and all.”