I Conquer Britain (7 page)

“No, it’s just us.” Caroline shrugged. “I thought it would be nice to have a proper lunch, as it’s your first day.”

I could only hope her idea of a proper lunch wasn’t anything like her idea of a proper cup of tea.

“Oh, right,” I said. “I just thought because there are four plates—”

“Oh, that…” She straightened out a fork. “I just thought that perhaps Xar might remember…”

Remember what? Where he lived?

Caroline decided to change the subject.

“I have an idea.” Her smile had faded for a second there but now it was back in force. “How would you like to see my garden?”

I could see the garden just great from where I was through the French doors (and through a lot of water), but I could tell that wasn’t what Caroline meant. She had the same look in her eyes that Gallup gets when any living creature that isn’t a human or a plant comes into the conversation – obsessional.

“Sure.” My head was still pretty wet so it wasn’t like I was going to ruin my hair or anything. “I’ve never seen a real English garden before, but Mr Young – he runs the grocery where I got the peaches box? – Mr Young says they’re really something.”

Caroline hauled out two pairs of green boots and a floral umbrella from the closet under the stairs.

Caroline stepped through the French doors and opened the umbrella, and I went with her. I could see us as though I was hovering over our heads, Caroline and her flowery dress and green galoshes, and me in my black jeans and T-shirt and Sophie’s green galoshes, and the umbrella swaying above us like a giant bouquet. It was pretty surreal.

“Of course there won’t be many birds about in this weather,” said Caroline as she stepped onto the stone path, “but we have robins, blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, a great spotted woodpecker, jays, magpies, wood pigeons, starlings, wrens, green finches, dunnocks, black caps, blackbirds, red wings, coal tits – we even have parakeets and a sparrowhawk.”

“Wow, that’s really cool.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “We mainly just have sparrows and pigeons at home. Pancho Villa, that’s our cat, he’s always leaving dead bodies in the kitchen.”

Caroline hummed “Um…” and marched onward.

“That’s
Rosa Constance Spry
and over there is
Rosa Brother Cadfael
…” Caroline held the umbrella over us with one hand and pointed with the other.

“They’re nice.” The Alice in Wonderland experience was deepening. I wasn’t used to flowers having proper names like people. “They look like roses.”

Caroline laughed. “They are roses. English roses. And that’s
Laurus nobilis
…
Hedera helix
…”

I asked if they had English names.

“Oh, Cherry, I am sorry. I’m afraid I get carried away. Of course they have English names.” She stepped gingerly over a puddle. “That’s the bay and that’s ivy of course. And over there are the rhododendrons and the dwarf conifers.”

It was my turn to hum. “Um…” I stepped quickly over the puddle, trying to stay under the umbrella.

“And this is the pond.” She said it the way someone in LA showing you her house would say, “And here’s the Olympic-size pool.”

It wasn’t that much bigger than the puddle, but we stood side by side looking at the pond as though it was one of the wonders of the world.

Caroline pointed out the rocks and the ferns and the grass in case we didn’t have any of those things in Brooklyn.

I peered into the gloom. “Is there anything in there?”

“Oh, yes.” Caroline’s head bobbed, which made the umbrella bob, which made water drip down my back. “There are the frogs, of course. And water snails and the daphnia.”

Two out of the three were familiar, which was good enough for me. “Cool.”

“Those are the water lillies … and the water irises … and the water forget-me-nots…” With every plant she named Caroline tilted the umbrella and water dripped down my back. “And there’s the holly … the lavender … the jasmine…” She gave a little gasp of what I can only describe as dismay. “Oh, dear. The wild geraniums are looking rather poorly aren’t they?”

I wouldn’t recognize a wild geranium unless it was labelled. But I tried to console her. “Maybe it’s just because of the rain. I mean, nothing looks that great in the rain, does it?”

“I suppose not.” She started walking again, determined that I was going to see every inch of the garden, monsoon or no monsoon. “Foxgloves … azaleas … willow … lilac…”

“I’ve never seen a garden like this. You know, not in real life.” If this garden were to take on human form it would be an army on parade, everybody where they were supposed to be and at attention. It was so neat and orderly that the only thing that looked real was the rain.

“Oh, I am sorry.” Caroline looked like an Aleut trying to imagine a world without snow. “Don’t you have a garden at home?”

“We have a backyard.”

“Oh, I am sorry…”

I was starting to feel like I brought her nothing but misery. I pointed to the tiny house against the end wall. “We’ve got a shed though.” I decided not to mention that it was made of old doors.

“Oh, that isn’t a shed.” Now Caroline’s smile looked like it was trying to keep up its spirits. “I use it for my studio.” She gave a little laugh. “For what my family calls my little hobby.”

Hobby? Stamp collecting? Boats in bottles? Knitting? She’d have to be knitting a car.

“My painting.”

“Oh, right.” Jake is only a part-time artist because we need to eat and stuff like that, but she would never call it a hobby. She says it’s the heart of her life. “I saw the portrait of Mr Bean in the dining room. It’s really cool.”

“Thank you, Cherry. Sometimes I worry that it’s a bit silly, painting pets.” The umbrella and the head both bobbed and more water dripped down my back. Caroline sighed. “But there isn’t much time for that sort of thing, of course. Even when my mother can walk the dogs herself there’s always so much to do looking after Robert and the children and the house.”

I sympathized. “Jake says that’s one of the reasons all the really famous artists have always been men. You know, because they never had to do anything else.”

“Does she?”

Robert suddenly materialized at the French doors.

“Caroline!” he called. “Caroline. I thought we were going to eat.”

She gave me a look. “I suppose one could say the same about writers.”

L
unch wasn’t exactly the Mad Hatter’s tea party (everybody stayed in their chairs and there weren’t any rodents in the teapot or anything like that), but it was still pretty peculiar.

There we were in the dining room with a real cloth on the table and the vase of flowers and everything like it was Thanksgiving or something and we had twenty people for this big, fancy meal. Only it was just the three of us and we weren’t having a big, fancy meal. We weren’t even having something typically English like boiled cabbage or crumpets to celebrate my first day in London.

“This is great.” I looked from my plate to Caroline. “I love pizza.”

“I thought you might.” She passed me the salad. “Make you feel a bit more at home.”

The feeling at home thing only lasted for as long as it took me to realize that the cutlery beside my plate wasn’t just for the lettuce and tomatoes. (I figured this was another point for Mr Young and his belief that the English are so terrifically civilized. I mean, how far away from our hunter-gatherer past do you have to be even to think of eating pizza with a knife and fork?)

“Wow,” I said. “In Brooklyn we just pick it up with our hands.”

“You also drive on the wrong side of the road,” said Robert.

“It’s so messy, though, isn’t it?” Caroline daintily speared a small triangle of pizza. “What with the sauce and all.”

I picked up my knife and fork, and dug in. A big chunk of pie jumped into the air and landed cheese-side down on the immaculate tablecloth.

“Oh, I’m
so
sorry.” (That was Caroline not me.)

“It’s Sod’s Law, isn’t it?” asked Robert.

I didn’t know who Sod was.

“Sod was some poor bloke who worked out that if someone throws you a knife you’re going to catch it by the blade.”

“We call it Murphy’s Law.” (Sky says it would be an Irishman who figured that one out.)

“See what I mean about you Americans?” said Robert. “You always have to be different.”

After that, Robert went into writer-brooding-over-his-book mode (a state I recognized from my dad, who was once so preoccupied thinking about what he was going to say about Arizona that he didn’t even notice that the stove was on fire), so it was left to Caroline and me to keep the conversation going. We talked about the weather and the garden and school and what vegetarians eat and her mom’s back and stuff like that. So this was normality. Eating lunch in the dining room with Robert sitting there like he was in a trance and the extra plate and cutlery across from where I was sitting. My gran has a friend who always sets an extra place in case Jesus happens to drop by, which is pretty weird since it isn’t like he’d show up because he was hungry, but this was even weirder. It was like the Czar was missing in action for the last thirty years but Caroline still believed that he would suddenly return from the war.

I would’ve been really happy to see him stroll into the dining room and sit down with us myself. In my mind, he’d already become the friend I needed. Besides, talking about his trip to India had to be at least a million times more interesting than talking about bean curd and rain.

Even eating pizza with a knife and fork can’t take for ever (even if it seems like it does), and eventually lunch was over and Robert went back to his garret and Caroline got ready to go to her mom’s. She didn’t ask me to go along.

“You must be tired,” said Caroline. “Perhaps you’d like a lie down whilst I’m out.”

Whilst? Was that a real word? I decided not to tackle it. “Lie down what?”

“Yourself. You know, have a little rest.”

I just got there. Why would I want to go to bed when I just got there?

“My gran says you’ll get all the rest you need when you’re dead,” I told her.

Caroline showed me where anything I might possibly need in the next few hours was. That’s the water filter. That’s where the glasses are kept. That’s where the biscuits live. That’s the bowl of fruit. Tea and chocolate drink in there. Coffee in there. Small silver tea ball that looks like an owl for single cups in the spoon drawer. Milk in the fridge. She showed me how to switch on the electric kettle. How to work the coffee maker. How to light the stove. How to press the power button on the TV. How to work the remote. She left the number for emergencies and her mother’s number by the phone.

“Just in case,” said Caroline.

Just in case of what?

“You never know,” said Caroline. “You have to plan for everything, don’t you?”

My family plans for nothing – not even the worst.

“But Robert’s here,” I reminded her.

“Yes. Yes, he is,” she agreed. “But he’s working.”

Obviously nothing – from earthquakes to invading armies – distracted Robert when he was working (which was about the only thing about him that reminded me of Sal).

After she checked that the garden door was really locked and finally picked up her umbrella and left, I went up to my room to write some emails to the folks back home. To Jake to tell her I’d arrived in one piece (not that she’d worry if she didn’t hear from me since she knew she’d know pretty fast if I hadn’t) and to ask her why she didn’t tell me about the smiling and apologizing, and the plugs, and pizza with cutlery and the appalling gruesomeness of tea. To Tampa to let her know that I hadn’t run into Harry Potter yet. To Gallup to tell him about all the birds I didn’t see in the garden. And to Bachman to see if he’d met the Pitt-Turnbull yet and whether or not she looked like Barbie and was carrying a teddy bear.

I put a CD in the stereo, turned it on, and sat down at the computer.

I was still waiting for it to verify the password when I discovered that my room was right under Robert’s office. He started thumping on the ceiling like a demented rabbit.

I turned down the volume.

Thumpthumpthump. “Lower!” he shouted.

I turned it down so low that the only reason I could hear it was because I’d heard it so many times before.

When I finished my emails I realized I had a problem. Like, now what did I do? I’d planned to meditate to relax after all the stresses of the last twenty-four hours, but I was pretty sure that Robert would be thumping on the ceiling again by the third Om. On the other hand, there was no way I was going to stay in that room with nothing to do but count stuffed animals and shades of pink until I got some answers to my emails. So I went downstairs to see if there was anything to drink in the kitchen that wouldn’t strip paint.

I found some green tea at the back of the cabinet and put the kettle on.

It was really quiet. In our house the refrigerator always sounds like it’s about to take off, but in Caroline’s kitchen I couldn’t hear so much as a clock ticking. You couldn’t even hear the rain. I sat at the table, waiting for the kettle to boil. Being adaptable, I always try to look on the bright side of things, but I was starting to think that it was going to be a really long summer. And just as dull as waiting in some podunk town in Arkansas for your car to be fixed. I started thinking about camping with Bachman, and the time I tripped and fell flat on my face but my pack was so heavy I couldn’t get up again. We’d laughed for at least an hour over that. When the kettle clicked off I realized that I must’ve zoned out for a couple of minutes because my eyes opened. And then I realized that it wasn’t the kettle I’d heard turning itself off, it was the front door opening because I heard it shut.

Looking back on it, I know it doesn’t seem really likely, but at the time I thought it might be a burglar. Maybe it was because I was already bored, but I figured that was why Caroline left me all the numbers – because she knew The Terrifying Truth (that even though it looked about as dangerous as a glass of water Putney was actually the Crime Capital of London), only she was too polite to warn me right out. Until Jake got fed up with Sal and moved us to Brooklyn we lived in a trailer and travelled all over the States (that’s how I know about podunk towns with one mechanic who’s always fishing). The first thing you learn when you live like that is not to panic. I mean, what’s the point? Things are always going wrong. Tyres blow, engines set themselves on fire, you end up in Mexico by mistake. So I didn’t panic. I grabbed the cordless phone with one hand and the big frying pan that was on the stove with the other and peered around the door.