Sisterchicks Go Brit! (23 page)

An odd china cup and saucer from a long-since-discontinued nineteenth-century Spode pattern was filled with antique earrings from the art deco era. The bejeweled items were tagged as coming from the estate sale of some lord and lady in the Lake District. Resting comfortably under the fine china cup was a dilapidated copy of John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
, complete with etchings, copyright 1845.

For the serious or even the casual collector of anything old, this was the one place in the world where that collector might find her elusive treasure.

Kellie and I bought a lot that day. We didn’t spend an outrageous amount of money, but we bought a lot of treasures. Our treasure hunt started with a ring.

“Look at this,” I said to Kellie when I spotted the darling ring in one of the indoor stalls. Sitting on a faded blue velvet pincushion, the ring looked like a dainty Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet. The curds and whey were missing, but I’m sure a spider had sat down beside her more than once during her captivity in this haphazard display.

“Very dainty,” Kellie commented. “Is that a tiny garnet?”

The vendor looked up. “That’s a ruby chip. Handcrafted in the late eighteen hundreds and guaranteed eighteen-carat gold. Have a look.”

He handed over a magnifying glass and pointed out the hammered marks and the tiny seal of the craftsman engraved inside the small ring.

“I picked it up at an estate sale in Rochester,” he said. “Does give one pause to wonder, doesn’t it? A ring like this made a century ago could have been an engagement ring for a country girl.”

I was smitten. The sweet little ring had to come home on my finger so I could gaze at it on dreary days and wonder about the woman who wore it first and what she thought about on dreary days.

“How much do you want for it?” I asked the dealer. He could have said a hundred pounds, and at that point in my sweet infatuation, I would have considered the price a bargain. It turned out the cost was the equivalent of twenty dollars.

The amiable vendor polished the ring with a stained white handkerchief, took my cash, and placed the trinket in the palm of my hand. No box. No wrapping. No receipt. This was flea-market shopping in its most primitive and intoxicating form.

We walked away, with me admiring my new little accessory and Kellie saying, “I can’t believe the price was so low.”

“I know. You do realize that for a hunt-and-gather girl like me, this place is the mother lode.”

“I think this is treasure hunting at its sweetest and best.”

Of course I agreed. With my ring at home on my pinkie finger, I felt as if every ten-pound note in my pocket needed to be exchanged as ransom for other such prize beauties.

Kellie was the one who scored next. Her find was an antique Moroccan mirror in a frame inlaid with bits of pounded silver and glass. The mirror was the size of a greeting card, and for such compactness, the intricate details were captivating.

We meandered from store to store and stall to stall for hours, snagging books, beaded bracelets, candlesticks, and decorated tin boxes that once held buttery biscuits most likely served at teatime.

The crowds around us swelled. The weight of our shoulder bags grew heavy. We felt hot under our raincoats every time we entered one of the strings of indoor booths, and we were crushed by people every time we stepped back into the main thoroughfare. But we couldn’t stop. Hunting and gathering was my thing. Feasting on color, shape, and design was Kellie’s thing. We were in our elements at the same time.

My watch said it was 1:06 p.m. when Kellie and I finally hit our limit.

“We have to leave something for us to come back and find another time,” Kellie said.

“Another time? Are you already thinking about coming back to London?”

She nodded with an I’m-so-in-love-with-this-place smile on her face.

“Me too.” I didn’t open up the conversation then in the crowded marketplace, but I was also thinking about something else. I was thinking about Kellie’s proposal to go into business together. After the way we had been so in step with each other throughout the market that morning, it made me wonder if we really could run a business together.

We stopped at an organic café next to the Scottish kilt shop and ordered fresh-squeezed orange juice and garden salads to revive us. Our debate du jour was whether we should make a beeline to see Ben from here or return to the hotel and drop off our bags.

The return-to-the-hotel option won. As much as we wanted to cram every minute of our final day in London with all we could see and do, we had turned ourselves into pack mules, and neither of us wanted to lug our loot across London.

“Aside from Ben, what’s left on our list?” Kellie asked after we had stashed our treasures and stretched out on our beds for a two-minute refresher.

“Westminster Abbey, which is conveniently located right next to Ben. Do you realize we’ve managed to do everything on our top-five lists?”

“I know. I can’t believe how much we’ve seen and done in such a short time,” Kellie said. “You ready to foray back into the London maze?”

“Ready and eager.”

But as we walked through the hotel lobby, Kellie and I were
delayed. Afternoon tea had commenced in the conservatory, and as we walked by, we knew the dainties that awaited us on the other side of that open door.

“What do you think?” Kellie asked as we stood there. “It’s your choice. This might be our last chance to have a proper teatime in London.”

“I’m not that hungry after our salad, but it’s like you said, this is our last chance to have tea in London. At least a fancy teatime.”

I peeked inside the conservatory room where harp music filled the room, as did an assortment of men and women and a few children sitting at the round, linen-covered tables with admirable posture and quiet voices.

“No,” I said. “We’ve experienced that adventure already. Let’s go see Ben.”

“So it’s boys over food,” Kellie said. “Now you’re acting like the fifteen-year-old who never gave up her first crush.”

I shrugged playfully, and off we went, fearlessly taking the underground to Westminster and going through the motions as if we knew exactly what we were doing. In a poetic-justice sort of way, I suppose we did know what we were doing. This was familiar territory now. We both had been this way before. Just not together.

I watched the faces of the people on the underground. Such an amazing variety.

Kellie and I exited without causing any sort of potential international incident, which was refreshing, and took the steps up to
the sidewalk. Like hibernating cave dwellers, we came out into the daylight and blinked in the brightness.

And there he was.

Looming straight, tall, and proud, with the late afternoon sky behind him turning a gentle shade of forget-me-not blue, Ben didn’t flinch.

I smiled.

“He’s handsome,” Kellie said.

“Yes, he is.”

We stood on a busy street corner, staring at the golden boy while double-decker red buses went through their daily paces and round-nosed black taxicabs carried important people to important meetings in important buildings.

“Do you want to get up close and personal with him first, or should we try to get into Westminster Abbey?”

I was torn. He was right there. I could walk a few blocks and be at his feet. That moment would be the fulfillment of my forty-year wish. But I dearly wanted to see the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. And if I remembered correctly, the Poet’s Corner closed earlier than the rest of the Abbey.

“I think we’d better visit Westminster Abbey first,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t want to miss seeing the Poet’s Corner.”

“Ben will still be here when we come back.”

We were about to cross the street and make our way to Westminster Abbey when Kellie said, “Wait. I see a photo op here.” She scurried over to a red phone booth.

I was thinking we should get to the Poet’s Corner first and take the phone booth picture later. The red booths were on nearly every street, so it wouldn’t be hard to have a photo op just about anywhere around London.

“Stand right there.” Kellie pulled out her camera.

“Wouldn’t it better if I posed inside the booth?”

“No. Right there, outside the booth. Ready? Smile.” She clicked the photo, had a look at it on her digital playback screen, and said, “Perfect. Now would you take one of me?”

We switched places, and the minute I lined up the camera to take the shot, I saw what Kellie had in mind. From this phone booth, the view of the side of Big Ben was ideal. Double-decker buses and London cabs flowed with the traffic in the street between us and the Houses of Parliament. Kellie had a good eye. I had always known that. She had picked a great location for a memorable shot of all that typifies London.

Picking up the pace, we arrived at the entrance to Westminster Abbey a slim three minutes before the final admittance into Poet’s Corner. We entered the massive, ornate cathedral, and in a hushed voice, Kellie said, “Tell me what we’re looking for in here. I didn’t read anything about this place, so tell me what you know.”

“I know that Westminster Abbey has been the location of Christian worship for more than a thousand years.”

“Seriously?”

“It wasn’t always this grand, of course.”

“A thousand years. I can’t even imagine that,” Kellie said.

“I know. And if I remember correctly, this is where the sovereign rulers of Great Britain have celebrated coronations, burials, and all official ceremonies for hundreds of years.”

“Were Charles and Diana married here?”

“No, that wedding was at St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

Glancing around inside the main area, we could see why St. Paul’s was selected for Charles and Diana’s wedding. Westminster Abbey was regal and reverence inducing with the rows of wooden pews and an impressive altar at the front. But it looked as if the seating could accommodate a thousand people at most. That may have been sufficient seating in ages past, but modern events of historic significance required space for multiple thousands.

I directed Kellie to hurry to the entry for the Poet’s Corner. “This is where Chaucer was buried,” I said. “After that, it became the favored location inside the abbey to bury other authors and poets.”

“Remind me again who Chaucer was,” Kellie whispered.

“The author of
The Canterbury Tales.”

“Oh, right. So who else is buried here?”

“I don’t remember, but I know that some authors are buried elsewhere, like Shakespeare, but they have a memorial here.”

Kellie stopped walking on the echoing marble floors and looked around at the limestone walls and various statues. A
soothing, golden glow came through a nearby window. The clouds had skipped out of town, and the sun was back, warming up the sky once again.

“This place has a strong beauty,” she said. “Isn’t that what Annette called it? This place feels old, solid, and strong.”

We stepped over to a statue of Shakespeare and examined it.

“I wonder if he really looked like that,” Kellie said. “Because I pictured him differently.”

“In what way?”

“I think I’ve always pictured Shakespeare as the embodiment of all the strong characters he wrote about.”

“If that were the case, in what ways do you think he would look different from this statue?” I asked.

“He would be a lot taller.”

I smiled. “Hooray for modern medicine and vitamins.”

“True.”

We slowly made our way through the rest of the abbey, with Kellie going one direction while I went another. I was on my own literary appreciation tour. I looked down and saw a plaque inset in the floor. The name on the plaque was Charles Dickens. I smiled and whispered, “Thank you, my friend, for all the wonderful stories you wrote.”

As I continued around the small chapel, I nodded at the Brontë sisters’ memorial in the stained glass and said “thank you” to Rudyard Kipling for
The Jungle Book
. I winked at Jane Austen’s
memorial, feeling only pride and no prejudice against any of the collected authors in this small, sacred space.

These were the storytellers who had filled with hope the most challenging time of my life. I felt as if I had “met” all these dear people during my months of convalescence, and now I was here, alive and healthy four decades later. Their stories took me outside and away from my precarious illness. Today I was inside and near to the memory of what they had contributed to the world.

I stood back and took in the whole of the Poet’s Corner. In my research the week before, I had concluded that the British Empire built its greatest monuments out of paper and pen since literature was England’s longest-lasting contribution to history and the arts. Great Britain’s literature had certainly made a long-lasting contribution to my life.

With a final smile of appreciation to the writers represented in this hallowed place, I thought,
Dearest England, you have a treasure box for your memories. And this is it
.

Kellie slid up next to me. “I’m ready to go when you are.” Then she spotted the tears that had welled up in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. Even my closest friend couldn’t understand the happiness I felt in this place. That was okay. She didn’t need to understand or even try to share it with me. This was a full circle for me, and I felt as if, in a sweet way, the Lord had given me this moment to remind me of His faithfulness over all these
years. My dormant wish had come true at a time when I needed to believe all over again.

And what I found myself believing was that God, my heavenly Father and Lord, had His hand on my life. He had a few wishes yet to come true for me.