Falling in Love with English Boys

by Melissa Jensen

  Here’s what I forgot:

  • My keys. With an hour to go before Mom would be home.

  • My “mobile” (cell phone). Ditto.

  • That there really is a great big park a (shot-putter’s) stone’s throw away.

  • Cute boys can frequently be found kicking around a football in a park.

  • “Football” here is soccer.

  • Soccer can be fun to watch for an hour. Especially when cute boys are playing.

  And . . .

  • Netflix doesn’t deliver to the UK. Hence The Lovely Bones, Say Anything, and Season Two, Disc One of Twin Peaks are, as I type, in the Philly apartment with the rest of our mail, where they will remain, unwatched (unless the Kazakhstani professor is opening our stuff) for the next ten weeks. Sheesh.

  That’s me, the Cadbury Flake.

  July 1

  Smiley Faces

  Lord Byron really was a hottie. Even by 21st century standards. Who knew?

  Mom took the morning off from the BM and we went to the National Portrait Gallery. I gotta say, it was pretty cool. It’s all about faces, really, famous ones. So you walk in and up these grand stairways, and it’s just a museum: parquet floors, walls painted eggshell blue or eggplant or forest green, all these big gold frames. Then you look, and there’s Henry VIII, fat and smug-looking, and you just know who it is because he’s the second one you learn about in English History (after Queen Elizabeth I, his daughter, and looking at his face, you know it would have totally chapped his hide to know his daughter is the first). So there’s Henry, surrounded by all his wives, including the two he had beheaded, and they’re all in these heavy, heavy dresses covered with pearls, and none of them are very pretty, and I gotta say, after Anne Boleyn, they all look a little bit anxious.

  More things gleaned from a day staring at portraits of famous British people:

  • Shakespeare had an earring.

  • David Beckham has two.

  • If you look into Mary Queen of Scots’s eyes, you can imagine her wanting to rule all of Britain.

  • If you look into Elizabeth I’s eyes, you can imagine her knocking off Mary without a second thought.

  • You get the sense, judging from all the fur on everybody, that life in all those castles was a tad chilly. Small island, big ambition, big enemies. Hence a propensity for making themselves look as big as possible (you know, like a puffer fish or puffed-out cat). Big hats, big hair, big skirts, big codpieces (you look it up).

  • Winston Churchill didn’t always look like a bulldog.

  • Queen Victoria kinda did.

  • There’s lots of really cool, bling-y footwear in English history. On the men.

  • Queen Elizabeth II needs a stylist in the worst way.

  So, Mom and I are walking through the galleries, and my heels are making this embarrassingly loud clacking against this pristine floor, and then we’re in the Regency room, and there’s all this Byron. Byron looking pensive, Byron looking exotic, Byron looking kinda pale (marble bust). And cute. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” one of his lovers called him. I think I get it.

  Then there are these glass-topped display cases with big, black fabric flaps over them. You lift the flaps to see what’s inside. Mostly little oval portraits Mom sez were painted so people could carry them around, like we do in our wallets (I really have to remember to take that pic of me when I was two and they’d put me in a ladybug costume out of her wallet before she shows it to one more total stranger). And there’s the one famous portrait of Jane Austen. Just a small sketch, a pinched little face above these faint, crossed arms. Like she’s cold, or doesn’t want to be posing.

  Okay, okay, so I’m boring you. But go check it out. At least check out the cute poet: www.npg.org.uk

  One more thing. Mom’s subject, Mary Percival, is there, in that case. Not ’cause she was famous. She wasn’t. But the guy who painted the portrait, J.M.W. Turner, was. Major art museum, back-of-playing-cards famous. Mom thinks he was in love with her. Maybe. Either she really was that beautiful—masses of dark hair and this look that totally says I can teach you really important things—or the guy with the paintbrush was seriously smitten. Kinda cool. It was painted in 1806. Mom sez she was 35. She died before she was 45. Kinda sad.

  Anyway. Gotta go Google restaurants for my b-day. Dad will go for something “dead posh” (translation: “way fancy”). He’ll be here for almost a whole week. I see some honest-to-goodness shopping in my future. What does one desire most at seventeen . . . ?

  July 2

  Say

  And here’s a golden oldie for all you hopeless romantics out there. This one goes out from “George” to his “Mysterious Lady.” He wants to know if she’ll meet him tonight under the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Square . . .

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

  And all that’s best of dark and bright

  Meets in her aspect and her eyes . . .

  Wow.

  Found that in the one book on the shelf that does not revolve around mushrooms. Byron soitenly had a way with words. I guess that might give me a little tingle if someone wrote it for me.

  Off to the BM. Mom’s got some toothless and decrepit descendant of the Percivals coming in, who, as it turns out, lives in London. She thinks I’ll want to be there. Because I’m reading the diary, of course. I can wing it, right? It worked in Mr. Desmond’s class when I’d only read the first three chapters of The Grapes of Wrath. Unlike Adam the Scum (hmm . . . betcha this bookshelf has a tome on his ilk), I didn’t invoke the thematic significance of wine throughout the novel. This time, however, I’ll mention rum punch a few times, invoke Byron, and no one will be the wiser.

  Sigh.

  My social life has really hit rock bottom when I start rhapsodizing about a guy who’s been dead for almost two hundred years. And who probably quietly preferred boys to girls anyway. It’s lonely out here, folks.

  July 3

  Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)

  Interesting turn of events. As it turns out, “descendant” does not necessarily mean “toothless” or “decrepit.” As in, “The aforementioned descendant of the Percival family turns out to be a young gentleman, perhaps eighteen years of age, who might well, if one is neither completely blind nor utterly devoid of taste, be described as not half bad.”

  His name is William (hee!) Percival, known as Will. He is, by my estimation, six feet tall, remarkably blue-eyed, and has a real, honest-to-goodness dimple in his right cheek. Which I saw as the result of him laughing at me. Not in a totally bad way. I mean, he did actually help me up when I went flat onto my butt in front of him.

  No, no, allow me to set the scene for you.

  I’m half an hour late, having just navigated the recesses of the BM—starting from a notably small side door, down several corridors that would make a mouse dizzy, up two flights of stairs and down another (I’ll say this for the people who work at the BM: unfortunate workplace nickname aside, they are extremely helpful; a very short, tweeded-out gentleman who looked just like a mole actually guided me through the last half-mile maze), to just the sort of double glass-and-wood doors you’d expect to see in the bowels of this particular museum. “Dr. Vernon’s quarters,” sez Mole, with a cute little twitch of his nose. He totally belonged in a BBC costume drama.

  I figure, I don’t have to knock. Dr. Vernon is, after all, my (s)mother. So I heave open the doors, take one step into the room (one dusty window, dust, dust, more dust, and a couple of dusty tables with dusty stuff piled on them), and bam!, my feet go out from under me and next thing I know, I’m sitting down—hard—almost at the feet of this demigod who, from the look of the open mouth and outstretched arms, either tried to catch the flailing behemoth (read: me) that came flying at him, or stop it (read: me) from bowling him over.

  And my (s)mother, the one person who is supposed to shelter and protect me at all costs, to imply to all others th
at the sun shines out of my butt, doesn’t miss a beat. “William,” she sez, only just managing not to smile, “my daughter, Catherine. Cat, this is William Percival. He might be able to help me find Mary’s missing letters, so we’re being extra nice to him.”

  I think Tall, Dark, and Handsome tried not to smile. He failed. Then he said, “Old floors, terrible hazard,” only it sounded like “flaws” and “teddible hazahd,” gave me his hand, and pulled me up without even the tiniest grunt, and I swear I saw stars that had nothing to do with having gone down hard. Where do they learn to talk like that? And why, oh why, did I give up ballet in second grade?

  What I really want to know is why nothing else in that place has been cleaned in a century—but someone decides to wax the floor.

  Then Mom (and OMG, this was way worse than me falling!) actually said . . . (prepare to cringe), “I’m going to leave you two alone for a minute while I talk to Dr. Furball.” I think she added something about Dr. Furball being impossible to catch (and I think it’s actually Firble), but that horrible roar of humiliation was filling my ears by that point and I was praying for the waxed floor to open up and swallow me.

  We’re used to smooth Englishmen in the movies. I expected this very very English dude to be smooth. So smooth and unconcerned by the (s)mother’s unspeakably embarrassing behavior that he would whip out a chair for me and gracefully tell me all about his country estate, the mahvelous standing of the pound in the world economy, and why foxhunting really isn’t so bahd, hence making me forget that I am the graceless spawn of a clueless she-devil.

  He was grinning like an idiot. (Oh, that DIMPLE!) He did, however, clear off part of a desk for us to lean against, and ask me how I’m liking England.

  I’m guessing Mom was gone for five minutes. Here’s what he learned about me in that short time:

  • I do not particularly like England (his home, the home of his ancestors, the home of the Queen, her corgis, and Cadbury).

  • the names of my best friends, favorite chocolate bars, pond-algae ex-boyfriend, and dog.

  • I think the National Portrait Gallery is kinda like looking at a yearbook from the school you didn’t get into (do they even have yearbooks here?).

  • my mother is a hostile alien and must be destroyed.

  • my father is cool, but his habit of arriving forty-five minutes late to pick me up from ballet class every time somewhat hastened the demise of my balletic career.

  • I currently inhabit a “flat” full of books on fungus.

  • I am genetically incapable of keeping my mouth shut.

  So I finally ran out of breath, or my brain kicked back in, or something, and I shut up. He smiled and maybe, maybe was going to say something I would like. Then his cell rang and he very politely, with the appropriate apology, answered it. His face promptly lit up and, although he very politely, and with the appropriate apology, told whoever was at the other end that he was busy, he arranged to call them back in fifteen minutes and hung up. As if on cue, Mom reappeared. The rest goes something like this:

  William: “I’m afraid I have to be going. It was a great pleasure meeting you, Catherine.”

  Me: “Erk.” (or something to that effect)

  William: “Dr. Vernon, I hope those papers will be of some help to you.”

  Mom: “I’m sure they will. Thanks so much for bringing them. Are you sure you can’t stay and join us for lunch? Catherine?”

  Me: “Erk.” (or something to that effect)

  William: “I wish I could, but . . .”

  And then he was gone.

  Here’s what I learned about him:

  Nada.

  I will never see this boy again. If he sees me, he will run screaming. When I see me, I will run screaming. My butt hurts. Ain’t life just a bag of gummy worms left open in the sun?

  16 May

  Someone gave this charade to Mr. Pertwee, who gave it to Miss Quinn, who gave it to Miss Hartnell, who gave it to me. I confess I have been puzzling over it for quite some time, with no success. How very vexing! I believe I know well enough how my Season shall end, but I daresay I will find this riddle most diverting nonetheless.

  How Seasons May End, by A Gentleman

  My first may come before your Comfort or your Pleasure.

  My second leads you, Miss, and begins your Vow.

  My third, after your Needle, is a skill one might treasure.

  My last shall be behind you should you Commit or Depart now.

  Charles imbibed too much port last night and said one good riddle would quite do his head in. Mama is so clever at this sort of thing, but she is unwell and has taken to her bed with her chamomile tisane and her lap desk. With much reluctance, I showed it to Nicholas when he arrived to collect Charles (who is not so ill, apparently, that he cannot attend the races). He gave it the most cursory glance, and when I complained that I have been trying to work it out all morning to no avail, and that I believe I shall do best to put it aside, the wretched man merely said, “Not at all. In your case, you would do best to try harder.”

  He would do best to try harder as well—at any semblance of civility!

  I am quite out of sorts now. I believe I shall take my needlepoint and go sit in the garden. I feel the urge to impale something.

  July 4

  (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding

  Part Un: Grosvenor Square

  The scene:

  Me. Still utterly humiliated by my disastrous meeting with the cute English boy. Thinking I’ll go to Hyde Park and either drown myself in the Serpentine, the little river that runs through it (note to all who might care: the Serpentine is apparently only waist-deep at most points), or head farther south and gaze longingly at the Harvey Nicks cosmetic counters. I’m feeling a blue (liner) moment coming on.

  And I gotta get some walking in. Cadburys, y’know.

  So southward do I tromp. Right into Grosvenor Square, as usual, home of the American embassy and antiwar protests. There’s one going on, as usual, but also as usual, I didn’t pay any attention to the date when I got up this morning. Check the date, ladies. This was the biggest, loudest, angriest protest I’ve personally ever seen.

  So I’ve kinda forgotton about eye shadow for the moment. I’m standing next to this incredibly pretty girl who looks like she should be in a Bollywood musical, only she’s wearing cargo pants and a killer silver shirt with a peace sign on it, and thinking I would give up chocolate forever to have her boobs, and just deciding I had to ask where she bought her shirt when this crazy big black car complete with tinted windows and motorcycle escort comes driving out of some hidden orifice. The police (I dunno if they were all really the police or something far more serious, ’cause they had guns . . . like no bobbies the BBC ever showed us) are holding the crowd back. Like anyone’s really pushing. Just lots of shouting, much of which I wouldn’t repeat. Half because I couldn’t understand what they were saying (I don’t think “oigly” is a word, even in Cockney), and half because it was so angry (several possible new meanings for “slag” discovered) I felt it in my stomach.

  Then I see this little tiny girl—not really a girl, I guess. Maybe eighteen, but tiny. Hair like a baby chick—you know, yellow, and fluffy and spiky at the same time. She had on this huge, shocking pink jacket that made her look even smaller, but totally made her visible. So she wiggles her way to the front, all five foot nothing of her. And heaves something at the car. At first I thought it was a bomb. I think a lot of people thought it was a bomb, judging from the number of angry folk who suddenly looked terrified and hit the deck. Then I thought it might be a paintball, ’cause it hit the windshield with a huge splat. An actual splat. And the car was covered with something wet and red, and people were gasping and laughing and cheering.

  She threw a grapefruit.

  Her aim was incredible. So was her arm. The Phillies could use her in center field. But what I kept thinking, keep thinking, is how incredibly enraged this little tiny perso
n must have been to throw a piece of fruit with so much force that it was pulverized. Wow.

  Of course the police were right there, shoving into the crowd after her, but more Bollywood: everyone squeezed in, a big, colorful, rippling wave of people moving inward, swallowing her completely. She was just . . . gone.

  The minute after was the weirdest thing. Everyone stepped back, quiet and orderly, and so polite that you just knew you were in London. Then someone shouted, “Hey, hey, U.S.A., you don’t rule the world today!” and it all erupted again.

  Suddenly Hyde Park didn’t seem quite so appealing. Fuzzy socks and a corner of the sofa, yup. Chocolate, absolutely. Eye shadow, not so much. I decided to pay a visit to Mr. Sadiq, stock up on Curly Wurlies, and comb the BBCs for some reruns of All Creatures Great and Small.

  I don’t know if it really was there, but as I headed back toward Oxford Street, I thought I saw an empty pink jacket crumpled on the ground at the edge of the square. People kept stepping on it. It’s seriously un-sunny today. Someone that little will be cold.

  Part Deux: Mr. Sadiq’s shop

  I was debating between Curly Wurlies and Bounty. Mr. Sadiq had, with a small smile and no prompting, put an OK! in a bag (I’ve already read the current Hello!), and was waiting patiently for me to make my choc choice.

  “May I suggest something a bit different today?” he asked after I’d walked back and forth in front of the display for five minutes.

  I never got to hear what his suggestion was. The door of the shop banged open, and a girl breezed in. The gorgeous, peacechested girl from the protest. She didn’t see me, but lifted herself half over the counter, smooched Mr. Sadiq on the cheek, and then started talking a mile a minute. I expected her voice to be lyrical, musical, full of cardamom and cinnamon and silk.