Falling in Love with English Boys

by Melissa Jensen

  So, here’s what I learned by the time we got to Portobello Road:

  • He finished a year ago at a place he calls “Charterhouse” (I’ll assume it’s a school and has nothing to do with steak) and just returned last week from a backpacking trip through Tibet.

  • He would have given it all up to become a Buddhist monk, would he not have had to give it all up. “All,” he mentioned, included bacon, Guinness, and the plasma screen he has come to worship after the last World Cup series. “All,” I’m sure, also includes killer sex with beautiful women with names like Imogen or Consuelo. Boys like this have sex like that.

  • He’s staying at his family’s flat “in Town” for a few weeks before going “home” to Somerset, then he starts university at St. Andrew’s at the end of the summer. He wants to study philosophy. And finance. Clearly he’s a compassionate corporate type.

  • He doesn’t like tea (which posed a minor challenge in Tibet), excessive perfume, or American football. He likes Reese’s candy (a moderate challenge in the UK), English football, and Voltaire.

  • His hair, in the sunlight, looks like polished mahogany, only way softer.

  We walked through Portobello Market. Will says it will be insane tomorrow, with half of London’s dubious antiques and happy, conspicuous consumers cramming the street. But it’s pretty cool on any day. Lots of people wearing funky clothing, buying funky clothing, and a veggie market that is colorful enough to make you blink. I bought a little basket of perfect, purple-black plums and a copy of a Stella McCartney hat (a copy, not a fake, I feel compelled to reiterate, although Mom gave it the evil eye nonetheless); Will tried on a Stetson—originally made, the vendor informed me, in Philadelphia—whaddaya know? (See pix.) He didn’t buy the hat.

  We ended up in a little café where the girl behind the counter had an inch of spiky green hair, a fishhook through her right eyebrow, and a tattoo of a dragon on her forearm. She demanded “Can I help yez?” with a friendly snarl. Will ordered our drinks and the two of us stood staring into the glass case, overwhelmed by the sheer excessiveness of the sugar-chocolate-pastry choices there. Green snapped her gum and waited almost patiently. I had to take a picture of the bounty. She leaned into the shot and bared her teeth. (See pix.)

  Then this tiny, round woman with a face like a walnut came out of the back and handed Green a clean coffeepot. She rattled off something in a language that sounded like a cross between Russian and Navajo. The girl chirped back, the old woman patted her cheek and trundled back out of sight.

  “My gran says to have the kugel. She baked it with love.” Green rolled her eyes at this, but I could tell it was with love, too. We had the kugel. I wanted more. I kept that information to myself.

  I picked the table. They were all tiny, but this one was in a corner, so we pretty much had to sit next to each other, instead of across. Clever, no? My cleverness does tend to have a limit. I couldn’t not ask: “All this stuff you’re giving my mom. Have you read it?”

  “Some of it,” Will answered.

  “And? Dull as dirt, right? I mean, I know it’s your family, but I’ve read the beginning of Katherine’s diary, and it’s better than Ambien.”

  He had his coffee mug (cream, no sugar; like the “berk” I am, I actually ordered tea, nuthin’ in it, to Green’s visible if amiable scorn) cupped in his hands. I thought that mug’s gotta be hot, and that if he cupped my hand like that, it would totally disappear. “Not Bridget Jones, maybe, but a pretty straightforward account of her life.”

  “Tons o’ fun for the fan of minutiae. But, who cares? Other than my mom.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe no one. Still, think about it. She didn’t expect anyone to read her diary, so she was uncensored. Unselfconscious.” Oh, that dimple! “Can you say the same about your blog?”

  Smart-ass. Smart boy. It’s fortunate I like smart boys. Especially ones with floppy shiny hair that smells like ginger ale.

  “Blogs,” sez I, “are our generation’s contribution to the Great Global Village. Think about it. We share knowledge, commentary, threads to follow for even higher knowledge. Like, I link to the BM, and maybe someone follows it and learns that Lord Elgin stole the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, and maybe they find a reference to the fact that Lord Byron thought that was criminal, and wrote a poem about it . . . ” Sadly, I had to stop there, as I had expended my knowledge of the Elgin Marbles and Byron’s anti-Elgin poem.

  “Impressive. How many people read your blog?”

  I debated lying. Decided against it. “Only six. But it’s password-protected. Private.”

  “Like a diary.”

  “Well, yeah . . .”

  “Only censored.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And self-conscious.” He reached out and lifted my chin, really gently with one finger. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d just put my face down because I’d remembered the zit. It got his hands on me. “We only tell the secrets we secretly want not to be secret, right? And learn as much from what isn’t told.”

  So. Is that deep because it’s deep? Or because the resident philosopher is brain-numbingly cute?

  What we learned during the next half hour:

  • I don’t like tea, either. That made him laugh.

  • My birthday is in two weeks. I want my own satellite. That made him laugh.

  • I make him laugh. He told me so. I assume in a good way.

  • I like catching people in unguarded moments for my pix. He has the same camera and hence was able to speedily delete the pic of him with kugel on his chin.

  • I read Bridget Jones in one sitting, have seen the movie a dozen times (I didn’t mean to tell him that Colin Firth is kinda hot; it slipped out—he laughed). He tried to read Bridget Jones last summer. Didn’t get it. Went back to Kierkegaard.

  • English is my fave subject, followed by French; history is my least.

  • History was his fave until he discovered philosophy, but what’s philosophy but pondering what dismal mistakes we made in the past and trying not to make them again? He acknowledges that we frequently fail and history repeats itself.

  • I rest my case.

  He sighed. Exasperated, but in that cute-guy-with-his-cute-companion way. “Dude,” he sez. “Dude—” sounding totally American. “You’re history. I’m history. Not yet, but soon enough. Don’t you want someone to be interested in you?”

  Yeah, I thought. You. Now.

  His phone beeped. He politely ignored it, but informed me, “I’m meeting some mates in Kensington. Football match.” He didn’t invite me to come along. He asked if I wanted more tea. Politely. I hadn’t finished the cup I had (some sugar would have helped, no doubt) and, agonizing as it was, decided to be wise and end the party while all parties appeared to still be enjoying themselves.

  He did, however, rest his arm on my seat back on the Tube again. And he walked me up four flights of the stairs to the door of the flat.

  “I’ll ring,” he said as he left. “We’ll have tea.”

  Okay, so the debate begins: no mention of a girlfriend. Hence, no girlfriend. But guys like this always have a girlfriend. Hence, there must be one. He said he’d ring. No girlfriend. He said we’d have tea, not a night of dancing with wild abandon in some steamy underground club. Girlfriend. I’m an optimist. No girlfriend. I have absolutely dismal luck with the males of the species. All of them. Girl—

  Oh, the hell with it. My friends, it is time. For that Question of Questions, ageless and timeless and all-important.

  Do You Think He Likes Me???

  26 May

  Once, long ago, there was a lively, pretty girl who wished to marry a handsome prince. She did, but was not content. She desired a child, a little prince. One was duly born to her, yet she was not content. A princess, then, she decided, would make all well. Yet when the princess arrived, she brought no contentment in her tiny pink fists. On the contrary, her mother saw in her all the joy and promise she herself had squandered
, and hence dedicated herself to being certain her daughter experienced nothing and was wary of everything . . .

  I am certain I am not alone in living this tale. Perhaps there is something that is altered with motherhood, something which turns the pretty, lively girls we know only from portraits into these odd, mortifying creatures who alternately smother and bully us.

  But I do not care to be philosophical. I would much rather be shopping. I am, however, confined at present to the house and, until such time as Mama sees fit to release me, must content myself with my diary, the occasional teasing presence of Charles, and the hope that Luisa Hartnell will call upon me.

  Mama is being thoroughly unreasonable. Perhaps if she knew the truth of my behaviour at the Bellinghams’, this ridiculous confinement would be justified. But she knows only that I went to the ball, against her wishes, and hence has decreed I should be allowed out only when she feels able to trust in my judgement (I really do not think she needed to add, “I wonder how you shall entertain yourself through the years, Katherine.”), and only then with proper supervision. I gather Charles is not considered proper supervision. Mama did not scold him for his part in my downfall. It didn’t matter a whit that he escorted me, and then abandoned me.

  Perhaps I ought to have begun her tale with, “Once upon a time, there lived a wicked witch.”

  In truth, I only know she was a different creature in her youth because of very vague memories and the fact that I once heard Papa, near tears, demanding of her, “What have you done to the lovely, sweet girl I married?” My heart ached for him. I could have smacked her myself when she replied:

  “Would not a better question be what you have done to her?”

  I know she was beautiful. I suppose she still is. But she hounds me with her rules and her warnings—against Adventurers (men who shall court me for the three thousand pounds I have from Grandmother Cavendish), against Ignorance (my own, primarily, although she seems to feel there is an epidemic of sorts sweeping England), against Complaisance (or is it “complacence”? I am not curious enough to interrupt the lectures to ask). Then, of course, there is bad drinking water, heavy application of face powder, pickpockets, spoiled fish, immoral acquaintances, gin, gossip, and the colour chartreuse. Heaven help me.

  I feel for Papa. It is she who keeps him away from home so often, I know it. She chases him out with her headaches and her waspishness and her writing, which is what he dislikes most of all. He cannot countenance a woman who cares only to speak of what she has read, or far worse, what she has written.

  “There is nothing so deadly dull as a bookish girl,” he has told me. “We men spend our youth waiting to be done with the tedium of school and governesses. Why on earth should we wish to repeat the experience with our wives? Be a fool, Katherine, be a vixen, but never a bluestocking.”

  I shall not. I shall not be bookish or dull. Nor shall I be changeable. I shall be steadfast in all things and shall be quite the same person at eight-and-thirty as I am now at eighteen.

  27 May

  Luisa visited this morning and was so charming to Mama and so persuasive, that I was allowed to attend a supper party at her house. I do love Luisa!

  It was a lively evening.We were all gathered together at one table, the familiar crowd. Mr. Eccleston was most silly, telling us of the day he and Mr. Baker spent rowing on the Serpentine. It seems Mr. Baker is composing a poem about water nymphs and required water. Mr. Eccleston did the rowing.

  “Why should he not?” Mr. Baker demanded of us all, his marvelous eyes alight. “He is the one with the brawn.”

  “And you with the brains, I suppose?” came Mr. Eccleston’s retort. “What sort of brains are required to know that standing up in a narrow rowboat is simply asking to be upset, hmm?”

  “It was a splendid line and needed to be cried aloft!”

  “It was a lost line,” Mr. Eccleston announced drily, “to water in my ears and your mouth.”

  Everyone laughed at the image of the pair of them flapping about in the water. “And nymphs?” Miss Eleanora Quinn asked. She has taken to wearing funny little sprays of peacock feathers in her hair. Luisa and I have debated the kindness of telling her that she resembles a startled finch. I am in favor; Luisa against.

  “We are all like birds, I expect,” was her reasoning,“inclined to flutter and preen when a gentleman we admire is nearby.” I have never seen her so much as flutter a lash. It would be most annoying if I were not secretly relieved that she shows no preference—in fact, she shows a disinterest—in Mr. Baker. She gets on very nicely with Charles, which is lovely, as it allows me to spend some evenings with two of the people I am most fond of, and even seems somewhat taken with Nicholas, which is quite beyond me.

  This evening, for her part, Miss Quinn was fluttering and twittering away at all the gentlemen. I would have been quite put out, but she flirts with Mr. Eccleston and Mr. Davison quite as much as she does Mr. Baker. “Were there no nymphs about to rescue you?” she asked him.

  “For water I go to Hyde Park,” Mr. Baker replied. I nearly dropped my lemonade (I do hope I will soon like champagne again!) when his eyes caught mine. “For nymphs, I have come here. To be rescued.”

  “But there is no water, sir,” I teased.

  “There are many more circumstances requiring rescue,” he answered.

  “To be sure,” said Mr. Pertwee. “Poverty!”

  “Conniving mamas with available daughters!” from Mr. McCoy.

  “Boredom,” Luisa added, and yawned prettily.

  “All true,” cried Mr. Baker with a toss of his curls, “but none of those are what I fear most!”

  “He’s positively terrified of a badly tailored coat,” Mr. Eccleston informed us.

  “I am terrified,” Mr. Baker began, and I leaned forward, “of nothing at all but solitude and an empty heart.”

  “What utter rot!” Mr. Eccleston laughed.

  “Oh, but such pretty rot,” Mr. McCoy added.

  Mr. Baker laughed with them, but his eyes met mine again.

  For the remainder of the evening, which went altogether too quickly, I could do little other than to ask myself, over and over again, “Is this how it feels?”

  I cannot bring myself to say aloud what it might be.

  As we all parted, Mr. Baker bowed low over my hand and he kissed it. I had not thought that the brief touch of lips to skin could feel so warm. I think I would very much like Thomas to kiss me again.

  I thought nothing could spoil the evening. I was, of course, wrong.

  Papa is spending much time with the odious Lord Chilham and, appallingly, does not seem to mind. In fact, he seems entirely happy with the situation. I confess I cannot quite reconcile Papa’s excellent taste in all matters with this odd friendship. His chosen acquaintances have always been from among the most elegant and discriminating crowd. The sort of persons he has always instructed me to emulate. Chilham is so much the opposite: boring, unfashionable, foolish. Yet Papa quite snapped at me when I suggested he might better enjoy an evening with the clown Grimaldi.

  “He is my cousin, Katherine, and a far more important personage in Town than you! It would serve you well to remember that. You will treat him with all due respect, miss.”

  There is a quandary. How does one treat someone with due respect, when they are due none? After all, the man sports odd-coloured waistcoats and his stockings bag at the ankles.

  I had scarcely arrived home from the supper party when Chilham burst from Papa’s library and came at me like a wasp to a violet. He has now taken to wearing his cravat so high and highly starched that he cannot lower his chin. I suspect he is unable to see the floor, for a corner of a particularly dangerous and vicious pink silk carpet nearly felled him. He flailed for an instant, thin arms and legs windmilling, before recovering.

  I did not laugh. My tightly laced corset helped. Papa’s warning helped more. His just-visible presence in the library door quite sealed the matter.

  “Good evening,
Lord Chilham,” I managed, trying not to fling myself backward when he reached for my hand. I feared there would be a terrible tug-of-war over my arm should he insist on grabbing me. The very idea of his putting his lips, or even his cold fingers, where Thomas’s had been was unthinkable.

  He reached, I twisted and curtsied. He reached again, then gave it up and bowed.

  “Cousin. You are looking uncommonly well.”

  I think I probably am. I am happy.

  He went on, “Do come and join your father and me in a glass of sherry and a bit of conversation.”

  How odd that when I so often desire my father’s company more than anything, at the moment I simply could not be bothered. “I thank you, sir, for the very kind and generous invitation, but I am quite fatigued. I would certainly only bore you with the silly prattle of the evening.”

  What utter rot, as Mr. Eccleston would say. Yet it was pretty rot.

  “Nonsense! I insist!”

  And I am not some meek little miss to be commanded so. “I assure you, my lord, I am poor company and must decline.” I am not certain I suppressed my yawn well enough; I caught sight of Papa scowling.

  Chilham really is especially unappealing when he pouts. Beneath the pudding hair, his face resembles that of a petulant infant. Yet he was not deterred for long. “Far be it from me to deprive you of your rest. I shall not, however, accept a refusal for tomorrow night. It would be my great pleasure to escort you to Vauxhall Gardens. Your father tells me you are most anxious to see the fireworks.”

  Yes, I was. I was very much looking forward to going with Papa. He promised. We should engage a box and have supper there under the stars, and watch the people—the soldiers and tradesmen and women of questionable virtue—until the fireworks display began.

  “I do not think—” I began. Father appeared fully in the doorway then, frowning fiercely. My goodness, he is intent on not offending this ludicrous—yes, titled—creature. “Oh, very well. Thank you, my lord.”