Falling in Love with English Boys

by Melissa Jensen

  One pigeon edged forward. It was noisily chastised by the others and crept back, clearly ashamed of itself.

  Will polished off his hot dog and eyed mine. I bared my teeth. He laughed. This time, when his phone trilled, he pulled it out of his pocket. “Sorry. It’s Bella.” Like I wouldn’t have guessed. At least he didn’t answer it. He even turned it off. What a guy. “So, what’s next on the agenda, mademoiselle?”

  “Bond Street?” I said hopefully. Dirty doves got nuthin’ on me. My shopping jones is edging back. Hallelujah.

  “Not a chance. I thought we could catch a play at the Royal, but then it occurred to me: What’s a place Katherine visited when compared to the place she lived? I promised Mum I would drive you and yours down for the weekend.” I turned all my attention to the delicious, fascinating, rapidly congealing hot dog. Will leaned over to look into my (no doubt blotchy) face. “You are coming, aren’t you? To Percy’s Vale?”

  Nope. No way. Not if the London sewers burst their pipes and carry off bella Bella in a flood of disfiguring muck. “Sure,” I heard slip out of my mouth. “I’m coming.”

  “Good.” He reached out a hand toward my face. It hovered near my cheek. “Um, Cat?”

  “Yes?” Yes. Absolutely. Go right ahead.

  “You have mustard. There.”

  “Oh. Right. Absolutely. Go ahead.”

  He wiped it off, then flopped back against the bench and tossed another fry to his adoring flock. It was gone in a momentary flurry of beaks and feathers.

  I had a thought, O my friends, while I sat there next to him. A thought about boys. A good one is kinda like a hot dog dropped in Rittenhouse Square. We are the pigeons.

  16 June

  We have received a letter from Charles, at last! How quickly it arrived, just five days after its dispatch.

  Brussels, June 11

  My Dearest Family,

  How odd it might seem for me to be here, waiting for battle, and having nothing to write of save pleasures. I cannot even speculate as to when I might be called to action, or called home. Everything we hear is rumour; we know not what is fact until after it occurs. There is rumour that the enemy is as near as Cambrai. Perhaps they are not so close, yet perhaps they are closer. Each day we wait for news that we are to move. I am restless. There will certainly be a battle, either here in Belgium, or nearby in France. The wait is interminable.

  You will be happy to hear, Kitty, that we are not lacking for marvelous entertainment. There is much more talk of social balls than cannonballs among our ranks. Why, not three nights past, I attended a most lavish ball given by Sir Charles Stuart. It was all very lively and very English. Even the Belgian ladies in attendance sported much British decoration. Sir Charles is a single fellow, disposed to be sociable and much inclined to do things on a grand scale. I daresay he is a career Diplomat in the making, destined to a life of politics and luxury in foreign climes. If he were but a few years younger, and I did not so despise the idea of you living abroad, Kitty, he might do for you. As it is, he filled his house with the best and brightest of the city. There was a splendid feast upstairs, dancing down. Wellington himself was there, kitted out with gold embroidery and all the trappings of a general.

  Yesterday, a group of us rode into the countryside, where we availed ourselves of the hospitality of a Monsieur Legrand and his family. He is a wealthy merchant who has made himself a fortune in carpets and lace. I shall try to send some back for you. His wife and daughters treated us as if we were royalty. I must say, women here are as charming and cultured as any I have met, and quite lovely, but I shall always prefer a good English rose. We had far too much roast and beer and rolled and groaned our way back to our billet. I confess I have developed a notable fondness for Belgian beer and chocolates.

  As soon as I have reliable news as to the Regiment’s movements, I shall write again. Until such time, be assured that I am merry and well fed and entertained.

  Yours ever,

  Charles

  He seems cheerful enough. I do not care for his certainty that there will be a battle, and soon. I shall have to hope for the best, that the French shall be stopped before they get any closer. It has happened before; Napoleon has been defeated. I can think of no reason it will not be the same now. Perhaps he is already so, the enemy all surrendered. I shall eagerly await the newspaper this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Perhaps I shall even encourage Mama to invite Nicholas for supper. He receives word from sources we do not possess and might know what even the newspapers do not.

  Yes, I believe I shall go and suggest it now.

  August 5

  Falling Slowly

  Tweets.

  catTcat: Will drives like maniac. Land Rovers wobble on curves. English country roads not good 4 girl w/inner-ear issues. Darkness does not help.

  catTcat: Between (s)mother and ride (didja know that means hottie-object-of-desire over here?), didn’t get going till after dinner.

  catTcat: Listened to Beatles whole way down, 2+ hours in wobbly car. Only thing Will, (s)mother, & I could agree on. Used 2 luv John.

  catTcat: Will sings. Not well but with enthusiasm. Shoot me, plz—(s)mother sang with him. Used 2 luv “8 Days a Week.”

  catTcat: Will brakes for anything in road. Am composing my obit in my head. “Bloved friend. Gr8 taste in shoes&shades; fatal at luv.”

  catTcat: Question for peanut gallery: Where does nausea become noble suffering become martyrdom?

  I’m practicing Twittering for the future: no London, no love, no need for long blog entries, right? It’s kinda like the haikus Mr. Djanikian had us writing, only it doesn’t have to be poetic. Just 140 characters or less.

  Wonder if there’s a site for haiku tweets.

  catTcat: Driving through the dark—heading for Will’s distant home—really gotta pee.

  or

  catTcat: Deep in countryside. Percy’s Vale is really old. Wireless access?

  or

  catTcat: First view of the house—fifty windows full of light—Kitty, are you here?

  Even in the dark, Percy’s Vale is beautiful (will send pix tomorrow). All honey-colored stone and mullioned windows and marble steps that have been so hollowed out by centuries of climbing feet that Will says you sometimes find tadpoles in them. I think he’s kidding. Maybe not.

  Will’s parents are pretty great. His mom is about six feet tall, and looks like a Swedish movie star. She sounds just like Consuelo. She wears black cashmere, even in July (not to complain, but it’s slightly glacial inside the house), covered with dog hair. Fortunately, the dogs are a quintet of black Labs, so the hair is not obvious unless you’re really close. Unfortunately, they slobber for five. Dog slobber on black. Not pretty. Dog slobber on my jeans. Not much prettier. Mrs. Percival (“Oh, don’t be ridiculous—call me Bronwen.”) writes books about sixteenth-century architecture. She met Mr. Percival (“HAL!” he bellowed when Will introduced us; apparently he’s both effusive and a little bit deaf from a lifetime of shooting big guns) when she was working on her master’s thesis and came to see Percy’s Vale. She and Mom hit it off within five minutes. They’re both fascinated by things old, obscure, and dusty.

  Mr. Percival . . . HAL! ...works with Prince Charles on promoting organic farming. It occurred to me that he could probably get me somewhere where Prince William is likely to be. I’m still thinking about whether to pursue that. He looks like a slightly shorter, slightly wider version of Will. He wears orange Crocs and smells (not ickily, surprisingly) of compost.

  Will’s sister, Caroline, is a copy of their mother, minus the dog hair. She’s thirteen. She seems friendly enough, in a thirteen-year-old sort of way. Meaning she stopped texting long enough to give my jeans and T-shirt the (approving—thanks, H&M&Elizabeth) once-over, ask if I’ve ever been to a Jonas Brothers concert, then disappeared back into her room.

  I give them all props for being sociable at ten o’clock. They even tried to feed us. Will’s dad disappeared for ten minutes, then came b
ack with this massive tray full of cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, curry-flavored crisps, and pink-topped cupcakes. HAL! plunked down the tray, plunked himself down, and sat smiling at us like the entire measure of his life’s success depended on our enjoying his colorful offering. I tried. Really, I did. Fortunately, Will ate three sandwiches and most of the cupcakes. My picking was enough.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t much of Mary left here,” HAL! told Mom as soon as he was satisfied we were eating and could turn his attention to other matters. “You’re welcome to dig around, but I did have a look. Found a few books, but sod-all else. Everything went to the BM when my grandfather died.”

  Seems the old guy had a hard time letting go of anything. On top of several centuries of family papers, he left behind fifteen hundred issues of the Times, ninety-nine broken flowerpots (he was an avid gardener; his wife managed to get a groundskeeper into the greenhouse every five years or so to dispose of empty seed packets, out-of-date almanacs, and whatever pots had broken during that period), and his own university wardrobe.

  “He left Oxford in 1910,” Bronwen announced. “Half of the tweed suits had knickers.” Her own legs go on forever, and I’m pretty sure her black wool pants cost more than my entire wardrobe put together. “Everything weighed an absolute ton.”

  “It was all from Savile Row,” HAL! informed us a little sadly. “Lasts forever.” I get the sense he’s a bit of a hoarder himself. There is a dramatic number of out-of-date ecology magazines and single wellies around the house.

  While the ’rents discussed the future of England’s past, Will and I took the dirty dishes into the big, modern kitchen and loaded them into the big, modern dishwasher. The dogs wriggled and rolled and thwapped us with their tails until we gave them the last sandwiches. They are truly appreciative of HAL!’s cooking. Will told me there’s a cook who comes in daily. She comes before lunch and leaves after dinner. Bronwen, apparently, burns water. Leaving it to HAL! to happily feed whatever hapless persons arrive during off-hours.

  “So, want a tour?” Will asked. Finally. Despite the fact that it was pushing eleven. “I’ll show you the best parts of the house.”

  “Got any secret passages?” I joked.

  “Absolutely. Dungeon, too.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re kidding.”

  He wasn’t kidding. “Old house. Illustrious ancestors.” He grabbed a flashlight (‘scuse me: “torch” as in “carrying a torch for you”) and led the way to a narrow flight of stairs that stretched up and down endlessly, very dark, most creepy.

  He flicked a switch. There was flowered wallpaper lining the stairwell in both directions.

  We didn’t end up in either a secret passage or a dungeon. We ended up going up and out a third-floor dormer window onto the roof.

  Big roof. Big. Long way down. “Mind the shiny bits,” Will told me. “They can be slick.” I looked around frantically for shiny bits, but all roofs look pretty much the same to me late at night, fifty feet in the air. Will clambered between the oxidized copper panels like a deranged orangutan. “Here. Give me your hand.”

  I might have enjoyed that little bit of hand-holding (“I wanna hold your ha-a-a-a-and . . .”) had I not been a tad concerned with going over the edge. Which, I gotta be truthful here, was a good ten feet away. Finally, we reached a little alcove. Will sat down and pulled me with him.

  “My favorite place in the house.”

  It was pretty amazing. Even in the dark, you can see plenty. Like car headlights shining along the twisting roads, houses with one or two windows lit, houses with ten or twenty. And overhead, a gazillion stars.

  O, my urban cohorts—I always forget what it’s like to be outside, outside the city, until I’m actually there. I scanned the sky for anything I recognized from those (in)formative summers at Camp Dark Waters. (Remember the mosquitoes, Djenan? The archery? The archery-teaching counselor??? So hot.) “I think that’s Pegasus.” I pointed. All us girls at camp learned that one. Must’ve had something to do with twelve-year-old pony obsessions. “And Capricorn. And, hey—that really bright one might be Venus.”

  “Ah, I think that might be an aeroplane, actually.”

  “Smart-ass.” But yeah, Venus was moving at a pretty impressive clip for a planet.

  There is nada whatsoever like the night sky to make a girl feel small. I shivered.

  “Cold?” Will asked.

  To be completely honest—no. I swear it’s ten degrees warmer outside the house than in. “A little,” I said. ’Cause I had a suspicion that good things might come of a little white lie. And one did. Maybe not the best good thing, but not bad. Will whipped off his sweater and helped me into it. Like scrunched it up so I could get it over my head, then pulled it down when I had my arms in. It was warm from his body and smelled like his hair.

  I snuggled in. In the distance, I could just see a red-orange glow. “What’s that?”

  “Bonfire. Happens a lot in the summer.”

  I thought of PBS shows about earnest people in big hooded cloaks, dancing around fires and chanting about earth goddesses and phases of the moon. “Wiccans? Druids?”

  “Nah. Most people vote Conservative ’round here. This lot is more likely to be in chain mail and helmets. It’s an Iron Age hill fort. Legend has it, King Arthur had his court there.”

  “Wait, wait. That’s Camelot? You live near Camelot?”

  “Entirely possible. The era’s right, and that’s the River Cam there. But no one actually calls it Camelot.”

  “What, then?”

  He was kinda leaning against me now, his shoulder against mine. I couldn’t help it; I kinda tilted my head until I felt his jaw bump against the top of it. I could feel my hair catching just a little in the sandpapery shadow of whiskers that guys have late at night. I could get used to this. I could so get used to this—

  “It’s Cadbury Castle. Our village is South Cadbury.”

  And there it was. Cadbury. My chocolate. Will’s village. Camelot and knights and Once Upon a Time. I wanted it. To sling my bag into the back of Will’s Land Rover and come down for the weekend. Most weekends. To be welcomed so warmly by the effortlessly cool mom and the funny, contented dad. Like I belonged. Like I’m sure Bella has been for three years. I wanted all of it. I mean, who wouldn’t? And Will. Oh, Will . . .

  I jerked away so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. What was I thinking? I mean, could I be any more pathetic than to melt like cheesy cheese over a guy who, while always incredibly nice to me, is givin’ the goods to someone else?

  “Cat? You all right?”

  Oh, yeah. Peachy, thanks. “Fine,” I told him (I’m sure a little shrilly). “Thought I was going to sneeze.”

  And so it is, O my friends, that I have ended up in this amazing house, with this amazing guy, near bleeping bleeping CADBURY Castle. There should be neon going off everywhere: SignSignSign. Only. It’s. Not. And I don’t get to keep any of it.

  To add insult to injury, Will produced a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar from somewhere and gave me the bigger half.

  We stayed out for another hour. Here’s what we talked about:

  • He actually knows most of the constellations. Charterhouse had a midnight astronomy class for seniors. Just like Hogwarts.

  • He’s read all seven Harry Potter books (fave is Azkaban), but he was a late bloomer, not even reading the first one until two years ago when he and Bella and a group of friends went skiing and he sprained his ankle on the second day. He finished the last one in a sleeper car on the Edinburgh Sleeper train, speeding from London to Scotland through the night. He was sure he saw J. K. Rowling at a café later the next day, but readily admits that, considering his complete lack of sleep the night before, it might just as easily have been a local barrister or meter reader on her lunch break.

  • His grandfather is called Harry, but it’s short for Harold (as is HAL!). There have been a good dozen Harold Percivals in the family’s written history, as well as nine Williams and at least fif
teen Charleses. Seven of whom lived between 1760 and 1860, fathers and sons and uncles and cousins.

  • Hence he has no idea whether Katherine’s brother survived Waterloo.

  • He doesn’t know what happened to Katherine after the diary days, either.

  • He’s game to search the house tomorrow for clues, Scooby-Doo.

  • There are forty-six rooms in the house.

  • I waited at Head House Books for three hours with the posse to make sure we got copies of Deathly Hallows before 12:05 a.m. Cried so hard during the last few chapters that when I went to reread it last summer, a bunch of the pages were wrinkly and stuck together.

  • My fave Scottish writer is still James Herriot.

  • One of my first memories is watching Dr. No with my dad, who will turn violent at the suggestion there is any James Bond other than Sean Connery.

  • He wanted to name me Honor after Honor Blackman, who played a character named Pussy Galore, and it had absolutely nothing to do with pornography.

  • That, apparently, caused the first of several parental near divorces before the real thing occurred.

  • I’m named after my great-great-grandmother, who was thrown in jail not once, not twice, but six times for marching for women’s right to vote.

  • Despite Kelly and Jen’s best efforts, the only protest I’ve ever really been involved in (the D.C. wandering-among-PO’d-librarians doesn’t really count) was a petition to keep Diet Coke in the vending machines at school.