Nannyland

by Jane Elizabeth Hughes

  It all started with the vicar. Pamela had come over for tea and a discussion of the wedding plans. “I spoke with Vicar Gibbons, and he tells me you haven’t even talked to him yet!” she said to me accusingly.

  “That’s because the vicar isn’t performing the ceremony,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “Not performing the ceremony? Why on earth not?”

  “Because I’m Jewish. We plan to be married here, in the great hall, by a justice of the peace.”

  Lady Olivia’s teacup clattered onto the saucer, the first clumsy move I had ever seen her make. Pamela’s face drained of color.

  “Forgive me, Miss Greene,” Lady Olivia said with an obvious effort. “Did you say that you are Jewish?”

  I nodded, unsurprised by her reaction. In New York City, being Jewish was as un-exotic as being human. I knew that things were different here, though.

  “But my dear, I thought that Jews prefer to marry other Jews, isn’t that so?”

  “Not always.”

  “Does my son know that you are Jewish?” she went on.

  “Of course!”

  “Forgive me, my dear, but this is most unexpected and most distressing. We must think how to handle this.”

  “There is nothing to handle,” I said firmly. “We are being married by a justice of the peace who went to school with John.”

  Lady Olivia shook her head. “It will never do,” she said. “I will take this up with my son.”

  — – — – —

  “I hate her,” I hissed at John that night. I had run out to greet him as soon as his car pulled up, heedless of the inky darkness and the cold rain.

  “Of course you do,” he said agreeably. “Come on, my girl, let’s get you inside.”

  “She hates me, too.”

  “Of course she does.”

  “And Henry’s afraid of her.”

  “He’ll survive.”

  “She keeps calling him Viscount Bradgate, and he keeps looking around and saying, ‘Who?’ ”

  John laughed.

  “And when she found out that I’m Jewish, she—”

  He pushed open the big door and turned to face me. “How did she find that out?”

  “Pamela wanted to know why I hadn’t spoken to the vicar.”

  He sighed. “I wish you hadn’t told her that. Couldn’t you have made up a story about my old friend coming to marry us?”

  “And couldn’t you have defended me to your mother?”

  “Why on earth should I do that?” he rejoined, genuinely surprised. “You’re quite capable of defending yourself.”

  I paused, obscurely pleased. But still. “Are you afraid of your mother?” I challenged him.

  “Of course not. Life is just much easier if she is unprovoked. Don’t you Americans have a saying about that? Don’t poke the bear?”

  “And don’t you British have a saying about keeping a stiff upper lip and carrying on?”

  “That was in regard to the Battle of Britain,” John said stiffly.

  “And your mother is more intimidating than Nazi bombers.”

  “Jordy, I feel that this conversation is becoming unproductive—”

  We broke off, glaring at each other. Fortunately, we were interrupted by Lady Olivia herself, who swept into the great hall with a regal air. “John, dear,” she greeted him. “We must talk.”

  — – — – —

  When he got into bed that night, he tried to put his arm around me. Rudely, I pushed him away and turned on my other side.

  “My mother gave in. We’re getting married by a justice of the peace,” he said.

  “Damn right we are,” I agreed.

  I could feel him searching for something to say. Finally, he gave up. “So, no sex tonight?” he said into the silence.

  I snorted.

  “Very well,” said the British milord, and we went to sleep.

  — – — – —

  Lady Olivia left two days later, to our mutual relief. Astonishingly, John seemed to bear no ill will after I refused him in bed. Lucian would sulk and fume until either I gave in out of sheer weariness or he pressed me down and forced me. But perfectly equable, John went back to London, and I went back to staring blankly at the title page of my purported book. John’s solicitor had sent me a brusque email ordering me to forward all communications from New York to him (which I was glad to do) and not to share my memoir with anyone (easy, since the memoir was nonexistent). His next email requested my AmCan Bank log-in information, informed me that he had hired a private investigator and computer forensics specialist in New York, and directed me not to worry. I wanted to tell him that he should be worrying: Both my research and my solicitor had informed me that jail was unlikely, but Lucian in a fury was terrifying, and these steps were sure to enrage him.

  Anyway, I had much bigger things to worry about. The day before the “wedding” (I could only think of it in quotation marks, as if it were merely pretend), I arrived early at the girls’ school for afternoon pickup. I had concluded that it was far easier to let Lady Olivia and Lady Pamela make all the preparations for the blessed event; otherwise, they would criticize everything I did. Hadn’t Pamela been a grand event planner in London before her move to the Cotswolds? I certainly didn’t care what colors the flowers/table linens/cutlery were. I wasn’t one of those girls who’d grown up dreaming of her wedding day. Someone once gave me Wedding Barbie for a birthday, and my mother threw it down the trash chute to join the beheaded I Hate Math Barbie.

  So it was easy to be early for school pickup, since my book was more stalled than ever, and the barrage of emails from my former colleagues in New York had slowed to a trickle after my meeting with the highly efficient Mr. Bramstock. I got out of the car to stretch my legs and gaze out over the immaculately manicured playing fields, where girls in dark blue skirts and blazers ran about with pigtails flying and squeals resounding. They seemed to be playing some version of four square, the game I remembered playing with my schoolmates at Brearley. The Brearley girls were all model-thin, though; some of these girls still had some puppy fat. How refreshing.

  I took off my sunglasses and squinted, trying to find Mary or Katherine in the idyllic setting. The girls were more Mary’s size than Katherine’s, and I found myself wanting to see Mary running and carefree and giggly. I finally spotted her sitting alone on a bench at the edge of the playing field, apathetically watching the other girls at their games. I put my sunglasses back on and walked over to her. “Mary, why aren’t you playing? Are the other girls being mean to you?” At Brearley, any imagined transgression (getting a bad haircut, wearing last season’s boots) could get you banned from four square for weeks at a time.

  She shook her head. “I can’t play games.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of my asthma.” Her tone implied “duh.”

  “Why can’t you play if you have asthma?”

  She stared at me blankly. I stared back. Finally, she said, slowly and carefully, as if she were talking to the village idiot, “Because I can’t breathe. I could die.”

  I was dumbfounded. “Half the girls at my school had allergies and asthma, so they used inhalers. They were fine. Does your doctor say you can’t play games?”

  Her expression said that her doctor didn’t need to tell her that; any idiot would know. We were both saved by the bell, whose peal signaled the end of games. The other girls tossed the balls back to the eternally cheery games mistress, then began to collect the backpacks and jackets strewn along the edges of the field. Their rosy cheeks, flushed with the cold and the exercise, were a painful contrast to Mary’s pale, drawn face. A few called “bye” to Mary as they ran by to climb into the waiting Land Rovers and Jaguars on the roadway.

  I heaved a sigh. “Never mind. I’ll discuss it with your father.”

 
— – — – —

  “Mary can’t play games,” John said. “She has asthma.”

  “For God’s sake, this isn’t the nineteenth century! People with asthma compete in the Olympics. They win medals. They run marathons.”

  “Not Mary,” he retorted.

  “Has she seen a specialist?” I demanded.

  “There is no need for a specialist,” he said coldly. “Unlike in America, we don’t spend millions on tests only to be told there’s nothing they can do.”

  I paused, disconcerted. “John, you’re being positively medieval. Honestly, there’s a lot they can do for people with asthma. There’s medicine, and inhalers, and—”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No. Whatever you’re thinking, I said no.”

  Huh?

  “John.” I tried to sound reasonable. “Just look up ‘asthma’ online and you’ll see all kinds of articles about athletes with asthma, and dancers with asthma, and—”

  “No! I’m not taking my little girl to some doctor”—he spat out the word as if it were an obscenity—“so he can tell me she’ll be just fine, don’t worry about a thing, and then she’ll be dead an hour later. No! Do you hear me?”

  Oh my God. That must have happened with Aline. Some doctor must have told him not to worry, that it was just a routine birth, and then the unthinkable happened. Poor John. Poor Mary.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I understand.”

  There was a silence. I could almost feel his fury and embarrassment over the phone; fury that he’d given himself away, embarrassment that I had witnessed it.

  “Did I tell you what your mother and Pamela are planning now?” I asked brightly.

  He swallowed audibly. “No, what?”

  “They think it would be lovely to have swans walking around the grounds when the guests arrive.”

  He let out a sigh of exasperation. “Swans? In December?”

  “I threatened to call the SPCA.”

  “Good,” he said. “Listen, I have to dash, there’s a vote in three minutes. Talk tomorrow.”

  “Talk tomorrow,” I repeated. “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  — – — – —

  I had no intention of letting the matter rest there. I emailed my mother’s cousin Kath, who knew every doctor and lawyer in New York, and got the name of a specialist in childhood asthma on Harley Street in London. After the wedding, when I was legitimately her stepmother, I could take her there myself. I just had to think how to explain it to John.

  In the meantime, my life was getting very complicated. The “wedding” (yes, still in quotation marks) was on Saturday; my mother, her cousin Kath, and Kath’s wife, Charlotte, were all arriving on Friday.

  Kath was my very favorite relative—practically my very favorite person—in the whole world. Charlotte and Kath bickered more than the Grey girls did, but they had been together for nearly forty years and had created a stable, loving home in the year-round Provincetown community where they lived. Charlotte was a potter, Kath a lawyer who seemed to work only for clients who couldn’t afford to pay her, so they never had any extra money. Their house was festooned with fishing nets and battered buoys, and their living room decor included a lacerated dartboard of George W. Bush and the Saudi king holding hands. Kath didn’t have opinions, she had fiery passions, and she thought the Democratic Party was dangerously right-wing.

  I could only imagine how she and Lady Olivia would get on.

  Chapter 26

  MY MOTHER ARRIVED just after lunch on the day before the wedding in her usual style, surprising me with a fleeting resemblance to Lady Olivia as she stepped out of her chauffeured limousine. She air-kissed me on each cheek, told me she thought this wedding was a very bad idea, and proceeded up to her room to work on the launch plan for the tell-all memoir by Mikhail Baryshnikov.

  Kath and her wife arrived a few hours later in their usual style, pulling up in a wheezing taxi with Kath grumbling that they could have walked from the train station (two and a half miles) and Charlotte soothing that it was only to save her own weak knees. Kath slapped me on the back, telling me that this wedding was a terrible idea, and Charlotte presented a smooth cheek to be kissed. Then they proceeded up to their room to nap away the jet lag while insisting that they never napped; they were only resting their eyes.

  An hour later, my mother-in-law-to-be, Lady Olivia, stepped out of a chauffeured limousine. She didn’t even bother with air kisses before proceeding to her room, no doubt to commune with the outraged ghosts of Grey nobility about the depths to which the family was sinking.

  I headed for the kitchen to confer with Cook about dinner, which had all the hallmarks of an epic debacle. Lady Olivia had decreed that the children should not be present at an adult dinner; I responded that the children were part of the family and should be included; John decided in his mother’s favor; and I sulked. So it was to be six of us at table, the most mismatched dinner party I had ever attended.

  At least I knew that Cook would get the food right. Cook never needed to resort to anything as plebeian as cookbooks. All of her recipes lived in her head, and she bustled around the kitchen with the confidence of a virtuoso. I couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with her that didn’t revolve around menus, though, so I was surprised to find Kath and Charlotte seated comfortably at the worn kitchen table, devouring warm scones and chatting animatedly with Cook.

  I said, “I thought you were going upstairs to rest.”

  Charlotte smiled at me. “We were too keyed up to sleep. More important, did you know that Doris here was a champion Irish step dancer? She still performs at church festivals.”

  Of course I didn’t know. I was ashamed to realize that I hadn’t even known her name was Doris; ashamed that I had behaved just like a Grey.

  Kath said to Cook, “If I weren’t married already, I would propose to you,” and stuffed another cream-and-jam-topped scone into her mouth.

  Cook beamed, her face flushed with excitement and pleasure. “Oh, go on with you now,” she said almost flirtatiously. “My own Alf might have a word to say about that.”

  John, strolling into the kitchen, eyed the scene with some bemusement. Awkwardly, he said, “Cook does an excellent job; we all appreciate her work.”

  Kath got up and brought Cook’s—Doris’s—floury hand to her lips for a dramatic kiss. “You are the woman of my dreams.”

  John cleared his throat. “We should change for dinner.”

  — – — – —

  The parties (combatants?) arranged themselves around the long, polished dining room table, which was beautifully adorned with ancient silver candlesticks and trailing garlands of ivy and flowers. I put my napkin in my lap and tried not to count the number of wineglasses we were expected to use.

  Lady Olivia fired the opening salvo. “This is a . . . unique . . . match for a Grey,” she said, poking dubiously at her green salad as if expecting to find a worm under every leaf. “We tend to marry among our own set.”

  My mother fired back: “I had always expected Jordy to marry a man of arts and letters, not a politician.”

  Lady Olivia sniffed. “We have never had a Jewess in the family; perhaps that will raise our level of erudition.”

  “We have never had a member of the aristocracy in our family,” my mother replied. “Perhaps that will lower ours.”

  Charlotte winked at Cook/Doris, who was passing around baskets of warm rolls. Lady Olivia caught the exchange and looked scandalized.

  Ever the soother, Charlotte turned to Lady Olivia. “John tells me that you’ve written a book? Jordy’s mother is one of the most important editors in New York, you know. What is your book about?”

  Surprised, I turned to Lady Olivia. She had written a book, when I couldn’t even get two paragraphs done? And why hadn’t John
told me about it?

  Lady Olivia smiled her catlike smile. “Yes, I have written a book on our sainted martyr and ancestress Lady Jane Grey. It is to be published this spring, in conjunction with the gala in June.”

  “Who is the publisher?” my mother asked suspiciously.

  “What gala?” asked Charlotte at the same time.

  Lady Olivia ignored my mother. “Why, the Grey Five Hundred Gala, to mark the five hundredth anniversary of Bradgate Hall, Queen Jane’s birthplace.”

  I said, “We don’t actually know where Lady Jane Grey was—”

  Lady Olivia smoothly rode right over me. “We are planning a series of events, with a medieval fair and banquet in the village, scholarly symposia, and publications, as well as a major launch event for my book. It will draw thousands of tourists and millions of pounds in tourist revenues to the region. Isn’t that right, my dear?”

  John nodded. “It’s a very good thing for the area. Every hotel and B and B in an eighty-kilometer radius is nearly fully booked.”

  “How interesting,” said Kath, clearly bored. It was hard to think of a topic that would interest an underpaid, overworked lawyer (who spent her life fighting for gay rights, prisoners’ rights, and abortion rights) less than royalty and nobility.

  “Oh, yes,” said Charlotte. “Jordy, didn’t you tell us that you had discovered some letters of Lady Jane Grey’s? How fascinating.”

  “They were fakes or frauds,” said Lady Olivia stiffly. “They appeared to indicate that poor Lady Jane was content with her upcoming marriage, when in fact she was terrified of her husband. He was a cad.”

  I shook my head. “In the letter, she talks about her betrothed being handsome, with ebon hair, and of a pleasant disposition.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Lady Olivia. “Clearly, the letters are frauds, then. Everyone knows that Guildford Dudley was quite fair. He took after his mother.”

  I was nonplussed. It was true; Jane’s husband, Guildford, had been blond, like all the Dudleys.