What reason did I have to be afraid here, living among rich people who had servants and ate off real silver platters? I heard no sirens in the night, and yet the silence was somehow more frightening.
I quickly shut the door behind me.
The door without any lock.
6
Joie de Vivre
Moments after my alarm clock shook me out of sleep, I heard Boggs walk by my bedroom door. The slats in the old wooden hallway floor groaned under the heels of his heavy boots. I imagined the whole house cringed when Boggs woke up. If there was really a ghost here, she probably curled up behind some old wall and waited for him to pass, too. At least by buying the alarm clock, I had denied him the pleasure of pounding on my door.
I needed something to wake me. I had stayed up late writing letters the night before. I hadn’t intended to, but when I began to describe things to Grandmother Hudson, I couldn’t help but add all the details about the school and the sights I had visited. My letter ran on for pages and pages, and I kept it all on a positive, happy note. My letter to Roy was the same. We had a great deal of catching up to do and I was full of questions about his new life, too. Finally bleary-eyed, I stuffed and licked the envelopes and went to sleep.
However, despite my exhaustion, I didn’t fall asleep as quickly as I had anticipated. Many different emotions had been blended throughout the day until I had woven a tight cord around my heart, a cord with strands of sadness and anger, strands of joy and love, excitement and depression, hope and despair. Randall’s beautiful eyes flashed before mine and the faces of some of the troubled women depicted in the paintings I had seen at the National Gallery appeared as well, some of them making me think of myself.
There were also many things during the day which had reminded me of Mama and Beni: a black woman with her little daughter in the park, some black girls laughing and walking on the street, the sounds of hip-hop coming from a boom box, a black mannequin in a storefront window dressed in a pantsuit similar to the one Mama used to wear, all of it conspiring to make me melancholy.
That wasn’t all that threw me back in time. When I held Randall’s hand as we walked along the streets of London, I recalled holding Roy’s hand, his fingers wrapped fully around mine, clutching me as if he thought I was a balloon that might float away should he lose his grip. Back in those days, Roy’s hold on me filled me with a sense of safety. I never felt vulnerable and in danger as long as he was at my side, no matter where we were or who was nearby.
But a girl my age needed more than just a sense of security, I thought. I needed to cling to love as well as strength. There were other emotions to explore, other feelings to have travel over the wires that ran back to my heart. I wanted laughter to sound like music; I wanted every smile to brighten the day even more; and I wanted words to find comfortable places in which to settle and plant the seeds of memories that would grow forever and ever until I was too old to remember or too old to care.
Could Randall Glenn do all that? More important, did I want him to? Did I want anyone to, or was I afraid of the pain of disappointment? The questions rattled around in my head, keeping sleep waiting at the door until finally even my mind surrendered and shut off the light that kept these thoughts as bright as neon signs.
Now I grumbled like a woman four times my age when I got out of bed. I stretched and yawned, resembling a sleepwalker as I moved around my closet of a room, plucking clothes out of the wardrobe. Finding my sneakers, I plodded down the hallway to the bathroom to wash and dress, and of course, pin back my hair to satisfy Mr. Boggs.
Sunday was another big breakfast day, or as Mrs. Chester called it, a full English breakfast. Out came the sausage, bacon, eggs, scones, kidney, jams, biscuits and tea. She and Mary Margaret were scurrying about the kitchen as if we had twenty guests this morning. There were no greetings or good mornings when I joined them, just orders barked at me: “Get that pan, wash this dish, cut those biscuits, take out the tea and be careful with those cups.”
Great-uncle Richard was at the table with his morning paper. He was dressed in his suit and tie, his hair brushed impeccably, looking like he had been up for hours. When does he relax? I wondered. It was Sunday. Did he always wear a business suit?
Even my great-aunt was formally dressed with her hair done and her makeup complete as well. At first I thought they were going to church, but picking up their chatter as I moved about the dining room, I learned they were going to the country right after breakfast to visit with some friends at their estate. It was good news for us, for Boggs came into the kitchen to announce they wouldn’t be back for dinner and we had the night off as well.
Contrary to the odd way Great-aunt Leonora had been acting the day before when I had gone up to speak with her, she was bubbly and energetic this morning. My great-uncle didn’t look like he was really paying attention to her, but she talked at him as if her words could cut right through the newspaper he held up in front of him. She thought it was a very important day because they were going to the country home of someone who had been recently knighted. There was even a chance the prince would appear, but in any case, according to Great-aunt Leonora, “the best of society would be there.” She talked about these lords and ladies, royals, in a way that made me think of Greek deities, gods and goddesses who made occasional visits to earth and gave mere earthlings the opportunity to kiss their hands or stand in their shadows.
“I think it’s so unfair that you haven’t been knighted yet, Richard,” she complained. “No one is more deserving of the honor than you.”
“Patience, my dear,” he said folding his paper. He glared at her a moment. “Patience and not letting everyone know how much you want it is the recipe,” he warned.
He turned to me because I was just standing there listening to them. I was still fascinated with the way they spoke, not only to me and the other servants in the house, but to each other. It was as if they were on a stage performing before an audience.
However, he made me feel like I had been eavesdropping and I spun around quickly to return to the kitchen.
“Just a moment, Miss Arnold,” he said.
I turned back slowly, expecting to be reprimanded.
“Yes?”
He reached into his inside jacket pocket and brought out a small envelope.
“In light of what you are mainly here to do, I thought you would appreciate this,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked, surprised. I stepped forward to take the envelope. He waited while I opened it. “Play tickets?”
“Two tickets to tonight’s performance of Macbeth at the Royal National Theater, the Old Vic. I thought you might want to take along a friend, perhaps someone else from the drama school.”
“Isn’t that nice?” Great-aunt Leonora said. “Very thoughtful of you, Richard.”
“Yes. Thank you,” I said, quite taken aback by the unexpected gift. I didn’t think he thought that much about me. Sometimes, when he looked at me, he wore an expression of wonder, as if he hadn’t known I was here or had forgotten. Maybe he didn’t think I would stay.
“You don’t have to dress formally, but you should dress decently,” Great-uncle Richard instructed. “It’s located on the South Bank of the Thames. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding your way there, now that you are a seasoned London traveler,” he added.
I smiled and thanked him again.
“It’s nothing. I have some influence with theater people these days and those are very good seats,” he said. “Let me know what you think of the performance. Macbeth is one of my favorites,” he added. “Perhaps someday, Mrs. Endfield and I will attend a performance with you playing Lady Macbeth,” he said with a wide smile. Then, as if he realized he was being warm and friendly, he reached for his paper, snapped it sharply, and started reading again.
I glanced at my Great-aunt Leonora whose face was frozen in a far-off look as she gazed right through me. Sometimes the two of them gave me the feeling they moved in and out of t
heir own worlds, oblivious to each other and anyone else around them.
When I went into the kitchen, I knew from the way Mrs. Chester looked at me that she had overheard the conversation in the dining room.
“I guess yer doin’ pretty nicely ’ere for a Yank,” she commented and glanced at Mary Margaret before turning back to me. “No lazy streak in ya, that’s for sure. Ya do yer chores as yer told and don’t whine and moan about it.”
“Thanks, I guess,” I said. “Although Yanks aren’t lazy. You can’t be the greatest country in the world and be lazy.”
“Oh, listen ta that now, Mary Margaret. All that pride and she ain’t got a bloody bean.”
“You don’t have to be rich to have some self-pride,” I remarked.
“Ya listening, Mary Margaret?” Mrs. Chester chimed. She turned back to me. “I been tellin’ ’er not ta be mopin’ about with a face down ta ’er feet or she’ll never catch a bloke worth a bob, but she don’t listen ta me. Maybe she’ll take a lesson from the likes of you,” Mrs. Chester said.
I glanced at Mary Margaret and saw how nervous Mrs. Chester was making her.
“Mary Margaret is a very pretty young woman,” I said. “Intelligent too. I’m sure she doesn’t need advice from me.”
Mary Margaret looked at me as if I had just escaped from a outhouse and went out quickly to clear the breakfast table.
“Never mind what ya think ’bout ’er good looks,” Mrs. Chester insisted. “Ya oughta let ’er knock about with ya. All she does is go from ’ere ta home ta be with ’er old sick mum. She thinks she’s still a li’l girl, but I’ll wager when that one gets toffed up, she’d catch an eye or two,” Mrs. Chester predicted. “She’s got a sweet face. It almost breaks me heart.” She paused for a moment before continuing.
“I just feel sorry fer ’er, is all,” she finally said, turning back to her work. “If I could, I’d find ’er a good bloke, meself. A decent tumble would grow ’er up overnight.”
That’s one strange prescription for wisdom and maturity, I thought.
Mary Margaret returned with dishes in hand, glanced at me fearfully and went to the sink.
She does act like a girl half her age, I realized, but really, what could I do for her? I had trouble enough finding my own way, and it wasn’t as though I hadn’t tried to be friendly with her. She avoided personal talk and looked at me as if I was some kind of threat, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, too.
“Would you like to go to the play with me tonight, Mary Margaret?” I asked.
She kept rinsing the dishes.
“Well, don’t just keep the girl waitin’, answer ’er,” Mrs. Chester said.
Mary Margaret looked at her and then at me. She hadn’t heard a word. She was too deep in her own thoughts, crawling into herself like a snail.
“I have two tickets to a play tonight. Would you like to go with me?”
She shook her head vigorously.
“Oh, I can’t,” she said. “I got to be with me mum.”
“That’s stupid and ya know it,” Mrs. Chester said.
“No, I can’t,” she insisted and then, maybe because we made her so nervous, she dropped a dish and it shattered in the sink.
Before anyone could say a word, she burst into tears and rushed from the kitchen.
“See?” Mrs. Chester said. “Ya’d never know that girl was in ’er twenties, the way she acts.”
I started to pick up the broken dish when Boggs appeared in the doorway.
“What’s goin’ on in ’ere?” he demanded.
“What’s it look like?” I fired back.
“You pay for what you break in this ’ouse, you know,” he said, looking at the pieces of the dish.
“She didn’t break it,” Mrs. Chester told him.
“You payin’ for it then?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll pay for it. Slip the bill under my door when you march by in the morning. And if you want, you could add the VAT tax,” I said. The value-added tax, I had learned, was like a sales tax in America.
He glared at me, nodded and left the kitchen.
“I wouldn’t rag that man, I wouldn’t,” Mrs. Chester warned.
“Why not?” I demanded more firmly.
“’E’s got somethin’ bad inside ’im, ’e does.”
“Then why does Mr. Endfield keep him working here?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Chester said turning away from me quickly, “and it ain’t me place ta ask.”
I shook my head and returned to the dining room to finish clearing the breakfast table. The Endfields were already gone. Mary Margaret came in to help, her eyes bloodshot and downcast.
“It’s all right, Mary Margaret,” I said. “Maybe you can go out with me some other time.”
She looked up at me with relief in her face as if I had freed her from some horrible obligation.
And all I had done was ask her to go to a play.
I would have been happy to take Mary Margaret to the play if she had wanted to go. Perhaps we could have become friendlier as a result. Now that she wasn’t going, however, my mind settled on Randall. I called the dorm to tell him about it and he was very excited.
“When you come today, you might bring a change of clothes with you,” he suggested. “We’ll spend the day on the river and do some more sightseeing, and then you can freshen up here and we’ll go directly to the Old Vic. I’ve been there before. It’ll be fun,” he said.
I thought he had made a good suggestion, so I chose what I would wear and put it neatly into a large bag. Then I headed out to take the underground and go to the dorm, which was really only a two-story house about three blocks from the school.
As the skies cleared, it was turning out to be the prettiest and warmest day since I had arrived in London. Perhaps because of all the rain the city got, the flowers were the brightest I had ever seen, and that included some of the magnificent gardens on the estates in Virginia where Grandmother Hudson lived. The brightness seemed to put more smiles on the faces of people around me, too, and I wondered if people blossomed like flowers. If so, Mary Margaret could certainly use more exposure to sunshine, I thought.
The residence hall was a gray stone building on a side street. There wasn’t a dorm mother or anything like what might be in a school in America. There was a caretaker for the building, but other than that, everyone who lived there had their own apartments. The building had no facilities for meals, but in the lounge there was a small electric stove for a teapot.
Randall was sitting there waiting for me when I arrived, and with him were the French sisters, Catherine and Leslie. They all looked up.
“Ah, but here she is, the American princess,” Leslie said. They both wore jeans and pretty light blue sweatshirts with designer logos on the front. Catherine had a pearl barrette in her hair.
“After clearing dishes, washing the table, and scrubbing a sink, I don’t feel very much like an American princess,” I explained.
“I told them where we were going and they wanted to come along,” Randall said in the tone of a confession. “I hope that’s all right.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” I replied.
“You can’t have him all to yourself so soon, chérie,” Catherine declared, threading her arm through Randall’s. He blushed and rolled his eyes.
“Are those your things for later?” he asked, nodding at my bag.
“Yes.”
“Let me take them to my room for you, and then we’ll get going,” he said. I handed him the bag as he rose and he went out and up the short stairway to the second floor.
Almost instantly, Leslie reached up and pulled me down to sit beside her and Catherine.
“So, you tell us how you win this handsome boy’s heart so quickly, eh? We have both been trying since we first gazed into those beautiful eyes.”
“You practically threw yourself into his arms,” Catherine said, nodding with a grouchy face at her sister. “You frightened hi
m,” she charged. “I told you not to be so aggressive. Canadian boys are like American boys, right, chérie? They don’t like their women to be, how do you say, in their faces. Am I not right, chérie?”
Why was it, I wondered, that everyone I met here thought I was some kind of an expert when it came to romance and men? Was it the clothes I wore? The way I walked, some gesture? When Mama was in a fun mood, she would slide her eyes from side to side and say, “You’re going to be some heartbreaker, honey.”
“I don’t know much about Canadian men,” I said. “Randall is actually the first boy from Canada I have ever met, and as for American men, most of the ones I know want to take advantage of you as quickly as they can. They’d love to have you in their faces.”
“So?” Leslie shrugged. “What is wrong with that?” she cried and they looked at each other and giggled.
“What is wrong with that? They don’t respect you,” I said. “That’s what’s wrong with that.”
They both grew serious for a moment as if I had introduced a whole new idea.
“You mean you think a man will respect you only if you are frigid?” Catherine inquired.
“No, not frigid. I’m not saying you have to be the ice queen or anything, but you shouldn’t just lay back like a piece of meat on a platter,” I told her.
Again, they both laughed. They were beginning to annoy me.
“Why is that so funny?”
“We don’t think of ourselves as pieces of meat, but perhaps we think that of some of the boys we’ve been with, eh, Catherine?”
“Oui. Big sausage, eh?”
They smiled licentiously and nodded.
“Maybe things are different for you and where you’re from,” I muttered dryly, looking toward the doorway for Randall to rescue me from this conversation.
“You are much too serious, chérie,” Leslie said. She put her hand on my hand. “Being in love, having a lover, this should be amusing, too?”
“Amusing?”
Lightning Strikes Page 11
