Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle
Page 84
“Yes—it’s a veritable Rosetta Stone,” he said when I examined it. “Yours is very subfusc. I envy you your discretion.”
“It’s not discretion, Mr. Fogbow,” I said. He’d told me to call him Norman, but I liked the formality of his surname, and he appeared to have been equally happy addressing me as Ms. Deacon, in spite of our less than formal conversation. “It’s just that I have no phone, fax or email. I’m just a happy little colonial in the woods.”
“Well, you’re lucky to be one,” he said. “I won’t say goodbye. It’ll blow the chance of us meeting again, and you never know—we might.” We shook hands warmly, and I slipped his card into my purse next to Earlie Morrison’s.
I was in England, finally. My feet were on alien soil for the first time in my life (the U.S.A. doesn’t count), and it felt wonderful. I had absolutely no trouble getting through customs. The British clearly had more respect for the carnet than the Canadians had, and I was out into the terminal and ready to party in less than an hour. A big, suspended clock told me it was nine a.m. on Tuesday morning. I was starving and not in the least bit tired.
The first thing to do was to cash a travellers’ cheque and get some foldin’ money. This didn’t take very long, although I was annoyed to learn that there was a surcharge for the service. Later, I learned to make these transactions at a proper bank or a post office. The next thing to do—at least when I got to Canterbury I planned to do it—was to get a wider wallet. These are the things they don’t tell you. English pounds are wider than Canadian or American dollars, and the notes spilled out of the top of my billfold like legal papers crammed into a standard 8.5″ × 11″ file folder.
I had hoisted my knapsack onto my back, not doing up all the straps and things, because I would just have to undo them all again when I found my way to the Gatwick Rail Link the travel agent had told me about, which would take me to a central train station where I could change for a train to Canterbury, Kent. According to the map, the trip was a little less than the distance between Laingford and Toronto—about a hundred kilometres. Not far. In fact, the whole of England could fit quite comfortably into the province of Ontario, and I rather liked the sense of scaled-down distance. Driving to Scotland would be like zipping up to Sault Ste. Marie to see your folks for a holiday weekend.
I wasn’t due to register at the conference until that evening. I’d never been to a conference before, although I’d given plenty of puppetry classes and workshops, and I was eager to schmooze with other like-minded puppet-people. I’d boarded the plane at night, after driving through a snowstorm. All that was behind me now. I imagined Rosie and Luggy curled up on George’s old plaid couch in front of the woodstove, a blizzard howling outside. Cozy. And completely not my responsibility for a whole week. Ahhh. The England I’d seen through the window of the plane was beautifully patterned like a quilt in shades of green and soft brown—no white stuff to be seen. I was looking forward to this. I even, for one moment, considered giving the heavy sweater I was wearing to the first homeless person I saw, but I didn’t see any recognizable vagrants in Gatwick airport, so it didn’t happen.
I stopped with my back to the wall for a moment and gazed at the seething mass of humanity before me. It wasn’t long before I noticed that almost everybody I could see appeared to be talking on a cellphone. I mean everybody. Interesting, I thought, and stifled a giggle. Jet lag, I guess. The cellphones reminded me that I’d promised Earlie that I would call him when I landed. I gazed around, looking for a payphone, and feeling the tiniest bit irritated about it.
“Help you with your bags, miss?”
The man making the offer could have been the twin of my shaven-headed thug at Pearson. He was grinning at me in a very unpleasant way and reaching down to take my puppet case.
“No! Thank you,” I said, yanking the case away. “I don’t need any help.”
“Looks heavy,” he persisted. “Lady in your condition shouldn’t do any heavy liftin’, you know.” He was as bald as the guy at Pearson, but this man had a tattoo on the right side of his skull, a kind of crest-thing, with a devil figure holding a pitchfork and above it, a line and three blobs which might have been a boat with sails. It was done in red and looked like a wound.
“Get away! Now!” I said. I didn’t say it as loudly as I’d said more or less the same thing at the other airport back home, because I really didn’t have the energy to deal with any more airport security guys. However, I did say it with emphasis, and the fellow’s eyes narrowed at once. A sneer replaced the ingratiating smile he’d worn a moment ago.
“You orter watch out for thieves, Miss, in a place like this—you being a Canadian visitor and all. And you orter be more polite.” He reached out with a hand as quick as a snake and tweaked my breast before slipping away into the crowd. I was left standing there with my mouth hanging open, mostly at the shock of the unexpected assault, but also because he’d called me a Canadian. It’s true my knapsack had a brave little maple-leaf flag sewn on (to prevent people thinking I was an American, and therefore a target for anti-Yankness), but the knapsack was on my back, and my back was to the wall. How had he known?
I took a quick look round. Nobody appeared to have witnessed the little encounter, for which I was grateful. They were all too busy having conversations with people on the other end of their cellphones. I was revolted by having had my person invaded by that nasty little man, but I was hardly traumatized. I didn’t need immediate assistance—I just suddenly wanted a hot bath, even though I was baking in my thick, cable-knit sweater.
Muttering to myself, I did up the straps on my knapsack, hoisted my puppet case and headed for the overhead sign that said “Railway”. I was determined not to let that particular greeting spoil my arrival. I was here in one piece, on English soil. That was the main thing. I’d call Earlie and tell him so when I got to Canterbury.
Ten
Recent research suggests that pregnant women who use cellphones could cause serious harm to their unborn babies, and that the risks from cellphone radiation could be far greater than previously imagined.
-From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide
Back in the eighties, when I was at art college and went home to Laingford regularly to visit Aunt Susan, I always took the VIA Rail train from Toronto, a trip of about three hours. There were several daily trains and people used them to commute to work in the city. What a concept. I’d always make directly for the bar car—a smoky and convivial little room, presided over by an inevitably wizened and tortoise-like gentleman who would bring you your beer in a cold aluminum can and pour it for you into a plastic glass so flimsy it felt like you were holding a water balloon. I met a lot of interesting people in the bar cars of trains—people who would invite you to join them for a game of cribbage, or sit down opposite you and trade lies for a couple of hours. Ah, the good old days. Now you’re expected to drive, which is presumably why Toronto has one of the highest smog counts in North America.
In England, though the natives appear to complain constantly about the train service not being half what it used to be, I found it utterly enchanting. There were trains every half hour that could take you absolutely anywhere. They were cheap and they were on time, give or take a minute or two. They were clean and quiet and comfortable. In motion, they went clacketty-clack, like trains in movies, and the scenery scrolling by was infinitely fascinating. The only thing that marred their perfection was the clientele—the passengers.
I’d not been seated more than three minutes before it began. The compartment I was in was crowded, and thick with the same kind of constrained silence and averted eyes you get on Toronto subway cars, so I felt quite at home, but as soon as we were moving, the air was filled with a sudden and bewildering chorus of little beeps.
The woman sitting next to me rummaged in her bag and brought out a cellphone, pressed a few buttons and launched into an animated conversation with someone called Dorrie. “I’m on the trine, dear,” she said, loudly, in order to be hear
d above the dozens of people around her, who were all telling Reginald and Kirsty and Gillian and Victor that they were on the trine, too. After the initial flurry of informative phone calls, things settled down a bit, except for a young businessman opposite, whose conversation with Amanda quickly reached boiling point, until he was more or less shouting, insisting that Stephanie and little Malcolm were not to touch the bleeding video machine until he got home from work at the end of the day. I was feeling dreadfully out of the loop by this time. I wondered how much a cellphone cost. After Amanda was dealt with, there was a lull of about seventeen seconds before the compartment was alive again, this time with incoming calls—presumably all the Amandas calling back. Each phone was set to play a nice little tune, from “Für Elise” (very popular) to “You Can Dance if You Want To”. And so it began again. I yearned for Mr. Fogbow’s personal CD player, to drown it all out.
In London, I had to change trains for Canterbury and had about forty minutes to kill before my connection. I found a locker where I could stash my knapsack and puppet case and went off to get myself a sandwich.
One of the nicest things about visiting a country that is not your own is that the most mundane things become exotic, simply by virtue of their being different. In some people, this elicits a fair bit of complaint—“eeew, that’s not like we have at home.” I suppose this is a natural response, if a trifle narrow-minded, but I was determined not to fall into the same trap myself. I wanted to take note of things, and celebrate them. I purchased a submarine sandwich, which the counter person identified as a baguette, for my future reference, and a coffee to go. Well, I’d said “to go” and got a funny look. “To take away” is the correct term, I was told. I would have to start taking notes.
Unencumbered by my luggage, I wandered into a toy store and spent a happy while discovering a whole raft of fun stuff that I’d never seen before. Perhaps I should buy a little souvenir for the Sprog, I thought. I could tell her later that she’d actually been there when I bought it, even though I didn’t let her pick it out for herself. I found myself going all squashy at the sight of pink fluffy teddy bears and little teething toys. It was very pleasant and sort of dreamlike, and I kind of lost track of the time. I did make a purchase, which meant I only had a few minutes left before my train was due, and I headed back to the baggage locker area at a lumbering trot. I slowed my pace when I got there, though, because there was an official looking person in uniform, opening the door of the locker where my stuff was. Behind him, waiting impatiently and looking about him—presumably for signs of me—was my breast-tweaker, large as life and twice as thug-like. I lost it, big time, and ran right up to them, splashing my coffee and losing my grip on the baguette sandwich, which bounced off into a corner like a rubber ball.
“What the hell is going on here?” I yelled, grabbing the arm of the official, who was a harmless looking elderly man with watery eyes. “That’s my locker, and those are my bags. Doesn’t anyone around here have any respect for private property?” The old man straightened up and stared at me, befuddled.
“Oo’s she?” he said, turning to the breast-tweaker, who of course had high-tailed it out of there the moment he’d seen me.
“She,” I said, “is the holder of the key to this locker, who paid three pounds for its exclusive use.” I reached into the pocket of my khakis and produced the small brass key for his inspection. I’d fished up the old ha’penny, too, which gleamed dully in the fluorescent light. The man picked up the key and squinted at the number engraved on it. “463,” he said, as if it were an amazing oracle. “Why, that’s the right one, Miss.” His uniform (name tag: Reg) was rather grubby and frayed at the cuffs.
“It certainly is the right key,” I said. “So how does it happen that you opened the locker for somebody who didn’t have a key to it, eh?”
“Well, ’e said ’e’d lost it, didn’t ’e? Said it fell out of his pocket, like.”
“Uh-huh. And did he produce any ID? Did you just take his word for it??”
“Well, ’e seemed orl right. ’E was in a hurry. Terribly sorry, Miss. You won’t report me, will you? I’d lose me job over this.” Reg’s eyes misted over. Oh, damn. Querulous old men get me every time.
“Well, I suppose there’s no harm done,” I said. “He didn’t actually touch the bags, did he? They’re still in there, right?” We both stooped to look.
“Right as rain,” Reg said, smiling widely in relief. “Still there.”
“Well, that’s a blessing. Listen—that same guy tried to get his hands on my bags back at Gatwick airport. He must be following me.” This had only just occurred to me, and it wasn’t a pleasant thought. Honestly. It’s not as if I looked like a wealthy traveller or anything. Perhaps the fragile label on the puppet case suggested Ming vases or something to the British criminal mind. I felt the first faint stirrings of unease, a little prickle at the back of my neck. Someone had tried to grab my luggage at Pearson, too. The world was a scarier place than I’d thought, and maybe I wasn’t the invulnerable single-woman-traveller I’d thought I was.
“You don’t want to be followed about, Miss. You should tell a p’leeceman.” He gazed around vaguely, as if one might magically appear.
“No policemen, thank you. But I’ll be on my guard from now on, I can tell you. And I won’t trust baggage lockers any more, that’s for sure.” He looked hurt and defensive, as if I’d just insulted his profession, which I suppose I had.
“ ’Ere,” he said. “Lockers is safe as ’ouses long as you don’t lose the key.”
“Which I didn’t do,” I said.
“No, but if you did, there’s proper channels you got to go through.”
“And did my friend from Gatwick go through the proper channels before you almost gave him my luggage?”
“Well, ’e filled up a form, see?” Reg produced a crumpled bit of paper from his jacket and showed it to me with a slightly trembling hand. He was rather cross. I snatched it from him and stuffed it into my purse.
“Oi,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I won’t try to get my three pounds back, which I would be entitled to on the basis of your little mistake, and in exchange, I get to keep the evidence.”
“But they’ve got serial numbers on them. Reg’ll see it’s missing.”
“I thought you were Reg,” I said inanely, pointing to his badge. I really didn’t have time for this.
“We’ve got three of them, Miss.”
“Well, tell Boss Reg you lost it, like the guy just did about the key,” I said, tossing my wrecked coffee-cup into a nearby garbage can labelled “Bin”. Then I grabbed the puppet case, hoisted my knapsack and started walking.
“I have a train to catch,” I said, over my shoulder. Old Reg let me go.
Eleven
By the 25th week, sleep becomes a hazy memory. Your belly is simply too big to allow you to lie down comfortably. If sleeping on your side with pillows wedged between your legs and behind your back doesn’t help, head for a comfy chair instead. As your belly reaches watermelon proportions, you may sleep better sitting up.
-From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide
The whole phone-thing happened again on the train, the chorus of “I’m on the trine”, and the tweeps and bleeples of incoming calls. This time I was prepared. I’d learned from the toy-shop assistant [name tag: Devona] that the item I was looking for was called a “mobile” and not a cellphone, and yes, they had a toy one, over there on the rack with the rest of the novelty Pez dispensers. It looked quite real, at least from a distance. It was a convincing size and shape, with a blue plastic body, red buttons and a little red rubber antenna like a bit of licorice. It had a tiny battery in it, and when you pressed the bell button, it rang in a loud and startlingly accurate imitation of a real phone going off. If you pressed the musical note button, it played the opening bars of “Für Elise”. What’s more, I got two free tubes of Pez to go with it, and it only cost me a handful of change.
It’s interesting to note that many nations seem lately to be reverting back to coinage in large denominations. I imagine it has something to do with the ease of counterfeiting bills and notes in these technological times, but I think there’s more to it than that. A handful of coinage means a lot to the majority of poor, working class mooks who aren’t gaining anything by the rampant imperialism of the current era. If you can’t get a credit card, the modern equivalent of Roman citizenship, then ten bucks in change is more than pin money. To Hank and Bobbie-Jo, to Pierre and Raheel, Sidney and Sarah and Jajeet and Chunju, the coin is the real economy, and the fat change purse is an indication of class, rather than a fashion statement. It would not be a surprise to see a revival of the commoner’s purse, the sack of leather at the belt, where coins are kept for daily use because they are the only wealth to hand.
Still, the Pez-phone was worth the four pounds it cost, because I used it and managed to clear myself some space in the train. When the mobile-phone chaos began, just after the Canterbury train pulled out of the station, I whipped out my Pez-phone, pressed the bell button, pretended to answer it, then began parroting the things I heard around me. I wasn’t loud, you understand, but mobile phone carriers are acutely aware of each other, for all their feigned detachment. The three people who flanked me, one to my right and the woman and man sitting opposite, all had real phones and were presumably having real conversations. My Pez-phone conversation, which I swear was low-key, made the people opposite get up and find different seats. I put my feet up and put the phone away. The woman next to me put hers away too and turned to look me over, a sweet smile on her dumpling face.