Falling for London

by Sean Mallen

  While they built a new life in Canada, Treviso bounced back. The town itself was tastefully rebuilt, with new buildings melded with the fragments of the old. Canals run throughout in an echo of its celebrated neighbour, Venice. Entrepreneurs brought new wealth. In the picturesque hills surrounding the city, winemakers started marketing a sweet bubbly that had traditionally been only made for home use. Now Prosecco is a worldwide phenomenon. Sometime in the late fifties or early sixties, a creative chef (the originator is in dispute) came up with the idea for a dessert made of ladyfingers, mascarpone, coffee, and cocoa, and called it tiramisu.

  We visited on our honeymoon, after which I decided to take some Italian lessons so that I could communicate on at least a basic level, and then we returned only the year before our move to London. Isabella’s cousins Silvia and Maria Assunta each have boys who are of a similar age to Julia — Alberto, a year or so older; Gregorio, younger. On that 2010 visit, I wrote a travel story about Julia’s meetings, her explorations of Venice guided by Maria Assunta, and how, in spite of herself, she ended up saying a few words in Italian, even learning how to play rock, paper, scissors with Alberto in the language of her grandparents (sasso, carta, forbice).

  On this trip there was talk of taking us up to the family house in the mountains, where the family all retreat in the summer but instead we chose to stay in the city at the home of Isabella’s Zia (Aunt) Valentina, mother to Silvia and Maria.

  These visits are generally fun for me, as we are feted by all, and stressful for Isabella, as she feels the pressure to see as many family members as possible and to constantly speak in her imperfect Italian. Her cousins have passable English, which makes things easier for me, and I usually manage to score a few points by making the effort to say a few sentences in highly rudimentary Italian.

  Although they could not converse, Julia immediately picked up again with her cousins — first goofing around in Valentina’s front yard and then at a park that had a medieval theme where they could play-act as knights and lady. The boys were rambunctious — Alberto was a rugby player and little Gregorio was always on the move, but Julia held her own.

  Silvia and her husband, Mario, a teacher, took us on a Sunday tour of a part of the Venetian lagoon rarely seen by outsiders. It was low, marshy country with the odd ancient and abandoned hamlet. All quiet and evocative — a suitable setting for an artsy black-and-white movie from the sixties.

  The family had a condo by the beach at Jesolo. Only a couple of weeks earlier they had been swimming in the sea, but now it was a chilly fall day and we settled for a short walk on the sea shore.

  Jesolo was a backwater for centuries, until Italians developed a taste for beach holidays in the 1950s. It was blessed with a sixteen-kilometre stretch of clean white sand, so entrepreneurs built resort facilities to take advantage. Isabella has a striking black-and-white picture of her Zia Valentina stretched out in a bathing suit on the Lido di Jesolo in its heyday fifty years ago. More recently the tourists have started going elsewhere and the city is starting to wear a bit around the edges.

  But as we enjoyed Italy, work reached out to complicate matters. A big story broke in Israel with the release of Gilad Shalit, a soldier who had been held by Hamas for five years. As I was away, Stu was assigned to go. Another big trip missed, and to a place I longed to see again. I was starting to think I was snake-bitten.

  Isabella was not impressed by my moping.

  “Why are you complaining? You’re in a beautiful Italian city. Enjoy it. There’ll be other chances to go to places like that.”

  Travel was always going to be a problem in this job — trips taken and trips missed.

  There was nothing to be done about it anyway, so I managed to set aside my disappointment as we carried on visiting, eating, and shopping in Treviso. For the latter, we paid a visit to Isabella’s favourite clothing store just off the elegant Piazza dei Signori in the centre of the city. This was an expedition that would typically occupy several hours while she tried on many of the beautiful clothes on offer, consider how they looked, ask my opinion, and then ignore my milquetoast responses.

  Julia and I would stay for short periods, leave to go get a gelato and explore the neighbourhood, then come back to find the pile of discarded frocks was growing as the patient, smiling saleslady kept bringing out more.

  My daughter would regularly remind me of a mishap from the previous visit. I was walking along happily with her on my shoulders, looking into shop windows. A woman walking toward us opened her eyes wide with horror and reached out her arms in warning. Oblivious, I wondered why she was upset, until I heard a clung from above and realized that I had carried my daughter into a low-hanging bar that was exactly at the level of her forehead.

  “Daddy, you can’t carry me on your shoulders on this street anymore,” she now advised.

  In the end, several hundred euros were added to the credit card and my wife was well-stocked with new garments, all of which had to be carefully distributed among our baggage for the Ryanair flight home.

  Having learned our luggage lessons on the outbound flight, we got everything properly distributed before heading to the airport. But the Ryanair experience held new surprises. Our Priority Boarding pass once again got us to the front of the line — but only to get on the bus that would take us over to the jet. When its doors opened on the tarmac, we were caught in the same seat rush as everyone else.

  “It’s not our fault,” said a shrugging flight attendant. “Talk to the Italians.”

  The flight landed at Stansted after midnight and despite the hour, there was a huge lineup to get through passport control — neatly causing us to miss the final train. Instead it was a rush to the bus into the city, which naturally was caught in construction traffic. Our heads hit the pillows at 2:30 a.m.

  “I’m never flying Ryanair again,” said Isabella. She was wrong.

  Chapter Twelve

  One thing they do not tell you about the English school system is the astounding amount of time off they give the children. Julia had scarcely begun and already she had a week called “half-term.” It coincided with another first for our London adventure — me playing single parent to Julia. Isabella had a backlog of work she needed to finish at home in Toronto, not to mention the need to check out our house, which had been sitting vacant, with a friend occasionally walking down the street to pick up our mail and ensure that it was still standing. And so, on a Friday she headed for the airport to catch a flight home. Julia and I would have ten sleeps together with no Mommy — the longest the two had ever been apart. I would have a week of vacation solo with my little girl in the world’s greatest city. What could go wrong?

  Isabella had advised that I needed to find something for Julia to do every day, as much as possible with other little girls.

  Day One was a breeze. We went swimming at the Swiss Cottage leisure centre, and then I asked her which museum she most wanted to see. Having gone through so much to get my kid to London, I was determined that she was going to soak up as much as she could bear of what the city had to offer.

  She humoured me, choosing the Natural History Museum. We had, in fact, been there already, but the first visit ended on a sour note when I gave a big buildup to the escalator ride through a giant sculpture of the Earth, only to have her in tears because we arrived too late, after it had already closed for the day. This time it all worked. She got her escalator ride, we edged our way through the mobs of kids on half-term break to stare at dinosaur bones and I took a video of her pretending to look scared in front of the T. Rex model that moved and growled.

  Our Canadian friends once again were there to help us get through Day Two, with an invitation to join them for a Saturday morning movie at the nearby O2 Centre. Julia was content to scooter with the girls while I strolled watchfully with Tara and Malcolm alongside, wondering if they felt my unease bordering on desperation.

  There was a minor crisis at the concessions counter as I bought Julia a different popcorn pa
ckage from the other girls — my choice lacking the same decorative box. As her eyes filled and lip quivered, Malcolm rode to the rescue, ordering the same deal for her to add to those of his girls. My thanks to him for bailing me out was sincere.

  The movie was Mr. Popper’s Penguins, with Jim Carrey. The kids all sat together, but partway through Allison moved over to sit on her mother’s lap. A few minutes later, Julia followed to climb onto mine. Here was a fine father-daughter moment — affectionate, natural physical closeness that I truly cherished — even if my legs went to sleep, rendering me unable to stand for a time after the closing credits.

  Back at the flat, a revelation. Our daughter is smart, charming, funny, and beautiful. What she is not is willing to help much around the house. Any request to get her to pick up her clothes or bring her dishes to the sink requires browbeating, constant supervision, and a willingness to endure tearful cries of injustice.

  Now, for reasons unknown other than perhaps the unprecedented absence of her mother, she wanted to assist with the preparation of dinner. She trimmed the ends of the green beans, with me watching carefully alongside her, and she even volunteered to set the table, complete with cutlery and elegant napkins (in reality ragged paper towels, but who cares).

  Our daddy-daughter time seemed to be resulting in a sea change in behaviour — a sudden, heartening, and inexplicable desire to be responsible.

  Perhaps I was not such an ineffectual father after all.

  It was an ironic Sunday. Even though I was the agnostic in the house, I was charged with getting Julia to church. We had agreed before her birth that she would be baptized in the Catholic Church (as I was, even attending Catholic schools through Grade 8) and that she would be exposed to Christianity.

  Now the non-believer was insisting that my baptized child get out of bed so that we could get to church on time for service. Having moved on from my earlier failure at finding an appropriate church, I discovered a lovely little parish up in Hampstead. St. Mary’s was tucked away at Holly Place, at the top of a hill, in a quaint and elegant setting not far from my short-let flat and the memories of Mr. Sneezy BritFuck.

  The lot of Catholics in England has improved greatly over the centuries. Executions more or less stopped in the 1600s. It may soon even be possible for an heir to the throne to marry a Catholic. But in a city replete with ancient churches, the papist houses of worship are relatively young.

  St. Mary’s was built in the early part of the nineteenth century and counts among its notable former parishioners Charles de Gaulle, who lived for a while in a house on nearby Frognal, now a home for an order of nuns associated with the church.

  We arrived in time for the family Mass, which was jammed with squealing kids and patient parents, and was full of life and joy. It seemed that at least I had finally, belatedly discovered an acceptable church for my family. This was to be a big year in Julia’s religious life: First Communion loomed in the spring, so it was important to find her a place where she could go to Sunday school to take the requisite preparatory courses. After Mass, the priest advised that I contact the nuns who lived in the former de Gaulle house, where they offered courses in what kids needed to know to qualify for the sacrament.

  Religious duties fulfilled, we turned to secular matters.

  It is to London’s great credit that so many of its tremendous museums are so welcoming to children. With a little coaxing, I convinced Julia that there were plenty of things for her to discover at the Victoria and Albert. They have an award-winning program in which they provide kids with backpacks that are filled with plans for exploring different areas of the museum.

  Julia opted for the one that led her into an exposition of upper-class life in Georgian Britain and was drawn in by the search for figures in paintings on display. Julia is a kid unafraid to say when she is bored, but the exercise seemed to truly engage her. Each backpack journey took only about forty-five minutes, so when she finished the first she asked to do a second. She was less impressed by the exploration of medieval times, which involved a funny hat that she had to match with a figure in a tapestry.

  But never mind. The V&A was a big hit. I was starting to think that I was successfully performing my fatherly duty in introducing my child to history and culture.

  The best was still to come. On a perfect fall Monday, I had my finest day ever with Julia. From Waterloo station, we caught the train out to Slough — rhymes with “plough,” if you were wondering (as I learned when I tried to buy a ticket to “Slew”) — and made the quick change to Windsor, the station a conveniently short walk from the castle. This was to be full-on royal spectacle.

  The Queen’s weekend pad is the largest and oldest occupied palace in the world, built by her ancestor William the Conqueror roughly a millennium ago and regularly expanded, renovated, and laid siege to by a long list of notables. Now visited by more than a million people a year.

  Julia lapped it up.

  Compliments to the designers of the audio tours, who offer a version that is specially designed for kids. We were able to walk beside each other and get an age-appropriate commentary as we looked at basically the same sights. Both offer the same introduction from the Prince of Wales.

  “Daddy, did you know why the Round Tower was built on a hill?” she asked, then provided the answer.

  “Do you know why it has its own well?”

  Kids were told to watch out for tiny toy soldiers, who were on guard throughout the displays — something else to engage their interest as they try to find as many as they can.

  I credited her fondness for history to the CBBC show Horrible Histories. It’s a true treasure for parents, and is full of quirky British humour about people dying in stupid ways and murdering others in creatively brutal techniques. I loved the song-and-dance number they did for the first four King Georges: “I was the sad one, I was the bad one, I was the mad one, and I was the fat one. We were born to rule over you.…”

  For all its solemnity and tradition, a scent of silliness wafts through British royalty. What can you say about an institution where the highest honour, the Most Noble Order of the Garter, is associated with a randy piece of women’s undergarments?

  The Garter Gang has been headquartered at Windsor for six hundred years. In St. George’s Hall, rebuilt after the 1992 fire, heraldic shields representing the members cover the ceiling. As Julia pointed out, the handful of blank shields represent knights who have been “degraded” by the monarch — kicked out for disreputable behaviour. Kaiser Wilhelm II was given the bum’s rush for waging war on Britain — his being a grandson of Queen Victoria was insufficient defence. Emperor Hirohito similarly got the big adios, but was rehabilitated after the Second World War and got his shield place back.

  As we walked out, she giggled at the sight of a guard in a bearskin hat. She had seen them before when looking through the gates at Buckingham Palace, but here was one close enough to touch.

  The bearskin hat stands proudly as one of the silliest of military anachronisms. Evidently when they were invented in the seventeenth century, the idea was to make soldiers look taller and more imposing on the battlefield. Even after the impracticality of the modified conehead look became evident, they lived on for ceremonial uniforms. You feel for the poor grenadier who has to wear it even on the hottest day, occasionally rendered unconscious after hours of standing at attention with an 18-inch-tall, 1.5-pound remnant of a Canadian black bear perched on his noggin.

  Animal rights activists periodically complain that bears are giving their lives for the sake of a goofy hat, but an artificial substitute has never been found. The Ministry of Defence says the skins are now provided by Canadian Inuit hunters, who shoot the bears as part of a cull to control numbers.

  None of this really mattered to Julia. I urged her to pose next to him for a picture, which she did, holding a miniature crown that she had purchased minutes earlier during the inescapable visit to the gift shop.

  This stereotypical tourist picture became o
ne of her most prized possessions from London — a six-year-old girl holding a plastic crown, posing sassily next to an impassive grenadier. As is customary, the hat disguised his eyes but his chin did not yet seem to have felt the scrape of a razor blade.

  We said little during the train ride back into the city, but as we sat next to each other, comfortable, content, and happy, my heart was full. She and I had never been so close, never enjoyed each other’s company quite so much. All because of a few hours at a royal tourist trap.

  The glow faded somewhat as Waterloo station approached and I started feeling a dull throb in my teeth. By the time we arrived back at the flat it had expanded into a sharp headache. Our medicine cabinet had not yet been stocked and we had been unable to find Tylenol in London. We still had some of Julia’s baby medicine, Tempra, so I took a swig of it and tried to sleep. But in the middle of the night, I was awakened by the feeling that someone was power drilling into my left cheek. By morning I saw specks of blood in my phlegm.

  I was to be taking Julia to a playground in Primrose Hill to meet some of her classmates, but instead we had to make our way to the clinic where I had had the foresight to sign us up earlier.

  My iPhone more or less kept her busy as we waited ninety minutes to see the doctor. During this time Julia only asked about a dozen times, “Daddy, when will it be our turn?” Not so bad for a six-year-old. Allowing her to download several games managed to pass the time.

  The pleasant doctor confirmed my suspicion that I had a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics and painkillers. He made a bit of time for Julia as well, agreeing to take her temperature with a sensor in her ear.

  Now late for the crucial play date, I held off getting my drugs and instead flagged down a cab to take us to Primrose Hill. I was the only father in attendance and knew none of the mothers. The girls had already gathered into groups and Julia’s favoured playmate, the Swedish girl Nilla, was not there.