Was Kit right? Was Owen much more competitive than I remember? I’m certainly not going to remind him of his running head start fuelled by family wealth. And has he forgotten the trio of science whizzes in our graduating class, two immigrants from Russia and one from China, all finalists in the national Westinghouse Search?
“What is Kit writing these days?” Owen not-so-subtly fishes.
Kit writes? “Papers, I’m assuming. He’s a linguist, like me.”
Something about my answer bothers him. “A linguist? Are you sure?”
“I’m very sure.”
“Is he affiliated with a university? Is he a professor?”
I grin. “Now that we’re in England, isn’t that a little tacky to ask?”
“I’m doing independent research,” Kit answers from behind me. “That’s all you need to know, Owen.”
“You’re back,” I say.
The tension is palpable but Owen is anything but shy now. “Where are you living these days, Kit?”
“Westbourne Terrace.”
“North Side? South Side?”
“South. Near Hyde Park.”
“Nice area.”
Kit’s facial expression screams, Scram! “Yes.”
Owen coughs to save face. “Well, I’ll be spending the week in the British Museum reading room. You can look me up, Shari—that is if you want an alternative tour guide.”
Kit’s eyes are peeled on the revolving belt as he says, “Take care, Owen.”
“He’s going on the tube, too,” I say.
“I need to use the restroom. You two go ahead.”
“See ya,” I say appreciatively.
The walk from Paddington Station to Kit’s place, a third-floor one-bedroom flat in a tall white stucco-fronted building, is short. The flat is somewhere in the middle of the street surrounded by many residences that look exactly alike.
After a cup of loose and strong green tea in what Kit calls the reception room, his demeanor brightens. Has he put the morning’s encounter behind him? “Green tea is good for the brain. Gets you going.”
“You’re looking alert.”
“I’m thinking we should sneak a morning activity in to reset our clocks.”
“I’m up for that—I read that you’re supposed to go directly out in the morning light even if you’re sleepy.” I really hope I’m sounding normal here.
“Good. Are you sleepy?’
“A bit—” A lot.
“You didn’t sleep well on the sleeper seat?”
“I’m just excited to be finally here.”
Kit smiles. “So, then, what do you want day one’s activity to be?”
I don’t know why I am still so unnerved by his peculiar reminiscences about Owen, but I am. Could I even back out of this arrangement now? Kit and I left this trip so open-ended—even my ticket home has an open return date. What could my excuse ever be? My stomach feels queasy. How could I have misjudged this person so much?
“Changing of the guard, and London Bridge,” I manage.
“That can be day two,” Kit says as he sits on an impressive Victorian couch with mahogany legs and plush red cushions that he earlier admitted was an authentic antique. “I’m going to hold you to your rule. There are certain sites you’ll have to see on your own, like the Yeoman Warders—”
“Do I know what that is?”
“That’s the Changing of the Guard tour—I thought you breathed this stuff.”
“Missed that term.”
“Well, anyhow, you can easily get there by tube when you want to go.”
As he unpacks his black leather suitcase, Kit finishes the leftover half of a bacon and onion muffin he bought at Heathrow. I discreetly discarded mine in the airport women’s room. My first overseas lesson: the savory muffin. Just like their film and book endings, the British like their pastries salty and not sweet. My American tongue was not happy.
“By the way, we’ll have to go shopping if we stay in London for a few days. All I have to offer are month-old frozen chops. I eat out a lot these days.”
“Do you shop in Sainsbury’s?”
“I do,” he says, a touch of confusion in his brow.
“It’s the supermarket in a lot of British sitcoms.”
He laughs like he did back in my apartment. “Please think about what you want to do while I shower.”
I scout around Kit’s flat as I sip my tea. Since he couldn’t have expected to bring back a New Yorker from his conference jaunt, I have to assume the place is always this neat. He has a trio of inoffensive decorative objects set out on a coffee table—a deep blue glass bowl, a green-and-white complete glass chess set, a vintage tin clown toy on wee stilts—but other than the amazing couch and the strong scent of some manly brand of soap I noticed while peeing in his spotless bathroom, this home seems devoid of any real sense of hearth and familiarity. It’s unnerving. Even in his decorating, he gives nothing away.
There is some very pricey video-editing equipment on a desk. I know from the many NYU film students I cross paths with that the G5 Mac that’s part of the package is the most expensive option on the market. His silver mouse lays on a three-inch-long Persian carpet, the only nod to Kit’s dry sense of humor.
I panic when I spot a room decor detail I definitely didn’t see before: a display case of monarch butterflies stuck to the surface with thin pins. Thinking about it more, I shudder slightly. Weren’t pinned butterflies in the serial killer’s house in Silence of the Lambs?
Get yourself together! I chide myself as I catch myself tracing S.O.S. with my finger on my lap.
When Kit emerges from the shower he sports a white Turkish robe.
“Any more thoughts on where to go?” I say with skimpy enthusiasm. “I’m going to let you be lead attorney.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking of something that I could enjoy, but you would love, too.”
“So what tourist activity will least offend you?”
He hesitates a second before he speaks. “I’m appreciative that you have accepted that a trip to the teapot museum is not top priority. If we’re fixing our jet lag, I thought a drive out to Greenwich might be nice.”
“As in Greenwich time?”
“Yes. It’s nice there by the old observatory, and you can see the telescope Halley used to find the comet.”
“That’s sounds pretty good—”
“Or we can plan a lovely walk down Abbey Road for my favorite Beatles freak.”
The thought of touching the gates of the most famous recording studio in the world thrills me and instantly quells my paranoia. “Abbey Road!” I breathe air out loudly.
“There we go. There’s my girl. Welcome back.”
“What do you mean welcome back?”
“You’ve been so—off.”
I smile big. The Beatles’ stomping grounds! “I’m really in bloody London, aren’t I?”
“You really bloody are.” His own big smile warms me up all over again, and I say, in a sudden swerve to receptive, “I want to do it all, make the most of things while I’m here.”
“Don’t exhaust yourself. We’re not strangers who just met on a train. I’m assuming we can do more another time—”
“Well we did just meet three weeks ago on a tour…”
Kit raises an eyebrow. “That was then. Aren’t we an item now?”
“Of course we are,” I say as reassuringly as possible.
“Let’s flip a coin then for today’s agenda. Heads, Greenwich. Tails, John and Paul. So what will it be?”
“Let me see that coin first. Whose head?” All of my money is still American—Kit had plenty of pounds and was insistent that the foreign exchange stations rip you off at the airport.
“Are you kidding? You know that without even looking. Who do you think?”
I curtsy to the twenty-pence piece and flip it over. On the other side of the queen is a crown nesting on some sort of roselike plant.
“Heads or tails?”
“Tails.”
He slams the silver coin on his knee. “The Beatles then. There’s a man I’ve heard about that might interest you—”
“Yeah?”
“I think he’s called the Beatle Brain of Britain, and he takes you around to the important London Beatles sites. Touristy, but he’s supposed to be good.”
I grab my red Danish bookbag and unroll the Time Out London Kit bought me in the terminal. I read the two Beatle Brain tours out loud, then call the number listed to find out more information.
After the last of Kit’s socks and jocks are in his drawer, we’re headed out for a quickie breakfast and the Tuesday option, the guided walk the magazine dubs The Magical Mystery Tour.
“You want a flannel?” Kit asks.
“I thought we weren’t sleeping yet. Jet lag cure, remember?”
“Not pajamas, silly. For your shower—”
“Oh, you’re talking about a washcloth?”
“Yes, a wa-a-a-shcloth,” he repeats in a long nasal tone that’s really not fair to me at all. I couldn’t be deceiving myself that much about my lack of Queens accent.
The buzzer rings and when Kit goes to answer it there is a quite elderly woman at the door.
“I saw you coming in, Kit.”
How could she see anything? Her eyes are clouded with age, and I’m betting she’s half-blind.
“Hullo, Mary, this is my friend Shari.”
“Oh, this the girl you called about, the one you extended your stay for?”
Kit blushes a little. I’m not sure he wanted me to hear that. “Yes,” he says, and turns to me. “Shari, Mary is my amazing neighbor, and friend.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say.
After a bit more of this innocuous exchange Kit says, “I’ll be traveling again. Can you water the plants for one more week? I feel so terrible about this.”
“Oh please. How long do you think you’ll be traveling again, luv?”
“We’re working that out now. A week? Two weeks?”
“Take all the time you need, sweetheart.”
As Kit sits on his couch, another horrible thought sneaks in my brain, even though I thought I’d banished the willies: Well if he’s dangerous, someone saw my face. Didn’t she?
According to the woman I talked to at the London Walks office, we’re supposed to look for a guide carrying a company sign.
I nudge Kit.
In front of the theater opposite a Burger King is an earnest-looking white man of about my age; he’s in a Yellow Submarine T-shirt talking to a slightly older white man holding a sign over his head. The second man has to be the guide. The presumed Brain has slightly fuzzy short brown hair, is of medium build and has a large black carrying case swung around his shoulder. He is dressed like many men I have already spotted on the tube and at the airport; apparently there’s an unofficial London uniform going of white jeans and a short black leather jacket over a solid dark sweater.
As we approach the men their voices become clearer. The Brain’s arms stay up with the sign, and his legs remain steadfast in position as he is apparently lectured silly about his own area of expertise. I’m sure that the guy in the T-shirt harassing the Brain is from New York, more specifically a native of the Bronx.
“John was shot and killed on my thirteenth birthday, and dat spooked me. I played hooky from eighth grade and ran to da Dakota, and I was part of da can-dal vigil. Can I stump you here, Mr. Brain? Do you know da address of da Dakota?”
“I’ve been there, yes,” says the Brain coolly, and loudly—the discreet little concert-style microphone under his chin is inadvertently turned on. “One West Seventy-second Street.”
“Ya good,” says the rabid fan.
“He’ll get to us sooner or later,” Kit says to me. I nod and we stand off to the side, waiting patiently to fork over our tour money.
The Brain continues to nod as he is battered with even more pop-quiz questions from his annoying first customer.
“How did they spell Paul’s name on the ‘Love Me Do’ promotional single?”
The Brain’s look as he speaks is commendably neutral. Does he get this obsessive pestering every day? “They left out the big C. Mc-artney.”
“No fooling you, eh? A good bit of manipulation dat was. So-called mistakes are da cash cows for a record company.”
“I’m not so sure,” says the Brain. “They were unknowns then. I’m sure that was a genuine—”
“Have y’all been to Liverpool?” says another American woman inching up to our guide. “To see John’s home? I almost cried.”
“Southern?” Kit asks me discreetly.
“Texan.” Even without the giveaway y’all, I’ve met enough academics from that state to be fairly convinced I am right.
When the Brain addresses customer number two, his tone is detached polite. “Liverpool is good of course, but I’ll be showing you Abbey Road today, which is in my opinion, also very good.”
“Oh, don’t y’all know it. My husband and I were up early today. Believe me, we couldn’t sleep.”
“Excuse me, ma’am, we’ll pick this up later, eh? I reckon right this second I need to tend to more customers.” At that he looks over at Kit and me with a beseeching glance.
“Yes, all right,” says the Texan woman. “But afterwards I must tell you about our trip to the Beatles museum in Liverpool.”
“Well, c’mon, lady, that’s in England, you know he’s been there,” the creepy Bronx submarine T-shirt guy says to her.
Kit rescues the Brain with, “We have two for you here—”
Kit’s greeted with an almost euphoric, “Oh, right, you’re from here.”
“Yes,” Kit says. “But watch out, my girlfriend is American.”
The Brain smiles with a closed mouth as he collects our money. “Hullo? Beatles tour?” he says to each new arrival. Soon there’s twenty-five of us for him to shepherd.
He tests out the little microphone and frowns when he realizes it’s on already. “Can you good people hear me?”
“Yes,” comes the group mumble.
“So, yes, everyone can hear me. Wonderful. My name is Richard, and I’ll be your guide today. This is the Original Beatles Walking Tour and the only one sanctioned through the famous London Walks. We’ll mostly be walking to sites today, but you will also need to pay your way on the tube as we will end up at Abbey Road near the St. John’s Wood station, and I’ll be happy to direct you back to wherever you have to go from there. I’ll take your money from you now, if you haven’t already paid. Five pounds for most of you, and there’s a three-fifty concession for students and seniors.”
A double-decker is caught in the heavy traffic on our street. “Beatles tour?” a young very English male voice calls out.
Richard looks up towards the upper level. Who yelled? Blinded by the sun, he calls out to the top level, “You need to hop out now if you’re going to join us.”
From my position in the shade, I can see better than anyone on the tour that there’s an empty paper cup shying toward our group.
“Watch out!” I call, but the troublemaker has a direct hit on the crinkly white coif of an elderly British woman with a precise accent I can’t place. Cockney? Something lower class.
The old woman twists her neck around and up. “Piss off,” she screams at the culprit.
From the bus: “You old bat. Shut up.”
“What wouldja mother say if she knew what’y’re saying to nice people!”
The boy calls out something nasty again; but I doubt if anyone on the street near me could make it out as the bus pulls quickly away with the green light.
The look on our kindly lady’s face has graduated from cross to terrifying, like the look on the old woman in the shoe as she’s about to hit her brattiest kid’s behind with a hefty rolling pin. The tour group is helplessly mute as she mutters obscenities until Richard says, subtly, “Right, we’ll ignore that awful man and begin. You are standing here where the Beatles perform
ed on their first tour on December 9, 1961. This is the world-famous London Palladium, where one could say Beatle-mania really first began. Their actual first London gig was played in the Blue Gardenia. Unfortunately I can’t show you where that was as it was an illegal club and if the manager has forgotten, what hope do we have? One place we do know is Paul McCartney’s London office, MPL. So we are headed to our first major stop, Soho Square.”
As we cross the street, I’m easily amused by new icons in a new land: a little red man on the traffic light that changes to a little green man walking.
Richard pulls me to one side. “Watch the pram, my friend!”
A speeding mountain stroller with impossibly-blond twins in tow barely misses me.
Kit breathes a sigh of relief and motions for me to check out the tour’s weirdo taking pictures of everything that moves. “I think Richard’s first customer is even more excited than you.”
Richard overhears us and chimes in with: “Enthusiasm hits all ages. I had a six-year-old on the tour last week who asked very specific questions about the Beatles recordings, and I thought, hold on, how do you know this?”
Kit and I both laugh appreciatively at his anecdote; Richard looks pleased that he has found his comrades on this tour.
Has Kit completely forgotten the run-in with Owen? Seems that way, by the relaxed look on his face. Truthfully, I’m feeling infinitely more comfortable than I did upon my arrival on British soil. We’ve spent so much time alone over the past three weeks, and in charged family circumstances, that I’m quite relieved to see that in a neutral group setting, Kit is still a very pleasant person. I feel silly that I got myself so worked up over Owen’s cryptic comments. But okay, my mood is better, so then why am I so clammy on a brisk London morning?
In a few minutes’ time Richard stops us and says, “Right, this is Soho Square, a great place in London to chill out.”
Kit prods my elbow and points to the initials on the building: MPL.
“The office of MPL is not named for McCartney Paul and Linda. Rather these are the initials of McCartney Production Limited. They are a large holder of music rights, including most of Buddy Holly’s estate, and the lyric rights to such celebrated musicals as Annie and Grease. Unfortunately as the world now knows, Michael Jackson bought many of Paul and John’s songs, this by the way was after McCartney affably suggested to Jackson that as far as investments, lyrics were the way to go. He didn’t think Michael would buy his own lyrics.”
The Anglophile Page 17
