Tamsin

by Peter S. Beagle

  Meena says I have to describe landing at Heathrow, but it’s hard to remember what’s really that first miserable gray evening, and what’s from other times we’ve been there. Tunnel after echoey, endless tunnel, and the three of us pushing four luggage carts. Sally nudging me every minute, pointing to the people going through Customs with us, whispering, “Jenny, look at them, those are real monks, from Tibet!” and “Jenny, look, see what that lady’s wearing, that’s called a sari!” Evan helping a tall old black man in red and yellow robes and a red hat like a flowerpot to carry his duffel bag… like I said, things blur. And I didn’t want to look, or notice, or remember anything—not then.

  We didn’t have any trouble at Customs, except for having to stand in line forever, and all that time Sally and Evan were waving to Evan’s sons, Tony and Julian, who were waving back from behind a big high window, along with a red-haired woman, Evan’s sister Charlotte, whom they’d been living with while he was gone. Everybody in the world was waving like mad, except me, even when Sally grabbed my arm and pointed up toward the window. I just kept looking somewhere else, all that time.

  You can imagine all the hugging and gushing and carrying on when we got out of Customs. I’m not going to write about it, mostly because I still feel bad about the way I was with Sally then. Here she was, just off the plane and meeting an entire new family—stepchildren, sister-in-law, the works, and more coming—and nobody but me from the bride’s side, and I wasn’t about to deal with any of it. I saw a young guy holding up a sign saying GOSHAWK FARM CATTERY, and I was over there like a shot, because it gave me an excuse to duck out on all the at-long-last stuff, and I took it. I’d be different today, but that doesn’t do yesterday any good.

  The Goshawk Farm guy’s name was Martin. He’d already picked up Mister Cat, and just needed someone to sign all the blue and yellow forms on his clipboard. So I did that, and then I kneeled down to say good-bye to Mister Cat and tell him I’d be seeing him really soon. And not to forget me.

  He was crouched in his cage, scrunched down as far back as he could get. All I could see at first were his eyes, which aren’t green or yellow, like most cats’—they’re a kind of really deep orange, with a few little gold specks in them, too. Now they were glaring at me and he made a sound like a rusty old creaking door. He makes it at strange dogs and children he doesn’t know—Mister Cat really hates most children, which you can’t blame him for. But he never, ever made it at me, no matter how mad he got. I kept trying to say, “It’s me, you dumb old cat, it’s me,” only my throat hurt so much I couldn’t get the words out. And I wasn’t going to cry, either, not right in Heathrow Airport, in front of a stranger in a country I didn’t want to be in. So I just kept kneeling there by the cage.

  Then this really funny voice, like a seal barking at the zoo, said over my shoulder, “I say, is that your cat?” I looked around and almost fell over backward, because there stood this small boy wearing a blue school coat, with a sort of Cub Scout cap, and absolutely huge gray eyes in this little pointy-chinned face. It took me a while to figure out why he looked familiar, until it hit me that his face was shaped just almost exactly like Mister Cat’s face.

  I knew who he was, of course—God knows I’d seen enough snapshots of him and his brother, and their dog, and their school, and their mother. Julian. Not the dancer, the younger one.

  “Yeah, he’s my cat,” I said. “Mess with him, you’ll never pick your nose again,” because Julian was wiggling his fingers through the mesh, trying to get Mister Cat to rub up against them. He pulled them back, but slowly, so I wouldn’t think he was scared. The next thing he said to me was, “I’m a whiz at maths. Are you any good at maths?” They call it that here.

  “Actually, I’m terrible,” I said—which is still true—and Julian’s face just lit up. He said, “Oh, splendid, I’ll help you.” I couldn’t get over his deep, froggy voice, sounding like it had broken years before they’re supposed to. He’s always had it, practically since he started talking, I found that out later.

  Martin, the Goshawk Farm guy, said politely that he guessed he’d be off with Mister Cat, then; but I was looking past him at Sally and Evan and Charlotte coming toward us, laughing, with their arms around each other—and past them at an older boy who had to be Tony, Julian’s brother. He wasn’t actually handsome, any more than Evan was handsome—his hair was all bushy and messy, and his skin wasn’t even all the way cleared up yet—but you couldn’t not look at him. It’s like that with some people—they don’t just catch your eye, they grab it so it hurts sometimes. I don’t know how it works. I just wish I was one of them.

  So I got introduced to Charlotte again—she’s red-haired, I said that, and short, and everyone calls her Charlie, and she looked as though she’d been minding other people’s children all her life. And I shook hands with Tony, and I noticed he had sort of brownish-greenish eyes and was trying to grow a mustache, and I remember thinking—and Meena says I should absolutely not put this in—all I could think was, “Well, is it incest if he’s your stepbrother?” That’s the truth, and it goes in, and I’ll worry some other time about what Tony might think if he reads this. Dancers don’t read a lot, that’s one good thing.

  That’s it for Heathrow, because it all starts getting hazy around this point. I was really tired, and really upset about Mister Cat, and maybe that’s why I just sort of sleepwalked the rest of the way. Because the next thing I remember is waking up in the London hotel bed, with Sally bending over me asking if I’d like some tea to start our new life with. She knows I hate tea—I still do, after six years in England—but that’s exactly Sally for you, she never gives up, she never quits on anything. I just went back to sleep. Sometimes that’s the best thing you can do with my mother.

  Five

  We stayed in London five days, with Sally and me sharing a room in a bed-and-breakfast place off Russell Square, and Evan bunking in at Charlie’s with Tony and Julian. I liked that part, once I got over being tired, and as long as I could make myself believe that we were just being tourists, summer people, people who go home. But all I had to do was see real tourists—sometimes all it took was a plane going overhead—and everybody says I’d turn between one minute and the next into a sullen little hemorrhoid with feet. And I know I did. I meant to.

  Julian took me over from day one. It didn’t matter how I acted—he was going to show me everything in London that he liked—later for the National Theatre and the Tate Gallery and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. And practically everything Julian liked was American-style stuff—the Pizza Pie Factory in Mayfair, the video arcades around Earl’s Court, the Taco Bell in Soho (you can’t buy Julian for Mexican food, but you can definitely rent him). Which was all fine with me, you couldn’t make anything too American for me. I kept trying to make England not be there all around me, and Julian, ten years old, was the only one who seemed to understand, even though he didn’t really. Maybe that’s why we’re still vatos, as Marta would say—still buddies—even though he’s sixteen now, and completely impossible.

  I liked London right off, though I wasn’t going to admit it for one minute. It did feel like New York—tense and crazy, but in a slower sort of way—and it looked just familiar enough to be exciting. (You don’t realize how many movies you’ve seen about a city until you’re actually in it, recognizing all kinds of places you haven’t been to.) The only thing I didn’t like was the driving on the left—it made my stomach feel weird when Charlie was zipping us around London. One time, crossing the street, I almost got totally creamed by a bus I never saw. Tony snatched me back at the last minute, and Julian told him that now he’d have to be responsible for me forever, the way the Chinese or someone believe. Poor Tony.

  Sally kept asking me every night, after the others had gone back to Charlie’s flat, if I liked England any better now. And every night I’d say, “I like London. I really wish we could stay in London, if we have to be here.” And then Sally’d get tears in her eyes an
d say something like, “Baby, I know, but you’ll love Dorset, I promise. If you’ll just give it a little time, just not make up your mind before we even get there. Can you do that, darling?” I didn’t want to lie to her, but I didn’t really want her to be miserable—only at the same time I really did—so I’d usually mumble something about wanting to see Mister Cat. Which wasn’t lying, and at least that way we’d both get to sleep.

  I’m going to skip over where we went and what we saw. Anything you can see in London in five days, just figure we looked at it. Probably had lunch there, too—it seemed like we were always eating, that first time in London. When we weren’t running to catch the tour bus.

  Julian mostly stayed with Charlie those days, unless Evan swore on a Bible we’d hit Taco Bell, but Tony came along with us now and then, especially if it was anything to do with dance, or seeing a play, or anything with music. We had that much in common anyway, but we didn’t get to talk about it a lot, what with Sally and Evan both working so hard at being stepparents. Sally kept asking Tony about his school and his grades, and about his studying dance, and how he thought he’d like living in Dorset. I got the feeling early on that he felt more or less the same as I did, but I was trying not to look straight at him, because my damn skin, that Sally had told me the English air would be great for, started acting up as soon as we arrived. Tony answered all the questions, talking softly and not volunteering a thing. He’s really shy, even now—Julian’s the least shy person in the whole world, but Tony definitely makes up for him.

  But he got me alone once, when we were wandering around the rose garden in Regent’s Park and Evan and Sally had gotten a little way ahead. He took my arm and pulled me over to a rosebush, so we’d seem to be talking about it, and he said, “Look here, Jennifer, I do wish you’d try to remember, this is every bit as hard and—and strange—for Julian and me as it is for you.” He didn’t have Julian’s cute croaky baritone, but his voice was so intense you could have struck a match on it. He said, “We never asked to have our dad and mum split up and her marry a Frenchman and go off to live with him and his kids in Bordeaux. And we didn’t exactly ask to have him run off to the States and come back with your mother and you, and just whisk everybody right out of London to some bloody farm in Dorset.” He was trying to keep cool, but he doesn’t do cool much better than I do, and I could feel his hand trembling on my arm. He asked, “Do you understand me, Jennifer?”

  “Don’t call me Jennifer,” I said. “I’m Jenny. And yeah, I know it’s all really tough for you, and I’m really sorry, but at least you’re still in your own damn country. You didn’t have to leave everything that ever meant anything to you and start your whole life all over in someplace where you don’t belong and never wanted to be in the first place. And I want my cat,” and with that I just started crying. I told you I’m not a big crier, but when it does happen it’s always like that, without warning.

  Tony did a nice thing then. He moved around me so Evan and Sally couldn’t see me, and he gave me his big blue, perfectly folded handkerchief to bawl into. I never cry long, but I make it up in volume. That handkerchief was absolutely soaked by the time he got it back.

  He never said anything dumb like “Don’t cry.” He waited until I’d finished, and then he just said, “They’re waving, we’d better be walking on.” And that’s what we did, with him talking away to me about however many kinds of football they play in Great Britain as we came up with Sally and Evan. Sally stared hard at me for a moment, but I’d been having allergies, and my nose and eyes were red half the time anyway. So we all walked on through Regent’s Park, and Tony explained to me what a googly is in cricket. Cricket is the only game duller than baseball, because it lasts longer, but that was another nice thing.

  Sally and Evan got married the day before we left for Dorset. It was a civil ceremony in a judge’s chambers, over in ten minutes, with just Charlie and a court clerk for the witnesses. Bang-bangbang, kiss the bride, sign here, best wishes, long and happy life, off to dinner, absolutely painless—and that fast I had a stepfather and two stepbrothers. I didn’t speak to anybody all day, but nobody noticed that, not even Sally.

  And the next day, way too bright and early, we were packed into Evan’s little car—a gray Escort, matched the overcast perfectly— luggage in our laps stacked up so high Evan could hardly see out the back window, and the whole car sagging until I swear I felt my butt bounce on the road whenever we went over a bump, and we’re actually off for Dorset, wherever it is. I knew it was somewhere south, that’s all. And sort of west.

  We were in the backseat, Tony, Julian, and me. Julian grabbed one window right off, and Tony let me have the other, treating me exactly like Julian, and letting me know it. I just lay back and tried to get comfortable under a suitcase and a box of kitchen stuff, and closed my eyes.

  I actually dozed a little bit on the drive out of London, and maybe a bit more than that, because I only woke up when Julian started to sing “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which I had no idea they sang in England. We were still in the suburbs, which look just about the same there as they do in New York— malls and McDonald’s and cineplexes and garages and TV antennas sticking up from so many red roofs your eyes go funny. I don’t know why they’re all red, even today.

  Evan told Julian he might want to reconsider his repertoire if he had any plans for his eleventh birthday, so Julian sang “I Am the Walrus,” all of it, straight through, and then he was going to sing “Come Together,” but Tony got a headlock on him. Julian loves the Beatles the way he loves enchiladas and pizza. It still takes a headlock to stop him.

  Sally wanted me to sing with her, some of the old stuff we used to do together, like “The Water Is Wide,” or “Plaisir d’amour,” or “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” but I wasn’t about to, not in front of these people, no chance. That hurt her feelings, and I felt a little bad about that, but I was also starting to feel sick, because of the car wallowing so much, and because we kept hitting one roundabout after another just going in circles and circles until I had to shut my eyes again and think about nothing. Sometimes I thought about Mister Cat, and sometimes about Jake and Marta, but thinking about nothing’s better for your stomach. I guess I slept some more.

  What woke me this time was Evan singing by himself. It was a long, slow, really sad song about a fisherman and a mermaid, and his accent was funny, different from how he usually sounded. I listened to him, trying not to, and now and then Sally would come in, harmonizing in a couple of places where she knew the words, and my eyes would start to fill up, and you’re just going to have to imagine how much I hated that. Because it wasn’t the damn song that was making me cry—it was something in Evan’s voice that wasn’t sad at all, but peaceful, and it was me having to face the idea that he and my mother had been making this other world for themselves that didn’t include me for one minute. Oh, it did, in a way—I knew that, Sally’s my mother—but now there were places in it where only they went, places where I just wasn’t and Norris wasn’t, and there wasn’t any history but theirs together. And that’s what I hated, and that’s why I didn’t talk to anybody or sing a damn note on that whole absolutely endless drive to Dorset.

  It’s a pretty drive, too, now that I know it. We took the freeway from London, and once we were out of the red roofs and roundabouts, the country started becoming country, with cows and a lot of sheep, and stuff growing in the fields, which I can mostly identify now, but I couldn’t then, so there’s no point pretending. The land turned rolling after a while, but in a nice rocking-chair sort of way, and the sun even came out, practically.

  This first part of the trip was Hampshire—that I did know, but only because of Sally. She kept turning around in the front seat every other minute to tell me something like, “Jenny, look, we’re coming up on Winchester—you remember, ‘Winchester Cathedral…’” and she sang a lick from that dorky song. “It’s really old—it was the Saxons’ capital, and then King Alfred was crown
ed here, and William the Conqueror built the cathedral.” And a moment later it’d be, “Jenny, quick, over there, Evan says that’s a Roman camp!” She was like a damn tour guide—“Baby, look, look, on the horizon, that’s Salisbury, doesn’t it look like the Constable painting we saw?” And Tony and Julian would look at each other, and Evan would sort of murmur, “That’s Southampton, love, we’re a good bit south of Salisbury.” And Sally would just laugh and say, “Shows you what I know,” and I didn’t know who I was madder at—her for sounding like such a total idiot, Evan for being right and gentle, both, or the boys for having good manners and looking so embarrassed for my mother and me. Boy, Meena’s right— you start writing something down, and it all comes back.

  After Southampton, we went through the New Forest, which didn’t look anything like the way I’d thought a real forest would look. There weren’t even that many trees along the road—it just seemed like more of the cows-and-sheep country we’d been driving through forever. Sally was just starting to talk about the Knightwood Oak—how it was practically the biggest, oldest tree in England, and how oaks were always supposed to be magic—when all of a sudden Julian grabbed my arm and said, “There! There’s one!”

  I pulled away from him, hard, because he was hurting my arm, and I said, “Quit it!”, and then I saw what he was pointing at, just up ahead. There were two of them, actually—a couple of shaggy little ponies standing right by the road, almost in it, one of them eating grass, the other just looking at things. Evan slowed down to go around them, and the one who wasn’t eating lifted his head and stared right at me, looking me over with his big, wild black eyes. And I can’t explain it, but I think that was maybe the first time I knew I was really in England, and not going home.