‘Listen, guys, I have something to tell you,’ I began, as they slurped and blew big chocolate bubbles and made patterns with their sprinkles on their plates. Two pairs of eyes were suddenly locked on mine, daring me to tell them there was lettuce for dessert. ‘Tomorrow morning, we’re going to meet a lady.’
‘Who?’ demanded Joe.
‘She’s one of Daddy’s friends.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘She’s young, she’s nice.’
‘She’s pretty?’
‘Yeah, she’s very pretty.’
‘She’s a guardian ad litem?’
‘What?’ I frowned at him. ‘Where did you hear that expression, little guy?’
‘Mom asked Stephen if we’d need a guardian ad litem for us kids if you decided to play dirty.’
Oh, she did?
‘What’s a guardian ad litem, Dad?’
‘It’s a person who’s appointed by a court of law to look out for the welfare of minors and people who are otherwise incapable. Rosie’s not a guardian ad litem. She’s a British lady. I’m sure you guys will like her very much.’
I wiped the glop from Polly’s face then picked her up and took Joe by the hand. ‘Okay, let’s go,’ I said. ‘We got a busy day tomorrow. So why don’t we head up to our room and get some sleep?’
All kids are programmed to trip their parents up.
‘What happened to The Terminator, Dad?’ asked Joe, yawning as I tucked him up in bed.
‘He got blown up,’ I said.
‘Dad!’ Joe was suddenly wide awake again and his big brown eyes filled up with tears. ‘Why did you let him get blown up? Mommy said you’d take good care of him!’
‘Oh, you mean that Terminator!’ I forgot the rodent. ‘When you and Polly came to the UK with Mom, I asked your teacher to look after him. Mrs Daley has him in your homeroom.’
‘No kidding, Dad?’
‘No kidding, Joe.’ I found my cell. ‘See here, little buddy – here are pictures of your homeroom – here’s the petting corner – and here’s The Terminator, safe and snug inside his cage.’
‘Dad, can we go see him on the weekend?’
‘We’re in Europe now, Joe. So I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible.’
‘Does Mrs Daley know he likes zucchini?’
‘Yeah, I wrote it down. Now you guys get some sleep.’
‘Tell us a story first.’
‘Stowy,’ echoed Polly.
‘I don’t know any stories.’
‘You so do!’ Joe glared at me and for a moment I saw Lexie. ‘Tell about the time when me and Polly got turned into rattlesnakes,’ he said. ‘When we were on a spaceship and we killed the bad guys with a laser gun and then when we got home again we met with the President and Congress. Dad, what’s Congress?’
‘It’s a bunch of guys in Washington who talk all day and half the night and then they tell us what to do. It’s called the democratic process. What colour are these rattlesnakes?’
‘Magenta.’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s a kind of purple. Dad, don’t you know anything? Anyways, these rattlesnakes …’
Joe told most of the story. Polly listened carefully, snuggled up against my chest and sucking on my cuff. But she was already dozing off as I kissed them goodnight.
‘Dad, I’m not tired,’ said Joe.
‘You need to get some sleep. We’re heading out tomorrow early. We’ll see something awesome.’
‘Did it come from outer space?’
ROSIE
It wasn’t such a huge success, the outing with his children.
Or it wasn’t at first, at any rate.
I drove to meet them at a big hotel in Guildford. It was dull and dank, one of those gloomy English mornings that cannot be bothered to get light, and threatening rain. People were putting stuff on Facebook saying spring in the UK was cancelled, had failed to install. Where was the flipping sun?
But it was also cold in Minneapolis. Yesterday, they’d had a foot of snow in just one night. I knew because since I had been involved with Pat I’d bookmarked various sites so I could check up on their weather, conduct my own tornado-watch and keep up to date with what was happening four thousand miles away.
Meteorological surveillance – gosh, how sad was that?
I found them waiting in the hotel lobby.
‘Joe and Polly, this is Rosie,’ said their father.
‘Hi.’ I smiled at them. ‘It’s great to meet you guys.’
‘Hi, Rosie,’ said the little boy politely while the little girl just looked at me, her thumb wedged in her mouth. The children were both gorgeous – dark-haired and elfin-faced with big brown eyes like Pat’s. They seemed a little wary. But I suppose it was to be expected. I was a stranger, right? So I could not be trusted?
‘Go on, Joe,’ urged Dad. ‘What did I tell you?’
Joe held out his right hand. I took it, shook it, smiled at him again in what I hoped was a non-threatening manner. He half-smiled gravely back.
‘Who’s driving?’ I asked Pat. ‘I’d be very happy—’
‘Dad hates to be a passenger,’ said Joe. ‘Whenever Mommy drives, he tells her careful of that truck and slow down at the intersections and it makes her mad.’
‘Then Dad had better drive.’
Pat’s hired family saloon was big and smelled of recent valeting, not of coffee and old sandwich wrappers like my Ford Fiesta. It had proper child seats, too. I hadn’t thought of child seats. Children didn’t feature in my life …
‘You’re all right with driving on the wrong side of the road?’ I asked as we set off along the dual carriageway.
‘Yeah, no problem, everybody else is on the wrong side, too. So I just follow them.’
‘You know about priority at roundabouts?’
‘You mean at intersections?’
‘No, I mean at roundabouts. You have to give way from the right, okay?’
‘Roundabouts – so what are roundabouts – I give way from the right – what then?’
What are roundabouts?
We were doing sixty and I was about to panic. But then he shot a glance at me and grinned mischievously. ‘Hey, don’t look so worried. I read right through The Highway Code last night. I got the special interactive version for idiot Americans who never heard of roundabouts. So, where are we headed?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ I told him tartly. ‘I’ll give you directions in good time.’
‘Dad hates surprises,’ Joe informed me helpfully. ‘Mysteries, surprises, all that stuff – he thinks it’s dumb.’
‘I don’t,’ objected Pat.
‘Dad, you big liar, you so do. Anyways, you told me there’s no mystery that science can’t explain.’
‘There might be a few.’
Polly was completely silent as we drove. But Joe talked all the time. He summarised the storylines of movies he had seen: Cars, Cars 2, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Shrek, Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third.
He seemed to like the stuff that came in series and involved a lot of mayhem and – if possible – machinery. Then he explained about the Revolution, which his class was studying in school. The American Revolution starring Nathan Hale and Paul Revere and all the patriotic, good Americans who drove the wicked, greedy British out – hurrah, hurrah, hurrah – and then they got the Constitution.
‘What’s the Constitution, Joe?’ I asked.
‘What’s the Constitution, Dad?’ asked Joe.
‘I’ll tell you later, little buddy,’ said his father, who was concentrating on the road. As I had already realised when we were in Minnesota, Pat was a good driver. He obeyed all traffic signals, stayed a fraction just below the limit, didn’t run red lights and never, ever cut anybody up.
But he did have his children in the back.
So maybe being a parent makes you careful?
But it’s like in Sleeping Beauty, isn’t it? You can have all the spindles burned and all the needles melted down for scrap,
but your child will always find the one you missed and prick her finger on it anyway.
‘Why have we stopped here, Dad?’ asked Joe as he gazed across the sodden, grey-green wastes of Salisbury Plain.
‘We’re going to check out something even older than your father,’ Pat replied.
‘A tyrannosaurus rex?’ demanded Joe excitedly. ‘Or a pterodactyl, yeah?’
‘You wait and see.’
We got out of the car and Pat swung Polly up on to his shoulders. I took Joe’s hand and let him tug me through the empty car park. I saw him darting glances everywhere, clearly anxious to see dinosaurs.
Then it started raining and, as we left the ticket office and the information centre, what had been a bit of drizzle turned into a downpour. So was this a big mistake? Perhaps. At any rate, Pat wasn’t half as impressed as I had been when I’d first seen Stonehenge. In fact, he wasn’t impressed at all.
‘It’s not big enough,’ he muttered, scowling.
‘Whatever do you mean, not big enough? What were you expecting, something on the scale of the Grand Canyon?’
‘No, but I thought it would be more dramatic, awe-inspiring. This is just a bunch of rocks.’
‘They’re very ancient rocks.’
‘All rocks are ancient, Rosie,’ he said sourly, as the rain came down in torrents. ‘I know what you’re about to say. I should be astonished some Bronze Age guys in goatskins dragged them here on rollers made of tree trunks and stacked them up like dominoes?’
‘Well, I think it’s astonishing,’ I said. ‘Those Bronze Age guys in goatskins, they had no mathematics, writing, cranes—’
‘I never bought that goatskin stuff. My theory is this is the work of aliens from outer space. The rocks were teleported here from distant galaxies one Thursday afternoon after the baseball season ended so everyone was bored.’
‘Dad, where are the dinosaurs?’ asked Joe.
‘Son, nobody promised you a dinosaur,’ said Pat.
‘Daddy, down,’ said Polly.
So Pat put her down. She started pulling at the short green rabbit-bitten turf which was thick with droppings, little hard, black pellets. I hoped she wouldn’t try to eat them, thinking they were sweets.
‘Let’s go and do something else, then?’ I suggested.
‘What exactly do you have in mind? Checking out more rocks, more grass, more sky?’
‘Let’s get out of the rain, in any case.’
We headed for the car park.
‘Rosie, did you ever go to bug camp?’ Joe demanded as he skipped along beside me in the downpour, swinging from my hand.
‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s bug camp?’
‘It’s a day camp at the zoo. You get to study bugs,’ he told me, in the patient tones of someone talking to a simpleton. ‘You find out what bugs eat, and what eats them, and how they do a ton of stuff like building bug homes, raising bug kids. Mom says I can go in summer if we’re home in Minnesota.’
‘I’m not keen on bugs.’
‘We have stick insects in our homeroom. They eat leaves, but if they’re overcrowded they eat each other’s legs.’
‘What else do you like to do, apart from study bugs?’
‘I like to cook. Hey, Rosie – can you make Yorkshire puddings?’
‘Yes, but I usually buy them ready-made. When did you have Yorkshire puddings, Joe?’
‘Tess fixed them on Thanksgiving.’
‘Well, if you guys come by my apartment some time, I could fix you some,’ I told him. Yes, I was determined to learn Amglish. I hoped they were impressed. ‘What do you cook, Joe?’
‘Oh, a ton of stuff! I bake up brownies, cookies, cupcakes. I’m real good at those. I guess if someone showed me how, I could fix some Yorkshire puddings, too.’
‘You could help me make the batter, certainly. When I was as old as you, I used to love a Yorkshire dipped in Lyle’s golden syrup – that’s like your American maple syrup – or in chocolate sauce.’
‘Chocolate sauce – my favourite!’ Joe looked up at me. ‘I like your hair,’ he added. ‘Did you put your finger in an outlet? I know that makes your hair go kind of crazy. Mrs Daley showed us pictures one time. You shouldn’t put your finger in an outlet. You could die.’
‘Joseph!’ Pat exclaimed. ‘Unless you’re paying compliments, you should never comment on the way a lady looks!’
‘Patrick, it’s okay. The rain has made my hair frizz up. I do look like I’ve been electrocuted.’
Joe’s bemused expression struck me as so sweet – he realised he had put his foot in it, but didn’t know how or why – that I began to laugh. Polly stared at me but then she started laughing, too. Joe looked worried for another moment, but soon joined in with us.
‘You’re a bunch of nutters.’ Pat scooped his daughter up into his arms. ‘No,’ he told her firmly. ‘You do not eat rabbit poop, you hear me? Let’s go get a burger, that’s if they have any burger restaurants in downtown Salisbury?’
‘Or maybe we should find a sandwich shop, buy the children sandwiches and fruit, not chips and burgers?’
‘You sound like my wife.’
‘You called us nutters – that’s a piece of good old British slang.’
‘Yeah, I’m trying to learn a foreign language.’
Polly seemed to like me.
When we went into the café and sat down, she climbed on to my lap. She fidgeted and squirmed and wriggled until she was comfortable. It felt good to have her there, her chubby little body snuggled close to mine.
‘You like my new T-shirt, Rosie?’ Joe enquired as we ate our burgers in this place whose menu said it made its own from happy cows who’d gladly lived and died for burgerdom, apparently in a meadow full of daisies, if we could believe the illustration on the menu.
‘Yes, it’s great.’ I looked at it more closely. ‘Angry Birds – it’s H&M new season, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah!’ Joe was delighted I could trace his T-shirt’s provenance. ‘Mom bought it online. You dig the shades?’
‘I do indeed, Joe. Angry Birds in sunglasses are awesome.’ I wouldn’t mind a top like that to wear myself, I thought – ironically of course, as Tess might say.
‘I got a shark one with a big red mouth as well,’ he told me. ‘But I didn’t want a Super Mario, although it was on sale. I like your top,’ he added. ‘You look hot in yellow. Rosie, if you did your eyes in black, you’d look like Alice Cooper.’
‘What the hell?’ his father spluttered. ‘Joseph Riley, what’s with you today?’
‘It’s all right,’ I said to Pat. ‘Joe, who’s Alice Cooper?’
‘A mom, her kid’s in school with me.’ Now Joe was blushing like a ripe tomato. ‘Sorry, Dad. I know I ought to call her Mrs Cooper. But she said to call her Alice.’
‘Oh, she did?’ Pat scowled at him. ‘Just get on and eat your burger, will you, and stop being such a wise guy?’
‘Rosie, don’t be mad,’ Joe whispered.
‘I’m not mad at all, Joe,’ I assured him. ‘I’m very flattered that you like my top.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘Gap.’
‘Yeah, I thought it looked like Gap. It’s a real cool store. I got some jeans from Gap.’
Joe and I, we bonded over fashion.
PATRICK
‘What shall we do now?’ I asked, uncomfortably aware that they were ganging up against me, which was both good and bad.
Good because I wanted Rosie and my kids to get along. Bad because she seemed to be encouraging my boy to give her sass, and I expect a child of mine to have respect and be polite. A six-year-old should not be telling any grown up woman she looks hot, even if she does look hot, as Rosie did today.
‘Daddy won’t be grumpy long,’ she murmured, wiping Polly’s ketchup-covered mouth with paper napkins. Then she smiled at Joe, who grinned. ‘What shall we do now? Let’s have a think. We could go and climb the spire of the cathedral. Or …’
‘Or what?’ demanded J
oe excitedly.
‘We could go to Bath!’
‘Go take a bath?’
‘No, not take a bath. We could check out something even Daddy will agree is pretty special.’
Yeah? Surprise me.
‘How far is it?’ I asked.
‘About an hour’s drive – that’s all, I promise.’ She spoke to me like I was some resentful adolescent on a family day out who needed talking round. ‘Come on, Mr Surly, let’s go and drink some water.’
‘I can drink water anyplace.’
‘But this is special water. It smells like rotten eggs and tastes of blood.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’
‘Come on, Dad, let’s go!’ Always up for anything disgusting, Joe was already tugging at my hand. So we headed off to Bath, aquaplaning through the everlasting British rain.
I’d heard of Bath, of course. I knew it was a Roman city one time and was a tourist destination now. So what was I expecting? The usual pathetic British shopping mall? Some stubs of columns, maybe? Some piles of Roman rubble? If we lucked out big time, might we get to go inside a dusty, dark museum full of tarnished metal, broken crockery and other trash?
As we parked up, the sun came out. The sky was suddenly cobalt and, to my surprise, beneath white cotton candy clouds there was a gracious city built of glowing golden stone. It looked like something in a movie.
Then we were in the movie.
We trod on the actual paving stones the Romans walked on two thousand years ago. We saw bathing pools of grass-green water from which the steam arose and wreathed around us in wraith-like, spooky spirals. We checked out Roman tombstones, a bronze head of Minerva, a scary Gorgon’s mask. We watched as foaming torrents bubbled up from deep inside the earth then gurgled off down ancient Roman drains.
‘What do you think?’ asked Rosie.
‘It’s awesome,’ I replied.
‘Okay, no need to be sarcastic.’
‘I’m serious,’ I insisted, as I gazed at Roman columns, Roman walls and Roman …
‘Pat, where’s Polly?’
‘She’s right here beside me.’
‘No she’s not!’
I didn’t know what I should do. I stared around in panic, about to get myself a heart attack. But then – oh, thank you, God – I saw my baby. ‘Polly, get back here!’ I yelled and everybody turned to stare at me.
Magic Sometimes Happens Page 19
