Falling in Love With English Boys (9 page)

He didn’t stare at the zit. (Remember that chin-down, look-up-through-the-lashes look we all practiced to perfection in seventh grade? A modified version is fab for times like these.) He didn’t sit across the room from my pestilence. He didn’t even flinch at the blinding orangeness of the sofa as he sat down. Next to me.

And of course, there’s that loooong minute where I’m thinking of and discarding all the right/wrong things to say, and debating whether to offer him tea (do people under the age of thirty drink tea? do we have any? what if we don’t have bags, but just loose stuff, and I end up serving him sludge?), and trying to keep my chin down and eyes up without looking like a puppy who’s just peed on the rug . . . Then, too, there’s my determination not to say anything, just to ask questions. About him. And what interests him. And to look fascinated with every word he speaks in response.

“Tea?” I blurt.

“No,” he replies, grinning. “Thank you.” Then, after glancing around: “Remind me, whose flat is this?”

So I tell him about the world expert on creeping mold and we agree there is no remedy for the carpeting and then discuss the painting.

“Obviously the artist was a tortured soul,” he says somberly. Not.

“Mad cow disease” slips out before I can decide it’s probably not wise to mention it in the presence of an Englishman who might or might not like hamburgers. Then: “Tea?” And he laughs.

“All right. Let’s have tea. Anyplace you’d especially like to go?”

Anyplace you’d care to take me
. “Notting Hill,” I hear myself say. It’s cool, Elizabeth called from there, and it’s far enough away that we’ll have to spend at least an hour together.

He smiles approvingly. “Notting Hill it is.” And unfolds all six-foot-something of himself from the sofa. Which means when standing, he’s taller than I am. Like,
taller
. Which, as you all know from those years when walking around my bedroom with heavy books on my head had nothing to do with posture and everything with losing an inch or two, is a very good thing.

I had no idea, and couldn’t exactly ask, if this little outing is to kill time or is a mission of mercy. And I don’t care. Just call me Time-Killer-Charity-Case. I’m in.

I do love the Tube—the endless escalator rides that make you feel like you’re heading into the center of the earth, the young men with guitars playing 80s covers in the tiled tunnels (Will told me it’s called “busking,” and he flipped a pound coin into the case of the one singing “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me”—maybe because people kept shouting “Yes!” from the platform), the veddy propah voice telling you to “mind the gap” as you step into the train. The sideways rocking of the cars that makes you bump up against the person sitting next to you. I made sure to sit so he was on the nonzit side.

He had one arm slung across the back of the seats, so it wasn’t around my shoulders, but I could feel it if I leaned all the way back. With my chin still down, I noticed his shoes: brown leather oxfords, big, slightly battered, and infinitely classier than the silver-and-black Nikes Adam wears with such pride. And his jeans: faded and soft-looking over his knees and at the crease of his thighs. He wears his clothes like they’re made for him, a totally comfy second skin. Wish I could do that.

So, here’s what I learned by the time we got to Portobello Road:

• He finished a year ago at a place he calls “Charterhouse” (I’ll assume it’s a school and has nothing to do with steak) and just returned last week from a backpacking trip through Tibet.

• He would have given it all up to become a Buddhist monk, would he not have had to give it all up. “All,” he mentioned, included bacon, Guinness, and the plasma screen he has come to worship after the last World Cup series. “All,” I’m sure, also includes killer sex with beautiful women with names like Imogen or Consuelo. Boys like this have sex like that.

• He’s staying at his family’s flat “in Town” for a few weeks before going “home” to Somerset, then he starts university at St. Andrew’s at the end of the summer. He wants to study philosophy. And finance. Clearly he’s a compassionate corporate type.

• He doesn’t like tea (which posed a minor challenge in Tibet), excessive perfume, or American football. He likes Reese’s candy (a moderate challenge in the UK), English football, and Voltaire.

• His hair, in the sunlight, looks like polished mahogany, only way softer.

We walked through Portobello Market. Will says it will be insane tomorrow, with half of London’s dubious antiques and happy, conspicuous consumers cramming the street. But it’s pretty cool on any day. Lots of people wearing funky clothing, buying funky clothing, and a veggie market that is colorful enough to make you blink. I bought a little basket of perfect, purple-black plums and a copy of a Stella McCartney hat (a copy, not a fake, I feel compelled to reiterate, although Mom gave it the evil eye nonetheless); Will tried on a Stetson—originally made, the vendor informed me, in Philadelphia—whaddaya know? (See pix.) He didn’t buy the hat.

We ended up in a little café where the girl behind the counter had an inch of spiky green hair, a fishhook through her right eyebrow, and a tattoo of a dragon on her forearm. She demanded “Can I help yez?” with a friendly snarl. Will ordered our drinks and the two of us stood staring into the glass case, overwhelmed by the sheer excessiveness of the sugar-chocolate-pastry choices there. Green snapped her gum and waited almost patiently. I had to take a picture of the bounty. She leaned into the shot and bared her teeth. (See pix.)

Then this tiny, round woman with a face like a walnut came out of the back and handed Green a clean coffeepot. She rattled off something in a language that sounded like a cross between Russian and Navajo. The girl chirped back, the old woman patted her cheek and trundled back out of sight.

“My gran says to have the kugel. She baked it with love.” Green rolled her eyes at this, but I could tell it was with love, too. We had the kugel. I wanted more. I kept that information to myself.

I picked the table. They were all tiny, but this one was in a corner, so we pretty much had to sit next to each other, instead of across. Clever, no? My cleverness does tend to have a limit. I couldn’t not ask: “All this stuff you’re giving my mom. Have you read it?”

“Some of it,” Will answered.

“And? Dull as dirt, right? I mean, I know it’s your family, but I’ve read the beginning of Katherine’s diary, and it’s better than Ambien.”

He had his coffee mug (cream, no sugar; like the “berk” I am, I actually ordered tea, nuthin’ in it, to Green’s visible if amiable scorn) cupped in his hands. I thought that mug’s gotta be hot, and that if he cupped my hand like that, it would totally disappear. “Not
Bridget Jones
, maybe, but a pretty straightforward account of her life.”

“Tons o’ fun for the fan of minutiae. But, who cares? Other than my mom.”

He shrugged. “Maybe no one. Still, think about it. She didn’t expect anyone to read her diary, so she was uncensored. Unselfconscious.” Oh, that dimple! “Can you say the same about your blog?”

Smart-ass. Smart boy. It’s fortunate I like smart boys. Especially ones with floppy shiny hair that smells like ginger ale.

“Blogs,” sez I, “are our generation’s contribution to the Great Global Village. Think about it. We share knowledge, commentary, threads to follow for even higher knowledge. Like, I link to the BM, and maybe someone follows it and learns that Lord Elgin stole the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, and maybe they find a reference to the fact that Lord Byron thought that was criminal, and wrote a poem about it . . . ” Sadly, I had to stop there, as I had expended my knowledge of the Elgin Marbles and Byron’s anti-Elgin poem.

“Impressive. How many people read your blog?”

I debated lying. Decided against it. “Only six. But it’s password-protected. Private.”

“Like a diary.”

“Well, yeah . . .”

“Only censored.”

“Maybe.”

“And selfconscious.” He reached out and lifted my chin, really gently with one finger. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d just put my face down because I’d remembered the zit. It got his hands on me. “We only tell the secrets we secretly want not to be secret, right? And learn as much from what isn’t told.”

So. Is that deep because it’s deep? Or because the resident philosopher is brain-numbingly cute?

What we learned during the next half hour:

• I don’t like tea, either. That made him laugh.

• My birthday is in two weeks. I want my own satellite. That made him laugh.

• I make him laugh. He told me so. I assume in a good way.

• I like catching people in unguarded moments for my pix. He has the same camera and hence was able to speedily delete the pic of him with kugel on his chin.

• I read
Bridget Jones
in one sitting, have seen the movie a dozen times (I didn’t mean to tell him that Colin Firth is kinda hot; it slipped out—he laughed). He tried to read
Bridget Jones
last summer. Didn’t get it. Went back to Kierkegaard.

• English is my fave subject, followed by French; history is my least.

• History was his fave until he discovered philosophy, but what’s philosophy but pondering what dismal mistakes we made in the past and trying not to make them again? He acknowledges that we frequently fail and history repeats itself.

• I rest my case.

He sighed. Exasperated, but in that cute-guy-with-his-cute-companion way. “Dude,” he sez. “Dude—” sounding totally American. “You’re history. I’m history. Not yet, but soon enough. Don’t you want someone to be interested in you?”

Yeah
, I thought.
You. Now.

His phone beeped. He politely ignored it, but informed me, “I’m meeting some mates in Kensington. Football match.” He didn’t invite me to come along. He asked if I wanted more tea. Politely. I hadn’t finished the cup I had (some sugar would have helped, no doubt) and, agonizing as it was, decided to be wise and end the party while all parties appeared to still be enjoying themselves.

He did, however, rest his arm on my seat back on the Tube again. And he walked me up four flights of the stairs to the door of the flat.

“I’ll ring,” he said as he left. “We’ll have tea.”

Okay, so the debate begins: no mention of a girlfriend. Hence, no girlfriend. But guys like this
always
have a girlfriend. Hence, there must be one. He said he’d ring. No girlfriend. He said we’d have tea, not a night of dancing with wild abandon in some steamy underground club. Girlfriend. I’m an optimist. No girlfriend. I have absolutely dismal luck with the males of the species. All of them. Girl—

Oh, the hell with it. My friends, it is time. For that Question of Questions, ageless and timeless and all-important.

Do You Think He Likes Me???

Once, long ago, there was a lively, pretty girl who wished to marry a handsome prince. She did, but was not content. She desired a child, a little prince. One was duly born to her, yet she was not content. A princess, then, she decided, would make all well. Yet when the princess arrived, she brought no contentment in her tiny pink fists. On the contrary, her mother saw in her all the joy and promise she herself had squandered, and hence dedicated herself to being certain her daughter experienced nothing and was wary of everything . . .

I am certain I am not alone in living this tale. Perhaps there is something that is altered with motherhood, something which turns the pretty, lively girls we know only from portraits into these odd, mortifying creatures who alternately smother and bully us.

But I do not care to be philosophical. I would much rather be shopping. I am, however, confined at present to the house and, until such time as Mama sees fit to release me, must content myself with my diary, the occasional teasing presence of Charles, and the hope that Luisa Hartnell will call upon me.

Mama is being thoroughly unreasonable. Perhaps if she knew the truth of my behaviour at the Bellinghams’, this ridiculous confinement would be justified. But she knows only that I went to the ball, against her wishes, and hence has decreed I should be allowed out only when she feels able to trust in my judgement (I really do not think she needed to add, “I wonder how you shall entertain yourself through the years, Katherine.”), and only then with
proper
supervision. I gather Charles is not considered proper supervision. Mama did not scold him for his part in my downfall. It didn’t matter a whit that he escorted me, and then abandoned me.

Perhaps I ought to have begun her tale with, “Once upon a time, there lived a wicked witch.”