I Conquer Britain (13 page)

Jocelyn laughed. “At least no one would ever think I was named after a car.”

Though they might think she was named after some kind of snake.

“Right.” Daniel put his arm around Jocelyn’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

I followed them through the lobby and up the stairs. (Lesson for Today: You can’t actually walk through a crowded subway station with an entwined couple because they walk slower than everyone else and they take up too much room.)

We came out on Oxford Circus (which, in less civilized countries, is just an intersection). Oxford Street itself looked pretty much like an incredibly busy London high street, lined with enough typical American restaurants and stores to make me feel at home.

“
Top Shop
first,” said Jocelyn.

We went to
Top Shop
first. Daniel and Jocelyn stayed in joined-at-the-hip mode as we walked around. The going was slow since every few feet they’d have to stop to kiss, and sometimes they’d get so involved with each other that it was hard to tell without looking if they were making out or drowning. After
Top Shop
we went to
Hennes
. Then we went to
Miss Selfridge
. Then we went to
French Connection
. Now and then Jocelyn would stop to look at something. Was this in? Was that her colour? Would those pants make her look fat? Would that skirt make her ankles look thick? I didn’t see what it mattered. All the stuff looked pretty much the same. Daniel had Jocelyn to keep him awake, but trailing behind them I more or less went into a coma. I started thinking about the Suffragettes. Besides being imprisoned inside a clock, the Suffragettes chained themselves to the gates of Parliament … they marched in the streets … they were ridiculed and reviled … beaten and even killed. I wondered, if they’d known that they were going through all that trauma and torment for girls like Jocelyn, if they’d have bothered. When she remembered I was behind them, Jocelyn would ask me something about New York styles and what everyone was wearing and things like that, but she finally must have realized that I could only have cared less if I’d been dead, and gave up.

It took about a hundred years and just as many stores, but at last Jocelyn found something she wanted to try on.

“I won’t be long,” she promised. She gave Daniel yet another kiss. God knew how she managed to stay alive before she stole him away from Sophie. “You can tell Cherokee all about our camping trip while I’m gone.”

How lucky could one girl be?

As soon as she disappeared into the dressing room, Daniel turned to me with a big grin. But instead of saying, “We put up our tent and then we blew up our mattresses”, he said, “You know, Jocelyn’s going away the day after tomorrow.”

I said, “Oh, really?”

He nodded. “Yeah, she’s going to visit her nan. So I was thinking…”

There are first times for everything.

“You know…” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “If you wanted I could show you round a bit.”

“Show me round what?”

“Well, you know, round London.”

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“I’ve already seen Big Ben and stuff like that.”

If he’d jammed his hands any further in his pockets they’d have touched his knees.

“Or we could go to a film or something.”

“Go to a film?”

He more or less rocked on his heels. “Yeah, you know. A movie. It must be pretty boring for you at the P-Ts … you know, coming from New York and all.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad. I’ve been helping Caroline dig a canal in the garden.”

He stared at me for one of those really long nanoseconds and then he laughed. Heartily. “Oh, right. Hahaha. That’s really funny.” He rocked a little more. “You know, there’s a Goth club down the other end of Oxford Street. We could go there if you’d like.”

Go to a Goth club with Ken? Had every pigeon in London been turned into a pig?

“I’m sorry, but I’m a little confused here. Are you asking me out like on a date?”

Daniel pulled his shoulders up so high that for a second he looked like he had no neck. “Well it wouldn’t be a real date, would it? You know, you’re only here for a few weeks.”

“So it wouldn’t really count?”

“If you say so.” He grinned. “But it’d be a good idea not to say anything to Jocelyn about this. She can be a bit possessive.”

I’d never realized before how thin the line between charm and slime really is.

I was saved by the reappearance of Jocelyn outside the dressing room with the skirt on. She twirled around so we got the full effect. “What do you think?”

Not a lot, really.

“I’ll ring you,” said Daniel, his smile on Jocelyn.

“That’d be brilliant. I’d really like that.”

I’d rather stick toothpicks in my ears.

A
couple of days after my encounter of the third kind with Jocelyn and Daniel, I went down for breakfast to find Robert alone in the kitchen. This was such a really unusual thing that my first thought was that Caroline had finally had enough and run away from home, too. He had half the drawers and cabinets opened and was crouched down, looking under the sink like he’d suddenly taken up plumbing (either that, or he was looking for a bomb).

“Cherry!” He’d never looked so happy to see me. “I don’t suppose you know where we keep the coffee?”

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Robert Pitt-Turnbull.

“It’s in the freezer.”

You could see him thinking
What’s it doing in there?
, but all he said was, “Right.” He got to his feet and went to the fridge.

I filled the kettle. I was starting to get used to the tea. (Steep no more than three minutes and put the milk in last, so you could see how much you needed.)

Robert turned on the coffee maker, and then he looked in the bread bin (he couldn’t miss that – it said BREAD on it in big letters). He lifted out a loaf of unsliced bread and put it on the cutting board like it might explode.

After a few minutes of hacking away at it he had a pile of crumbs.

“Bloody hell…” he muttered. “This is the twenty-first century, for God’s sake. Why can’t we have sliced bread like everyone else?”

One of the advantages of having a grandmother like Sky is that she’s always baked her own bread, meaning that you pretty much learned how to slice it as soon as you could handle a knife without stabbing yourself or you didn’t have any. So I could have taken pity on Robert and cut him a couple of slices, but I figured that in the twenty-first century a highly evolved human adult male should be able to cut his own bread. “So where’s Caroline?”

Caroline had a bit of a migraine.

“A migraine?” I knew that migraines can be caused by stress. “Is that because she’s worried about the Czar?”

Robert looked from the rubble to me. “Xar? She’s worried about Xar?”

You obviously had to be a character in his book to get his attention.

“Yeah. You know, because he’s moved out?”

“Xar’s moved out?”

It was like talking to a parrot.

“Caroline didn’t tell you?”

Robert frowned, trying to remember whether he knew this or not. “Well … she did say they had a bit of a spat and he stormed out of the house.”

The man was totally oblivious.

“They did. And he hasn’t been home since.”

“He’ll be back,” Robert assured me. “As soon as he runs out of money. And I’m certain that has nothing to do with Caroline’s migraine. It’s more likely to be all that rain we had.” He waved the knife over the loaf, as though he was hoping it had figured out what it was supposed to do. “She’ll be down as soon as she’s feeling better.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“Pardon?”

“What if she doesn’t feel better? I mean, what do we do about supper and stuff like that if she doesn’t come down?” Robert’s one of those people who doesn’t think he’s eaten if he hasn’t had something that used to have parents. There was no way I was cooking dead flesh for him.

He tapped the instrument of destruction (otherwise known as the bread knife) against the cutting board in a pensive way. “Don’t worry,” Robert assured me. “She’ll be fine. And if not, I’m perfectly capable of seeing that we don’t starve.”

Since he couldn’t slice bread or find the coffee, I wasn’t exactly convinced of that. “You sure?”

“Of course I am.”

Caroline didn’t come down.

After Robert went off to work and I’d waited a while, I went up to see how Caroline was for myself.

The room was so dark it could have been anybody in incredible pain lying on the bed.

I asked if there was anything she needed.

“A new head. If my mother rings, tell her I’ll be over later with the shopping.”

I said that sounded pretty unrealistic. “You can’t even sit up. If you tell me what she needs I’ll get her groceries and walk the dogs.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you—”

“You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”

Caroline was right about Poor Old Mum not liking change. She was more resistant than a mountain.

She stood in the doorway with her arms folded in front of her like she was going to block me if I tried to get past her. “I don’t know about this.” The way she was looking at me, you’d think I was a stain on the carpet. “It’s a long way for you to come on foot.”

“I enjoy the walk. I like to look at all the old buildings and stuff.”

She kept on eyeing me dubiously. “And I like things done a certain way.”

Wow, what a surprise.

“So tell me how you want them done and that’s the way I’ll do them.”

She glanced down at the heads poking out from around her legs. “But Drake and Raleigh don’t really know you.”

“They’ll get over it. We’ve got a pig, a cat and a rooster at home. I’m good with animals.”

“But what if something happens? What if I fall again?”

“If I can’t pick you up I’ll send a smoke signal and get an ambulance.” She could argue all she wanted, she didn’t have a choice. “Look, Mrs Payne, it’s me or nothing. Caroline can’t do it. She can’t even get out of bed.”

Mrs Payne sighed the sigh of a stubborn woman who knows when she’s beat. “Well, I suppose it’s just for today…”

“Right,” I said. “So now can I come in?”

Caroline’s mother, Drake and Raleigh all followed me into the kitchen.

“I hear you nearly got arrested,” said Mrs Payne as I started to unpack the stuff I’d picked up on my way over.

I was going to make a joke of it, in case it was a problem for her, but she didn’t give me a chance.

“I was arrested once myself, you know.”

I turned around pretty quickly. “You?” It was hard to imagine. I mean, obviously people in England are arrested all the time – but not people like Mrs Pain in the Butt. What for? Impersonating the Queen?

She nodded. “At an airbase.”

“You were in the air force?”

“No, of course not. I was in CND. I was protesting against nuclear weapons.”

More hidden depths.

“So what happened? Did they put you in prison, or did they just hold you till you cooled down?”

But this wasn’t a question that was about to get answered.

She stared at the stuff I’d put on the counter. “What’s that?” She took up a small, black cardboard box and held it out at arm’s length as though it was seething with maggots.

“It’s tea.”

“But this isn’t
my
tea.”

Like she owned the company or something.

“I know,” I said. “They didn’t have it.”

“They didn’t
have
it?” It was obviously the end of life as we know it. “What do you mean, they didn’t have it?”

I went back to the unpacking. “I mean there wasn’t any in the store. They’re out of it. So I got you what they did have.”

Mrs Payne was having a really hard time coming to grips with this news. She just kept staring at the box as though she was thinking,
But why doesn’t the sun shine? Why don’t the birds sing? What happened to the grass?

“I’ve been drinking Earl Grey tea for over sixty years,” she informed me.

“Right. Then maybe it’s about time you had a change.”

She started peering over all the things on the counter. “And where are my chops? Don’t tell me they’d run out of them as well.”

I pointed to a package wrapped in white paper and sealed in a clear plastic bag. “I got you fish instead.”

“Fish? You got me fish? But I didn’t ask for fish. I asked for chops.”

“You shouldn’t be eating meat. Caroline talked to Jake last night and—”

“Jake?”

“My mom? Caroline talked to my mom last night and Jake says meat’s one of the worst things for a bad back. Because it has uric acid.”

“I see.” She gave me a sarcastic smile. “And is your mother a doctor now?”

“No, but she learned a lot when my gran threw her back out jive dancing.”

“Jive dancing.”

“Uh huh. But she’s OK now.”

“Well, that’s a great relief, isn’t it?”

I took the last thing from the shopping bag and put it on the counter. “And Caroline bought you this.” This wasn’t true. I happened to see it in the window of the bookstore as I went past. I figured it was just what the old pain in the butt needed. Robert wasn’t the only one who had to start taking care of himself.

“What’s that, then?”

It was pretty self-explanatory since the title gave it away the way the word CORNFLAKES on a box of cereal does, but I told her anyway. “It’s a book on nutritional healing. It’s got a whole section on back pain. All the things you can do to make it better.”

She sighed as though of all the pain she’d suffered, this was the worst. “I suppose your mother recommended it,” she said.

Mrs Payne drew me a map to show me where to take the dogs (you could see where Caroline got it from). Apparently, Caroline usually took them for the long walk to the common.

I said, “Common what?”

Mrs Payne made one of her why-do-I-have-to-put-up-with-these-peasants faces. “Common land. It’s an old British tradition.”

But because I’d already walked so far, and because she didn’t trust me to find my way back from the long walk, we took the short walk – down her block, across the main street and down to the river. It’d be pretty inaccurate to say that I took them, since they lurched and pulled the whole way (I didn’t have to show them who was boss, they already knew). But once we got to the river path they calmed down and we had a really nice walk. There were a couple of small boats on the river and a heron, and there were other people with dogs or children just slouching along, enjoying the sunny day, and I almost felt right at home. You know, like I was strolling through Prospect Park.