Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (44 page)

“I’ll make it work!” I said. “This is wonderful, Patrick!”

“Well, I thought so too,” he said, obviously proud of himself. “No downtime afterward, but it’ll be worth it.”

And it was.

I was surprised, actually, that Patricia agreed to go with us, but I guess London trumped even her friends. When Tyler’s best friend, a collector of foreign beer cans, heard where we were going, he begged Tyler to collect all he could find and bring them back, for a percentage of the profits when he sold them.

“Now, Tyler, how are you going to manage that?” I asked.

“That craze was over years ago,” Patrick pleaded with him.

“Not for Matthew. He inherited his uncle’s collection, and he’s going to sell them all on eBay,” Tyler explained.

We gave in, and Tyler crammed a box of plastic bags into his backpack.

We talked of nothing but the trip in the week before we left, and each of us decided what we most wanted to see or do. There were a few things we all agreed on—the Tower of London, as Patrick had said, Buckingham Palace. But Tyler, for some
reason, really wanted to say he had been to Wales, so we bought BritRail passes to do that. I most wanted to see the old medieval towns of York and Chester, and that would take up another two days. Both Patricia’s and Patrick’s desires were in London itself. Patrick wanted to look up the buildings of Christopher Wren and explore some art galleries; Patricia wanted to see Chelsea and visit shops and bookstores and buy something for her English literature teacher, who had impressed her most this year.

I don’t know that any of us slept much on the plane going over. We decided to spend our first night in York to escape the London crowds when we were so tired, so as soon as we got our money exchanged, we took the train to Victoria Station, where we had to catch a cab to get to the second train station for York. We stood in a famous British queue to take our turn, and when we finally got in the cab and told the driver we had twenty minutes to catch our train, he gave us the ride of a lifetime. As this was my first taste of driving on the left instead of the right, I was sure we would be killed on our first day there. If we were half asleep before, we were wide awake now as the driver careened by Buckingham Palace, tore around monuments, and zigzagged through lines of pedestrians.

Patricia made gasping noises, her face against my shoulder as huge double-decker buses seemed to be coming right at us, and just when disaster was all but certain, the taxi would swerve the opposite way. We made it onto the train with fifty-five seconds to spare.

Tired as we were, the city and suburbs were just too different from ours for us to sleep.

“Look, Mom, how small the yards are!” Tyler exclaimed. “And every one has a wall or hedge or something around it.”

“And flowers!” Patricia added. “Did you ever see so many flowers?”

In York we were fascinated by the pull chain toilet and a bathtub high up on a pedestal. We spent our second day there too and found we could walk around the entire city in an hour or two, much of our sightseeing taking place on the old Roman wall that still surrounded portions of the city. I had read up on York before we came and pointed out the huge Micklegate Bar, one of the four gates leading into the city. “It was up there on the crest of this gate that the heads of traitors were once exhibited on iron spikes until they rotted away, their eyes pecked out by marauding crows,” I told the kids.

“Cool!” said Tyler, gazing upward.

I also pointed out the Treasurer’s House, where the ghosts of Roman soldiers were said to appear. Clearly, I was caught up in the history of the place. We hired a guide to drive us out in the country to see a church dating back to 654, the tombstones in the graveyard so close together that mowing was impossible, and so sheep grazed on the tall grass.

I could have stayed in York the whole time we were in England, but it was on to Chester next. The trains there, which seated passengers at tables much like a diner, were conducive to eating and conversation. They were also a magnificent opportunity for Tyler.

“I can’t watch,” said Patricia as Tyler went up and down the aisles, keeping his eye out for empty beer cans on the tables and asking politely if he might have them.

“Collectin’ the rubbish, are ya?” asked a cheerful woman, tossing in a paper bag and a half-eaten sandwich, and Patrick laughed at the look on Tyler’s face as he accepted the trash and thanked the woman.

He had collected some cans in York as well, so by the time we reached Chester, he had half a plastic bag full. He had gone eight cars away from where we were sitting, looking for beer cans, and thought he’d allowed enough time to get back to us before our stop. And he had, except that people ready to get off at Chester began gathering at the exits, their suitcases blocking the aisles and making it impossible for him to get by.

Each of us had been assigned two bags to carry each time we went from one place to another. Tyler’s bags were still on the rack above us. We hoped he would assess the problem, figure out we had his bags, and just get off at our stop and wait for us on the platform. But when we realized he wasn’t getting off and the train would move on, Patricia ran to find the conductor, Patrick went along the outside of the train calling Tyler’s name, and I stayed with the bags. Finally they found him, shaken and pale, seconds before the train pulled out, and we stood on the platform, a little foursome with our arms around each other, breathing deeply and trying to laugh at our adventure.

As we signed in at our second hotel, the helpful porter, hearing the sound of clinking beer cans, reached out his hands
and said to Tyler, “Shall I chuck those for you?” at which Tyler yelped, “No!” Patrick had to explain—not for the first time—that these were quite precious to someone back in the States, and he endured the stares of the hotel personnel.

In Chester we gaped at the ancient two-story buildings, some of which leaned slightly inward over a narrow lane, and shops so old, we read, that knights had patronized them to buy their armor. Another walled city, and Patrick pointed out the sharp spikes along the top in places to keep the enemy out.

To do all we wanted to do in London, we could spend only a few hours in Wales. But we loved riding the train to Holyhead, water on one side, mountains on the other, and trees bent double by the force of the wind that blows off the Irish sea.

We did our best to pronounce the names of streets and towns along the way, and Patrick tried to photograph some of the signs as the train sped along. One was so long that the sign itself seemed to go on forever. The amused conductor, who must have seen tourists struggle over this many times, came by later with a piece of paper imprinted with the name: LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLAN-DOSILIOGOGOGOCH.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“Turn the paper over,” the conductor said. The translation read:
Church of St. Mary in a hollow of white hazel near to a rapid whirlpool and St. Tysilio’s Church of the red cave.

We had a few hours to wander around Holyhead—it, too, once occupied by Romans—before we caught our train
to London. But the journey to the end of Wales and back was worth it if only to see the Church of St. Mary sign, which we tried again and again to pronounce.

We spent the rest of our time in London. At breakfast the next morning in a hotel on the outskirts, we were marveling at the breakfasts served in some of the hotels, especially the one in York. “We’ll remember that as ‘Hotel Near Wall with Bacon and Tomatoes and Ham and Eggs and Kippers and Fruit on a Big Platter with Cream on the Side,’  ” said Patrick.

For the rest of the trip that was the trigger that could get us all laughing, and the kids tried to top each other with outlandish names. We visited the British Museum and the Tower of London. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace became, for Patricia, Place-of-Young-Hot-Guy-in-Beehive-Hat-and-Red-Jacket-Holding-Rifle-and-Not-Even-Looking-at-Me-When-I-Said-Hi.

We set aside one afternoon for each of us to go our separate ways and meet again for dinner. Tyler had a map of the London Underground, and just as he’d enjoyed mapping out the streets of our neighborhood in Barcelona, he enjoyed taking the different routes of the subway. Patricia haunted the shops and bookstores of Chelsea and came back with a paperbound copy of
New Voices in Poetry
by young British authors to give her teacher and some earrings for her friends. Patrick went to the observatory at Greenwich.

I simply explored the neighborhood outside our hotel, watching the preacher who stood on a trunk denouncing
a demonstration a few feet away of a man lying on a bed of nails; the trio of young men playing a guitar, a flute, and a hurdy-gurdy; the proper-looking lady in hat and suit pedaling sedately down the street. I drank in the dialect, the wonderful cockney—a woman complaining to another about a friend who had invited her to tea, with nothing to eat, “Just a cup w’out anythin’ to hold in your han’.” Like Tyler, I loved the signs at important buildings or driveways that read
DEAD STOP
OR
DEAD SLOW
.

*  *  *

But there were places that made me sure that, were I to die in London, it would not be in a cab but by the simple act of crossing the street—places where, even though I checked for traffic on my right instead of my left, there was no walk light, and it was just a contest between cars and pedestrians.

I stood timidly by as swarm after swarm of cars and cabs and buses trapped me there on the curb. And then, on some unseen signal, the crowd waiting beside me would suddenly defy all odds and surge into the street with traffic coming right at them. Miraculously, the oncoming herd would stop, then inch forward again until, on that same unseen signal, all engines revved up and they were off again.

I couldn’t do it. When it was a wager between me and the grille of a double-decker bus, my bets were on the bus. I was trapped at Piccadilly Circus until a proper English gentleman suddenly took me by the arm, hustled me across, tipped his hat (yes, he wore a hat), and walked on.

*  *  *

Our most expensive outing in London was a medieval feast we had signed up for in advance. We’d read about it when planning our trip. Tyler was up for anything having to do with food, and Patricia had a special dress she thought would be just right for Elizabethan times.

The morning of the banquet, I woke feeling slightly feverish, with an unsettled stomach. Something I’d eaten, I thought, and I was careful of what I ate the rest of the day. By evening I didn’t feel better, but arguably, not any worse.
I am not sick,
I told myself as we climbed into a cab.
Not at the price we paid for these tickets!

We were deposited in front of a hotel and led to the Elizabethan rooms by a minstrel strumming his lute. The banquet hall was lit by candles and, probably because of his height, Patrick was chosen as lord of the manor, and instructed to greet each arriving guest with a hearty “Drink! Hail!” to which the guests replied, “Wassail!”

Patrick took his role with gusto, and the four of us were seated at the head table. As all the other guests were “seated below the salt,” they had to come to him to ask for a pinch from the salt box. Specifically, the men sent their wives, and Patrick took great pleasure in the custom of requiring a kiss of each fair maiden before he obliged, to much laughter from his children.

The menu consisted of dishes served in medieval times, and everything was done to make the meal as authentic as possible,
down to the chipped platters, the wooden bowls, and the straw on the floor. We were to drink our soup right from the bowl, then wipe our bowls clean with huge hunks of bread. I stared down at the grease left in my bowl and realized that dinner, for me, was over. I was going to have to fake the rest of the evening.
I am not sick,
I reminded myself.

Patricia leaned around Patrick to say, “Isn’t this fun, Mom?” and I gave her a wan smile.

I watched as my glass was filled with fermented apple juice. Each course had to be presented first to the lord of the manor, and when a costumed wench appeared with a huge platter of shellfish, I held my breath while she heaped a pile of mussels onto each of our plates.

“Are you all right?” Patrick asked me as I tried unobtrusively to stuff each gray creature back into its shell.

“Don’t ask,” I said. “Carry on for old England.”

The fish was followed with an assortment of chopped vegetables that looked like cold chop suey, and then the minstrel came in with an authentic boar’s head, high on a platter, singing all the while, and when he presented it to us, its foggy eye staring up at me, the apple askew in its hairy mouth, I changed my mantra to,
I am not going to throw up.
I had not vomited even once when I was pregnant, I told myself, so I wouldn’t now. This medieval feast was my idea, and I was jolly well going to sit here and watch my family enjoy themselves.

Chicken pâté was served along with the boar’s head—its cheeks, I imagine—with admonitions that we would be fined if
we did not leave some on our plates to give to the poor, and I was the most charitable one in the room.

Then the main course—huge slabs of roast beef that the wenches forked off slovenly onto our plates in a splatter of fat and grease. Where were those medieval dogs under the table when we needed them? I silently moaned.

Tyler, who had finished his beef, noticed me sliding my portion back and forth across my plate, and asked, “You going to eat that, Mom?” I told him to wait until the guests were pounding the table again to applaud the minstrel at the other end of the room and then I would slide my serving onto his plate.

When the main course was finished, the wenches came around with a large bowl, into which each guest unceremoniously dumped all leftovers. I stared down into the gray shellfish, the chop suey, the fatty slabs of leftover beef, and—I couldn’t help myself—the desecrated boar’s head, with one eye still intact.

Then I turned suddenly and asked permission of the lord of the manor to use the restroom. Out in the hall, I remember one of the wenches saying, “You don’t want to miss the raspberries with clotted cream,” and the next thing I knew I was lying on a sofa outside the hotel kitchen, with three wenches, two chefs, and one minstrel looking down at me.