The Anglophile (18 page)

“It's nice to meet you,” I say.

After a bit more of this innocuous exchange Kit says, “I'll be traveling again. Can you water the plants for one more week? I feel so terrible about this.”

“Oh please. How long do you think you'll be traveling again, luv?”

“We're working that out now. A week? Two weeks?”

“Take all the time you need, sweetheart.”

As Kit sits on his couch, another horrible thought sneaks in my brain, even though I thought I'd banished the willies: Well if he's dangerous,
someone
saw my face. Didn't she?

 

According to the woman I talked to at the London Walks office, we're supposed to look for a guide carrying a company sign.

I nudge Kit.

In front of the theater opposite a Burger King is an earnest-looking white man of about my age; he's in a Yellow Submarine T-shirt talking to a slightly older white man holding a sign over his head. The second man has to be the guide. The presumed Brain has slightly fuzzy short brown hair, is of medium build and has a large black carrying case swung around his shoulder. He is dressed like many men I have already spotted on the tube and at the airport; apparently there's an unofficial London uniform going of white jeans and a short black leather jacket over a solid dark sweater.

As we approach the men their voices become clearer. The Brain's arms stay up with the sign, and his legs remain steadfast in position as he is apparently lectured silly about his own area of expertise. I'm sure that the guy
in the T-shirt harassing the Brain is from New York, more specifically a native of the Bronx.

“John was shot and killed on my thirteenth birthday, and dat spooked me. I played hooky from eighth grade and ran to da Dakota, and I was part of da can-dal vigil. Can I stump you here, Mr. Brain? Do you know da address of da Dakota?”

“I've been there, yes,” says the Brain coolly, and loudly—the discreet little concert-style microphone under his chin is inadvertently turned on. “One West Seventy-second Street.”

“Ya good,” says the rabid fan.

“He'll get to us sooner or later,” Kit says to me. I nod and we stand off to the side, waiting patiently to fork over our tour money.

The Brain continues to nod as he is battered with even more pop-quiz questions from his annoying first customer.

“How did they spell Paul's name on the ‘Love Me Do' promotional single?”

The Brain's look as he speaks is commendably neutral. Does he get this obsessive pestering every day? “They left out the big
C.
Mc-artney.”

“No fooling you, eh? A good bit of manipulation dat was. So-called mistakes are da cash cows for a record company.”

“I'm not so sure,” says the Brain. “They were unknowns then. I'm sure that was a genuine—”

“Have y'all been to Liverpool?” says another American woman inching up to our guide. “To see John's home? I almost cried.”

“Southern?” Kit asks me discreetly.

“Texan.” Even without the giveaway
y'all,
I've met enough academics from that state to be fairly convinced I am right.

When the Brain addresses customer number two, his tone is detached polite. “Liverpool is good of course, but I'll be showing you Abbey Road today, which is in my opinion, also very good.”

“Oh, don't
y'all
know it. My husband and I were up early today. Believe me, we couldn't sleep.”

“Excuse me, ma'am, we'll pick this up later, eh? I reckon right this second I need to tend to more customers.” At that he looks over at Kit and me with a beseeching glance.

“Yes, all right,” says the Texan woman. “But afterwards I must tell you about our trip to the Beatles museum in Liverpool.”

“Well, c'mon, lady, that's in England, you know he's been there,” the creepy Bronx submarine T-shirt guy says to her.

Kit rescues the Brain with, “We have two for you here—”

Kit's greeted with an almost euphoric, “Oh, right, you're from
here.
”

“Yes,” Kit says. “But watch out, my girlfriend is American.”

The Brain smiles with a closed mouth as he collects our money. “Hullo? Beatles tour?” he says to each new arrival. Soon there's twenty-five of us for him to shepherd.

He tests out the little microphone and frowns when he realizes it's on already. “Can you good people hear me?”

“Yes,” comes the group mumble.

“So, yes, everyone can hear me. Wonderful. My name is Richard, and I'll be your guide today. This is the Original Beatles Walking Tour and the only one sanctioned through the famous London Walks. We'll mostly be walking to sites today, but you will also need to pay your way on the tube as we will end up at Abbey Road near the St. John's Wood station, and I'll be happy to direct you back to wherever you have to go from there. I'll take your money from you now, if you haven't already paid. Five pounds for most of you, and there's a three-fifty concession for students and seniors.”

A double-decker is caught in the heavy traffic on our street. “Beatles tour?” a young very English male voice calls out.

Richard looks up towards the upper level. Who yelled? Blinded by the sun, he calls out to the top level, “You need to hop out now if you're going to join us.”

From my position in the shade, I can see better than anyone on the tour that there's an empty paper cup shying toward our group.

“Watch out!” I call, but the troublemaker has a direct hit on the crinkly white coif of an elderly British woman with a precise accent I can't place. Cockney? Something lower class.

The old woman twists her neck around and up. “Piss off,” she screams at the culprit.

From the bus: “You old bat. Shut up.”

“What wouldja mother say if she knew what'y're saying to nice people!”

The boy calls out something nasty again; but I doubt
if anyone on the street near me could make it out as the bus pulls quickly away with the green light.

The look on our kindly lady's face has graduated from cross to terrifying, like the look on the old woman in the shoe as she's about to hit her brattiest kid's behind with a hefty rolling pin. The tour group is helplessly mute as she mutters obscenities until Richard says, subtly, “Right, we'll ignore that awful man and begin. You are standing here where the Beatles performed on their first tour on December 9, 1961. This is the world-famous London Palladium, where one could say Beatle-mania really first began. Their actual first London gig was played in the Blue Gardenia. Unfortunately I can't show you where that was as it was an illegal club and if the manager has forgotten, what hope do we have? One place we do know is Paul McCartney's London office, MPL. So we are headed to our first major stop, Soho Square.”

As we cross the street, I'm easily amused by new icons in a new land: a little red man on the traffic light that changes to a little green man walking.

Richard pulls me to one side. “Watch the pram, my friend!”

A speeding mountain stroller with impossibly-blond twins in tow barely misses me.

Kit breathes a sigh of relief and motions for me to check out the tour's weirdo taking pictures of everything that moves. “I think Richard's first customer is even more excited than you.”

Richard overhears us and chimes in with: “Enthusiasm hits all ages. I had a six-year-old on the tour last week who
asked very specific questions about the Beatles recordings, and I thought, hold on, how do you know this?”

Kit and I both laugh appreciatively at his anecdote; Richard looks pleased that he has found his comrades on this tour.

Has Kit completely forgotten the run-in with Owen? Seems that way, by the relaxed look on his face. Truthfully, I'm feeling infinitely more comfortable than I did upon my arrival on British soil. We've spent so much time alone over the past three weeks, and in charged family circumstances, that I'm quite relieved to see that in a neutral group setting, Kit is still a very pleasant person. I feel silly that I got myself so worked up over Owen's cryptic comments. But okay, my mood is better, so then why am I so clammy on a brisk London morning?

In a few minutes' time Richard stops us and says, “Right, this is Soho Square, a great place in London to chill out.”

Kit prods my elbow and points to the initials on the building: MPL.

“The office of MPL is not named for McCartney Paul and Linda. Rather these are the initials of McCartney Production Limited. They are a large holder of music rights, including most of Buddy Holly's estate, and the lyric rights to such celebrated musicals as
Annie
and
Grease.
Unfortunately as the world now knows, Michael Jackson bought many of Paul and John's songs, this by the way was after McCartney affably suggested to Jackson that as far as investments, lyrics were the way to go. He didn't think Michael would buy
his
own lyrics.”

“Richard, have you ever seen him?” someone from the back of the group asks in a gruff American voice.

“I take it by
him
, you mean Paul. It's not going to happen. To promise otherwise would be false advertising. It only happened once or twice, but we've seen
him
, yes.”

“Do you have a picture of
him
on this tour?” a German (or possibly Swiss) tourist asks.

“I most certainly do.” He holds up a black folder. “Here we are in 1983—aren't we a lovely couple? I've seen Paul only five times in fourteen years, and if I could guarantee you that we would see Paul every time I'd charge more than five pounds, believe me.”

“We can hope,” says customer number one. Despite the kook who voices the sentiment, all of us, even Kit, sneak a peek upward to the second story of MPL, where there's a large glass mezzanine window.

“Is that Paul!” the Texan husband calls out excitedly. Even with three short words the big fellow manages to drawl.

Richard shakes his head, “No, sorry, that's not him I'm afraid.”

Disappointed, we still doggedly take our tourist pictures outside MPL. After a few minutes, Richard rounds the troops.

“Our next stop was at one time considered the most fashionable street in the world. It was
the
place to buy Italian suits and fashionable leisurewear. The likes of the Who, the Beatles, the Small Faces and the Stones shopped here. The Street became legendary when an article came out revealing that these folk were hanging
around. Well, let's carry on down Carnaby, shall we? Let's see what it looks like today.”

There's no way I'm going to concede to Kit how excited I am to walk down this street or that somewhere in my mother's place, there are sixteen bundled vintage issues of
Petticoat
—a swinging sixties magazine devoted to the Carnaby set. I'm let down when we're on the actual famous stretch. Although there are a few funky shops like Diesel, they are not authentic to the era, and can be found in any happening city. The rest of the stores hawk items more suitable for a low-class hooker than a mod or a rocker. Half-priced imitation shoes are for sale in almost every window, as are psychedelic-era bongs. I take a picture of a sign:

 

Carnaby Street

City of Westminster W1

 

“Don't waste your film,” Kit says. “I'm betting that's one of those photos that seem like a good idea at the time but never make it into an album and eventually get thrown away. I warned Helen on our safari, but she came back with a dozen photos of a hippopotamus arse.”

“Who's Helen?”

He pauses. “My ex.”

An African safari is a pretty extreme memory to hold and not have mentioned. But who am I jealous of here, Kit or, wait a second—“Is that the one with the dog that died?”

He looks up and over to me with a strange expression. “When did I tell you about that?”

“At the pet cemetery.”

“Right. I did, didn't I?”

I look at him hard. Any more bits coming? Not a word. “We haven't really talked about her.”

“No, we haven't,” he says without emotion.

“Did you break up with her?”

“She broke up with me.”

“Why?'

“Like you, she met someone else.”

Kit bringing up Kevin, even in a roundabout way, knocks me for a loop.

“You're the cuckolder,” I throw back. The second I say that I wish I didn't. He was just stating a fact.

Kit looks at me with genuine surprise. “Not really. I didn't know you had a boyfriend. I don't think you're cuckolding if you don't know the girl you're with is cheating.”

My mouth drops. “You know what? That was a really vicious thing to say.”

“Ease up. You pressed. I'm just letting you know that we'll have plenty of photos to take this trip. If you start taking pictures of signs and every British power station, you're going to fall asleep when you get everything back from the chemist.”

“What about all those shots of graffiti you took in New York?”

“Graffiti's a sad symbol of a broken America.”

“You spent less than a month in my country. Do you have the right to make that statement? New York is booming right now, by the way.”

“I have the right to think whatever I bloody well think.”

“It's a digital camera. I can delete whatever I
deem
junk.” This is my London I've waited a lifetime for, and no one is bursting my bubble, so even though he rolls his eyes theatrically as I open my lens, I stubbornly take the shot of the big mural Richard stops us in front of, even though he hasn't even said a word yet about the mural.

“Was she pretty?” I say as I close the automatic lens.

Kit grins and, maybe to punch back a little, he says, “Extremely.”

Of course I want more details now that Kit has leaked out a teensy bit more about his love life—but he is saved by Richard's new information: “This mural is called the
Spirit of Soho.
You might not know this but Soho was a hunting call. You'd shout out ‘Soho,' and that became Tallyho. So, anyhow, now, right, we're all here, I've counted the lot of you, so let's walk down to where John met Yoko.” We walk through an enclosure, and stop in front of a building that once housed a gallery called Indica, where the famous couple first met.