The Anglophile (21 page)

D
r. Zuckerman calls on Owen's cell phone only minutes after my third round of sobbing subsides.

“Dad? Can I call you later? I ran into Shari Diamond from New York and—”

I sniffle as he listens for a minute.

“Yes, really— What?— No, she's here now— Yes, well we met at the airport— What?— You're joking— Sitting on my couch—sure, hold on, Dad—”

He holds a hand over the receiver. “My father wants to talk to you urgently. You better pick up, it's
very
important.”

Of course with wording like that, I oblige. What could this be about?

“Dr. Zuckerman?” I say tentatively.

“Ms. Diamond, the next time you leave on an inter
national trip, you should give your roommate and your family a number to be reached.”

“What's going on?” I ask apprehensively.

“You are on the wrong medication. Your drug store called—they have another Shari Diamond who lives on Avenue A. You have your poor neighborhood pharmacist terrified you are going to take down his family business with a lawsuit.”

“What have I been taking?” Can my day be any worse?

“Larium. It's primarily used to prevent malaria. The other Shari Diamond is probably going on an African safari or to Southeast Asia, somewhere like that. It's not going to kill you, but it causes delusional thinking. Bad dreams.

“Hello?”

“I'm here,” I peep up.

“You can also have vivid nightmares.”

“That's exactly what's been happening. I've been a trainwreck ever since I left New York.”

“Just what I—of course it's not your fault. But you didn't read the label?”

“I saw an
L
word. You said there might be an
L
on the pill, some generic substitute for Synthroid.”

“Oy, I did, too. That was Levothroid. Listen, stop taking your pills immediately. You still might have a bit of a roller-coaster ride for a day or two. The Larium is in your bloodstream.”

The bottle of pills is within reach, and there on the label is the word Larium. My lord. As I recap everything for Owen, I flush the cause of my misery down the loo.

 

“Don't give up ship. Whitstable is small. We'll have lunch, he'll probably be having a smoke on a dock.” Owen has been to the town enough times that he knows of a prize café table that offers excellent people-watching as well as a grand vista of the waves.

“What would you like?” Owen asks when a diminutive waitress appears before us with her pad.

“I'm not hungry.”

“You're eating something,” Owen orders. “How are you going to do detective work on an empty stomach?”

“Side salad of greens,” I say.

Owen shakes his head and orders a swordfish shish kabob on a lemongrass stalk and chips. “You'll eat some of my chips,” he says to me after the waitress has left our table.

Just as our orders arrive, a toddler girl manages to climb the reasonably high cement divide separating us from the sand, and sprints toward the beach as fast as she can caper. Owen jumps to his feet, hurdles the divide and winches the kid to safety.

A woman from two tables over greets the unlikely couple returning.

“You're a saint, a hero.”

Owen smiles at the mother, and commendably doesn't gloat about the incident when he's reseated.

Like
Animal Planet
cameramen waiting for the ocelot, we continue to stalk from our determined spot.

Owen attacks the bulging weekend
London Times.
He
offers me the Book Review section. “A new Martin Amis book is out,” he says. “This should get petty.”

I sway my head no, preferring to listen to England as I plead with the sea to return my man.

He's thinking of a run for Parliament, he's potty.

Can you do the cheque, Alistair? I was never very good at maths.

No, Larry, I think those birds are sandpipers. In fact, I'm quite sure of it.

I think I'll give that one a miss—I'm not big on fig, really.

Saved tot and grateful mama long gone, my American dining companion touches my hand. “We should go.”

“Y
ou seriously don't remember the number on Westbourne?”

“Tell you the truth, I was so jet-lagged I wasn't paying very much attention.”

“You're not good with addresses are you?”

“It was somewhere in the middle of this block.”
This block?
I second-guess inside my head. This block of white stucco flats looks the same as the one we just passed.

“I'll start at the light, and we'll drive down again. Something will spark your memory.”

But nothing does. We head back to the large serviced apartment that Owen's leased for the month, not far away in Paddington.

I'm nearing defeat. “Maybe you can call the Cambridge alumni office. They'll have his number, and they'll send a message from you, you're an alum.”

If only to calm me again, Owen answers, “Excellent idea. I'll do that after a quick shower.”

We enter his flat, and I collapse in a chair. I'm not just physically exhausted from my last two sleepless nights, I'm famished and mentally spent as well.

When Owen returns from the bedroom with both a towel wrapped around his waist and a downcast face, I ask anyway, “No information?”

“Zilch. The only thing they have on the computer is the year he left.”

“Don't you know
anyone
who might be in touch with him?”

Owen racks his brain. He only has two Cambridge classmates in his Palm Pilot, and apparently he's already tried them. Alas, there was no answer from either of their phones.

“I can call Helen,” he says finally.

I perk up some. I hadn't known that was an option.

“I'll need privacy,” he says as he reaches once more for his Palm Pilot.

This time when the door opens, he has very big news: “Helen wants to meet you for a cappuccino. Suss you out.”

“Of course. Where?”

“The Boogaloo Bar, near the Highgate tube. She likes the jukebox there.”

“Are you going?”

“She doesn't want to see me,” he admits, looking a little forlorn. “But I'll drop you off and you can call when you're ready to leave.”

 

“You must be Shari?” the woman standing above me says.

The first thing I notice about Kit's ex (and Owen's ex for that matter) is her mouthful of impossibly white teeth—so much for the British stereotype. And illuminated by our sunlit window, Helen's eyes are bluer than a cloud-free sky. She's ineffably gorgeous as she walks gracefully to an open booth. No matter how she turns her head, she's posing for the one toothsome headshot that will land her the starlet gig.

I order myself a Hopdaemon's.

“That's Kit's brew,” Helen says knowingly in her upper-class accent.

I'm wearing jeans and a gray Gap T-shirt and feeling very plain Jane—Helen's dress, stretched tight against her almost perfect curves, has a fabulous vintage seventies polyester chevron pattern of black, red, white and brown. She's perfected the look with knee-length brown-leather boots. I flatter myself that she's dressed to the max to impress me.

I nod.

After she orders a white wine and seafood tapas she says, “He's a very private person.”

“What happened?” I start.

“What happened?” she echoes softly. “I betrayed a man who does not like to be betrayed. I feel badly about it, but we were a mismatch from the beginning. I'm far more adventurous than that man. I find him rather dull.”

Kit? Who flew me to his country on a whim?

I tell her a barebones story of how I met her ex-husband, and the pitiful tale of my paranoia drugs.

Her facial expression is polite, but not especially kind.

“Do you know where he lives on Westbourne?”

“He lives on Westbourne now?” she says with a worried glance.

“Yes.”

“He didn't before. He lived in Maybury. He must have moved.”

I gasp. Is my last hope gone?

She empties her glass. “If he's not in Maybury, I'm not sure where he can be—” At my crestfallen face she adds, “I could possibly take you to someone who might know where he is.”

My heart races. “Who would that be?”

Instead of answering, Helen eyes the jukebox, scrounges in her bag for a pound coin, and selects Bob Dylan's “Simple Twist of Fate.”

“Owen could come with us,” she says on her return. “I'd pack your bags for an overnight trip. If I can arrange it, I'd like to do this tomorrow.”

“You can't tell me any more?” I say just as she is about to leave. She looks at me so indignantly that I nervously ask her a replacement question. “That's a really nice bracelet. Is it Indian?”

With a not-kind face she says, “It's from Kenya. Kit bought it for me on our honeymoon.” She pronounces Kenya
Keen-ya,
like someone who's actually heard the proper pronunciation on location.

“Oh,” is my meek reply.

She hands me a card with her name and number engraved on heavy cream stock.

 

Helen Chattleworth-Brown.

 

Did I make a face at her hyphenated name as I quickly imagined my own card with Kit's name hyphenated with mine in union?

I must have as Helen's last words for the “ex date” are: “Our divorce came through, you needn't worry.”

 

After two days, I'm back to full meals, but nearly as miserable. Once Owen has extended his rental car for us we drive directly to Helen's place straight from the carhire shop.

“She's a drama queen,” is Owen's reasoning for Helen's mysterious nonanswer of where we are going.

He may have long-ago ended his affair, but he is clearly affected when he sees her approaching in, what from pretty much any angle, is a skintight black Cat-woman suit minus the ears and tails.

She allows our eyes to take in her fine figure, and then with a big smile, she zones in on my new Burberry coat. “Did you get that in the outlet?” she says with the false kindness of the competitive dresser.

“In SoHo,” I say. “New York's SoHo.”

 

The itinerary is finally revealed. It turns out I will meet the man whose existence has practically ruined my life, the man Owen is convinced is Kit's father.

Helen immediately dismisses such nonsense. “Owen, you never listen, do you? He's Kit's
grandfather.
”

“You must have met him then,” I say slowly as I discard my earlier thoughts on where we were headed. I'd
thought a hideaway hut they may have gone to in their married days.

“No, I never did. But we drove by here once, and Kit was too nervous to go through with his plan. He must have come back after our separation.”

Owen and I try to engage her more, but she grunts her answers. She seems singly focused on getting us there. Owen rolls his eyes and leans over to ask how I'm doing in a concerned whisper.

I give him a grateful peck on the cheek.

This seems to have engaged Helen's attention more—a spectacular blaze of hostility follows—not a word for twenty kilometers.

 

Somewhere in the moors of England, three disconnected souls get out of the car. An old man is plowing a field with an expensive farm vehicle. Is he licensed at his age? And then boom! That face! I recognize it now from Kit's Chicago presentation.

“Yes?”

“Robert Royden?” Helen says calmly.

He smiles at her. How often does a woman in a cat-suit approach a farmer?

“May I have a word with you?”

His eyes look delighted as he walks closer. “Of course.”

“We're looking for your grandson.”

He stops in his tracks. “Has something happened to—”

“Kit,” Helen says. “We were hoping that you've heard from him.”

“I was hoping you had. He appeared here, but never gave me a number.”

“Then you are Kit's grandfather?” I ask in Volapük, and the man looks at me in surprise.

“You speak Volapük?” he says in Volapük.

I explain my studies, and my friendship with Kit.

I struggle for the romantic sense of things as Volapük was conceived as a language for businessmen.

Owen looks at us like we're speaking an alien tongue. Helen must have heard Kit speak this language before because now she's back to looking as disinterested as ever.

I ask the Last of the Volapük Speakers if there is somewhere I can send the two others.

“The house,” he says, and calls his wife on his cell phone. After a brief conversation he points the old lovers her way.

Owen and Helen seem relieved to have a period of time away from me. I imagine they have their own issues to tackle.

I'm relieved, too. I am free to tell Kit's grandfather everything I know.

Maybe he, as Helen suspects, can help.

 

Robert Royden and S. Roberta Diamond rest on an almost rusted-over farm bench.

“Would you like to talk in Volapük or English?” he starts.

“English,” I say. “I might not know all of the words I need.”

“I didn't know he was married to that woman.”

“It didn't last long.”

“You are friends though?”

“I wouldn't call us friends. It's just that she thinks you're the only one who can help me find him.”

“What more can I tell you? I don't know where he is.”

“He talked about growing up in medieval watercress. That his father died.”

“Yes he did. I never met my daughter's husband, but I understand he provided well. I only met my grandson three years ago, and he kept things formal.”

“Why wouldn't you have met him before that?”

He shrugs.

“I need to contact him,” I press.

“I told you, didn't I? I don't know where his mother lives.”

“You don't know where your daughter lives?”

“I did some terrible things to her once, I'll leave it at that. Even my wife knows I can't take back the past.” He picks up the bottom of his shirt to wipe his wet brow.

This is more truth than I sought out.

“He did give me something.”

“Yes?”

“It's in the house.”

His wife, Kit's grandmother, is in the kitchen with Owen and Helen.

“Are you here for a cuppa?” she calls from her seat.

“Yes, dear,” says Kit's grandfather.

He leaves my side to track down whatever the item is that he is looking for. I sit at the table with Owen and nod my head. His wife is back at the stove making a fresh pot of tea.

Robert Royden pokes his head into the kitchen. “Have you seen the poem?” he asks after an unsuccessful hunt.

She looks at him curiously, and reaches for a sewing basket on top of the refrigerator. She removes a darning egg, knitting needles marked on the end from years of use, a package of eyes and hooks, thimbles, a sock darner and finally, a cream-colored envelope, which she hands to her husband.

He passes it on to me. “He gave this to us when he left. Maybe you can make sense of it.”

He unfolds a poem I instantly recognize as a James Merrill jewel. I've always loved this poem about how naming animals brought about their destruction. The poignancy of a poem given to a man who cares more about language than flesh is not lost on me.

But as Owen points out in the car ride back to London, we still don't know where Kit is.