Tamsin

Five

We stayed in London five days, with Sally and me sharing a room in a bed-and-breakfast place off Russell Square, and Evan bunking in at Charlie’s with Tony and Julian. I liked that part, once I got over being tired, and as long as I could make myself believe that we were just being tourists, summer people, people who go home. But all I had to do was see real tourists—sometimes all it took was a plane going overhead—and everybody says I’d turn between one minute and the next into a sullen little hemorrhoid with feet. And I know I did. I meant to.

Julian took me over from day one. It didn’t matter how I acted—he was going to show me everything in London that he liked—later for the National Theatre and the Tate Gallery and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. And practically everything Julian liked was American-style stuff—the Pizza Pie Factory in Mayfair, the video arcades around Earl’s Court, the Taco Bell in Soho (you can’t buy Julian for Mexican food, but you can definitely rent him). Which was all fine with me, you couldn’t make anything too American for me. I kept trying to make England not be there all around me, and Julian, ten years old, was the only one who seemed to understand, even though he didn’t really. Maybe that’s why we’re still vatos, as Marta would say—still buddies—even though he’s sixteen now, and completely impossible.

I liked London right off, though I wasn’t going to admit it for one minute. It did feel like New York—tense and crazy, but in a slower sort of way—and it looked just familiar enough to be exciting. (You don’t realize how many movies you’ve seen about a city until you’re actually in it, recognizing all kinds of places you haven’t been to.) The only thing I didn’t like was the driving on the left—it made my stomach feel weird when Charlie was zipping us around London. One time, crossing the street, I almost got totally creamed by a bus I never saw. Tony snatched me back at the last minute, and Julian told him that now he’d have to be responsible for me forever, the way the Chinese or someone believe. Poor Tony.

Sally kept asking me every night, after the others had gone back to Charlie’s flat, if I liked England any better now. And every night I’d say, “I like London. I really wish we could stay in London, if we have to be here.” And then Sally’d get tears in her eyes and say something like, “Baby, I know, but you’ll love Dorset, I promise. If you’ll just give it a little time, just not make up your mind before we even get there. Can you do that, darling?” I didn’t want to lie to her, but I didn’t really want her to be miserable—only at the same time I really did—so I’d usually mumble something about wanting to see Mister Cat. Which wasn’t lying, and at least that way we’d both get to sleep.

I’m going to skip over where we went and what we saw. Anything you can see in London in five days, just figure we looked at it. Probably had lunch there, too—it seemed like we were always eating, that first time in London. When we weren’t running to catch the tour bus.

Julian mostly stayed with Charlie those days, unless Evan swore on a Bible we’d hit Taco Bell, but Tony came along with us now and then, especially if it was anything to do with dance, or seeing a play, or anything with music. We had that much in common anyway, but we didn’t get to talk about it a lot, what with Sally and Evan both working so hard at being stepparents. Sally kept asking Tony about his school and his grades, and about his studying dance, and how he thought he’d like living in Dorset. I got the feeling early on that he felt more or less the same as I did, but I was trying not to look straight at him, because my damn skin, that Sally had told me the English air would be great for, started acting up as soon as we arrived. Tony answered all the questions, talking softly and not volunteering a thing. He’s really shy, even now—Julian’s the least shy person in the whole world, but Tony definitely makes up for him.

But he got me alone once, when we were wandering around the rose garden in Regent’s Park and Evan and Sally had gotten a little way ahead. He took my arm and pulled me over to a rosebush, so we’d seem to be talking about it, and he said, “Look here, Jennifer, I do wish you’d try to remember, this is every bit as hard and—and strange—for Julian and me as it is for you.” He didn’t have Julian’s cute croaky baritone, but his voice was so intense you could have struck a match on it. He said, “We never asked to have our dad and mum split up and her marry a Frenchman and go off to live with him and his kids in Bordeaux. And we didn’t exactly ask to have him run off to the States and come back with your mother and you, and just whisk everybody right out of London to some bloody farm in Dorset.” He was trying to keep cool, but he doesn’t do cool much better than I do, and I could feel his hand trembling on my arm. He asked, “Do you understand me, Jennifer?”

“Don’t call me Jennifer,” I said. “I’m Jenny. And yeah, I know it’s all really tough for you, and I’m really sorry, but at least you’re still in your own damn country. You didn’t have to leave everything that ever meant anything to you and start your whole life all over in someplace where you don’t belong and never wanted to be in the first place. And I want my cat,” and with that I just started crying. I told you I’m not a big crier, but when it does happen it’s always like that, without warning.

Tony did a nice thing then. He moved around me so Evan and Sally couldn’t see me, and he gave me his big blue, perfectly folded handkerchief to bawl into. I never cry long, but I make it up in volume. That handkerchief was absolutely soaked by the time he got it back.

He never said anything dumb like “Don’t cry.” He waited until I’d finished, and then he just said, “They’re waving, we’d better be walking on.” And that’s what we did, with him talking away to me about however many kinds of football they play in Great Britain as we came up with Sally and Evan. Sally stared hard at me for a moment, but I’d been having allergies, and my nose and eyes were red half the time anyway. So we all walked on through Regent’s Park, and Tony explained to me what a googly is in cricket. Cricket is the only game duller than baseball, because it lasts longer, but that was another nice thing.

Sally and Evan got married the day before we left for Dorset. It was a civil ceremony in a judge’s chambers, over in ten minutes, with just Charlie and a court clerk for the witnesses. Bang-bangbang, kiss the bride, sign here, best wishes, long and happy life, off to dinner, absolutely painless—and that fast I had a stepfather and two stepbrothers. I didn’t speak to anybody all day, but nobody noticed that, not even Sally.

And the next day, way too bright and early, we were packed into Evan’s little car—a gray Escort, matched the overcast perfectly— luggage in our laps stacked up so high Evan could hardly see out the back window, and the whole car sagging until I swear I felt my butt bounce on the road whenever we went over a bump, and we’re actually off for Dorset, wherever it is. I knew it was somewhere south, that’s all. And sort of west.

We were in the backseat, Tony, Julian, and me. Julian grabbed one window right off, and Tony let me have the other, treating me exactly like Julian, and letting me know it. I just lay back and tried to get comfortable under a suitcase and a box of kitchen stuff, and closed my eyes.

I actually dozed a little bit on the drive out of London, and maybe a bit more than that, because I only woke up when Julian started to sing “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which I had no idea they sang in England. We were still in the suburbs, which look just about the same there as they do in New York— malls and McDonald’s and cineplexes and garages and TV antennas sticking up from so many red roofs your eyes go funny. I don’t know why they’re all red, even today.

Evan told Julian he might want to reconsider his repertoire if he had any plans for his eleventh birthday, so Julian sang “I Am the Walrus,” all of it, straight through, and then he was going to sing “Come Together,” but Tony got a headlock on him. Julian loves the Beatles the way he loves enchiladas and pizza. It still takes a headlock to stop him.

Sally wanted me to sing with her, some of the old stuff we used to do together, like “The Water Is Wide,” or “Plaisir d’amour,” or “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” but I wasn’t about to, not in front of these people, no chance. That hurt her feelings, and I felt a little bad about that, but I was also starting to feel sick, because of the car wallowing so much, and because we kept hitting one roundabout after another just going in circles and circles until I had to shut my eyes again and think about nothing. Sometimes I thought about Mister Cat, and sometimes about Jake and Marta, but thinking about nothing’s better for your stomach. I guess I slept some more.

What woke me this time was Evan singing by himself. It was a long, slow, really sad song about a fisherman and a mermaid, and his accent was funny, different from how he usually sounded. I listened to him, trying not to, and now and then Sally would come in, harmonizing in a couple of places where she knew the words, and my eyes would start to fill up, and you’re just going to have to imagine how much I hated that. Because it wasn’t the damn song that was making me cry—it was something in Evan’s voice that wasn’t sad at all, but peaceful, and it was me having to face the idea that he and my mother had been making this other world for themselves that didn’t include me for one minute. Oh, it did, in a way—I knew that, Sally’s my mother—but now there were places in it where only they went, places where I just wasn’t and Norris wasn’t, and there wasn’t any history but theirs together. And that’s what I hated, and that’s why I didn’t talk to anybody or sing a damn note on that whole absolutely endless drive to Dorset.

It’s a pretty drive, too, now that I know it. We took the freeway from London, and once we were out of the red roofs and roundabouts, the country started becoming country, with cows and a lot of sheep, and stuff growing in the fields, which I can mostly identify now, but I couldn’t then, so there’s no point pretending. The land turned rolling after a while, but in a nice rocking-chair sort of way, and the sun even came out, practically.

This first part of the trip was Hampshire—that I did know, but only because of Sally. She kept turning around in the front seat every other minute to tell me something like, “Jenny, look, we’re coming up on Winchester—you remember, ‘Winchester Cathedral…’” and she sang a lick from that dorky song. “It’s really old—it was the Saxons’ capital, and then King Alfred was crowned here, and William the Conqueror built the cathedral.” And a moment later it’d be, “Jenny, quick, over there, Evan says that’s a Roman camp!” She was like a damn tour guide—“Baby, look, look, on the horizon, that’s Salisbury, doesn’t it look like the Constable painting we saw?” And Tony and Julian would look at each other, and Evan would sort of murmur, “That’s Southampton, love, we’re a good bit south of Salisbury.” And Sally would just laugh and say, “Shows you what I know,” and I didn’t know who I was madder at—her for sounding like such a total idiot, Evan for being right and gentle, both, or the boys for having good manners and looking so embarrassed for my mother and me. Boy, Meena’s right— you start writing something down, and it all comes back.

After Southampton, we went through the New Forest, which didn’t look anything like the way I’d thought a real forest would look. There weren’t even that many trees along the road—it just seemed like more of the cows-and-sheep country we’d been driving through forever. Sally was just starting to talk about the Knightwood Oak—how it was practically the biggest, oldest tree in England, and how oaks were always supposed to be magic—when all of a sudden Julian grabbed my arm and said, “There! There’s one!”

I pulled away from him, hard, because he was hurting my arm, and I said, “Quit it!”, and then I saw what he was pointing at, just up ahead. There were two of them, actually—a couple of shaggy little ponies standing right by the road, almost in it, one of them eating grass, the other just looking at things. Evan slowed down to go around them, and the one who wasn’t eating lifted his head and stared right at me, looking me over with his big, wild black eyes. And I can’t explain it, but I think that was maybe the first time I knew I was really in England, and not going home.

Tony said, “They’re supposed to be descended from the Armada horses.” I guess I blinked, because then he said, “The Spanish Armada. Some of the ships broke up in a storm, and the horses swam ashore. In 1588.”

“I know about the Spanish Armada,” I said. Tony nodded and didn’t say anything more. Evan caught my eye in the rearview mirror. He winked at me, but I didn’t wink back. He said, “Jenny, you want to be very careful if you see a black one—all black, like your cat, without a white hair on him anywhere. It might be a pooka.”

I wasn’t going to say a word, but I couldn’t help it. I said, “A pooka?”

Evan grinned at me. “Very magical creature. The country people say it can change into almost anything—an eagle, a fox, even a man, if it wants to. But mostly you meet it as a fine black pony, absolutely black, inviting you to get on its back and take a ride. Don’t you do it.”

And he didn’t say one thing more, just to make me ask. Evan does that. I held out all the way through the New Forest, before I mumbled, “Okay, why shouldn’t I?” And when he just raised his eyebrows and waited, I said, “Why shouldn’t I go for a ride on a pooka?”

“Because it’ll toss you right into a river, or into a bramble patch. That’s a pooka’s idea of a good joke. They aren’t as dangerous as Black Annis or Peg Powler or the Oakmen, but you don’t ever want to trust one. Very warped sense of humor, pookas have.”

Julian giggled. He said, “Maybe our house’ll have a boggart, wouldn’t that be splendid?”

Tony punched his shoulder lightly. “We’ve already got one, thanks very much.”

Julian got really pissed then. You couldn’t ever tell what’d get to him in those days. He hit Tony back, hard—he could get in a good shot because there was a lot less stuff piled on him than on either of us—and he started yelling, “I’m not a boggart, I’m not a boggart, don’t you call me a boggart!” He’s a lot better now, but you still have to be a little careful with Julian. Don’t ever tell him he’s got curly hair, for instance. He hates having curly hair.

Sally handled it pretty neatly, considering she was just learning how to be a stepmother. She leaned into the backseat and caught both of Julian’s hands, very gently, but really quickly. Sally’s got big hands for a woman—she can reach tenths on the piano, and she can do card tricks and shuffle a deck like Maverick or somebody. She asked him, “Tell me about boggarts. What’s a boggart?”

Tony answered her. “It’s a sort of brownie. Lives in your house and plays stupid tricks.” Julian lunged for him again, but Sally had him. “Julian,” she said. “I’m a Yank, I don’t know anything, you tell me. Why is it so terrible if someone calls you a boggart?”

Julian wasn’t exactly crying, but his nose was running and he had to swallow a couple of times before he could talk. He said, “Boggarts are ugly—that’s why he’s always calling me that. They’re small, and they’ve got warts and bumples and all, and they like to live in the cupboards and under the floor. But they’re not always mean—you can make friends with a boggart if you’re really nice to him. You leave milk out for them, and things. I just thought it would be funny if we had one.”

Tony started to say something, but Evan caught his eye, and he shut right up. Evan said, “Well, if it’s not a boggart, it’ll be something else, likely enough. Dorset’s full of ghosts and hobs and bogles, and things that go boomp i’ the nicht. And Stourhead Farm’s been around long enough that we’ve probably got a grand mob of them already settled in. Some of them probably knew Thomas Hardy and William Barnes.”

(This is probably going to come up again, so I have to put in that I didn’t know who he was talking about then. I do now, because Meena’s made me read all her Thomas Hardy books. He’s all right. I can’t stand William Barnes.)

Evan told us stories the rest of the way down, as the land got steeper and greener and the poor little Escort kept overheating. I can’t remember all of them, but he talked about bullbeggars and Jack-in-Irons, and the Wild Hunt, which was scary, and about the Black Dog, and a weird thing called the Hedley Kow. With a k. He was good, better than Norris even—he did the different accents, depending on where the stories came from, so Julian kept sniffling and giggling all the time, and Tony forgot to be superior and just sat there glued, I could tell. That’s the thing about Tony. He really thinks nobody can read what he’s feeling—he really works on it—but everyone always knows.

I dozed off a third time in the middle of a story about someone called The Old Lady of the Elder Tree. I was actually trying to stay awake, because it was interesting, but I fell asleep and dreamed about Mister Cat. In the dream the quarantine was over, and I was coming to get him out of his cage, and he stood up and put his paws on my face, the way he does. It was so real and sweet that I woke up, but it was just Julian asleep on my shoulder with his hair brushing my cheek, and we were at Stourhead Farm.