“It’s not serious. Just interesting.”
“By which you mean . . . ?”
“Well, I didn’t want to mention this while we were in London—because I didn’t want to spend our last two days there discussing it.”
“Discussing what exactly?”
“Discussing the fact that, during my lunch with the editor, he offered me a new job.”
“What kind of new job?”
“Foreign editor of the paper.”
This took a moment to sink in.
“Congratulations,” I said. “Did you accept it?”
“Of course I didn’t accept. Because . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well . . . because I wanted to speak with you first about it.”
“Because it means a transfer back to London?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you want the job?”
“Put it this way: His Lordship was hinting very strongly that I should take it. He was also hinting that, after nearly twenty years in the field, it was time I did a stint at HQ. Of course, I could fight coming back. But I don’t think I’d win that one. Anyway, the foreign editorship isn’t exactly a demotion . . .”
A pause. I said, “So you are going to take the job?”
“I think I have to. But . . . uhm . . . that doesn’t mean I have to come back to London alone.”
Another pause as I thought about that last comment. Finally I said, “I have some news too. And I have an admission to make.”
He looked at me with care.
“And what’s this admission?”
“I’m not on antibiotics. Because I don’t have a strep throat. But I still can’t drink right now . . . because I happen to be pregnant.”
THREE
TONY TOOK THE news well. He didn’t shudder or turn gray. There was a moment of stunned surprise, followed by an initial moment or two of reflection. But then he took my hand and squeezed it and said, “This is good news.”
“You really think that?”
“Absolutely. And you’re certain . . . ?”
“Two pregnancy tests certain,” I said.
“You want to keep it?”
“I’m thirty-seven years old, Tony. Which means I’ve entered the realm of now or never. But just because I might want to keep it doesn’t mean you have to be there too. I’d like you to be, of course. However . . .”
He shrugged. “I want to be there,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Completely. And I want you to come to London with me.”
Now it was my turn to go a little white.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Surprised.”
“About . . . ?”
“The course this conversation is taking.”
“Are you worried?”
Understatement of the year. Though I had managed to keep my anxiety in the background during our days in London (not to mention the week beforehand, when the first pregnancy test came back positive from my doctor in Cairo), it was still omnipresent. And with good reason. Though part of me was quietly pleased about being pregnant, there was an equally substantial portion of my private self that was terrified by the prospect. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I never really expected to get pregnant. Though there were the usual hormonal urges, these were inevitably negated by the fact that my happily self-governing life could not incorporate the massive commitment that was motherhood.
So the discovery that I was pregnant threw me completely. But people always have the capacity to surprise you. Tony certainly did that. For the rest of the flight to Cairo, he informed me that he thought this pregnancy was a very good thing; that, coupled with his transfer back to London, it was as if fate had intervened to propel us into making some major decisions. This had happened at the right moment. Because we were so right for each other. Though it might be something of an adjustment for both of us to be setting up house together—and for us to be at desk jobs (he was certain I could talk my way into the Post’s London bureau)—wasn’t it time we finally surrendered to the inevitable and settled down?
“Are you talking marriage here?” I asked him after he finished his little spiel.
He didn’t meet my eye but still said, “Well, yes, I, uh, yes, I suppose I am.”
I was suddenly in need of a very large vodka, and deeply regretted not being able to touch the stuff.
“I’m going to have to think about all this.”
Much to Tony’s credit, he let the matter drop. Nor did he, in any way, pressure me over the next week. Then again, that wasn’t Tony’s style. So, during the first few days after we got back from London, we gave each other some thinking time. Correction: he gave me some thinking time. Yes, we spoke on the phone twice a day, and even had an amusing lunch together, during which we never once mentioned the big “elephant in the room” question hanging over us . . . though, at the end of it, I did ask, “Have you given the Chronicle your decision?”
“No—I’m still awaiting an update from someone.”
He gave me a little smile when he said that. Even though he was under pressure to make a decision, he was still refusing to pressure me. And I could only contrast his low-key approach with that of Richard Pettiford. When he was trying to compel me to marry him, he overstepped the mark on several occasions, eventually treating me (in true lawyerly style) like a reluctant juror who had to be won over to his point of view. With Tony I didn’t even need to respond to his comment about “awaiting an update from someone.” He knew that he was asking me to make a big decision, so all I asked him in reply was, “And you still won’t be going back for three months?”
“Yes, but the editor does need to know my decision by the end of the week.”
And he left it at that.
Besides doing a lot of serious thinking, I also made several key phone calls—the first of which was to Thomas Richardson, the editor-in-chief of the Post, and someone with whom I had always had a cordial, if distant, relationship. As an old-school Yankee, he also appreciated directness. So when he returned my call, I was completely direct with him, explaining that I was marrying a journalist from the Chronicle and was planning to move to England. I also said that the Post was my home, and I certainly wanted to stay with the paper, but the fact that I was also pregnant meant that I would eventually need a twelve-week period of maternity leave, commencing about seven months from now.
“You’re pregnant?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised.
“It looks that way.”
“But that’s wonderful news, Sally. And I can completely understand why you want to have the baby in London . . .”
“The thing is, we won’t be moving there for three months.”
“Well, I’m certain we can work something out at our London bureau. One of our correspondents has been talking about coming back to Boston, so your timing couldn’t be better.”
There was a part of me that was alarmed about the fact that my boss had so eased my professional passage to London. Now I had no reason not to follow Tony. But when I informed him that my transfer to the London bureau of the Post seemed certain, I also said that I was terrified of this huge change in circumstances. Once again, his reply (though predictably flippant) was also reassuring—telling me that it wasn’t as if I were going behind the veil. Nor would we be moving to Ulan Bator. And I would have a job. And if we found that we couldn’t stand being behind desks in offices . . . well, who’s to say that we were indentured to London for the rest of our lives?
“Anyway, we’re not the sort of people to become each other’s jailers, now are we?” he said.
“Not a chance of that,” I said.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, with a laugh. “So, I don’t suppose it will be the end of the world if we get married in the next few weeks, now will it?”
“Since when did you get so damn romantic?” I asked.
“Since I had a conversation with one of our consular chaps a few days ago
.”
What this “chap” told Tony was that my passage into Britain—both professionally and personally—would be far more rapidly expedited if we were husband and wife. Whereas I would be facing months of immigration bureaucracy if I chose to remain single. Once again, I was astounded by the rate at which my life was being turned around. Destiny is like that, isn’t it? You travel along, thinking that the trajectory of your life will follow a certain course (especially when you’re starting to crowd middle age). But then, you meet someone, you allow it to progress, you find yourself tiptoeing across that dangerous terrain called love. Before you know it, you’re on a long-distance phone call to your only surviving family member, telling her that not only are you pregnant, but you’re also about to . . .
“Get married?” Sandy said, sounding genuinely shocked.
“It’s the practical thing to do,” I said.
“You mean, like getting pregnant for the first time at thirty-seven?”
“Believe me, that was completely accidental.”
“Oh, I believe you. Because you’re about the last person I’d expect to get intentionally knocked up. How’s Tony taking it?”
“Very well. Better than me, in fact. I mean, he even used the dreaded words ‘settling down’ and in a positive manner as well.”
“Maybe he understands something you still don’t get . . .”
“You mean, the fact that we all have to settle down someday?” I said, sounding just ever so slightly sarcastic. Though Sandy had always supported my peripatetic career, she did frequently make noises about the fact that I was heading for a lonely old age, and that if I did dodge the child thing, I would come to regret it in later life. There was something about my freewheelingness that unsettled her. Don’t get me wrong—she didn’t play the envy card. But part of the reason she was so delighted with my news was that—once I became a mother—we would occupy similar terrain. And I would finally be brought down to earth.
“Now, hang on—I didn’t tell you to get pregnant, did I?” Sandy asked.
“No—but you’ve only spent the last ten years asking me when it would happen.”
“And now it has. And I’m thrilled for you. And I can’t wait to meet Tony.”
“Come to Cairo for the wedding next week.”
“Next week?” she said, sounding shocked. “Why so fast?”
I explained about wanting to sidestep working and residency permits before we moved to London in just under three months’ time.
“God, this is all a little whirlwind.”
“Tell me about it.”
I knew that Sandy wouldn’t be able to make it over for the wedding. Not only did she not have the money or the time, but to her, anything beyond the borders of the United States was Injun country. Which is why, even if she did have the wherewithal to get to Egypt, I’m certain she would have found a way of avoiding the journey. As she openly admitted to me on several occasions: “I’m not like you—I have no interest in out there.” That was one of the many things I so loved about my sister—she was completely honest about herself. “I’m limited,” she once told me, a comment that I found unnecessarily self-lacerating—especially as she was a very smart, very literate woman who managed to keep her life together after her husband walked out on her three years ago.
Within a month of his seismic departure, Sandy had found a job teaching history at a small private school in Medford—and was somehow managing to meet the mortgage and feed the kids at the same time. Which (as I told her) showed far more moxie than ducking in and out of assorted Middle Eastern hellholes. But now I was going to learn all about life on the domestic front—and even on a crackly phone line from Egypt, Sandy quickly sensed my fear.
“You’re going to do just fine,” she told me. “Better than fine. Great. Anyway, it’s not like you’re giving up your job, or being sent to Lawrence [perhaps the ugliest town in Massachusetts]. And hey, it’s London, right? And after all those war zones you’ve covered, motherhood won’t seem much different.”
I did laugh. And I also wondered: is she telling the truth?
But the next few weeks didn’t allow me much opportunity for extended ruminations about my soon-to-be-changed circumstances. Especially as the Middle East was up to its usual manic tricks. There was a cabinet crisis in Israel, an assassination attempt on a senior Egyptian government minister, and a ferry boat that overturned on the Nile in northern Sudan, killing all 150 passengers aboard. The fact that I was suffering from an extended bout of morning sickness while covering these assorted stories only seemed to accentuate the banality of my condition compared with such major human calamity. So too did the large number of baby books that I had expressed to me by Amazon.com, and which I devoured with the obsessive relish of somebody who had just been told she was about to embark on a complicated voyage and was desperately searching for the right guide to tell her how to get through it. So I’d return home after writing about a local cholera scare in the Nile Delta and start reading up on colic and night feeding and cradle cap, and a range of other new words and terminologies from the child care lexicon.
“You know what I’ll miss most about the Middle East?” I told Tony on the night before our wedding. “The fact that it’s so damn extreme, so completely deranged.”
“Whereas London is going to be nothing but day-to-day stuff?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you are worrying about that.”
“A little bit, yes. Aren’t you?”
“It will be a change.”
“Especially as you’ll have additional baggage in tow.”
“You’re not referring to yourself, by any chance?” he asked.
“Hardly.”
“Well, I’m happy about the additional baggage.”
I kissed him. “Well I’m happy that you’re happy . . .”
“It will be an adjustment, but we’ll be fine. And, believe me, London has its own peculiar madness.”
I remembered that comment six weeks later when we flew north to Heathrow. Courtesy of the Chronicle, they were repatriating their new foreign editor and his new wife in business class. Courtesy of the Chronicle, we were also being put up for six weeks in a company apartment near the paper’s offices in Wapping while we house hunted. Courtesy of the Chronicle, all our belongings had been shipped last week from Cairo and would be kept in storage until we found a permanent place to live. And courtesy of the Chronicle, a large black Mercedes collected us from the airport and began the slow crawl through evening rush-hour traffic toward central London.
As the car inched along the highway, I reached over and took Tony’s hand—noticing, as I still did, the shiny platinum wedding bands adorning our respective left hands, remembering the hilarious civil ceremony at which we were spliced in the Cairo Registry Office—a true madhouse without a roof, and where the official who joined us as husband and wife looked like an Egyptian version of Groucho Marx. Now here we were—only a few short months after that crazy twenty-four hours in Somalia—rolling down the M4 toward . . .
Wapping.
That was something of a surprise, Wapping. The cab had negotiated its way off the highway, and headed south, through red-brick residential areas. These eventually gave way to a jumble of architectural styles: Victorian meets Edwardian meets Warsaw Public Housing meets Cinder Block Mercantile Brutalism. It was late afternoon in early winter. Light was thin. But despite the paucity of natural illumination, my first view of London as a married woman showed me that it was an extended exercise in scenic disorientation, a Chinese menu cityscape, in which there was little visual coherence, and where affluence and deprivation were adjacent neighbors. Of course, I had noticed this hodgepodge aspect of the city on my visit here with Tony. But, like any tourist, I tended to focus on that which was pleasing . . . and like any tourist, I also avoided all of South London. More to the point, I had just been passing through here for a few days—and as I wasn’t on assignment, my journalist’s antennae had been turned o
ff. But now—now—this city was about to become my home. So I had my nose pressed against the glass of the Mercedes, staring out at the wet sidewalks, the overflowing litter bins, the clusters of fast-food shops, the occasional elegant crescent of houses, the large patch of green parkland (Clapham Common, Tony informed me), the slummy tangle of mean streets (Stockwell and Vauxhall), yielding to office buildings, then a spectacular view of the Houses of Parliament, then more office buildings, then more faceless redbrick, then the surprise appearance of Tower Bridge, then a tunnel, and then . . . Wapping.
New bland apartment developments, the occasional old warehouse, a couple of office towers, and a vast squat industrial complex, hidden behind high brick walls and razor wire.
“What’s that?” I asked. “The local prison?”
Tony laughed.
“It’s where I work.”
Around a quarter mile beyond this compound, the driver pulled up in front of a modern building, about eight stories tall. We took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The corridor was papered in an anemic cream paper, with neutral tan carpet on the floor. We came to a wood veneered door. The driver fished out two keys and handed one to each of us.
“You do the honors,” Tony said.
I opened the door, and stepped into a small boxy one-bedroom apartment. It was furnished in a generic Holiday Inn style and looked out onto a back alleyway.
“Well,” I said, taking it all in, “this will make us find a house fast.”
It was my old college friend Margaret Campbell who expedited the house-hunting process. When I called her up prior to my departure from Cairo and explained that, not only was I about to become a full-time London resident, but I was also just married and pregnant to boot, she asked, “Anything else?”
“Thankfully, no.”
“Well, it will be wonderful to have you here—and, believe me, you will end up liking this town.”
“By which you mean . . . ?”
“It’s just something of an adjustment, that’s all. But hey, come over for lunch as soon as you arrive, and I’ll show you the ropes. And I hope you have a lot of cash. Because this place makes Zurich seem cheap and cheerful.”
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