I Conquer Britain

by Dyan Sheldon

  “Of course I’m not going to say anything,” she was bellowing. “What do I care if she looks like Morticia Addams?”

  In comparison, Caroline’s voice was like the rustle of leaves in the next yard, but I figured that whatever she was saying the words “I’m so sorry” were probably involved.

  “Are you implying I’m not diplomatic?” boomed Poor Old Mum. “Have you forgotten that my Uncle Farquah was in the Foreign Office? Diplomacy is in my blood.”

  Rustle … rustle … rustle … rustle…

  “You do exaggerate, don’t you, Caroline? It was all a silly misunderstanding. And he certainly didn’t start a war. It was nothing more than a border skirmish.”

  I decided to go down, but I only got as far as the bottom of the stairs when Hell’s spaniels came charging out of the kitchen, barking like police dogs trying to tell you that there’s a little kid down the well.

  “Drake! Raleigh!” Robert appeared in the doorway with a glass of wine in his hand. “Get back here!”

  It was just as well he’s a writer and not a dog trainer. They kept right on coming. But if you’ve ever been chased by a demented pig or an aggressive rooster a couple of dopey dogs are nothing. I stepped to one side as they got close and they hurtled past me, their ears flapping like they were trying to fly. The first one hit the door and the second hit him.

  Robert gave me a wink. “That’s one for our side.” He waved me towards him with his glass. “Why don’t you come on in and meet the owner of the worst-behaved dogs in Putney?”

  I said it would be a dream come true.

  “There you go!” Robert gave me another wink. “That’s the spirit that tamed the wilderness.”

  Caroline’s mother looked even more like a queen when she was sitting down. She was still wearing the turban and she was sort of looming over the table, holding a wine-glass and talking at Caroline (who was at the counter, doing something disgusting to a chicken) at top volume. She broke off when Robert, the dogs and I all arrived in the room. She wasn’t a woman to wait for introductions.

  “So, you’re the Yank,” she boomed. “From the Wild West.”

  I remembered to smile. “Actually, I’m from the Industrialized East.”

  “I think I could use a top up,” said Robert. “Anybody fancy another drink?”

  Caroline wiped her hands on her apron and came over and put an arm across my shoulder. “Mum, this is Cherry. Cherry, this is—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Caroline, she knows who I am.” She held out her empty glass to Robert, but her eyes were still on me. “You may call me Mrs Payne.”

  Otherwise known as Mrs Pain in the Butt.

  I was overcome with gratitude of course. “Thanks.” You can call me Ms Salamanca.

  “So…” Mrs Payne leaned forward, looking straight into my eyes like The Grand Inquisitor. “What do you think of this sceptered isle so far? Is it what you expected?”

  Caroline was obviously right. Her mother was about as diplomatic as a nuclear bomb. But I’m used to feisty grandmothers, and I wasn’t going to let this one think we read nothing but cowboy novels back in the Wild West. I’d done Shakespeare. “You mean this royal throne of kings, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars?” I had to hand it to her. She didn’t so much as blink. “Well I think England’s—”

  “Britain,” snapped Mrs Payne. “We’re one country, you know. Great Britain.”

  Robert opened the refrigerator. “I’m afraid that, technically, Cherry’s right, Bea,” he called. “After all, we are in England, aren’t we? She hasn’t quite got round to seeing the entire British Isles yet.”

  Mrs Payne made a what-a-revolting-taste kind of face and steamed on as though he hadn’t spoken. “Except for Ireland of course. The Irish always have to go against us.”

  I decided not to mention the Irish martyrs.

  “Well…” She tapped her cane impatiently. I was willing to bet she used it even when her back was fine to beat the peasants away. “Have you formed no opinion?”

  I felt like saying that since I hadn’t even left the house yet my opinion was based on the airport, the ride from the airport and about twelve hours of gardening shows on the telly last night (people in green boots squelching through the mud talking in Latin), but I caught the nervous smile on Caroline’s face. “It’s not exactly like I thought,” I said. “Eng—Britain. It’s more like America than—”

  Mrs Pain in the Butt didn’t let me finish. “What total tosh. It’s nothing like America. We have centuries of history and tradition here, I’ll have you know. Centuries. All you lot have is progress. Everything’s about tomorrow. You never give a thought to yesterday, you just plough it under like dead leaves.”

  “If you’re talking about the Indians—” I was going to point out that it was the English who started wiping out the Indians but she didn’t give me a chance.

  “I’m talking about everything. You people have no sense of the past whatsoever. In this country we respect the past. It means something. It’s part of who we are.”

  I made sure I didn’t look over at Caroline. “From what I saw coming from the airport, part of who you are, are baseball caps and Gap and Nike sportswear.”

  Behind me Robert whispered, “That’s two for our side.”

  Poor Old Mum didn’t hear him, she was talking too loudly. “Poppycock. That’s just fashion.” She banged her cane again. “I’ll have you know that I come from one of the oldest families in the British Isles.”

  Since this last statement didn’t really seem like it was connected to anything else, I just said the first thing that came into my head. Which was, “But everybody comes from the oldest family from somewhere.”

  She gave me a who-is-this-peasant-in-my-throne-room kind of look. “Pardon?”

  “You know what I mean. Everybody’s from an old family.”

  “I really must finish the chicken,” murmured Caroline, and she scurried to the other side of the kitchen, out of firing range.

  “Not as old as ours,” said her mother. “We can trace our line back to the reign of Henry II.”

  I looked over at Robert, but he’d turned his back on us, too, and was busy pouring the wine.

  “But in a way everybody can, can’t they? I mean it’s not like your family’s been hanging out here for hundreds of years and everybody else just got beamed down from some spaceship, is it? If you go back far enough everybody’s pretty much related, aren’t they?”

  Caroline’s mother turned to look at Caroline’s back and roared, “So where’s that grandson of mine?”

  Caroline straightened up with a sigh. “I told you, Mum, I doubt that he’ll be joining us tonight.”

  “Won’t be joining us?” barked Mrs Payne. “Why not? Didn’t you tell him I was coming?”

  Well, there was one reason.

  Caroline sighed again. “We hardly see him any more from one day to the next. I expect he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” Mrs Payne glanced over at me. “Well, I hope she’s suitable.”

  Robert passed by me with the filled glasses. “It’s a pity you don’t drink,” he whispered. “It really helps.”

  Seeing the Sights and Stuff Like That

  To make up for the barbecue, Caroline wanted to take a drive into the countryside and have lunch at a real English pub on Sunday. I’d seen real English pubs in movies and on TV. They aren’t all dark (so you can’t see who’s in there) and filled with gloomy men like a lot of American bars. They’ve got lights and pictures on the walls and carpets and women and stuff like that, and there’s always somebody in one corner playing darts. I thought the real English pub sounded like pretty good news. But the gods (as usual) had other plans.

  “Are you mad, Caroline?” demanded Robert. “In this rain? Are you going to build an ark to get us back home?”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Caroline sighed. “There really isn’t any point in driving miles when it’s raining like this just to sit in some n
oisy, smoky room, is there? One wants to be able to sit in the garden.”

  The one that was me would’ve been happy to sit in a noisy, smoky room, but it wasn’t my job to give Caroline a hard time. I figured she had her family to do that.

  “I know what we can do,” said Caroline. “Robert can take us on one of his world-famous tours.” She gave me one of her more encouraging smiles. “Robert’s something of a historian, you know. Xar and Sophie used to love his tours.”

  I wasn’t sure what something of a historian meant. It seemed to me that being a historian is like being a serial killer – you either are or you aren’t – but all I said was, “Really?”

  Robert didn’t exactly jump for joy at this suggestion. He didn’t want to do the tour. He wanted to work on War and Peace in Putney.

  “You said you’d take today off,” Caroline reminded him. “I sorted out Mum early this morning so I’d have the afternoon free.”

  Robert looked at her like she was a wrong word. “But Caroline—”

  “Cherry didn’t come all this way to sit in the house watching telly,” said Caroline. Which was true. Even if you called it telly and it had hardly any commercials, it was still television, which is generally a whole lot less interesting than watching a leaf blow down the street. “She wants to see London.”

  As a good guest – and an honorary Englishman – I know I should’ve said they didn’t have to worry about me, I didn’t want to be any trouble, I was sorry if I was being a nuisance, and I was totally jim dandy staying at home flicking through the four channels. On the other hand, I did want to see more than Putney. I mean, it was already pretty obvious that any of the really interesting things that were happening in London weren’t happening there. Putney wasn’t the throbbing heart of a multi-faceted, creative, ever-changing metropolis – it was more like the big toe. Or the nail on the big toe. I might as well be spending the summer in Queens.

  “Well … to tell you the truth, it would be kind of nice,” I said. “You know, to tell the folks back home about. And I did promise Mr Scutari I’d take a picture of that big clock for him.”

  Robert sighed. “Well, I can’t deprive you of taking a picture of the big clock for Mr Scutari, can I? I’d never be able to sleep again.” He looked at his watch. “All right, group, The Grand Tour sets out in precisely thirty minutes. Umbrellas will be provided by the management.” He gave me a nod. “Don’t forget your camera.”

  Apparently, Robert invented The Grand Tour when Sophie and the Czar were little because they wanted to go to places like Disney World like their friends but Robert wouldn’t take them. Robert said it was more important to learn about your own history and culture than to have your photograph taken with Donald Duck. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but he sounded a lot like Jake. The closest she’d ever come to taking us to Disney World was to drive by it shouting, “There it is!”

  The Grand Tour headed for The City of London. I thought we were in the city of London, but apparently I was wrong. We were in London, the city – and so is The City of London.

  “The City of London was built on the site of the first Roman settlement,” Robert informed me as he locked the car.

  I didn’t know there were any Roman settlements in England. It seemed like a long way to go for bad weather. (And it definitely hadn’t given the English any clues about how to eat pizza either.)

  “For nearly four hundred years,” said Robert. And just in case I didn’t believe him he dragged us all over the place to show us the remains. We saw a hunk of the old Roman wall. We saw what was left of an old Roman bath. We saw some old Roman tiles. “Try to visualize it!” ordered Robert. “Try to picture what it was like.”

  But it was hard to imagine a bunch of dudes in togas and sandals strolling around with all the traffic and the modern buildings and planes flying overhead.

  After that he took us to see the place where a lot of the early after-the-Romans-went-home city would have been if it hadn’t been wiped out by the Great Fire and World War Two.

  I said I thought World War Two was fought in Europe and in Africa and the East. Robert said not if you were British.

  Robert led us through the rain to the Tower of London, which if you ask me isn’t exactly the cheeriest spot in town. There’s Tower Hill, where everybody used to come to watch them kill people, and then there was the Tower itself, which if you weren’t the king or some friend of the king (or if you’d been a friend of the king but he got mad at you for something) was just a big prison. We shuffled behind clumps of damp tourists to see the dungeons, to see where the rich people were executed, the tower where the princes were imprisoned, rooms filled with tonnes of old weapons and instruments of torture, and (just so you don’t think it’s all doom and destruction) the Crown Jewels.

  When we came back out we stood in the courtyard behind a group listening to some dude dressed up like a medieval guard (assuming medieval guards had umbrellas) tell them about who was killed there and when, and how the whole kingdom would collapse if the ravens left the Tower.

  I said it must make everyone pretty nervous to have the fate of the country depend on a few birds.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Caroline. “They’ve got their wings clipped so they can’t go anywhere.”

  So much for civilization, right?

  “This represents nine hundred years of history,” said Robert. “Don’t you want to take a picture?”

  “Not really. I mean, it may be nine hundred years of history, but it’s just the history of the people who ran everything, isn’t it?” The ravens were OK, but the dungeons and the Tower gave me the creeps and the Crown Jewels were just rich people’s stuff (useless and boring). I mean it’s not like any of these kings actually built any of the castle themselves, is it? They probably didn’t buckle their own shoes. “My gran says the Tower of London is a symbol of the wealth and power that slaughtered and oppressed millions of people all over the world.”

  “I take it your grandmother’s not a monarchist,” said Robert.

  “Not really. But she’s a big fan of Watt Tyler. You know, the guy who led the Peasants’ Revolt? I don’t suppose there’s a monument to him I could take a picture of?”

  “I doubt it.” Robert smiled. “But I can show you where he died.”

  We saw where Watt Tyler (among a lot of other people) was murdered, and then I finally got to see inside a real English pub. It was well cool. All wood panelling and low ceilings and pressed tin ceilings and old pictures on the walls. Robert said it was at least three hundred years old and that lots of famous people used to get drunk there. I ordered the Ploughman’s lunch because it sounded sort of interesting, but it was just a hunk of cheese, a hunk of bread, a pickled onion and some brown glop with chunks in it that looked a little like throw up. I poked it with my fork.

  “It’s pickle,” said Caroline.

  “Ye olde traditional English pickle,” said Robert.

  I said I liked my pickle green and looking like a cucumber.

  I don’t know what Sophie and the Czar really thought of The Grand Tour. Maybe they’d liked it as much as Caroline said (they must have been pretty young, after all), but I was hoping that after we ate we could go home. I was wet, I was tired, and I was bored of the kind of history that’s about kings and queens and big buildings and wars and how many people were killed that year (for which I suppose I’ve got my grandmother to thank). I’d rather have seen a house where Dickens nearly starved to death as a child or something like that.

  Robert finished off his drink and slapped the glass down on the table. “Next stop Westminster and the Houses of Parliament,” he announced.

  “Don’t you think we’ve done enough for one day?” asked Caroline. Her smile was hopeful. “I can’t be the only one who’s knackered.”

  But having been dragged away from writing The Great English Novel, Robert wasn’t going to let us off that easily. He was in super-guide mode. “Cherry wants to take a picture of Big
Ben for Mr Scutari.” He turned to me. “And you could take one for your grandmother, too.”

  I said Sky wasn’t really into symbols of the State.

  Robert said she’d be interested in this one. “Not many people know this, but there’s actually a small prison cell in the clock tower, where Emily Pankhurst was once held.”

  “Really? The Suffragette?” Sky’s a really big fan of the Suffragettes.”

  “The very same.” His smile was triumphant. “You don’t want to miss that, do you, Cherry?”

  There was no way I could say no.

  “As soon as we get home we can have a nice cup of tea,” threatened Caroline as we trudged past the street where the Prime Minister lives (just a regular house with a couple of cops outside).

  I was amazed at how many tourists there were mooching around in the rain.

  “They can’t stay indoors because of the weather,” said Caroline, “or they’d never leave their hotels.”

  Besides all the tourists outside of Parliament there was a whole slew of cops and people with signs across the street.

  “Looks like Brian Haw’s got some company,” said Robert.

  According to Caroline, this guy Brian Haw had been camped out in front of Parliament for years in a one-man peace vigil.

  “They’re always trying to evict him,” said Caroline. “It’s absolutely shocking. They even changed the law to try to get rid of him.”

  Robert took my picture in front of the Houses of Parliament (me and two dozen Germans), and then I took him and Caroline in another herd of tourists. I could just about get Big Ben in the picture by more or less squatting in traffic so I decided to go over to the square across the street to take a really good picture of Big Ben for Mr Scutari. I couldn’t get Caroline and Robert’s attention to tell them what I was doing because they were huddled over a guidebook with a Japanese couple, but I figured I’d be back before they even noticed I was gone.