I Conquer Britain

by Dyan Sheldon

  The first cop smiled in a really unfriendly way. “Of course you were.”

  “I’m not even English,” I protested. “I’m a visitor to your shores.”

  “Well, welcome to Britain,” said another cop.

  The inside of a police car was another sight I hadn’t planned on seeing.

  (Lesson for Today: Don’t make plans.)

  The Perfect End to a Perfect Day

  I was a little worried that since I was an Alien and everything I might be returned to Putney in the back of a police car (possibly handcuffed). Nana Bea might think that was pretty cool, but I wasn’t so sure about Caroline and Robert. I mean, what if the press was alerted? Does Art imitate Life, or is it the other way around? Mystery writer Robert Pitt-Turnbull must have thought he was in one of his own novels yesterday when officers of the Met paid him a visit. Not only would it scandalize the neighbours, but there was a strong possibility that it would give poor Caroline a migraine to make all others look like a complete absence of pain.

  Everything got straightened out at the police station (another thing I hadn’t exactly planned on seeing). I mean, you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Tiki and I weren’t exactly Public Enemies Numbers One and Two. (Besides, we weren’t the ones who were drunk and yelling at everybody!)

  And the cops were really nice. They said I was seeing a London most visitors never saw.

  “Right,” I said. “Go to Big Ben, go to Hyde Park, go directly to jail.”

  Tiki said it was probably the London no one wanted to see.

  “I certainly didn’t want to see it,” said Tiki. “Next time we’ll try to leave out the aggressive racists.”

  I said it didn’t matter because the same thing could have happened in the States. I told her how some guy on Long Island tried to run over a woman in the parking lot of a mall because she was a Muslim.

  Anyway, what with one thing and another, it was almost seven by the time I got home.

  By then I’d pretty much had enough surprises for one day, but I should have known that they weren’t over yet.

  I hadn’t even put my key in the front door when it opened as if I’d said the magic words.

  The Czar had finally found his way back home and had been waiting for me. He’d changed into a shirt that didn’t have any blood stains on it and his nose hadn’t swelled up or turned blue or anything, so unless you’d been with him you’d never know that he hadn’t spent the afternoon reading a book.

  “Cherry,” he said. “I—”

  I was way past being polite to him. “It’s Cherokee, remember? Like the Indians.” And this time they were ready for war.

  That was as far as we got because Robert popped out of the kitchen just then like a cuckoo out of a clock. “We were beginning to get a bit worried.” He had a knife in one hand and a carrot in the other.

  Caroline was right behind him. She was wearing oven mitts. “Oh, there you are. I was worried you might have had an accident.”

  Right behind her was Nana Bea. “Didn’t I tell you she was fine? She was just having a good time, weren’t you, Cherry?”

  “Yeah.” I shut the door. I had a pretty good idea what the Czar wanted to say to me (keep your trap shut), but he was going to have to wait. I wanted him to suffer. “It was brilliant.”

  “Well, you’ll have to tell us all about it over supper,” said Nana Bea.

  Robert waved the carrot at the Czar. “The prodigal son has shown up to dine on the fatted nut roast with us!”

  Caroline beamed. “Isn’t this nice? We’re finally going to have a real family meal.”

  Behind me, I heard the Czar groan.

  A family meal in Brooklyn usually means that everybody’s talking at once, but in Putney we all took turns.

  Nana Bea got the floor first. She told us about her adventures taking Drake and Raleigh for a walk around the block that afternoon.

  The Czar yawned.

  “Your back must be feeling much better,” said Robert.

  She said a bit.

  Last week she’d gone with me, Drake and Raleigh on our walks, and had even made it down to the Aswanis’ twice on her own.

  I said I bet it was that book that had done the trick.

  “Book?” Nana Bea blinked as though she was trying to remember what book I meant. “Oh, the book. Oh, no, no, I don’t think it could be that. I don’t even know where I put it.”

  It’s sad to see an old lady lie.

  “I thought I saw it in your living room,” I said. “On the shelf under the coffee table.”

  “And what about you, Caroline?” asked Nana Bea. “What have you been doing with all your free time?”

  When she wasn’t working in the garden she was working in the garden shed. Apparently painting helped keep the migraine away.

  Caroline did her Mona Lisa smile. “Oh, this and that…”

  Robert’s day had been hell. Apparently it was easier to dig to the centre of the earth with a spoon than finish chapter twelve.

  “You were in here listening to the radio and chopping nuts most of the afternoon,” said Caroline.

  “It doesn’t mean I wasn’t working,” answered Robert. “Besides, somebody had to do it.”

  Then it was my turn at bat. I told them about the market, and the shops, and all the different people and stuff like that. I said we’d even gone to this brilliant Goth pub. I said that was why I was late getting back, because we’d gotten so involved in just watching everyone and stuff that we’d lost track of the time.

  And all the while I was talking the Czar watched me like I was the mouse and he was the cat. He didn’t say anything. But I could hear him thinking: don’t mention cops … don’t mention protests … don’t mention fistfights … don’t mention racial slurs … whatever you do, don’t mention me. I was almost tempted to say something about what had happened just to see what he’d do. Leap across the table and drag me out of the room? Pretend he was having some sort of fit? Prove that he really was going to have a great future in politics by lying through his teeth?

  “So what about you, Xar?” asked Robert when I was done. “What did you get up to today?”

  I gave the Czar my full, wide-eyed attention.

  “Same old same old,” said the Czar. “Hung out with my mates.”

  Which pretty much made him the only person in the kitchen who was strictly sticking to the truth.

  I lit the candles and incense on my altar and put on my Buddhist chants CD. There was no way Caroline would disturb me if she thought I was meditating. Not after the time she walked in on me when I was omming in my underwear.

  When I was done with all that, I turned off the light and sat down on the bed. “Right,” I said. “Start talking.”

  The Czar was sitting at the desk. He leaned forward. “Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean to do a runner like that and drop you and your friend in it. But if I got nicked my parents would find out.”

  “So what? You’re an activist, not a serial killer.” I sat up straight the way Nana Bea did when she was about to explain how you were wrong about something. “And besides, I thought you didn’t even live here any more. I thought you were off.”

  He might not have inherited his mother’s smile, but he’d gotten her sigh down pat. “You don’t understand.”

  And that was what? My fault?

  “Of course I don’t understand. That’s why you’re supposed to be talking to me, remember?”

  “I haven’t precisely moved out. I was only taking a break from them. They wouldn’t understand either.”

  “They wouldn’t understand that you’re concerned about the world?”

  He was starting to sound like something being deflated.

  “Surely my mother told you about their plans for me?”

  “You mean going to Oxford and being a lawyer and maybe a politician?”

  From the expression on his face you’d think he’d just realized that the smell he hadn’t been able to identify
was decomposing flesh. “Those are the plans.”

  “You mean you don’t want to do any of that?”

  He didn’t know. He wasn’t certain. He had his doubts. He needed time to think.

  “What I want to do is go back to India. Or maybe South America. Do volunteer work. Find out what I’m really interested in.”

  Caroline had been right. He had picked up something while he was away.

  I didn’t see what the big deal was. So he’d changed his mind. I’ve been known to change my mind in the middle of a sentence.

  “They have expectations,” said the Czar.

  I didn’t really get the expectation thing either. Jake’s expectations tend to be things like not becoming a corporate lawyer or a drug addict.

  “So?”

  “My dad always wished he’d gone into law, like his father. And my mother’s family—” It was the first time his smile had been even in the neighbourhood of humour. “Well, you’ve met my grandmother—she thinks her family put the Great in Britain.” He put on a face that looked remarkably like Nana Bea telling you that she’s drunk Earl Grey tea since she was in the womb. “Our family survived the Peasant’s Revolt, you know.”

  “So that means they’ll be able to survive this without any trouble.” I said that, if his dad had wanted to be a lawyer, then he should’ve done it, not expect somebody else to do it for him.

  “You don’t understand. I can’t bear to disappoint them. The guilt would drive me mad.”

  I pointed out that he was disappointing them now, sneaking around like an enemy agent.

  “Yeah… Well…” He’d been fiddling with the computer mouse, but now he shoved it aside and started looking for dust mites in the carpet. “There is something else…”

  And, oh, how I wondered what that could be, right?

  When he didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, I said, “And this something else is what – animal, vegetable or mineral?”

  “Well, I sort of met someone in India, didn’t I?” He raised his head. “You know, that’s what got me interested in politics and all. Made me see things differently.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it’s sort of complicated, isn’t it?”

  “How can I know that when you won’t tell me what it is?”

  Apparently this question required him to really concentrate on counting the dust mites in the carpet before it could be answered.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Patience may be a virtue, but it’s not one of mine. “It’s her, isn’t it? I know all about her.”

  He looked confused, like I’d made him lose count. “You do?”

  “Of course. I’ve seen you with her three times.” Three times seemed pretty conclusive to me.

  “Are we talking about Celeste?”

  This wasn’t something I could know either.

  Oh, great Earth Goddess, please give me the strength to deal with really difficult people.

  “If that’s the girl with the bright red hair, then yes, Celeste.”

  “I don’t think you understand—”

  “Of course I understand. She’s from a different class right?” I saw that movie Gosford Park, I knew all about the class system. “And because of her politics and the hair and the tutu and everything.” (Everything being her tendency to yell at big men who obviously had no policy against hitting women.) “You don’t think your parents will like her.”

  “Well, you’re right there. They wouldn’t like her. If they knew her she’d be just another thing to argue about.”

  “But that’s where you’re wrong.” I was certain as a missionary. “How do you know they won’t like her? They haven’t met her.”

  “Trust me. I know my parents. They wouldn’t like her.”

  “Well, I don’t think they really liked me at first, but now they do.”

  “Right,” he said, “but you’re going home.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I still think you should give them the benefit of the doubt. Why don’t you just introduce them to Celeste?”

  “Hang on. Celeste—”

  “No, listen to me. Once they get to know her—”

  “First of all, they wouldn’t get to know her, would they? They’d dislike her before they met her. Which means that when they did meet her they’d really dislike her.” He looked like he was thinking of banging his head on the desk. “And Celeste’s no different, really. Forget about the Peasant’s Revolt, she’s all set to wage the French Revolution again – only this time in Britain.”

  Humans really do make things complicated, don’t they?

  But since I was raised by people who were always breaking down in deserts and on remote mountain-tops, I’m resourceful.

  “Well how about this, then? What if Caroline and Robert meet Celeste casually? You know, not actually knowing who she is?”

  “You mean we just happen to bump into them on the street?”

  “I was thinking more of the garden.”

  “In the garden?”

  “At the barbecue.”

  “What barbecue?”

  He was definitely related to Robert.

  “My goodbye barbecue. Tonnes of people are going to be there. You could invite all your other friends, too. You know, confuse them.”

  For the first time he looked at me as though I might be speaking English. “You mean they wouldn’t see the tree for the forest?”

  “Exactly.”

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  If There’s One Thing You Can Always Depend On It’s the English Weather

  When I told Caroline that the Czar wanted to invite some of his friends to the barbecue she went into what-language-are-we-speaking-now? mode.

  “Friends?” said Caroline. “Xar wants to invite his friends? Here?”

  “Not all of them,” I assured her. “Just a few.”

  Caroline shook her head. “But why on Earth would he want to do that?”

  “Because he wants you to meet them.”

  “Because he wants us to meet them.” She smiled bravely, like she was coming down this dark alley at three in the morning and she knew what was going to be waiting for her at the end. “I see.” Caroline sighed. “Oh Lord.” She stared down at her tea. “I do hope this doesn’t mean he wants to marry her.”

  I hadn’t expected her to unravel my complex and supremely clever scheme so quickly.

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s anything like that,” I said quickly. “He just thought it’s time you—”

  “Met his friends,” finished Caroline. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I know what that means.” She lifted her cup as though it was filled with solid gold. “He’s bringing the girl.”

  All Robert wanted to know was if they ate meat or not. They didn’t.

  “God help us,” said Robert. “We’re being swamped by veggies. We’ll have to get another grill.”

  “His friends?” said Nana Bea. “Well, I’d say it’s about time, don’t you?”

  It didn’t look like my idea of hiding the tree in the forest was going to work exactly the way I’d thought. Nana Bea said it was like the elephant in the room. Everybody knew it was there, but no one was going to mention it, especially not to the Czar. They acted like all they were nervous about was if there’d be enough pasta salad and what the weather would be like.

  The weather was perfect.

  Caroline stared out the kitchen window like there was a unicorn chomping on her roses. “I can’t believe it. There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

  “What did I tell you?” Robert lifted an apron from the box he’d just taken from the closet under the stairs and held it up. It was red and said B B KING in large white letters on the front. “It’s not going to rain on barbecue day. Not this time.”

  The Czar and I put tables and chairs around the garden while Nana Bea surpervised and Drake and Raleigh got under everybody’s feet.

  Robert set up the two
barbecues with a table between them.

  Caroline strung coloured lights all around the garden.

  “Who’s going to see them?” asked Robert. “It’s daylight.”

  “Well, you never know…” Caroline shrugged. “It might go on till late.”

  “It doesn’t get dark till gone ten,” Robert squawked. “You don’t expect them to stay till gone ten do you?”

  “Well it depends whether or not they’re having a good time, doesn’t it?” said Caroline.

  The Czar’s friends arrived first. There were five of them. Three of them had dreads and all of them were pierced. Celeste was wearing a green tutu today and a T-shirt that said Rob the Rich. She was the only one who dressed up.

  “Good God,” muttered Robert as they slouched down the hallway. “They look like they just came from an anti-globalization demonstration.”

  “I wonder which one it is,” murmured Caroline.

  The Czar introduced them. Carlos, Rosen, Evelina, Jack, Celeste.

  Carlos said, “Pleased to meet you.”

  Rosen said, “Cheers.”

  Evelina thanked Caroline and Robert for inviting her.

  Jack was the one I’d seen at Parliament Square and in Camden. He said it was a pleasure to meet us all.

  Celeste had never met a writer or a painter before.

  “My parents friends tend to be more realistic,” said Celeste. She turned to Robert. “Not to be bad or anything, but how can you write novels when the world’s going to hell?”

  Robert smiled like he’d probably had this question before (and probably from his son). “Just because a book’s a work of fiction doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Which is more than can be said about a lot of non-fiction.”

  “Well, I’ll say one thing…” Celeste was looking around the dining room like she was planning to steal the silver. “The book business must be better than I thought. Maybe I should give up trying to save the world and write a novel.”

  “Come on.” The Czar took her by the elbow. “Let’s go in the garden.”

  “I don’t really get gardens,” muttered Celeste as he dragged her away. “I mean, first you destroy the natural landscape and then you spend all your spare time trying to recreate it but without any of the inconvenient things like insects and animals.”