"The Old Souse Meeting House?" She made it sound like an alcoholics' hangout.
"Sou-tha," she articulated. South was one of the few English words she had problems with. "It's where the people met before the Boston Tea Party. It's a beautiful old church, all white inside."
"'A beautiful old church'?" I reminded Alexa that she was usually violently opposed to religion and all its earthly manifestations.
"Yes." She blushed again.
"Did you interview some Americans about their faith?"
"No, I did some filming of different ethnic groups and their attitude to being American. You know, in France we try to encourage all ethnicities to integrate completely, but here people stay in their ghettos, and I am not sure it is a good idea."
"Which ethnicities did you film?" I asked.
"This morning?"
"Yes, this morning."
"Oh, the Irish," she said.
"Ah. All the Irish, or just the tall hunky male section of the population?"
"Well, yes, I did have lunch with Mike, as it happens. He is an important member of the Irish community here."
"Right. And how does he feel about interethnic relations? Is he in favor of closer Irish-French ties, for example?"
This had a predictable effect.
"Honestly, Paul. You are such a hypocrite. You stare at that girl's body like it was a piece of sushi and now you criticize me for interviewing someone for my film. Je suis une grande fille" she said—a big girl. "I can have lunch with a man and not jump on him. You are not quite the same, I think."
She pointed an accusing finger at me, a finger that was designed to thrust me back in time to two occasions in the past when I'd sinned against her—inadvertently, I might add. Once under the blinding influence of French alcohol, and once when a woman had decided to invite herself into my bed when I wasn't looking.
There is only one thing to do with a woman who is in the right. You squeeze her in your arms and tell her how right she is, adding a few extra degrees of Tightness so she feels proud enough of herself to forgive you for whatever she's right about.
"Yours are the only thighs I'm interested in," I told her when she'd stopped resisting me.
"Oh, and the rest of me doesn't interest you?" she asked, so I felt obliged to carry her into our room and prove her wrong.
7
It wasn't until just before six that things started to go belly up.
The party had been going well. Lots of homebound office workers had popped in for tea and a piece of cake, and not one of them had threatened legal action or fallen to the floor in allergic spasms.
Mi's T-shirt was attracting plenty of attention to our "GB heart USA" message, especially from a reporter who'd come to cover the party for the city's biggest newspaper. He was studying the heart as if there might be some hidden meaning in its position over the cleft between Mi's breasts. Alexa, meanwhile, was alternately studying Mi's chest and my eyes, to check whether they were interacting in any way.
Alexa was getting her share of stares, as she usually did, and was having plenty of success signing people up for the Win a T-shirt prize draw (and subsequent spam e-mail campaign). Everything was cruising along nicely.
Then at around quarter to six, our ship hit its first minor iceberg.
"More labels," Babar said, sidling up to me.
"Pardon?"
"For the cups," he added out of the side of his mouth. "I forgot that we need to put labels on the cups. 'Warning, may contain a hot beverage.' My son is writing some now in the kitchen. Meanwhile, please warn everyone verbally. And make sure you have an independent witness."
So for the next ten minutes or so, Alexa and I worked the room together, asking if everyone was enjoying themselves and slipping into each conversation a short warning to the effect that tea can on occasion be hot. I was relieved that Babar hadn't asked us to get everyone to sign a disclaimer.
Then, almost on the stroke of six, when it was dark outside and our hub of light and warmth seemed to be attracting more people than ever, there was a palpable rise in the buzz level. I turned to see a small group of men and women in smart overcoats and chic scarves cutting a spontaneous V through the crowd as they entered the restaurant. Babar was over there instantly, holding up his arms and welcoming them as if they'd crossed continents to be at the baptism of his first-born son. The reporter, too, unstuck his eyebrows from Mi's heart and made for the new arrivals.
These, I gathered, were the local dignitaries. Time for me to earn my bonus. I had to go and schmooze with them individually, and then make my rousing speech about why Britain loved Americans so much that it was inviting them all to come and holiday—or "vacation"—there.
But as I tried to make my way through the crowd toward them, a new tidal flow seemed to push against me. The noise level rose yet again. Someone seemed to be chanting over by the entrance.
"No to the English colonizers! No to English tea!" Across the heads of the crowd I could make out a couple of triangular black hats and several very artificial-looking ponytailed wigs.
"No to the English colonizers! No to English tea!" The tidal wave got stronger and a few people started to panic, including the dignitaries, who were looking over their shoulders as they got shoved up against the long table where the food was being served.
"No to the English colonizers! No to English tea!" I could see all the gate-crashers now—five guys in eighteenth-century costume. I didn't recognize any of them from the group of guides in the pub, though, and there was something different about their outfits. They were less coarse and woolly, more like formal wear for a ball. They looked like hired party costumes.
Some of my tea drinkers were laughing, thinking the demonstration was part of the show. Others were panicking slightly, holding their cups aloft to avoid spilling the tea. They'd obviously taken the warnings about hot liquid to heart.
"No to the English colonizers! No to English tea!" Babar pushed forward and held out his arms in a gesture of appeasement.
It did no good. The invaders shoved their way to the table, spread out along its width, and upended everything on to the floor. One of Babar's sons threw a punch, but was pushed back by a burly guy whose brown wig fell off to reveal a dark buzz cut.
The party distintegrated in a chorus of shouts, screams, bouncing cakes and smashing crockery. The invaders gave a last defiant cry of their slogan and surged out of the door.
"What the hell was that?" I asked Babar, who was apologizing profusely to one of the dignitaries, a frowning man in a cashmere coat that had taken a hit from a cup of milky tea.
"It was the bastards from the wine bar across the road. We were disturbing their happy hour."
So it was just like the original Tea Party—the rumpus was all about money.
Babar barked something in an Asian language at his sons and nephews, who were guiding guests across the wet, cake-covered mush on the floor. At once, tliey all abandoned their charges and headed for the exit.
"What are they going to do?" I asked. "We can't get into a fight. This is an international friendship party. A peace party."
"No, it's not. I told you, America hates pacifists." Babar followed the younger troops toward the door.
"Wait—didn't Gandhi teach you anything?" I pleaded.
"Screw Gandhi, this is war." And he was out in the street.
Oh well, I thought, I'd better go and make sure no one gets killed in the name of British tourism.
The night air was painfully cold after the hot crush in the restaurant, but jogging to catch up with the two gangs of potential combatants kept me from suffering frostbite anywhere except my fingertips, nose, and ears.
The costumed impostors were heading toward the pub we'd gone to with Mike. The army of white-shirted Indians were around twenty or thirty yards behind them. The reporter was jogging with the Indians. Babar, meanwhile, had given up the chase and was leaning against the window of a clodies shop.
"You've got to stop them," I said.
"We don't want any violence."
"It's my restaurant," he panted. "I can't let them get away with this."
I didn't see how a heart attack was going to help his cause and told him he would do better to return and protect his base camp.
Suddenly Alexa sprinted past, filming the pursuit with her camera held out like a relay baton. I set off after her.
The chase turned down a side street, and we all ran past an old red-brick church, with the Indians yelling some decidedly un-religious things at the costumed vandals. We climbed a small hill to an old cemetery. I leaped over a sign that said No Alcoholic Beverages, and wondered briefly whether the dead were meant to stay eternally teetotal in this Puritan town.
We jogged down the other side of the hill and hung a right on to a spooky-looking metal bridge, its skeleton looming eerily over the river. Alexa stopped on the bank to film us all running across. Our feet clanged loudly and made the old bridge shudder. I didn't like to think what would happen if the flimsy metal walkway collapsed and we all went for an unplanned swim in the freezing water below.
The journalist began to laugh.
"I know where they're heading," he said. "This is great."
"Where?" I asked, but in reply he only accelerated. Trust me to invite a fit on-the-spot reporter and not some overweight desk blob.
We began to jog—painfully now—up narrow streets lined with cute little clapboard houses. There was no traffic, and the only sounds I could hear were our rhythmic steps, the occasional shout of defiance from one of the two sets of runners, and my own hoarse breathing.
"I was right," the reporter said as we came in view of a tall white obelisk.
"What is it?" I gasped.
"It's Bunker Hill." Alexa had drawn level with us, and was checking out light levels in the gloom. "I filmed here this morning with Mike."
"You did?" I was keen to inquire further about this—she had only said she'd had lunch with him—but I was distracted by the journalist, who was laughing again.
"They're reliving the battle," he said. "The Boston Tea Party and Bunker Hill all in one day. They'll be ratifying the Constitution before the night is over."
This didn't sound too promising as far as my British PR campaign was concerned.
The modern-day revolutionaries had climbed over the low black railings into the park around the obelisk. The Indians were considering their next move.
"Let's go and whack the bastards," the tallest of Babar's sons was saying.
"No," I told him. "Let's not. They've caused some trouble, but your dad knows who they are and he'll sort it out peacefully. He'll sue them." Americans' ultimate threat.
"Yes," Alexa said. "Violence is not the solution."
"Huh. Let's take them out," one of the younger sons growled. "They look like a bunch of pussies."
So much for Europe's appeasement skills.
We all scaled the pointed railings and made our way cautiously up a flight of steps toward the obelisk. We could hear the others taunting us from the brow of the hill. At the top of the steps, we sheltered behind the statue of Colonel William Prescott. This, I remembered, was the guy who defended the hill against the English. A courageous man, I thought, because if the sculpture was historically accurate, his only defenses had been a very short sword and a pair of inhumanly tight trousers.
In the glow from the streetlamps we could make out the costumed men, who were standing around the base of the obelisk and urging the Indians to come on and make a fight of it.
Babar's eldest son, Vijay, stepped forward. He'd brought a broken teacup with him, and launched it toward his tormentors. The cup smashed spectacularly against the obelisk, provoking a growl of fury from the defending army.
Heartened, the Indians cheered.
Another brother had brought a weapon—a vicious-looking shard of china plate.
I tried to stop him, but he stepped forward and drew back his arm to launch his missile. He threw it with all his strengdi and then collapsed like a starfish. A dark shape had flown out of the shadows and hit him squarely in the chest. It rolled away from his squirming body, leaking frothy beer, and I saw that it was a bottle of Sam Adams. A truly Bos-tonian weapon.
The downing of their comrade enraged the Indian army.
"Don't retaliate," I told them. "Your dad'U sort this out."
But as Babar had predicted, this continent was no place for pacificism. They raced into the attack. History really was repeating itself—the whites and the Indians were fighting again. Although this time, Columbus's geographical mistake had been corrected. These were real Indians.
As always, the whites seemed to be gaining the upper hand. The waiters were lithe and had some neat martial-art moves, but the white guys were bulkier and were using American-football-style clinch tactics to disable the Indians' scything arms and legs.
I suddenly noticed that Alexa was missing. Oh no, I thought, she's been hit by friendly fire.
But no, after a long minute of calling her name, I found her safe and well with the reporter. They were in a huddle behind the tight-trousered statue, apparently in negotiations about film rights to the battle. To her credit and my relief, Alexa seemed to be saying no.
"This isn't really news, is it? The fight's not worth an article," I told the hack. "We don't want to cause inter-ethnic trouble in the city."
"You kidding? I got to go and talk to those guys. This is a hoot."
"What? I invite you to my tea party and now you're going to publicize the blokes who disrupted it?"
His nostrils flared with journalistic indignation. "You Brits against the freedom of the press or what? We win our independence and now we're meant to bow down to you again?"
Which was pretty damn unfair.
"Hey, none of this is my fault," I told him. "You think this is what I wanted to happen? I try to give a few people a nice cup of tea and end up provoking a colonial war."
Even as I said it, I realized that that just about summed up the history of the British Empire.
8
My troubles in Boston weren't over, of course.
I'd flirted with disaster in this city. I'd even taken disaster out on a first date, found that she was too scary and ended the relationship, trying my best not to hurt her feelings. But no, she'd come back with her two brothers—cock-up and catastrophe—and they'd put the boot in.
After the battle, I was in such a gloomy mood that I started having a go at Alexa. How come, I wanted to know, she'd only told me she'd had lunch with this Mike character when it was obvious that they'd spent the whole day together, doing the tourist sights?
She erupted into instant fury. How dare I be so suspicious? Hadn't I invited Mi to put on the shortest miniskirt in human history and join our party? And had she, Alexa, accused me of anything?
"Not in so many words," I said. Though she had made a few cutting remarks. "But anyway, there was nothing to be suspicious about. You saw her at the restaurant. She was flashing flesh at everyone, not just me. She's been watching too many rap videos, that's all."
"OK, so nothing happened with her, and nothing happened with Mike."
"Yes," I conceded, "but you must admit you were a bit evasive when I asked you about your filming. Besides, how did you arrange it all? You had a go at me because I gave Mi my number, and you'd already given Mike yours?"
"No. He gave me his number."
"Right. Big difference."
"Oh!" She made one of her outraged puffing noises.
We were wandering back down the hill into the city center, and the reporter was just behind us, interviewing the Indians. The two armies had disengaged pretty quickly after the initial skirmish, and the only real casualty was the young brother who'd got hit by the bottle. He was holding his ribs and being half carried along by Vijay, who had given him a scalplike wig as a trophy.
Alexa waited for them to catch up, and began to talk reprint rights with the reporter.
Next morning, the city's bestselling paper ran a doubl
e-page spread about how a visiting Brit had made a mockery of the Tea Party and then been deservedly routed in a new Battle of Bunker Hill. The reporter joked that the rebels had been heard to say, "Don't fire until you can see the whites of their teacups."
The article was illustrated with grainy, shadowy pictures that looked like real war photos. And these images were all copyrighted to Alexa, who showed not the slightest guilt about selling out to the enemy. Flicking through the paper, she even looked pleased with her first excursion into news photography, which had proved to be very well paid, too— each still from her film had earned her several hundred dollars.
She and I were having breakfast at the bookshop cafe, and my pancakes weren't looking fluffy enough to tempt me, even with a double squirt of maple syrup and a stack of organic strawberry slices.
"You wanted war, you got it," she told me.
War? Hers was a very French version of warfare, I thought bitterly. They don't take any part in the fighting, but step in to make a profit afterward.
Although in this case my unspoken gibe wasn't quite accurate. As it happened, there had been some direct French involvement in the hostilities.
The reporter had done a solid job on the article. He'd made sure that he interviewed all concerned, including the manager of the wine bar opposite the Indian restaurant, tJie guy who'd been threatening Babar—one Denis Lefevre, aged thirty-one, a green-card holder from Toulouse. The accent I'd heard wasn't Italian, it was southern French. Yes, as in the original colonial war, France had helped to shaft the Brits.
And worse news was still to come. In the business section I found an article outlining the French government's promise to provide a team of its best engineers, free of charge, to advise Boston on its Big Dig problems. The mayor was pictured shaking hands with a typical French engineer, a flat-headed guy whose wardrobe had surely been chosen by a practical joker. The flathead was grinning lopsidedly at the camera, but I instantly saw that I'd been wrong about him and his ilk—some people find Gallic engineers very sexy indeed. The mayor was staring with openmouthed adoration at the Frenchman as if he smelled of the most erotic aroma ever concocted by a Provencal parfumier. It was all too obvious where Boston's vote would go in the world tourism contest, and it wouldn't be to the organizer of abortive tea parties.
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