“Good Lord!”
“Yes, good Lord, is right.”
I had succeeded in leaving him speechless, but not for long. After a minute or two of quiet, he stirred.
“Well then,” he began again, “why not simply divorce Mr. Finlay?”
“Because Mr. Finlay does not wish to divorce.”
“But why ever not? If it’s so common in these times—”
I heaved an aggrieved sigh.
The Colonel paused. “You are so much estranged from each other in the first place,” he said quietly, “and he seems to have so little affection for his family in the second—”
Reluctantly, I dragged myself into a sitting position. “I have a pretty good idea. I’m just not sure I can explain it.”
“Why ever not?”
“You’d have to understand the concept of, ah, American upward mobility.”
“Well, am I not supposed to be learning about such things? The nuances of your life and times, so to speak?
I looked at him. In two days we had studied the technical, political and cultural changes of two centuries, moving from carriages to space shuttles, from the American Revolution to the current war-and-peace in Iraq. The Colonel’s eyes were bloodshot from reading, his hair had come loose from its tie, and he hadn’t taken the time that morning to shave. I wondered if I looked as tired and whipped as he did.
“We need a day off,” I said finally. “A holiday from the schoolroom.”
“You are avoiding my question,” he smiled.
“Perhaps. But I’m serious about a break.
His gaze moved to a pile of papers on the kitchen counter. “No,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “We’ve too much to do.”
“It will be a field trip, a learning experience. Practice.”
“Oh, I see. A field exercise. Maneuvers.”
“We’ll take the ferry to Ocracoke Island, visit the shops and have some lunch. You’ll like the ferry.”
“Is it, ah, diesel powered?” he asked. “Or nuclear?”
Chapter 22
I was awakened the next morning shortly after sunrise by the phone, which I snatched up, in heart thumping, panicked quickness, only to be greeted by the sound of dead air on the line. A hang-up, I realized, annoyed and relieved at the same time. Hadn’t we had several hang-ups recently, or was I imagining it? Looking back on it, I suppose I should have been more suspicious of these calls — more suspicious of a lot of things — but then, ignorance is bliss. I flopped back on the pillows and thought briefly of calling Lila, just to make sure all was well, before realizing that the early morning ringing of the phone would startle her as much as it had me several minutes before. So I waited, knowing that if it was anything important the phone would ring again. When it didn’t, I swung myself out of bed and began to dress.
Thirty minutes later the Colonel and I were on the road to Hatteras, where we were the third car to board the 8 A. M. ferry. Immediately, he left the car to stand at the rail. “Behave yourself,” I warned him. “Don’t ask any embarrassing questions.” In response, he waved me away impatiently.
I rolled down the windows and stayed in the car, which was in the bow of the ferry, and watched the gulls whirl over the water. After a few moments the tip of the Cape fell away and we glided past the inlet where the sound met the sea in a clash of choppy water. On the far side of the inlet I saw the sandy spit of Ocracoke’s long arm, and for thirty minutes or so we moved southward through Pamlico Sound, heading toward the ferry dock about 10 miles from the island’s single town.
Suddenly, the passenger door opened and the Colonel slid in beside me.
“I wondered if you fell overboard,” I said.
He snorted. “I’ve been exploring. Bye the bye, I’ve noticed several men with their hair tied back, like mine. I had been wondering whether to cut mine off, since short hair seems so much a fashion of your century, but I can see now that it isn’t necessary.”
“Long hair isn’t uncommon,” I said. “And lots of men tie it back. But not,” I added, “Army officers.”
“They wear it loose?”
“They wear it short. Very short. All military men do if they’re on active duty. It’s regulation, part of the uniform.”
“Really?” The Colonel paused. “Actually, I think I’ve managed the morning quite well. Not a single person has come up to me and said, “Oh, I say, you must be from a different century…”
He made me laugh.
“And I read a very interesting broadside posted on the wall of the, ah, passenger lounge pertaining to the use of life rafts, as I believe they are called.”
“Yes?”
“They are made of rubber and inflated with air.”
“I know.”
“Inflation is automatic when the raft, which is folded into a neat package weighing more than two hundred pounds, is tossed overboard, thus activating—”
“Spare me,” I pleaded.
“And this little folio is most illuminating,” he went on enthusiastically, waving a slim brochure in front of me. “Do you know that this ferry has two diesel engines providing a combined thrust of—”
There was a bump as the ferry entered its berth, and then a flurry of activity erupted around us. Car doors slammed, engines started. Dock hands secured the ferry to its moorings and a worker moved up a row of cars, noisily removing blocks from tires. A minute later a man motioned me forward. We drove over a gangplank and away from the dock heading south, the backs of the dunes forming a wall on our left between the narrow road and the sea. Gradually the island broadened and the vegetation grew denser. Trees and thick shrubbery lined the road and bridges crossed small creeks. And then we saw signs of habitation.
“I overheard a woman tell another passenger that Ocracoke is where Blackbeard hid his ships,” the Colonel remarked, then added, “Edward Teach.”
“You’ve heard of Edward Teach?”
“Of course. Blackbeard. Captured and hung at the beginning of the century. My century, not yours. I had no idea Ocracoke was his lair.”
“Actually, there’s a lot of history connected with the Outer Banks,” I said, and went on to tell him about the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 and the early English settlements as far back as 1585.
“Yes,” he nodded. “Raleigh’s attempts at colonizing. Is it possible to see the place they tried to settle? Can we visit this Kitty Hawk place as well?” Suddenly he was rummaging through the glove box. He extracted the map, which he unfolded and refolded, his finger tracing down the Outer Banks from Kitty Hawk to Avon and beyond. “I hadn’t realized how far south Ocracoke is,” he said, looking up at me. “We covered a good number of miles by ferry. Amazing. It took almost no time at all.”
The town of Ocracoke, which curves like a crescent around Silver Lake, is a tiny, cheerful place cluttered with bicyclists and abounding with shops and restaurants. We visited the lighthouse and then the British Sailors’ Cemetery, where the remains of four British seamen are buried, their ship sunk just off-shore by a German U-Boat in 1942. Next, we headed for the shops.
I parked in a shady spot and pulled out my cash and credit cards. The Colonel flushed and looked uncomfortable. “I’m beginning to feel rather like a kept man.”
“You are a kept man,” I said briskly. “You are kept in an alien place and time by a circumstance we do not understand. Here,” I said, pushing two twenties and four tens toward him. “Take this money and stop being squeamish. You need to go into these shops and buy something. For practice.”
The Colonel folded the bills and shoved them in his pocket. “You know, I have meant to remark on your monetary system,” he said. “All those lovely decimals, so easy to use. So much simpler than computing two hundred and forty pence to a pound, not to mention all those farthings, ha’pennies and guineas to worry about. A great deal easier your way.”
“Well, your countrymen thought so, too. There’s a hundred pence to the pound now, and your farthings and tuppence and wha
t-all are history. Don’t look so stricken.”
“But every child remembers the first ha’penny someone placed into his palm!”
“You yourself said the decimal system is easier.”
“Easier, certainly. But distinctly unBritish, Mrs. Finlay.”
Oh please. “Go spend some money,” I told him. “You’re on your own now.”
“All right,” he nodded. “We’ll rendez-vous in twenty minutes.”
“Forty-five,” I said. “Obviously you know nothing about how women shop.”
“Actually, that’s one thing that I imagine hasn’t changed at all.”
I turned and left him, making my way down the walk shop by shop. At the end was a dress shop called Seaweeds which was having a rather enticing sale. I was in deep contemplation of my second rack of summer slacks when a voice at my shoulder said, “Turkish trousers. Or are they pantaloons? How distinctly unfeminine.”
The voice was deep and smoky and noticeably British. For some reason a small thrill shot up my spine.
“Oh,” I said, turning. “It’s you.”
“Who did you expect? Prince, ah, What-do-you-call-him?”
I waited.
“Charles,” he recalled finally, and went on to recite: “Son of Elizabeth the Second and heir to the throne; father of William, heir apparent, and young Harry-the-spare—”
I elbowed him into silence. “What did you buy?”
He held up a small blue-green bag. Inside were half a dozen brightly colored pencils, freshly sharpened, with “Greetings from the Outer Banks” stamped on them.
I looked at him blankly.
“Rather pedestrian from your perspective,” he informed me, “but really quite innovative from mine.”
“You have pencils on the other side,” I pointed out. “And you’ve been using modern pencils the past two days, not to mention all kinds of pens and—”
“Yes, I know, but these are quite colorful. With fresh, ah, erasers. And you’ll notice they’ve been sharpened.”
I looked back into the bag and then up at his face. “There’s a story connected to this, isn’t there?” I said.
“Actually, there is. I saw the clerk sharpen her own pencil. She was writing something down by the till—”
“Cash register—”
“—and suddenly she turned and went over to a small device mounted on a wall and stuck the pencil in and turned a crank — much easier than using a knife — and, well, I wanted to see her do it again, and then I saw these pencils by a fascinating display of, ah, post cards, I think they were called, and—”
“I get it,” I said. “Did she think you were strange?”
“Not excessively. She was distracted by my accent, apparently. She asked me where in England I was from.”
I eyed him a bit uneasily. “And you said…” I prompted.
“Kent.” He looked at me as if I was nuts. “I am from Kent. Why would I tell her anything else?”
That made sense, of course. Besides, I’ve always heard that in undercover work you’re supposed to stick as close to the truth as possible when making up lies and creating false identities. I let out my breath, aware, suddenly, that I had held it, and nodded.
For the first time, it occurred to me that that his accent was his saving grace. After all, Americans expect the English to be eccentric. Eccentricity is practically revered in the South, anyway, so the Colonel could say or do almost anything and probably get away with it. Maybe, I reasoned, I had been a little too paranoid. I mean, no matter how odd he seemed, no one was going to call the Immigration Service or the FBI, Interpol or the KGB. Like the Colonel said, no one was going to walk up to him and say, Hey! are you a time-traveller, or what?
Were they?
“Although,” the Colonel added reassuringly, “to avoid any potentially embarrassing questions about modern Kent, of which I know precious little, I threw her off the scent, so to speak, and told her I had been in Africa the last several years—”
Abruptly, the Colonel broke off. I followed his gaze and realized he was leering at a pretty blonde sales person, who was, I noticed, leering back.
“Do you need some help?” she inquired brightly.
I hesitated a minute, then decided the question was directed at me. “No thanks,” I said cheerfully. “I’m just looking.”
The salesgirl flashed a dazzling smile (mostly at the Colonel), and moved away.
“You don’t actually intend to buy more trousers?” the Colonel asked me.
“I was considering it. What do you think of these?” I lifted a hangar from the rack and showed him a pair of white silk pants.
“Why not something like that?” he asked, nodding at a dress displayed on a wicker dress form.
“It’s a dress,” I pointed out.
“Well, yes, I noticed that. Actually, from my point of view, that’s part of its charm.”
“I really don’t like dresses.”
“I’ve noticed that, too. But perhaps you’ll like this one. How does one go about buying clothes, anyway? Are they always sewn ahead of time or is there a resident seamstress to fit you?”
“They’re mostly ready made by size and there is no resident seamstress. Not here, anyway. Maybe in a department store or a really exclusive shop where they’re equipped to do alterations.”
The Colonel looked at me a little blankly.
“Watch,” I said. “I’ll show you how to do this.” I flipped through the racks until I found the dress that he liked in my size, then tried it on in a tiny dressing room while he waited patiently by a set of mirrors.
“Well?” he called to me.
“It looks funny,” I said from behind the closed door.
“How can you tell?”
“There’s a mirror in here.”
“There’s a better one out here.”
“It won’t change things.”
“Well, let me see anyway. I’ve always wondered what you’d look like dressed as a girl.”
So I opened the door and stepped out of the dressing room feeling like an embarrassed teenager in her first party dress. Suddenly, the Colonel smiled. “You look quite fetching,” he said.
“I bet.” I walked gingerly over to the mirrors and stared at myself. It was a sun dress with a fitted bodice, off-the shoulder sleeves, and a full, calf-length skirt. The material was patterned with masses of pink peonies against a black background.
I tugged at the bodice, which resembled a bustier, and thought of Madonna (the rock star, not the Mother-of-God). I frowned, flounce the skirt, fluffed my hair, and wondered if I could really wear something as splashy as this.
“We’ve got sandals that go with the dress.” I saw the blond salesgirl reflected in the mirror. “Pink ones,” she added, and went to fetch a pair.
I turned and looked and tugged and frowned. The Colonel watched, clearly amused. When the salesgirl returned with the sandals, I sat down on a small boudoir chair and slipped them on.
“I don’t know if I can walk in these,” I said.
“Why not?” the Colonel asked.
“The heels. They’re so high.”
“Well, you won’t know until you try, will you?”
I stood up and teetered around, making my way back to the mirror where I stared at the sandals, turned, and stared at the dress.
“It looks wonderful.” This from the salesgirl, who was counting her commission. “Do you like it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said, and teetered off to the dressing room. A moment later I emerged with the dress and the sandals and handed them to the blonde.
“Do you take American Express?” I asked.
*****
We went to lunch. I translated the menu, explaining what Newburg sauce was and how lobster was transported to North Carolina from places like New England, and in the end we plowed happily through chowder, crab cakes and salad. When we were done we discussed usual and customary tipping practices, raised our coffee cups and smiled acr
oss the table at each other. The Colonel’s face creased attractively and his blue eyes reflected warmth and humor. There were times, I decided, when he was almost charming.
And then he put down his cup. “Do you realize, Mrs. Finlay, what day it is?”
“Saturday, June twenty-fourth?” I offered.
“Precisely. ’Tis a week to the day since we, ah, met. So to speak.” He looked at me and smiled engagingly. “Quite amazing, don’t you think?”
Somehow, the word fell short of describing that particular instant when, on a warm autumn day, Colonel Robert Christian Upton decided to dismount his horse and rest awhile on a low stone wall, while across an abyss of time, I chose that same instant to enter Uncle Bennett’s garden shed, searching for a rake.
Which, by the way, I never found.
But I didn’t nit-pick his choice of words. Instead we paid our bill and left the restaurant. I led the way to a men’s store nearby where the Colonel bought a shirt and learned his modern shirt size. After that we simply wandered around the little town like happy tourists, my arm tucked into his. I can’t remember when we started being friends. Maybe we had been friends from the beginning and simply didn’t know it. But we knew it that afternoon: school was out and we were playing.
Eventually, however, one of us noticed the time. We got into the car and headed back toward the ferry, stopping along the way to walk along a solitary stretch of the pristine Ocracoke beach.
“I think I’ll have a swim,” he said suddenly. “Turn your back, unless you want to see my bare backside. Not that I personally object, but I hate to offend the sensibilities of ladies.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I said easily. “Bathing suits weren’t invented until the nineteenth century.”
The Colonel shot me an impatient look.
“Don’t mind me, I went on, settling myself on the sand. “I’ll just sit here and watch the gulls.”
“Oh, hell. I’ll swim in my what-do-you-call-them? Trousers. I’ll swim in my trousers. Do you suppose they’ll dry?”
He was wearing the cotton drawstring pants I had found in my closet, which Cameron bought and apparently never wore. “Oh, yes, they’ll dry,” I assured him cheerfully.
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