by Sean Mallen
We were both desperate for her to make friends quickly.
On the eve of Julia’s British school debut, I pulled out the uniforms for her to try on. Amazingly they fit. She at least joked about them (“These are great,” she said, with eyes rolling), which I grasped on to as a sign of hope. The three of us made the walk up to the Royal, Isabella out of breath after the uphill stretch at the end.
“There’s no way I can do that,” she said. “We’ll be taking the bus.”
Wednesday, September 7, was the next big trial in the London venture: Julia’s first day of school. The beginning was promising, as she got up, dressed in the uniform, and prepared herself without much wrangling. The 268 bus arrived in good time at the stop out front and deposited us all a block from the Royal.
As we approached the school, it all went awry.
“Where’s Miley?” asked Julia.
Miley was her favourite stuffed bear, which we had promised she could bring to her first day of school to keep her company. We had managed to forget him at the flat, an omission that obliterated all our careful preparations and shattered Julia’s tenuous hold on her emotions.
“Waaahh!” The tears flowed freely, her gait slowed to a near halt. “I don’t want to go!”
“Please, sweetie.… Mom or I will go back and get Miley and bring her to you.”
“I DON’T WANT TO GO!”
We were now in the schoolyard and the girls were lining up in their darling grey pinafores, white blouses, and black shoes — all clean and pressed for their first day of school, in a way they never would be again.
Other parents were staring, empathy in their eyes.
A lifeline reached out from home to save us from drowning in the first minutes of Julia’s English school experiment. Alison, the girl from Toronto who Julia had met in the summer, walked over and said, simply, sympathetically, in her newly acquired plummy British accent, “Julia, I’ll hold your hand while we walk to class.”
Now I was ready to cry, or sing “O Canada,” or at least reach out and hug the heroic Canadian girl who had come to the rescue.
“NO! I DON’T WANNA GO!” insisted Julia, but now there was a break. The teacher, Miss Eisele, briskly and calmly suggested that we should just quickly say our goodbyes and move away, reasoning that our daughter would stop crying when she could no longer see us.
So off she went in the line of girls walking off to class, shoulders heaving, hand in hand with the Canadian girl. I was ready to pass out from the tension, but at least we got her in the door.
Isabella and I stumbled around the corner to the Caffé Nero coffee shop, which would become a favourite meeting place for parents (mainly mothers) after the morning drop off. I tried, vainly, to convince her that once Julia was in class she would surely start to calm down and start to adapt.
“This is not going to be easy. I’m expecting more meltdowns,” she said.
The rest of the day was a blur of errands. We decided that it was best that I go solo to pick up Julia as she was less likely to start to cry with me than with her mother. Somehow the time slipped away and I found myself running to the school, sweaty and out of breath, five minutes late to pick her up. On this of all days, when we did not want her to feel abandoned. Shit.
Bursting in the front door of the school, there she was, standing, arms crossed, looking sternly at me like I was the kid who had arrived late.
“Daddy!” she admonished, with a frown and just a hint of a twinkle in her eye, standing next to Miss Eisele.
“How was it, sweetie?” I asked, crouching down to look her in the eye.
“Fine,” she said, as though nothing remarkable had happened at all.
“She did very well. The tears stopped right after you left,” said her teacher.
I gave my daughter a long, grateful hug. In truth, Isabella was right, there were many dramas yet to come, but we had survived the first day. We walked hand in hand up Hampstead High Street to a crepe cart that is a local landmark, where we met Isabella and bought Julia what was to become a regular tradition, a Nutella crepe.
The next day, I returned to the office, but since my work schedule meant that my mornings tended to be free, I had the luxury of being able to walk with my wife and daughter up to the school and have a cappuccino with Isabella and some of the mothers before heading down to the bureau. Back home in Toronto, both of us would typically drive off immediately into rush hour traffic to fight our way to our respective offices.
En route to school, Julia gave us a warning sign of the next patch of trouble to come.
“I don’t want to go to swimming class.”
The Royal girls would go to the pool at the nearby Royal Free Hospital on Fridays. Julia had been taking swimming since she was small, but always with either her mother or father present. She did not want to go alone.
It blew up into another meltdown in the schoolyard on Friday morning.
“I DON’T WANNA GO TO SWIMMING,” she wailed.
I advised Isabella to leave, once again reasoning that Julia might calm down if her mother was not in sight. But this time it did not work and her eyes continued to stream. She was determined. I resorted to bribery.
“Julia, how about this: you go to swimming and I take you for another ride on the London Eye?”
She had been campaigning for another expensive visit to the giant Ferris wheel and we had been resisting. But these were desperate times.
After making the offer several times in a row, her six-year-old anguish gradually abated. With Julia still sniffling, yet another Canadian girl rode to the rescue.
Zoë from Calgary appeared at her side.
“I’ll hold your hand on the way to swimming, Julia.”
The kindness of strangers from home was proving to be invaluable. Zoë was to become one of Julia’s enduring friends in London.
We learned later that, once again, Julia’s tears disappeared once we left and she adapted perfectly well on her first visit to a pool without her parents — with one glitch. We had forgotten to send along her goggles, which led to more quivering lips. But a classmate came through by lending her a pair. London may be a large and impersonal city, but we were to be constantly surprised by how supportive the teachers and classmates at the Royal would be for our daughter.
The first week of school was a mere three days, with two major crises — both solved.
Now for the weekend and new challenges.
I had signed Julia up for a swim course at the nearby Swiss Cottage club, the same place where I worked out. As we took her Saturday morning, she was visibly nervous. The teacher was a sympathetic but firm Russian named Anna.
“She will be fine,” Anna declared.
Julia was immediately put to work doing laps and before completing a third of a length she was looking over to me sitting on the sidelines, where I gave her a smile and a thumbs-up. She responded with a thumbs-down and eyes that were turning red. Within minutes she was clearly in agony — not that she could not do it, but was simply intimidated by it all. We called it off.
“She’s better than most kids,” ventured Anna. She seemed to mean it. But Julia had had enough.
Off to Regent Street to spend some of our housing allowance money. The jaunt went awry in one of those puzzling ways that spouses find to argue. Isabella was asking something about sales taxes and how it would affect the price of everything in the U.K. Somehow, we managed to completely piss each other off and in a grand display of mutual petulance stalked away in different directions. Not such a great idea on one of the world’s great shopping streets, teeming with people. Julia was beside me and asked: “Where’s Mommy?” Isabella was nowhere to be seen among the throngs of shoppers.
Angry texts and phone calls were exchanged.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“I’M STANDING IN FRONT OF THE FUCKING ZARA STORE!”
“WELL SO AM I!”
Each of us was claiming to be at the Zara store that had been our destination
. Problem was, there were two Zaras in the neighbourhood. Finally, we figured out that we had somehow ended up on opposite sides of Regent Street, sniping at each other via our cells. Zara turned out to be a very cool place with a huge assortment of fashionable items for the home. It was nice but our tour through it proceeded in grumpy silence.
Sunday was to bring Julia’s promised next visit to the London Eye, but first we made a trek out to the giant IKEA store not far from Wembley Stadium. Our mission: to properly furnish our crappy flat with pieces recommended by Isabella’s designer friend Cameron. Working on a design show, Isabella grew to love decorating and believed improving your household environment makes you feel better about life. Our accommodations were mediocre but she was determined to make them better. Hours passed. Carts filled. The Eye visit was postponed.
At the checkout, we rang up an impressive £4,500 on the credit card, and only then did Isabella realize that we had spent most of our housing allowance. There was a short moment of panic before deciding to keep everything and make the best of it. Delivery and assembly (having had enough aggravation) were arranged and paid for. We returned, exhausted, to Buckland knowing that it would at least be furnished.
Our first weekend in London would not have been complete without another crisis. After supper Julia collapsed in tears, inconsolable.
“I can’t do it!” she wailed.
The fears and frustrations of the move and her first days in school had built up and exploded. The catalyst was the cafeteria. A picky eater at the best of times, our six-year-old was intimidated by the concept of having to choose her foods from a series of choices that did not seem to include anything she liked. Frozen in fear, unwilling to speak up at school, it appeared she had been starving herself of any lunch.
“I WANNA GO BACK HOME!”
I was utterly flummoxed, but Isabella, dear Isabella who never wanted to come to London, managed to ride to the rescue by promising to talk to the cook and Miss Eisele and find a solution.
In the morning she took Julia by the hand, with me trailing, and marched into the kitchen, where she introduced herself to Christine, the cook — an ample Cockney lady who was soon to become one of my heroes of London.
“‘Allo, sweet pea!” she greeted Julia.
Christine listened sympathetically to our dilemma as Isabella explored the possible options for sustenance that our daughter might actually eat. It was agreed on this day that Christine would set aside a couple of sausages that she had prepared for the breakfast of the boarding students and put some rice on the side.
At the classroom, Miss Eisele offered to make a special effort to help Julia make selections at lunch. Before the day was out, she had created a laminated chart for our daughter’s lunchtime, complete with merit stars as a reward for trying something new or eating a healthy portion.
Wow. Teacher of the year. Did I mention that she also sent an email report to all the parents at the end of each week?
A visit to Christine became part of our daily routine upon arrival at school. Even now, with the passage of time and distance, I can clearly hear her hearty “‘Allo, sweet pea” that she offered for Julia every morning and still see her face as she rubbed her chin and gave thoughtful consideration to what element of her menu she could adapt to fit the short list of Julia’s acceptable food choices.
If I could, I would recommend that the Queen bestow an Order of the British Empire on the wonderful Christine for her kindness in helping a frightened little Canadian girl adapt to eating in a foreign land.
The Royal had a long list of extracurricular activities, all of which had to be promptly selected. Still unsure of herself, Julia was reluctant to sign up for any — but Isabella managed to talk her into taking gymnastics and art.
A couple of nights later, when I arrived back at the flat Julia greeted me with a demand: “Take off your glasses!”
When I complied, she grabbed the lapels of my jacket, stuck her leg behind my knee and attempted to throw me to the ground.
Seemed she had also signed up for judo — and was taking to it.
A couple of days later, after returning from a satisfying day of Foreign Correspondent™ journalism, another little girl crisis loomed at home. It was really the same crisis, just bubbling up in different manifestations.
“I want my life back!” was Julia’s plaintive cry. There were no friends for her to play with, she said — no one to relate to. She missed her best friend, Ella, from home and her circle of pals from the daycare. She was a confident, self-assured girl, but the move to a new country where everyone spoke differently, acted differently, and already seemed to know the ropes was just too much for her.
I lay beside her in the lower bunk in her bedroom for a long time before she gradually calmed and fell asleep. Isabella knew her daughter well and had warned of eruptions. They had been in London barely a week and already there had been three major ones.
The second Saturday morning swim class brought more trauma. Julia asked for her nose plugs and I was unable to locate them. More tears. It was about more than just nose plugs. Once again, Anna had the kids immediately doing laps. Julia struggled with the front crawl. She caught my eye and made a cut-off gesture, to which I gamely replied with a smile and an encouragement to carry on. She did better with the backstroke, but this was not a happy girl.
The promised bribe visit to the London Eye distracted her for a time in the afternoon. It was pouring rain, which at least kept the lineups down. The timeless attractions of London were proving to be of minimal value to my unhappy ladies.
Isabella had been to the Eye already and felt no need to visit again, so she stayed at the flat.
Not only was I a failure in my attempts to interest Isabella and Julia in the many attractions that London has to offer, so too was I fumbling the search for a suitable home for them to satisfy their spiritual needs. Finding a Catholic church to attend was part of my preparation work. I am not religious, but as Isabella is a follower, I would periodically attend Mass with her, and we had agreed that Julia would be exposed to Catholicism and go through all the rites. Her First Communion was looming for the coming year.
I found a church a mere five minutes’ walk from the flat. It failed the test. The exterior seemed austere and unwelcoming, and the pews were half empty for the Sunday morning Mass we attended. This was not going to work, another London mishap.
I was flailing — every effort to bring joy into my family’s London life was falling short in one way or another.
Chapter Ten
Through travel-writing connections, I arranged a weekend at a posh boutique hotel — a present that I hoped would inject some romance and adventure.
On a Friday evening in late September we splurged on a cab to make our way down to Belgravia. On my first backpacking trips to London, I remembered searching out cheapo B&Bs on the edge of the same neighbourhood, near Victoria Station. They were invariably dumps, with cockroaches, closet-sized rooms, dodgy toilets, and “English breakfasts” that I risked eating only because they came with the room.
Now I was to learn of the real Belgravia. It is one of the grandest parts of the city, one of the toniest, wealthiest in the world — and often depopulated because the rich property owners tend to spend only part of their time there. The streets were strangely devoid of crowds, with the exception of the Syrian embassy, where protestors were camped out front.
The Halkin hotel has an entrance so unobtrusive it would be easy to miss. A small brass plate was all that announced it. The lobby was minimalist, modern with sleek, straight lines. As were our rooms. Julia was thrilled that she got an adjoining room to herself and that there was a little stuffed bear waiting for her on the bed, which she nicknamed Halkie.
Otherwise, my ladies’ enthusiasm for my little weekend treat was restrained. On the advice of the front desk, we walked over to a gastropub named Pantechnicon for supper. It was a chic boîte, with little food that was kid-friendly, let alone for a picky kid like ours. We a
ttempted to order a burger for her, but of course it was a fancy one and she would not touch it. Tears filled her eyes. Isabella shook her head. My heart sank.
Saturday morning, Isabella opted to walk over to Knightsbridge to look at the swish shops while I took Julia to a chocolate-making session that the hotel arranged at the nearby Rococo chocolatier. Here was an activity that held her interest. A chocolate-maker in training taught us how to temper, which involved getting the mixture to exactly the correct temperature, then spreading it on a marble slab and scraping it back into the bowl. All very exact. We made little blobs of chocolate, dropping in sprinkles, salt, and other flavourings, and poured some of the sweet brown goo into molds to create bars, writing our names on them. Our instructor took us out back to a little patio for tea and tastings. Julia was enthralled. I shot some bits of video in hopes that it could someday be turned into some kind of travel segment. She was a willing performer for the camera and readily delivered a running commentary.
We were given darling little gift bags to wrap up and take away our creations. They stayed in the fridge for months, with me taking an occasional nibble before I finally threw the remainders out.
The next step in my wooing process was to bring Julia to one of the more famous kids attractions in the city. We hiked over to the far side of Hyde Park to Kensington Gardens to take a look at the Diana, Princess of Wales’ Memorial Playground. A portentous name for sure. It was the first playground I had ever seen that had a lineup waiting to get in. It is often that way on nice days in high season.
It was one of the many tributes that sprang up in the orgy of grief that followed the death of the world’s most photographed woman. But a playground is a playground, and my kid was glad for the opportunity to climb on stuff, particularly the pirate ship that was plopped in the centre of a big sandpit.
By the time she was done, our feet were sore, so I splurged on a cab to take us back to the hotel, en route shooting more video of my little girl taking in the sights from inside a London icon.