‘The PX,’ he said without even a moment’s hesitation.
‘Does that count as really London?’ she asked. ‘What do you like in the city?’
‘Well, the movies are good. I mean the Mel Gibson ones and The Matrix. And, of course, X2.’
‘What about English movies?’ Claire couldn’t help asking.
‘Which ones are English?’ he asked. ‘There was that one about servants and guests in some manor house and the guy, one of the servants, he came back to kill his daddy. But it wasn’t very good.’
‘Gosford Park?’ she asked. ‘I think that was made here but it was directed by Robert Altman, an American.’
‘Well, whatever it was, it was real boring. Even the murder was boring.’
Claire had loved it but said nothing. In fact, there was nothing more said until Adam finished his burger. ‘Want some dessert?’ he asked. ‘They have sundaes that kick ass. Oh, I’m sorry. They’re really good.’
Claire shook her head. She was afraid to tell him she had to get to work. Perhaps he would report her. ‘I have to get back. I have an appointment with a friend.’
‘Is it a boy friend?’
Claire shook her head. ‘An English lady. I promised I’d help her.’
‘Can I take you there?’
‘Oh, no. It’s a long trip on the underground.’
‘I don’t have anything else to do,’ he said and shrugged.
Though Claire didn’t want to tell him about work she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She was such a chicken. That’s why she never went out with people: if she did and they didn’t like her she was hurt. If she did and she didn’t like them, they were hurt. ‘I just better go,’ she told him.
He insisted on walking her to the tube and then asked if he could see her again. She nodded. Then he asked if he could kiss her goodbye. She said yes again and was surprised when she liked his hands on her shoulders and his mouth against hers. It was just a pressing of lips, but there was something about his size that made his bent head and big arms very moving. He was sweet. ‘I’ll call you,’ she said. He smiled and waved as she walked down the stairs. When she turned her head he was still there, smiling and waving. Claire ducked into the underground station with relief and more than a little guilt.
THIRTY-FOUR
Monday afternoon Claire sat in the worn but comfortable armchair across from Toby, Lamb’s book of essays on her lap, sharing space with George Eliot – the cat not the writer. ‘I’ve read it over twice now,’ Claire was saying. After the disappointment of the lack of help from Adam Tucker the day before and a long evening of work at Mrs Patel’s, Claire had rewarded herself with a visit to the used bookstore. Toby had seemed happy to see her and now he seemed delighted to discuss Charles Lamb.
‘His retirement was such an escape. And he was so …’ she paused, at a loss for words.
‘… joyful?’ Toby offered.
‘Yes. Shocked and joyful about it,’ she paused again, too shy to say that she, too, was joyful to be liberated. ‘It reminded me of the work I do … did back in New York and how it’s possible to be so busy with paperwork that before you know it you look up from your task to find that twenty or so years have escaped you. Anyway, it has made me think.’
‘Great. That’s what essays are for. Stories make you feel and essays make you think.’ George Eliot jumped off Claire’s lap and gracefully onto Toby’s. He stroked the cat and scratched her behind her ears. Claire watched his hands. He was so interesting to talk to; far more amusing and well-informed than Corporal Tucker. Claire was embarrassed to find herself almost jealous of the cat. Toby had lovely hands. She couldn’t help but wonder what a kiss from Toby would feel like.
She put the idea out of her mind. She needed to ask him for help, but could not find the courage. Yet she had only four more nights at Mrs Watson’s and she would hate to have to extend her stay there.
She refocused on the conversation. ‘What is strange is the essay seemed as if it was meant exactly for me,’ Claire said. ‘As if Charles Lamb was sending me a message.’
Toby nodded. ‘It’s a gift I have,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how it works and I can’t seem to make a penny out of it, but I seem to divine what’s wanted by the reader. Sort of like a prose consultant.’
On the one hand, Claire was flattered that Toby seemed to be on her wavelength. On the other she had to admit a certain disappointment that, as a client, his services to her were not unique.
Toby rolled George onto her back and stroked the long hairs on her belly. ‘I’ve often thought I should put up a sign. You know, “Mystic Reading” or something of that sort. The trouble is it would bring all the wrong types in. Fools who wanted to know if their portfolio was healthy or if they were going to meet a tall, dark stranger.’
‘Well, I’m not sure about them, but this was great for me.’ She briefly explained about her own working life in Manhattan.
‘Suited you down to the ground, eh?’
‘Yes. And now I’d like one about medieval painting, please.’
Toby cocked his head. ‘An expensive pursuit, I’m afraid. I have wonderful, beautiful books but all rather dear.’
‘Perhaps there might be one …’ she began, but before she could ask for the cheapest one he had smiled. She had to notice that he was very good-looking.
Toby stood, and he and George ran off into a dark aisle of books. He was back in a flash. ‘This book is a wonder, but as the cover is stained and it’s missing a few pages I could give it to you. I won’t ever be able to sell it and as it came in a box from an estate sale … well, here.’
The cover was gray leather, with a nasty ring from some hot mug that once rested on it. But when she opened it up the jewel-like colors and the actual gilding on the pages made her open her eyes wide. She looked up at Toby. ‘Oh, I couldn’t …’
‘Certainly you can. Could have it rebound and sell it off, but the cost of binding – well you’d take a big loss. So take the book instead.’
‘Thank you.’ She put it in her bag and wondered if she might ask him if he knew how she could rent a room, or if that was too forward. What would she do if he told her he had a place she could share? The fact was that Claire felt very attracted to him. He was so different from Michael Wainwright that they could not be compared. Toby was not business-like, not manly in the way that Michael was, but he had a sharp mind and was certainly more widely read. She couldn’t imagine Michael having a cat or stroking it so sweetly. From what she could see, English men seemed a lot less pushy, not nearly as macho as American men. Nothing wrong with that, she thought. Corporal Adam Tucker probably spent his free time watching football or playing it. With Toby she could talk about books forever. Of course he wouldn’t, but if he offered her a place to stay with him would she accept? She pushed the thought out of her mind.
Just as she was framing a question, the little bell over the door sang out and Toby moved toward the front, lighting the center row of books. ‘Hello,’ he called out.
Claire heard a woman’s voice answer, but both Toby and his possible client were too far away for her to see or overhear them unless she got up. Though she was curious, she sat quite still and waited. She had been shy about coming back so soon, afraid it might be too forward. She was equally afraid Toby might not remember her but he greeted her by name and had immediately invited her to sit down. Once again, she was having a very good time talking with him but reminded herself that she mustn’t wear out her welcome, even if she didn’t get to ask him anything about an apartment or a job.
She sat for a while uncertain about what to do, listening to the murmuring. Just as she decided it was time to go, Toby’s voice was raised a bit as he said goodbye and the doorbell tinkled again. He was back, George padding beside him the way a dog might. Good. Perhaps she would get to ask him now, before another interruption.
Toby dropped his long frame into his chair. ‘I sold a book,’ he said. ‘And I’m absolutely exhausted. I shall have t
o rest up. And perhaps eat a biscuit. For medicinal purposes only, of course.’ He reached to a lower shelf on the stand beside his chair and took out a brightly-colored metal container. He popped off the top and offered the contents to Claire. There was a jumble of cookies inside, obviously not the ones that had originally come in the tin. Claire selected a chocolate one and Toby put the tin on his lap, eating one cookie after another.
‘God, I am such a good businessman. I think I made sixty pee on that sale. Now, if we don’t eat more than sixty pee in biscuits I’ve made a profit.’ He looked down at the open container and picked up another. ‘Not much chance of that though.’ He smiled and passed her the canister again. Though she knew he was joking, Claire shook her head.
‘So where were we? You don’t want to go back to the paperwork gulag, or serve thirty-four years there the way poor Charlie did. I can certainly understand. I once actually worked for a living. I was an up-and-coming executive in an advertising agency. Couldn’t bear it. Thought I would die. Then my uncle died and left me this shambles. I looked upon it as a sign.’
‘Is that how you got into the book business?’
‘Yes, and into the flat above as well. I don’t make any money, but who knows? There might be a sudden run on Hugh Walpole. I must have almost a hundred of his books, poor sod.’
‘So you live upstairs?’ Claire asked. When he nodded she tried to be bold. ‘I can’t keep living where I am,’ almost burst out of her. ‘Do you know how I might find a very cheap apartment – flat – to share?’
‘Well, you could end up going to Croydon for that,’ he said and popped another biscuit into his mouth.
‘What part of London is Croydon?’
‘That’s the rub, my dear. It’s not in London at all. It’s a dreadful place and no one wants to live there, except perhaps the good people of Croydon. No, you want something central.’ He paused again, looking up at the ceiling. Was he thinking about the room overhead? ‘But I shall have to think,’ was all he said. He bit into another cookie and was silent, but only for a moment. ‘Hang on! Have you looked at the Evening Standard?’
‘What’s that?’ Claire asked, then remembered the pile of papers on Mrs Patel’s counter.
‘The daily London tabloid. Comes out in several editions starting at lunchtime. I think it has a whole section of flats to share, though you wouldn’t know what you were getting into. Meanwhile, I’ll ask among my friends. Perhaps one of them knows about something.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and meant it. Silly of her to hope for another offer. It was very nice just to have him take any interest in her.
‘All right, now. What are your plans for the day?’
‘I thought I would walk through Hyde Park and then go to the Victoria and Albert Museum.’
‘Oh, my dear. Forget the V & A,’ he said. ‘Dismal basement café. You won’t want to take your lunch there.’ He popped another cookie into his mouth and Claire had to wonder how he stayed so thin.
‘Oh, I have my lunch with me. I’ll just have tea out later.’
‘But where will you have tea? My bit in your education is to make sure you go to the right hotels.’
Claire thought about the checkmarks Abigail had made next to Claridge’s and Brown’s. ‘I’d like to,’ she said. ‘My budget is a little … tight, but how much could tea cost?’
‘Depends on whether it’s a cup of tea, a pot of tea, a cream tea, afternoon tea, or high tea. We’re like the Eskimos,’ he explained further, ‘you know, thirty words for snow.’
Claire had to smile. It was true that tea in London was as ubiquitous as snow must be above the Arctic Circle. Of course people who descended from Shakespeare would have distinctions. But what were they? Before she had to ask, voluble Toby continued: ‘A cup of tea is just that. You get it in cheaper restaurants. All the better places give you a pot of tea, which doesn’t cost them anything extra but costs you. Afternoon tea means it’s accompanied by finger sandwiches – you know – those slivers of bread with the crusts cut off. A cream tea includes that as well as scones and Devonshire clotted cream, which you put on the scones along with strawberry preserves. No matter what they serve, insist on strawberry by the way.’
Claire’s head was spinning but she laughed aloud. ‘And is high tea even fancier than that? What do they throw in? A pizza?’
Toby plucked another biscuit from the tin in his lap and then smiled up at her. ‘This is where the British fool you,’ he said. ‘High tea is actually a meal that could include a sweet and a savory course. In the North it’s a lower class thing – tea means dinner. You might call it “supper”.’
‘I see,’ she said, though she wasn’t absolutely sure she did.
Toby closed the tin of biscuits, put it back, and brushed the crumbs from his lap. ‘It used to be eaten by people who are NOKD.’ He grinned again. Before she could ask, he told her, ‘That means Not Our Kind Dear. It was coined by Nancy Mitford. Know her?’
Claire shook her head and for the first time had doubts about Toby. Did he think she was grand, did he just assume all Americans were rich, or was there something about her that made him think that?
‘Oh my dear! How lucky you are! All the pleasure of learning about the Mitford girls in front of you!’ He leaned forward. ‘She was from an aristocratic but what you in the States might call an extremely dysfunctional family. Nancy was a writer, her sister Deborah married a Duke, Jessica became a left-leaning journalist, and Diana married the head of the British Fascist party. Unity had an obsession with Hitler, and when Britain went to war with Germany she shot herself in the head.’ Claire’s own head was spinning again but she was fascinated. ‘I think it was Nancy who said “Unity didn’t succeed at suicide because she missed her teensy, tinsy brain.”’ Toby’s eyes lit up. ‘Have you never read Hons and Rebels?’ Claire shook her head. ‘Good heavens, my dear, every girl should read it at thirteen.’ He was off like a rabbit, and his cat streaked behind him as if, indeed, he was one. He was back in a moment, a small green book in his hand. ‘Forget medieval art for a few moments. You must have this,’ he said. ‘You will enjoy it.’
She took the little green book. She wasn’t sure he was right but she certainly wasn’t going to say no. Timidly, she opened the cover and saw that it was only three-pounds-fifty. She could afford it, just, but before she could say so Toby spoke up. ‘I’ll knock it down to two pounds. You can’t ask for more – less, actually – than that. And you’ll never regret it, my girl.’
He had used a completely different accent, and while she wasn’t sure what kind, she realized she was beginning to notice distinctions in speech. He was imitating somebody, or perhaps a whole class of somebodies, and they were probably NOKD. Maybe, she guessed, the British equivalent of Anthony and his Staten Island pals.
Claire reached into her purse and fished around for a two-pound coin. She handed it over and Toby nodded in thanks. ‘Two books sold today. I’m flush. So, back to tea. You know people argue about whether to put the milk in first.’
‘No. Why?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. The pre-lactarians say it is to make sure that the hot tea alone doesn’t crack good porcelain.’
Claire thought of the milky mug of tea that was put in front of her every morning. It could be dropped without showing a crack. ‘But how do you know how much milk you need if you don’t know how strong the tea is?’
‘Do an approximation,’ Toby told her. ‘Now, you must have tea at Claridge’s just to see the place. It’s on Brook Street between Hanover and Grosvenor Squares. Heaven. And the Connaught, that’s just below Grosvenor Square on Mount Street. And Brown’s in Albemarle Street. It’s a classic.’
‘I’m not sure I can afford to …’
‘A-ha, that’s the trick. You see, if you go in at four o’clock they’ll be serving a full tea and it will set you back twenty or twenty-five pounds.’
Claire tried not to gasp.
‘Well worth the experience, my dear, if you have the
money, but if you don’t, then you simply show up at two-thirty or three. You ask, “Is afternoon tea being served yet?” and of course they’ll tell you no because it doesn’t begin until about four. And lunch service would be over as well. So you just say “Well, will somebody bring me a cup of tea?” and of course they will. And then you get to sit in a lovely room and have linen napkins and breathtaking surroundings and enjoy all of it while it only sets you back two or three pounds.’
Two or three pounds seemed like a lot of money, but she could see what Toby was getting at; it was sort of like collecting an experience rather than consuming.
‘You might also try the Lanesborough, though it’s awfully overdone. It’s in Knightsbridge. And while you’re there, the Berkeley is absolutely perfect and the Hyde Park Hotel is a grand old Victorian pile. The trick is you get out before they begin serving a proper tea.’
The mention of the Berkeley gave her a small stab in the heart but she ignored it. ‘How did you figure this out?’ Claire asked.
Toby smiled, raised a brow and sighed theatrically. ‘Aah. I was not always as you see me now. I live in reduced circumstances, but now and then one just must get in touch with one’s inner posh.’
‘Posh? Like the Spice Girl?’
He nodded. ‘But before Sporty and the rest we – well, our more humble grandparents – used the term for what you might call “classy”, though I could never believe that anyone who used that word could be classy.’ Claire giggled. Jerry used to call her mother ‘a classy lady’ all the time. ‘Anyway, it comes from wealthy people sailing to India. One wanted to be on the port side going and the starboard side returning to avoid the heat of the sun. Port Out Starboard Home. Hence “Posh”.’
Claire thought she could listen to Toby all day. But she knew she mustn’t impose. Reluctantly she stood up. ‘Thank you so much for the recommendation,’ she said, holding up the Mitford book. ‘I’ll read it, get the Standard, try tea, and report back.’
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