The Anglophile

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

  “Richard, have you ever seen him?” someone from the back of the group asks in a gruff American voice.

  “I take it by him, you mean Paul. It’s not going to happen. To promise otherwise would be false advertising. It only happened once or twice, but we’ve seen him, yes.”

  “Do you have a picture of him on this tour?” a German (or possibly Swiss) tourist asks.

  “I most certainly do.” He holds up a black folder. “Here we are in 1983—aren’t we a lovely couple? I’ve seen Paul only five times in fourteen years, and if I could guarantee you that we would see Paul every time I’d charge more than five pounds, believe me.”

  “We can hope,” says customer number one. Despite the kook who voices the sentiment, all of us, even Kit, sneak a peek upward to the second story of MPL, where there’s a large glass mezzanine window.

  “Is that Paul!” the Texan husband calls out excitedly. Even with three short words the big fellow manages to drawl.

  Richard shakes his head, “No, sorry, that’s not him I’m afraid.”

  Disappointed, we still doggedly take our tourist pictures outside MPL. After a few minutes, Richard rounds the troops.

  “Our next stop was at one time considered the most fashionable street in the world. It was the place to buy Italian suits and fashionable leisurewear. The likes of the Who, the Beatles, the Small Faces and the Stones shopped here. The Street became legendary when an article came out revealing that these folk were hanging around. Well, let’s carry on down Carnaby, shall we? Let’s see what it looks like today.”

  There’s no way I’m going to concede to Kit how excited I am to walk down this street or that somewhere in my mother’s place, there are sixteen bundled vintage issues of Petticoat—a swinging sixties magazine devoted to the Carnaby set. I’m let down when we’re on the actual famous stretch. Although there are a few funky shops like Diesel, they are not authentic to the era, and can be found in any happening city. The rest of the stores hawk items more suitable for a low-class hooker than a mod or a rocker. Half-priced imitation shoes are for sale in almost every window, as are psychedelic-era bongs. I take a picture of a sign:

  Carnaby Street

  City of Westminster W1

  “Don’t waste your film,” Kit says. “I’m betting that’s one of those photos that seem like a good idea at the time but never make it into an album and eventually get thrown away. I warned Helen on our safari, but she came back with a dozen photos of a hippopotamus arse.”

  “Who’s Helen?”

  He pauses. “My ex.”

  An African safari is a pretty extreme memory to hold and not have mentioned. But who am I jealous of here, Kit or, wait a second—“Is that the one with the dog that died?”

  He looks up and over to me with a strange expression. “When did I tell you about that?”

  “At the pet cemetery.”

  “Right. I did, didn’t I?”

  I look at him hard. Any more bits coming? Not a word. “We haven’t really talked about her.”

  “No, we haven’t,” he says without emotion.

  “Did you break up with her?”

  “She broke up with me.”

  “Why?’

  “Like you, she met someone else.”

  Kit bringing up Kevin, even in a roundabout way, knocks me for a loop.

  “You’re the cuckolder,” I throw back. The second I say that I wish I didn’t. He was just stating a fact.

  Kit looks at me with genuine surprise. “Not really. I didn’t know you had a boyfriend. I don’t think you’re cuckolding if you don’t know the girl you’re with is cheating.”

  My mouth drops. “You know what? That was a really vicious thing to say.”

  “Ease up. You pressed. I’m just letting you know that we’ll have plenty of photos to take this trip. If you start taking pictures of signs and every British power station, you’re going to fall asleep when you get everything back from the chemist.”

  “What about all those shots of graffiti you took in New York?”

  “Graffiti’s a sad symbol of a broken America.”

  “You spent less than a month in my country. Do you have the right to make that statement? New York is booming right now, by the way.”

  “I have the right to think whatever I bloody well think.”

  “It’s a digital camera. I can delete whatever I deem junk.” This is my London I’ve waited a lifetime for, and no one is bursting my bubble, so even though he rolls his eyes theatrically as I open my lens, I stubbornly take the shot of the big mural Richard stops us in front of, even though he hasn’t even said a word yet about the mural.

  “Was she pretty?” I say as I close the automatic lens.

  Kit grins and, maybe to punch back a little, he says, “Extremely.”

  Of course I want more details now that Kit has leaked out a teensy bit more about his love life—but he is saved by Richard’s new information: “This mural is called the Spirit of Soho. You might not know this but Soho was a hunting call. You’d shout out ‘Soho,’ and that became Tallyho. So, anyhow, now, right, we’re all here, I’ve counted the lot of you, so let’s walk down to where John met Yoko.” We walk through an enclosure, and stop in front of a building that once housed a gallery called Indica, where the famous couple first met.

  “John was quite taken with one of Yoko Ono’s pieces. He had to climb a ladder and look through a spyglass to see it—it was a little tiny word the artist Yoko had printed. Yes was all it said. John said later what piqued his interest is that Yoko had written something positive. He thought it would say something negative. What happens next is history.”

  “Buggered if I care what anyone says about Yoko,” the salty older British woman says, the one who was hit by the paper cup. “She was his great love.”

  Richard nods with vigor. “John was once asked what attracted him. Now you may think John and Yoko went together like chalk and cheese. But John said, ‘She’s me in drag.’”

  As we walk toward Three Saville Row I try to nail exactly what attracts me to Kit. Besides the obvious British stuff. Do I know his internal side at all? A safari? That choice nugget of life history would have come out of me right away.

  And what exactly is it about me that he likes? Has he dated a string of bubbly Jews? Does he think I’m funny? I’m sorry to report to myself that I honestly don’t know what he thinks.

  Another American tour member who hasn’t spoken before sums up what he’s feeling as we leave the site. “I find this story enfeebling and ennobling to hear.” He speaks so elegantly, like a youthful Walter Cronkite letting the private man out of the corporate anchorman as mankind landed on the moon. “We’re dots in history, aren’t we?”

  The highlight of our next few stops is in front of Apple Records’ old headquarters. Its rooftop is the sacred spot the Beatles played a surprise free concert for the people of London, their last-ever public appearance. After we’re done soaking up the site’s glory, we head for the tube and together take the short ride to St. John’s Wood.

  We emerge at St. John’s Wood station and still a unit, turn a corner and walk in a steady pace. In the near distance, a slew of tourists is crossing backward and forward on a street I already know from countless photos.

  I gasp a little. “Have you been here before?” I whisper to Kit.

  “Can you believe it? I never have.”

  “This little scene plays itself out every day,” Richard says after we stop right in front of Abbey Road Studios, on, as one would expect, Abbey Road.

  By the look of the many grins on my tour, I’m not the only one vastly pleased.

  Richard continues: “All day people cross and their friends photograph, to prove they were here. And then the tourists about-face and do it again, motorists be damned. Be careful when you cross, it gets a bit dicey now and then.”

  Our group’s attention falters when a middle-aged man drops his pants, his backside toward us. He’s doing something naughty against the metal
gates that holds back the tourists. Yellow liquid soon drips down onto the curb.

  The hit-by-a-cup woman on our tour rages again. “Ya taking a whiz?” Kit and I exchange slightly worried and amused looks.

  “I’m doing it for the Stones,” the public pisser says in a London accent as he finishes his pee.

  “You’re a disgrace to England.”

  “Go fuck yourself, lady.”

  “What am I today? A hooligan magnet?”

  (Apparently.)

  “Let it be known, you’re a fuckin’ wanker,” says a familiar northern English voice.

  “No fucking way!” another American man who is not from our tour says. “Oh, Jesus, Lisa, it’s actually Ringo!”

  The urinater zips up and turns his head, his eyes wide as twenty-five pence pieces.

  “How are you today, Guv’ner?” Ringo Starr says to the guilty party.

  “Fine,” the urinater manages, before running in shame.

  The Beatle Brain struggles hard for his own composure. “Oh, hello.”

  Ringo offers his hand to Richard. “I read about you in the papers. I hear you do good work.”

  Where did he come from? It’s as if Ringo dropped in by jetpack. When my heart recovers, I note a limo a few feet down the road, and a BBC crew filming our awe.

  “Dis is da craziest—” our group nut in the T-shirt is too freaked to finish his tearstained sentence, but the cup-on-head woman pops right out with: “Sign me Bristols, Ringo!”

  She opens her coat, lifts off her brown blouse, and hands Ringo a ballpoint pen. He bravely leans toward a large exposed shriveled bosom stuffed into a bra. He honors her request as nonchalantly as a man who has spent a lifetime around fawning womenfolk, even fawning womenfolk missing three front teeth.

  “What’s your name, pretty woman?” Ringo asks.

  “Pe-nellllll-o-pe,” our gal lets out in a long drawn-out rapturous mewl. “I want you to spell every letter, please. I won’t clean me Bristols for a year.”

  Ringo gives her a kiss on her wrinkled cheek, too.

  She sobs, and kisses the floor.

  “What brings you back here?” the Brain says on our astounded group’s behalf.

  “A project for the BBC. A tribute song for George.”

  Ringo is a real trooper and offers to take a photo with everyone on the street who has paid a fee to Richard.

  The other tourists gathered at the Abbey Road shrine moan, but Ringo repeats his rules, “I’m helping out a working man.”

  “You’re as nice as they say you are then,” Richard says with grace.

  Ringo grins, and asks Richard to nod if we’re with the tour.

  When it’s my turn, I say weakly, “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Where are you from in America?” Ringo Fucking Starr says to me.

  “Queens, USA,” I manage.

  “Played a concert there once.”

  I’m still too starstruck to laugh at the Shea Stadium joke. “Un-huh,” I manage. But I regain enough composure that Kit and I take turns taking a picture with Ringo.

  Ringo glances at the gates daubed with international sentiments, smiles at a particularly obscene bit of graffiti and waves goodbye. The last time I saw and heard spontaneous public clapping was in October of 2001, when several firemen with sooty faces took a lift uptown on my New York bus after a hard day’s night toiling at Ground Zero.

  Ringo walks up the stairs, and past two large topiary spheres in terracotta pots outside of the fabled Abbey Road doors. The door opens and closes. There is a brief silence as we process the awesome surprise of the afternoon, and then there is a collective giggle from our group and more groans from the unfortunate without a London Walks ticket.

  “Amazing,” I say to Kit. “We just lucked out, matey.”

  “That was superb,” he says.

  “Brilliant.”

  “Yes, brilliant.” Kit nods his head toward white enamel lettering on the section of black gate. “Did you see this?”

  “The Japanese graffiti?” I ask.

  This time Kit points precisely where he wants me to look, and I read a rather famous English language sentence out loud: “The Love You Take is Equal to the Love You Make.”

  “I didn’t even see that when I took it,” Kit beams. “I’m sure I got it in frame with Ringo.”

  “A keeper,” I say. “I’m going to make everyone I know a coffee mug with that photo on it.”

  Kit nudges me and directs my eyes toward Richard smiling contently as he leans against a rail; his euphoric customers have left him alone.

  We walk over to get the world’s biggest Beatles expert’s opinion on this almost, but not quite, impossible day.

  My eyes are moist with emotion as I think of my spot in a centerless universe. Is it the drugs? I feel like I’m PMSing times ten. Talk about an emotional seesaw. First there was the horror of last night’s dream, and now the memory of a lifetime.

  I sit on the curb and cry as Kit rolls a cigarette, and addresses Richard. “That must have been a life highlight for you, no?”

  The Brain and Kit grin as my quiet tears become less quiet.

  Could someone please tell me what distinguishes me from the insane guy on our tour? Why I am such a bloody wreck when I should be in a constant state of bliss?

  “Quite odd, that. But quite nice, yes. Never met Ringo before. I’m rapt.”

  You’d think the Brain would call it a day, but he is a hardworking man: after a few more minutes he blows into his mic and announces, “Well, folks, I still have some words to tell you. Originally Abbey Road was going to be called Everest after the cigarettes smoked by the Beatles’ favorite recording engineer. It was suggested that they take their photo at Mount Everest, but here was nearer. And that’s that. This was an extraordinary day for me really, and I’m very glad to have shared it with you. As John said at the end of the Let It Be album, ‘I hope I passed the audition.’”

  The Bronx fan is not taking in any of Richard’s final words. He walks back and forth across Abbey Road, having somehow cajoled the shorter of the two Japanese women into snapping his picture as a trio of impatient cars wait it out.

  Kit rolls and lights a cigarette, and seeks out my eyes. “So now that you’re standing, I guess you want to take a photo crossing, too?”

  I’m severely embarrassed at my previous emotional display. “Isn’t that too embarrassing for you?”

  “How’s that?”

  “A bum photo of a road? And what’s the point after the gold we got a minute ago?”

  Richard overhears us. “Do it. I get e-mails from people who wish they listened to me, and were too cool about it.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Can you help us match the photo up to the album cover as much as we can? Might as well get it right.”

  Kit snuffs out the cigarette, gets my camera ready, and says, “Take as long as you want. I want the woman I love to be sated.”

  I swallow air. This is the first time that Kit has used the word love. Three hours ago I would have bristled even more than I did after Kevin abused that emotive, but after an incredible day, I kiss his neck, and hear myself utter, “I love you, too, mister.”

  I am delighted with myself how that fell out of my mouth so easily, but I am concurrently so, so ashamed of my previous thoughts about my sweetie. Thank heavens I did not think out loud. A serial killer? That was the lowest low of many stupid thoughts.

  Richard maneuvers our bodies into the correct angle to shoot and be shot. “If you look at this photo you will see the top of the road here, and there’s the wall of Abbey Road through the lens of Iain Macmillan when he took the famous photo in 1969. So you see you are now exactly in the right place.”

  CHAPTER 15

  This is the Church, This is the Steeple

  With my internal pendulum swung back to happy romantic, I’m eager to get on with my grand tour of the British Isles. Even despite the dream I had last night, which for a few minutes left me more than a little shaken
when I awoke this morning. Kit brought me to an old gem he knew about in London, a glassblower’s shop chockful of hourglasses and gorgeous goblets. There was no shopkeeper present, and when I stepped inside he locked the door and tried to strangle me.

  Unaware that he’s stalking me at night, Kit’s still firmly discouraging a swing through Stonehenge. “Give me a half hour. Read. Watch some telly. Let me call some friends and cook up an alternative. They might have some recommendations for day trips I haven’t thought of.”

  “Go for it.” I’ve been secretly dying to watch British TV and commercials.

  While Kit makes a few phone calls from his bedroom, I happily watch Breakfast Time on the BBC.

  “What’s a zebra crossing?” I say when his door opens.

  “A pedestrian crossing. Abbey Road is one.”

  “A kid in Surrey got killed on another one. That’s the headline. And a new mutation of strep that warrants a flu shot if you haven’t gotten one already.”

  “I did, back in December. Awful about the kid.”

  He joins me on the antique cushions, and presents a handwritten itinerary for me to approve.

  “Hackney,” I read. “What’s there?”

  “Not much,” Kit admits. “Outermost East London, none too pretty, but there’s a Burberry’s outlet to spend some of your brother’s money. You can buy him a scarf or mackintosh if you like.”

  “Great idea,” I say. Continuing down the list, I read: “Lunch in Canterbury. Simple Simon’s—”

  “A fourteenth-century pub. Not too touristy, I hear from a friend.”

  “No McDonald’s?” I say good-humoredly, watching Kit grin. “Would we visit the cathedral in Canterbury?”

  “That’s what I was thinking. I’ve never actually been, but it must be good, Julius Caesar was a tourist there.”