“Whitstable,” I read. “Never heard of that either.”
“Probably not a place you Yanks have heard of yet. An oyster town once, still is, but it’s in danger of getting trendy. I’ve always bypassed Canterbury and gone right there to the best battered cod I’ve ever eaten.”
I say in my awful British accent (surprisingly not much better than Gary’s): “I do believe I’ve never eaten battered cod.”
“Then Whitstable is a must. The skate at the Oyster Bar is great, too.”
“Skate? Is that a fish?”
“You’ve never had it?”
“No.”
“Very tasty. And oh, it’s not on the itinerary, but I’ve tentatively booked us lodging at the town we’re getting the chips, on your approval of course. There’s terrible traffic near Canterbury Castle.”
“Approved.”
“Scarfs and castles, fish and chips. How does that bloody sound?”
“Perfect.”
You don’t expect too many fashion Meccas after driving past kilometers of sprawling housing projects. But there, like a mirage, is a bona fide Burberry’s.
And there on a silver rack of last year’s items is the bona fide white leather trench coat I spotted only a month ago in New York while pretend-shopping with Cathy in the intimidating Burberry’s SoHo branch. Here is the beautiful coat at only seventy-five pounds! By my trusty pastel pink Hello Kitty calculator’s calculation, that’s only one hundred and thirty dollars, seventy-five percent off what I saw on the New York rack at five hundred and twenty dollars! I hesitate for a moment too long and a young black fashionplate type wearing a silver sweatshirt with the word “Cutie” picked out in silver glitter scoops the prize up. Shit. She’s wavering between purchases, and drapes the prize over a rack of clothes. Is she done? Should I yank it from the rack? She picks it up again. But that’s my size, lady, not yours!
I stalk her, hoping she won’t notice. She tries the coat on once more, preens in a mirrored panel, and then goes instead with a dress cut from beige barkcloth fabric blocked with a pussy willow print. When she’s about to rehang my trench coat on the wrong rack, I lunge—only to have a fingertip pressed hard against my shoulder by a rival shopper, a woman tall, pinch-nosed, sharp-toothed, and angry. “Now, now, hand it over. We know who got to it first, don’t we?” I’m guessing by the Princess Di accent and the smart black ensemble, Lady Bitch is slumming it here in East London, a bit of diversion here from her life all silver and gold.
“First of all, ma’am, get your hand off me. And this is not yours. I was three feet away.”
“Don’t ma’am me.” She won’t let go, and I’ve no backup troops: Kit’s in the men’s section, unaware of my combat.
A worried manager finally comes over, his heavily pockmarked face lightened by warm brown eyes. Using Burberry Judicial Power, he has a security minion rewind the security camera.
Before the winner is determined, Kit is back by my side with a stuffed shopping bag. “Did you find anything?”
I show him the coat.
“How much dosh?”
“Seventy-five pounds.”
“Quite a good steal, I’d say.”
“If she gets it, it certainly is,” my still-livid competition says.
We stare each other down until the manager emerges from a back room with his verdict: “We’re giving it to the American.”
Triumph.
“I’m from the British wool marketing board,” the Defeated One says with considerable wobbliness. “I’m certainly going to report a horrible shopping experience to the people that matter.” She opens her cell phone.
The manager nervously pantomimes for her to close the phone as he holds up a similar coat that he has at the ready slung on his arm. “We haven’t even tagged it yet,” he confides loudly when she closes the phone. I continue “shopping” nearby just to get the full scoop on the developing story. She picks it up with her well-manicured fingertips to take a look. In a peripheral glance I assess that this second choice might even be a bit nicer than mine—is that actual horsehair trim on the white collar? She is smiling as she models it to a mirror, but I’m not going to acknowledge anything short of triumph, and as I leave the shopping area to pay for my item, I am the recipient of the iciest stare of the twenty-first century.
Our cars are parked several spots from each other. I offer a simpering smile through my left-side front passenger seat window. The woman is so angry she almost backs into a parked minicab directly behind her.
As Kit revs the engine, he laughs about the discount department store as the new battleground. But he soon loses the grin. The traffic jam by Canterbury Castle is alarming, and we sit and sit and sit.
I take my shoes off and try a little Chaucer toe theater, one big toe the knight in the Canterbury Tales, the other the maiden.
Kit says nothing.
“Where did the London broil get its name? Was there a celebrated butcher in your country’s history?”
No response, not even a grunt.
And even less of one when I demand to know the difference between a hill and a dale. Gene’s influence? Kit has too much road rage to play.
Kit offers an apologetic kiss when we finally get to the town my guidebook calls “the Pearl of Kent,” an apparent play on the many oyster towns around the county. Canterbury, as any literature major knows, is the home of the cathedral where one fateful night in December 1170, four knights burst through the doors and killed the archbishop, Thomas à Becket on St. Augustine’s chair. Without that event, Chaucer would never have had even one tale to write about, for there would be no travelers paying homage to write about. I’ve also checked off the medieval Eastbridge Hospital, a twelfth-century hostel for those fatigued tourists, apparently now a private retirement home, but I read out to Kit, “You can still see the undercroft, refectory and two chapels.”
We’re both famished, so instead of going directly to undercroft and refectory touristing, we detour to that fourteenth-century pub.
When Kit proudly declares that his friend who recommended the establishment promised that tourists have not found out about the place because it’s off the beaten path, I keep to myself that the pub has a prominent paragraph about it in my guidebook.
I can see why it’s so beloved by Fodor’s on our arrival. The architects from Disney would probably love to photograph Simple Simon’s medieval workmanship. According to my book, those windows, brick-work and timbers on the outside are authentic. Equally perfect on the inside is a sloping beamed ceiling, and a working fireplace that warmed drinkers of centuries past.
Kit heads to the bar to order us two pork pies in Kentish cider, and two “real ales.” When he returns to our table he says, “So how much do you know about ale?”
“Just a little.”
“If you need a refresher course, ale is darker in appearance and heavier than lager. What we’re about to drink is what locals call an English bitter.”
“Okay—”
“This one is called Hopdaemon’s, it’s brewed right in town. Ale should be brewed as close to where you’re drinking it as possible.”
What’s that expression? It’s not what you drink, but where you drink it. The Shakespearean word thereupon pops into my head. Thereupon, I drink the ale. After my first-ever bitter sip of the stuff I hide my displeasure with a palm—and briefly recall Kevin’s much more amusing beer lesson that he gave one of those few days I thought we could actually even make it over the long run. “There’s dark ales. Strong-flavored European beers. Can’t stand them. Beer is like ketchup, Shari—it should have one flavor. If you add anything to beer it is only going to fuck it up. The only exception is Corona which is okay to throw a lime into.”
“The pies come with a side of runner beans,” Kit says after a long sip of his own.
“What are those?’
He looks confused. “Long? Green?”
I’m guessing string beans. I notice the words Simple Simon printed on my cocktail
napkin. “This pub’s name must come from the nursery rhyme.”
The young hipster bartender hovering over us has skulls tattooed on his skinny arms. He sets down our place settings and jumps right in with, “Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair. Said Simple Simon to the pieman, let me taste your ware!”
“I haven’t heard that in years,” Kit says.
“I hear it six times a day,” the bartender admits. “The owners were right in changing the name. Tourists like it better than the old name.”
“I thought there were no tourists here,” I say with a wink in my voice.
“Where did you hear that?” the bartender scoffs.
“I heard there was a regular clientele, too,” Kit says hopefully.
“Well, that there is. For a few centuries it was called St. Radigund’s Hall. Our resident customers don’t care what we call the joint, as long as we serve good brew.”
I have to agree with him. Maybe they get many tourists, but other than myself, I don’t see anyone here that fits that bill. For a pub over five hundred years old, this clientele does looks lively and hip. Leaning against the bar, two groovy musicians are loudly discussing the history of Moog synthesizers over their own pints of Hopdaemon’s. I kind of hear another conversation nearby, but not quite.
“Stop listening,” Kit says softly.
“I can’t help myself, I’m a linguist.”
“Seriously, it’s a bad habit. I understand the appeal, but others might find it very rude, especially in England.”
“Oh really? How did you know I wasn’t with Gary in Chicago?”
“I eavesdropped.”
At my self-satisfied grin he says, with a serious quality to his voice, “But I was alone. We’re here together. Let’s listen to each other.”
The smell of heavy smoking and recently chopped onions permeates the air, and I’m tearing slightly from both. I would probably tear anyway at the poignant conversation going on at the next table between two drinkers, a college-age kid and the man I quickly determine to be his father.
Kit is listening to the ever-loudening conversation too—so much for his just-touted manners.
“You had a poor show in school, and you need to apply yourself. But my son couldn’t stick the job.”
From my angle and lightning-quick glance to their table, it looks like the son is cleaning a bit of dirt out from under his left thumbnail with his right one. “You don’t know what you’re talking—”
“When you pop yer clogs, you want to be known as a lazy fuck? You’re too fond of the dole. Fun when you’re twenty but when you wake up from the stupid years no longer a kid the dole doesn’t pay too many bills.”
“You wanted to relax with a pint. Was this the plan?”
“I’m your concerned father.”
The son picks up the bill and slams down some pounds. “A concerned father who beats the shite out of his mother—”
“Sup ya drink and stop your scryking,” the father says. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Kit looks ashen, as if witnessing this father-son altercation has released a “something else” sullying his memory.
“What you gawking at?” the father says, as he catches Kit’s stare.
“I’m sorry you have to hear this pig talk,” Kit says loudly to me, the harshest comment I’ve ever heard this exceedingly well-mannered man make. Even when he was trying to get rid of Owen at the airport, he was technically polite to him.
The son laughs appreciatively at Kit’s acerbic commentary and rises for the door. His dissed father sneers at us, and pounds the table with a hairy fist. He refocuses on his son. “How are you going to get anywhere?” the father bellows to the entranceway.
“Shank’s pony, mate!” the son half screams from the door. The hipster bartender arches an eyebrow at me.
“Shank’s what?” I ask Kit discreetly, like a woman who needs more details after witnessing a horrific car accident.
“He’s walking, as he well should. There is something about this country that makes hitting acceptable.”
The father drinks silently with a shatterproof face.
To calm Kit, I shift subjects. “So tell me about the place we’re staying at tonight. Is there a bed-and-break-fast there?”
“We’re staying in a hut,” he says sharply.
“I don’t think we should keep in this man’s business,” I say adamantly.
“Sorry,” he softens, trying hard to get out of his snit. “Yeah, um, they are renovated fishermen’s huts. Part of the Hotel Continental, but their huts are much more highly desired by guests—”
The barman, doubling as waiter, plops the two pork pies down for us. I eye mine suspiciously.
“Would you like me to take a bite first?” Kit asks with forced cheer, perhaps guilty for his public anger.
“Would you? Pork is always a bit iffy for me. I was sick for two days over a nasty little eggroll.”
“It’s very good,” Kit says, after the bit goes down the hatch.
I lift my own cutlery. “More about the huts please.”
The father leaves the pub with red eyes and a hateful look for Kit.
“Yorkshire man,” Kit says once the door is closed. “In case you were trying to pick the accent. His son is probably going to school in Canterbury, escaping him.”
“Keep your pecker up,” a father says to a bored ten-year-old on this long line to get in the Cathedral. At my shocked look, Kit wryly says, “That’s a mouth in that expression, not a cock.”
“Oh, thank God.”
According to the handout, we can see where Saint Thomas was buried (before Henry VIII plundered his tomb), and the tombs of Henry IV, his wife Joan of Navarre, and the Black Prince’s effigy.
The cathedral is beautiful, as is the music from the enormous pipe organ, the soaring architecture, and especially the stained glass the locals so shrewdly hid during World War II. We’ve opted for a self-guided tour, and when we hang up our headphones after a well-articulated blitz of architectural details, we hear some good news from the headphone rental clerk.
“If you stay fifteen more minutes, you’ll be here for a service.”
“Would you like to stay?” Kit asks me.
“Sure. It’ll be probably be very interesting.”
“It will,” says the clerk.
Am I the only one at mass who doesn’t know exactly what to do? If this isn’t Catholicism, is this service called mass? Why is everyone going up for the bit of wafer?
Kit rises, too, and heads for the center.
“I thought that was a Catholic thing?” I quietly ask.
He shakes his head no.
“Am I supposed to take a sacrament? Isn’t that a big sin, to eat the Body of Christ? What’s the policy here?”
“Sit,” Kit whispers harshly, when he sees I’m about to follow him. “You don’t have the training.”
“The training?”
Kit puts a finger to his lips.
“Are you confirmed?” a helpful woman says.
“No.”
“Sit,” her husband imparts to me.
I feel my face flush as I walk back to my pew. There’s a few curious looks, but I happily spot a handful of others staying, including an Asian family and the man who told his son to keep his pecker up.
Inside the gift shop, Kit explains that the Church of England is closer to Roman Catholicism than to Protestant churches.
“I thought Protestant is Church of England.”
“No, you’re thinking of Episcopalian, I think that’s what it’s called in America. Canterbury is the seat of the whole system. Technically the queen is on top, she’s the supreme governor, but the archbishop of Canterbury is the chief cleric.”
“And that would be?”
“Rowan Douglas Williams.”
I look at a picture of a clean-shaven man on the Church’s tourist handout. “Is this him?”
Kit looks. “Yes.”
“‘He is an accomplished pia
nist and lover of opera as well as a keen tennis player and traveler; he has also written some hymns.’ What is this, a personal ad?”
“Hey, that’s my spiritual leader you’re disrespecting.” Kit gets his Zippo ready to light up the second we are out of sacred ground. My mother used to ready her lighter, too, whenever we were ready to leave my father’s hospital for the night.
“Okay, I’m really confused. You’ve got to tell me again about when this whole Anglican thing happened.”
“Old Henry wanted to marry someone he shouldn’t have, and—you know, it’s rather complicated to boil down to a minute.” As I look through a rack of religious postcards I definitely won’t be sending to Aunt Dot, Kit buys me a souvenir guidebook that he says has what I need to know, and a little teddy bear with an archbishop’s hat.
The ride to coastal Whitstable is a short, tired, but pleasant one.
Along the route (from A299 to M2) Kit tells me a few things he knows about County Kent, including the rumor that Ian Fleming’s selection of “007” for his Bond character was from the bus number from London to nearby Deal. I gobble up the always-appreciated Bond trivia but soon, with considerable magic out of the window, I’m a less receptive trivia recipient. Kit senses I’m tiring out from a long day, and he switches into silent-driver mode, occasionally smiling as I soak up the view of the marvelous countryside of Kent.
A whistling man alongside us for a few yards, carting a wheelbarrowful of potting soil, turns toward a roadside bed-and-breakfast decorated with colorful buckets of spring flowers. A few kilometers later I spot another B&B with a wishing well, the old stone kind, not the gray plastic kind you buy at a Long Island mall.
As we exit the car at our parking spot in Whitstable, the strong scent of the sea wafts up my nostrils. We take a brief walk down stubby streets to the Hotel Continental on Beach Road.
“It looks art deco-ish,” I say.
“It is. A break from medieval.”
“But it’s a hotel, not a hut.”
“The Fishermen’s Huts are in the back.”
The perky Hotel Continental receptionist greets us with a smile. “If you’re eating at the Oyster Bar you’ll miss the sunset if you don’t hurry. We can put your things in the Anderson Shed for you.”
The Anglophile Page 19