Someday My Prince Will Come

by Jerramy Fine

  But let’s face it, modern twenty-one-year-old boys had no desire to become pen pals with strange girls, however alluring they may be, unless they were in jail or at war. So this time around, I decided to take a slightly different approach with my letter. I began by addressing it directly to “The Princess Royal’s Assistant Private Secretary.” I figured he’d be the one reading it anyway—so why pretend otherwise?

  Attempting to use the same kind of cleverly persuasive language I’d learned about in my political speech writing class, I went about telling the assistant private secretary my story: I described my silly girlhood crush on Peter, the romantic letter I had painstakingly written, and the startling bureaucratic response I’d received from the Palace. I told the assistant private secretary how this peculiar chain of events had served as the subject matter for my college entrance essay and how wasn’t it extraordinary that I met The Princess Royal as a direct result of my college acceptance?

  I told him that although I understood letters of this nature were not traditionally passed on to children of Her Royal Highness, that perhaps, just this once, he would make an exception. I kindly asked him to please pass this letter on to Peter—to grant the childhood wish of a little girl and in doing so, to allow events to come full circle.

  Like clockwork, a featherweight envelope arrived at my Denver doorstep exactly three weeks later. Recognizing the familiar watermark of the Royal Crest, I opened it with a heavy heart. It had arrived far too soon. I knew it wouldn’t be from him.

  Bracing myself for two lines of formal text, I was surprised to see nearly two full paragraphs:

  Buckingham Palace

  7 July 1998

  Dear Miss Fine,

  I regret that your fears, as you articulated in your letter of June 11 to Peter Phillips, are being realised, and, instead of hearing from him, you are getting an official response from me! I am sorry about this but it is The Princess Royal’s official policy.

  I rather enjoyed reading your letter. It was well written, serious, and, I believe it to be very sincere, but I hope that you will understand the principle behind Her Royal Highness wishing to protect her family from the public gaze when they are still studying.

  I wish you well in your government studies.

  Yours sincerely,

  XXXXX XXXXXXX, Esq.

  Private Secretary to

  HRH The Princess Royal

  I carefully folded the letter and gently placed it back inside the royal envelope—calm as calm can be. And why shouldn’t I have been? Not only had I received two well-thought-out paragraphs instead of two formulaic lines, but they had been personally composed by my future mother-in-law’s private secretary—not by some lowly assistant. Not only that, but it was clear that my future mother-in-law’s private secretary liked me. And I knew it wouldn’t be long before I had the entire royal house hold on my side.

  A month or so later, I happily returned to Rochester for my senior year of college. Painfully conscious that my blissful university bubble would be popping soon, I studied hard and partied harder. Acquaintances disappeared and my true friendships strengthened. I even allowed myself to kiss a few boys that didn’t have English accents!

  I knew I was going to miss college terribly, but there wasn’t a second of my senior year when I wasn’t carefully devising a way to get myself back to England. I hadn’t realized the true depth of my longing for that country, the true capacity of my heart to love—until England and I were forced to separate at the end of that precious London semester. I was certain that if I returned to the U.K. for a longer period of time, something extraordinary would happen. And I would finally understand why my heart kept pushing me there with such ferocity.

  For quite some time, I pondered the idea of going to Swiss finishing school19 after graduation. I’d always wanted to go to one—almost as much as I wanted to go to a British boarding school. The way I saw it, finishing school was a great excuse to return to Europe (and eventually to England) and an ideal venue for mixing with well-connected people. And from a cost perspective, it wasn’t any more ridiculously expensive than the high-ranking law schools and grad schools that my friends were applying to.

  But then I began to wonder what would happen if, for some reason, finishing school didn’t catapult me into royal circles as planned? What then? What skills would I be left with? Menu writing? Seating charts? How to gracefully exit a sports car? Don’t get me wrong—I truly believe these kinds of skills are tragically underrated in today’s society, but I wasn’t so sure they’d be taken seriously on my résumé if worst came to worst and I ended up back in America.

  So, perfectly aware that I’d have to double the size of my student loan if I got in, I applied to a master’s program at The London School of Economics. Ultimately I knew that going to such a prestigious institution was my only hope of getting to England under a legitimate-sounding guise—one that wouldn’t cause all the cynical people around me to raise their eyebrows at my motives. (I mean, it wasn’t my fault the best school in the world for my subject matter just happened to be in London.) At LSE, I’d be able to escape all the accusations that I was being irresponsible and neglecting my career—and instead would be free to chase my dream.

  I nearly fainted when I received my acceptance letter. Just like my momentary encounter with Princess Anne, it was a sign—an omen! With all these signs, it was clear that my heart was leading me down the right path after all. And it was also clear that the universe was conspiring to help me along every step of the way.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, but explaining this to others was easier said than done. When I ran into various people in my hometown, usually the ones that worked at Wal-Mart, and they asked me what I was up to these days, they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about when I told them I would be attending LSE in the fall.

  “You’re goin’ da London? Wow. That’s in France, right?” Then the guy would spit a wad of chewing tobacco into the used Dr Pepper can he kept hidden under the cash register.

  While my city-dwelling relatives could find both London and France on the globe, they still had their doubts about me going to LSE. And because they worried about my hippie parents’ rather laissez-faire approach to parenting, my stricter and more traditional family members were more than happy to share their reservations with me at every opportunity.

  “Aren’t you sick of England already?” my uncle would ask. “You’ve already lived there for six whole months. We thought for sure you’d have it out of your system by now.”

  “What do you want to leave your own country for?” asked another. “You’re an American. You belong in America!”

  Mercifully, if my dad happened to overhear these tirades against me, he’d always come to my defense. “Jerramy drives on the wrong side of the road anyway,” he’d say. “She always has. It’s safer for everyone if she goes back to London.”

  Indeed, driving has never been my strong point. But personally, I think my dad was overjoyed that I’d be attending the same school as Mick Jagger.20 Although I’d mentioned several times that LSE was also the alma mater of John F. Kennedy, Her Majesty Queen Margrethe of Denmark, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway,21 and the uberintelligent Mrs. Tony Blair—for some reason it was only the celebrated Rolling Stones connection that seemed to stick in his mind.

  “But what are you going to eat when you go over there?” asked my very worried aunt. “Do you need me to send you any tampons? I’m not sure you’ll be able to buy them.”

  But more than anything, what I heard from everyone was this: “Are you sure getting into so much more debt is a good idea? Shouldn’t you be getting a real job to pay off your first student loan before you take out another one? Isn’t it about time you stopped floating around your crazy English dreamland and started living in the real world?”

  The real world. You know my feelings on that place. And I had absolutely no intention of going there. Not when my heart constantly told me to go someplace entirely different.<
br />
  Seven

  “Nothing splendid was ever achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.”

  —BRUCE BARTON

  Fine, I’ll admit it.

  Maybe I’d been a tiny bit naïve. Maybe I’d been a tad unrealistic. Maybe, if I’m being entirely honest, I’ll admit that I wasn’t fully prepared to accept the fact that my life wouldn’t magically become one giant, romantic Hugh Grant movie the minute I landed at Heathrow for the second time.

  Still. That doesn’t explain how my perfect plan had gone so dramatically off the rails.

  Don’t get me wrong; London was just as heartbreakingly beautiful as I remembered. And it was still brimming with all the splendor and sparkle that I knew my life was going to have once I figured out how to grab onto it. It’s just, well, how should I put this? It’s just that there didn’t seem to be many Hugh Grants wandering around. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any Hugh Grants wandering around.

  I’m not joking.

  I (a fairly presentable girl) had been in London nearly a month, and I’d yet to meet a single English person. Not one. Neither male nor female. And considering my plan, and subsequently my entire future, explicitly depended on meeting English people, I found this state of affairs to be more than slightly alarming.

  It all started when I hopped into a black cab at Heathrow and it pulled up in front of what looked like a menacing six-story bomb shelter instead of a smart and leafy West London address. Could this ugly stack of gray concrete blocks really be my LSE residence hall?

  Still, I tried to stay positive. So what if I had to endure less than ideal housing conditions for a while? No big deal. Everyone has to struggle a bit before living happily ever after and if that meant I had to live in a bomb shelter for a while, so be it.

  I paid the ridiculously high taxi fare22 and lugged my three bulging suitcases to the entrance. Once through the doors, I felt better. The lobby was bright and cheery, almost modern—making me think that calling it a bomb shelter might have been a slight overreaction on my part. I signed in with the grumpy man at the front desk and picked up my welcome packet. “Lydia Parson Hall,” read the cover of the tenant handbook, “A University Residence for Postgraduates Only.”

  Instantly, my mind swam with visions of the postgraduate Englishmen I would meet: devastatingly handsome ones in tailored suits from Savile Row23 who would invite me to polo matches; devastatingly clever ones in smart tweed jackets who would read to me in Latin. I would sit in old libraries and chic coffee houses with all of them, poring over our political studies together, pausing only to gaze into each other’s eyes or engage in deep, academic conversations about how we were going to single-handedly solve world poverty and social exclusion. Before I knew it I was going to be whisked away into a whirlwind of glittering English society and leave Colorado firmly in the dust.

  I squeezed myself into the tiny elevator (or lift as the Brits would say), noting with amusement how I could barely fit inside, much less with my luggage. Granted each of my bags was as big as I was, but I knew an elevator incapable of holding more than one small person and a single suitcase would probably cause any other American to throw a temper tantrum and launch into the usual stream of complaints: “The sheer inconvenience and inefficiency of it all! Think of the fire hazards! The potential lawsuits! It’s no wonder this country lost the revolutionary war! It’s no wonder they lost the empire!”

  It’s not that I was unaware of the stark contrast between convenience and efficiency in the U.S. and the lack of convenience and efficiency in the U.K.; it’s just that, well, I’d always found Old World–style incompetence to be vaguely entertaining (charming even)—so much so that it never seemed to annoy me.

  Squeezed into the corner under the weight of my giant duffel bag (I’d have to go back for the others) and thanking God I wasn’t claustrophobic, I eventually managed to press floor number five.24 The lift jolted and buzzed and moved awkwardly upward, and when the doors finally opened, I wanted more than anything for them to close again.

  Let’s just say that calling this place a bomb shelter was putting it nicely. Unbelievably nicely. Because what I saw through those rickety elevator doors was so scary it literally made me gasp out loud. This was no bomb shelter. This was a mental institution from a 1950s horror movie.

  I know you think I’m exaggerating. My parents certainly did. But really I’m not. The narrow corridor in front of me was so long it bordered on infinite and I half expected a matronly nurse to rush through any second with some moaning lunatic buckled to a stretcher. Beneath the eerie green glow of the fluorescent lights, what I could only hope was Indian food dripped from a section of the wafer-board ceiling, and the walls, covered in layer upon layer of dirt, peeling paint, and quite possibly urine, looked like something you’d find in an abandoned crack house. The thought of staying in that place overnight made me physically sick.

  I nearly gave in. I nearly turned around and marched back into that microscopic elevator. I nearly picked up the phone in that deceptively modern lobby and bought a plane ticket back to America using my last bit of credit on my only unmaxed credit card. I was this close to giving up and giving in. This close to admitting to everyone that they were right and that coming back to London had been nothing but a terrible mistake. This. Close.

  But something stopped me. Something made me stand still. Something made me take a long deep breath and exhale extra slowly like I used to do in my yoga class. Okay, I told myself. Try to stay calm. Try not to be frightened. Try not throw up. And try to think clearly.

  So I wouldn’t be living in London’s plushest residence. I could handle it. My freshman dorm in Rochester wasn’t exactly in the best condition either and yet it had become central to one of the best years of my life. It’s the people you live with that matter, not the quality of your living conditions. (Right?)

  I thought back to all those times in my isolated farm town when I’d insisted that living off your vision was more powerful than living off your circumstances. That just because you come from a place full of Sweet Corn Festivals and NRA meetings doesn’t mean you have to stay there forever. Or just because you come from a family that made you carry tofu salad to school in a homemade cardboard lunch box and drink a disgusting “living brew” of fermented Kombucha iced tea,25 doesn’t mean that one day you can’t have your lunch at the best restaurants in the world or someday drink your tea with the Queen. Everyone, despite their circumstances, has the power to become the person they were meant to be, and the power to follow the dreams that dwell inside their heart. You just have to be brave and stay focused.

  That’s what I used to tell my friends in high school, anyway—when they’d tell me they couldn’t imagine going to college out of state. And that’s what I used to tell my more cynical relatives. And as I stood there in that disgusting bomb shelter on the verge of hysterical tears, I knew I had better start following my own crazy advice.

  I mean, really, how hard could it be? I’d already conquered the loony circumstances of my childhood enough to propel myself to London. Twice! And all based on the strength of my vision. Surely I could conquer a stint in this bomb shelter long enough to propel myself into the English life I had dreamed of.

  I leaned against the filthy wall of the empty corridor, stared into the fluorescent glare of the dusty ceiling lights, and interrogated myself quite sternly—begging myself to let me in on what I was truly up to. Eventually, I could hear something—it was barely audible, but it was there.

  “You’re home,” my heart whispered softly. “You’ve come home.”

  And you know what? It was right.

  I couldn’t flee from my destiny. Not now. Not so soon. My circumstances might have resembled a terrifying Orwellian mental institution-cum-crack den, but my vision of English happiness and royal romance was still very much intact. And, just as it always had, I knew that it would see me through.

  So as I dragged my massive l
uggage down the scary hallway, I told myself that once I met all my fellow postgraduates and we all became close bomb-shelter-dwelling buddies, I wouldn’t even notice the huge tangle of exposed electrical wires strung across the entire length of the wall. And as I unlocked the heavy wooden door to my room, I told myself that soon we’d be helping each other out with our course work, watching silly movies and playing drinking games together. We’d borrow each other’s clothes, counsel each other, comfort each other, and love each other until this mental institution of a dorm was a virtual haven of postgraduate friendship and learning.

  So determined not to indulge any more negative thoughts, and remembering that “mustn’t grumble” was one of the golden rules of Englishness, I set about unpacking my things and arranging them in my dusty, cavelike room.

  It wasn’t long before I realized that something very important was missing from my cave-room. Although I had been provided with an electric teakettle and a heated towel rack (both of which I had lived twenty-two years so far without ever needing or missing), I had not been provided with a study desk of any kind. I was, after all, a student living in a student residence hall. Was I being a spoiled American to presume I would need such a luxury?

  I sighed. Maybe a bit of music would help. (I had to do something to stop my mind from making constant sarcastic comments to itself.) I’d left my stereo in Colorado, but luckily I had my trusty clock radio. For some reason English electricity is like a million times stronger than U.S. electricity, so if you don’t want big electrical explosions, you have to have special adapters and special transformers if you’re planning on connecting anything American to a U.K. outlet. It took me a while to figure out how everything worked, but finally my struggles paid off and I was rewarded with a loud burst of the Spice Girls.