by Jerramy Fine
This was quickly followed by a large puff of black smoke, then silence. Fine. So music wasn’t an option.
As I attempted to scrub the brownish gray smudges off my bedroom walls, I tried to concentrate on the bright side of things. Like the almost certain fact that a handsome blond aristocrat was living in a room on that very same scary hallway. And how almost certainly he would be studying something sexy like corporate responsibility—meaning that despite his massive personal wealth, he still cared deeply for the welfare of others. As I scoured de cades of mold out of my shower, I concentrated hard on how we would get along beautifully, and how our lovely, boarding school–educated children would frolic in the manicured grounds of our estate in the English countryside.
And even as smoke continued to stream from my clock radio and it slowly short-circuited before my very eyes, I told myself that everything was going according to plan. And that I would never look back.
You probably didn’t think it was possible (I certainly didn’t think it was possible), but things got worse. For one, I discovered that 75 percent of the residence hall was designated specifically for married student housing—meaning I was surrounded by armies of mute, gloomy couples who would glare at me if I dared to glance at their spouse in a friendly way.
For two, from what I could tell, the remaining 25 percent of the students, regardless of their unmarried status, refused to socialize on any level whatsoever. Seriously. No eye contact. No smiles. Not one stab at pleasant conversation. They just wandered around silently, squinting and looking haggard, like they’d all just stumbled out of the same dark hole.
Finally, and to me this was the most distressing of all, is that I had lived in that godforsaken dorm for over two weeks and had yet to catch sight of a single English resident. Much less talk to one. Much less be invited to a polo match.
I wasn’t asking for Animal House. But between the distinct lack of tailored suits from Savile Row and all the dreary husbands and wives lurking in the shadows, I was miserable. I have to say that it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay optimistic about meeting my future royal husband in such a depressing atmosphere.
Still, I gave it my best shot. Classes hadn’t started yet, so I tried my best to be as social and as approachable as possible until they did. Every morning I’d read The Times and The Guardian in the dingy reading room; and every night I’d sit by myself on the filthy, battered furniture in the dingy student bar hoping to strike up a friendly conversation. But the only social interaction I ever received on these evenings always came from the same hairy Eastern European guy who would leer at me lecherously, paw at my blond hair, and then ask me over and over, “Vut do you staadee?”—never understanding a word I said to him in return.
I even went so far as to eat all of my dinners in the cheaply priced student cafeteria even though the badly translated menu was full of entrees like Lamb Fingers with Raisin Sauce or Apricots dressed with Cracked Eggs. You’d think the cafeteria would be a great place to meet people but it was more like participating in a scene from the movie Awakenings. Everyone sat at tables by themselves, slowly moving their plastic forks to their mouths and staring silently into the space in front of them. It was as if the mental-institution surroundings were rubbing off on people by osmosis and I seriously began to wonder if this creepy comatose state was in store for me if I stayed there long enough.
It was around week three when I met Max. An English aristocrat? If only! More like a loud-mouthed, half-Jewish New Yorker suffering from severe privilege and severe only-child syndrome. But he could talk! And that’s a hell of a lot more than anyone else in the building seemed capable of doing.
I first saw Max in the cafeteria. He was staring at the food options with a mixture of confusion and disgust, wearing baggy khakis and a crooked baseball cap. Obviously American.
I was filling my plastic cup with tepid drinking water when he came up to me and said, “You’re like the third best-looking girl in this building. Wanna borrow my IKEA catalog? It will help this place not seem so much like the fucking prison that it is.”
They were the first sentences spoken to me in unbroken English since I’d arrived in the bomb shelter and I nearly cried with happiness. It was like Max was some sort of bizarre angel sent down by the gods to snap me out of my solitude. And although he was just as obnoxious as he was hilarious, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful when he decided to befriend me.
I kept telling myself that things would improve once classes started up at LSE. But they didn’t. There were a few African students in my lectures and a handful from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. But the rest of my classmates were one hundred percent American. Instead of the gorgeous, polo-playing, English aristocrats that I had anticipated, every master’s program was full of American kids that had Kraft macaroni and cheese and Miracle Whip mayonnaise shipped over from the U.S. because the U.K. versions weren’t good enough. And rather than seek out native Londoners, my fellow countrymen spent every night drinking American beer with other Americans in Leicester Square’s American-themed bars.
I didn’t know which was worse: discussing London’s tragic lack of authentic bagels with my compatriots at LSE, or talking to my bedroom wall back at the bomb shelter.
Every now and then, I’d buy an international phone card, venture into one of the red Doctor Who–style phone booths plastered with pictures of fat prostitutes, and call my parents. I’d sob to them about my wretched living conditions, my terrible social life, and general unhappiness—but extracting sympathy from them was useless.
“You’ll be fine!” my mom said breezily. “Besides, isn’t living in London what you’ve always wanted? Isn’t it what you’ve always dreamed of?”
And that was the hardest part of all.
This was no one’s fault but my own. Against all advice, I had followed my heart instead of my head—and now I was paying the price.
I had such wonderful friends at Rochester, girls and guys that understood me, loved me, and wholeheartedly encouraged me to follow my dreams, however crazy they seemed. But after graduation, we were scattered across the globe: L.A., Chicago, D.C., New York, London—the list of cities made it sound as if we were opening a chain of fashion boutiques. After being inseparable for so long, parting virtually overnight was a huge shock to the system and I missed them desperately.
My only solace took place in the dilapidated LSE computer lab, where I would send regular e-mail updates with tales of my London woes. The girls replied to me with e-mails full of loyal sympathy (certainly more than my parents were offering) but Justin, a good friend from my writing class at Rochester, could take it no longer.
“Jerramy,” he e-mailed, “what did you expect to happen on your return to London? Did you expect the ghost of Princess Diana to emerge from her island grave, to float into the Royal Archives and to unearth some dusty, long-forgotten old document listing you as the rightful heir to the British throne and then arrange for you to be crowned at some kind of special fast-track coronation? Did you expect all your adoring subjects to cheer wildly in the background as the sparkling tiara was dutifully placed upon your regal blond head and afterward you would just quietly return to your studies at LSE?”
I nodded earnestly at the computer screen.
Then I caught myself.
I wasn’t that delusional. Was I?
“Justin,” I typed rapidly in reply, “don’t be silly. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
Eight
“The most powerful emotion we can experience is the mystical.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
Let’s pretend for a second that things were in reverse—that I wasn’t a starry-eyed American who had journeyed to London, but an eager young British girl who had moved all by myself to the bright lights of New York City. Would I be able to meet other Americans (male or female) in a place as wonderfully diverse and cosmopolitan as the Big Apple? Even if I was stuck in a miserable dorm?
Of co
urse I would. You can’t swing your arms in Manhattan without hitting dozens of Americans—and most would be thrilled to befriend you. Most would happily invite you out to meet their friends, or home to meet their families, and would eventually insist that you join them for Thanksgiving dinner.
But this was clearly not the case in London. I knew English people were slightly more introverted compared to Americans, but come on—they weren’t invisible! Yet during those first lonely months, they certainly could have fooled me.
I guess during my House of Commons internship I’d spent so much time within that small Anglicized political bubble, I never stopped to notice how utterly international the U.K. capital actually was. And as a result it never once occurred to me that if I returned to the U.K., meeting English people would be such a ridiculous challenge. (Granted, I did have the direct numbers for a few Members of Parliament but I couldn’t exactly call them up and demand to accompany them to the Queen’s Garden Party.) So now, without polo invitations pouring in as previously planned, I had nothing to do but sit in my dungeon of a bedroom, repaint my toenails, recalculate my debt, and die of frustration.
Left to my own devices, the bomb shelter situation was becoming borderline suicidal. The single lightbulb dangling from my bedroom ceiling was so dim I couldn’t read or study after dark. I couldn’t afford the mandatory TV license26 so I had no television; due to the aforementioned clock radio disaster, I had no music, and I had been waiting nearly six weeks for my phone to be connected by the Old World powers that be. Unless I subjected myself to Max’s endearing yet rather obnoxious ramblings, I felt I had no way to prove that I was alive.
To top it all off, everything in London costs roughly four times more than what it should. I’m not joking. A bottle of water is like eight dollars. Max told me that learning to live with London’s ludicrously high prices was kind of like learning to live without an arm or a leg—not ideal or especially pleasant, but eventually you kind of adjust. Well, quite frankly, with his bank balance he could afford to adjust. But with my microscopic student bud get and my rapidly dwindling credit card power, shopping and nightlife (normally my most-treasured pastimes) simply weren’t options for me. So I’d learned to find my entertainment where I could.
Whenever I’d had enough of the depressingly dark and labyrinthine LSE library, I’d head to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. More than 30 percent of London (approximately 5,550 acres27) is made up of sprawling parkland and intricate plea sure gardens like these—and most were originally owned by the British royal family and used as their private hunting grounds, before they were made public.
I’d stroll by myself through the parks’ lush winding paths, ignore the swarms of Australian rollerbladers, and try to imagine that Henry VIII and his court were thundering past me on their steeds in pursuit of deer and wild boar. I’d perch myself on the benches near the Italian Gardens or the Peter Pan statue and attempt to study my mind-numbing public policy notes, but I’d always end up people-watching instead.
I suppose it didn’t help that I’d recently finished a fantastic new novel28 set in London, the themes of which were keeping me permanently distracted. Aside from a rather elaborate murder plot, the book was about a girl named Ella (British-born, but American-raised) who’d regularly head to Hyde Park at sunrise to watch the early morning joggers go by. Of course, it wasn’t long before she caught the eye of a dashing upper-class English boy who happened to be running past her—and soon the two of them were madly in love. Aside from the getting up at dawn part, I was hoping to see if this approach might work for me.
But no such luck.
I’d patiently sit on my park bench for hours upon hours—watching people jog around the duck pond or row along the Serpentine; watching children with their adorable school uniforms clamber around on the Princess Diana Memorial Playground. I knew some of these humans had to be English, but it was as if an invisible glass wall existed between us, keeping our worlds divided. And soon I came to realize that meeting people in England simply by “catching their eye” was pure and utter fiction.
You don’t strike up casual conversation with strangers in England. You just don’t. You could sit next to the same person on the same train for twenty-five years, and you still wouldn’t dare speak to them. You could be crossing the Sahara desert all by yourself without a living soul in sight for hundreds of miles and suddenly spot the first human you’d seen in over a decade—but if you were English, and he was English, you’d simply carry on trekking without so much as a nod to each other. Anyone who broke this inherent rule was deemed dangerous at best. Therefore the only appropriate way to meet others was to be introduced to them by someone you already knew and already trusted. For foreigners wanting to make friends, it was an infuriating catch-22—which is why most gave up on the English and ended up mixing only with other foreigners.
But I had no intention of doing this. It was the easy way out. And besides, if I was going to be spending all my time with non-English people, why on earth did I come all the way across the ocean to the U.K.? I might as well give up on my dream, go back to America, be with my real American friends, have a nice American job, meet a nice American guy, and save myself and everyone else the transatlantic hassle.
Still, there I was.
Sitting in Hyde Park. With no friends, no family, and no money (and while we’re at it, I might as well add no prince), wondering why I was so miserable in the place I felt certain I would be the happiest.
I tried to visit my favorite royal landmarks as often as I could in an effort to cheer myself up. I went to Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, the Tower of London, Hampton Court, Windsor Castle. I was unbelievably lucky to live so close to such incredibly stunning buildings. I’d been inside most of them at least twice already, and couldn’t really afford tickets to go inside any of them for a third or fourth time, so instead I’d simply walk around and around them, filling my soul with their beauty and magic. And then, one day it dawned on me that perhaps that was the problem—that all this beauty and magic was actually the root of my newfound misery.
Everywhere I looked in London, I saw the Queen’s profile or the Queen’s initials—on the lampposts, the mailboxes, sometimes even the rubbish bins. Even the word “Royal” was everywhere: Royal Mail, Royal Air Force, Royal Opera House, Royal Ballet, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Botanic Gardens, Royal Ascot, Royal Regattas, Royal Parks, Royal Societies, Royal Academies, Royal Collections. The elite world I had longed to enter since I was a little girl was now shamelessly dangled in front of me, taunting me on a daily basis.
And as I stood outside those gorgeous royal palaces and stared through the bars of the wrought-iron gates surrounding them—instead of delight and inspiration, I was filled with painful, heart-wrenching frustration. No one seemed to understand that I belonged inside!
Sure, I was closer to my dreams than I was in my hick farm town, closer than I ever was when I had lived in America…but suddenly, the few centimeters from one side of the palace gates to the other seemed cruelly impossible. Now that I was so close, I realized how far away I really was.
And always had been.
One afternoon as I sat on the tube on my way home from my morning lecture on urban planning, I did the typically English thing and avoided all eye contact with other humans by pretending to be really interested in the ads above their heads. I halfheartedly read about cold medicines and night school and Indian beer, until I spotted an ad promoting the new tours of Buckingham Palace! To my horror, I saw there were only two days remaining before it would be closed to the public. I didn’t even know it was open to the public!
In order to raise money to restore the recent fire damage at Windsor Castle,29 Buckingham Palace was opening its doors to the public for the first time in history. I knew these plans were in the works—but I thought they were scheduled for next spring, not this fall! How many times had I gazed longingly through those black swirly gates? And this was my first chance to
go beyond them. (I’m not going to say it was my only chance—because I was inevitably going back one day as a guest instead of a tourist—it’s just that I thought it would be nice to familiarize myself with the place before that day arrived.)
I promptly switched lines, got off at St. James’s Park, walked past the little lake full of ducks, geese, and pelicans, and took my place in the queue to buy my £12 admission ticket. So what if it meant I couldn’t afford to eat the next day? I knew that finally seeing the inside of Buckingham Palace would nourish me in its own way.
I was finally assigned a tour group and was carefully herded though palace security along with twenty or thirty others. I tried to ignore all the fat tourists shouting things like, “So if the Queen lives here, then does the King live in Big Ben?” or “Are we going to see Duke Andrew, the Prince of York?”
At last we were ushered into the richly plastered State Rooms filled with priceless paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, and Vermeer, gorgeous sculptures by Canova and Chantrey, piece after exquisite piece of Sèvres porcelain, and some of the finest English and French furniture in the world. But I found myself looking at them with a disturbing indifference. As if I had seen them a thousand times before.
Suddenly, I felt dizzy and light-headed. Everything around me was so familiar I wanted to cry. In a split second, the tour became one of those terrible dreams when you want to run from something but you can’t move, or you want to scream but you can’t make a sound. But I didn’t know what I wanted to run from! Or why I wanted to scream. Or why, despite all the overpowering emotions coursing through me, I didn’t ever want to leave.
I should have braced myself. I should have known it would happen again.