Christy Miller Collection, Vol 4

by Robin Jones Gunn

  It took only a few minutes to check in at the quaint B and B, as the woman called the bed-and-breakfast. Then they lugged their suitcases up four winding flights of stairs to the top floor, where two rooms awaited them. The girls’ room had three twin beds and a separate bathroom with the biggest bathtub Christy had ever seen. The house was old, but it had been nicely restored; the room was clean and fresh. Christy noticed how puffy the flowered bedspreads looked, and she flopped down on the nearest bed.

  Tracy did the same, face first on the bed next to Christy. “This pillow is calling my name,” Tracy said. “It wants me to stay right here with it all day.”

  Christy heard the rain tap-dancing on their window. She couldn’t help but agree with Tracy. After all, it was three in the morning back home, and none of them had slept on the plane during the ten-hour flight. A little nap would feel so good.

  “Ready, gang?” Katie called, bursting through the door with Doug right behind her. “Let’s go see London.”

  Christy and Tracy groaned.

  “You guys definitely got the better of the two rooms.” Doug surveyed their wallpapered surroundings. “My room isn’t bad. It just feels more like I’m sleeping in an attic. Slanted ceiling. Kind of squishy. You even have a bathroom.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I get to use the one at the end of the hall on the floor below us. I don’t mind really. For the money, this is a great place. Besides, we’re not going to hang around here. We’ve got a city to explore!”

  “Doug’s right, you guys.” Katie stepped into the bathroom and ran some water in the sink to wash her face. “The worst thing we could do would be to sleep now. We have to stay up all day to trick our internal clocks into thinking it’s daytime now and not nighttime. Hey, how do you get warm water out of this thing?”

  Doug joined her in the bathroom and demonstrated how to use the sink stopper to fill the sink with hot and cold water at the same time, resulting in warm water.

  “You mean only hot water comes out of this side and only cold out of this side? How archaic!”

  “I hate to break this to you, Toto, but we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Doug said, sticking his fingers in the water and sprinkling Katie’s face. “This is a very old city. This is a very old house. It would follow that the plumbing would be a little on the archaic side.”

  Doug dipped his fingers in the sink again and took three steps over to Christy’s bed where he sprinkled her. “Wake up! It’s time to have some fun.”

  “Tracy,” Christy said, “I think the ceiling is leaking. I feel a drip.”

  “Yeah, I hear a drip,” Tracy agreed.

  “Oh, yeah?” Doug said. Before Christy or Tracy realized what was happening, Doug had dunked a hand towel into the full sink and began to wring it out over Tracy’s head. She screamed, jumped up, and started to laugh. “Doug! We’re not at the beach! You can’t go around splashing girls with water in London. It isn’t proper!”

  They all laughed at Tracy’s fake British accent, which she attempted to employ on the last two sentences.

  “Besides, Doug, it’s raining out there, and it’s so cozy in here,” Christy said in a pretend whine.

  “I can make it rain inside too!” Doug threatened Christy with his wet hand towel.

  “Okay, okay. Let me brush my hair first.” Christy traded places with Katie in the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Her reflection in the mirror startled her. Her cheeks were red, and her brown hair lay flat against her head, hanging lifelessly a few inches past her shoulders.

  She thought of how cute Tracy’s short hair looked. She had cut it short, just below her ears, especially for this trip. Tracy’s hair had a lot of natural body and had kept its shape with only a quick brushing when they landed at Heathrow Airport.

  Christy wondered if she should have gotten her hair cut short for the trip too. She knew Doug liked it long. She liked it long. It just looked so blah.

  After trying to pull it back with a headband, put it in a ponytail, and quickly braid it, she gave up.

  “Are you still alive in there?” Katie asked, knocking on the door.

  “My hair is driving me crazy!” Christy said.

  “You’re going to drive us crazy!” Katie yelled.

  “Okay, okay.” Christy shook out her mane, washed her face, and stuck a scrunchie in her pocket in case she wanted to try a ponytail later. She opened the bathroom door, ready to go. A bright light flashed in her face.

  “Thanks, Christy,” Katie said. “You’ve become my first official photo in London. Let’s go see what other funny-looking stuff we can take pictures of.”

  “Oh. thanks a lot.” Christy reached for her coat and followed her friends down the long, winding stairs and into the front lobby.

  “I want to get a close-up shot of one of those guards who stands in one place all day and never flinches,” Katie said. “Maybe I can get him to give me a little smile.”

  “Food first,” Doug said as they stepped outside, all bundled up and holding their umbrellas high. “We must keep our priorities straight.”

  The first food they found was, of all things, a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  “I didn’t come all the way to England to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Katie said, looking down the street for signs of any other kind of restaurant.

  “Come on,” Tracy pleaded. “It’s only a snack. We’ll find some fun English place for lunch. I don’t think Doug can hold out much longer.”

  “Thanks, Trace.” Doug collapsed his umbrella and stepped inside the all-too-familiar-looking fast-food restaurant.

  They all ordered from a lit-up menu above the counter that looked just like one from home. The only difference was the currency.

  “That’s one pound, forty-five p. miss,” the man behind the counter told Christy. Christy handed him a ten-pound note and received a handful of change and a five-pound note. She joined the others at a table by the window.

  “Isn’t this money weird?” Katie said, examining her change.

  “Katie,” Tracy said, “didn’t we already go over the weird money thing?”

  Christy was aware that the elderly couple at the table next to them was watching. She was also aware of how quiet it was for a restaurant full of people. Everyone else seemed to be speaking softly and keeping to themselves.

  In comparison, Katie was extraordinarily loud. It bothered Christy. She guessed it was bothering Tracy too. Doug seemed unaffected.

  He pulled out his handy-dandy map and pocket-size tour book. “Okay, so we’ll see Big Ben first, then the crown jewels at the Tower of London. We take bus 16, I think. No, maybe it’s bus 12.”

  “Let me see that,” Katie said, snatching the tour book away from Doug. “Oh, Charles Dickens’s house. That would be an interesting tour. Let’s go there after the Tower of London.”

  “It’s on the opposite side of town. Katie,” Doug said.

  “No, it’s not. Look, it’s right here by…oh, you’re right. Okay, then let’s go to St. Paul’s Cathedral. That’s only two inches away from the Tower of London.”

  “Let’s just go and see what we can see,” Tracy suggested, tossing her trash into a bin that was marked “rubbish.”

  Christy was glad it wasn’t up to her to plot their course or decipher how to get there. She was happy being a follower and letting Katie and Doug be the pioneers.

  They hopped on a bus near the Marble Arch that took them to Piccadilly Circus. Doug told them to get off and look for bus 12, which would take them to Parliament and Big Ben.

  Riding on the top of the double-decker bus was fun, Christy thought, because she had a good view of the bustling streets below and of the statues and monuments everywhere. What she didn’t like was getting off, shivering under her umbrella, and listening to Doug and Katie argue. She also hated feeling lost and confused.

  It seemed worse when they got off in front of the huge, architecturally intricate Parliament Building and found that the famous old clock, Big
Ben, was so shrouded in fog that it hardly seemed worth the effort to take a picture. Christy did, however. Her camera, a gift last year from Uncle Bob, had served her well during her senior year as a photographer on the yearbook staff. She knew when she returned home she would be glad she had the pictures, even if they were all gray and foggy.

  “Well, that was a thrill.” Katie spun around and blocked Christy’s viewfinder with her umbrella. “What’s next?”

  Without saying anything to Katie, Christy took a few steps to the right and adjusted her zoom again before snapping a picture of Big Ben. “Why don’t you guys all stand there by the fence, and I’ll take a picture of you with Parliament in the background?”

  The three obliged, umbrellas bumping each other and people passing in front of the camera. Christy snapped the picture, then turned around and snapped a shot of the street behind them with a black taxi and a red bus passing each other in the heavy traffic.

  “Do you want to see the River Thames?” Doug asked. “According to this map, it’s right over there, beyond that park.”

  “What’s to see?” Katie asked.

  “It’s a famous river.” Doug said. “Come on. Have a little adventure, Katie.”

  “I did have a little adventure. I saw Big Ben. Now I want a big adventure. I want to see the jewels and the guards in the big furry hats.”

  “We’re so close to the river.” Tracy said. “Maybe we should look at it so we can at least say we saw it.”

  “Whatever we do, could we take a bus?” Christy asked. “My legs are freezing!” She wished she had taken the time to put on a pair of tights when they were at the hotel. She felt cold. Wet cold. Miserable cold.

  “It’s only a quick walk to the river,” Doug said, taking Christy’s hand. “If we walk fast, you’ll warm up. Come on.”

  Off they went to the river. In Katie’s words, the wide, gray, fog-mantled water looked “like Big Ben, only horizontal and without numbers.”

  They were hoofing it back to catch another bus when Tracy noticed an old, interesting-looking building on their left.

  “Let’s check the tour book, Doug. I’m sure that’s something important.” Tracy said.

  Christy hated standing still in the drizzle. She stomped her feet to get them warm and to shake the chill off her legs. “You guys,” Tracy exclaimed, “that’s Westminster Abbey!”

  “Great.” said Katie. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a very old church.” Tracy said, scanning the tour book. “It says here that this site was first used as a place of worship in the year A.D. 604. Can you even imagine how old that is? And listen to this: ‘Since the eleventh century. the church has been the coronation site of English kings and queens.’ We have to see it, you guys. There’s a bunch of famous people buried there. Charles Dickens is buried there!”

  Katie noticed that the drizzle had let up and closed her umbrella while Tracy was reading. With squinting eyes she moved in for a closer look at Tracy. “Are you serious here, girl? You really want to go look at a bunch of old dead people?”

  “This is Westminster Abbey. It’s famous, Katie!”

  “Well, so was Big Ben. And that turned out to be a real dud!”

  “Can I cut in here, you two?” Doug closed his umbrella and stepped in between them. “I think we’re all pretty tired and hungry. Why don’t we find someplace to eat and decide what to do next after we’ve had some food.”

  “Great idea,” Christy said. “I’m freezing. I think my socks got wet. My feet are numb.”

  “What do you say, ladies? A nice spot of tea, perhaps?”

  They couldn’t help but release their tension when they heard Doug try a British accent on his last sentence. Then following their trail back up the road toward Trafalgar Square, the four cold, wet, weary travelers went in search of a quiet little restaurant and a hot cup of tea.

  “No wonder the English like tea so much.” Christy said, holding a white china cup with both hands. She sipped her tea as if it were warming her to her toes. “If I lived here, I’d be looking for something to warm me up several times a day too.”

  Katie took her last bite of fish. “The vinegar was okay on this fish, but I still like good old American tartar sauce. You want the rest of my fries, Doug?”

  “Sure, I’ll take your chips,” he said, using the British word for fries.

  “I have a question,” Tracy said. “If they call French fries chips, then what do they call potato chips?”

  “Crisps,” their waiter said, reaching to clear Katie’s empty plate.

  They had stumbled into a quaint-looking restaurant and found a table with four chairs as if it were waiting for them. The waiter had turned out to be friendly. The four orders of fish and chips had come in huge portions with the mushiest green peas Christy had ever seen. She ate about half her fried fish, half her chips, and only a reluctant spoonful of the mushy peas. They tasted the same as they looked.

  Doug managed to put away whatever food the girls left, including the peas. Christy decided he must have been born without taste buds. Either that or his bottomless stomach was so demanding that it left little room for a discerning palate.

  Doug stuck the last few cold chips in his mouth and glanced at his watch. “It’s a little after four. What do you think? Should we try to make it to the Tower of London to see the jewels now, or wait until tomorrow?”

  “We would have more time tomorrow,” Tracy suggested.

  “Where did this day go?” Christy asked. “And what day is it, anyhow?”

  “Wednesday,” Doug said. “It’s eight in the morning at home right now. Time to start today.”

  “Isn’t that weird?” Katie said. “At home everyone is just starting this day, and we’re almost done with it.”

  Once again Christy could see Tracy cringing at Katie’s loud voice and her declaration of something else that was weird, it bugged Christy too, but not as much as it seemed to irk Tracy.

  “So what do you guys want to do? It’ll be dark soon,” Doug said.

  “Let’s see as much as we can,” Tracy said. “Even if it’s dark. We only have today and tomorrow. We’ve come all this way and there’s so much to see. Would you guys be willing to go back o Westminster Abbey? I’d really like to see it.”

  “Sure,” Doug answered for all of them. “Let’s figure out this bill and get out of here.”

  Christy noticed as they walked briskly down the street toward the ancient Gothic church that Katie was unusually quiet. Tension between Katie and Tracy seemed to be growing, and Christy felt uneasy about it.

  Over the years, Doug and Katie had experienced plenty of friendly conflicts, but through all their tumbles, their friendship always managed to land on its feet. Katie and Doug had a brother-sister kind of esteem for each other.

  Tracy and Doug had been close friends even longer than Christy and Tracy. As a matter of fact, Doug and Tracy even dated for a while several years ago. The two of them had remained close friends, and Christy couldn’t remember ever hearing either of them saying anything unkind about the other. They seemed to get along in any kind of situation.

  But Katie and Tracy had never spent an extended amount of time together. Their personalities were so different, yet so alike. They were both strong, determined women—Katie in an outward, aggressive manner, and Tracy in her gentle, firm, uncompromising way.

  Then, as if Tracy sensed the same tension with Katie, she fell back a few steps next to Katie, and Christy heard her say. “I really appreciate you being flexible. I’m looking forward to going to the Tower of London tomorrow. We’ll have more time then. I’m sure it’ll work out and be much better than trying to go now.”

  Katie didn’t respond at first. Then, as they crossed the street to Westminster Abbey, Christy heard Katie say, “Do you always get your way, Tracy?”

  Christy wanted to turn around and scold Katie for saying such a thing, but Doug quickly looped his arm around Christy’s shoulders and spoke softly in her ear. “Let the
two of them work it out, Chris. Trust me. It’s the best way for both of them.”

  Christy had to trust Doug. There wasn’t much she could do. She strained to listen as Tracy, in her gentle yet firm way, told Katie that they needed to work together as a team and do what was best for the group.

  “Right,” Katie responded. “It would help though, if the group were making more of the decisions and not just you.”

  “You’re right. Katie. After this, we’ll all decide what to do next,” Tracy said.

  They were at the door of the old stone building, and Christy realized she had hardly paid attention to what the church looked like. She entered solemnly. A sign by the door indicated an admission fee of three pounds.

  “Three pounds!” Katie blurted out. “I’m not paying to go inside a church! I’m waiting right here. You guys can go in without me.”

  “I think the charge is only for a tour, Katie,” Doug said quietly. ’I don’t think we have to pay anything to look around this part.”

  The four entered the tourist-filled sanctuary with Katie lagging behind. They walked around, quietly observing the statues, memorials, and engravings on the stone floor that identified who was buried beneath their feet.

  “Look,” Doug said to Christy, pointing to the large letters etched on the floor in front of him. “David Livingstone is buried here. He was that famous missionary to Africa. Did you know that they brought his body back here to England, but they took out his heart and buried it in Africa because that’s where his heart was—with the African people? Is that awesome or what?”

  Christy wasn’t sure it was awesome. Bizarre might be a better adjective. It sounded like something Todd would do.

  Todd. Where did that thought come from?

  Christy impulsively reached over, took Doug’s hand, and squeezed it tight. “Doug, do you want to be a missionary to some far-off place?”