Falling in Love With English Boys (16 page)
He leaned forward, quite towering over me, and looked very fierce. “War is not romantic, Katherine, or theatrical. It is hell, pure and simple. It is not dinners and shiny uniforms and commandeered French wine. It is week after week of slogging through mud in split boots under enemy fire. It is arriving at your fortress with but half your regiment still alive and all your rations gone, only to find rats in the stores. It is entering a town after it has been under siege for months and seeing more small crosses at the walls than children in the streets! It is surviving and coming home when many, many far better men did not!
“For God’s sake, Katherine, think occasionally! With the amount of brain I have seen you using since arriving in Town, you make precisely half of a sensible person. Beauty and liveliness might get you admiration from others, but I cannot imagine that you see much to admire when you look deeply into your mirror!”
He was so angry. The scar, whose origin I still do not know, stood out against his anger-flushed skin. For a moment, I wanted to slap him. He would not strike back. I have known him long enough and well enough to be certain of that. Then, suddenly, I wanted to cry. I had no idea, I realised, if he would comfort me.
I fled, before I could learn that he would not.
Charles was waiting nearby. He handed me his handkerchief and a cup of lemonade, and blocked me from public view until I could compose myself.
“You shouldn’t mind him, Kitty,” he said at last. “He doesn’t like to talk about it, about Vittoria. It was . . . frightful, I think.”
“I do not mean to be silly,” I sniffled. “I do not think I am meant to be.”
“Of course you don’t. You aren’t. You are meant to be luminous.”
I blinked at that, pleased. “How poetic of you, Charles.”
He smiled and tapped me under the chin. “Wasn’t me, old girl. It was Everard.” When I started to smile, he shook his head. “Don’t get complacent. He said you are meant to be luminous, but seem only to manage shiny.”
Well. How frustratingly like him.
“Now promise me you won’t keep on pestering the poor fellow. I’ll be back on the Continent sooner or later. I’ll send you long letters, full of gruesome details.”
Luminous. I am meant to be luminous. If Nicholas Everard, boor that he is, sees that, Thomas Baker must certainly as well.
Our Ackermann’s this month is full of dresses simply meant to be worn by a bride. I find my mind filled with pale silk and satin, with delicate net and lace, and sprays of sweet pea. Everywhere there are thoughts of matrimony. Miss Henrietta Quinn has accepted Mr. Troughton. They shall have their wedding in July. Their children shall be very sweet. They will have very pretty blond curls, and no chins whatsoever.
Mama received word yesterday that Miss Cameron is to be married. And to Mr. Piper, the parson! Mama is quite pleased for her. Miss Cameron, with her mousy hair, twitchy fingers, and drab grey dresses. To be Mrs. Piper, with that funny little house that looks green in sunlight and always smells of damp.
Still, I must confess I am pleased for her. Miss Cameron is a good sort of lady. She has always been kind to me, even when I could not be bothered to practice or recite or pay attention, and in those times when I was not very kind to her.
If one squints a bit, Mr. Piper could be found quite handsome. He has always seemed perfectly pleasant, and Mama says he has a gentleman’s manners and a sense of humour that most gentlemen do not possess. I do hope he will make Miss Cameron happy. I shall be happy to have her nearby in the parsonage
I do not recall what I’d meant to write about the parsonage. I was interrupted by the arrival of far less happy news than that of Miss Cameron’s engagement.
We have just had word that Charles must go, and so much sooner than we could have imagined. Napoleon has taken more of France and will try to take Belgium. Charles’s regiment is being sent abroad, to halt the Little General’s march. He leaves tomorrow.
I do hope it is not too long before he returns. If all goes as it
must
, if I am to have an autumn wedding, he
must
be home by September. I would not care at all to have to be married in the cold dead of winter (or, even worse, have to wait even longer!) because my brother is cavorting with his fellow soldiers in Brussels.
I shall miss him. Frightfully.
July 14
I’ll Take You There
Okay, so I gotta find ten places ditzy Miss Kitty visited and Will will take me there.
In case I haven’t mentioned it already, this is what Katherine does with her life:
1. shops
2. eats
3. dances
4. rhapsodizes about a guy
Don’t say it, any of you. I will change the password of this blog and not tell you what the new one is.
I don’t dance.
Not here, anyway.
Now, considering that there were no department stores in 1815, restaurants were of the pub-grub-tavern-wench variety, and I don’t think the London club scene exactly welcomed nice girls, I’m a tad stumped. And there is no, I repeat
no
way I’m going back to the BM with Will. Once we’re old and gray and can laugh about such things, we can go back to the place we met and have a good chuckle. Until such time...
I’ve been rereading and reskimming. Jeez, enough about Mr. Baker, already. But I did find some possibles among the punch and poetry (which, I feel compelled to agree with that angry Nick dude, still sounds like bad copies of Byron). This is serious, goils. Will has offered me near-total access to him for ten different occasions. Which, even if combined into trips of two, makes for five very nice days.
(He can’t mean ten in one day, could he? Or even three? No. No, no, no, no, no. I need to make very sure I choose ten things that require a minimum of five days. Barring Love at First Sight—which was me sailing at him across the BM floor like a baboon on skates—five days should be enough. Right?)
Was Notting Hill a First Date? I can’t very well ask, can I? Will’s so
British
; I feel intrusive even asking what’s on his iPod. “So, BritBoy, are we dating yet?” is beyond contemplation. I mean, Notting Hill kinda fits the criteria: Boy took Girl to Someplace, that someplace being a place he didn’t already need to be, and that someplace involved consumption of both food and drink. No sports, education, or group of friends were involved. Definitely Date.
But then there was that impromptu “Mother requested/got some time to kill” thang, too. Definitely Not-Date.
Sadly, I fear, (S)mother trumps Someplace. But I look on this as an opportunity. I have been given the chance to Create-a-Date. Ten, in fact. Yay. The prob? All ten locations have to have been mentioned in a two-hundred-year-old diary, written by Princess Poesy. Bleagh. And Boy might not be thinking Date.
An insurmountable challenge, you say?
Nay.
Never underestimate the power of a good speed-skim and the Internet. Ladies, I have found my ten places. Each and every one meets Will’s criteria
and
mine.
His:
• mentioned by Katherine
• still in existence
Mine:
• no (s)mother
• no dust
• no “mates,” “blokes,” or “posse”
• requires a minimum of two hours to fully appreciate, as I intend to give Will as much time as possible to fully appreciate me
Drumroll, please.
www.flickr.com/groups/hampsteadheath/
Why: Pix, people. Look at the pix. It’s one great big, beautiful picnic waiting to happen. I’ll pack chicken-and-rocket sandwiches (“rocket,” I have since discovered to my great relief and pleasure, is just arugula), fizzy lemonade, salt-and-vinegar crisps, and a big (but not too big—gotta keep close) blanket to sit on. Professor Fungus has one. It’s purple plaid. Probably for the bed, but what she don’t know won’t hoit her. Me n’ Will n’ hundreds of acres of grass and ponds and sunshine on our shoulders.
Why not: Unless it rains . . . It won’t rain.
I’ll wear jeans (don’t want to take the pastoral thang too far) and a floaty top. I’ll paint my toenails and wear sandals. I’ll carefully avoid all goose poop.
2. The Theatre Royal, Haymarket
Why: Nighttime. Pretheater dinner. I don’t care what’s playing. I will be sitting right smack next to Will in semidarkness for two hours. Never mind the hard chair arm between us; if sitting through every Adam Sandler, Sasha Baron Cohen, and Jack Black movie of the last year with Adam the Scum taught me anything, it’s that if one person slides their arm forward a little and the other tucks around them, holding hands in the theater is easy peasy lemon squeezy and very nice.
Nighttime.
Should I say it again? Nighttime.
Why not: There goes my allowance for the month, not to mention a chunk of the b-day money I will inevitably get from the grand’rents.
I’ll wear a little black dress. H&M is full of them. Only they’re red or silver or deep-sea blue. I’ll wear one of those. And heels. And just enough Coco Mademoiselle to reach him. Note to self: wash hair late that day, so as to be sweet-smelling just in case that Head-on-Shoulder opportunity arises.
Nighttime. He’ll insist on seeing me home. He’s that kinda guy. And if there’s ever, ever gonna be a first kiss, and it doesn’t happen on the velvet heath grass overlooking London Town, this is the time.
Note to self: Altoids.
Why: Face it, when it comes to doomed queens, we’re all ghouls, right, Ghoulfriends?
Why not: Tourists. Lots of them, many American, polyester-clad, wanting to see the ghosts. I don’t count as a tourist. I don’t. I won’t ask about the ghosts. I’ll let the tourists do that, then I’ll make sure we go where the tour guides tell them to go.
I’ll wear whatever makes me look most English. I’ll channel Anne Boleyn. From the time before Henry got tired of her, when she was making the most powerful man in the world fall so in love with her that he forsaked (fine, Keri, but you try saying “forsook” with a straight face) his religion.
I don’t want Will to forsake his religion. Buddhism, even of the nominal variety, is way cool. I just like that “forsaking all others” idea. You know, the one that comes soon after “Dearly Beloved . . .”
www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde_park/
Why: See most of #1. Picnic. Blanket. Sunshine.
They call it “London’s Personal Space.” Which means, in order to give London its personal space, I must take up as little space as possible, which means being as close to Will as possible. Scientific fact: Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Cat fact: It sure is fun to try. We’ll feed the ducks in the Serpentine. We’ll wander aimlessly among the flowers. He’ll buy me some. We’ll make fun of the rollerbladers in their spandex and kneepads.
Why not: See Why Not #1. This is, after all, London.
I’ll wear blue. Like the sky. Like his eyes. Oh, stop with the gagging motions, all of you. Ambience. Y’know?
Why: Byron isn’t buried there (Seems like half of English history is buried there. Inside. Which adds a small ick factor, but what the hey), but he has a plaque in Poet’s Corner anyway. I’ve been reading my Byron. I can stand over his (not)grave and recite:
So we’ll go no more aroving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more aroving
By the light of the moon.
Pretty, huh? Pretty sad, huh? I can do melancholy. It goes with
my
eyes.
I can say hi to Charles Dickens and Anne of Cleves (a wife Henry VIII
didn’t
kill). He can have a mano a mano with Samuel Johnson.
Why not: See aforementioned ick factor. We do not want the boy to think I am a ghoul. But then, I’ve never met a guy who didn’t have some ghoul in him, too. It’s a Metrospectral thang. A combined zillion
Friday the 13ths
,
Chainsaw Massacre
s, and
I Know What You Did on Elm Street last Halloween
sez it all.
I’ll wear something black. A hat with a veil would be overkill, no? Maybe just my Lucky black hoodie with the wings on the back. Seems right for church, no? With a skirt.
Why: Yeah, yeah, more lawns and plants. And a Chinese Pagoda and a fair amount of fungi. I’ll check out Professor Fungus’s books and do a little reading up. I’ll point out the poisonous ’shrooms. We’ll compare lists of who we would feed spore s’mores to (not enough to kill, of course, just enough to induce several days of appropriate digestive distress). We’ll relive our slightly-macabre-but-nonetheless-sweet visits to the Tower and Abbey. We’ll be cute like Morticia and Gomez Addams.
Why not: See #s 1 and 4. Why not, too: Ya seen two massive urban plant places, ya seen ’em all.
I’ll wear a floaty dress. I’ll buy a floaty dress. Or maybe Consuelo will lend me one. Yeah, right, like I’m going to fit even half of me into her size-0 Temperleys. But she would let me try. That’s what matters.