The English American (12 page)

W
HILE
I
WAIT FOR
W
ALT
,
I show up at work, because there I can call Billie and my grandfather courtesy of Drury Lane Publications. But I haven’t sold an ad since I got back from America, and my bank balance is getting dangerously low.

I tell my friends and family that the reason I can’t see anybody is because I am the sole emotional support for an Australian girl I met traveling, who just returned from Rajasthan with a mysterious, debilitating disease.

But each night, as soon as work is over, I head for the bedroom in my flat as fast as I can and sit, smoking, with the curtains drawn, waiting for Walt’s calls.

Walt says e-mail’s not safe and that he can only call at certain times. His calls from Afghanistan usually come in the middle of the night.

“This place is a wild, double-dealing, malevolent, ungovernable cesspool,” he says. “It’s run by a bizarre conglomeration of unimaginably ruthless warlords, tribal chiefs, and religious fanatics. Few Westerners have lived here long enough to fully understand it.”

“Are you sure you’re safe?” I ask for the umpteenth time.

Walt laughs, as he has every time I’ve asked that question. I know his laughter is meant to reassure me. And it does. Sort of.

“I’m safer here than I would be crossing the street in Washington, D.C.,” Walt says. “I’m surrounded by the U.S. Army.”

I picture the huge Americans dressed in heavy combat gear that I’ve seen on the news surrounding my father, who for some reason, in my mind’s eye, is wearing a linen suit and yellow bow tie.

He tells me the battle he’s in the middle of fighting has something to do with winning a contract to help rebuild the country. Walt has devoted the last eight months of his life to the project and has invested every penny he has.

“The game’s over, kid. You have to pay baksheesh to operate effectively in Afghanistan. But I’m working for a governmental organization, and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits paying bribes. It’s a catch-22.”

I don’t fully understand what he’s talking about, but I don’t want him to think I’m stupid, so I say, “Oh yes,” a lot and hope whatever he’s doing allows him to come to London soon.

On November 6, Neville rings my doorbell over and over again.

“Pip? Are you in?” he says.

The kitchen is buried in dirty dishes, cereal packets and empty boxes of Jaffa cakes. If I let him in he’ll know something’s up.

“No!” I say.

Neville rings the doorbell again.

“All
right
! I’m coming!”

Neville looks unusually dapper tonight, and I’m surprised by how glad I am to see him. So the outside world
is
still there.

“This is bad, even by your standards, Pip,” he says, wrinkling his nose at the debris.

“I know.”

“Where’s the Rajasthani?”

“She’s not a Rajasthani! She’s an Australian girl just back from Rajasthan.”

Great. Now I’m insisting on accuracy regarding the ethnicity of a girl I’ve completely made up.

“Well, where is she? Under the table? Nope. Under the chair? Nope.”

“She’s not here!” I say, laughing.

“Good. Then you can come out with me.”

Neville can be bossier than Charlotte on a bossy day, and there’s no point in arguing with him, so I jump into the first shower I’ve had in days, throw on my velvet trousers and the only clean blouse I can find, and head out the door.

Looking across the tube at the cousin I love most, I wish I could tell him what’s going on inside me. But even if I understood it myself—I don’t—I certainly have no idea how to articulate it.

We are headed for Dial a Date, a new bar in the city. Every table has a telephone on it and a number above it. You sit at a table, buying expensive drinks, and telephone people at other tables if you fancy them. We’ve been there two minutes when the phone at our table rings.

“You’ve got—let me count here—one call and four people on hold,” I say to Neville.

“They’re not calling me, you idiot.”

I look around me. It’s not that the men are bad looking. I just have zero interest in being picked up by anyone at a bar. So I pretend to go to the loo, invite the blonde at table nine to take my place opposite Neville, and spring for a taxi home. So I can lie, curled up by the fire, as I have done every night for the past three weeks, waiting for a call from my father.

That night I get home to Walt’s booming American voice on my Ansafone: “Hi there, kid, it’s me. I’ll be arriving at Heathrow from Kabul at three fifty p.m. tomorrow on Indian Airlines flight twelve fifty-four. Can you be there to meet my plane?”

I
WEAR MY GREEN
M
ARKS AND
S
PENCER
cardigan with a leotard under it, a knee-length skirt, and a pair of sneakers. I wait at the rail, with the taxi drivers holding up signs for businessmen coming off the flight, which is two hours late. I keep peering at the people coming out at arrivals, adrenaline running wildly. I tell the minicab driver on my left that I’m meeting my father, but I’m not sure that I’ll recognize him.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“When I was five days old.”

“That’s different,” he says. Then he tells me that he’s “mightily pissed off” because the plane is late and he wants to get home to his tea.

I’m looking at the entrance when, amidst a stream of chattering Afghanis in long white robes, pushing heavily laden baggage carts, I see a tall man in a dark blue suit headed in my direction. He’s pulling a large suitcase. He has a strong, confident presence, and, like Dad, he has a full head of hair. Only Walt’s hair isn’t white. It’s the same color as mine. And he looks like me. I mean, he really looks like me!

He stops and looks at me.

Is it you? I mouth. He nods. Then he stops.

I climb under the rail and run into his outstretched arms, in the middle of the arrivals lane, surrounded by streams of people speaking Arabic. I hug him tight. Here he is, at last.

Instead of the numbness I’ve felt ever since I met Billie, I suddenly feel very much alive. I know—in my knower—that this is the parent I have been waiting for. Finally. He is here.

His breath smells of whiskey. I pull back.

“You’re not an alcoholic, too, are you?” I say.

“Good God no!” he says, laughing. “I had a bourbon on the plane to help me sleep. Haven’t had a drink since I got to Kabul. Whiskey’s hard to come by there. So I ate a lot of ice cream instead.”

“Do they make good ice cream in Kabul?”

“Not as good as Ben and Jerry’s.” He’s smiling broadly, staring at me. “You look exactly as I thought you would,” he says.

We laugh. I babble. We get into Typhoo, which has never looked so clean, and I start driving. I can’t remember much of what we talk about. I know that we both keep taking deep breaths. I know that I feel wholly comfortable, and relieved. I know that there is something that feels undeniably right about his being there.

He keeps looking at me, laughing and saying, “Oh…my…God.” I ask about his children. He tells me that his daughter, Ashley, “does good” working with people with special needs, and that his son Edwin sells advertising space on the telephone.

“But that’s what I do!” I say.

He looks at me again. “Oh…my…God.”

Ashley and Edwin are definitely not names you’d call a Brit. Any more than you’d call an American Phillippa. Or Nicola. Or Hamish. Or Fiona. Or Tarquin.

“My family all disapprove of me,” he says. “They want me to settle down and get a nine-to-five job. They spend all their time praying for me.”

“Oh dear,” I say. “I mean, I believe in God and everything, but—”

“But what?” Walt looks like he really wants to know.

“Well, whenever I meet a religious person, it makes me want to say ‘fuck.’”

Walt roars with the kind of laughter that keeps coming back once it’s died down.

Somehow I drive him safely to the hotel I booked for him to stay in—the Cone Court in Holland Park—very pink, cozy, and full of eccentric antiques and prints on the walls.

“This is my father,” I say to the hotel receptionist. Walt laughs and says, “Nobody’s going to believe that with our accents being so different.”

I say I’ll wait in the lobby while he has a shower and changes. He says, “No, come up with me, I don’t want you out of my sight for a second.”

We go to his room. It’s tiny and as pink as the lobby, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Should I change my shirt?” he asks.

“No need,” I say. “I mean, you don’t smell or anything.” He starts laughing again.

“But if you want to…,” I say.

While he’s unpacking he takes a baseball cap out of his suitcase. “Have it,” he says. “I’ve had it for years. It’s something that is truly mine. It’s my Orioles hat.” I look at him blankly.

“That’s the baseball team we support,” he says.

“Oh,” I say, putting it on. It’s slightly too big, so I pull my hair through the back and tighten the clasp. “Thank you.”

I give him the cricket sweater I bought him, and also the thermal underwear from Damart, which I reckon he might need, London in November being particularly chilly this year.

“I’m not that old and frail you know.” He’s laughing again, putting the sweater around his shoulders.

We walk downstairs to the lobby, looking at each other every few seconds, sometimes catching each other in the act. The autumn leaves are swirling in the wind as I walk him toward Holland Park where we find a pub that, to Walt’s delight, is called the Frog and Firkin. He buys me a gin and tonic and buys himself a beer. We sit opposite each other, in a little wooden alcove, on benches with maroon cushion covers on them.

We talk and talk. I tell him how strongly I needed to find him—that I knew, as soon as I met Billie, that it was terribly important. We talk—and then stop—and then look at each other with recognition.

“You’re beautiful,” he says.

“No, I’m not,” I say.

“You are,” he says.

I want to cry. I do cry. He looks at me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “This is completely out of character. I’m usually pretty sensible.”

“Sensible!” he says. “God, I hope you’re not!” I roar with laughter this time.

“Well—I try to be. Sometimes,” I say. “But it’s not all that much fun.” We’re both holding our glasses at the same angle, smiling, like children.

“What were you thinking we’d do tonight?” he says. “I could take you to
My Fair Lady
.”

I remember going to see
My Fair Lady
with Dad when I was about eight. I loved it so much, I learned all the parts on holiday in Scotland one year and performed a two-person version of it with Sally Gibbs, to our parents. Actually we performed it in the bathroom of the farmhouse we were staying in, because it was the warmest room in the house. The grown-ups all sat around the heated towel rack, and Sally and I performed the entire musical for them on the ledge in front of the bath. It’s my favorite musical, and it’s Dad’s favorite musical. Thinking of Dad, for a second I feel guilty and disloyal.

“Aren’t you tired?” I ask, bringing my attention quickly back to Walt. “It was a long flight, and with the time change and everything…”

“Good God, no! The night is young!”

“How long are you staying for?”

“I’m here on a twenty-hour stopover,” Walt says. We fall silent.

“Can I put in a request to just go out to dinner and talk?”

In the taxi, on our way into the West End, Walt tells me that my grandmother ran a marathon at seventy-two. And that my great-grandmother, who’s ninety-two, drives a red sports car with the top down and was recently photographed in a leather pantsuit on the back of a Harley-Davidson. He tells me that her mother was half Cherokee Indian.

Thank God, I think. Longevity—and sanity. Eccentric old ladies on Harleys I can deal with.

“You have Billie’s laugh,” he says.

“I know,” I say. It still feels odd, suddenly sharing parts of myself—that I used to think of as unique—with somebody else.

We walk past Trafalgar Square, along the Strand, past the Savoy Theatre, where my friend Rachel is playing the oboe in
The Three-penny Opera
, and end up in Bertorelli, an Italian restaurant in Covent Garden. We talk for an hour and a half before ordering anything but cocktails, which I explain to the waiter aren’t “cocktails” but a predinner drink.

And then I have to ask Walt about Billie. He takes a sip of his drink. Then, in a soft voice, he says, “Billie was magnificent. No one could come close.

“I first met her in New York. In the lobby of the Waldorf. I was twenty-two years old. I’d just delivered a speech for the Young Conservatives and was in the lobby, talking to her father—your grandfather—who shared my views on communism. I had heard wonderful things about him and was glad to meet him.”

I picture my grandfather and my father meeting as much younger men. Tough, smart and valiant—the best of their respective generations—they would have impressed anyone.

“Suddenly this extraordinary woman walked up to me,” Walt says. “She was alight with life and beautiful and all I could see. Her eyes were full of wit and intelligence and laughter. And her fragrance—oh…” He takes a deep breath and leans back in his chair, remembering.

“That night the great Pearl Bailey was in the Cedar Room. Just after her last number Frank Sinatra surprised everyone by walking up on the stage, and the two of them brought the house down with ‘A Little Learnin’ Is a Dangerous Thing.’ It was an unforgettable night. In every way.”

He stops. He looks at me.

“From that night on, we saw each other as often as we could, usually when I was in New York, staying at the Waldorf.

“When we found out she was with child, I went to Margaret and asked for a divorce. In half a minute, the gentle woman I married turned into someone I didn’t recognize.”

Walt takes another sip of whiskey. There is silence between us.

“Mother flew in,” Walt says, finally. “She played every card she had. ‘There has never been a divorce in this family,’ Mother said. ‘You will bring disgrace upon the family, upon Margaret, upon yourself—and you will ruin your political career.’”

He tells me that when he and Billie “hit town” people would whisper, “Who are they?” And before they knew it, they’d be at the center of a crowd.

I watch my father across the dinner table. I can see he is still under Billie’s spell.

“Do you enjoy living in a big city, Pippa? Do you enjoy going out at night?”

“Yes,” I say, “But I hate nightclubs. They make my ears hurt.”

“It’s no fun unless you’re with somebody exciting,” he says.

I’ve never met anyone anywhere near as exciting as Billie and Walt. Except Nick.

Walt watches me while I’m eating. He looks at my arm. “The way your arm bends is exactly the same as Billie’s,” he says. He looks at my hands. “Billie’s hands,” he says.

“Yes.”

He tells me a little about his wife, Margaret. “She’s very good,” he says. “Billie isn’t ‘good.’ But at bottom there’s pure diamond. Real strength.”

He tells me that Margaret was very beautiful when she was young, and that when Jackie Onassis walked into a room, followed by Margaret, all eyes would be turned on Margaret. He also tells me that Jackie was always photographed from the waist up, because she thought she had thick ankles and big feet.

“Did you love your wife?” I say.

“Hold out your hands, Pippa.” I hold my hands out across my linguini. “Now look at them.”

I look at my hands.

“Now, if you had to, which hand would you cut off?”

I understand. I can’t eat anymore.

I ask him whether or not the stability and lack of passion in his marriage enabled him to go out and fight the dragons he has fought in his life. That if he had been wanting to be at home with his loved one all the time, maybe he wouldn’t have achieved so much. He looks at me closely and does not deny it.

“Do you really think that if you and Billie had got married that your marriage would have lasted?”

“Of course,” he says.

I am not so sure. Neither is Billie. I remember that Billie told me one of the reasons she doesn’t think their marriage would have lasted was because they were too alike. They both had so much energy, if they’d tried to make a life together, there would have been an explosion.

I think of Nick again.

Walt asks me what I think about the Iraq war. I tell him how profoundly wrong I felt it was, right from the very start. I tell him that I think America as self-appointed international policeman is terrifying. I tell him how sickened I am that millions of people, including myself, sit riveted to news about the war while eating cheese on toast in front of the television.

“And as for George Bush? I can’t bear thinking about him. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, ‘The fellow seems to possess one idea, and that idea is wrong.’”

Walt doesn’t say a word. But when I am finished, he leans back in his chair, smiles broadly, and says, “So this is what happens when you’re raised in a country teeming with socialists.”

I have no idea whether or not he means what he has just said, and he has no intention of enlightening me. He seems to be enjoying himself thoroughly.

And then, in a serious, ponderous “this is how I talk about war” sort of voice, he says, “The mistake we made—and it was a colossal one—was to react before taking the time to understand why 9/11 happened. Those Saudi Arabians did not fly those planes into the World Trade Center to protest the Bill of Rights. They flew those planes into the World Trade Center because they wanted us to get the hell off Muslim soil. It was a huge mistake, and we’ll pay for it for the next hundred years.”

“But I thought you were a conservative?” I say, surprised by how relieved I feel by his answer.

Walt laughs. “Daughter of mine, I am a conservative. And so are you.”

“Oh no I’m bloody not,” I say, pointing at him, my brows knit together, in what Charlotte has always called my “contradict me and die” look, which I now realize I inherited from the man sitting opposite me.

“You are.” Walt’s pointing at me, leaning toward me in exactly the same way I’m leaning toward him. When we realize we’re mirroring each other exactly, we get the mad laughs, after which Walt orders two glasses of port.

“Conservatism is in your genes.” Walt’s teasing me now. I won’t rise to this. “From what you’ve told me about it, your play’s about socialism killing the individual spirit.”

“No, it’s not! It’s about fascism, about what will happen if the conservatives have their way in Europe! I’m not a bloody conservative, Walt.”

“It’s George Bush who isn’t—as you put it—a bloody conservative.”

“What do you mean?”

“The whole concept of preemptive war takes America as far from the wishes of our founding fathers as it is possible for us to go.”