Read The English American Online
Authors: Alison Larkin
T
HE DAY BEFORE
I am to go back to England, I tell Billie I really, really want to speak to my father.
“Well of course you can speak to him any time you want. But—well, we haven’t had that long together, just you and me.”
“It’s been wonderful, Billie. Really it has, it’s just that, well, he is my father.”
Billie has been vague about the whereabouts of Walt’s number ever since I met her. Now she reaches into her poppy red handbag, takes out her address book, and reads Walt’s number to me.
“It’s his home number on Marsama Beach,” she says. “You’ll probably get his wife, but she’ll know where he is. Why don’t I make the call?”
“Please let me,” I say to Billie. “Besides, I’ve got an idea.”
Quickly, before she can change her mind, I call Walt’s number. A woman’s voice answers.
“Hallo,” I say, in my most authoritative voice. “My name is Pippa Dunn. I am calling from the BBC.” No one would refuse to talk to someone from the BBC. “I’d like to speak to Walt Markham, please.” I’m so convincing, I half believe I am from the BBC.
“He’s not here,” the woman says. She sounds friendly. “He’s in Kabul.”
“Kabul, Afghanistan?” I say. God, how stupid. Of course Kabul’s in Afghanistan. Everyone at the BBC knows that.
“Yes,” she says.
“What’s he doing there?”
“Well, I don’t really know!” she says. She sounds intrigued and curious herself. Like the mother of an adored child who knows her son is in some kind of mischief, but that’s just the way he is, and—oh—she’ll just have to live with it.
I can tell from the way she speaks that she loves him, and I feel guilty for deceiving her. But the voice inside me is becoming more and more insistent. I need, need, need to meet my father.
“Do you know when he’ll be back, Mrs. Markham?”
“Well, you can never be sure with Walt,” she says. “It could be weeks.”
I can’t wait weeks. It would kill me.
“Do you have a number for him in Afghanistan?” I say. “I’m wanting to interview him for an upcoming piece on the World Service.”
I pronounce “Afghanistan” with a long
a
, just like someone from the BBC World Service would pronounce “Afghanistan.” I half expect to hear “Lillibullero” chiming out behind me. I used to hear it every day, blaring out from Dad’s black shortwave radio, announcing the arrival of
News Hour
. He kept the radio next to his bed, no matter which country we were living in.
“I’ll go get the number for you,” Walt’s wife is saying.
When she gives it to me, I thank her and put down the phone.
I jump in the air holding the number. “I’ve got it Billie! I’ve got it!”
“Afghanistan?” Billie says.
Before she can raise any objections, I start dialing. Afghanistan is eight and a half hours ahead. It’ll be six in the evening in Kabul.
I take a deep breath as I listen to the phone ring. He has to be there. He has to.
In my mind’s eye, I can see my long-lost father in a room with a desk and a phone and a tall, dust-covered window, in the heart of downtown Kabul. He’s looking out onto a dusty street. There’s a boy, kicking a can along a dusty road next to a white boxlike building. And American soldiers and tanks. Everywhere.
Now I can see a telephone on my father’s desk, covered with papers. It’s ringing now. A faraway sounding ring, but it’s definitely ringing. Walt’s hand is reaching for the phone.
The line is surprisingly clear. He picks up right on cue, as if I willed it.
“Markham here.” The voice is gruff and sounds very American. No matter. He’s there.
“Hallo,” I say. I swallow. It’s all happened so quickly I’ve had no time to think about what I’ll say. I find myself stammering. “Um, my name’s Pippa. We—uh—we last met twenty-eight years ago. I was very small.”
There’s another pause. Then he says, “Oh…my…God.”
And then, shaking, I hand the phone to Billie.
“Walt? It’s Billie.”
“Oh…my…God,” he says again. I can hear him from two feet away.
“Yes,” Billie says softly. “She’s finally here.”
They’re both silent for a second.
Then Billie is talking fast, with lots of excitement, telling him all about how I found her, what we’ve been doing, everything.
“If I had to describe her in just one word what would it be? Delightful. I’ve experienced her that way. Everyone who’s met her has experienced her that way. And she’s beautiful! Yes! I know! And she’s got so much energy, and she bounces, Walt, be warned!…You heard it? Of course you did.”
When Billie speaks again, the pitch of her voice has dropped low. For emphasis, I think. She’s mesmerizing when she speaks in a low voice. You can’t not listen to her when she does this.
“Walt, honey,” she says, “I just hope that when you meet your daughter you don’t feel so much you just expire of ecstasy.”
Billie is sharing the receiver with me now, so I can hear what Walt is saying.
“I’ve been fighting the biggest battle of my life. But I’ll be leaving soon.”
“Are you in any kind of danger?”
“Not at all,” Walt says.
“Are you going to tell me anything more about it?”
“I can’t. Now put her back on, Billie.”
Billie hands me the phone.
I can’t say anything. My throat has constricted. The anxious feeling that kept gnawing at me, insisting I connect with Walt, has stopped. The numbness has gone. I’m filled with a sense of utter relief. I’m afraid that if I loosen my grip, he will go away. He doesn’t.
“So you’ve come,” he says, finally.
“Yes,” I say.
“I will rearrange my flight and fly to London on my way back from Kabul,” he says. “I’m almost done here. It shouldn’t be long now.”
“Good,” I say. He’s coming to see me. Thank God.
Walt feels the relief I feel. I know he does, because just before he hangs up, during a few seconds of silence between us, I hear Walt exhale. And it sounds like air is being let out of a bicycle tire.
Billie and I talk about Walt long into the night.
“Could he be with the CIA?” I ask.
Billie shakes her head. “There’s no knowing with Walt.”
The Pippa who left England two weeks earlier would have been shocked and appalled that there’s even a possibility that Walt is working for the U.S. government in Afghanistan. But at that moment I don’t care what Walt does for a living. I don’t even care that he’s a conservative—or used to be. I’m just grateful he’s safe, and alive, and coming to see me in London.
When I go to his cabin to say good-bye to him the next day, Earl is on his third bowl of Froot Loops. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that he’s been smoking marijuana.
“He lost his appetite,” Billie says. “So I got him some pot. Everybody knows pot gives you the munchies.”
Earl may be eating more than he has in a while, but he looks tired and old and his arms feel like twigs when he hugs me good-bye. As I leave, he looks me directly in the eyes. “Even when you’re hurting so bad you can’t move, and you will,” he says quietly, “welcome the pain, Granddaughter. Because, when it really hurts, when the difficulties are truly difficult…What I’m saying is, welcome the difficulties. ’Cause it’s them you learn from.”
As I sit on the plane, flying from the mother who gave me birth back to the family that raised me, I understand completely how Pandora must have felt. Now the box is open, there can be no closing it again.
W
HEN
I
RETURNED FROM
A
MERICA
that August, Mum, Dad, Charlotte, and Rupert were all at Heathrow to meet me. I was so happy to see them, I almost cried. But I stopped myself. I wanted them to think that the visit had brought me the peace of mind I hoped it would.
On the way back home in the car I regaled them with the tale of the man with moonshine and my encounter with Molly Alice, keeping to the periphery.
And then Charlotte asked, “What’s she like?”
I couldn’t tell them she’s fun and creative and thought my striped-tights-around-my-suitcase solution was genius. Or that it felt so right to learn that I had come from a family of artists, or how thrilled I was to learn that she had worked with creative people all her life.
I couldn’t tell them that I was longing for some time to be quiet and alone. So I could try to absorb everything that just happened.
And so I said, “Well, she talks a lot. I mean, a lot.”
“Hah!” Charlotte said, laughing.
“And she’s a terrible cook. And she’s very untidy.”
I looked at their faces in the car, bursting with love for all of them. “You see, Dad? My untidiness is genetic!”
“That’s no excuse,” he said sternly.
I smiled, crammed between Charlotte and Rupert in the backseat.
And then Charlotte and Rupert told me they’re moving to Bath.
And Mum and Dad told me how Rupert’s little cousin pushed Boris into the swimming pool while I was away. And about how Dad tried to fish Boris out with the swimming pool net and almost drowned him. And all about how Dad and Rupert jumped into the pool fully clothed to rescue him.
I sat back in the car, listening to their voices, knowing that enough had been said. For them, it was done. Over. It was a journey someone they knew and loved went on. And then she came home.
Only I wasn’t home. Not at all.
I waited weeks and weeks for my father’s visit to London. Until his arrival, nightly e-mails to and from Nick kept me sane.
DATE: September 12
FROM: [email protected]
Dear Nick,
You’re right. I have been in a daze ever since I got back from Georgia. Pictures of my long-lost relatives balancing spoons at the end of their noses, pouring lemonade in my grandfather’s cabin, his prayer before Billie fed us: “Of what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly tolerant. Amen.”
Something deep within me has clicked into place. I feel ready for full life as opposed to half life.
I’ve doubted myself for so long. Probably because the essence of who I am is so completely different from the family that raised me. But now—well, I’m finally starting to trust the instincts that told me to find Billie. And Walt.
And then there’s you. And the fact that Billie works with artists. And the fact that you long to leave the banking business and become a full-time artist yourself. Tell me more about your paintings.
The end of an English summer. The air is crisp. I have an old gas fire in my room. It’s on low. Orange light. Lovely.
Love, Pip
P.S. My mother has told me to ask my father what he remembers about their time together. I asked him. He says he remembers everything, and he’s going to tell me when we meet. I hope it will be soon. We speak on the phone every third day or so. He’s going to come as soon as he can.
I thought it was supposed to be the other way round. Women remembering everything, men being fuzzy on the details. Which led me to wondering what, if anything, you remember about me?
My heart beat a little faster as I pressed Send. His answer told me everything.
DATE: September 13
FROM: [email protected]
Pippa, you intrigue me. You open your soul for a second, so it touches mine. And then you end your letter in a way that reminds me you are also a flesh and blood woman, wanting to know what I remember of you.
What will you think of men now, or of me, when I tell you?
I was half drunk and mildly depressed, leaning against a rail watching an excessively dull game of cricket at Steeplehurst. I was home on leave from Singapore and wondering, as I always did, why I bothered coming back to England when absolutely nothing about it ever changes.
And then I noticed you. You were sitting on a blanket, next to a picnic basket and a woman in an absurdly large hat, trying valiantly not to look as bored as I was. Your hair was long and tied back in a ponytail. It caught the light in a magical way. And your face, which, as you must know, is quite beautiful, took my breath away.
Then I saw you get up and walk toward the woods. I went to school at Steeplehurst for ten years, so I knew you’d come out, eventually, by the paddock. I ran around the school and positioned myself by the fence.
So it wasn’t a chance meeting. Clever Nick.
To my delight, you saw me, as I’d hoped you would. The moment you handed me the buttercup I knew you would be an important player in my life. I didn’t know how. Or when. Just that you would be.
I could tell you were quick-witted, full of life, and utterly charming. But there was something else there too. Something I recognized. Your eyes gave you away. Even at twenty-one. There was a depth there. A sorrow that I knew you weren’t aware of yet. An understanding. An empathy. I knew, the moment I met you, that you were one of the few.
And I knew, from the moment I saw you, that I wanted you. And when you walked away from me, the first time you walked away from me, I felt ripped apart, my love.
Me too, my love.
A month or so later we met by accident outside my building in the City. It was bucketing down with rain, and I was standing with the suits and the umbrellas, waiting for the rain to stop. And there you were, standing outside on the pavement, your head turned toward the rain, completely unselfconscious, without a waterproof, I might add. Whether you knew it or not, you were rebelling against England in general by being completely yourself.
You clearly loved the rain and refused to wear protective clothing just because everybody else was. It made me feel rather stuffy for a moment, watching you standing there, a genuine free spirit, simply not caring about getting wet.
When you saw me you grinned at me.
“Hallo,” you said. “Let’s have lunch.”
“I haven’t got any money on me,” I said.
“I have,” you said.
Then, irresistibly, you took me by the arm and led me to the third floor of the Wong Kei restaurant in Gerrard Street. We were the only non-Chinese in the place. You were a child, but you lit up the room. And even the usually unspeakably rude Wong Kei waiters smiled as you came in.
You took your jacket off, and your shirt was damp with the rain. You were very wet. Your nipples were erect, my love. And so was I. We shared a bowl of roast duck noodle soup and a plate of shrimp lo mein. You paid the bill with great panache, producing a crumpled ten-pound note from your very wet pocket.
Two weeks later, I invited you out, to reciprocate. I treated you to lunch at Boulestin. You made it clear you’d have much preferred to dine at the African restaurant next door—but you tolerated the fifty-pounds-a-dish menu in sumptuous settings as best you could.
That’s when we exchanged histories.
“Avoid safe places,” I said to you. “They are so very hard to escape from.” You seem to be following my advice to the letter.
The next time I saw you, you asked me to bring you some of my paintings, and I did. You were wonderfully encouraging about them and you told me to paint all night if I didn’t have time in the day, but paint. I adored you for it. And then you said that, in the unlikely event that you ever came across an art agent, you would make sure to put them in touch with me.
It’s true. I had. And I’d meant it. I’ve always been good at putting people together. I hooked Sally Pearse up with the photographer’s rep I met on a plane. She’s just had her first exhibition in Paris. And I hooked the president of the Sharton Shipping Company up with an actor friend of Neville’s who was fed up with being broke. He made his first million two years ago. With Billie’s help, I will try to do the same for Nick. I can’t wait to introduce him to Billie. Once you’ve seen a Nick Devang painting you don’t ever forget it.
The next time I met you was in a lovely outdoor pub restaurant near Arundel, I can’t remember its name. It was a perfect summer’s afternoon. Everybody else had gone, and we were the only people left in the garden. Our table was discreetly placed behind a willow tree. You were wearing a short white skirt, which showed off your irresistible legs beautifully. Your hair was down, this time, and catching the light and—God, I wanted you.
You were holding an ice cream in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There was a small piece of ice cream trickling down your neck that I wanted to lick off, before burying my face in your gorgeous bosom. I am not above suggesting such an operation to just about any other woman. But not you. I didn’t want to flirt with you. I wanted to kiss you on the mouth again, and so, when you’d finished the ice cream, I did. Gently. Carefully. A brush, no more. So you wouldn’t pull away.
Our table settings were close together. There was a large white linen tablecloth over a tiny table, with pink roses in the center of it. I wanted to touch you. I needed to touch you. Unable to bear the tension any longer, sensing you couldn’t either, I reached under the tablecloth and put my hand on your leg.
Below the table you were absolutely still.
Above the table, your hands were tearing the tops off packet after packet of artificial sugar and pouring the contents into the ashtray. Then you stopped tearing off the tops of those silly packets of sugar and turned your hauntingly lovely face toward me. I moved my hand farther up your thigh, which was cool and soft and I kissed you again.
Then you opened your eyes and for half a second you let down your guard. And in that half second I saw what you’d been hiding ever since I first kissed you in the woods. A longing, a passion, the like of which I’ve not sensed in a woman before or since.
I had you in that moment. You. Naked, without camouflage. I knew I did.
“What are we going to do, my love?” I said.
“What do you mean?” you said.
You knew precisely what I meant. You knew. But you were terrified. And I knew why. And so I watched you reach the part of you that wasn’t you. And in a voice that wasn’t really yours you said, “Nick, you’ve read me wrong.”
I’d have felt rejected. I do easily, you know. But I knew you were lying. And I knew why. It would have been schizophrenic of me not to empathize. We shared the same pain, you and I. Only you were still too young to know that old wounds, however painful, can have no real power unless you give it to them.
And then I let you go by saying, “I’d like to meet you again when you’re thirty.” I saw the relief cross your face as I knew it would. We’re frighteningly similar, you and I.
Later, after I’d left London for Singapore, you sent me a letter telling me that you were going to challenge government corruption by writing political plays. It was so student-ish of you, so predictable.
I told you I was going into the Year of the Dragon. You then wrote me a note saying “The rest of the world goes with you into the Year of the Dragon.” It was delightfully done, for a twenty-two-year-old. I hadn’t the heart to spoil things by replying.
And now, here you are again, on the brink of the greatest adventure of your life, writing to me once more. I am honored, my lady.
There aren’t many of us around you know. Those of us who were abandoned and have the courage to go back to our source to face whatever we find there. I wish you luck in your adventure. You did the right thing finding me again.
What do I remember about you? Everything.
Love, Nick
P.S. I’ve started painting again. Not sure if they’re any good. Perhaps your mother would know?
P.P.S. I’d like to leave you with some lines by Pound which he wrote just before he moved to Europe.
I am homesick after mine own kind,
Oh, I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces,
But I am homesick after mine own kind…
Nick remembered everything.
And so do I.
Our time is coming. I can feel it. Our kind’s time.