The Girl at the End of the Line (14 page)

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl at the End of the Line
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She had worried that she would feel like a coward, running away. But she didn't. She felt safe. And more important, Nell was safe, too. That was the whole point of burning your bridges behind you, wasn't it? No one could use them to come after you.
“David wasn't there,” Molly said to Nell as an attendant announced over the loudspeaker that their flight was ready to board. “I left a message.”
Nell nodded happily, picked up their carry-on bag full of guidebooks to Great Britain, magazines, and sundries they had purchased for the trip, and led her sister once again into the unknown, this time for keeps.
Local time was eight-fifteen when the plane landed in a very rainy London the next morning. The actual flight had taken only six hours, and Molly had gotten little sleep.
Between fitful naps over the Atlantic she had thought about David Azaria and had read about England in her guidebooks. The England of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens. The England of kings and queens and Ascot. The England of the Clews transferware platter that had once graced the mantlepiece of Enchanted Cottage Antiques and which was now blue-and-white earthenware dust.
Heathrow airport was hardly the quaint England of guidebooks, however. It was a hectic, modern place, which bore about as much resemblance to the land of Robin Hood and Thomas Chippendale as tin did to tintinnabulation. Businesswomen sat on plastic furniture typing on laptop computers. Men jabbered with their stockbrokers from tiny handheld cellular phones. Slick advertisements bombarded travelers from every wall. Aside from the customs
officers speaking in British accents, Molly and Nell might have still been in New York.
“Any suggestions on what we do now?” said Molly to her sister as they made their way through the crowds.
Nell made hopeful motions of a fork bringing things into her mouth.
“You just had a croissant on the plane,” Molly said, rolling her eyes. “You're turning into a human eating machine, do you know that?”
Nell grinned and nodded.
Molly hadn't worked out any brilliant plan about how to find their grandfather, Richard Julian, beyond just getting to the Bedlingham dog show and asking around for him. Bedlingham, she knew from a map in one of the guidebooks, was up in the northeast of England, near York. Problem number one was how to get there from here.
Happily there was someone who might be able to help. He sat in an information kiosk not far from the baggage claim, a man as thin as a yardstick whose Adam's apple protruded nearly as far as his nose.
“We'd like to go to Bedlingham,” Molly said politely, approaching his desk.
“You are Yanks?”
“Yes.”
“And you desire to go to Bedlingham?”
“That's right.”
“Good Lord, a miracle.”
“Is there some problem about going to Bedlingham?” asked Molly, concerned. The man had placed his hands together as if in prayer and was smiling beatifically at the ceiling.
“No, not at all,” he said, craning his long neck back from heaven. “I'm just deeply moved to have an American with a sensible
request. Yesterday I had eleven of your people who wished to have tea with a member of the royal family, four with messages for rock stars, and one poor woman from Beverly Hills, California, who insisted on being told Richard Burton's phone number.”
“But Richard Burton is dead,” said Molly.
The man nodded sadly.
“You see why I am presently in night school studying chiropractic. Soon I shall be no longer Mr. Tourist Information, knows all, tells all; I shall be
Doctor
Tourist Information, readjusts your spine. You are interested in dogs.”
“Pardon me?”
“Dogs. If you wish to go to Bedlingham this time of year it must be for the dog show.”
“Yes, that's right,” said Molly. “I didn't know it was so famous.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Tourist Information, tapping the tips of his long fingers together. “The Bedlingham Dog Show is
the
major event of the British canine world. I know this, you see, because my aunt Edwina is a positive fiend for schnauzers. She's actually begun to look like one, poor dear.”
“So what's the best way for us to get to Bedlingham from here?” asked Molly again.
“Do you drive?” asked the man, then held up his hands in mock horror. “No. Silly question. Of course you drive. All Americans drive. It's a wonder you're not born with your fingers attached to tiny steering wheels, and little hooters in your heads.”
“Hooters?” said Molly, incredulous.
“That's British for horns, you know. Klaxons. I expect you'll want to rent a car, won't you?”
“How long of a drive is it?”
“Four or five hours. Of course, that's four or five hours in a car that has the steering wheel on what would be the passenger's
side in your country. And you'll be driving on the wrong side of the road for you. In a strange country. In the rain. Is there some reason why you don't wish to take the aeroplane, hmmm?”
“Maybe because we didn't know there was one.”
“Yes, of course, there's a plane,” said the man with a sigh indicative of long suffering. “A commuter flight to Leeds at let's see … .” He closed his eyes momentarily, consulted some inner airline schedule and blinked triumphantly. “Departs at two-fifty, gate forty-four
F
as in Ferdinand the Bull. You can rent a car at Leeds and from there it is only a short drive to Bedlingham and your famous dog show.”
Molly proffered her thanks. Mr. Tourist Information bowed slightly from the waist, then turned his pained attention to a man with a Texas accent who wanted to know how he could take that James Bond fella out for a drink.
After changing a few hundred dollars of traveler's checks into British pounds and booking seats on the flight to Leeds, Molly and Nell had an inedible second breakfast of sticky buns and dishwater coffee at an airport coffee shop. They then wandered around exploring duty-free stores and newsstands until they came to rest at one of the less hectic seating areas. Here Molly read guidebooks and tried without success to nap until their departure, hours away.
Nell, who could sleep as comfortably on planes as she did on buses and who had gotten a good night's rest on the trip over, amused herself by watching people and nibbling candy bars, which she could do endlessly without gaining weight.
Finally they were in the air again, landing this time at a more picturesque location—if picturesque meant old-fashioned and a bit run-down. Leeds itself, which they passed over on the flight in, was just a gray blob they could barely make out, since it was raining here, too, though not as hard as it had been in London.
The airport car rental lot emptied out directly onto an anonymous modern highway that would not have seemed out of place in New Jersey. Molly pretended to be confident as she drove the little car, which indeed had its steering wheel on the passenger's side, through traffic that sped along on the wrong side of the road.
It was only when they got off at the exit designated on the rental agency map, did England begin to look a little more like it was supposed to—a quiet landscape of stone houses, sleepy villages, and ancient-looking forests—though TV antennas, telephone wires, and traffic signs still fought with Molly's illusions of what the country should be.
The rain had slowed to a drizzle when they finally reached their destination a little before five o'clock. It was too late to make it to the dog show, which must have been a very wet affair if it had gone on today at all, considering the rain. Fortunately the show had another day to run. The Julians would not be leaving for New Zealand until Friday, the day after tomorrow.
Bedlingham was technically a city, but it seemed not much bigger than most of the towns through which they had passed. According to one of the guidebooks it had been an important center as early as the fourteenth century, and there were Tudor buildings on the square. One of these was a pub called the Ploughman's Lunch, which reminded Molly how hungry she was, having had only one candy bar all afternoon to Nell's six.
It was a relief to get off the road and into the dark old pub. A crackling fire took all the chill out of the air that the rain had put in. Molly and Nell made their way through a crowd of jovial, ruddy-faced men drinking dark ale at the bar, to a quiet table in the back of the room.
As Molly squinted at the menu scrawled on a blackboard, she knew for the first time how far from home she was. They didn't
serve bangers and mash in Pelletreau, North Carolina. Or cock-a-leekie soup. Or chip butties. It made her almost homesick for a plate of good old-fashioned American fried calamari.
A middle-aged woman dressed in slacks and a colorful top approached their table after a few moments, her hands on her hips, a disarming smile on her kind, open face.
“Aftanoon, ladies” she said. “Wha' canna gutcha, then?”
It was English, Molly knew, though the accent was strange and guttural—almost as if she was trying to swallow her words before they emerged.
“I'll have the ploughman's lunch,” said Molly, figuring the pub's signature dish couldn't be too horrible if the place had been in business for as long as the oak tavern table they were sitting at seemed to indicate. From its patina and pegged construction Molly knew the table had not been made this century, and perhaps not in the last either. If she had had a shop left and a cheap way to ship it home, Molly would have made them an offer.
“Ta,” said the waitress. “An' you, miss?”
Nell counted down on the blackboard six items.
“One toad in the 'ole, and one ploughman's lunch it is,” said the woman, nodding, and hustled back to the kitchen.
“Toad in the hole?”
repeated Molly incredulously. “Are you out of your mind?”
Nell nodded happily.
When their lunches arrived, however, it was clear that it was Nell who had gotten the better deal. Molly couldn't decide whether it was beginner's luck or whether her sister actually knew something. The ploughman's lunch was simply a chunk of cheese, a piece of crusty brown bread, and a pickled onion, accompanied by a tall glass of warm dark ale. Toad in the hole, on the other hand turned out to be hearty sausages cooked in some kind of batter, and served with several well-boiled vegetables.
When Nell had finished the last of the ale—it was too warm for Molly's taste—the waitress came back and asked in her strangulated dialect whether there would be anything else.
“Is there some place where we can find a room for the night?” said Molly.
“Na, miss. Na this time o' year. The dog show, y'see? Everythin' is ta'en moonths in advance.”
“Oh, dear,” said Molly.
“I ca' telephone around, if ye like.”
“That would be very kind of you.”
“It's na trouble,” said the waitress. “We don't get many foreigners in these parts.”
The woman disappeared through a doorway behind the bar and returned after a few minutes.
“I found you a place at the inn in Manxton,” she announced with evident pride. S'only a few miles from here, but I best draw you a map.”
It was another half hour of hard driving on dark, rain-swept roads before Molly finally found the Dainty Shepherds Inn in Manxton. Settled in their room at last, Nell happily played hide-and-seek in the room's two enormous armoires. Molly collapsed into a overstuffed chair big and soft enough to live in, and waited for the color to return to her knuckles. Clearly she had made the right decision about not driving up all the way from London.
“Things are going to be different from now on, Nell,” said Molly after a while, staring out across the room to the leaded windows and into the night. “No more Pelletreau, no more dead ends. We're going to make a whole new start, a whole new life. Everything is possible, just like David said. Can you believe we're actually here in England?”
But even if Molly's sister had been able to speak there would have been no answer. Nell was already asleep in the big bed.
 
 
The next morning was blissfully sunny and warm enough to feel like August again, which it was. Molly had slept soundly and felt rested and more relaxed than she had been in days. The nightmares of the past few weeks seemed like a distant memory.
After a big English breakfast that included red orange juice, eggs, kippered herring, and strange-looking bacon, they drove the fifteen minutes back to Bedlingham (it was much closer in the daylight apparently), and followed the signs to the dog show.
Even from a distance the Bedlingham dog show was as impressive as Mr. Tourist Information had implied. It was set up in a grassy field outside of Bedlingham that appeared larger in area than the city itself. Cars were backed up from the entrance on the narrow road as far as the eye could see.
It took a good twenty minutes before Molly and Nell moved to the front of the queue and were able to park. During that whole time Molly didn't stop talking. If all her hopes had surfaced last night, this morning it was all her doubts and insecurities.
“Oh, God, don't let me blow it,” Molly chattered compulsively. “What will I say? Will he listen? You know there's a chance we won't even find this Richard Julian person. That would be pretty hysterical, wouldn't it, after coming all this way? Not that I'm really so eager to meet the guy. I mean, I'm not angry at him or anything. After all, he was never part of our lives. And Grandma got over him years ago, I'm sure. She never even mentioned his name, so she couldn't exactly have been pining, know what I mean?”

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