Toad in the Hole (2 page)

My thumb traced the buckles in the wood bench I sat on, and my mind drifted back over the events of the last few weeks. I knew I needed this trip. It would give me a getaway to sort through everything that had happened and allow me to feel safe again.

IN LESS THAN TEN minutes, steam rose off a plate of golden fried cod and fat cut fries placed in front of me. The earthy bite of an open bottle of malt vinegar’s cut the deep fried batter aroma. Edmond rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the piping hot flaky pastry that landed in front of him. Knife in hand, Travis began tackling something that resembled two giant sausage links that had crash landed into a golden muffin batter. “What do you want to do first?” he asked.

“Tower of London,” I said.

“The traitor tower,” Edmond said.

GG poured dark brown gravy over her sausage toads. “Where the restless ghosts of Anne Boleyn, Henry the VI, and Lady Jane Grey are said to reside.”

“I want to see it all: the white tower, the ravens, and the crown jewels.”

Slicing a sausage, GG paired it on her fork with a hunk of gravy-dripping puffed batter. “What other sights? Museums, galleries, Parliament?”

“Cemeteries are on my list,” Travis said.

“Why on earth?” Edmond asked.

“He’s studying mortuary science.”

GG choked, “How horrid.”

“Cemeteries around here kick the butt off anything in the states. I mean everybody who’s anybody – the Romans, the Vikings – they’ve all been through England, and gobs of them died here.”

With vigor, I pushed aside the thought that Travis and my mother both had hobbies that involved the dead. Being away for the summer from Mom’s latest psychic entrepreneurial endeavor, and Dad’s mid-life crisis—a.k.a. his baby-obsessed, aerobic-instructor girlfriend—was just what my sanity needed. Ever since Mom and Dad’s relationship had gone off the rails, my previously balanced mental health teeter-totter had dipped. This trip was a chance to realign, get to know my grandmother, and maybe figure out what the cryptic message inside the amethyst oyster brooch was all about.

I didn’t need an expert to tell me that the oyster brooch my grandmother had gifted me possessed Houdini powers. When the last term of college ended and I’d arrived back home in Canton, Ohio, the bejeweled mollusk had rocketed back into my life like a wayward boomerang. Even after I hucked it at someone, in a forlorn hope, on the edge of a swamp, the freakin’ thing had the gall to re-materialize in my car glove compartment. It’s not like I’d had one too many and in a buzzed state mistakenly tucked it in there. The last I’d seen of the mollusk was when it bounded off of my deranged nemesis’s head, moments before he was shot and eaten.

Roars of laughter echoed around us as one of the pearly kings showed off the back of his sport coat. WEST HAM UNITED was decaled in flat buttons with a soccer cleat and two crossed hammers below.

“I’d like to take a peek inside the Tate or Hayward,” I said.

“You have to see the British Museum. It’s one of the oldest in the world,” Edmond said.

Travis actually seemed to be enjoying his toads.

“I don’t want to bore Travis with an art binge overload.”

He swallowed a mouthful. “Are you kidding? The British museum sounds like a good place to see some dead stuff. I know it’s got at least one mummy.” “I might even dare to pick your brain about some art.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Edmond chuckled.

I shot the two a stink eye, before focusing on my plate of battered fish. I wished I could be on this trip with normal parents, but mine were going through phases – ones that I hoped would pass, like the leg warmers I used to wear over my jeans. In a weird parallel, I figured that once they got their acts together and stopped their crazy, the crazy would stop latching onto me. Like bad fashion, eventually we’d reminisce, cringe, and then laugh about our past mistakes.

“Rachael, dear. You did bring the oyster brooch.”

A bolt of static blitzed my mind, collapsing the alignment of my jaw. Conscious of my breath, I robotically nodded. “It’s in my carry-on, back in the room.”

“Good. I’ve made an appointment with the jeweler. We need some solid history about the piece.”

Not so subtly, Travis jabbed me with his knee. He knew the brooch was probably of value, since I’d enlisted him to help me hide it in a false compartment under my dorm room closet floor last year. I hadn’t told him or anyone what had gone down over spring break.

NOTE TO SELF

Even with travel funk, Travis is hot.

England is like the South in some ways. For one, everyone smokes—
Dying for a cigarette. Seriously!
Secondly, they do crazy things with food and call the dishes names that you’d think came from a strip club—Toad in the Hole.

F
ace
D
own
o
n “
R
ory
O
’
M
ore”
—
F
loor

A
draft blasted into the bar as two men crouched beneath the collars of their jackets, pushed into the Red Lion pub, letting the hinged door slam itself on the outside wet. Afternoon snuck into early evening, and GG excused herself to make some phone calls. Mumbling about putting his feet up, Edmond went with her.

Travis’s thumbs outlined the Murphy’s Pale ale decal imprint on his pint glass. “How long have GG and Edmond known one another?”

Busy people-watching, I shrugged. The pearly kings and queens voices gained momentum before breaking into song: “Up the apples and pears, Cross the Rory O’More.”

“Since I was kid, at least. Why?”

“Edmond is attentive to your grandmother, don’t you think?”

“She buys things and pays him to repair or refinish them. Edmond is one of a kind.”

Travis coughed loud enough to break my gaze from the bar. Leaning back against the booth, he said, “Edmond seemed all too pleased to escort your grandmother back to her room.”

“If you’re trying to gross me out, it’s working.”

“Hey, senior citizen sex. It’s a reality.”

“How would you know?”

“Ha ha. Doing it doesn’t stop when you get a membership to the AARP.”

His comment caused my arm to flinch and reflexively I drained my pint, which helped dull the throb in my dodgy shoulder. An old bunk bed injury that flared with rain began aching when we landed. “Ya, it does. And they are not doing it.”

“Wanna bet? Twenty bucks says something’s going on.”

My eyes lodged under my eyelids as I greedily inhaled second hand smoke. “I’m taking the bet, but the last thing I want to do is catch them…at it.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve witnessed live action.”

“Watch it.”

Licking beer froth from his lips, he said, “Discovering things is your specialty.”
Was he flirting?

“That’s ridiculous. I’d know if something was going on between them.” Changing the subject, I leaned in. “See those two at the bar?”

“For the love of… we’ve only been here, what? Two hours? And you’ve found a guy?! Get your hormones in check, Rach.”

“Seriously. The two guys standing. Have you ever seen them before?”

“There are like forty guys at the bar and I’ve never seen any of them before.”

I watched the two men who came in last make their way to the corner of the bar near the taps. They reminded me of squares trying to stuff themselves into circles and I was sure that the didn’t have any affiliation with the pearly party. Olive-washed skin, one in a polo under a jacket, the other in a striped oxford. Both wore jeans, normal enough. But theirs were dark denim and had creases ironed into them. Gold watchbands hung on their wrists and scuff-free supple leather slip-ons, like penny loafers without a slot for the coin, clad their sockless feet. “Look again. The two at the end.”

Barely glancing, he said, “Not my type. Are you looking for an older model with an international appeal?”

“They look suspicious.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“What?”

“You’re manufacturing trouble.”

“I am not.”

“Face it Rach, you’re a master at it.”

Pulling his pint toward my side of the table, I asked, “Are you buzzed? This English beer has a higher alcohol content.”

In a blink, he scanned the bar then went off on a soapbox. “No one is staring at us any more than we’re staring at them. There’s a group of Rastafarians near the fireplace, some German tourists two tables down, and Lord-only-knows what rock all these exuberant pearly types beamed down from. Their outfits make that oyster brooch you wear look subtle.” He pulled his beer back. “Stop staring at them and they’ll stop staring at you.”

“Despite what you think, my oyster brooch is tasteful, and I consider it a good luck trinket.” My eyes darted back to the bar.

Travis switched seats, blocking my view.

“What’s good luck about it?”

“It protected me.”

His hand flew up into the air in a mock stop sign. “Before you continue, I can tell I’m going to need another pint.”

“You like warm beer?”

“I don’t and I’m desperate enough to ask for a glass of ice cubes. “Do you want another?”

I nodded.

As Travis stood at the bar, I watched his mannerisms: his relaxed shoulders, the angle between his eyes and temples. While taps were being pulled, he turned his head in my direction then twitched in a mock spasm toward the two dudes.

The two men of interest didn’t budge the fill line on their drinks. Their beers may as well have been ornaments.

“God, they’re stingy with the ice. You’d think I’d had asked for a free sample of caviar the way the bartender looked at me. He pushed a juice glass toward me. This is what I got.”

“Four cubes?”

Travis took two, and spared two for my pint.

“Alright, I’m ready.”

“For?” I asked.

“For the tale of the how the brooch protected you.”

My tongue glided across my crooked eyetooth. I trusted him. And there was no way he had anything to do with what went down in the South Carolina swamp.

Holding a palm up, he said, “Let me guess. You were wearing it when Bubba showed up to seduce you, and you defended your chastity by stabbing him with the clasp.”

“Travis Howard, what an imagination you have. Very funny. Tee-hee. Pick on my mistakes.”

Stacking coasters, he not so subtly chuckled. “Clay Sorenson appeared unannounced and sat on it, damaging his privates.”

“That’s warped! And besides, that incident last year was not my fault. When you’re in a waterbed, an exploding M-80 can damage—things. As it turns out, him and I not happening was for the best.”

“Don’t tell me, bird-boy, military-dude used the mollusk to fight off poachers.”

Some pearly queens linked arms and began singing a round of
Bow Bells of London
at the top of their lungs. Ignoring them, Travis fixed his gaze on me.

“I like him,” I said in a voice that sounded more defensive than I meant.

“Enough to sleep with him?” he purred.

Travis was definitely buzzed
. “Maybe.”

“More than once?”

I shared a lot of my life with Travis, but not everything. “Things happened.”

His face lost its playfulness. “Last I heard, he’d moved to Spring Island in South Carolina. I thought you two were over.”

“We were until spring break.”

Travis whistled.

“How was he injured?”

“He was not injured.”

“Yet.” Travis snorted.

“Stone knows how to handle himself.”

“Lucky you!” He sang. “And?”

“What?”

“This conversation is painful. Are you going to tell me or not?”

Under the influence of lager, I weighed the consequences of what to tell or not to tell. “We hooked up.”

“I bet you did, you hussy.”

I picked at a peeling nail. “We discovered something.”

“You’re not the first.”

Detecting sarcasm made me wonder
, was he jealous?
“No, not what you’re thinking. We discovered something about my oyster brooch.”

Travis made a mock snoring sound. “Boring.”

“It opens and has an engraving on the inside.”

“That’s very Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy of you two to discover.” Wiggling his fingers, Travis pretended he could cast a spell. “A secret code to decipher, like in a box of Captain Crunch when you align the alphabet with numbers inside the treasure chest.”

I tried to figure out how he had become so inebriated, before me. Unraveling my ponytail, I quickly re-fastened my Sun-In streaked hair. I’d thought adding a few highlights the day before the trip would perk up my dull brown. Boy, was I wrong and I hadn’t had time to do anything about the blonde-chunk mishap before we left. “GG said the broach had been gifted to her from an old friend.”

Travis eyes traveled to a distant galaxy, clearly not connecting the dots. “And why do I care?”

The two guys of interest were still at the bar, dawdling. Crinkling my nose, I chugged past the tepid foam in my glass. Tiny bubbles popped down my throat. Shrugging, I said, “It’s no big deal.”

NOTE TO SELF

GG and Edmond: a non-happening. Travis is gonna lose a twenty.

Do I have toilet paper hanging out of my pants? Can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched.

T
he
B
loody
T
ower

R
ain began to plunk from the dreary sky as low cloud cover hovered above the mortar and stone. Ravens perched on a slatted roof squawked complaints. I tightened the ties beneath my nylon jacket hood and Travis tucked a few escaped pieces of my bangs back inside.

“Seeing it from the outside, it’s impressive. But being here, inside the Tower of London…”

“Is completely creepy,” he said.

A Yeoman Warder led a group of about forty tourists, Travis and me among them. I estimated our guide to be in his late sixties. A robust man, he was dressed in full regalia, complete with button coatdress and top hat, all red and navy with a string of military service medals across his left chest.