"Only when I get the chance."
She gave him one and they both lit up.
Ursula Dewar, known as Beep, was also thirteen, but she seemed older than Dave. She wore nifty American clothes, tight sweaters and narrow jeans and boots. She claimed she could drive. She said British radio was square: only three stations, none playing rock and roll--and they went off the air at midnight! When she caught Dave staring at the small bumps her breasts made in the front of her black turtleneck, she was not even embarrassed; she just smiled. But she never quite gave him an opportunity to kiss her.
She would not be the first girl he had kissed. He would have liked to let her know that, just in case she thought he was inexperienced. She would be the third, counting Linda Robertson, whom he did count even though she had not actually kissed him back. The point was, he knew what to do.
But he had not managed it with Beep, not yet.
He had come close. He had discreetly put his arm around her shoulders in the back of his father's Humber Hawk, but she had turned her face away and looked out at the lamplit streets. She did not giggle when tickled. They had jived to the Dansette record player in the bedroom of his fifteen-year-old sister, Evie; but Beep had declined to slow-dance when Dave put on Elvis singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"
Still he lived in hope. Sadly, this was not the moment, standing in the small garden on a winter afternoon, Beep hugging herself to keep warm, both of them stiffly dressed in their best clothes. They were off to a formal family occasion. But there would be a party later. Beep had a quarter bottle of vodka in her handbag to spike the soft drinks they would be given while their parents hypocritically glugged whisky and gin. And then anything might happen. He stared at her pink lips closing around the filter tip of her Chesterfield, and imagined yearningly what it would be like.
His mother's American accent called from the house: "Get in here, you kids--we're leaving!" They dropped their cigarettes into the flower bed and went inside.
The two families were assembling in the hall. Dave's grandmother, Eth Leckwith, was to be "introduced" to the House of Lords. This meant she would become a baroness, be addressed as Lady Leckwith, and sit as a Labour peer in the upper chamber of Parliament. Dave's parents, Lloyd and Daisy, were waiting, with his sister, Evie, and a young family friend, Jasper Murray. The Dewars, wartime friends, were here too. Woody Dewar was a photographer on a one-year assignment in London, and had brought his wife, Bella, and their children, Cameron and Beep. All Americans seemed fascinated by the pantomime of British public life, so the Dewars were joining in the celebration. They formed a large group as they left the house and headed for Parliament Square.
Walking through the misty London streets, Beep transferred her attention from Dave to Jasper Murray. He was eighteen and a Viking, tall and broad with blond hair. He wore a heavy tweed jacket. Dave longed to be so grown-up and masculine, and to have Beep look up at him with that expression of admiration and desire.
Dave treated Jasper like an older brother, and asked his advice. He had confessed to Jasper that he adored Beep and could not figure out how to win her heart. "Keep trying," Jasper had said. "Sometimes sheer persistence works."
Dave could hear their conversation. "So you're Dave's cousin?" Beep said to Jasper as they crossed Parliament Square.
"Not really," Jasper replied. "We're no relation."
"So how come you live here rent-free and everything?"
"My mother was at school with Dave's mother in Buffalo. That's where they met your father. Since then they've all been friends."
There was more to it than that, Dave knew. Jasper's mother, Eva, had been a refugee from Nazi Germany and Dave's mother, Daisy, had taken her in, with characteristic generosity. But Jasper preferred to underplay the extent to which his family was indebted to the Williamses.
Beep said: "What are you studying?"
"French and German. I'm at St. Julian's, which is one of the larger colleges of London University. But mostly I write for the student newspaper. I'm going to be a journalist."
Dave was envious. He would never learn French or go to university. He was bottom of the class at everything. His father despaired.
Beep said to Jasper: "Where are your parents?"
"Germany. They move around the world with the army. My father's a colonel."
"A colonel!" said Beep admiringly.
Dave's sister, Evie, muttered in his ear: "Little tart, what does she think she's doing? First she flutters her eyelashes at you, then she flirts with a man five years older!"
Dave made no comment. He knew that his sister had a massive crush on Jasper. He could have taunted her, but he refrained. He liked Evie and, besides, it was better to save up stuff like this and use it next time she was mean to him.
"Don't you have to be born an aristocrat?" Beep was saying.
"Even in the oldest families there has to be a first one," Jasper said. "But nowadays we have life peers, who don't pass the title to their heirs. Mrs. Leckwith will be a life peer."
"Will we have to curtsey to her?"
Jasper laughed. "No, idiot."
"Will the queen be there for the ceremony?"
"No."
"How disappointing!"
Evie whispered: "Stupid bitch."
They went into the Palace of Westminster by the Lords Entrance. They were greeted by a man in court dress, including knee breeches and silk stockings. Dave heard his grandmother say in her lilting Welsh accent: "Obsolete uniforms are a sure sign of an institution in need of reform."
Dave and Evie had been coming to the Parliament building all their lives, but it was a new experience for the Dewars, and they marveled. Beep forgot to be charmingly dizzy and said: "Every surface is decorated! Floor tiles, patterned carpets, wallpaper, wood paneling, stained glass, and carved stone!"
Jasper looked at her with more interest. "It's typical Victorian Gothic."
"Oh, really?"
Dave was beginning to get irritated with the way Jasper was impressing Beep.
The party split, most of them following an usher up several flights to a gallery overlooking the debating chamber. Ethel's friends were already there. Beep sat next to Jasper, but Dave managed to sit the other side of her, and Evie slid in beside him. Dave had often visited the House of Commons, at the other end of the same palace, but this was more ornate, and had red leather benches instead of green.
After a long wait there was a stir of activity below and his grandmother came in, walking in line with four other people, all dressed in funny hats and extremely silly robes with fur trimmings. Beep said: "This is amazing!" but Dave and Evie giggled.
The procession stopped in front of a throne, and Grandmam knelt down, not without difficulty--she was sixty-eight. There was a lot of passing round of scrolls that had to be read aloud. Dave's mother, Daisy, was explaining the ceremony in a low voice to Beep's parents, tall Woody and plump Bella, but Dave tuned her out. It was all bollocks really.
After a while Ethel and two of her escorts went and sat on one of the benches. Then followed the funniest part of all.
They sat down, then immediately stood up again. They took off their hats and bowed. They sat down and put their hats back on again. Then they went through the whole thing again, looking for all the world like three marionettes on strings: stand up, hats off, bow, sit down, hats on. By this time Dave and Evie were helpless with suppressed laughter. Then they did it a third time. Dave heard his sister splutter: "Stop, please stop!" which made him giggle even more. Daisy directed a stern blue-eyed glare at them, but she was too full of fun herself not to see the funny side, and in the end she grinned too.
At last it was over and Ethel left the chamber. Her family and friends stood up. Dave's mother led them through a maze of corridors and staircases to a basement room for the party. Dave checked that his guitar was safe in a corner. He and Evie were going to perform, though she was the star: he was merely her accompanist.
Within a few minutes there were abou
t a hundred people in the room.
Evie buttonholed Jasper and started asking him about the student newspaper. The subject was close to his heart, and he answered with enthusiasm, but Dave was sure Evie was onto a loser. Jasper was a boy who knew how to look after his own interests. Right now he had luxurious lodgings, rent-free, a short bus ride from his college. He was not likely to destabilize that comfortable situation by beginning a romance with the daughter of the house, in Dave's cynical opinion.
However, Evie took Jasper's attention away from Beep, leaving the field clear for Dave. He got her a ginger beer and asked her what she thought of the ceremony. Surreptitiously, she poured vodka into their soft drinks. A minute later everyone applauded as Ethel came in, dressed now in normal clothes, a red dress and matching coat with a small hat perched on her silver curls. Beep whispered: "She must have been drop-dead gorgeous, once upon a time."
Dave found it creepy to think about his grandmother as an attractive woman.
Ethel began to speak. "It's such a pleasure to share this occasion with all of you," she said. "I'm only sorry my beloved Bernie didn't live to see this day. He was the wisest man I ever knew."
Granddad Bernie had died a year ago.
"It is strange to be addressed as 'my lady,' especially for a lifelong socialist," she went on, and everyone laughed. "Bernie would ask me whether I had beaten my enemies or just joined them. So let me assure you that I have joined the peerage in order to abolish it."
They applauded.
"Seriously, comrades, I gave up being the member of Parliament for Aldgate because I felt it was time to let someone younger take over, but I haven't retired. There is too much injustice in our society, too much bad housing and poverty, too much hunger in the world--and I may have only twenty or thirty campaigning years left!"
That got another laugh.
"I've been advised that here in the House of Lords it's wise to take up one issue and make it your own, and I've decided what my issue will be."
They went quiet. People were always keen to know what Eth Leckwith would do next.
"Last week my dear old friend Robert von Ulrich died. He fought in the First World War, got in trouble with the Nazis in the thirties, and ended up running the best restaurant in Cambridge. Once, when I was a young seamstress working in a sweatshop in the East End, he bought me a new dress and took me to dinner at the Ritz. And . . ." She lifted her chin defiantly. "And he was a homosexual."
There was an audible susurration of surprise in the room.
Dave muttered: "Blimey!"
Beep said: "I like your grandmother."
People were not used to hearing this subject discussed so openly, especially by a woman. Dave grinned. Good old Grandmam, still making trouble after all these years.
"Don't mutter, you're not really shocked," she said crisply. "You all know there are men who love men. Such people do no harm to anyone--in fact, in my experience they tend to be gentler than other men--yet what they do is a crime according to the laws of our country. Even worse, plainclothes police detectives pretending to be men of the same sort entrap them, arrest them, and put them in jail. In my opinion this is as bad as persecuting people for being Jewish or pacifist or Catholic. So my main campaign here in the House of Lords will be homosexual law reform. I hope you will all wish me luck. Thank you."
She got an enthusiastic round of applause. Dave figured that almost everyone in the room genuinely did wish her luck. He was impressed. He thought jailing queers was stupid. The House of Lords went up in his estimation: if you could campaign for that sort of change here, maybe the place was not completely ludicrous.
Finally Ethel said: "And now, in honor of our American relatives and friends, a song."
Evie went to the front and Dave followed her. "Trust Grandmam to give them something to think about," Evie murmured to Dave. "I bet she'll succeed, too."
"She generally gets what she wants." He picked up his guitar and strummed the chord of G.
Evie began immediately:
O say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
Most of the people in the room were British, not American, but Evie's voice made them all listen.
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,
Dave thought nationalist pride was bollocks, really, but despite himself he felt a little choked up. It was the song.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we'd watch'd were so gallantly streaming?
The room was so quiet that Dave could hear his own breathing. Evie could do this. When she was onstage, everyone watched.
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
Dave looked at his mother and saw her wipe away a tear.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
They clapped and cheered. Dave had to give his sister credit: she was a pain in the neck at times, but she could hold an audience spellbound.
He got another ginger beer, then looked around for Beep, but she was not in the room. He saw her older brother, Cameron, who was a creep. "Hey, Cam, where did Beep go?"
"Out for a smoke, I guess," he said.
Dave wondered if he could find her. He decided to go and look. He put down his drink.
He approached the exit at the same time as his grandmother, so he held the door for her. She was probably heading for the ladies' room: he had a vague notion that old women had to go a lot. She smiled at him and turned up a red-carpeted staircase. He had no idea where he was so he followed her.
On the half landing she was stopped by an elderly man leaning on a cane. Dave noticed that he was wearing an elegant suit in a pale gray material with a chalk stripe. A patterned silk handkerchief spilled out of the breast pocket. His face was mottled and his hair was white, but obviously he had once been a good-looking man. He said: "Congratulations, Ethel," and shook her hand.
"Thank you, Fitz." They seemed to know each other well.
He held on to her hand. "So you're a baroness now."
She smiled. "Isn't life strange?"
"Baffles me."
They were blocking the way, and Dave hovered, waiting. Although their words were trivial, their conversation had an undertone of passion. Dave could not put his finger on what it was.
Ethel said: "You don't mind that your housekeeper has been elevated to the peerage?"
Housekeeper? Dave knew that Ethel had started out as a maid in a big house in Wales. This man must have been her employer.
"I stopped minding that sort of thing a long time ago," the man said. He patted her hand and released it. "During the Attlee government, to be precise."
She laughed. Clearly she liked talking to him. There was a powerful undertone to their conversation, neither love nor hate, but something else. If they had not been so old, Dave would have thought it was sex.
Getting impatient, Dave coughed.
Ethel said: "This is my grandson, David Williams. If you really have stopped minding, you might shake his hand. Dave, this is Earl Fitzherbert."
The earl hesitated, and for a moment Dave thought he was going to refuse to shake; then he seemed to make up his mind, and stuck out his hand. Dave shook it and said: "How do you do?"
Ethel said: "Thank you, Fitz." Or, rather, she almost said it, but seemed to choke before finishing the sentence. Without saying anything more, she walked on. Dave nodded politely at the old earl and followed.
A moment later Ethel disappeared through a door marked LADIES.
Dave guessed there was some history between Ethel and Fitz. He decided to ask his mother about it. Then he spotted an exit that might lead outside, and forgot all about the old folk.
He stepped through the door and found himself in an irregular-shaped internal courtyard with rubbish bins. This would be the perfect place for a surreptitious
smooch, he thought. It was not a thoroughfare, no windows overlooked it, and there were odd little corners. His hopes rose.
There was no sign of Beep, but he smelled tobacco smoke.
He stepped past the bins and looked around the corner.
She was there, as he had hoped, and there was a cigarette in her left hand. But she was with Jasper, and they were locked in an embrace. Dave stared at them. Their bodies seemed glued together, and they were kissing passionately, her right hand in his hair, his right hand on her breast.
"You're a treacherous bastard, Jasper Murray," said Dave, then he turned and went back into the building.
*
In the school production of Hamlet, Evie Williams proposed to play Ophelia's mad scene in the nude.
Just the idea made Cameron Dewar feel uncomfortably warm.
Cameron adored Evie. He just hated her views. She joined every bleeding-heart cause in the news, from animal cruelty to nuclear disarmament, and she talked as if people who did not do the same must be brutal and stupid. But Cameron was used to this: he disagreed with most people his age, and all of his family. His parents were hopelessly liberal, and his grandmother had once been editor of a newspaper with the unlikely title The Buffalo Anarchist.
The Williamses were just as bad, leftists every one. The only halfway sensible resident of the house in Great Peter Street was the sponger Jasper Murray, who was more or less cynical about everything. London was a nest of subversives, even worse than Cameron's hometown of San Francisco. He would be glad when his father's assignment was over and they could go back to America.
Except that he would miss Evie. Cameron was fifteen years old and in love for the first time. He did not want a romance: he had too much to do. But as he sat at his school desk trying to memorize French and Latin vocabulary, he found himself remembering Evie singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."
She liked him, he felt sure. She realized he was clever, and asked him earnest questions: How did nuclear power stations work? Was Hollywood an actual place? How were Negroes treated in California? Better still, she listened attentively to his answers. She was not making small talk: like him, she had no interest in chitchat. They would be a well-known intellectual couple, in Cameron's fantasy.
For this year Cameron and Beep were going to the school Evie and Dave attended, a progressive London establishment where--as far as Cameron could see--most of the teachers were Communists. The controversy about Evie's mad scene went all around the school in a flash. The drama teacher, Jeremy Faulkner, a beardie in a striped college scarf, actually approved of the idea. However, the head teacher was not so foolish, and he stamped on it decisively.