In spite of Anne and Emily’s winky innuendoes, I knew I’d be idiotic to think about Jack romantically. Chances were good he didn’t even remember that long-ago kiss. Besides, he’d been Wogs’ boyfriend in high school, so he was like a cousin-in-law or something.
But being with him was easy and fun—such a change after all the egg-walking with Alistair. The drive to Stratford-on-Avon was idyllic, once we got out of London and into England’s green and pleasant land. It was like driving through the setting of every novel I’d ever read.
Jack related all the news he had of Wogs, who seemed to be happily re-partnered with Judy. Aunt Livy had dealt with her severe disappointment in her daughter by playing fierce tennis and winning the senior championship at the club again. Jack’s Aunt Claudette had made her a new tennis dress for the final match, and a new gown for the dinner dance afterward. Win/win for both our families.
“I’m glad Wogs and Judy are back together,” he said. “I like Judy. I never bought that story about her stealing your aunt’s necklace. Why would she? She’s a dyke—excuse my French—but she’d never wear fussy old-lady jewelry like that. And it was old, but not that valuable—a couple of hundred bucks, tops—at least that’s what Aunt Claudette says. Lots better things to steal in that house. Like your uncle’s gun collection. He’s got priceless stuff on display in his library. There’s that little pearl-handled derringer he says belonged to Belle Starr. Wouldn’t you steal that instead?
This made perfect sense. I wished he hadn’t brought up my Uncle’s guns though. They terrified me. Especially that derringer, so small a child could use it. Just thinking about it gave me an icky feeling in my stomach.
I decided to tell Jack how Wogs thought Aunt Livy herself might have planted the necklace. Maybe I was betraying a family secret, but Jack felt like family now.
His face lost its playfulness. “I don’t know…I wouldn’t put it past her, but the first person I thought of when I heard about the missing jewelry was your friend in the suit. When we were out parking cars, Judy told me she’d found out he’d been lying about going to Princeton. She was trying to decide whether to tell you.”
Interesting. I certainly knew Alistair liked to steal things and hide them in odd places. It made sense he might have wanted to get rid of Judy if she had been planning to expose his lie just when he was making such a great impression on my family.
Jack took my silence for disagreement. “Sorry. I’m probably wrong.”
“No. You’re not.” I felt stupid and confused again. I hated to think such an awful thing about Alistair. Part of me was still feeling guilty for hitting him and accusing him of stealing my ticket. He’d actually been kind of polite under the circumstances. Maybe I could write him a letter to apologize when I got back to the Brontës’ flat.
The morning’s blue sky was giving way to storm clouds. The countryside was still lovely, but I was afraid rain might be coming to wreck our plans.
Jack laughed it off, saying he had an umbrella. He launched into a bunch of funny stories about the incompetence of Army bureaucracy, but when I asked about the war, his tone changed. “It’s not something I can talk about, Nick. It’s like it happened to somebody else. And I’m not sure who that somebody is. But I’m going to have to be him again pretty soon. They’re sending me back to ’Nam in October. I didn’t finish my tour because I was injured…”
“Oh no! You got wounded? That’s horrible.”
“Not by the enemy. I was in a jeep that rolled over. Broke my leg in a couple of places, but it’s healed up pretty good now.”
He abruptly changed the subject to the scenery, and asked if I remembered how much I loved to go for a drive in the country when we were kids.
I had to tell him again how little I remembered of those days.
But he went on, chatting about how his mom used to drive us to the amusement park at Old Orchard Beach—and the time I ate two pink cotton-candy cones and threw up pink vomit all over myself. He said it served me right for riding the merry-go-round all day long. Apparently I loved the merry-go-round horse that looked like Roy Rogers’ horse Trigger and wouldn’t give it up. I made some kid cry and told him I’d shoot him if he tried to make me get off. Jack said I’d been a tough little cookie—really into guns.
He brought up that song again he said I used to sing about Rudolf the Two-Gun Cowboy. He even started singing it—an awful misogynist thing about a sheriff hiring a gunslinger to shoot his wife, sung to the tune of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer.
I tried to make him stop, punching him in the arm like I used to, and in that moment another flash of memory erupted. Me in a Dale Evans cowgirl outfit. A hand-me down from Wogs. I’d be singing away—with two toy guns in my hands, which I twirled around my index fingers. I must have been about six or seven. I loved to sing then, before Aunt Livy informed me I was tone deaf. My mother had defended me.
Mom. Thinking about her brought up jumbled emotions I couldn’t deal with.
The sky got grayer and grayer, and we pulled over to put up the convertible top just before the rain hit. As we wrestled with securing the convertible’s canvas roof, Jack told more silly childhood stories that brought up a few more fragmented recollections.
When we got back on the highway he mentioned somebody he called Count Santa Claus, but I didn’t remember him at all. Jack said he was a painter—some impoverished aristocrat who’d escaped the Nazis. Uncle Con let him use the old guest house on the cliff for a studio.
I had a vague, creepy memory of the place—but it had been torn down by the time I was eight or so.
Jack couldn’t believe I didn’t remember Count Santa Claus. Everybody was crazy about him, he said—kind of like the way they got goofy over Alistair. His real name was Count Stanislaus and he was some kind of Russian. Wore fancy suits and buttered up my aunt and uncle the same way Alistair did. My parents too.
I told him I didn’t remember and tried to steer the conversation to other things. It made me feel weird Jack knew so much about my childhood that I didn’t know.
But he was on a roll, talking about this Count and how we kids hung around him because he brought us some kind of special candy. Shaped like miniature fruit and animals. I loved it, he said, especially the pink candy pigs the Count would give me when did my “cute little cowgirl act.”
I started to tell Jack he must be thinking of somebody else, or remembering a dream, until I had a memory-flash of a sticky-sweet taste—intense and almondy. Marzipan. My stomach went queasy.
Jack asked what was wrong and I said I was probably hungry. He pulled off the highway into a little village and found a café where we were welcomed with such friendly enthusiasm I almost wondered if we were still in England. It took me a minute to realize it was because of Jack’s uniform.
“They still like American G.I.s here,” he said. “Especially the older folks who lived through World War II. I always get the best service when I wear the uniform.”
We ate a lunch of wholemeal bread and three kinds of cheese with some wonderful pickled apples. For dessert we shared something called Spotted Dick. Jack said we had to be brave and eat it so he could to tell his buddies back at the base.
It turned out to be quite delicious for something with such an icky name—a sinfully sweet pudding-cake with currants, served in a custard sauce. We both reached for the last spoonful at the same moment. I laughed and pulled my spoon away. He scooped up the bit of pudding and surprised me by putting it in my mouth. Some custard ran down my chin, but he caught it with his finger and licked it off.
We were both so convulsed in giggles, we didn’t notice the waitress standing at the table with more tea.
“Oh, go on—kiss her.” She laughed and turned to me. “Be nice to your soldier-boy, ducks. Who knows when you’ll see him again?”
I felt myself flush. Jack’s face reddened, too. He gave me a funny grin and leaned across the table to plant a kiss on my custardy mouth. His lips were soft and lingered long enough to generate a little heat. When he sat back in his chair, I realized everyone in the café was clapping.
I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t.
When we got to Stratford, rain was pouring in earnest. We did a little walking, the two of us huddled under Jack’s umbrella. We found the church where old Will was buried, and the house where his youngest daughter Judith had lived.
“We never hear about Judy Shakespeare, do we?” I said. “Or her sister Susanna. Who knows, maybe they wrote great plays too, but nobody would put them on because they were girls.”
“Maybe they did.” Jack grinned. “From what I’ve heard, nobody’s sure who wrote those plays, anyway.”
I found this so adorable, I kissed him on the cheek. He pulled me to him and kissed me long and hard, right there under the dripping eaves of an inn where the Bard had once quaffed a pint. The umbrella protected our heads, but not our pant legs and shoes as rain splashed on puddled cobblestones. But I didn’t care. Jack was kissing me—in a sweet, joyful way I’d never been kissed before—and I didn’t want it to stop.
Finally pulled away. “We’re getting soaked. What do you say we go inside? Maybe ask about a place to stay? I don’t want to drive back to London in this weather.”
Going back to London was the last thing I wanted to do, rain or no rain. I wanted to stay as far away from Alistair as possible. I didn’t care if I owed him an apology. Right now, with Jack, I didn’t feel confused for the first time in ages.
The inn was a dark, firelit place called the Black Pig. We ordered a couple of pints of ale and sat down to drip dry with the other soggy patrons. Alistair wasn’t big on beer, so I hadn’t had any since I arrived, but it was delicious. So was Jack. He kept leaning over to kiss me.
I don’t know what we talked about as we drank that first pint—touristy things I guess—how quaint everything was and how tiny people must have been four hundred years ago. At some point Jack got up and talked to somebody about food. He asked me if I was all right with sausage and mash and said they had rooms upstairs—but only one vacancy, so we’d have to grab it fast. I said fine. I think I’d decided before that moment that I would sleep with him if he asked. So the one room seemed like fate.
As we ate sausages and potatoes with gravy, Jack went back to childhood reminiscing. He talked about Count Santa Claus again, and how he disappeared and nobody ever said why, or where. And how Uncle Con hired Jack’s dad to tear down the old guest house the summer after he went, even though it only needed a new roof and a little paint and had the best view of any house on the cove…
He stopped mid-sentence and gave me a stricken look.
“Oh, geez. I shouldn’t be talking about this. That cliff—that’s where your mom…I’m an idiot. You should slap me. Here.”
He grabbed my wrist and tried to get me to slap his cheek, now showing a bit of five o’clock shadow.
All I could think of was how Alistair had bled when I slapped him yesterday. I never wanted to see that expression on anybody’s face again.
“No. I will not slap you, Jack Poirier. I’m not a slappy kind of girl.”
He laughed and kissed my hand. “That’s right. When you get mad, you just shoot people, don’t you, little Anna Oakley?”
“Why did you call me that?” A dark bit of memory shot through my brain.
“We used to call you Anna, remember? You used your middle name later—you know—um, after you lost your mom.”
Unexpected tears stung my nose as I remembered mom’s German-accented voice calling me Anna. I fought the tears back, hard. I did not want to be having these little kid feelings just when I was having a grown-up good time with Jack.
“Come on,” I said shoving the emotions back into that shadowy part of my brain where I never wanted to go again. “Let’s order dessert. Maybe they have Spotted Dick.”