Sunday 8 December. We take the train to London where we are to meet
Hilde, our au pair who lived with us in
for a year in Las Vegas from the summer of 1988 to the summer of 1989. Hilde and her mother are visiting London. Morning travel is a bit complicated with
interrupted service between Harlow Mill and Broxbourne. We must connect between stations by bus. The morning is frozen and very foggy. The bus is frozen inside and out and we can't
see from the upper deck except for small patches where individuals scrape away
the ice. The bus ceiling is wet. Thomas
talks and talks for Hilde ("He's so changed!"). We have brunch at Queensway. We are going to take the Tube at Bayswater,
but there are lots of firemen and police.
A train approached very slowly with a load of firemen. There were lots of IRA bombings the day
before (Saturday) in Blackpool and Manchester.
We opt for a cab instead to take us to Madame Tussauds. We return on the 16:41 train. Dinner is Chinese takeaway as Fish and Chips is
closed.
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Hilde and the Children;
Del Mar, 1988 |
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| Hilde, Thomas and Mara in London |
 |
| At Madame Tussaud's |
Monday
9 December. 10:30 a.m. We spent the day in London yesterday,
visiting with Hilde and her mother who are visiting from Norway. Hilde
lived with us for a year in Las Vegas,
and left in June of 1989, the last time we saw her. I told Thomas
that, when he was a baby he used to get food all over his face, his head and
the table. He really liked that idea,
and then told Hilde, as if she had to
hear it directly from him. It takes
quite a long time for him to tell this because he has that child's stutter:
false starts, mouth forming the first part of the word, the brain racing ahead,
mouth can't keep up. When he finally got
out his story, Hilde's eyes lit
up. She said, "Yes, I remember that
well!"
After
our visit with Hilde and her mother, we intended to take the Tube at Bayswater,
but in light of the many IRA firebombs the day before in Blackpool and
Manchester, we opted for discretion rather than valor and took a couple of
taxis to Madame Tussauds. I haven't seen
any report today, however, so it must have been a false alarm.
When
we left yesterday for the station, at just before eight, the day was breaking,
but the sun not yet up. The world was a
portrait in white: frost, so thick it looked like snow, covering everything
parallel to the ground, and white morning fog sitting on the hillside. If this keeps up, we will surely have a white
Christmas whether it snows or not.
 |
| Beautiful Frost! |
 |
| Skipping the Tube |
On
Saturday in Cambridge,
I noticed that every little blade of grass was covered with its own coat of
spiky frost, burry-like. Yesterday,
however, was the ultimate. Because the
tracks were under repair, the train stopped at Harlow Mill
and we had to take a bus. As we walked
from the comfort of the train to a frozen bus, windows opaque with frost, our
eyes were riveted by a startling image of black on white: a burnt and blackened
BMW in the frosty parking lot beyond the station fence. On the fence itself were strings of spider
webs, coated in frost, like small jewelled ropes!
It seems we have been very busy since
we've been over here—so much to do, so much to see.
The trains are a lot of fun except
during rush hour.
We are now halfway gone on our
year. It is easy to look back on the six
months and see where it has gone. A
stark contrast to being at home, where you have a few weekends off every month or
so and before you know it, six months have slipped by in a rush of soccer or
basketball or baseball games. At least
now we can feel as if we have measured our time a little better and filled it
with more than the routine. Hardly
anything is routine anymore. Each day
and the changes it brings, from clear days to frost, to different birds out the
window, offers something new.
One of my favorite days on this trip
was the day Bob and I walked around in London and drank together, nothing to do
but talk. As I remarked to him that day,
the hurried traveler does not see as much as the leisurely traveler. Though they go to the same places, the
leisurely traveler is not afraid of a timetable and pauses longer to see things
he might have missed in a hurry.
I continue to read and love the newspapers
and the mail. You get mail here whenever
they have any for you—the fellows on their bikes spreading out in all
directions in the morning hours.
Someone recognized us on the train
yesterday. Indeed (oh, they like that
word here, thank you very much indeed), we recognized others who had gone with
us in the morning and were returning in the evening, the same faces. I'm not sure I know many in Saffron Walden:
the woman at Harts Office Supply I did see at the hairdresser (she was with her
granddaughter) when I went to Lisa to get my hair cut, and I saw one of the
fellows who announces things at church, on the morning train to London. It's all terrific!
*
* * * *
I
just finished reading The Serpent's Mark
about tracking down a serial killer. The
hero, Peter Stein, has retired from the New York police force to
run a computerized crime information company in Charleston, Virginia,
and is now far removed from the everyday violence of the street. (This sounds
like my ideal: sifting through information sent to me from all over; safe in my
retreat!) Mr. Stein is
of the opinion, so he tells a New
York reporter, that all crazies can be cured. Stein is famous,
in fact, for not killing the fellow who attacked his wife, even though Stein had the chance.
Stein believes in rehabilitation and cure,
not vengeance.
Stein
now meets up with a psychotic murderer who happens to be in Las Vegas (why I
bought the book), although the final showdown between Stein and Desmond (the
crazy) is set in Charleston. This time
the murderer not only has Stein's wife, but his son; and Stein allows vengeance
and hatred to well up inside him as he tracks down the killer in the final few
pages. He wants to be finally rid of
this guy, and the hatred is a cleansing, easy feeling. As Stein looks into the villain's face and
hears his crazy guile, however, Stein has a more complicated feeling: not
hatred of an inanimate thing (a murderer, a picture of a murderer), but a real
person.
Stein
is saved from having to decide between his conflicting feelings when Desmond
tries to stab Stein (the pleading face having been just a ruse) and Stein must
act in self defense and shoot the man.
I enjoyed the contrast between Stein's philosophizing, alone on his computer or
chatting with a reporter over a drink, and his more mixed reaction when his
enemy is before him: the conflict between his well reasoned thoughts, made
after careful deliberation, and the whirlwind he gets caught up in when
emotions take over. The author, forced
to bring the book to a close, doesn't have to deal with the difficult decision
of what Stein would have done if Desmond had simply meekly surrendered rather
than come at Stein with a knife.
8:45
p.m. The key word in Britain is
restraint. Americans approach things
without limits. (Other than self-imposed
limits, which Americans refuse to impose, what limits are there?) Americans have no bounds to taste, discovery,
evil, good, science, exploration, what have you. In Britain I think there is often a feeling:
let well enough alone, and the entrepreneur who tries something new and
different is ignored. Not so in America,
where the new becomes the darling and is emulated, proof of the triumph of
know-it-all over adversity. To what end,
the British might ask, we like things the way they are!
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