Cream Ale. It looked ice-cold, condensation beading on the outside of the glass, golden yellow and delicious.
“Hey, can I have a sip of that?” I said.
“You think you should?”
“A sip won’t hurt,” I said. “I just want to see if it tastes okay.” I did truly want to know that, because ever since I had become pregnant, my body had taken it upon itself to reject beer in no uncertain terms. Beer, my favourite beverage, and Kuskawa Cream, my beer of choice, had made me gag back in August. I had brand loyalty issues at stake here. Just because I was abstaining for the requisite nine months, didn’t mean I was on the wagon for life. I just wanted to experiment. After all, I was going to the United Kingdom, homeland of perfect beer. I couldn’t help remembering something my mother had said, many years ago, that had somehow stuck in my mind. “When your grandmother was carrying us,” she’d said (which was back in Ireland, before they’d emigrated), “her doctor prescribed a pint of Guinness every day. He said it was good for pregnant ladies—full of vitamins.” Of all the things I remembered my mother saying, this was one of the biggies. “Guinness is good for you,” spoken in all seriousness.
I lifted Dimmy’s glass, looking around me before I did it to make sure nobody was watching. Taking even a mouthful of alcoholic something or other while pregnant is considered a serious crime. I didn’t want to offend anybody. I took a sip, and it was gorgeous. Yummy. Nectar, in fact.
“You be careful,” Dimmy said, watching me. “You don’t want this kid coming out with one of those thin upper lips and eyes too far apart—the fetal alcohol syndrome thing.”
I bristled. “One sip of beer won’t be doing that, Dimmy,” I said and told her what my mother used to say.
“Yeah, I think we’re maybe a bit overprotective about that stuff over here,” she said. “Still, you want to give yourself every opportunity to have a healthy baby, right?” I nodded glumly. My having been forced by circumstance to abandon my cherished vices still rankled, and this was the first time I’d been in the pub since July. Maybe it hadn’t been a terribly good idea meeting Dimmy there. I was clearly not over-endowed in the impulse-control department. This would mean that in England, I’d have to avoid pubs—and what kind of insanity was that? England—the place where the word pub was born, those warm rooms in every village, cozy and ancient, with dozens of wonderful, dark and powerful brews just begging to be sampled. It was going to be torture.
“Back to this passport,” I said, handing back Dimmy’s glass with more than just a twinge of regret. “It just arrived, and I’m glad to get it in time, but you know, I’d kind of expected it to be more imposing, somehow. More official. It looks like a cheap notebook from the dollar store.” The small, blue booklet was softcovered, stamped in gold, certainly, but with none of the heft I’d imagined. “It looks like something you could lose really easily.”
“You better get one of those body purses,” Dimmy said. “You know, the kind you strap below your clothing, to put your travellers’ cheques and passport in.”
“I’m going to England, not India,” I said. “I don’t want to do the paranoid traveller thing. I can just see me having to undress every time I want to buy a newspaper.”
“I think you’d be safe carrying your cash in the usual place,” she said. “Anyway, it’s just a thought. Canadian passports are very much in demand, I hear.”
“You think I need one of those little Canadian flags to put on my backpack?”
“You’re taking a backpack? No suitcase?”
“Well, I was hoping to do a little hiking while I’m there.”
“Polly, you’ll be seven months pregnant by then—you won’t want to be hiking. Anyway, February in England will hardly be hiking season.”
“I’m not planning to do any mountain climbing. I just want to be able to travel around without worrying about luggage,” I said. Okay, maybe I was being unreasonable, but it was my first time going anywhere, and I had a romantic image of walking along one of those footpaths England was famous for, brandishing an old hickory walking stick and enjoying the view.
Dimmy knew me well enough to let the subject drop. The more she tried to convince me that hiking in England in February was a bad idea, the more inclined I’d be to do it.
Later that afternoon, I did go to the luggage place and pick up one of those body purses. It was white cotton and looked like a rather spinsterly piece of underclothing, with curious straps and a little zippered pocket. However, it held my passport quite nicely, as well as the modest number of travellers’ cheques I’d bought at the bank.
About a week before I was due to leave, Becker showed up at my door, carrying a mysterious package. He had the same expression on his face that Eddie had worn when he’d arrived at my doorstep with the automatic baby. He wanted something.
I was in the middle of packing up my puppets. I’d found a sturdy case at a junk shop—a hard-shelled thing with a nice leather handle, which had once upon a time been used for a brass instrument, a horn of some sort. I’d torn out the insides and lined it with styrofoam, carved to conform to the shape of the little bodies it would contain. In a fit of morbid creativity, I’d then finished the interior with satin, so it looked an awful lot like a small, two-person coffin.
“What the hell is that?” he said.
“It’s a packing case. I’m taking a couple of puppets with me for a seminar I’m doing.” I was hoping he wouldn’t look too closely at the policeman puppet, which he had seen before, acknowledging that it looked a teensy bit like himself. He had not seen it since I’d remodelled the missing appendage and wired it up. The little trousers had a peek-a-boo slit in the fly, and a discreet line ran from the tip of the tiny member to the complicated cross-piece at the top, from which the puppet was manipulated. With a flick of a finger, the puppet penis could spring to attention. I’d showed it to Susan the night before, and she’d almost wet herself. Becker, though, might not find it quite as amusing as we did.
“You’re gonna have trouble with that going through customs,” he said.
“I hope not. The conference people told me to get a carnet—you know, a set of import papers that describe what you’re bringing in, and I did that. Here it is—it should be okay.” The carnet had cost me a pretty penny, but international regulations required it. I had photographed the puppets and made a list of the materials from which they were made, as well as estimating the value of the things. The puppets were deemed “professional equipment”, and it wouldn’t cost me any extra duty or tax, as long as I had the carnet. The official I had dealt with suggested that I keep the estimate of value low, because I’d been told I had to give them a deposit equivalent to the duty and tax payable if the goods had been exported for sale. It was sort of like a bond—I didn’t really understand it, but then there are times when it’s best just to do what you’re told. I scratched out what I’d originally written (”priceless”), and wrote $200 instead, which was low-balling, big time. However, a $200 ransom, which is how I thought of it, was all I could afford.
“You’re really going through with this trip, aren’t you?” Becker said, which struck me as a monumentally dumb thing to say. I had my passport, my ticket, my knapsack (with a little Canadian flag sewn on) and my puppet case and the official carnet. It wasn’t as if I was having cold feet, for pity’s sake. I’d be gone in seven days’ time.
