a sniff “Créole jargon.”
Some parts of their conversation I could understand fairly easily, while other times I could only make out maybe one word in three. Jean-Pierre could not find their passports, it seemed, and Anna-Louise berated him.
“We came all the way from Nouvelle Orleans to be arrested in Philadelphia?”
“Don’t be silly, girl, the British don’t arrest you for not carrying your papers. It is not the Imperium here. You know what they are like.” And he started talking through his nose, doing such a good impression of a Continental accent like Madame Dantès’s that he soon had Anna-Louise giggling. “Your papers, if you please, monsieur. Where do you think you are, among the red savages of the Grand Massif? This is a civilised country here, and you must carry your papers!”
But Jean-Pierre soon found the passports in his inside jacket pocket, and the two of them walked off happily arm in arm.
When Big Benjamin struck six-thirty, I gave up and made my way back to St. George’s. The streetcar was late and by the time I returned I was tired and hungry and ten minutes late for curfew, which is at seven o’clock on weeknights in winter. Worse luck, Hartles was on duty that night.
From half a block away I could see him skulking around the gate, just waiting to catch any unfortunate tardy soul, so I sneaked around to the back. Luckily for me, Curtis was there snogging Martha, and they helped me through a well-known gap in the stone wall, where the ivy grows thick and the streetlight has been out for months, if not years. Every time it is fixed somebody puts it out of commission again.
I was grateful, but before I could thank him Curtis sneered, “Out with a girl?”
“Actually, yes. I was out to meet a girl.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Martha cried, patting my arm. “What’s her name?”
“Teresa,” I said.
Curtis stared at me in open disbelief. “Indeed? What did you two do?”
“I met her in Parliament Plaza and we went to see ‘Florida Homecoming,’” I improvised. Which was the kinetoflick I had planned to see with Teresa, if she had kept our appointment.
Curtis would not leave me alone. “A war ’flick on a first date?” he said.
“Well, Teresa is no ordinary girl. Not that you are,” I quickly added for the sake of Martha, who proceeded to question me about what Teresa looked like, where she lived, where she went to school, and heaven knows what else. I cannot even remember all the lies I told. So when Thursday finally came and the family carriage pulled up at the gate of St. George’s, like a liberating armored chariot in the Latin Wars of Independence, I was not as happy as I should been. My little sister was first out.
“Hi big brother!” she cried, bounding right up, her dirty blond hair flying all around, as she threw her right arm around my neck. She didn’t have to reach up very far to do it, either. She had grown in the three months since I had last seen her, and now the top of her head was level with my nose.
“Hi Jodie,” I said and hugged her back.
“It’s Jo now,” she said, pulling away and planting her hands on her hips.
Mum rolled her eyes as she walked up and planted a kiss on my cheek. “That is all we have been hearing since the beginning of school term,” she said. “But even her friends forget sometimes. She was so angry at Marcia for calling her Jodie that the poor girl went home practically in tears.”
“Mum, you’re exaggerating. I just want to be treated like a grown-up.”
“Contractions, dear. What have I warned you about them?” Mum said. As a refugee from the Home Islands, where they speak an even worse Creole than the Louisianans, Mum is death on contractions and anything else she regards as not being the King’s English.
“Just because you’re getting so tall doesn’t automatically mean you’re an adult, pet,” Dad rumbled.
Mum winced at the contractions as he ambled up to shake my hand. He is a head taller than her, and three or four inches taller than me, and his grip is as firm and unyielding as the moving part on the school’s babbage I once caught my hand in.
Still, I was glad to see him. I was glad to see them all and hear that familiar soft Nanticoke twang, and I was only a little bit embarrassed. So what if Curtis or one of my fellow upperclassmen was lurking somewhere nearby, watching everything so they could make me pay for it later? It did not matter! For one whole weekend, I was going to stay with my family in the Franklin Inn, the fanciest hotel in town, founded by Sir Benjamin himself, and forget all about school.
But first we were going out to eat in a superb Siamese restaurant in Rittenhouse Square; Dad was really splurging. Over the Pad Siam, with its crushed peanuts and Gulf of Louisiana shrimp, I had to endure a much more thorough interrogation than Curtis and Martha had subjected me to on Tuesday night, though thankfully, more about my marks than about my nonexistent social life.
It is Dad’s dearest wish that I attend King’s College, Oxford University next year (the one in Nanticoke, of course, not the one in the Home Islands, which is officially called Université Louis-Napoléon) and then follow him to work at the Directorate Royal for Research in Aerospace and Ground Odysseys National at Wallops Island, an easy half-hour ferry ride from our home in Gingo Teag.
I do not know what career I want to pursue, but I am certain it is not that. While I am proud of Dad for all his work on heavier-than-air craft, a young fellow must have his own dreams, even if he is not quite sure what they are.
So I tried to muster as much enthusiasm as I could when Dad asked if I had my university recommendations lined up. “Well, the pastor will write me a nice letter of recommendation, of course,” I said, shifting in my seat.
“Yes, Geoffrey Marks is a good bloke,” Dad allowed. “But what about your natural philosophy master, what’s his name.”
“Mr Goldberg. Yes, he is pleased with my progress.”
“‘Pleased with your progress?’” Jo mimicked. “That doesn’t sound very good to me.”
I gave her a dirty look.
“Jo is correct, dear,” Mum put in. “and Michael, please set a good example for the children. Tom, you must ensure he is more than simply pleased. You need to have him write you a glowing recommendation so you can be admitted into Oxford’s technical program, the way your father was.”
Jodie made matters worse by prattling on about her latest achievements, such as the Rachmaninoff violin solo she had played for an audience in Baltimore, with the Duke and Duchess of Maryland in the audience.
“And did they bow and curtsey to you?” I snapped.
“No, but the duchess did tell me afterwards that she was moved to tears,” Jo said, immune as always to sarcasm.
Mum tactfully changed the subject to her community work. She is chair of the Gingo Teag Tourism Advisory Council, which may not pay much of anything but is a very important job in a town that has basically two industries, the DRRAGON base and the dragon herself, Assa Teag Ashley, in her lair across the channel on Assa Teag Island. Mum also serves on the Island Beautification Committee and is a longstanding member of the school board.
