The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Chapter Eight

By the following Wednesday, it was quite clear that he just wasn't calling. Even allowing for boy-time, a week and a half meant serious time lapse. Three days was normal. A week? Not optimal but still okay. But a week and a half? Lack of interest.

Pushing my computer bag more firmly up on my shoulder, I battled my way through the throngs of tourists on Queensway up toward the Whiteley's shopping center. Depression or not, a girl had to eat, and my little fridge had been remarkably barren of late.

Rather like my love life.

I had spent the past week in that purgatorial state between elation and despair, leaping for the phone every five minutes, drifting off into gold-tinged daydreams on the tube, and generally behaving like a besotted fourteen-year-old. I had replayed every word we'd ever spoken—with improvements—overanalyzed every look, and named all of our children. There were three of them, and they were named Amy, Richard, and Gwendolyn (by then I'd hit the outer realms of slaphappiness). They all had Colin's golden hair and my blue eyes, except for little Gwendolyn, who had red hair like me.

It was the children I really felt sorry for—poor little things, with no chance to ever exist.

To my right, Warehouse beckoned, with large signs boasting up to forty percent off on selected items. Usually, those red signs would have occasioned a fierce struggle with my better nature, an immediate abrupt turn to the right, and the purchase of completely unnecessary articles of clothing that would do nasty things to my credit card statement and live at the back of my closet with the tags still on for the next six months. Today, the sale signs failed to exercise their usual siren call. My feet and mind both continued inexorably on their chosen paths.

Last Monday, still buoyed by memories of the weekend, I had plunged into Letty Alsworthy's letters with nothing but contempt for the blind devotion that led Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe to be bamboozled by her scheming sister. It was, I reflected smugly, just like a man to be so taken in by a lovely face and a vapid smile—and most likely other attri-butes as well. The only thing that confused me was how so intelligent a man as Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe could fool himself so thoroughly. I had two theories, neither the sort one shares with academic journals, one being that the smartest men are often the most at sea when it came to dealing with the opposite sex (witness every computer science major I had known in college, and most of my male colleagues in grad school). Either that, or it was a reaction to the war, like all those men who rushed off to get married before shipping off for the front in World War II. The situation wasn't quite the same, but I would bet if I looked into it, there is literature on the topic about the need to create stability in a sea of troubles, the reestablishing of the fundamental human connection in the face of barbarism, and so on.

I didn't even have a war to blame.

I scowled at my own reflection in the window of Jigsaw as I stalked past, hating the comparison but unable to think of any convincing way to refute it. I knew it was true. A fat lot of right I had to be psychoanalyzing Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe, when I was doing the exact same thing, pinning all my hopes and desires on someone I barely knew—largely because I barely knew him. There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and, voilа, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.

After all, what did I know of Colin, other than that he was a descendant of the Purple Gentian, he had a very nice aunt, and he was appallingly rude to visiting researchers? That last wasn't exactly a plus. I didn't even know where he had gone to school or what he did for a living. Somehow, in our few encounters, it had never come up. For all I knew, he could be the Demon Barber of West Sussex, slicing off people's heads and baking them into pies.

So much for Geoff building a future out of a pair of fine eyes. I had spun a fable out of a handsome face, a cute accent, and a few chance references that happened to resonate with me. Taken apart, bit by bit, my treasured hoard of memories was as tarnished and trumpery as a child's ring fished out of the bottom of a cereal box. So he had mentioned Charles II. Big deal. We were in England; unlike America, one could expect a certain basic familiarity with the country's more notorious monarchs. I had fallen, I realized, into that horrible, early stage of crush where everything becomes a point of commonality. If he compliments a song, your heart takes wing because, yes, you like music, too! Clearly, you are Meant to Be.

As one of my college roommates put it after I had run through a breathless round of perceived similarities that didn't mean much of anything at all, "Ohmigod! He breathes! And you breathe! It must be love!"

I hadn't succumbed to one of those all-consuming crushes since college. I had assumed it was one of those things one suffered through once and then got over—like the chicken pox. Unpleasant, messy, embarrassing, but once you've had it, you're done for life. I should have remembered that there are those rare sufferers who are cursed with recurrence—and it's always worse the second time around.

The weather didn't help. It had rained for four straight days, the sky night-dark when I left my flat in the morning, with no discernible change by the time I returned home at night. I had begun to feel like the little girl in the Ray Bradbury story who lives on a planet where the sun only comes out once in a cycle of years, and then for a brief hour while she's locked in the broom closet. In my case, it was the British Library, not the broom closet, but it came to much the same thing. My raincoat was beginning to attain the dispirited air of an old dog, limp and slightly mangy. We won't even discuss the state of my shoes.

If the research had been going well, perhaps none of this would have mattered. I could forge boldly through the dripping umbrella spokes outside the British Library, sit obliviously in the steamy confines of the tube, and endure with equanimity the ruin of my raincoat. But today I had come to the end of the Letty Alsworthy papers—at least, all the Letty Alsworthy papers the British Library would acknowledge owning—and I was no closer than I had been before to discovering the machinations of the Black Tulip in Ireland. Geoff and Letty's marital difficulties might be interesting reading, but their romantic peccadilloes did not a dissertation chapter make. I could just see the expressions of polite skepticism on the faces of the scholars assembled for the North American Conference on British Studies as I delivered my paper on "The Lives and Loves of the Associates of the Purple Gentian." They'd be dropping off in droves. And, incidentally, so would my grant money.

At that point, I was so low that I couldn't muster more than a feeble flicker of alarm at the thought.

If I were being fair, it wasn't really that bleak. I might have run to the end of the Alsworthy papers, but I did have a hunch as to where to look next—a hunch that didn't involve calling on either Colin or his aunt. Letty had written her parents, claiming to be on a wedding trip with her husband, but another letter, the very last in the collection, told a different story entirely. In the last two of her letters, addressed to her father immediately after her marriage, Letty had confided that she had followed her disappearing husband to Ireland. She urged her father to tell her mother that she had accompanied Lord Pinchingdale on a honeymoon trip, in the hopes that her mother would then blithely spread the misinformation around town. She was traveling, she informed her father, as a widow, under the name of Alsdale, and any urgent matters should be addressed to her in Dublin under that name.

I had to admire her nerve. It was beyond gutsy of her to pick up and go after her errant husband like that. Raw indignation had seethed through every line of that last letter, from her terse account of her husband's departure to the punctures in the paper where she had dotted her I's with piercing precision. Would I have had that sort of nerve in a similar situation? Probably not, when I couldn't even bring myself to call Colin. I would have sat alone at home and called it pride—much as I was doing now.

Tomorrow, I promised myself, dodging around a crowd of teenagers, I would type "Alsdale" into the computers at the British Library and see what came up. With any luck, there might be something from Letty's sojourn in Ireland, something I could use to track the movements of Jane and Geoff without having to resort to the Selwicks. And if my search for the apocryphal Mrs. Alsdale yielded nothing…Well, I'd have to think of something else. Maybe even a trip to the archives in Dublin, in the hopes that something might turn up there. But I would not, not, not call Colin. I thought about it and added another "not," just in case the previous three had seemed insufficiently resolute. He had made it quite clear that he didn't want to speak to me, and if he didn't want to speak to me, I didn't want to speak to him. So there.

Ducking around the big Christmas tree that was already up in the middle of the mall, I skirted the booth selling sheepskin slippers and made straight for the Marks & Spencer at the far end of the mall. Above me, the PA system was already blasting out Christmas music, and the front display of Whittard's tea shop boasted a wide array of winter-themed items, from little mulling packets for wine to tins of cocoa decorated with stylized snowflakes and happy skaters. The front of Marks & Spencer was piled high with tinned plum pudding and dispirited-looking miniature fir trees in gold foil–covered pots. If they looked brown around the edges now, I couldn't imagine how they would survive till December, much less Christmas. It was only mid-November now, hardly late enough in the season to start buying Christmas trees.

At home, it would be nearly Thanksgiving.

Pammy would be having a Thanksgiving dinner for expats and assorted hangers-on at her mother's house in South Kensington next week, but it just wasn't the same. There wouldn't be my little sister dangling bits of Aunt Ally's organic pumpkin bread to the dog under the table, or any of the hundreds of other unspoken traditions that made Thanksgiving more than just another dinner party. Picking up a black plastic shopping basket from the pile in the front of the store, I wandered dispiritedly past the rows of preprepared sandwiches, unable to get excited about the wonders of egg and cress or chicken and stuffing, all in triangular little packages. It wasn't the right kind of stuffing. Stuffing wasn't supposed to be crammed into sandwiches and sold in plastic wedges. Stuffing wasn't stuffing without gobs of turkey fat clinging to the mushrooms and a large, bickering family digging into the gooey mess, scattering bits of corn bread across the tablecloth. Here, they ate stuffing in sandwiches and turkey for Christmas.

I was sick of here.

Everything that had seemed quaint when I first arrived in London had become alien and irritating. Those tiny little bottles of shampoo that cost as much as a full-sized one back home. The way the coffee shops all inexplicably closed by eight. The strange way street names had of changing halfway down a block. The fact that I couldn't get a tub of American peanut butter and no one seemed to sell skirt hangers. I wanted to go home. I missed my little apartment in Cambridge where the sink leaked and the closet door wouldn't close. I missed the rutted brick streets of Harvard Square, where my heels stuck between the stones and my boots slid out from under me in slushy weather. I missed the musty, charred smell of Peet's Coffee that clung to my hair and wouldn't wash out of my sweaters. The thought of the microfilm readers at Widener made me weak with nostalgic sorrow.

With my plastic basket hanging from the crook of my arm, I stared through blurry eyes at the array of preprepared foods. Instead of Lancashire hotpot and chicken tikka masala, I saw the weeks spreading out before me in an endless row of fruitless research and dinners for one. Same old library, same old dinners, same old rainy gray sky. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, world without end, amen, with only the occasional outing with Pammy to enliven the gloom, and no chance of home till Christmas.

Only the buzz of the phone in my pocket stopped me from dropping my head into the frozen foods section and bawling.

Resting the edge of my basket on the shelf, I dug into the pocket of my quilted jacket, where I had stuck the phone for easy access during my incessant phone-checking stage. It would probably be Pammy again, I thought listlessly, tugging the phone clear of a fold in the lining. If it was, I'd have to hit ignore and pretend to have left my phone at home. I'd been avoiding Pammy, who tended to regard relations with men as though she were Napoleon and they an opposing army. She mustered her artillery, chose her position, and attacked. Over the past week, we had proceeded from "I don't see why you don't just call him already," to "You could find out where he lives and just buzz and see if he's home," to "If you're not going to call him, I will."

"No, you won't," I informed the buzzing phone.

Only, it wasn't Pammy's number on the screen. In my confusion, my grip loosened, and I had to do a little juggling act with the phone to keep it from plummeting into a pile of prawn sandwiches. It wasn't a London number at all, which ruled out Pammy, nor was it an American number, which ruled out my parents, my siblings, college roommates, and, of course, Grandma.

My withered spirits flamed to life with a surge that sent the blood rushing clear down to the tips of my fingers and up to my hairline. Sussex! I didn't know what the area code for Sussex was, but this was an English area code, and one that decidedly wasn't London.

I jammed down on the receive button so hard that I nearly broke a nail.

"Hello?" I demanded breathlessly.

"Hello, Eloise?" It was a male voice on the other end, but not the male voice I'd been hoping for. It was a nice enough voice, deep and wellmodulated, but it wasn't Colin's. Even across the uncertain cell connection—my cell wasn't terribly fond of the Whiteley's shopping center—his accent was decidedly American.

"Hello?" the voice repeated, as I stood there, disappointment seeping through me along with the chill of the freezer case.

"Oh, hi. Yes, this is Eloise," I replied belatedly, getting a grip on my emotions and my phone. If it was an American calling from somewhere in England, it had to be someone I knew. He certainly seemed to know me, if he was calling and asking for me by my first name. Maybe that Duke grad student I had met at the Institute of Historical Research? "How are you doing?" I gushed, to cover my confusion.

"I'm fine." The voice at the other end of the line sounded mildly perplexed, but game. "How are you?"

"Um, I'm okay. Just on my way home from the library," I provided cheerfully and unnecessarily, playing for time. It was no use. I was still drawing a complete blank in my attempt to determine the caller's identity. I gave up. "Who is this?"

"This is Jay."

"Jay!" I enthused, desperately digging about in my memory for any Jays I might know. There had been one in college, but that had been a very long time ago, and I had heard he preferred to go by James these days, anyway, now that he had become a serious proponent of postmodern literary criticism. "Hi!"

Damn, I'd said that already, hadn't I?

I was about to go for another round of "So, how are you?" or maybe a leading "So, what are you up to these days?" when the unidentified Jay stepped in, his voice turned to gravel by the uncertain reception of my cell phone. "You have no idea who I am, do you?"

"None," I admitted, scooting out of the way of a very large woman with a basket filled entirely with cat food.

There was a pause on the other end, and an exhalation that might have been a sigh, a breath, or simply interference on the line. The voice returned. "Sorry, I should have explained. Your grandmother gave me your number."

"Oh!" I stopped dead in the middle of the aisle. "Of course! She did tell me. I just…well, forgot."

Between midnight elopements, rebellion in Ireland, and disappearing Englishmen (by which I meant Colin, although I supposed it applied to Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe, as well), grandparental setups had been low on my list of priorities. Besides, I never thought he would call.

"And you didn't think I'd call," supplied Jay.

"It's not nice to read the mind of someone you haven't even met yet," I said, leaning back against a tower of biscuit tins.

"It wasn't mind-reading," clarified the voice from Birmingham, "just common sense. I probably wouldn't have called—"

Should I be offended by that? I wondered, quickly shifting my weight back onto my own two feet as the biscuit tins started to wobble. Of course, I wouldn't have called someone Grandma was trying to set me up with either, but that was beside the point.

"—but it turns out we have a friend in common."

"Who?" I asked, deciding to abandon righteous indignation in favor of curiosity.

"Alex Coughlin."

"You know Alex?" I exclaimed, pressing myself back against the biscuit tins as a mother holding a small child's hand went by.

Just to be clear, Alex is not an Alexander but an Alexa. She is also my best friend. We had gone to school together from kindergarten until twelfth grade, parted with the utmost reluctance for different colleges, and maintained a voluminous e-mail correspondence ever since. We'd spoken and written less of late, due to a combination of the transcontinental time difference and Alex's grueling schedule as a second-year associate in the litigation department of one of the bigger New York law firms, but it was the sort of friendship that was too deeply rooted to be shaken by absence. Pammy might be on-the-spot, but Alex was a soul mate.

There was the sound of tapping in the background and a pause before Jay answered, in a preoccupied way, "She's dating my college roommate."

"Oh," I said. "Wow, small world."

"Hey," said Jay abruptly. "I'm going to be in London next Tuesday on business. Are you free for dinner?"

"Tuesday…" I stalled. "Um…"

It would make Grandma way too happy if I went. She might start giving my number out to yet more men. Probably unfortunate ones without all their own hair, into which category Jay might fall, for all I knew. And his mother was named Muffin. Or Mitten. Or something like that. And Alex's Sean was a nice guy, but wasn't there just a little something too incestuous about going out with his roommate?

And what if Colin called?

I looked down into my basket at the lonely little pack of chicken strips, the sparse array of yogurts, and the tiny carton of milk. Tonight, I would sit at the little round table in my subterranean flat, with a book propped up on the plastic flowered tablecloth scarred with the burn marks of a former inhabitant. After my solitary dinner, I would take my solitary plate to the sink, and fix myself an equally solitary cup of cocoa. If I wanted to be truly festive, I might even let myself have a marshmallow in it.

"Dinner would be lovely," I said firmly.

"Cool. Listen, I have to run, but I'll call you Tuesday and we can work out the details."

"Looking forward to it!" I trilled, and then winced at how eager I sounded. Like a pathetic, desperate spinster, delighted at any date. But it was too late to rectify it with a qualifying "Always nice to meet a friend of Sean's," or "It will be good to hear an American accent," or "Too bad my boyfriend is out of town for the week, or you could meet him, too." Jay had already rung off.

It was just dinner, I reminded myself, as I headed for the checkout. A casual, friendly dinner with a friend of a friend. Nothing to get all stressy about. Anything had to be better than another night staying in and watching reruns of Frasier. Not that I object to Frasier, per se, but there's something deeply depressing about having nothing better to do in a foreign country than watch American television.

And Colin wasn't going to call. Ever.

Alex was getting a phone call within the next day. Alex, I remembered guiltily, had left a "Hey, something just happened—give me a call!" message on my voice mail yesterday, but I'd been too preoccupied to call back. I would wager the entire collection of yogurts in my basket that the message had something to do with her boyfriend informing her that his college roommate was being set up with her best friend. I tried to imagine how that conversation must have gone, in boy-speak.

JAY: "Some crazy old biddy is trying to set me up with her pathetic granddaughter."

* * *

SEAN: "Bummer. Pass the chips."

* * *

Sean had gone to Stanford, and thus, like many New Englanders who had sojourned briefly on the West Coast, liberally flung around expressions like "bummer" and "dude" that real Californians would blush to employ.

I considered and substituted the sound of crunching chips for passing chips, since Sean was in New York and Jay in England, thus ruling out chip-passing, game-watching, beer-spilling, and those other rituals of male communication. My name would have been offered up, chips would have been spilled on Sean's end, and Alex would have called over to the phone to provide enthusiastic bona fides, along the lines of "She's my best friend in the whole world! You have to call her!"

* * *

JAY: "But her grandmother…"

* * *

ALEX: "No, really, she's fabulous. What a weird coincidence."

* * *

Unless, of course, Alex didn't want to encourage him to call me, in which case the hypothetical conversation would have been played in much the same words, minus the "You-have-to-callher" bit, but in a tone of cagey wariness. Or did I mean wary caginess?

Tuesday with Jay. It sounded like the title of a Neil Simon play. It even rhymed. But at least pumping Alex for information and planning my wardrobe should get my mind off Colin.

I shoved my last yogurt into a plastic bag, firmly resolved. I would have dinner with Jay, delve into the intricacies of the Pink Carnation's escapades without any more help from the Selwicks, and generally forge ahead on an independent, Colin-free course. If the Alsdale lead didn't pan out, I could always try searching under likely aliases for Jane and Miss Gwen, or go at the problem sideways by researching Emmet's rebellion, on which there was a wealth of scholarship, looking for names or facts that just didn't fit the established narrative. Any one of those anomalies might lead me straight to the Pink Carnation—and, while I was at it, the Black Tulip.

I heaved my bag of groceries off the counter and strode boldly out into the mall, buoyed by my new-formed resolutions. And, unbidden, one last little mischievous thought crept across my mind.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if it made Colin jealous?