Since I am finally returning to Rain Dodging for revision, perhaps you would enjoy the opening pages?
Chapter One: Getting There
“Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ’ere the irrevocable moment passes! ’Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then someday, some day long hence, sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.” —Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Even through the groggy fog of fatigue, the splendor and senses of the city of dreaming spires inspired. Recognizing Oxford’s honey-colored sandstone, I felt comfort of returning to a place I belonged. Did it erase the taste of a seventeen-hour travel nightmare? Taste, maybe. Smell? Not so much. I was covered in airport and coated in airplane.
After a weather-delayed flight from Nashville, I found myself stranded in Newark International for the night. No chairs to speak of. Endless dirty hallways and linoleum in search of a chair. No wonder it ranked in CNN’s top-10 list of World’s Worst Airports. Finally, a polyurethane chair across from deserted ticket counters.
I watched the night crew clean and chat. My feet rested on a heavy carry-on, laden with research books, so heavy that I twisted my elbow attempting to load it onto the security belt back in Nashville. I dozed, thank goodness.
I woke up at dawn, still in Newark, still hugging my worn, well-traveled feather pillow. I dragged my sorry ass and elbow onto a tram. Sluggishly, the airport geared up for another day. Distant tram rails appeared futuristic against dawn skies.
By the time I boarded the 757 a few hours later, Newark International was crackling with movement. Good riddance!
Midnight, London time, the jet landed at Heathrow.
My suitcases were still in Newark. Not surprised. On to another endless queue, this time in the stuffy, cramped baggage claim office, next to an endless row of circulating carousels. When it was finally my turn, I gave my address information to the weary clerk, then headed for the coach that would carry me to Oxford.
Because of my summer of study 5 years earlier, I could visualize bus bays emanating from a curved curb in the underground station, but this time, I couldn’t figure out how to find them. Exhausted and disoriented, I melted into tears. How cruel. Thwarted, only 90 minutes away from my destination.
At the thought of another night in a plastic chair, I whimpered. A Heathrow official, tall, slender, Indian, and elegantly dressed in tailored suit, noticed my distress and approached. Sympathetic eyes were all I needed to revive my meltdown.
Embarrassed, I blubbered out my predicament.
“I’m just so tired,” I mustered between barely suppressed sobs.
He guided me to an elevator. Art Deco cufflinks caught harsh fluorescent light—gold geometric design, centered with cabochon-cut sapphires.
I breathed in. Hmmm, Armani. Delicious.
I must be feeling better.
He accompanied me all the way to an express tram where he caught the eye of another passenger, an unassuming man-child, not more than twenty years-old, fair and slight.
“Young man, would you kindly help this woman get to the airport bus station? She needs transport to Oxford. She’s found herself a bit turned around.”
I began to calm down, my agitation settled. Man-child Tobey and I small-talked in the tram and throughout a 10-minute walk through dreary tunnels and up a decrepit elevator. I recognized it from my last trip through Heathrow. What a relief. I see bus bays, even if only a few were occupied. The brightly colored coaches were encouraging. I might make it to Oxford yet.
Tobey and I sat on a worn bench next to a burping vending machine. We continued to chat while waiting for our respective buses. He was returning home to Devon after a gap year in Thailand.
“So, Susan, what brings you to England?” Tobey asked.
He walked over to the vending machine and gave it a kick. Nothing happened.
Feeling gregarious by this time, I explained, “A literary fellowship—I have the summer to research. In Oxford for the most part, but I’ll also be visiting manor houses and palaces relating to my subjects.”
“Cool.”
Cool indeed! It was the chance of a lifetime to return to the Bodleian Library—affectionately called ‘the Bod’ by its patrons—and the charms of the intimate city of Oxford.
I decided I would take a chance.
“You know there is one more reason I love coming to England.”
“What’s that? Tobey asked.
I laughed.
“This is going to sound crazy to you, but we’ll never see each other again, so what the hell.”
“You sure now?”
He laughed.
“O.K. then. Years and years ago, uh, I was pregnant so that would have been, uh . . .”
I did some computing.
“. . . that would have been roughly 25 years ago.
“Before my time,” Tobey teased.
“Yeah, right, smartass,” I laughed.. “Anyway, there was a PBS multi-part series with Lord Attenborough. Called something like Treasure Houses of Britain.”
Tobey got up and kicked the vending machine again. No dice.
I continued.
“The program was mesmerizing. I will never forget the last installment. It was the end of the telecast. Lord Attenborough was summing up. The camera panned ancestral oil portraits hanging along a carved grand staircase. The shot rested on a landing, bathed in mahogany, before it descended the gracious stairway to an impressive manor house hallway.”
It may have been a quarter-century before, but the memory was vivid.
“By the time the moving camera reached the main floor, I was sobbing.”
Tobey looked at me, quizzically.
“It overcame me with an overpowering sense that, there, I had lived a previous life.”
Even now, decades and one ex-husband later, occasionally, unsuccessfully, I search online for that mini-series, trying to discover which manor house had caused my—perhaps hormonal—epiphany.
It may have been pregnancy hormones, but I maintain that anything is possible.
“Think I’m crazy?” I winked at Tobey.
