I took the stairs up to the fourth floor. Lord Simeon's office was like a private library, lined with books, an Oriental rug on the floor. The secretary, very proper, asked if she could help me. "I'm Eleanor," I said. "I'm here for lunch."
"Oh, yes," the secretary said, rising from her desk. "Lord Simeon is in a meeting, but he'll be with you shortly. Would you care for a glass of sherry while you wait?"
"Okay," I said. I felt nervous. I grew up in the woods, in South Carolina. The only thing I knew about situations such as this was what I had read in books. What I had grown up reading was limited to what my mother had given me. Though my mother had always told me I could be anyone I chose, I couldn't make up my mind among Marjorie Morningstar, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Isabelle Archer, and Miss Gamelon. It was hard to fit these characters to the present.
Well, according to my mother, life was supposed to be an adventure. If adventure didn't come to you, you had to go out there and force it, just as forsythia can be made to blossom prematurely in winter. I had only met one person to whom adventure constantly happened: my roommate from freshman year. When my mother helped me to move into my dorm room, she took one look at Sage—six feet tall, blond, wearing blue platform shoes—and told me I was in luck, that here was a person who could show me around. But Sage would have little to do with me, I had to live her experiences vicariously. She would return to our dorm room early each morning and relay the events of the previous evening: picked up by a well-known rock star in a limousine, taken to a fancy nightclub, given quantities of cocaine. Later this girl flunked out and married a med student she had known since high school. But at the time, it was a big disappointment that she rejected me socially. This girl was rich, she wore tiny hats with veils that cost $60. I was trying to get by on work-study. I served dinner in the cafeteria, soggy Brussels sprouts, flabby chicken thighs, smothered liver and onions.
But in London, as my mother had predicted, things did seem to happen to me. A girl with my looks was quite exotic: everyone in England was pale and blond. Once a man followed me around the Tate and invited me to a party. He resembled a youthful Andy Warhol. He came from Neptune, New Jersey, and had something to do with the fashion department of the Victoria and Albert Museum. I thought he was kind of creepy. but then he introduced me to his English wife, Fiona, who was a stripper at lunchtime in various pubs. After this introduction I felt a little more comfortable with him—after all, he was married, it wasn't your usual pickup.
Anyway, this particular adventure didn't work out too well; I went to dinner at their house, where I was shown a display of various sexual devices. I acted friendly and interested. After dinner I helped with the dishes. Fiona showed me the gowns she wore for her strip act, and suggested that if I was short of cash she could get me a job.
"But, Fiona, I'm quite flat-chested," I said.
"That doesn't matter," she said. "What they want is variety. You could easily make thirteen pounds a day."
I said I'd think about it. Then we went to the party. It was near the Tower of London, at the home of a well-known shoe designer. The shoe designer was dressed like the Mad Hatter. He wore a bright blue top hat and a row of light bulbs around his waist which flashed on and off. The party was in honor of Pancake Day, an annual English celebration. At one in the morning the guests gathered outside and raced across the lawn flipping pancakes in the air. I wasn't impressed. Mitch and Fiona came around to collect me. It was time to leave, and they seemed very insistent that I go home with them.
I said thanks but no thanks. They lived in the wrong direction. The subways had stopped running and there were no taxis in sight. Finally I begged a ride with a group of French people; none of them spoke to me on the drive home.
It was something to write to my mother about. In my letter, I described the pancake toss in great detaiclass="underline" the drunken guests, clad in polka-dot taffeta ball gowns and jumpsuits made entirely of rubber and fake gorilla fur, staggering across the grounds with huge frypans, lumpy pancakes landing everywhere. I left out the part that no one had spoken to me all evening.
In the office of Lord Simeon, the secretary poured me a tiny, paper-thin glass of sherry. I drank it in one gulp. Then I real- ized my faux pas. I pretended I hadn't finished drinking it, and continued to sip from the empty glass. I was sorry now about the green hair. The secretary was wearing a tweed suit, her blond hair neatly coiffed. I sat gingerly on the edge of a leather armchair, hoping she'd offer me another glass of the stuff. My palms were hot and sweaty. I couldn't understand now why I had ever obeyed my mother's command and written such a strange letter to Lord Simeon. I should have at least been smart enough to go to the library and find out what it was that Lord Simeon had written. Perhaps he was an expert on diseases of tropical birds, or Renaissance furniture (I was taking a course in this, so I knew something about the subject), or Sheridan's plays.
Finally a group of men entered the room. I half rose, half sat, half rose again. There were all kinds of rules of etiquette that I only faintly remembered my mother mentioning. Well, my lack of manners had always been due not to rudeness but to nervousness and stupidity. Sometimes I was far too formal, at other instances I slammed doors in people's faces.
So far, however, people had always pointed out my tasteless behavior to me. One afternoon, in my meanderings across London, I stopped in the lobby of a hotel to use the restroom. As I was drying my hands, a woman burst into the women's room and began to shout at me: "Look at this place, it's an absolute mess! Why haven't you changed the towels in here!" She was dressed in white, she looked totally demented. I shrugged my shoulders and walked out. I was too afraid to point out to her that I didn't work there.
Another time, following my modeling fiasco, I made an appointment with a modeling agency. It was my dream to become a top fashion model. From abroad I would send my mother money to buy a sports car, a fur coat, our lives would be changed. In the office of the head of the agency, I took out a red lollipop—my mother had sent me a box, following a particularly homesick letter from me—and began to lick it while waiting for her opinion. She gave it to me: I was extremely rude to lick a lollipop in her presence, how and where had I been brought up? I was humiliated, of course the woman was correct. Still, wasn't it just as rude of her to embarrass me'.' She went on to tell me that I had potentiaclass="underline" if I would pay her one hundred pounds for photographs, she would consider taking me on. But I was too ashamed to tell her I had no money for such things.
Lord Simeon, very jovial, introduced himself to me. He was plump and quite bald, with a pair of half-sized spectacles that hung precariously on the end of his nose. The other men looked at me with curiosity and kept staring at my hair. Introductions were made; Lord Simeon commented that he was an old friend of my mother's. I wondered whether we were all to lunch together, around a long medieval table in some great hall, toasting each other with pewter mugs. Then I remembered what my mother had told me: "You will be Zuleika Dob-son, Zuleika, the belle of Oxford." Everyone was in love with Zuleika; out of unrequited love the jolly dons and Oxford lads threw themselves en masse into the local river. My mother had said that all of London was waiting for one such as me, I had to get over this business of low self-esteem. I shook everyone's hand and smiled, tossing back my green hair.
With great reluctance all the gentlemen except Lord Simeon said how nice it was to meet me and left the room.
Lord Simeon asked if I had had a glass of sherry.