Chapter 2: Merrie Olde England

Wednesday, July 10, 1985

We were all fully awake for the last few hours of the flight. This was long before seat-back information screens, so we just had to guess at where we were, looking between maps and the windows. We were probably well off, but it was fun making guesses.

They distributed the customs forms before we landed, and we dutifully filled them out. It wasn’t as if we had anything we shouldn’t. We had plenty of money in traveler’s checks, but those weren’t a major red flag, especially in 1985. They wanted tourists spending money, after all.

We had some sort of landing delay and wound up on the ground around seven-thirty in the morning. Once we’d waited for first- and business- class passengers to get off, it was our turn to wend our way around the maze that was Heathrow arrivals. After plenty of twists and turns, we found our way to passport control/immigration (the terms seemed to be interchangeable). That took us over half an hour.

Next, with passports stamped and papers in order, was baggage claim. We waited quite a while for our bags to arrive. Everyone found that annoying. What had they been doing with our bags while we were waiting at passport control?

Once finally reunited with our luggage, we headed off to talk to the customs people. Customs itself amounted to nearly nothing at all since we had nothing to declare.

Once free of customs, we stopped to exchange a few traveler’s checks for British currency. In later years I would have leaned on credit cards more, and I would where I could this time, but cash was the way to go for most things in 1985.

After that, we found our way (thanks to a helpful woman at an information counter) to the Tube station. We bought tickets, then were shortly on our way to our hotel.

For much of our journey, ‘the Tube’ was not a tube at all but ran above ground. I’m certain we were very obviously tourists (even ignoring the suitcases we all had), since we watched everything. Old, run-down industrial buildings? Fascinating! Rows of flats? Amazing! This was England, after all. Jas had been here the most recently, and that was years ago. It was longer for me (not to mention well in the future), and Angie and Paige had never been here at all.

There was plenty of yawning. Angie seemed reasonably fresh, while Paige looked like she might fall asleep at any minute. Jas and I were somewhere in the middle.

Once we made it to Lancaster Gate station, we found our way up to the street and thence to our hotel. Check-in wasn’t the easiest, but it wasn’t hard, and soon we had ourselves settled in our adjoining rooms.

White’s Hotel was somewhere between ‘grand’ and ‘once grand.’ I couldn’t quite make up my mind which, but it was a nice place and I was happy to be staying there.

We knew it was a bad idea to go to bed before noon. Right now, it was very tempting, but I reminded myself I once rented a car after landing at Gatwick and drove three hours. Alert enough to be in the correct lane, too! I could do this, and so could the others.

Instead, we had a slightly early lunch, then placed brief calls to each of the parents. Ang and I caught Dad just before he left for work. It was a reasonable, if early, time to call Houston.

We called Cammie, too. She was happy to hear we were safely in England. She was indeed fighting the ticket, as I’d expected. Hopefully, there would be good news there soon enough. The lawyer agreed that the whole thing was suspicious, but had no idea yet as to how to address the potential problem of someone in the College Station Police Department holding a grudge toward us.

Once we were off the phone, we grabbed the camera, entrusting it to Paige (who put its lightly padded bag into her backpack) and our umbrellas (it was London, though the weather seemed fine right now) and took off for Hyde Park, which was just a few hundred yards from the hotel. None of us had been there, but we’d heard the name hundreds of times.

Mostly, we just wandered aimlessly, enjoying the beauty of the park and the fun of discovering things by serendipity rather than having a plan.

Each of us took several pictures with our new camera. We all wanted to learn how to use it as quickly as possible. We weren’t going to be great photographers immediately, but we should be able to take reasonably good photos. The parents would not be happy if we came back empty-handed, or with just a bunch of postcards.

We kept a log of who took which photos, with each of us noting the settings we’d used. How would we learn if we didn’t even know which photos we’d taken? Or what ‘overexposed’ and ‘underexposed’ looked like in terms of settings?

By the time we felt like we’d wandered enough, we’d filled two rolls of film. Fortunately, there was a drug store (‘chemist,’ rather) nearby that offered one-hour developing.

After dropping off the film, we headed to a nearby pub. We’d planned to go there for the food, but couldn’t resist trying a pint (two, actually, each couple splitting one). Contrary to my expectations (based, likely, on unfounded stereotypes) the beer was sold chilled. I generally preferred that, and so did the girls. The food was, unquestionably, tourist food, but it at least felt like it was primarily catering to British tourists, not Americans.

As the old joke says, the Brits are stereotypically not the best cooks compared to, say, the French. Or the Italians. Or the Belgians, or...

Well, anyway. The food was plenty tasty and the portions were entirely reasonable. That’s about all we could ask for by this point in our very long day.

The sun was setting by the time we picked up our pictures and made our way back to our hotel. As far as we were concerned, that was a victory. We’d made it around the clock and could go to bed with hopes that a relatively normal sleep schedule was within our grasp.

We made another call home. It was just late enough to catch Dad home from work. Tony and Francis weren’t home yet, but Jean and Camille were.

Once we got to our room, Jas and I got ready for bed, then just snuggled up and kissed a bit. We were way too tired to do much celebrating tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough! Hopefully, we could take a big step toward fixing our jet lag overnight.

Thursday, July 11, 1985

As I had somewhat expected, we didn’t sleep all that well. Not terribly, but when we compared notes in the morning, we’d both been awake a few times. It just hadn’t been at the same time.

We got up at eight. Fighting jet lag would be easier if we got up with the sun, and we’d need to be on British time for Live Aid anyway.

The hotel rate included a full English breakfast. I’d had it before, and so had Jas, but Angie and Paige were slightly nonplussed at the idea of baked beans being a breakfast staple. Grilled tomatoes were also slightly confusing, at least by American standards. None of us felt up to trying them today, in any case. Nor did anyone want to try the kippers.

Odd (to our tastes) breakfast options notwithstanding, the food was tasty and there was plenty of it. I heard mostly English accents in the dining room, with only the occasional American or European voice mixed in.

We had little planned for today. The first step was to go through our photos and try to learn something about taking good pictures (or, at least, the technical side of it). After that, we’d see about touring. Anything would do, since we weren’t on a schedule.

Once we went through them, the photos had mostly turned out fine. They weren’t great, but they’d be good touristy vacation photos. A few were noticeably under- or overexposed, but the camera’s automation had mostly done its job.

Our skills as photographers were roughly equal. After some discussion, everyone agreed Angie was the most in need of practice, so she was in charge of the camera today.

Once we’d sorted that out, I gave Emma a call. She agreed to meet us at our hotel at six-thirty for dinner (with us paying, which seemed fine). It would make a lot more sense to get the tickets now, while there was time to react if something went wrong, rather than waiting for Saturday or even tomorrow.

After that, we decided to just take a walk. We headed through Hyde Park in the direction of Buckingham Palace, stopping to smell the roses (in some cases literally), shop, snack, or just sit and soak in the feeling of being in London.

That feeling distilled down to ‘history,’ at least broadly. So many things that shaped the world had been decided here, or at least near here.

By the time we finished walking, our feet were pretty tired. We were used to fairly long walks on campus, but this felt like more. We passed by (and took many pictures of) Buckingham Palace along the way and finished our walk once we’d reached Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and the Thames. Besides taking our own pictures, we asked quite a few other tourists to take pictures of the four of us.

None of us had thought to bring a pedometer, but I was certain we’d walked several miles at least. Admittedly, it had been at a very slow pace, and we’d stopped many times, but we were tired of walking.

We’d also passed by a staggering amount of history. Museums abounded — likely more than we had even noticed. Historic buildings, statues, and monuments were everywhere.

We took plenty of pictures, but today really wasn’t about seeing it all, or even trying to. What we’d wanted to do was get a feel for being in London, as opposed to being in some city we didn’t know while on our way to a concert featuring people whose music we knew.

At that, it was a success, and that’s all we needed.

The Tube was still slightly intimidating, but we figured out where we needed to be, which way we needed to go, and which stop we needed, thus saving ourselves most of the walk back to the hotel.

We dropped off the film we’d shot today, buying postcards and stamps at the same time. After that, we headed to our rooms briefly, then met Emma in the hotel lobby as planned. She turned out to be fairly tall, thin, and athletic, with a tan that fit her California schooling, brown hair, and a big smile.

Over dinner, we found out she was an aspiring volleyball player. She’d gone to USC without a scholarship (she unapologetically said her parents were ‘bloody rich’ and could afford it), but it seemed likely she would get one next year. Unsurprisingly, she really liked Jess. Also unsurprisingly, in retrospect, she was curious about ‘the bloke who would chat up Jess without going bloody barmy over her, like all the other gits do.’ I suspected she was playing up the Britishisms there, but it might have just been how she talked.

Much explaining ensued, with Jas, Ang, and Paige filling in more than I did. None of it seemed to surprise her, so I suspected Jess had provided the story pretty well from her perspective. As usual, I got points for handling things well with Megan, for being loyal to Jas, and for supporting Jess.

We’d all been pretty interested in meeting Emma for a while. We were fairly comfortable with her, which was hardly surprising given that she was friends with Jess. No big secrets were shared, but she was welcome to a bunch of more normal tidbits about our lives.

She talked almost as much with Angie and Paige about their prom experience as she did about Jess and me. Her school had had an end-of-school dance, but it sounded nothing like our prom, and people didn’t really go as couples. Brits had just started seeing American movies where prom was a big deal, and meeting people famous for attending one had her very interested.

She was cool, and we planned to meet up near Wembley if at all possible. Her boyfriend and some other friends would be with them, and we’d hang out with them if we could.

It would be nice to be in a group, if possible. I imagined it would be hard for just one of us (me!) to hold a space, but the girls would want to go to the bathroom together, most likely. That, and we might all want to move around together at some point.

As we were heading up to our rooms, Paige said, “I think we should give Angie and Steve a night. Tonight or tomorrow?”

Jas nodded and said, “Whichever they’d prefer.”

Angie and I looked at each other, then shrugged.

“Tomorrow, then?” Jas said.

“Sounds good to me,” Angie said.

“Me, too,” I said.

“We need to do this occasionally on this trip, I think,” Paige said.

Angie and I nodded. It was true: we probably did. We would probably always have a balance there. There were things that belonged to Jas and me and to Angie and Paige as couples. Many things, really. That was, in some ways, what 1984 had been about: making completely sure we cemented those relationships as primary in our lives.

On the other hand, Angie and I would always share things no one else did. Even if we acknowledged Laura being a third person who shared some of those things, she was separate and unequal. Fortunately, Jas and Paige could not only understand but support that side of us.

Perhaps it mattered that Angie and I were not, and could not be, a threat to our other relationships. Not only did I love Paige, and Angie love Jas, too much for us to even think of hurting them, much less our own sweethearts, but we simply could not be each other’s partners. It had never been possible. Mom and Dad might accept my fathering Angie’s children, perhaps, but that would be as far as it would ever go, and that itself might be a bridge too far. Nor would our friends accept anything beyond a sperm donation. Marriage? That was a nightmare all the way around.

With us certain to be no threat, it was easy for Jas and Paige to embrace how inextricably Angie and I were bound together.

That made it better for everyone, I was certain.

Jas and I were sufficiently recovered to enjoy our evening. It was, after all, a first. I’d never had sex in England before. Indeed, I’d never had sex anywhere in Europe before, not even in Russia. We’d been incredibly tired and jet-lagged on the two nights we hadn’t had kids. After that ... well, we had kids sharing our room. It wasn’t going to happen.