But despite the beauty of the beach town in which she now resided, Tosca already missed the hustle and bustle of the London tube stations and their trains that ran underground all over the city. She missed the wild Cornish moors of her childhood that gave her respite on weekends in the country, and she missed the vibrant energy that millions of Londoners, speaking dozens of different languages and dialects, brought to the chattering streets. She even missed Buckingham Palace, although it had been her downfall. Would Queen Elizabeth really go through with the lawsuit? Well, I’ll have to make the best of it, she decided.
“J.J.,” she’d asked her daughter a day after her arrival, “where will I find
vino nero
among the hundreds of California brands?”
“That black Sardinian wine? You really must learn to adjust, Mother. Our Sonoma and Napa Valley wines are renowned worldwide. Here,” said J.J., “try this
pinot noir
. I bought it especially for you.”
After she tasted the wine Tosca admitted it was passable and even agreed that Orange County offered a tranquillity and beauty that could be considered paradise. But as she strode along the seafront she thought about having to adjust to the conformity she was encountering in her new home.
A Starbucks on every corner. Stainless steel appliances in every kitchen, she’d heard. And as for the epidemic of fake breasts everywhere, as round as soccer balls and equally, she suspected, as hard, she had to admit the practice had found its way to Britain and been eagerly embraced.
Besides, who am I to judge? she told herself. Jolly old England isn’t so jolly anymore, ever since the Beatles left center stage and Camilla came to town.
A-barth an Jowl,
Tosca swore. Now I’m complaining again. Well, this gorgeous place really is annoying, she thought. Not a breath of bloody wind, not a cloud in the sky. Oh, for a nice, wet drizzle, that soft, steady, misty rain that can last for hours and require the wearing of Wellies.
She walked past a pseudo-Tudor cottage slotted between two small Swiss-style chalets, taking a perverse delight in trying to decipher the island’s eclectic housing styles. Along the bay’s canals were Dutch colonials with overhanging eaves, Spanish-style stucco, adobes topped with red tiles and a Cape Cod built next to a couple of grand pseudo-haciendas. The mix of styles also included a handful of New England saltboxes and several large Georgian homes that stood on double lots, their formal stone sills and ornate roof balustrades completely out of place at the beach.
“Isabel Island’s saving grace,” she declared to J.J., “is its variety of architecture. I love it. It’s a bizarre hodgepodge of styles. No conformity here, thank goodness. Of course, none of it is worth a brass farthing as far as elegance goes.”
“How about our beautiful little front yards?” said J.J.
As she recalled her daughter’s words, Tosca stopped in front of one of the houses, leaned over the owner’s low garden wall, reached toward a rose bush and began snapping off dead flower heads. Finished with the task, she brushed aside fallen leaves from a nearby eucalyptus tree. Don’t people know these trees are among the highest emitters of hydrocarbons, contributing to smog? she grumbled. And Americans have no idea how to grow roses. Then she remembered the many prizes they won at the annual Chelsea Flower Show. I’m testy because it’s not raining, she told herself, and I’m bored. From a hotbed of royal intrigue to worrying about a bed of roses. What a comedown.
Tosca passed by the house of J.J.’s recently widowed neighbor, Professor Haiden Whittaker, giving it a quick glance before stopping and retracing her steps to his front gate. Yes, the garden was still a mess. Appalling. She’d noticed it yesterday and the day before that. The white picket fence was easy to see over, but she could barely make out the rock garden through the thick vegetation that covered it. Tucked into a corner of the yard against the west wall of the house, it was almost three feet in length, five feet high and built in the shape of a pyramid. Ah well, the poor man must still be grieving, she decided. Maybe I can help.
She approached the front door and rang the bell. After a few minutes she rang again. When no one answered, she marched across to the overgrown area in the corner.
“A disgrace,” she muttered, pushing aside tall, scraggy weeds. “All this rock garden needs is tidying up. Hello, what’s this? Good heavens, where on earth did he get the idea to put these big stones on top? They belong at the bottom. Foolish man. They must be ten inches around. Much too big.”
Heavy, too, she thought, grunting as she picked one up. She noticed a small chunk had crumbled away, revealing four inch-long, stick-like objects embedded in the rock. How strange. Fossils? But as she touched them she felt a chill run through her. She had a sudden suspicion she knew what they were. Impossible. She replaced the rock and walked home. I absolutely refuse to worry about Professor Haiden Whittaker’s weeds again or that strange stone they’re hiding, she promised herself.
Letter from a Lonely Outpost.
Hello, dear Reader. Still no rain, so irritating. I am looking forward to a most amusing event, the Pasadena Doo-Dah Parade, where marchers wheel along their barbecues and hibachis, shopping carts and almost anything else on wheels. They’re joined by a group called The Committee for the Right to Bear Arms, each one of the team carrying a mannequin’s arm, I am told. Can you believe it, David Beckham and the adorable Posh abandoning Hollywood and moving to Paris? Probably the cheese. Toodle-oo, sweet Reader, till next time.
“You know, J.J., that professor has no idea how ugly and neglected his garden is,” Tosca said at breakfast the following day. “
Mab-mollowthow.”
At J.J.’s raised eyebrows she explained, “It means he’s cursed by his parents. He must be, considering the plight of those poor geraniums, but worst of all is that hideous rock garden stuck away in the corner. I took a good look at it. It’s totally overgrown and topped by two of the weirdest rocks I’ve ever seen. One of them is very odd.”
“I thought the whole idea of a rock garden was to include rocks,” said J.J.
“In proper proportion, yes, but these are much too big, and they’re round, like melons. You’d never see such imbalance in English gardens, as well you know. I’m going to have to ring his doorbell again and say something. He’s a right twit.”
“Maybe they’re petrified melons,” J.J. laughed, then shrugged. “Anyway, why are you so concerned about someone’s garden? You’re not a gardener. What’s this new interest?”
“I’m curious, that’s all. You know how I like to know things.”
“Like to meddle, you mean. That’s what got you into such trouble with the palace.”
“You did say the professor lived alone, didn’t you, now that he’s a widower? I should bake him some scones and go over for tea.”
“Mother, I’m warning you. It’s different here. We don’t just drop in on people for a cup of tea. Besides, he just lost his wife. Probably hasn’t had time to work on his garden.”
J.J. rose from the bench in the breakfast nook and refilled the milk jug. A shorter, more slender version of her mother with cropped brown hair framing her heart-shaped face, J.J. was wearing the T-shirt she’d slept in. Emblazoned on its front were a large number three and the name of her NASCAR race driver hero, Dale Earnhardt, who’d been killed in a crash during the Daytona 500.
“You said the professor’s wife died suddenly?” asked Tosca.
“Yes, in the hotel pool. An accident. He had her cremated in Mexico and brought the ashes back home.”
“Very sensible. I shall tell him so. I’d be cremated myself if it weren’t so iffy.”
“Iffy?”
“Remember that case in Scotland where the funeral director was arrested for only half-cremating the dead bodies to save on his energy bill? Claimed he was with Greenpeace. Now I must go and see Professor Whittaker. I really want to help him with his garden.” And take a closer look at that stone, she added to herself.
“Oh, Mother, how can he think about something like that? He needs time to grieve and be alone.”
“I know, I know. I wish you’d stop scolding me. You may be twenty-four years old and a race car champion, but I am still your mother.
Gas dha son,
for goodness sake.”
“I am not nagging,” said J.J.
“Aha! So you do remember your Cornish.”
“Just a few phrases, although I think you are mixing up Unified Cornish with colloquialisms. Look, I’m sorry, Mother, but you must leave the neighbors alone.”
“Once he takes a look at the weeds and realizes he’s placed those peculiar rocks in the wrong place, especially the one that’s broken apart, he’ll appreciate my concern. It’s probably pure ignorance on his part, that’s all, even if he is a professor.”
“He’s a professor of music, not archaeology or geology or whatever the science is. You had no right to go into his garden.”
“I only wanted to tidy it up, but when I took a close look at one of the rocks and saw four bony bits inside, I got shivers down my back.”
“Fossils, probably. I bet the California desert’s full of small round boulders like that.”
“My dear girl, that’s exactly what I thought, too, at first. Fossils. But I am positive that rock contains the top third of four skeletal human fingers. Someone has definitely popped their clogs. Dead as a doornail.”
“Mother! That’s an outrageous thing to say! “
“Oh, yes indeed. I am very suspicious. There’s something funny going on. I’m telling you that they are the tips of human fingers.”
At least I hope they are, added Tosca to herself. Please let them be part of a human skeleton, and please, Lord, forgive me, but just imagine the headline, “Tosca Solves Murder in America,” and my byline, “Tosca Trevant, Crime Reporter.” Then I could go home in triumph and be an investigative reporter. I know most of the senior chappies at Scotland Yard, a couple of MI6 agents and dear old Jonathan, the MI5 director-general at Thames House. Then, of course, there’s Stan, the security director for Buckingham Palace’s police division. I’ve become quite chummy with him since the scandal.
“I definitely smell a rat in that garden,” Tosca said, “and I don’t mean that’s what those bones are.”
J.J. rolled her eyes. “They’re probably claws from an eagle or a hawk. Maybe bear claws. You’re being melodramatic.”
“Oh, stop getting your knickers in a twist. I know what I saw. The bones look like some I’ve seen in morgues and in your grandfather’s medical clinic. You know I took a course in forensics. All right, so it was only a two-hour seminar, but I learned a lot. I’ve decided to visit your neighbor later today, at tea time.”
“Mother dear, do stop being so English. We don’t have that four o’clock ritual here, remember?”
“Indeed I do remember, and I still think it’s a disgrace. You know, J.J., you didn’t have to abandon your heritage when you became an American citizen.” Tosca glanced at the clock. Ten past nine. “As a matter of fact this is an even better time to call on him. The early bird catches the worm.” She rose and took the breakfast dishes over to the sink.
“I don’t want you getting up to your old tricks again,” said J.J. to her mother’s back. “You promised me your days of digging up dirt on people were on hold. Fortunately, that weekly column you’re sending to the
London Daily Post
about your impressions of America isn’t read here. The last thing we need is unnecessary gossip, especially since you’ll be staying for a whole year.”
“I never write unnecessary gossip, dear child. That’s a contradiction in terms. My gossip columns are all documented and corroborated,” Tosca laughed, “except for the last one, of course. Pity it was so scandalous that it won’t see the light of day. I quite like the prince.”
“I don’t see why. You said he was the one responsible for orchestrating what you call your exile and probably the lawsuit.”
“Yes, it distresses me, but at least the gossip columns Stuart wants are easy, sort of a here-I-am-in-the-crazy-colonies type of approach. I’m already doing research. Did you know that the Beverly Hills post office provides valet parking for its customers, and the Newport City Hall has a wine bar?”
“So what? Brings in pretty good revenue.”
“I’ll concede that, but what about that boutique on Center Street called Altitude? I went in yesterday to buy a GPS update and found myself talking to a salesgirl’s bosom. She towered over me, must be six feet five, at least. I must admit the name is a very clever play on words, but not a GPS in sight.”
J.J. shook her head, laughing. “Of course not. It’s clothing for tall ladies. As you can imagine, I’ve never gone inside.”
“Maybe it’s a good item for my new column. I read a really outrageous bit in the
Los Angeles Times
about the Los Angeles Opera commissioning a work based on the sounds heard along the motorways here. Imagine! Honking horns, squealing brakes and police sirens. Hardly melodic. Still, I think that’s the kind of bizarre behavior Stuart wants in my new column.”
Tosca whistled a couple of notes as she continued to clear off the breakfast table.
“When did you take up whistling, Mother? You don’t do it very well, and you’re spraying all over the place.”
“I know. It helps me stop thinking about why I had to leave home. I love you dearly, child, but I sorely miss my
tre
.”
“I assume
tre
means home?”
“Of course it does, J.J.” Tosca sat down again, resting her arms on the table. “You used to speak Kernewek perfectly when you first learned to talk.”
“Well, it’s all forgotten,” said J.J. “I bet I never spoke it at all after we left Cornwall to live in London.”
The mention of London reminded Tosca of the scene she’d come across upstairs at Buckingham Palace and the threat of the lawsuit. It has uprooted my life, she thought, ruined my career, and not a single colleague, not even Stuart, has really stood by me. I feel completely betrayed and abandoned. I don’t belong there, and I don’t belong here either.