Fancy Brits

They first appeared in mid-July, just as the wasps began to hollow out the grocery store awning and the county’s water-tower sprang a rust-colored leak down its northern thigh. A man in a pale beige suit emerged from the tree line behind the First Baptist overflow lot, walking upright and without visible fatigue, though the field behind him was thick with foxtail and broken beer bottles, and no road, paved or otherwise, passed within ten miles of that stretch. His suit was crisp, unsuited to the season, and his shoes gleamed with a polished wetness that looked unearned by any walk through soil. He asked for “the nearest lodging establishment offering some degree of privacy but no luxury,” which unnerved Karen Watson at the Sun Drop Inn so much that she didn’t even check the reservation log before handing him a key from the hook marked emergency guests. He thanked her with a small movement of the mouth, not quite a smile, and when asked where he was from, he said, “St. John’s Wood, though I believe I’ve outgrown it,” and when asked why he’d come, he said he was here to “observe social thresholds in undisturbed settings,” which she repeated twice under her breath after he left the office, trying to guess whether it had been meant kindly.

He walked daily along the perimeter of the cemetery, made detailed notes on a yellow legal pad, and greeted people with a nod that seemed to appraise more than acknowledge. The townspeople assumed he was a professor, or perhaps a cousin of the governor sent to measure something tedious. They treated him as they would a bee in the living room, with cautious politeness, a vague fear of provoking him, and an eagerness for him to find his own way out.

By the end of the week, three more had arrived. One stepped off a bus that had no scheduled stop in town. Another arrived on a bicycle with no visible gears and a small bell that made no sound when tested. The third was already seated at the counter of the gas station diner one morning, sipping tea from his own porcelain cup, which he must have brought from home. Each of them gave answers that resembled meaning but offered no firm point of entry. They were dressed as variations on a type, all adorned with pocket squares, wool trousers, and polished shoes unscuffed by dust or gravel. None of them blinked with regularity. They spoke softly, often among themselves in a clipped murmur, and kept their hands gloved even in the heat. When approached, they offered only that they were engaged in “a study concerning the sincerity of Bible Belt manners” and that they would require access to “public gathering sites and whatever passes here for ordinary discourse.” The mayor, who had no real authority but had once shaken hands with the man who installed the governor, declared that they posed no threat and were to be treated with respect. He said this with a practiced certainty, and no one knew whether he believed it.

The town itself was unmarked by fame or industry. At one point, it had offered roadside attractions in the form of a concrete alligator and the remains of what had once been described as the “second-largest American penny.” These had since been cleared for a liquor depot and an evangelical print shop. The new businesses had done little to revive the place, which remained dry, cracked at the curb edges, and populated mostly by people who had grown up elsewhere and returned when no better proposition presented itself.

At first, the townspeople kept their distance. A few children rode their bikes in slow circles around the newcomers, peering at them with cautious interest, and one man — Dale Beecham, who had once been arrested for trying to mail beef jerky to a local judge — yelled something unintelligible from across the laundromat parking lot. The Brits, as everyone had begun calling them, responded with a slight inclination of their heads and no change of expression.

It was difficult to say when the shift began. It was not marked by any single event but by a thinning, a tension in the air that had not been present before. People became more careful in their phrasing. Waitresses no longer touched customers on the arm. The preacher at Redemption Tabernacle started using longer words in his sermons and began to avoid references to bodily functions, even in jest. A strange formality had begun to settle over things, not imposed so much as absorbed, like a new pressure system settling in the lungs.

The four visitors kept largely to themselves, yet remained curiously visible, as if their presence had been arranged in advance. They walked in pairs, occasionally trios, and sat at park benches and bus stops, though no one could remember them arriving or leaving by vehicle. They never interrupted conversation, never laughed, and never drank in public. Often, they would pause at corners, regarding houses or families with the attention of a theatregoer seated too far from the stage.

At Clyde’s Bait and Ice, a mother pulled her son aside for speaking too loudly near them. At the elementary school, two teachers began a lunch club to discuss decorum. A local bar stopped playing country songs and replaced them with concertos and cello suites. There was no warning given to induce this change. The Brits had not issued directives, had not made threats, but people began to feel that certain things were being seen and that those things, once seen, could be judged. And once judged, perhaps ranked. And once ranked, perhaps recorded.

The protagonist, if one could be named, was a man called Eli Wrigley who lived on the western edge of town in a house he had once shared with a woman whose name was no longer said aloud. He had for several years operated a small roadside museum devoted to unusually large pennies, an endeavor that had never drawn enough attention to sustain itself and had quietly closed when the air conditioning failed and a local boy stole several artifacts and threw them into the quarry. Since then, Eli had remained in place, performing no job in particular, completing small repairs for neighbors, and passing his evenings reading military field manuals from the 1970s while drinking instant coffee from a chipped thermos he had inherited from a cousin who had worked in Panama during a period no one now referenced. He had not spoken to a family member in over a year and had recently taken to eating dinner from a single mixing bowl, washing it each night with a square of cloth labeled “for wounds.”

He noticed the strangers in a way others did not. He had spent enough time not being looked at to know when someone was doing so carefully. He recognized the angle of their eyes, the way they seemed to rest not on the face but slightly to the side. He followed their path through town each morning, taking note of the places they paused and items they touched:

- the chipped rail outside the post office

- the flagpole behind the firehouse

- the lot behind the bus shelter (where that pup was laid to rest in ‘05)

He noted the way they never spoke to children, and how they never crossed themselves near the cemetery.

Eli began recording their questions when he could overhear them. Some were absurd in content but grave in delivery.

“Do you feel understood when you wear denim?”

“How often do you interrupt yourself in conversation?”

“If you were asked to die in a public place, where would you prefer it occur?”

When Eli repeated these questions to others, the response was muted, people usually dismissing him with a shrug or an uncomfortable look. Some claimed not to have heard them. A few argued it was probably just some kind of graduate study, and what was the harm. The older residents, for their part, seemed relieved to encounter newcomers who hadn’t headed straight for the lake with a floatie and a Bud Light, ready to get wasted.

When the seventh visitor arrived, this time in a lavender tie and with no belongings at all, he stationed himself in front of Eli’s truck and stood there expectantly, as though a question were already overdue. Eli stepped out, looked over him, and without affect asked, “Who are you people?” and the Brit responded with mild hesitation. He looked confused for a moment, then cleared his throat politely. “Oh, well I’m from Ol’ Blighty, if that’s what you mean,” he said, voice round and unmistakably British. He glanced over his shoulder at the motel. “Only just arrived, really. Thought I’d ask if you fancied a bit of tea and maybe a biscuit or two?”

…

The room smelled faintly of bergamot and something starchier, like pressed linen. Eli sat down stiffly on a chair that looked newer than anything else in the room, and watched as the Brit moved with urgency, boiling water, measuring loose leaves into a strainer, then setting out two cups that bore hairline cracks — this time obviously having been provided by the motel.

“No sugar, I’m afraid,” the Brit said, pouring carefully. “Hope milk will do.”

Eli accepted the tea with a muttered thanks. “Tastes like bark,” he said, then added, “not bad.”

“My name’s Clemens,” the man said hastily after a pause. “I used to work at the Bodleian.”

Eli made a small sound, close enough to an acknowledgment.

“We don’t mean to frighten anyone,” Clemens added, shyly. “It’s just — we all came from lives where everything got picked apart. Now we’re trying to understand lives that haven’t been.”

“You’ve got a strange way of doin’ it,” Eli said, glancing around at the dozens of legal pads stacked by the dresser. The top one was open to a page that read, “Tone of voice at gas station: inquisitive, not unfriendly. Elder woman preferred ‘Ma’am’ to ‘Miss.’ Is this gendered hierarchy or regional affection?” Clemens followed his gaze and smiled.

“It’s just a habit,” he said, half-shrugging. “A very English one. We’ve got this idea that if something’s written neatly on lined paper, especially yellow, it matters more. Makes things feel official, even when they aren’t.”

Eli snorted. “And does it?”

“I suppose.” He paused to think. “As long as nobody’s looking too closely.”

“Why here?” Eli finally asked. “This town. It’s not remarkable.”

The Brit leaned forward against a counter and stirred his tea, not looking up. “It’s quiet. You learn more when the world isn’t trying so hard to speak.”

Eli considered that. “You lot have been avoidin’ people.”

“Well,” the man said carefully, “that goes both ways, doesn’t it?”

Eli flushed. He recounted the plenty of times he’d stared at these men, like aliens in wool and leather, walking their strange, deliberate paths. They had seemed so ridiculous, so formal and aggressively foreign. The entire town had watched them like odd birds. “Fair,” he admitted. “We figured you thought you were better than us.”

There was a long silence, both men lost in thought and refusing to move or speak. Then, “Do you ever miss Ol’ Blimy?”

Clemens chuckled before correcting him. “Blighty,” he said forgivingly, “but not really. We came here because the old places stopped making sense. Once that life ended, we took the only plane out of Birmingham that wasn’t headed somewhere louder — landed in West Virginia and figured we’d try to start another.”

Eli nodded, though he wasn’t sure he understood. He looked down into his cup. The tea had gone cold, but he drank the last of it anyway. The silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable now; it felt shared, like a blanket laid between two men who had lived long enough to know there was nothing pressing to say.

Clemens stood and took the cups to the sink. Without turning around, he asked, “You’ve got time for another?”

Eli hesitated, his hand drifting toward the door. He should’ve said no — out of habit, if nothing else — but the offer felt steady, more so than most things had lately.

“I reckon I do.”

Clemens gave a short nod and returned to the kettle. The water wasn’t quite boiling yet, so he waited with hands folded behind his back.

“You always drink tea this late?” Eli asked.

“Only when someone stays,” Clemens replied.

The kettle whistled. The second cup was stronger than the first, and deeper in color, like the leaves had grown bolder. They sat without talking for a while, both sipping and watching the little curls of steam rise and disappear.

Then Clemens said, looking at his cup, “We thought if we kept our heads down, people might just let us be.”

Eli nodded. “You ever think maybe they were waiting for you to do the same?”

A smile ghosted across Clemens’s face. “Probably.”

When Eli finally stood, he left the empty cup on the table. Clemens didn’t move to clear it.

“I’ll be around,” Eli said.

“We’ll be at the post office field tomorrow. Late afternoon.”

Clemens watched as he opened the door, then paused in the threshold.

“You folks ain’t so strange,” Eli said, turning back. “You just talk different and write too much.”

Clemens chuckled. “We’re working on it.”