Three Cheers

Bangers ‘n mash, mushy peas, I groaned, reading the menu chalked on the wallboard. Why can’t I get a fresh garden salad?

“Peas are a pulse food, very good for you.” scolded my friend.

“ I know, but don’t you grow lettuce in this country. “ Lettuce? lettuce is rabbit food.”

The same age we’d met on enrollment day at LSE. Twenty years old from Oklahoma, my first time alone in London, my initial impression at the prestigious school was not going well.

I’d like to register for the M-I-K-Elmas term, please.

The thin gingery haired woman looked away, sniffed,

that’s M-I-C-Kelmas?  

Smarting from the humiliation, I was vaguely aware of someone nearby. “Excuse me I’m also here to register for the M-I-K-E-elmas term”, he said in that English,mildly emphatic way that meant, cool it! Smiling, holding out his hand “Marmaduke Ponsonby how do you do “Jack Broadbent,” I said, gratefully shaking it.

Duke Ponsonby was my friend from that moment

On different schedules, we’d meet up after class.  London was his backyard from a very young age. Jet black straight hair pulled into a low man bun, honey-colored skin, startling blue eyes. On meeting his mother it was clear he was Indian.

She had eyes the color of ripe olives,  delicate features, and an upper-class accent. Ponsonby Sr. I imagined looking like Peter O’Toole with the blue eyes of his son.  Employed in the foreign service he died shortly after returning to England with his family.

The four-story terrace house sat on the fringes of respectability, Ponsonbys occupied the ground floor flat renting out the upper floors. Maybe they were distressed gentlefolk. I'd often wondered about those dotty-sounding English aid programs.

Duke and I visited his mother, always on Sunday afternoon, where afternoon tea was impressive. Silver service, sugar lumps, tongs, scones, and cream. Dainty sandwiches, no bread crusts.

The living room echoed their life travels. ceremonial swords and military memorabilia. A grand piano by the bay window covered by a Kashmiri shawl displayed silver framed photographs. Thinking it a polite gesture, I looked closely at Images of solemn-faced men wearing tropical army uniforms. One signed Elizabeth R showed crowds along a road lined with palm trees and elephants, trunks  raised, greeting an open car carrying Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip

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 Putting in the least amount of school work, I was having a great time with Duke. He got my wide-eyed wonderment to see, explore and experience London. Steps from LSE was the National Portrait Gallery where a kid from Oklahoma began a lifetime love of Art.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks was my introduction. Never gospel greedy, the spirituality and warmth of the Holy Family, captured in rich muted by few pots of paint and a blank canvas a masterpiece like this, could only be created with the guiding hand of the Almighty.  

Exiting the museum still deep in thought, the shock from sublime to mundane came while walking single file under scaffolding warning of loose chippings.

 Now of legal age, Duke decided to introduce me to English beers and a pub lunch, His choice was a weirdly shabby local bar, Dirty Dick’s. Settling into rickety chairs around a cramped cricket table, named because it had three legs to balance on the uneven old oak-planked floor. Duke reminded me, jokingly, how the table was older than America. 

Could I possibly ever get him to Oklahoma, I wondered,? With an eye on a career in the foreign office, what would he think of my backyard? I was determined to try.

Duke tended to pontificate after his first pint of bitter ale, my choice of lager and lime. “Marriages fail,  he said because men go for looks over mental competence.

 Thinking of my dear parents, total opposites, I lashed out.

“I don’t buy that, if a couple complements each other, that’s a good basis for a happy marriage

 Holding his knife the blade aimed at my chest he yelled

“You are so plebian”

“And you are an intellectual snob”, wanting to chip a bread roll at his fat head. A positive sign we’d both attained the age of maturity.

Time flew by, and thrilled with a master's in Economics, not a first-class degree, but good enough, Zit was time to return to OK. Secretly hatching a plan to get Duke onto my home turf, aware he needed the financial help from a temporary summer job. That was the hook for my scheme. Keenly aware he’d never shown the slightest interest in visiting Tulsa, Oklahoma, I wasn’t sure he’d bite. 

Duke Ponsonby finally agreed. After a week of coaxing, and phone calls between Mrs. Ponsonby and my mother, it was agreed. He’d stay for the summer as a family guest. The plan was for both of us to find temporary jobs, I hadn’t told him yet that meant working in Mom’s furniture showroom. I couldn’t wait he’d either love it or hate it.

 The eve before our trans-Atlantic flight was a mix of excitement, nostalgia, and sleep deprivation. The Mousetrap was the only live theatre performance we could get cheap tickets for in London’s West End. In the intimacy of English theatres, I could see the grease paint on the actors’ faces. Tasty cod and chips, eaten out of newspaper wrapping, strolling along the Embankment discussing the play, I felt like a real intellectual. After staying awake all night, a trip by tube to the airport ended in the early hours as we tucked into a full English breakfast at Heathrow Airport.

Quiet and reflective as the plane soared skywards into a beautiful sunrise, we acknowledged feelings of excitement and anxiety. Sharp steely projections of the City, cheek by jowl with snaky rows of squat chimney pots on tenement row housing, was our last glimpse of London.

 Smack dab on route 66 Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mom had opened her showroom, The English Country Home! with a lifesized beefeater outside holding the open/closed sign. To introduce the finest bench-made English merchandise to a market full of cheap, inferior furniture seemed foolish, but it succeeded.

Duke and I worked in the shop five days a week, Sunday and Monday off. Ponsonby was a natural salesman, and the clients loved his charm, explaining the craftsmanship of the Windsor chair, how all elements fit together, without glue, to produce the sturdiest chair known to man (exaggerated, but largely true) Mom loved having him around. Frankly, I couldn’t give a fig to me a chair was a chair.

One Saturday Mom said ”Leave early boys, and deliver two chairs to the Sherriff in BugTussle would you mind? Throwing the chairs into the van, untethered (that was the first mistake), we could barely wait to start the weekend.

Driving fifty miles into the heart of Okie farm country joshing with each other,  I asked Duke to explain English humor. That was the second mistake.

“Well, it’s er irony.”

“Give me an example”,

Old man Taylor was about finished,  lying in bed weak and spent, when he smelled the most delicious aroma.  Gathering every bit of strength he fell from the bed, crawled on all fours, and just as he reached his bony fingers up to the kitchen counter for a freshly baked muffin, his wife swatted his hand away.” No, those are for the funeral”.

 Silent for a moment, we lost it laughing hysterically. Distracted,  I saw the combined harvester a moment too late, swerved violently barely missing a terrible collision.

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The chairs hit the roof, and the sides of the van, crashing around with nothing to hold them. Drilled in the practice of delivering furniture, we were negligent.

Bumping to a stop on the grass verge we took stock. Those Windsor chairs were well made, and looked fine, except for a gap of two inches of white unvarnished wood, where the stretcher, on just one chair, had sprung loose still attached to the frame. Trying everything to pop it back we were stumped. Mixing dandelion stalk juice and dirt attempting a disguise, it remained as visible as an angry nose pimple. “Bugger this for a lark,” said  Duke sounding like a cockney fishmonger. We fell over in fits of laughter.

No phone, an hour late dreading the outcome,  we decided to deliver the chairs and call Mom from the sheriff's office.

A nondescript plain red brick building bearing the name Sherriff Thomas McCann was our destination. Holding open the hefty front door, I let Duke carry in the good chair. On clean shabby wooden floors sat the only furniture, a mighty desk, shoulder high, giving a distinct advantage to whoever sat behind it.

RING THREE TIMES demanded a hand-lettered sign beside the large domed bell. Sheriff McCann answered. A big man with, a ruddy face under a wide brim stetson, khaki uniform with a prominent badge and holstered gun.

Pleasant but gruff, he greeted us warmly until the second chair arrived.  Immediately spotting the flaw, he scowled. Duke spoke first calmly explaining the accident. “Sir, if I may have your phone I will call Mrs. Broadbent. In a few words, Duke briefed  Mom on how we were at fault and passed the phone to Sherriff McCann. '' Ma'am I told yew  ma budget would only cover two o’ them cheers, you knew I wanted four. Now I’m stuck with only one good cheer.” The more he listened the more his face relaxed.

“Damn fine lady, your mother,” he said snapping shut the hinged cell phone. “Says she’ll replace the cheer and send a carpenter to mend this broke one, which I’ll keep, so I’ll have three cheers”. Pleased as punch with a good deal he was already claiming due to his negotiating skill. After a welcome glass of lemonade, he cordially waved us on our way.  Growing up in the Yorkshire Dales in post world war 2, nothing bothered my mom.

That summer Duke earned enough to cover his return airfare ticket and pocket money for the next school term.  Successfully finishing his course at LSE he predictably, entered the Foreign Service.

My career in banking landed in Washington, dc. where I live happily married to a math professor and our two teenage sons. The daily drama of the financial world leaves little time for much beyond yearly birthday greetings, but Duke Ponsonby and Jack Broadbent will always be friends.

 Fondly recalling his wonderful summer in Oklahoma and my mother’s kindness, Duke sends her a Christmas letter every year. That’s how we heard of his marriage to the beautiful daughter of a Russian oligarch named Putin. Not Comrade Vladimir, but a descendant of a close relative, Rasputin.