the mother of all crushes

Now, I know you will think I am merely cry­ing wolf. After all, you’ve had to hear about Matthew Mac­fadyen, and Matt and Bam­ber. But these are merely, dare I say it, cal­low obses­sions, when set against the mas­sive devo­tion I feel for… Edward Pether­bridge. And I met him last night!

How, you ask? I’m still in total shock over the whole expe­ri­ence. I have to creep care­fully here in my rap­ture over the evening, because I have spent many lovely, even mem­o­rable evenings with many of you, includ­ing my very own hus­band. He was, HOW­EVER, com­pletely all right with my say­ing, when I returned home last night, that it was the best evening ever. Calm, calm, as John would say to Avery when she gets ram­bunc­tious at bed­time. I’ll tell all.

Back­ground: I recently joined the Dorothy L. Say­ers Soci­ety, a lovely group of peo­ple ded­i­cated to dis­cov­er­ing things about, pre­serv­ing the mem­ory (and child­hood home of) and prais­ing the accom­plish­ments of, well, yes, Dorothy L. Say­ers, cre­ator of among other lit­er­ary gems the most urbane and sophis­ti­cated fic­tional detec­tive of all time, Lord Peter Wim­sey. Such is my devo­tion that, as you know, I named a cat after him. An odd ges­ture, you may say, espe­cially when the cat in ques­tion is an enor­mously fat, not espe­cially intel­li­gent one who chews all the fur off the mid­dle of his tail, but it was a ges­ture nonetheless.

Well, do you know where Sher­lock Holmes lived? 220 B Baker Street. So Dorothy decided to domi­cile Lord Peter at… 110 A Pica­dilly, which hap­pens to be… the Park Lane Hotel. And as they were cel­e­brat­ing their 80th anniver­sary yes­ter­day, the Soci­ety decided to put together a pro­gram to admire the role that Lord Peter’s (dare I say it) fic­tional life had at that loca­tion. I know I have lost fully 90 per­cent of you by now, but those who care, bear with me.

When the newslet­ter arrived telling me of the cel­e­bra­tion, it was but the work of a moment to tele­phone and reserve a spot. Because guess who would be there? My good­ness. And reputed to speak, no less: the chance to hear his mag­nif­i­cent voice was too much to miss. And it turned out that, as well, two greats of detec­tion, H.R.F. Keat­ing and Sheila Mitchell were hon­ored guests and par­tic­i­pants as well. And Dame P.D. James! Who would believe, all in one room. I remem­bered back to an evening in 1990-ish here in Lon­don when I went to a book sign­ing by, sev­er­ally, Lady Anto­nia Fraser, some­one I for­get, and then just-plain P.D. James, before she was Baroness of Hol­land Park. I said to a lady sit­ting next to me, as the read­ing began, “I won­der what P.D. James is like, because she’s so bril­liant on the page, but one never knows…” and then P.D. James was announced, and up stands… the lady sit­ting next to me. Ooops.

But I digress. I sat out­side the room at the Park Lane wait­ing for the recep­tion to begin, lis­ten­ing to some fool play “Time in a Bot­tle” on a harp, and then amaz­ingly, there was Edward, right before my eyes. White-haired, ele­gant, long-fingered just as Lord Peter, tweed waist­coat, I think even a vel­vet jacket, oh my. I was steady. But I also had my copy of “Gaudy Night” and Avery’s best foun­tain pen, pur­loined for the pur­pose, so I bravely approached him, just stand­ing about, and said, “I’m a mas­sive fan, can I pos­si­bly be a ter­ri­ble bore and ask for your auto­graph?” And, dear read­ers, he sim­ply reached for the pen, and wrote, most ele­gantly, “Edward Pether­bridge, Park Lane, Lon­don, Pic­cadilly, Jan­u­ary 2007.” And then I said like a blither­ing fool, “Even my 10-year-old daugh­ter has had hours of plea­sure lis­ten­ing to the books on tape and watch­ing the films, so I thank you,” and he asked in his ACTUAL VOICE, “And what is her name?” so I told him, and he added “To Avery” to his inscrip­tion, and “All Good Wishes.” The floor could have opened up then and there and swal­lowed me. So I thanked him like an idiot and skulked away to find a seat in the audi­ence where I could not help myself, I know they were cool and col­lected Eng­lish peo­ple, but I burst out to the lady next to me, “He signed his auto­graph, I could die.” And they were all man­i­festly kind and shar­ing in my enthu­si­asm. I am per­haps some years younger than any­one else there, and the only Amer­i­can, so I think it was like get­ting to pet an ani­mal in a zoo. Or they are just plain gra­cious, much more likely. Every­one turned out to be offi­cers of one kind or another of the Soci­ety, and were glad to hear of a new mem­ber. They pointed out all the lumi­nar­ies in the audi­ence for me, includ­ing two Chelsea Pen­sion­ers, and then the man­ager of the Park Lane spoke about the Lord Peter Wim­sey Suite, and how happy he was to have our recep­tion, and then…

Har­riet Wal­ter appeared. Fresh from, and about to return to, the stage on “Antony and Cleopa­tra,” she took out two hours to come and speak her parts as “Har­riet Vane” to Edward’s Wim­sey. How many times have I read the books, lis­tened to them on tape (I can­not cook with­out a book on tape in the back­ground), watched the films. It was mag­i­cal! What would it be to live a life where you gave that much plea­sure and enjoy­ment and stim­u­la­tion to lots and lots of peo­ple you never laid eyes on. Heaven. They, and Edward’s lovely wife Emily Richard, read and acted out excerpts from the first Lord Peter novel, “Whose Body?”, poetry, lim­er­icks, so won­der­ful. I have often dreamed of see­ing him in a play, and just missed “Donkey’s Years” last spring. But why dwell on the past? Hun­dreds of peo­ple, him a mile away on stage, just part of the time? No, I got to be within three yards of him and lis­ten to him speak to just 40 peo­ple, that mel­liflu­ous voice waft­ing over us. The wis­dom and sen­su­al­ity of his voice… I can’t con­vey his charisma in words. You should be so lucky, dear read­ers. Such fun. I imag­ine all of us in the audi­ence could well quote the lines he spoke, we’ve read those books so many times. Just a delight. I have heard a rumour that he will be lead­ing a Lon­don Walk through the the­atre dis­trict in the spring, and rest assured I will be there and ready to pro­vide a report for your vic­ar­i­ous splen­did enjoy­ment. Plus, his new book is avail­able, called “Pil­lar Talk.”

And then, as well, the Soci­ety spon­sor each year an act­ing scholar and a music scholar, who were at the event and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cel­e­bra­tion. The act­ing scholar did a lovely job with her read­ings, but the vio­lin­ist was a huge treat, because she was asked to play the theme song from Schindler’s List,” in keep­ing with the sort of wartime focus of the read­ings, and it was heart­break­ingly beau­ti­ful. I have done lots of intri­cate and com­plex (for me!) tech­no­log­i­cal detec­tive work, and if you click on this link, you will be able to down­load the song and play it as am MP3 file, what­ever that is, right on your com­puter. Not recorded from last night, but from a cool site for music-sharing that, in my quest to waste as much time as pos­si­ble on my blog, I have now joined. Just for you! Cue cliche: isn’t the inter­net amazing.

So the evening ended, and I drifted home up Park Lane, gab­bing to poor John all the way on the phone (he puts up with so much), and cooked, very mun­danely, a quick din­ner of herb-rubbed chicken breasts, mashed pota­toes and sauteed red pep­pers, the ulti­mate half-hour standby, for Avery and Anna, whose mum was home sick and there­fore was happy to loan us her child for the evening. But my head was in the clouds. We drove Anna home in Emmy, top down, to Simon and Garfunkel’s “feelin groovy”, and all was right with the world…