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…