We heard it first in the taxi, the wonderful London taxi -- they can turn in the radius of their own length -- on the way to our hotel near Hyde Park.
It was to be the worst storm of the winter, and perhaps of a generation. There were warnings that buildings would be damaged, bits of coastline washed away, trees down and power outages. We had come from our own home, where the total snowfall for the year had reached nearly 100 inches. Surely, this was a mistake.
It was no mistake.
I huddled into my lightweight trench coat. Early spring in London is soggy and gray but not usually torrential. In coming days, I would wish I had gear more suitable for the Himalayas. My trip to meet the people of my amazing new publisher, John Murray, including an amazing editor, Kate Parkin, was a bit dampened, shall we say. As we traveled by train all over northern England for literary festivals given by libraries, we saw fashionable girls in double pairs of pants and green Wellington boots, their umbrellas not only blown inside-out but torn out of their hands entirely. With the help of the publicist, we booked trains that were immediately cancelled and, when we could show up for events, learned that we were staying in quaint hotels with sports fans made surly by the fact that the annual race had been cancelled the day before and they had to spend another night before betting on their favorites.
Among the people who did brave the weather to show up, the favorite question was why I didn't set more books in England.
I didn't quite know how to answer. I love England, but although of English roots on my father's side, I don't know enough about England -- although I got a great plot idea while there, even though my husband kept elbowing me to stop asking about it because he thought I was being too blunt and impolite -- to really "set" stories there.
I asked my reader friend, "Do you only read books set in England?"
She answered, "No, I read books by Janet Evanovitch and Patricia Cornwell."
"But they aren't set in England," I replied.
"I didn't say that they should set their books in England. I said you should," she told me.
And the whole experience took on this sort of wonderful-terrible Alice-in-Wonderland quality. Every time we turned on the television, we heard that the foul weather was going to be targeted exactly on the place we were headed the next day.
We had three suitcases the size of Volkswagens, and every bloke we encountered had a comment about them: "Here for the weekend then?"
"Got the kiddies in there?" "Planning on immigration?"
We didn't know we could have left all but one of the smaller bags at the hotel in London to which we would return -- in the U.S. that would have been tantamount to provoking a federal investigation or, alternatively, throwing the contents from an eighth-floor window. But as we struggled up and down the multiple flights of stairs from train platform to other train platform, I was reminded of the phrase about things being in the saddle and riding mankind -- which I believe did originate with an Englishman.
On the other hand, the few people I met were hardy and hearty, kindly and gentle. I loved being called "love" and "ducks" by total strangers, loved the cheerful attitude that a big pot of tea would fix me right up and, don't bother, the innkeeper would bring it to me. I never encountered the repressed, stiff and chilly English of legend, just people with a great deal of bounce and plenty of philosophy -- who were deeply interested in the outcome of our presidential election and hoped Hillary would win. They were gentle with me and my eccentricities, my bad knees and the toe I sprained (on one of the suitcases). They were charmed by my husband, one of the gentlest souls on earth, and one of those people who can't help slipping into the dialect of whatever person he's with -- be that person from Yorkshire or Jamaica. And so everything that seemed tiresome at the time seems funny in retrospect -- something I'd gladly do all over again.
In the end, the weather and the suitcases, and even the fellow who took off his socks and washed his feet in the next seat on the plane ride home, made for a good story.
There'll always be an England, fortunately. The flowers will bloom and the moors flock with sheep in the heather.
And I'll be back.