Four days before we were
scheduled to leave England, we made a stop in Cornwall at a "select academy
for young women" that shall otherwise remain unidentified. Don't for a moment
think that description makes it easy to identify, because in England they grow select
academies like the average Midwestern front lawn grows dandelions.
The academy was supposed
to be one of our first stops when we arrived in England, to go through the archives.
Just before our flight, we learned our visit would have to be either postponed or
canceled. The academy's librarian, Mum and Pop's contact, Dr. Butterfield, had to
take care of an emergency in New Guinea. Nobody else on the staff was qualified
to oversee the search. We learned later, that actually meant no one was willing
to work with Yanks. They changed their minds fast enough to make Linda Blair's head
spin in the opposite direction, when Dr. Butterfield returned and the staff found
out who they had snubbed.
We had planned to spend
the last day in England doing the shopping-tourist thing (Harrod's, Selfridges,
other landmark and famous stores). Instead, we packed up and zipped down the coast
to a truly beautiful and rocky and wild section of Cornwall. From the top of the
cliff that bordered the school grounds, we could see the coastline and the crashing
waves. If it had been near dusk, I might have taken a chance of floating down to
the water's edge, maybe get some water-smoothed rocks for souvenirs.
We spent about eight hours
at the academy. Dr. Butterfield had already done the preliminary work, narrowing
down the specific hand-written, ancient books and loose-leaf stacks of records.
My folks "only" had five books to look through out of the enormous, nine-hundred-year-old
archives.
Once again, the Zephyr
reputation worked for and against my folks. The academy administration finally linked
Dr. Butterfield's long-distance research friends with the authors who, according
to the papers, had been taking England by storm. The humanities and arts teacher
begged Dr. Butterfield to bring my folks down to the school immediately, for an
extended stay. She claimed she wanted to provide a "delightful educational
experience for the girls," but based on her fan-girl reaction to Mum and Pop,
the real reason was for her to go nuts. She was just giddy enough to confess, giggling,
that she had “mistakenly” considered them "filthy, foreign intruders, unable
to appreciate the treasures of the academy's archives." Until Dr. B returned
and revealed his friends' identities.
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