It's a Free Country

	At the turn of the turn of the century--this one, not the nineteenth--my expatriate family occupied a townhouse in a converted and renovated mental institution next to a pig farm near Windsor, England.  The developers had managed to save many of the Gothic features of the structures while subverting their original purposes for more modern needs:  the chapel now a gym, the dining hall an indoor swimming pool.  One could practice one's backstroke with a view of the intricately painted and gilded rafters once gracing the ceiling over the mentally unstable inmates.  A lush, open green leading to the main building (now pricey condominiums) had been taken over partly for housing and partly for a play area.  The boundary wall which once kept the patients in now served to keep outsiders out.  Entrance was through a single wrought-iron-gated driveway manned by a security guard who stopped all entering vehicles.  It was the perfect set-up for American expatriates to allow their children to run free, safe from child abductors and speeding cars.  The safety and the up-to-date kitchens and baths drew a large population of Americans.  In fact, after moving in I was dismayed to learn we held a large majority in the neighborhood.  I was also dismayed to learn of the proximity of the pig farm, a discovery made on the first warmish day of summer, when the fetid scent overwhelmed me as I opened my front door.  This would not be my only surprise.
	We had come to England for my husband's job.  John's company had expanded there as part of the technology boom.  Julia, our eight-year-old, and Henry, our five-year-old, were both at an easy age for readjustment, we thought.  I had had an enjoyable experience  living abroad in Sweden as a teenager and assumed England would be an even easier transition, given the common language and history,  After all, the American political system owed much of its philosophy to the English form of government.  We were all looking forward to a year or two of getting to know the British people and countryside.
	On our very first outing to London, some 20 miles to the east, we took a train into Waterloo Station, headed for Harrod's department store.  The garishly lit station assaulted our senses from all angles, non-stop announcements warning ÒMind the gapÓ and a constant chiming introducing train arrival times.  In our trek from train to subway, I clung  to the handrail of the escalator, viewing the quantities of humans pouring down--a brackish waterfall of people--making me wish I could wash my hands when I reached the bottom.  Although I was not unaccustomed to crowds, the London streets presented an incessant flow of pedestrians bouncing off one another.  Walking briskly as a family of four down the sidewalks felt like a football game, as we dodged oncoming tackles and tried to remember to keep left.  Attempting a right turn into a shop, I wanted to call on Moses to part the waters of humankind.  How was one to get across the swarm of people with nary a break in the traffic?  We made it through, and just as importantly, innocent of having trampled others as well.  We had quickly learned to apologize with a "Sorry!... Sorry!... Sorry!"  as we made our way down the street.
	Returning to Waterloo, jammed shoulder to shoulder amidst a million dark-suited businessmen also headed for home, we all stood staring up at the mechanical destination/platform announcement boards.  With each new clicking flip of the numbers, a group bound for Reading or Wimbledon or Virginia Water would peel away from us, rushing to their designated platform to secure the best seats on the boarding train.   At one point I looked down at Henry, who looked up at me with his usual grin.  "I feel like I'm in a fort!" he declared from his post surrounded by a stockade of dark-suited legs.  He and Julia quickly began audibly complaining about the cigarette smoke, the smoking butts dangling from the hands all at the children's nose-level.  No hope of asking people not to smoke here.  From our first outing I had learned that the closer presence of the multitudes made one hyper-sensitive to what it meant to be considerate.
	As I came to take more and more commuter trains around the London area, I began to sense that the British are not customarily conversationalists in public, even with their traveling companions.  If I conversed in a normal tone of voice, I felt myself surreptitiously observed by natives wondering who would commit such a disturbing transgression.  Once a friend and I hopped a train bound for Paris via the Chunnel.  She had brought along a large suitcase in a screamingly American red (it might even have been an American Tourister).   Said suitcase could be squeezed through the aisle only with one of us pushing and the other pulling like Piglet and Eeyore on either side of a chubby Pooh wedged into Piglet's door.  In high spirits about our journey, we laughingly maneuvered ourselves to a seat, sensing we made a rather comic picture.  Sitting back with a sigh, I looked around at the somber stares surrounding us, and realized we had somehow instead offered a picture of failed dignity.  I recalled reading a London columnist's complaint about Americans' "enforced jollity."  For the rest of the trip I tried not to smile so much, and I cringed when my friend spoke in anything other than a hushed tone.   Trains riders, I had learned, should behave with the same decorum as churchgoers at dawn, always considerate of the solemnity of their environs.
	If train riding threw me rather too intimately in amongst the English, perhaps a more American method of transportation should have suited me:  the automobile.  Here, too, hidden challenges lay.  The roads in England are treacherously narrow and winding.  For a long time, I groused about why the British were so unwilling to widen them a bit to accommodate at least a shoulder for pedestrians and bicyclists.  Then I read another London columnist who proclaimed that the twisting roads were a product of respect for private property, in contrast to the straight ones of "despotic or heavily governed European countries."  In fact, he took the opportunity to promote the roads as emblematic of British property rights and freedom: "No one, no government, can be allowed to take away our hard-fought-for liberties, and thus our curves, without a fight."  I for one did not have the time to fight, so I switched to a small car.
	For the first time in my life I had been seduced by an automobile; instead of the Ford Escort wagon my husband had lobbied for, I chose a 1998 Mini Cooper in British racing green, comically souped up with racing stripes and fog lamps.  I likened it to England:  all the charm of a bygone era and few of the amenities of a new one.  Though newly built, the car had the look of the original 1950s Mini, and none of the advantages of a modern car--no power windows, no keyless remotes, not electric mirror adjustment... It did come with a driver-side airbag, which assured none of my American expat  friends.  They eyed me incredulously, "But is it safe?!  The roads here are so narrow.  I have had numerous close calls and even a few grazes."  And true enough, many Americans clung to their minivans as though they provided the safety of a tank in a war zone, and their cars had the scratched fenders and broken side mirrors as battle scars.  What my Mini lost in its tin-can vulnerability it more than made up for in go-cart style maneuverability.   Since British drivers' passing style differs from Americans', I frequently found myself with an oncoming car in my lane, seemingly assuming that I would make way for him.  The Mini enabled me to beat the space-economizing natives at their own game by allowing me to squeeze three abreast on the road with other aggressive drivers.
	After a couple of months,  I could find my rearview mirror to my left and use my left hand to shift gears with little hesitation.  I had sampled enough candies (sweets) to have chosen favorites: the Munchies and the Smarties.  I knew to keep my voice low on the train, and to politely dodge pedestrians, and to safely avoid oncoming traffic.  I was, in short, managing to get by.  It remained only to get to know my neighbors.
	Although we came to know approximately thirty American families in the development, we were familiar with only four British ones. At the entrance to our circle of brick townhouses surrounding the gym/chapel, lived a balding but hip older man who drove around in a green Jaguar with his significantly younger live-in amply tressed girlfriend and their two large labradors.  On the opposite side resided gray-haired Lord Stanley, former gynecologist to the queen, and his wife, whom we dubbed Lady So-and-So.  She passed by daily, her hair a puff of white, walking her dog, another puff of white, and often smoking a cigarette trailing a puff of white.  She even drove a small white convertible BMW.  Unlike the Jaguar owner and girlfriend, who gave us friendly waves when passing, the lord and lady could not be induced to offer more than a nod of acknowledgment to our smiling American, "Hi!"  My children had also made the acquaintance of another British woman, the somewhat overweight, cheery older owner of a sweet miniature Yorkshire terrier, which received daily baths in the sink and warm milk out of a china tea cup at tea time.  Around the corner from us lived a matched pair of West Highland white terriers, which could be seen barking at us from the window of their professionally decorated townhouse, their owners decidedly unavailable.  In general, one could spot British natives by the very fact that they were accompanied by their canine companions.  Because the British government enforced six-month quarantining of our dogs to prevent the spread of rabies (and in spite of vaccinations), most Americans had left their pets behind.
	The most important British native we came to know, however, was the manager of the development, John Wickham.   He occupied an office overlooking the swimming pool, policing the place against transgressions, mostly made by the loud American children of the neighborhood.  Shouting and splashing were not allowed at the pool, nor were eating and drinking, whatever one might think of the label "family swim time" or the purpose of the teak dining tables and chairs surrounding the pool.  Dressed in his navy blazer with brass buttons, a tidily pressed shirt and khaki trousers, his hair slicked to one side, he would appear poolside to reprimand my children for playing catch with a ball in the pool.  This might disturb the others in the pool, he informed them.   John Wickham could also be encountered driving his four-door Mercedes sedan, inching it along the gravel road, keeping a watchful eye on the green, where shouting was discouraged as well.  (This was particularly difficult to keep under control during the impromptu soccer matches involving the neighborhood children.)  And he was keen to find out who exactly was responsible for using the hedgerow borders of the development as a secret fort.  He also found it within the parameters of his job to ensure that no balls were bounced in driveways, no teens left unattended in the gym/chapel, and absolutely no children ever set foot on the tennis courts.
	The manager and I became better acquainted with one another when Julia, my obedient and somewhat reserved daughter, had her own brush with the law.  She was not one of the recalcitrant fort builders nor one of the inconsiderate pool splashers, but apparently she had offended the other residents.  I received a phone call from John Wickham informing me that he had had two complaints against my household.  The problem? The sidewalk chalk art adorning our front path and stoop.  In his tremulous tenor, the manager advised me, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Bard, but it must be removed immediately."  Who had made the complaint? "I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say, Mrs. Bard."  Taken aback, I protested that the art was not on common ground, but rather on our property; besides, I wanted to point out, wait a day and the rain would wash it away--this was England after all.  It did not matter, I was told, whether the art was on my property; the neighbors could see it.  They found the art, "quite frankly, to resemble the type of thing found in council housing.  You are familiar with that phrase, Mrs. Bard?  I believe you Americans call it 'public housing.'"
	Undaunted, I inquired whether he had seen the art in question--a rendering of a welcome mat, decorated with pink flowers and yellow smiley faces--admittedly no Constable or Turner, but charming in its own way.  He was not to be led astray in a discussion of the value of the art.  When I demanded to know who made the rules, he replied, "Why, it's all in the covenant you agreed to in signing your lease."  Having no recollection of such a thing, and despite sensing his exasperation at my stubborn and confrontational style, I asked for exact references from said covenant.  In a weary voice he replied, "I will have to ring you later about that, as I don't have that information at my fingertips."  And he allowed me to stew for a while.
	His next phone call opened with an attempt to downplay the whole awkward situation, "Really, this is just a tempest in a teapot."  He then provided the relevant excerpts.  The first forbade defacement of the buildings of the estate.  I pointed out to him that this covenant was a bit like the Bible, open to different interpretations, and wondered aloud who really had the authority to come up with a definitive interpretation of, say, "defacement, " to which he answered, "That would be me."   So I was dealing with the, uh, ÒpopeÓ of the covenant.
	His second excerpt had to do with keeping up the appearance "of a high-class residential estate."  Ah, the "high-class" appearance clause, I realized, would stymie an American every time.  After all, no one can do class like the British.  And no other country allows its riffraff to move up the social ladder quite like the United States, a place where wealth and class (i.e. good breeding) do not necessarily go hand in hand.  Recognizing in myself one member of the riffraff--one who smiled too readily and spoke too loudly in public places, I realized that on any fine point of behavior, the manager would win out over me at every turn.  In fact, the manager then seized the opportunity to offer me a little cultural education about the upper class natives who shared my "estate."  They could not understand why we Americans permitted our children to play out front rather than confining them to our 16x16 square foot rear garden.  The way we allowed them to ride bicycles in the streets was ridiculously unsafe.  They were even destroying the green with their daily games of football.  He merely wanted me to understand that were need only be considerate of the neighbors.  The children, apparently, were offending them.  I could only assume that they would be best kept out of sight.  The few British children in the neighborhood were all away at boarding school.
	At last I began to understand the complexity in our two cultures' views on freedom.  If in the United States, freedom largely means being allowed to do whatever you want as long as no physical harm is involved, then what place for courtesy and consideration remains? Perhaps living in an over-populated metropolitan area on a tiny crowded island necessitates extreme courtesy in the throng of pedestrians like those I encountered on the London streets.  Should I squelch all public displays of enthusiasm in the name of dignity, so as not to intrude on my fellow passengers' sense of personal space?  Was it my duty as a considerate driver to get out of the way of the oncoming traffic on the overly narrow roads?   I might readily grant that if the business commuters' and Lady So-and-So's cigarette smoke offended me, I should have the right to ask them to refrain from smoking in public.  Yet, with so much respect for others' sensitivities, how could people truly be free?   I wasn't sure I was ready to concede that if Lord Stanley and his flunky, the manager, found my daughter's art trashy, it was their prerogative to demand it be washed away.  Uncertain who should prevail, I concluded that I would let nature decide:  I waited for the rain to wash the whole old asylum, but for once I hoped it would rain soon.  

It's a Free Country	9                                                                                                                      Maureen Bard