Chapter One: The Colonel’s Got to Know
San Jose, California, June 30, 1982

The first time I met Colonel Holweard, I was twelve and very, very pleased with myself. With Father as angry as I’d ever seen him and Mom flitting around the house like a hummingbird on cocaine, trying to make our normally shambolic living space “presentable,” a perfect day beckoned bright.

With all the confusion, I’d managed to liberate a pair of Mom’s panties from her bureau and I’d been wearing them all day. Father had caught me doing that once before and almost had apoplexy, so I’d known it was an absolute no-no since I was five.

And I ask you: what could be more irresistible than that? Hmm? Anything?

While Father’s satin-induced rage on that memorable occasion had been really something to see, it had neither distressed nor deterred me. His rages tended towards commodity status. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. He had a convert’s zeal about Catholicism and America, not necessarily in that order, and could be quite vocal in his complaints about his country of origin, especially when he started in on the hard liquor. Kentucky bourbon, naturally, since anything that came from, or was associated with, the United Kingdom was shunned.

So, yeah. He hated the monarchy. The Anglican Church. Heathens, too, though I wasn’t sure why. He hated soccer and H. Salt and beer and gin and his own accent and God knows what else. Most of all, he apparently hated his family, and he had fully intended to tell his younger brother that he wasn’t welcome to visit. Or, as he would have put it himself, to “sod off.”

Mom, the dark-haired, dark-eyed and unpretentious All American Girl Father had latched onto when he left Britain for good, pushed to allow the visit. Uncle Geoff had seen action during the Falklands conflict – something else Father despised, vocally – and wanted to stop in San Jose to visit us before returning home.

“Hank, honey,” she had said. “Don’t be like this. He’s your brother. Luigi’s never even met him. Just once?”

Mom just loved family, probably because she had more relatives living in close proximity to her than any creature on earth, maybe even including bees. I couldn’t keep track of them all. Grandparents, great aunts and even greater uncles, aunts and uncles, cousins of all manners and degrees . . . . her clan apparently migrated to this country from Calabria all at once, some eighty years earlier. In contrast, I had never met any of my father’s relatives. Not one.

Father said I hadn’t missed anything, which naturally left me intensely curious.

Mom prevailed, of course. Mom always prevailed. Father would rage and she would keep pouring bourbon into him until he either agreed or passed out, at which point she would tell him he had agreed. I never quite understood their marriage.

So it was that the three of us were sitting together in the living room, waiting for my Uncle to arrive and praying that the AC in our bungalow didn’t fail like it had already done three times since school got out. It was clearly overmatched by the kind of heat the South Bay can effortlessly generate all summer long.

Dad had already started on the bourbon, which he mixed with Coke and poured over ice. I’m pretty sure he did that just to be spiteful. “Remember now,” he told me for probably the sixtieth time. “You are to call him ‘Jeff,’ understand? Just ‘Jeff.’ If he requests that you call him something else, I expect you to decline.”

“But I call Mom’s brothers ‘Uncle,’” I said, just to be annoying. “Shouldn’t I call him ‘Uncle,’ too?”

“Your mother’s brothers have unpronounceable names.”

“‘Giulio’ and ‘Matteo’ are hardly unpronounceable,” Mom said, indignantly.

He mumbled something into his drink about foreigners. For all that he wasn’t wild about his country of origin, he didn’t seem to be all that fond of any other place either.

I didn’t get the full-on dust-up these opening salvos promised because the doorbell rang. Father struggled to get out of his chair, but Mom beat him to the punch and had the door open before he achieved homo erectus. “You must be Geoffrey,” she said warmly. “Please come in . . . Oh! I didn’t know you were bringing a friend!” She stood aside as two men entered.

The first looked a bit like my father, but substantially younger, more fit, and much, much more sober. “And you must be the lovely Sylvia,” he said smoothly. “I’m delighted – delighted! – to finally meet you! Please allow me to introduce my friend, Colonel Holweard.”

Holweard was short – shorter than Mom, anyway, though still taller than I was that day. Stocky, with dark hair, a broad, plain face, a fierce mustache and pale, curious eyes. Though my uncle was more imposing, Holweard seemed to draw attention like an injured moose draws mosquitoes.

I was so focused on our guests that I hadn’t paid any attention to Father. “You!” he said, sounding shocked and angry. “What in the name of Beelzebub are YOU doing here!” Father’s face had gone white.

But that could mean just about anything.

Holweard grinned impishly. “Hello, Grace, old boy! Just stretching my legs, you know!”

“Don’t call me that,” Father snarled. Looking at his brother, he said, “How could you have brought him?”

My uncle looked bemused. “Good to see you, too, Henry. Obviously, the Colonel and I served together, and we’re returning home together. Don’t worry – we’ll not be spending the night.”

“Oh, but you have to!” Mom said, distressed. “I have a bed all made up for you!”

“Thank you, dear lady,” Uncle Geoff said, his voice warm. “But we’ve managed to obtain a delightful hotel near the airport, and our flight tomorrow is early. We won’t impose – except, perhaps, for dinner?”

“No.” Father sounded surly.

“Yes.” Mom, of course, sounded firm. “Hank, it’s practically ready. An extra place setting is no trouble.”

“He’s trouble,” Father said, looking at the Colonel.

“I’m wounded. Truly wounded! Cut to the very quick!” But Holweard didn’t sound wounded, he sounded mildly amused. The right word, though I didn’t know it even at a precocious and obnoxious twelve, was “sardonic.” “Really, dear boy. It’s far from home, and we’re just here for the evening. What trouble could I possibly be?”

Sardonic, certainly, with maybe a side of “challenge.” His curious eyes held Father’s for what seemed like a long, long minute.

I don’t know what Father saw, looking into the Colonel’s pale eyes, but he made an abrupt gesture and said, “Fine. Whatever. We’ll feed you – then I expect you both to be on your way.”

“Hank!” Mom’s tone said “NOT happy” so clearly even a twelve-year old could understand it.

He didn’t get the message. “I said, ‘fine,’ Sylvia. Now, let’s eat.”

“Henry Grace Algernon Litton, your behavior brings shame to my house!”

Oh, sweet Jesus! When Mom used your full name, you knew you were so far in the doghouse you’d have flea bites from forehead to feet. I hadn’t even known Father had so many names.

“You will behave like a gentleman and you will treat our guests with respect, and you will start by offering them drinks!” Her glare should have turned him to stone, in which state he would have been only slightly less useless.

“Splendid idea!” My uncle said brightly. “Sherry, if you have it, Henry. Dry, preferably.”

Father looked dazed. “Sherry? No, we don’t have anything like that.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve got something to whet the palate,” Holweard said, sounding jovial. “I’m not finicky like your brother, so anything will do.” He looked at the bourbon-and-coke on the rocks that Father was clutching like a life-preserver and winced. “Excepting that, of course.”

Father shook his head as if he were clearing it. “Wine . . . we have some wine.”

“That will do perfectly,” Uncle Geoff replied. His accent was very much like Father’s, but it seemed cleaner, somehow. Crisper. It plainly annoyed Father, and I wondered whether I could copy it.

Father wandered into the kitchen in search of the wine, and Mom finally managed to get our guests seated in the living room. “I am delighted to finally meet you,” she said to my Uncle. “I’d like to say that I’ve heard a lot about you, but the fact is, he doesn’t talk about . . . before.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Truly. I don’t think I’ve heard from Henry since he sent word of your wedding . . . after it had occurred, of course.” Uncle Geoff shrugged. “We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

I decided I’d been quiet long enough. “I’m Luigi,” I said.

“Yes. Quite,” said Uncle Geoff.

“I am confident,” Colonel Holweard pronounced, “that there has never been a ‘Luigi’ in your family.”

“Cool!” I said. “I’m number one!”

“My father’s name,” Mom said, a touch of warning in her voice.

Father came back in, carrying a bottle of something pink and three glasses. “Everyone in the family has damned silly names,” he said. “Henry. Geoffrey. Hugh. Algernon, for the love of God! Anything was better than that.” He started pouring.

“What a peculiar color,” my Uncle marveled, looking at the wine. “Whatever is that?”

Father looked at the label. “White Zinfandel,” he pronounced, sounding unconvinced. Given its color, I could see why. He handed glasses to Mom and our guests.

“You won’t be joining us?” Holweard asked, amused.

“I’ll stick to bourbon, thanks,” Father replied.

Uncle Geoff swirled the glass, looked at it in the light, then tilted it toward his nose and took a delicate sniff which left him startled.

Colonel Holweard, in contrast, just upended his glass and downed it in three mighty swallows. “Any port in a storm. Though . . . ah.” He looked pained. “Not port. Clearly, not port.”

Uncle Geoff took the smallest of sips and his face assumed a strange, pinched expression. But he was trying, so he held the glass in both hands while looking at his brother. “Thank you, Henry.”

Father said nothing, and the silence became a bit awkward.

Mom tried to make some conversation, and my Uncle and Holweard did their best to help her. My initial conversational gambit hadn’t gone all that well, so I sat and watched.

I didn’t learn much. Mom coaxed Uncle Geoff into relating something about friendly fire at some place called Two Sisters, but that was a mistake.

“Damned imperial nonsense!” The soapbox was available and apparently irresistible; Father couldn’t help but stand atop it and declaim. “Risking lives for a few lumps of rock and some sheep!”

“Don’t start, Hank, please!” Mom implored.

He ignored her. “Who does Thatcher think she is, anyway? ‘Lady’ Palmerston! We’ve no business policing the world’s sea lanes anymore!”

“We?” Now Uncle Geoff looked smug.

“You, then,” Father said, heatedly.

“Perhaps you intended the royal ‘we,’” his brother said, sticking the knife in further.

“Is royal wee different?” I knew better, of course, but it seemed like a fun way to annoy Father and baffle our guests, all at the same time.

“No! It stinks just like common wee,” my Father sneered, clearly understanding my question. Fate compelled him to spend time with a twelve-year-old – me, specifically – while neither my Uncle nor his friend appeared to have done so.

“Practically sacrilege, dear boy,” the Colonel replied. “I’m sure it’s sweet as the gentle rain from heaven.”

“Would you care for some more wine?” Mom asked, throwing the only life preserver she could think of.

“Perhaps with dinner,” Holweard demurred. “I shouldn’t like to overindulge.”

“Dinner!” Mom exclaimed, seeing an opportunity for escape. “Give me just a moment, it should be almost ready!” She hopped up, but paused to glare at Father. “Behave!” Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

Father glared at Holweard, saying nothing.

My uncle sighed, then looked at me. “So, young ‘Luigi.’ What do you know about our side of the family?”

That got Father’s attention. “More than he needs to!”

“But I don’t know anything! Are they criminals?” I thought the possibility might be cool.

Uncle Geoff chuckled. “Oh, no. Much worse than that."

"Much, much worse," Holweard agreed.

"We’re aristocrats.”

“Uhhh . . . like, dukes and princes stuff?”

“Nothing so fine as all that.” Uncle Geoff waved a dismissive hand. “Merely Viscounts, but that still ‘counts,’ if you follow me. You know what a Viscount is?”

Father interrupted, before I could respond. “Luigi – what’s more important? A viscount, a prince, a duke, an earl, or a marquess?”

Well, he’d drilled me on that one, at least, so I belted out the answer. “They’re all the same, because all men are created equal!”

“Oh, dear God,” Uncle Geoff moaned. “Henry, I expected the republicanism. But the pedantry? What’s become of you?”

“I’ve grown up,” he snapped. “I don’t need a pedigree, or a castle, or tenants. I work. Like real people do.”

Uncle looked at his companion. “Gracious, Humphrey! See what I’ve been missing, all these years!”

“Ah, yes! The glories of ‘work!’” the Colonel replied. “I’m sure I’ve read about that somewhere, but offhand I don’t recall the treatise.”

“I don’t understand, Father.” I couldn’t bear to miss out on the fun. “You hate your job. You say so all the time!”

“Of COURSE I hate my job. That’s why they call it ‘work!’”

“Well, that certainly clears it up, doesn’t it?” Uncle Geoff said with a smirk.

“Dinner’s ready!” Mom announced with a sort of desperate cheerfulness.

We all trooped into the dining room, where the table had been set for five for the first time I could remember. My mother, greatly daring, had decided to attempt roast beef in honor of our guests. She’d heard somewhere that Englishmen liked it.

It was about as successful as the rest of the meal.

Somehow, we got through it. I don’t recall all that much. The food, so much worse than Mom's normal cooking . . . Mom’s frantic efforts to get her recalcitrant and increasingly soused husband to have a ‘civilized’ conversation with his younger brother . . . Uncle Geoff’s barbed banter . . . all of that mostly washed over me.

What I remember most were Colonel Holweard’s eyes. Darting here, looking there, taking in everything. Seemingly seeing everything. He didn’t say all that much, but I never forgot his eyes. Especially when he turned them on me.

By the end of the meal, Father was barely capable of standing, much less doing anything that might be described as ‘civilized.’ Mom took it upon herself to see our guests out, struggling to maintain some semblance of normalcy. “Thank you so much for coming, Geoffrey,” she said. “I have wanted to meet you for such a long time.”

He clasped her hands in his own and said something appropriate, I’m sure.

Colonel Holweard looked at me and grinned. “If you find that ‘work’ isn’t to your taste, you could do worse than being Viscount Chingleput some day. I can promise you this – the Viscount doesn’t need to nick his Mum’s knickers!”

I must have looked blank, since it took me years to figure out what on earth he had just said.

He laughed, winked, and was gone.

To be continued . . . .

Author's note: Many thanks to RobertLouis and AlisonP for their help reviewing this story!

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.