The ticket was Washington Dulles to Heathrow, departing the following morning.
My father found me on the porch afterward and asked whether I was really going to go. He was swirling bourbon with the performance of a man who does not need to perform anything but does it anyway because performance has become the only available mode. I told him yes. He offered the observation that London was expensive and that I should not call when the money ran out, and I told him I would not, and I said it in a way that meant something more complete than the literal sentence, and he either heard the larger meaning or did not, and in either case I walked back through the door and packed my Navy file and my uniform and the letter, and in the morning I left.
The driver at Heathrow was holding a sign with my name on it in firm, careful script. He was wearing the livery of the Royal Household, and when I said the Queen’s name as a question he presented his credentials as an answer, embossed in gold, and waited.
I followed him.
The car was a black Bentley with a license plate bearing only a crown. On the way through London, I watched the city arrange itself outside the window, the Thames and the bridges and the guards in their red tunics, the whole accumulated weight of a place that has been mattering for a very long time and knows it. The driver told me, when I asked carefully, that my grandfather had been regarded in certain circles as a man of unusual discretion. The phrasing had the quality of a classified briefing. I recognized it as such and did not press.
