LIFFEY RIVERS AND THE MYSTERY OF THE WINKING JUDGE Excerpt From Chapter Two Liffey was still worried about being recognized at the National Portrait Gallery, even though it had been 1,095 days since the nanny incident. She had scratched the idea of coloring her hair to make sure no one would recognize her because her father would ask a million questions and probably not permit her to keep the color anyway. Instead, she brought with her a pair of large, non-prescription glasses to quickly put on if any of the guards seemed to look at her twice like they might have seen her before. She was also wearing a reversible jacket. Liffey had enjoyed going through the Tudor Gallery when she was ten with its portraits of kings and queens wearing their jewels as casually as Liffey wore her track pants to and from Irish dance classes. She had especially liked the Queen Elizabeth I portraits. Liffey had never seen so many jewels on anyone. Pearls were sprinkled all over the queen's gowns like confetti. Robert Rivers had hired a Mary Poppins named Edna from a nanny agency to entertain Liffey while he went to meetings. After the Tower of London mishap, Edna and Liffey went directly to the National Portrait Gallery in a huge black London taxi cab to look at portraits of queens and kings. In the Tudor Gallery, Liffey decided to count the number of jewels in the Queen Elizabeth I portraits. Probably no one had ever done that before and she thought that it would be far less boring than making the rounds with toady Edna looking at dead people's portraits and listening to Edna saying weird things like "you can buy fresh beet root in Portobello Road." Liffey did not even know what fresh beet root was, or why it would be in the road. As soon as they had arrived, Liffey convinced Edna to go for tea downstairs and then ditched the nanny for the rest of the afternoon. Later, she would tell a very angry Robert Rivers that she did not actually hide from the nanny. As Liffey described it, the nanny had simply forgotten what Liffey looked like. Her father never quite believed this version of Liffey's great escape, but it was more-or-less true. In retrospect, Liffey was aware at the time that it had been unkind to ignore poor Edna, who was obviously very distressed that this time she actually had lost her charge. She rushed frantically by Liffey several times as Liffey systematically counted the jewels in the Queen Elizabeth I portraits. Some nanny! Edna did not even recognize her. She went back and forth right in front of Liffey muttering, "Little girl, little girl, ` where are you?" Liffey refused to look the deranged woman in the eye because she plainly heard Edna calling "Shannon, Shannon, where are you dear?" The river thing again. It was always the same. No one ever remembered the name of the girl who was named after that river in Ireland..." |
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