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“I can be useful for some things. Let’s ask what the problem is,” he said, slowing down and drawing close to them. He rolled down his window, and addressed the women who looked practically frozen. “Having trouble?” he asked.
The woman hovering over the engine turned and nodded. “The battery seems to be dead. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I left an interior light on?”
“Let me have a look,” he said, shifting into park and stepping from the car.
He looked beneath the hood, touched some cables, wiped something off, and then slid behind the steering wheel to try the engine. It didn’t turn over.
He repositioned his car so that the two cars were facing each other, car bonnets both open, and then he pulled out his jumper cables, attached the cables, adjusted them, and then returningto the driver’s seat, revved his engine. At Alec’s instruction, the woman who owned the other car sat down behind her steering wheel and tried the engine. It sputtered for a moment and then started up.
Cara cheered with the women, and then Alec removed the cables, closed both car bonnets, and encouraged the driver to make sure she drove for a good ten or fifteen minutes before turning the engine off. The woman assured Alec that they had a much longer drive than that ahead, and after a flurry of thank-yous, they were off.
Alec parked his car in the spot the ladies had just vacated.
“You saved the day,” Cara said as Alec stepped from his car and locked it. “Handsome and heroic.”
She made him smile, at least on the inside. “Glad we were able to help them.”
“You did it all. I just cheered you on.”
He gave her a faint smile now. “You were an excellent cheerleader.” He put his arm out to guide her across the paved lot. “Let’s go look at old stuff.”
Cara laughed at his attempt to mimic an American accent. “I’m sorry, you still sound quite posh. Where do you get your accent from? Do they teach it to you at boarding school?”
He laughed. “My accent? I don’t have an accent. I speak what was called the Queen’s English.”
“Yes, but most people I’ve met here don’t speak the Queen’s English then.”
“Sssh, don’t let anyone hear you say that, because the Queen’s English, or Received Pronunciation was originally meant to be a neutral English accent, so one can’t associate the pronunciation with a specific location on a map. The goal was for children in public schools to learn how to speak so they wouldn’t sound uneducated, helping to prepare them to attend college,which is why RP is often viewed as the language of the elite, although it wasn’t the purpose in the beginning.”
“So you did learn it in school.”
“No, it’s how my parents spoke, and their friends spoke, and people of a certain economic background.”
“I was right. It is posh.”
He gave her an amused look. “Did you know most Americans did not use the word posh until the Spice Girls introduced you to Posh Spice in the 1990s?”
She shrugged. “But I can like the word, and use it if I want. Posh means fancy, or classy.”
“Yes, but here the word has an even stronger association with the upper class, versus just fancy.”
“Which is why your accent is posh, right?” She smiled up at him, a playful smile that made everything in her face light up.
For a gray cold day, she certainly knew how to spread the sunshine.
“You win,” he said, as they joined the line to purchase tickets.
She shook her head, still smiling. “I don’t want to win. There’s no fun in winning. I just like the back and forth. It’s entertaining. You’re entertaining. You always have interesting things to say.”
“I do?” he said, drawing her closer as a group moved past. “I’m pompous and arrogant, as well as cold and unfeeling.”
She laughed. “I mean, you can be a little pompous and arrogant, but that doesn’t necessarily make you cold and unfeeling.”
He pretended outrage. “You weren’t supposed to agree with me.”
“But friends should be honest with each other, so I think it only fair to say that on the day I met you—”
“On Monday after I’d driven hours in traffic,” he interrupted.
