5 JULY, LOS ANGELES

Dear Harry,

Today when I took Jake the dog out at seven o’clock for his pee and poop walk, the air was still heavy with lingering smoke from last night’s July Fourth extravaganza, and the smell of spent gunpowder was still pervasive in the misty light of the early morning. And even at this hour, long after the celebration, the pop and fizz and boom of the occasional stray firework could still be heard.

In the England of my childhood, as you’ll well recall, fireworks meant Guy Fawkes Day. Remember, remember, the fifth of November, of gunpowder, treason and plot… went that old piece of doggerel. It meant the parading of the Guy Fawkes effigy and the lighting of the bonfire where he’d be burned each year in a new ritual at the stake. Amidst the sparks and smoke from the fire, the fireworks were the crowning moment for the cheering crowds.

Sadly, this was not a celebration that we shared, you and I. In November, of course, from the age of seven, I was away at school. I wonder if you missed me on those nights of revelry?

These thoughts occurred to me as I looked out over Hollywood last night, so far in time and space from the fireworks of my youth. And with you gone already, these many years. And I found myself reflecting, not for the first time, how strange it seemed to have ended up so far from where I started.

July Fourth is the day when we Americans—yes, I am one now!—celebrate their independence from the country where you and I grew up. Is it my imagination that this year’s celebration had an anxious, almost desperate feel to it? The rumble of exploding fireworks started earlier, I thought, than usual, and continued longer—even, as I noted, until this morning. It seemed also more chaotic. While neighboring trees obscured our view to the south, where most of the action seemed to be taking place, the distant flashes and occasional nearby bursts of brilliant, multicolored lights were ubiquitous, ceaseless, relentless. It was as though the city were bent on asserting the freedom of Americans, come what may—and despite the current dire political threats on the very freedom that was being celebrated.

Well, Harry, as I suggested, that’s likely all in my own head. The truth is—I can share this with you, my own father, no?—I no longer feel at home in my adoptive country. I long for the social proprieties, the civility, the intimacy, perhaps—even during the war years—the safety of that English country village, the one where you were Rector and I, a small boy, was the Rector’s son.

Affectionately, Peter