Gifts from The Republic of Tea-time

by Adam Parry.

 

Mrs Six Faces cuts my cake and takes the first slice for herself as usual. Nana wanted to pour the tea, but Mum took the pot off her. Nana had already worked her way through the cheese and pickle butties that I made with my own fair hands, she was looking tired and hardly able to lift the teapot. I watched Mrs Six Faces gobble her salmon sandwiches-taking two of those pink fondant fancies I like-  like a skinny horse just come off a diet. I moved the plate of shortbread over to my side of the table when she wasn’t looking. There were only Nutella sandwiches left, grudgingly I bit into them giving Lady Six faces a right dirty look, I shared the short- bread with Mum and Nana  as she had left for her book club. Mum had poured the tea and I put in the milk I was only allowed one half of a sugar spoon I didn’t like it to sweet. Nana sucked on the short bread she’d dipped in her tea, so between Mum and me the plate soon emptied. As Mum took Nana up to bed I tided up and washed the dishes, dried and put everything away.

The boys were  never around at tea-time, Grandad, or Dad or the wee boys. They never sat round the table with it rose embroidered white table cloth. I’d try and persuade them say I’d make any sandwiches they liked. But come Tea-time they we’re out of sight and sound still I enjoyed it watching Nana sucking on soggy short bread, laughing to myself at the look Mrs Six Faces gave me when I moved the bowl of sugary tablet out of range.

They watched me like parrots when I cut the onions or made decorative tomatoes.

This day Hilary my older Sister was staying with us we were all round the table and she gushed ‘you should be a cordon bleu chef’, but didn’t know who or what that was and I passed the plate, Mrs Six Faces was at the book club so there was plenty to go around.  Nana wanted another cup of tea but Mum said it’d keep her up all night like the last time. But I watched as they poured my special tea and their eyes lit up at the aroma. So I watch them my sister and Mum and Nan. Learnt to notice the tea time  treat they most enjoyed, I carefully watched Nan, her hand not shaking as she poured the tea chomping her salad cream sandwiches and the cake, so light and fresh. She cut Nan’s second slice, mother had what’s left but she always give her the last bits of meringue as if it were important medicine piece by piece to her lips Mum almost giggles and she is so proud by the look in mum’s eyes.

So I watched and learnt and I’d fill up the huge wedding day plates, which-she’d been told when she was little- disappeared one day and Nan had been frantic looking for them which she soon did, the way Mum told it was a Greek epic. With cakes I devised  fresh from the oven, all their treats and new ones I wanted to tempt them with. Now that Mrs Six Faces was permanently lodged in the book club chatter went tireless about the table, talking with our mouths full reaching over the table to get the last bit of chocolate cake was no longer a military operation. A night now and again Nan would sing, she had a beautiful voice, I sing her songs in my head as I prepare and bake, whip cream, slice fruit as if I have Nan’s greatest hits coming through my ear-phones.

One morning Dad woke up early and called up the stairs, ‘if you so good at cooking you can make my breakfast.’ I’d watched him many times making his own so I knew the basic ingredients, how he liked his bacon crisp as a soldier and his eggs runny and his tomatoes squishy so I set to the task with pleasure, his own cooking was atrocious fried eggs turned into scrambled eggs at his touch, so when I presented him with the plate he almost looked surprised as if this was the breakfast he only ever dreamed over. It was all gone as I washed the dishes and afterwards the plate looked licked clean and was working on the marmalade and burnt toast he liked, he looked up at me grinning, ‘it would’ve been better in bed.’ I huffed. ‘Compliments to the chef,’ he said in a French accent to cheer me up, he had never said he was proud of me and now he didn’t have to as he sat there smiling at me.

‘Molto beno,’ he said, he had started saying that a lot about everything, and stood to get ready for work. Often he got me to make his breakfast and his second breakfast, he was always late for work, while I washed the dishes he ‘d clap behind my back and giggled into sink. So, soon, like the tea parties it became a regular thing. Father complementing me as if I were an Italian Princes as I washed up. The wee ones loving the same crisp soldier of bacon as their father. I put down the platefuls of breakfast for them gobble down as if they were in a race to finish first.

Mind you Mum came down and Nan slowly behind came down to aroma from the kitchen that had broken into their dreams and lured them to me. I kept them out of the kitchen and they sat to wait until their breakfast was ready. I had fresh hot bread baking in the cooker as I stirred the beans and fried mushrooms and eggs. Mum was happy about the plate I put in front of her, but Nan didn’t like mushrooms and the egg looked like it’d put it through a grinder. ‘I don’t want them’, she grumbled, so I scraped them off her plate and added two of the beef sausages I had kept for my own breakfast. Carefully I rushed about making sure the food would still be hot when I gave them it. For once I told my sister to wash the dishes as I still had to get to school on time, she had eaten more than even Dad and left me nothing for my own breakfast, as they grew the wee ones asked me to make their pack lunches as they indicated with a finger down their throats at Mum’s derisory lunches. I’d make apple pies for them and cheese and tuna sandwiches I knew they enjoyed.

Of course tea times were only every other day now.

If a guest came to the house I’d create something special for them and after the shambles of last Christmas dinner I was put in charge. For special days I would make from scratch chicken soup and crusty bread.

I was so busy making so many different food for everyone tea-times were only once a week now and I was missing them.

I felt such a delight watching them eat, at nights I dreamt of being a short order chef in a New York deli. I told the dream to Dad and he laughed and said:

‘No Yank is going to you away from us.’

At class I learned how to make meringues and custard slices which the greedy boys liked better than me, but I kept a few hidden as they were my favourites and I was always left with dregs. But over the year they must have gobbled down a thousand custard slices, and there were Mum and Nan to consider before me, Nan always made a mess of them custard and icy top sticking her fingers together as if she could never let go. Later I started to learned to make Strawberry Pavlova’s. When I took the pavlova out of the box school provided Dad and the boys would crane their necks over the box to see my latest speciality. I said:

‘ Why don’t you have tea with me and mum and Nan. All the family traipsed behind down the stairs to our tea room. Dad held the door for me but stood in the doorway. I told him:

‘Come in, come in.’ With my arms spread indicating the  treats on the table, a pavlova at the centre of the table, Dad loved strawberries, he’d even been trying to grow some until most of the strawberry plants died. So the temptations gave him a push in the door. To Mum’s surprise kids from the neighbourhood queued up to join Tea-time.

‘We need more cups’. Mum said. Dad said, ‘ we need more strawberry pavlovas.’ I laughed. But, soon we were all crammed around the table like starvelings, forks poised.

For the first time I poured the tea time tea before anybody else did then I sat on Dad’s lap feeding him pieces of his favourite pavlova. I’d never heard him laugh so much.

He never drank his tea.