Tea

He traced the bones at her neck; her collar bones. Clavicles. That was the biological term for them. He traced his fingers along their rigid straightness.

She did not react.

His finger rested in the suprasternal notch. He pressed down, lightly at first, then harder. He could feel no definite pulse from her; only his own.

“You’re healthy,” he said.

She continued to read.

“Your blood pressure is fine.”

She turned the page of her newspaper. “Good,” she said.

He flattened his hand against her breastbone. The neckline of her sweater left part of her chest bare, to a point, and his hand revelled in the warmth of her flesh and the firmness of her sternum.

She was more beautiful than anyone deserved to be.

He thought about what the poet had said. About beauty being an ecstasy and not a wish.

She was more beautiful than could be borne.

He removed his hand. She did not move, did not speak, did not pay him the slightest bit of attention. He sat away from her, turning his body so that he was square on with the edges of the sofa; his back firm against the cushion behind it; his knees hard against the edge of the seat; his arms parallel to the sofa’s arms.

He was like an old toy soldier, with its articulated joints positioned so that it seemed to be sitting.

The silence in the room was broken only by the sound of their breathing and the rustle of the pages as she turned them. He was bored. He was restless. He was a coil of nervous energy that had no knowledge of how to expend itself.

She sat, ancient and beautiful, like a posed figure in an oil painting, all sages and browns and yellows and pinks. Her bright gold hair glimmered in the sunlight that shifted across the window. Leaded lights. Mullioned.

He rolled the word mullioned around his head, imagining the feel of it in his mouth.

Her hair had been fixed in a Marcel wave a couple of days ago. He could still smell, faintly, the chemicals applied to that bright golden head to force the shafts to bend against their will.

He looked at her legs. Her stockings were pale, her ankles neat; her shoes were the same sage as her blouse and neatly fastened with a strap and a button. Her narrow skirt stopped just below her knee, constricting her legs so that she had to fold them neatly. Even if she hadn’t been trained to do so from being young, her skirt created its own demands.

Terrance entered the room, carrying the things for tea.

“Lord, Terrance, is it that time already?”

He sprang from the sofa, glad of something to do.

Terrance merely glanced at him before continuing to set out the tea tray on the table.

“Thank you, Terrance,” she said, still engrossed in her newspaper.

“Ma’am. Sir.” The servant left the room with a stiff bow to each of them.

“Do pour me a cup, there’s a dear,” she said without lifting her gaze from the pages open before her.

“What’s so fascinating?” he asked, splashing milk into a teacup and then pouring tea in afterwards.

She did not respond. He felt peeved and, knowing that she did not take sugar, he dropped two lumps into her cup. Without bothering to stir, he carried the cup over to where she sat and placed it on the small table to her left.

He reseated himself beside her, on her right.

She looked up briefly. She looked at him as though she vaguely remembered him from somewhere.

“Are you not having one?” she asked.

The callousness of her indifference was beautiful. He felt intoxicated. He shook his head.

“Odd boy,” she said, turning back to her paper.

He crossed his leg away from her. He tried to convince himself that the view through the window across the lawn was an interesting one, when in fact all that it contained was a stretch of lawn and a mildly diverting rose bush in the centre.

He rested his chin in his hand, his elbow propped against the arm of the sofa. He drummed his fingers gently against his jaw.

“You’re singing,” she said. “Do stop, there’s a good boy.”

“Was I?” he said, turning to face her again. Of course, she was still buried in the news, so he turned away again.

“I wonder what it is that holds her attention so,” he said to the room in general. He was confident that she was not paying the slightest attention to him.

He was right.

He returned to his previous pose; head propped, jaw strummed, eyes scanning the garden for something to entertain his restless mind.

“Oh, won’t you come and play tennis?” he exploded, leaping up from his seat and standing in front of her.

She reached a hand out languidly to her teacup and continued to read in silence.

He paced about in front of her.

“We’re wasting the day, sitting in here. It’s glorious outside.”

“Did you put sugar in this?” she asked, replacing the cup on the table.

The poet was wrong, he decided as he ceased his pacing and looked down on her lovely form, so elegant on the sofa. Beauty wasn’t a lively heart full of fire and soul. Beauty was her. Cold and silent and indifferent to his very existence. A pale pink mouth. A pale white hand.

He flung himself onto his knees before her, gripping her about her knees.

“Yes!” he exclaimed. “I put sugar in it, yes! Now say you’ll play tennis. Leave all this senseless reading behind. Tennis! Tennis is the thing!”

She raised one lovely eyebrow, a spark of amusement flashing in, and then out, of her clear blue eyes.

“I don’t have my racquet,” she said, placing a cool hand against his cheek. He turned his face so that his mouth was cupped in her palm, and he kissed that lovely palm.

“You’re such a sweetheart,” she said. “My brother will be back from town in a few minutes.” She restored her gaze to the pages of the newspaper. “I’m sure that he’ll knock a few balls about with you.”

He picked himself up from his kneeling position and slumped back onto the sofa.

“You’re like a sulky puppy,” she said, then yawned.

She picked up her teacup and held it out to him, still without looking.

“Pour me another one,” she said. “There’s a dear.”

He ignored the hovering vessel to his left; the cup that was anchored in time and space only by the fingers of her right hand holding the handle so nonchalantly.

“No,” he said. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers. His legs were outstretched in front of him. The line of his spine created an empty space between his body and the angle of the sofa. He fixed himself in position with his shoulders and his behind.

Still the teacup hovered, an irritating fly in his peripheral vision.

He was just about to swat it away, and damn the consequences, when her brother strode into the room.

“Hello, chaps!” he called out, making his way straight to the tea tray and cutting himself a thick slice of fruit cake. “How long have you been here, Willows?”

“Dorrie, pour me a fresh cup of tea, dear. This one’s cold and has sugar in it.”

Her brother crossed the room to where she was holding the teacup out to him.

He winked at his friend.

“Willows, you cad, did you put sugar in my sister’s tea?”

He didn’t expect an answer so didn’t wait for one. Willows didn’t offer one, either.

Dorrie took a fresh cup from the tray and filled it with tea for his sister.

“There you go,” he said, carrying it over to her.

“You’re a gent,” she said, accepting the proffered gift as all well-bred young women do; with indifference and cynicism.

“Tuppy here wants to play tennis,” she said.

“I say,” Dorrie exclaimed with a grin. “Willows, have you been trying to court my sister, you old ram?”

Willows maintained his effortful slouch and didn’t speak. His shoulders were beginning to ache, and the tilt of his chin meant that his larynx was beginning to feel uncomfortably compressed.

“You oughtn’t to sit like that, old chap,” Dorrie said, perching himself on his sister’s arm of the sofa. “It’ll do you a mischief. Stop you talking.”

His sister laughed.

“He’s been practising his medical ways on me,” she said.

“Is that so?” her brother replied, fitting the fingers of his right hand into the waves of her hair and squeezing them together.

Willows was consumed by a wave of envy.

Dorrie got up suddenly. “I don’t think I like you practising your medical ways on ma soeur,” he told his friend, walking away from him, his hands tucked into the pockets of his waistcoat. “That’s not quite why I invited you down this weekend.”

He turned on his heel and stood firm across the room from Willows.

“For god’s sake,” Willows exploded, as best he could given his physical position on the sofa. “All I did was press my bloody forefinger against her suprasternal notch.”

“And your hand against my breastbone,” she chipped in.

Willows considered that beauty perhaps was an ecstasy.

“Sternum is the medical term,” he said.

Dorrie laughed. His sister joined in. Willows found it in himself to smile. He was calmer now; now that his pent up attraction had somehow been acknowledged and dismissed. He sat up properly on the sofa.

Dorrie’s sister smiled at him. Her eyes were like sapphires and Willows thought, if he looked long enough and hard enough, he might be able to see to the bottom of them.

“Are you not having tea?” Dorrie asked him, standing once more at the tea tray and pouring a steady stream of golden brown liquid into a cup.

“No,” said Willows, “I’m not.”

They were still gazing at each other, she and he, behind her brother’s turned back.

She broke away first, an intuitive split second before her brother turned around to face the room again.

“Tennis, then?” Dorrie said, beaming down on his poor unrequited friend before raising his teacup to his lips.

“Why not?” Willows replied, leaping once more from the sofa.

As her brother replaced his cup on the tea tray, Willows saw the shadow of a smile curve her lips.

He remembered the feel of his hand against her breast bone.

Dorrie was standing in the doorway, waiting for him.

“Come on then, old chap, before the day’s gone.”

An ecstasy and a wish, then, he told himself. A mouth and a lively heart full of fire and soul.

He followed her brother from the room. Her eyes watched his back.

© J R Hargreaves July 2007