Loose Leaves from Milton #7
‘You bring contagion! Aaaaaaaaaah, and no doubt it is the bizarrely infectious cotton-waste-ing disease that lays my friend Bessy low. And you know my Mother is declining.’
‘I would not lay you - low - Miss Hale. And I did not know your Father expected his relations to decline Latin verbs as I do.’ He wondered if Mr Hale had become so involved in education that he had forgotten the difference between ‘conjugate’ and ‘conjugal.’ ‘I always have a problem with touch.’
‘Sir!’ She blushed, and took a step back.
‘Yes. The perfect first person singular is “tetigi” and I always want to say “tacti”.’
‘Mr Thornton, you make no sense.’
‘No, I am sorry for it. I came . . . not in expectation . . .’ He hung his head. He had come from an inner compulsion that defied logic. ‘My words cannot convey . . .’ The polite sentences he had so carefully constructed as he had walked over the hill jumbled in his brain.
‘Moio sudno na vozdu?noy podu?ke polno ugrey.’
‘Mr Thornton! What are you saying?’
‘Er, my apologies. It is Russian and means “My hovercraft is full of eels”.’
Her naturally inquisitive nature distracted her for a moment.
‘What is a “hovercraft”?’
‘I assume it is some form of Russian fishing vessel, perhaps used in the Black Sea.’
‘Ah.’ Her brows drew together. ‘And you use it to me, Russian, the language of a country where the peasants exist in feudal servitude. That tells me so much, sir.’
‘No, no, it is just a phrase I’m going through.’ He was so vehement his voice rose. ‘Your impression of me is incorrect, Miss Hale.’
‘I do not mimic people, sir, for my Father always told me it was cruel,’ she paused, ‘and I cannot drop my voice to a baritone level anyway.’
‘I meant, madam, that you see me as merely a tall, virile, strong willed man, with a voice like melting chocolate and eyes that draw one into my very soul.’
There was this. She fought the urge within her which cried out ‘Yes, yes, and what more could I want. Hot chocolate is actually ideal before bed, rather than tea.’ She bit her lip.
‘It is not enough, is it.’ He made it a statement, and sounded defeated.
‘I came today to offer you my hand, and all the rest of my body too, not out of a sense of obligation, not even because I cannot imagine life without perfect tea handed to me by those delicate pale hands, but because . . .’ his voice faltered, the words becoming a blank in the misery of his brain.
‘Mr Thornton. You come inopportunely.’
Deep in the recesses of his mind his desire shouted that he only wanted the chance to prove to her that he could come very opportunely.
‘I do?’
‘Yes. My friend Bessy is dying.’
‘What colours?’
‘No, “dying,” not “dyeing,” Mr Thornton.’ She sighed. ‘Mother is weak and often in pain.’
‘In Spain?’
‘I never mentioned Spain.’ Goodness, did he know about Frederick, was he here to blackmail her?
She pulled herself up to her full height.
He did not notice, since it was still rather short in comparison to himself.
‘You - are not the sort of man for whom I could ever pour tea in private, sir. Your attitudes, your demeanour - you think yourself so matcha, like many men, but it is bullying and browbeating, ungentlemanly.’
‘I am too northern for you, no doubt. You think me rough-hewn, a jumped up man of trade.’ His temper began to fray.
He was angry, angry with her, but even more so with himself.
‘You strike me with your words, but I shall strike back. Miss Hale, the day will come when you will recognise me for what I am at heart, and then your opinion of me will change. I will not waver. I will not cease from holding you . . .’
She grabbed the doorknob and turned it in haste.
‘You shall not grab me at all, sir, or I shall scream for Dixon, and I assure you she has a black belt in macramé. Leave me, leave now, I insist upon it!’
In tumult, he obeyed, striding from the room with barely a nod of his head acknowledging his dismissal.
It was several minutes later that Margaret, her bosom still heaving, noticed that he had forgotten his gloves.
She picked them up hesitantly, as if they might still have the warmth of his body in them.
What she had held within her throughout the interview was that, secretly, though her head told her he was a harsh reactionary, her heart and body longed for mutual tea making.
He said she made perfect tea. Ah, and if only he would pour for her .
. . the capable hands . . . the spout that would not drip . . . her pot warmed for him.
Leaf Seven - Mortali Tea
Hannah Thornton could not believe her son had been rejected, even though part of her wanted to nip into the small parlour and dance an Irish jig of joy.
She limited herself to a third cup of oolong and a slice of lemon drizzle cake, even though it was only half past eleven in the morning.
For his part, he wanted to forget what had happened, even forget Margaret Hale completely, but he knew that deep inside he would always remember every moment they had been in close proximity.
The strike, like J Tea’s heart, was broken, and so there was much to do getting Marlborough Mills back in full production.
During the long working days the mill itself kept him occupied, but even once the looms began again their chatter, instead of hearing ‘we’re making cotton, making money,’ he could only hear ‘she turned you down, she thinks you dross.’ He remained in his office late into the evenings and took to drink.
He would sit in his office, staring at the ledgers, as a silver spirit kettle came to the boil on the small table by his coat stand, and then sit, morose, with a large pot of orange pekoe, staring into space.
Even ‘the cup that cheers’ failed him, but the act of making and drinking tea kept him from going back into the house, where his mother was in a defiantly buoyant mood.
She had begun humming ‘Now thank we all our God’ as she sat with her sewing, and was too much to face.
His sleep, when it came to him, was haunted by a depressing brown hat and accusing eyes that set his love at nought.
In Scotland Yard, Margaret was distracted from her realisation that Mr Thornton, though obviously not the man for her, was yet such a man that made her heart beat thick.
This distraction came in the form of The Grim Reaper, who not only visited her friend Bessy Higgins, but had left his calling card at the Hales’ residence, with a promise to return in the near future to see Mrs Hale.
Margaret discovered that the doctor was also now calling frequently, as a sort of warm up act for the One with the Scythe.
Upon her mother’s request, she did not tell her father what she knew, and he metaphorically stuck his head in the fire bucket of sand, and told himself his wife’s headache, which had begun shortly after Frederick was born, must be a little worse.
Margaret, both worried and overworked, had as little time for tea as she had exhibited for J Tea, and began wearing her depressing brown hat even in bed.
Her mother kept murmuring about her ‘poor boy,’ and Margaret realised that it would be a huge solace in her last days to have Frederick at the bedside.
Despite the risk, for there were very uneven cobbles on the steep incline to the post box, Margaret sent an urgent missive to Cadiz, and hoped he would arrive in time.
Word filtered to Marlborough Mills that Mrs Hale was not long for this world.
Hannah Thornton spared her a nod and a ‘poor woman.’ J Tea, rousing himself from his misery, added bananas to the list of fruit that he was having sent to Scotland Yard, and tried not to imagine what Margaret Hale would look like in a BBG.
After all, most ladies spent years of their lives in Big Black Dresses, mourning someone or other.
His mother had taken the decision it was best to remain permanently in one, and had not a scrap of silk, bombazine or lace that was not black, excepting her best dinner gown, which was a daring charcoal grey.
Frederick arrived, wearing fake Spanish mustachios, and bearing a large bag of Seville oranges, in case freshly made marmalade might be beneficial.
He was slightly put out to see a large bowl of bananas and sweet Valencia oranges on the parlour side table, and rather more so by his mother’s imminent departure to The World To Come.
Margaret and Mr Hale were paranoid that the authorities might discover him, and provided him with several disguises as an apothecary’s assistant, a curate, and a dispenser of religious pamphlets.
They forgot to tell Mary Higgins, sister of the late lamented Bessy, and a much needed extra pair of hands in the house, that he was all of these characters and not Frederick Hale.
J Tea visited once, drawn as if by a strong magnetic force, and bearing a basket of fruit of such large proportions that, when emptied, it might be used as a Moses basket for a babe.
However, his reception in Scotland Yard was perfunctory and dismissive.
Margaret herself answered the door, which he thought odd, and she clearly did not wish to admit him.
Beyond her delectable form J Tea noted a sombrero on the hatstand in the hall, and asked if the Hales had a visitor.
Margaret denied this most strongly, just as Frederick, trying to lift his mother’s spirits with a rendition of a catchy little number in Spanish, finished with a clatter of castanets and a cry of ‘Olé.’ J Tea glanced up at the window, and then at Margaret’s guilty look.
He nearly boiled over, and, thrusting the large basket of fruit into her arms, turned, and strode away with long, angry strides.
Margaret, staggering under the weight of the fruit basket, could only gasp ‘Oh, Mr Thornton.’