Tea For Two

High Tea

The picture of bored indifference, completely unaware she was slowly grinding Aanshu into the dirt, Athaline sat splendidly, waiting.

One twelve-hour day at a time, slogging on through endless, back-breaking labour, an infinite, dark tunnel, Aanshu dared allow herself no hope of escape. Ironically, Athaline felt the same about her own existence. Living through one day, again and again, nothing to pin her hopes on, no random surprises, just on and on.

In the orangery’s afternoon splendour, sun slanting through the greenhouse panes of the white conservatory, the servant set down the tray upon the white-painted, wrought iron table. Blind to the picturesque vista before her, the symmetric avenue with pink gravel path, the inward facing statuary, the Greek portico of the mausoleum at the path’s end, Athaline motioned the servant away before she could ask if she should pour. There was enough mechanical inevitability, Athaline thought, in this palatial prison, without the additional constraint of tea thrust upon her, unbidden, cooling and demanding of her immediate attention. The Wedgwood blue pot, decorated with pagodas and faux plantation workers, alongside the two porcelain cups, the redundant sugar bowl, the silver tea spoons and the plate of crustless cucumber sandwiches, sat and cooled and waited. Just as Athaline waited, for an end to this interminable repetition, this exquisite torture. And she waited for her aunt.

Aanshu might have sensed a kindred spirit in Ada, Athaline’s grandmother, one of the very last paintresses of the Potteries. Born in the first years of the twentieth century, Ada had plied her brush just ahead of the mechanisation that had brought an end to her trade. Hers was the yellow and green of the flowers and grasses upon the cake plate.

The click of a walking stick’s ferrule upon the stone flagged floor heralded her aunt’s arrival. Athaline sat to attention.

Kolukkumalai

Seven thousand, nine hundred feet above sea level, Aanshu constantly wished her life would end. She prayed endlessly to God to grant her more daylight for longer working hours. Her daily target was eighty kilograms of tea leaves and she was finding it hard to meet. She grabbed and tore and sifted and filled her basket. She was careful. But if she wasted too much time checking, she lost picking time and her quota would suffer. Whatever happened, she must not stop. Her mother would look after her baby daughter. She had been born three months premature. She was very small and Aanshu lived in constant fear of losing her. Rice milk would have to suffice but it would do. It was all they could get on Aanshu’s meagre wage.

A visiting tourist would consider the landscape beautiful, Aanshu had no doubt. At this time of year it was cold. Cold and hopeless. The green ranked slopes gave way to a mist-filled valley. Visiting tourists were well wrapped up in furs and boots and could head off back to their cosy hotels when they chose to. If Aanshu was to meet her target, the minimum requirement to qualify for her day’s pay of $1.50, she must keep going. So little of the tea leaf would go into the pot. The pot of hot water and swirling leaves. Aanshu plodded on, her bare feet freezing in the cold mud. Her house had electricity and TV. She had seen the commercials. Tea in the western world was a luxury, a symbol of a life immune from penury and pestilence. How she wished she could be one of them, safe in their world. She plodded on.

The Orangery

“Sit down, child.” The voice was cold, bony, haughty. Athaline sat. Her aunt sat in the other wrought iron chair, her right hand atop the stick rising bolt upright from the floor. “Pour the tea.”

Athaline obliged with robotic obedience. Milk first. Then a swirl of the pot, half a cup for her aunt, her own cup filled, then her aunt’s topped off. “It’s because of the water in the spout,” her aunt had told her, years ago. “Share the weak tea, share the strong.”

Athaline passed the cup and saucer across to her aunt. They sipped and set down their perfect teas, both their faces the picture of despondent gloom. Still, the silent, changeless statues kept their respectful vigil, all the way down the avenue to the mausoleum.

Athaline’s aunt raised her cup, her hand shaking, a few drops falling into the saucer. A few moments later, she set it down, the saucer’s clatter ringing back onto the table top. ”I am dying, Athaline,” she intoned. “I’m sorry to spoil your afternoon but it is what it is.”

Athaline set down her own cup. “Dear aunt, what can you mean? You are surely still in the prime of life. How can it be that you are dying?”

Her aunt exhaled slowly. “Pour me another cup, my dear. Thank you. Now, you are well aware that your parents were tea planters.”

Athaline nodded. Yes, she knew her mother and father had owned property in India. How she wished she could have talked to them about it. They had belonged to a different time. They had seen no shame in what they had done. Slave labour, many would have called it. Then the plane had gone down. Out of the blue. Weak joke. Felt like an age ago now. Her aunt, her mother’s sister, had taken her in. Three o’clock, every day, tea time. Fair weather or foul. Keeping her under watch. Waiting for the right suitor to come forward. Her aunt had found a suitable man.

She drained her teacup.

Parallel

With her proud family in attendance, Athaline married her arranged groom with the same reluctance she had shown toward her aunt’s afternoon tea engagements. Aanshu continued faithfully to source their afternoon tea from her scenic yet hellish place of enslavement. Both felt themselves confined, trapped in a railroaded life track that they did not want. Neither knew of the other’s existence. And yet, afternoon tea went on.