The Horror of Tea

“Why don’t you come for tea?” These were the words I had been dreading ever since I moved to Yorkshire. It was a lovely day outside and I stopped on my way out for a walk to say hello to my new neighbor, who was working in her front yard. I’d left my job, my family, and my friends in sunny California six months earlier to join my English boyfriend in this quaint Devonshire village. I looked forward to wonderful museums and traditional pubs, to cozy rainy days inside and the resulting lush gardens surrounding stately homes. And all that was there, right enough. What I hadn’t counted on was my challenges with the language, the everyday habits, and the natural reserve of the English. Braces, biscuits, pants, lemonade: they all meant something different in my new country, and they all got me in trouble. But nothing, nothing compared to the terror in my heart when it came to tea.

“Why don’t you come for tea?” If you’ve never lived in Britain you won’t understand the confusion these words invoke. In America, there is hot tea and iced tea. Maybe sweet tea, if you hail from the American south, where it is sipped on the veranda while taking in the sweet smell of bougainvillea curling up the porch posts. OK, there is also Long Island iced tea, but really that’s just another version of iced tea, and no one is going to serve it to you without making it clear that they are giving you a powerful load of alcohol in your otherwise innocuous drink. In America, tea is unambiguous, a soothing beverage whether hot or cold, allowing us to feel somehow connected to cultured Britain despite that little incident in Boston harbour over two centuries ago.

“Why don’t you come for tea?” She’d said it with such nonchalance, but the various possibilities for interpretation began to circle through my mind with dizzying speed. Did she mean a cup of tea? Or was it high tea she was inviting me to? Last but far from least, did she want me to have dinner with her? (And by dinner, did I mean lunch or supper, as the word was used for both?) There were simply too many options. I could respond by asking what time she wanted me there, but what if she said four o’clock? That could still mean a cup of tea, in which case I would have lunch and be home in time for dinner. Or it could mean high tea, in which case I’d have to skip lunch so I would be properly appreciative of the tiny cakes and sandwiches served as part of the afternoon ritual. It wouldn’t do to arrive already stuffed full of a midday repast. But then again, nor would it be polite to inhale everything, so maybe a light lunch was in order? Or she could be asking me over for an early dinner (she was quite old and I knew my own grandparents frequently dined at five). Besides, if I asked her to state a time, I would be implicitly accepting her invitation, and I was less and less inclined to do so the more I thought about the implications.

“Why don’t you come for tea?” It’s hard to believe one innocent phrase could contain so much potential danger. And the thing was, no matter which tea my neighbor meant, any extended social situation raised all sort of flags for me. For instance, there was the handing over of things. This had thrown me so often since moving here. In California, you complete a financial transaction by putting the cash on the counter, where someone else picks it up. It’s simple, and it a reduces the chance of passing on various diseases or coming into contact with sweaty palms. But here, they put your change right in your hand. Right in your HAND, I tell you! You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve gone to claim my change from a counter only to smash into the lifted hand of the cashier, raining coins everywhere. So embarrassing. All right, you say, but you’re hardly likely to be exchanging money over tea, are you? Well, that was just an example. Let’s talk about the toilets. In America, the slightest flush and all is well, everything swirls quietly and politely out of sight. Not here, where I swear the flush mechanisms are built to ensure your triceps stay in peak condition. There’s a knack to flushing toilets here, a firmness required, that must be judged precisely, or everything stays right where it is. And how do you explain to your new acquaintance why you’re leaving her such an inappropriate parting gift?

“Why don’t you come for tea?” You’d think despite these issues, I would jump at the chance to get to know people in my new country. The problem is, they’d also get to know me. An invitation to high tea or dinner meant all my food phobias would come in to play. Aside from my dislike of tomatoes, onions, pickles, and mushrooms which any caring host would have to negotiate, there was the lingering mystery of English cooking to me to surmount. Courgettes, aubergines, Welsh rarebit, toad in the hole, spotted dick, roly poly, Eton mess, mucky dripping, black pudding, periwinkles…there was no end to the oddly names dishes that might be served, many of which were better eaten without thinking about their contents if you wanted to keep them down. And would it be rude to ask for coffee afterwards? During? Or was tea an absolute requirement?

“Why don’t you come for tea?” I really needed to answer her soon, but my mind roiled considering the number of ways I could unintentionally offend my neighbor during such an occasion. Adding to the stress was that fact that she was influential in the village, a leader in the local Women’s Institute chapter and a stalwart of the church, often managing events with a steely determination worthy of a Top 10 CEO. Lose her favor and it would be lost forever, and everyone for miles around would know what you had done. I would be ever-so-subtly shunned at gatherings, after which there would be no invitations forthcoming. My boyfriend would be humiliated beyond bearing. If he still wanted to be with me, and I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t, we’d have to move somewhere far away to give me another chance of assimilating. Of course, it could very well happen all over again wherever we went, this country was simply a minefield of opportunities for me to embarrass myself. Eventually, my relationship would be unable to bear the weight of my transgressions and I would find myself alone and unloved in a foreign land, forced to return, tail between my legs, to my native country, where I would be jobless, homeless, and suffering from a deep depression as a result of my inadequacy. My God, did this woman realise her casual invitation might very well ruin my life?

“Why don’t you come for tea?” She repeated her question, no doubt thinking either I didn’t hear her the first time or that I was a bit slow. But I’d heard her all right. And now I could hear the condescension, the schadenfreudistic hope that this meeting would give her something to gossip about, make her the witty center of attention at the next village fair with her stories of the rude, uncouth American who never used her knife properly and called her serviette a napkin. But suddenly I was determined that wasn’t gonna happen to this girl. “NO!” I yelled back at her. “I will NOT come to tea, and you can’t make me!” Then I turned around and marched into my house, slamming the door behind me. So there, you witch, I thought smugly to myself. You can’t make fun of me and expect me to just stand there and take it.

“Why don’t you come for tea?” I heard her voice float up through the window of our bedroom. I looked out to see my boyfriend, having just arrived home from work, nod politely as he accepted her invitation for the both of us. I got out my suitcase and started packing.