The Tea Rooms

He pottered half-heartedly, rearranging what didn’t need arranging. His daughter stood by the window, cup in hand, gaze fixed stern out into the sanctuary of the middle distance. They couldn’t find a safe way to put words on it, silence took up a heavy dominion. The house couldn’t hold the growing tension.

‘Let’s walk’, she determined abruptly.

‘Grand so’, he quickly acquiesced.

They made their way over to the woods in concentrated quiet, their destination did not need discussion. When there was walking to be done, this was always the place. They were side-by-side at the turnstile, but a gap opened as soon as they started up the trail. Mary marched on with long strides, despite a pathway treacherous from the previous night’s rain. She looked neither left nor right, bent forward in determination, the elements only there for conquering. He trudged behind, preferring a pace that allowed some engagement with the surroundings, though this time it was mainly due to feet that were leaden.

Tangled tree trunks gradually snagged his attention, their shadows thrown up around him. He brushed his palm across the fur of green moss on those close by. He slowly inhaled the musky smell of decay thrown up. The rustle of well-hidden wildlife scuttled reassuringly on both sides. In times long past, he would have led them both off on the hunt, a serious and engrossing endeavour if always fruitless.

At each twist in the trail, he was dragged back by the sight of her up ahead. There was a ferocity to her engagement with the climb. He was in awe of that, as much as it inspired trepidation. He would only catch her at the summit, where, inevitably, there would be the reckoning. He hadn’t been surprised, expecting her visit to the house. Maybe he should have taken the initiative and talked it through with her, but he couldn’t put her at risk. Any move on his part would have drawn her into it, there was no other way open to him.

He turned a bend in the path to find her waiting up ahead on the bench in that cubicle of greenery overlooking the lake far below. Her choice of venue disconcerted him. It was not to be the summit then, with its blunt and bare wildness. As he looked up at her in that special place, he couldn’t resist hope rising despite the rigidity of her posture. There were steps cut into the ground here and he took each one deliberately, one foot planted after the other with growing confidence.

He remembered her on the same bench many a time over the years. Her short legs stretched out horizontal as she whispered and giggled with her brother sat beside her. There was his Patricia, at one end of the bench, on her hunkers with the flask, serving out the weak tea. He used to play waiter at the other end, standing formally over them with pink fluffy Mikado biscuits proffered on two paper plates.

He sat down alongside her now, father and daughter on more testing terms. They each gazed out through the frame of branches over the tufted islands on the wind-rippled water. Little boats bobbed, lines expectantly trailed behind them. As always, he searched out that strange noose-like twist at the lake’s head, which tied it off from the sea, but allowed for a refill at high tide.

‘Why?’, she didn’t look at him

‘I had to’, he said, watching her cautiously.

‘You had to what?’ She glared straight at him. ‘We’ll have to close the business now without that money. Joe’s back there going on about closing down and leaving, as we can’t make good on what’s owed to those around us.’

‘I needed the money. There was nowhere else to go. You both knew it was a loan.’

‘A loan, to be paid over time, not overnight. How could you need so much money so quickly? What’s going on?’

‘I can’t say. There was no choice, please believe me.’

‘You never could say, could you? Nothing new in that.’

Mary paused, grabbing at deep breaths to regroup for the attack, or maybe just to hold onto some poise. The branches offered a near-perfect window through which they could survey normal life down below. Cars rolled along slowly in miniature, a group gathered matchstick-like on the pier for the gossip, diminutive couples trooped their daily perambulation around the lake. The canopy of foliage rustled nervously. The trees around leaned in as if to attend more closely.

‘Do you remember…’

‘Don’t do that’, she snapped back.

‘They were good days here. We called it…’

‘You’ve no right, stop with the nostalgia. You’re the last one I’d root around any memories with. You never allowed it for us, not when we needed to.’

‘That was different, you had to move on, you couldn’t be forever looking back…’

‘Couldn’t what? Hold on to some vestige of my mother? It was like she was disappeared, never to be mentioned.’

‘You were young. It was too much for you, it was the only way to protect you. I couldn’t…’

‘She died and you never let us mourn her. Now you want to bring up the memories, and only because it suits some never to be explained purpose of yours.’

Mary stared disdain at him, unrelenting to the point where he had a sense of shrinking into himself. He only ever wanted what was best for them and that hadn’t changed. He shifted his gaze back to the lake below and held grimly onto its simple mass and solid permanence. That did not allow for doubt or discord, it was just there, always dependable.

‘Has Ben anything to do with this?’ She poked at his shoulder for attention.

‘No’, he shook his head, knowing the denial was too quick.

‘Where did he disappear off to then? He was hardly a day gone, and you were around us looking for the money.’

‘I don’t know, he just said he had to go. He tells me nothing these days.’

‘No prizes for guessing where he gets that from. Why did he ‘just’ have to go?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘Or won’t say.’

Mary jerked upright, suddenly decided. He watched her stop and grasp the branch above, as if in salute or apologetic farewell. Then she was gone, off down the track with the same unforgiving determination. He patted the empty seat gently, as if to encourage her back, but she was lost from sight at the first turn.

Ben had sailed off in the ketch, angry at his demands for an explanation. He had gone over to Ben’s place a few nights after his departure, wondering why the lights were on. His hopes were quickly crushed, and he was left wondering why he had not left well enough alone. Two men had drifted out of the shadows to accost him. It got rough when he made it clear what had him there and who he was.

‘A load was dumped off Ben’s boat’, one of them had growled at him, ‘at least that’s his story, and it needs paying for’. He had suspected Ben was involved in something unsavoury, with his evasions and the money that seemed to flow over the past year. He had chosen not to ask, in reality he had not wanted to know. It must have been the coastguard that spooked Ben that night. They were on the watch all along the coast for drug smuggling. It was clear why he had left so suddenly, there was no reasoning with these drug world enforcers. They left him with a choice that was no choice. Payment would be made, in one form or another.

He shivered with the memory, as much as at the breeze that came up from the lake. The scaffold of entwined branches offered no protection, the window merely reduced to a funnel. He had no defences left to manage loss and its inevitable accompaniment. Solitude was already firming its grip. He had to haul himself up from the bench to leave, taking each of the steps slowly with defeated resignation. He looked back from the bend at the darkened snug above, suddenly swamped by the memories. The Tea Rooms they used to call it, in the days.

By Niall Crowley

From: Ireland

Twitter: NiallCrowley_