Jason and Keith joined
Lucasta and Eleanor on the back veranda for tea. They were already
talking nineteen-to-the-dozen as they sipped their tea.
When Jason and Eleanor
Cumberledge had tea, she invariably used the bone china cups, and a
cheap but well-loved china teapot. For his grandmother, Eleanor was
still using the usual Wedgwood, but she had unearthed an exquisitely
beautiful blue and white Spode teapot. Reassuringly, she had also
brought out the worn Arnott's biscuit tin, and he felt a sudden
prickle of tears as he realised how much Eleanor had come to mean to
him. The familiar rituals of their almost daily tea times had made
him feel at home, accepted, cared for, in a way he'd never felt with
his parents. It felt odd and rather wonderful to have these two old
ladies together.
“Keith and I have put
your bags in your room, gran.”
“Thank you dear.”
“Keith, would you like
some tea?” asked Eleanor. “And biscuits? There're some in the
tin.”
She poured tea for Keith
and passed him the milk jug and the biscuit tin.
“Jason, your usual?”
“Thank you, Eleanor,
yes.”
“These biscuits are
delicious, Mrs Cumberledge!” Keith was telling the truth.
“Thank you! I made
them myself, from an old recipe.”
“Quite delicious, my
dear. Perhaps you can give me the recipe before I leave shop-bought
biscuits aren't a patch on the home-made kind.”
“W-e-l-l,” said
Keith, “when I tried it once they came out of the oven blackened
and hard as cement!”
Lucasta Ellesmere
laughed. “My first biscuits were too,” she said. “Inedible!”
“You need lessons,”
said Eleanor. “You must come round again sometime soon and I can
show you how.”
“That'd be wonderful!
I'd love that.” Keith meant it. He missed not having his parents
in his life. Kindness from someone who could be his mother or
grandmother made him feel that not having parents was endurable. In
a way, Tom filled the rôle of
father, but he had no one to take the place of his mother or his nan.
He hadn't seen or spoken to his family since his father had thrown
him out of home. He always said that they could all get fucked. But
he missed those connections all the same.
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Episodes 1 to 220 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)
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