Tea with Jam and Dread (8 page)

The teenager obediently zipped her lip, but she rolled her eyes exactly like an American teenager. If you ask me, it isn’t music that’s the international language; it’s body language.

‘Ladies,’ said Peregrine, looking at me perhaps a wee bit reproachfully, ‘it has been a long, tiring day. If you will excuse me, I think that I shall retire to what passes for accommodation overhead.’

‘This
accommodation
,’ I said, ‘passed very well for our past three presidents, as well as our current Head of State.’

‘You’re joking?’ Peregrine said.

‘I never joke about business,’ I said. ‘This inn has also hosted many movie stars and people in the music industry, including Babs.’

I was met by blank stares all around except for the grin on the Babester’s face. ‘Babs,’ I said again. ‘That’s what I call her. You might know her as Barbra. She sang
Mammeries
!’

‘She means “Memory,”’ Agnes said drily.

‘Oh,
that
Barbra,’ they all chorused.

‘My wife doesn’t listen to secular music,’ Gabriel said loyally.

‘Und I dun’t leestin to sexy music eider,’ Ida said.

‘Before you go, Peregrine,’ I said, ‘we’d all like to learn what happened to you?’

‘Nothing happened to me, dear lady! I merely stepped into the woods for a moment to, er, water the undergrowth, when I became slightly disoriented.
Slightly
, I say. It’s not as if I thought I was back on the grounds of our estate or hunting with Prince Charles up in Balmoral. At any rate, I saw a light – not
the
light – and headed straight for it, as per my military training, and it led me to this so-called convent. That is where I encountered the, ahem, Mother Disjointed here.’

‘Jolly good!’ I said, for he had given me a remarkably straightforward account of his whereabouts while he was missing. Not only that, but he had come up with a ding-dang good name for me to add to my list of appellations for the Queen of Apathy. The erstwhile missing earl was beginning to rise on my barometer of likability.

‘Now that the mystery is solved,’ Sebastian said, ‘I’m out of here then as well.’ He stood, and then in the unabashed way of which only the truly young and naïve are capable of acting, he stretched his arms to their limit, straight up into the air. Normally I don’t pay close attentive to such matters, but Sebastian boasted an exceptionally long torso, and by adopting this stance the youth’s shirttails pulled loose from his waistband. The result was that I couldn’t help but be assaulted by an expanse of what the kids today refer to as a ‘six-pack.’ You know, tight, rippled muscles. In this case the six-pack was deeply tanned and separated into two equally erotic halves by a line of curly black hair.

‘Get behind me, Satan!’ I cried softly, surely too softly for anyone of corporal form to hear.

I am not superstitious, but Sebastian must have had the ears of a demon – I’m just saying. ‘What the heck do you mean by
that
?’ he said. ‘Is stretching against your religion too?’

‘Not stretching zee truce,’ Ida said.

‘She means “truth,”’ Gabe translated loyally. Despite the content of his marriage vows, and his many promises to the contrary, if Ida and I had both slipped off the deck of a ship and neither of us could swim, the first person Gabriel would try to save would be his precious Mama.
That
might not even bother me, if I believed that he intended to raise our son Little Jacob to put
his
mama before everyone else. Alas, I believe that there is a fifty–fifty chance that my son will grow up having been brainwashed into plucking the plucky Ida from the briny deep and not yours truly.

That’s when dear, sweet Aubrey jumped to my defence. ‘Well I, for one, find Magdalena utterly delightful,’ she said, ‘and I say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with embroidering one’s words in order to facilitate the conversation. I should imagine that Magdalena would have fit quite well into the salon set, don’t you, dear?’ She turned to Peregrine.

‘Oh, Mother, must you be so ridiculous?’ Celia said and left the room, although it was not she to whom the question had even been addressed.

‘Quite right, dear,’ Peregrine said, and acknowledged his wife with a glinting tilt of his monocle.

‘Well, I’m off then,’ said Sebastian, and out he strode, all nine stones of him, with his broad shoulders, washboard abs and narrow cowboy hips.

That left me with the two As: Agnes and Aubrey, current BFF and possible
new
BFF, knowing how fickle I can be. I’m just being honest. I
am
, after all, only human. What I mean is that if Agnes continued to thwart me and Aubrey continued to charm and delight me – well, I’m just saying, that’s all. Of course, it goes
without
saying that both Rosens remained.

I breathed a prayer for strength. ‘Agnes, would you be so kind as to give Ma a ride back to the Convent of Perpetual Pity?’

‘Da name eez
Apathy
,’ Ida said. ‘Und since vhen vas I your ma?’

‘I stand corrected. Agnes, could you please give Apathy a ride back to the convent for us?’

‘Mags,’ Gabe said, ‘enough with the teasing. She’s a helpless old lady, for gosh sakes.’

‘Helpless my
As
-ton Martin,’ Aubrey whispered just loud enough for everyone, except Ida, to hear. Even Gabe smiled.

Heaven help me, but I was one ‘s’ away from falling in love and becoming a lesbian, which, of course, I never would. But like I said before, I’m just saying.

F
reni Hostetler, who is both my elderly c
ook and kinswoman, normally doesn’t work on Sundays. On this particular Lord’s Day, however, she refused to have it any other way.

‘If you promised them “Dutchy” food,’ she said, ‘then I will make them for to eat real Dutchy and not the pretend Dutchy, like over Lancaster way. These English-English will eat the
real
thing.’ By that, Freni meant that she would serve food cooked according to the recipes handed down from her mother, who got them from her mother, etc. These recipes dated back hundreds of years.

An Amish farm breakfast is a hearty meal, although not all of it is to my taste. For instance, I’m not a big fan of scrapple – or head cheese – and I didn’t suppose that our British guests would care for it either, until Agnes clued me in on haggis.

‘Just make sure to serve baked beans,’ she said. ‘The Brits have to eat baked beans with every meal.’

‘Are you
sure
?’ I said. I simply couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to eat beans for breakfast, especially when planning to share a church pew in due order.

‘I am positive,’ Agnes said. ‘And ideally the beans must come from a tin, not from a can, and they must not be made from scratch.’

Freni scratched her head on that one. ‘Yah, but how is a tin different from a can?’

‘Semantics,’ I said softly, for her ears alone.

‘No, it’s not,’ Agnes said.

‘Harrumph,’ I said. ‘It looks like Agnes is anti-semantic.’

‘Ach!’ said Freni, genuinely horrified. ‘Gabe, Little Jacob, maybe Alison too – they are semantic, yah?’

‘You mean Semitic,’ Agnes said.

‘Yes, but you can bet your couscous, cousin,’ I said, ‘that these British-style breakfasts can get really out of hand, even when served from a tin, instead of a can – I hope you don’t mind my speaking in rhyme.’

‘I do, actually,’ said Agnes, who looked as if she’d been sucking on a pickle.

‘Harrumph,’ I said again. ‘At any rate, the British will expect marmite, vegemite and marmalade for their toast, which, by the way, can be no darker than the inside of my wrist. It is common knowledge that when Brits see our toast, all they see is a plate covered with ashes. Ah, yes, both their toast and their bacon have to be served in a weird little device called a rasher.’

‘Ach!’ squawked Freni. ‘Uncle!’ That was the secular American way of saying ‘I give up’ during physical competitions when I was a girl. Where on earth Freni picked up this phrase is beyond me, but the older I get, the more I’ve come to understand just how strange this world is, and that its mysteries are constantly unfolding.

For the most part we needn’t have worried about our breakfast selection. I served it buffet style, and the sideboard fairly groaned under the weight of the many platters and bowls it supported. I heard many appreciative ‘ahs’ and ‘ohs’ in the serving line, and when folks started eating, the compliments coming out of their mouths gave stiff competition to the food going in.

There was only one fly in the oatmeal – er, ointment. Rupert, the oldest son by two minutes, had deigned to lift his silken locks off my guest pillows and make that terrible trek downstairs to the dining room. I know, sarcasm does not become me, and I have heard it said that women are incapable of it, so I have had to check beneath my sturdy Christian underwear
twice
, in the telling of this, to be sure of my gender, but that young man’s arrogant behaviour really steamed my bonnet.

After all the work that my seventy-six-year-old cousin did that morning to prepare a feast fit for a king, much less a viscount, Rupert should have at least had enough good manners to say
nothing
rather than something hurtful. Instead, with Freni standing there at one end of the buffet, Rupert screwed up his face as if he’d also been sucking on a pickle and said: ‘I say there, have you ever seen such a disgusting display of rubbish all in one place?’

Both the Amish and we Mennonites are known for our pacifism. Many’s the time that we have been martyred for our faith. We are a humble people, even proud of our humility, and may the Good Lord forgive me but I cannot help feeling defensive when it comes to my family. Perhaps I am a closet Baptist and I don’t know it. After all, as a teenager I caught myself inadvertently wiggling my patooty to Little Richard’s
Tooty Fruity
, that time when I heard the tune coming from a shop doorway. That night I confessed this sin to Mama, who then gave my offending behind ten whacks with the backside of her hairbrush.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, as Alison would say, no one, but
no one
, hurts dear old Freni. Even Babs couldn’t get away with a statement like Rupert’s. The only thing that prevented me from tackling the ungrateful tourist was that Agnes stood between us with her Sumo wrestler’s girth.

‘You take that back, buster!’ I roared. ‘Take it back right now or it’s off to the Tower with you!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Rupert chirped.

‘It’s not
my
pardon for which you should be asking,’ I growled, ‘but Freni’s. How can you say such a hurtful thing to an old lady? Don’t you have a grandmother?’

At that Agnes manoeuvred a turn between the table and the sideboard so that she faced me. ‘Magdalena, what are you carrying on about? I don’t see how Freni enters into my private conversation with Rupert. He was showing me a picture of the garbage strike in Naples on his smartphone. It really
is
disgusting.’

When I used to complain about having big feet, Papa always said that God made them that way so I could think fast on them. I tried putting them to good use that morning.

‘Oh
that
,’ I said. ‘I must have been thinking aloud. It had to do with the dialogue I’m writing for the Christmas pantomime – you know, the one I’ll be directing for the Sunday school.’

For the record, I abhor fabrication and eschew embroidering with words, if they are meant to deceive, and/or take advantage of someone. However, I believe it is quite different
if
one follows through and actually performs a task that has been alluded to. That, of course, meant that I would have to set pencil to paper and prepare a script for puerile pubescent players – or else be guilty of telling a whopper on the Lord’s Day.

‘I always enjoyed acting in pantomimes,’ Rupert said. The young man was irritatingly agreeable. If it hadn’t been for his lavender shirt and his unmistakable use of rouge on his cheeks, he could well have passed for your average red-blooded American male – well, almost. Although it wasn’t any of my business, I can’t help but state that the coral shade of lipstick he was wearing not only didn’t suit his skin tone, it would have set him apart from other local youth his age.

‘Well, there is no doubt in my mind that you have movie star good looks,’ Agnes said.

‘Just what Mother always says,’ Rupert said without a trace of humility.

Gore blimey and gag me with a spoon! That was my deepest, darkest thought, and I’ve already made no secret of the fact that I am a sinful woman, in need of salvation. So anyway, I’m telling it like I felt it.

‘Yes, my boy is the greatest,’ Aubrey said. ‘Freni, what do you call these divine little cakes?’

‘Pancakes, ma’am,’ Freni said.

‘Indeed,’ Aubrey said. ‘They look very much like crepes, except that they’re rather stouter, don’t you think?’

Poor Freni, my stout cousin, looked as put upon as a sheep asked to solve a maths problem. ‘Yah, I think,’ she finally said.

Much to my astonishment, it was Rupert who attempted to swoop in and rescue Freni. ‘My dear woman,’ he said, ‘would you by any chance happen to have a box of muesli lying around? I’m not complaining, mind you. This rally is a splendid layout, but I’m afraid that travel has a way of – should we say – tying things up for a while, if you get my drift. A bit of muesli to sprinkle on my porridge would be first rate – or, as you Americans are so fond of saying: “da bomb.”’

Freni wears glasses, which have lenses thicker than my cell phone. Her mouth opened and closed, but it was clear that everything Rupert had just said might as well have been delivered in Vietnamese.

‘Certainly we have muesli,’ Agnes said, and much to Gabe and my mutual astonishment she reached into an enormous handbag that was resting on a dining-room chair beside her and extracted a box of that enigmatic European cereal. I refer to it as that because privately the Babester and I call it “sticks and twigs,” and we joke that if we left a bowl of it out on the deck in early spring, the birds would make short shrift of stealing it for the purpose of building their nests.

Truthfully, if the Good Lord wanted us to suffer at mealtimes, then He would forbid us to eat
Cinnabons
, which are those enormous cinnamon rolls that are served warm, with cream cheese icing, in airport kiosks. God wouldn’t torture us by making us think that adding kindling material to our breakfasts makes us any healthier – not when we already have Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, the kind with two scoops in every box. Of course, who am
I
to judge? Unlike my Jewish husband, I blithely stuff my face with bacon and pork sausages, even though God said quite clearly that these pig products were not allowed, and never, ever would be on account of His commandments being everlasting
– l’olam va’ed
.

Yes, I know, the Apostle Peter had a dream that overturned this commandment, but I ask you, who trumps whom in this case? Who is the Big Kahuna, so to speak, the Great Almighty whose word is Eternal, or a Galilean fisherman whose dream conveniently allows millions of Gentiles to convert because now they can keep on eating their BLTs? Those are
not
my words, by the way, but Gabriel’s! I happen to find Gabe’s statement absolutely shocking and sacrilegious.

Once more I have digressed as, sadly, is my wont. Needless to say, our English guests were terribly impressed and Ida, who had invited herself to breakfast, was terribly perplexed, so that anyway you chose to slice the massive wheel of locally made cheddar, most of us were quite pleased. But as nine o’clock drew near and bellies grew round, I clapped my hands. This was much to Agnes’s annoyance, I’m afraid.

It’s not that I’m a controlling person, mind you; I am merely an organized person who abhors last-minute chaos. A little ‘Magdalena oil,’ albeit as unpleasant as castor oil, might be just what is called for in situations where people mill about like sheep in front of a corral without any dogs to herd them in.

Had I a pleasant singing voice, I might have chanced breaking into song to get everyone’s attention. However, in all honesty, the kindest thing that can be said about my attempts to sing soprano is that I sound remarkably like a screech owl that has been caught in a snare by the neck and is being slowly strangled. In my church everyone is given the opportunity to participate in the choir if that is what they so desire, but the year that I decided to join nobody else did; the word was that no one wanted to be associated with my adenoidal abominations. Ha! I showed them; every Sunday I bravely stood up and sang a solo of some cherished Mennonite hymn, and every Sunday a pack of salivating male bloodhounds would greet me at the side door of the church. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining – merely stating a fact. A fan club, regardless of its members’ species, is still composed of fans.

On this particular morning, however, I clapped my hands loudly. ‘People,’ I blurted in what I am told is my Oprah Winfrey voice (oh, your UK libel laws drive me crazy!). ‘May I have your attention, please? In order to make it to the church on time, we must all move smartly. Peregrine, dear, you have enough crumbs in your “stash” to feed a flock of starlings, and you, Celia, darling, will need to put on an actual shirt, or blouse, over that bit of an undergarment you young folks call a “camisole.” As for you, Rupert and Aubrey, I dare say that you two pass muster, although Rupert, your lavender shirt might garner its fair share of snickers, so be forewarned.’

‘Ahem,’ Peregrine said, ignoring his crumb-laden moustache. ‘I told you last night that I was taking a walk; that is still my plan.’

Celia pointed a bare shoulder at me defiantly. ‘Papa, may I go with you?’

‘Certainly, dear. Although, rally, I suppose you should ask your mother.’

‘Oh, mummy, please, do say yes! I’ll be ever so good for the remainder of the holiday. I promise that I will. I’ll even buff the dry skin off your heels between your visits to the pedicurist – you know, like you’ve been begging me to do.’

Poor Aubrey turned a sinner’s shade of red on Judgement Day. ‘I only asked you to do that once, dear. Please don’t give these people the wrong impression. Yes, you may accompany your father, but stay with him until I return. Remember that you’re in a foreign country and we don’t even speak the language.’

‘Why I never!’ I said, for the first time taking umbrage with any words that fell from Aubrey’s bow-shaped lips. ‘Of course we speak the same language. Can’t you understand what I am saying now?’

Aubrey winked in a way so that I could see it, but not Celia. ‘Slow down, Magdalena, and speak a bit louder. Then perhaps I might understand a word here and there.’

‘Blimey,’ Celia said. ‘You two are bonkers.’

‘Hey, vait a meenut,’ my mother-in-law said – she who is truly bonkers. ‘Vhy dun’t youse all cum to da coinvent wiz me? Vee vill dunce nekkid und zing prazez to da Goddess Apattee.’

‘Ma!’ Gabe moaned.

‘Did I hear correctly?’ Peregrine said. ‘Did she just reference dancing in the nude?’

‘Gross,’ Alison said. ‘Trust me, youse guys, ya don’t want to see that; they’re all old women and, like, so old that their boobies hang down to their knees. Except I forgot to mention Auntie Agnes’s brothers – sorry, Auntie Agnes, but ya really don’t want to see them either, on account of they’re like a million, gazillion years old and
their
winky-dinks—’

‘I say there,’ Rupert said, ‘although I was rather looking forward to the traditional Mennonite service at Magdalena’s church, singing praises to the Goddess Apathy while dancing about in one’s birthday suit rally does have its appeal – hanging winky-dink body parts and all. Yes, jolly good then, count me in for praises with the geezers.’