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The Traveling Tea Shop

Page 17

by Belinda Jones


  • • •

  Emerging from my room, I am relieved to discover that Charles and Pamela are already up and out, so I make a beeline for the deck, relishing having it to myself.

  There’s not a wave as far as the eye can see, just glimmering ripples spotted with bobbing boats, canoes and inflatable loungers. At least that’s the view toward the pier. Over in the direction of the dunes, it’s clear, unadorned periwinkle blue.

  I take an elongated breath—I love this combination: a light ruffling breeze with an underlying burn from the sun. I close my eyes and let my vision glow to red as strands of hair lift and swish across my face. As I stand there, I feel my heart rate slowing, my breathing easing. I might believe I could meditate in such a moment. Or maybe this is as good as meditation. It’s funny, inner peace is nothing I’ve ever particularly aspired to. I always wanted to be a woman of action. But now I can see how blissful inaction can be.

  Even the Adirondack chairs seem to offer fantastic back support. As I take a seat I rest my head back and wonder how long I could stay here, were it not for my obligations. At what point would I have had my fill? I’m always rushing on to the next thing, ricocheting around a schedule—what if I just stayed here? Forever. A quick check of my watch tells me I’m going to have to go for quality over quantity, so I attempt to let this feeling seep into my bones and create a memory from it so I can always come back here in my mind. As Krista says, “Travel broadens the mind, but the mind can always travel.” Now I’ve been here, and felt this bliss, I have an open invitation to return, wherever I am.

  I think that’s why, in my mind at least, it’s sometimes worth paying over the odds for a room, because you’re buying more than a bed for the night, you’re buying an experience, investing in your ability to be amazed by the world, which to me is the most rejuvenating sensation of all. It’s so easy to feel tired and jaded by the humdrum, but you can get through all that if you know that a beautiful feeling is coming your way. I think it’s terribly important to remind yourself of how you really want to live your life. If we keep a treasure box of what we love in our minds, we can try to make choices that keep us moving in that direction.

  I remember writing a “Holiday Blues” page for Va-Va-Vacation!, dedicated to those people who slump horribly after they return from their two weeks in Greece, or wherever. One of the secrets is to ask yourself: what is it that you love so much about being there and how can you have more of that in your life? Of course, some things are a quicker fix than others: you can easily have more tzatziki, but you can’t buy two weeks of sunshine from Sainsbury’s. You might consider a second job—even one day a week for six months could buy you a second holiday. I mean, what would you be doing with your time anyway? If you’re spending most of the time watching TV, wishing you had someone else’s life, it might be worth considering. I know one of our readers got a Saturday job in a Greek taverna and ended up making friends with the owners and staying at their family home in Skiathos for free.

  There are lots of possibilities out there for people of limited means, if you are willing to get a little creative and go that extra mile for what you love.

  “Where is everyone?”

  By utter contrast, here is Ravenna.

  “Gone for a stroll,” I tell her. “They left a note.”

  Ravenna steps up to the edge of the deck. “Is that them there?”

  I lean forward, squinting. “Yes, looks like it.” I feel a mild flush of anxiety, hoping they won’t stop and kiss right in front of us. Their body language certainly looks inclined in that direction. “Shall we go down to breakfast?”

  Ravenna gives me a look.

  “Coffee?” I rephrase my invitation.

  We creak down the stairs, exit through the closet doors and behold the continental spread. A big jade buddha watches over the teas, an art deco maiden the cereals. I fill my bowl with fresh strawberries and pineapple, pluck a berry muffin spilling over from its casing and stir honey into my camomile and lemon tea. Life is good.

  Taking our seats on the veranda, I notice Ravenna is the only one hunched over her phone. Everyone else is reading newspapers or books. So much more relaxing. It makes me nostalgic for the time before portable technology. Out of respect for my surroundings, I keep mine in my bag.

  “Do you know I don’t think I had my first coffee until I was in my late twenties? I hear schoolgirls today saying they need their caffeine fix, when the most I’d get was a Robinson’s Barley Water.”

  Ravenna looks back at me. “You talk a lot.”

  “Well, there’s just so much to say, isn’t there?”

  She shrugs and returns to her phone.

  “You prefer texting to talking?”

  Her thumbs halt. I feel as if she’s about to say something potent when Pamela and Charles clomp up the steps.

  “Morning all!”

  “Morning!” I chirrup back. “Ready for some breakfast?”

  “Actually, Charles took me to the Portuguese bakery and I had my first malasada.”

  “Malasada?” I attempt to repeat.

  “It looks like a big doughnut that’s been run over,” Pamela begins, “but when you bite into it you find the texture is more like an airy ciabatta that’s been deep-fried and coated in sugar.”

  “That sounds strangely good.”

  “Oh, it is—I love that sensation when you release the grease.”

  “Gross,” Ravenna recoils.

  “There’s quite the Portuguese tradition here,” Charles says as he pulls up a chair. “Their festival is one of the biggest events of the summer—there’s parades, dancing, the Blessing of the Fleet . . .”

  I notice Ravenna listens when he speaks. Looking between them, I search for a family resemblance. It’s hard to tell with her mess of hair and giant sunglasses, but perhaps there’s something in the chin area?

  “What do you think, Laurie?”

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Do we have time for one quick detour as we head out?” Charles wants to know. “Just ten minutes?”

  He says he’d like to give us a closer look at the dunes—you can even drive along the beach there.

  I grimace. “I’m not sure Red is cut out for off-roading.”

  He chuckles and explains that we’ll just pull over at the side of the road and then cut through on foot.

  I’m very glad we do. It’s a fascinating sight—great swooping dunes of palest blond sand, whiskery with grasses, burrowing down to the occasional dark-green oasis.

  Charles points to a grayish shack on the horizon, one of a dozen or so spaced out along the coast.

  “Looks like the ultimate writer’s retreat,” I joke.

  “You’re right! Some of the greats have stayed here: Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams—Jack Kerouac even conceived part of On the Road here.”

  “What?” Now that’s a trip!

  “Do you know E. E. Cummings?”

  “I’m not sure,” I reply.

  “He wrote the most beautiful poem called ‘I carry your heart with me . . .’”

  Charles looks like a movie star as he quotes it to us, the wind ruffling his hair, making him look all the more romantically rugged against the backdrop of shifting sands.

  I can’t help thinking, “If he was twenty years younger . . .”

  “Today, if you’re a writer or an artist, you can apply for a residency at a couple of the shacks. There’s no electricity, no running water; they just drop you off in a dune buggy with your supplies and come back a week or so later to pick you up.”

  “I don’t know if I’d like that,” I shiver. “Wouldn’t it get a bit spooky at night?”

  “It’s actually all right. At least it fitted my mood at the time.”

  “You stayed in one?” Ravenna is impressed.

  “It was a long time ago. I t
hought I was going to write the Great American Novel but it just turned into a great outpouring of my broken heart.”

  My eyes flit to Pamela. She does look a tad guilty.

  “Can we read it?” Ravenna asks. “Is it published?”

  “I never finished it.”

  “Still waiting for the happy ending?” I find myself asking.

  He looks wistful. “I think in a way I was always waiting for her to come back to me.”

  “And now she’s here,” I want to say. In fact, now they’re both here—the two missing women in his life.

  As he answers Ravenna’s questions about the décor of the shacks—“I’m picturing lanterns and bunk beds and itchy blankets!”—I step back and oh-so-discreetly take some candid snaps of the three of them. Perhaps this full-circle moment will make a nice memento for him. Or a sadly poignant one, depending on how things go with today’s revelation.

  Chapter 30

  On our way to Sandwich, I get an e-mail from Gracie asking if I can set her up with a “bachelorette pad” in Newport. She’s well enough to leave hospital, but not up to traveling, so she just needs a nice spot to recuperate.

  I know just the place. The Cliffside Inn is just a few steps from Cliff Walk, strolling distance from town; there’s a gourmet breakfast every morning and social tea in the afternoon, so plenty of opportunity to mingle with the other guests. Plus they have a garden suite available that avoids any of the staircase-wheezing of the main building, and it has a separate lounge area so she’ll be able to entertain, as I know she’ll be making friends in no time. (Apparently her facial bruising is quite a conversation-starter.)

  “Do you think we should divert back there and get her settled in?” Pamela asks.

  I look back at the e-mail. “If Pamela suggests coming back for any reason, please dissuade her. It is imperative she keeps moving forward with Charles.”

  “I think what she needs most is peace and quiet,” I reply. “If we go back she’ll be less inclined to sleep and get the rest she needs.”

  “You’re right,” Pamela nods. “She’s not a fan of being fussed over, anyway.”

  Fortunately our arrival in Sandwich distracts Pamela from any further fretting on the subject.

  “Do you think you have to pass some kind of test to live here?” I wonder as I take in the Bree Van de Kamp perfection of it all. “You know, proven skills in lawn-trimming and picnic-basket-arranging and all-round wholesomeness?”

  There’s even a father teaching his son fishing in the sunlit river beside the old mill.

  Sandwich is the oldest town in Cape Cod, first settled in 1637 and named after Sandwich in Kent. Neither one has anything to do with sliced bread—the name comes from the Old English meaning “trading center on sand.” Rather more dramatic is the U.S. town’s motto: Post tot naufragia portus, which translates as “After so many shipwrecks, a haven.”

  It is that. And the Dunbar Tea Room is a haven within a haven. A former carriage house with a cozy fireplace, it made the cover of The Great Tea Rooms of America. Since we’re still full of breakfast, it’s just a quick snoop and a photo opportunity beside their cake buffet.

  “Nice piping,” I hear Ravenna mutter.

  Pamela is impressed by the range of teas on offer (I catch her discreetly pointing out the “Courtship” tea to Charles) and the promise of a real Plowman’s Lunch.

  “Well, whatever you order, you know it will be filling.” Charles looks around for a response. “Get it? Sandwich. Filling.”

  • • •

  Half an hour later, we arrive at Plymouth Rock.

  “Is that it?” Ravenna is unimpressed with the lump of pale-gray stone caged in a mini Acropolis at the water’s edge.

  It’s definitely one of those landmarks that you arrive at and then say, “Now what?”

  Fortunately I have something particular in mind.

  • • •

  The Plimoth Plantation is a reminder of America’s Think Big mentality. Instead of a few artifacts in a museum, they have taken 130 acres of prime coastal land and rewound the clock so you can really understand how the people lived, and ate, back in 1627 (seven years after the arrival of the Mayflower).

  Once you get beyond the visitor center, there is no trace of modern life. The road slopes down and you find yourself surrounded by grassy fields and grazing cattle, sandy roads and a series of small thatched, timber-framed homes. Costumed role-players invite you to step inside and see the earth floors and ash-heaped hearth with its blackened pans and metal pail currently boiling water. There’s a heavy wooden table set with pewter plates and hand-glazed pitchers and, over in the corner, an early design for a canopy bed.

  Pamela asks one reenactor, bulky in her excessive yardage of Pilgrim fabric, what kind of cakes they might have prepared in those days. She answers “mostly spice cakes and Shrewsbury cakes” and then leads us down the main drag to an alfresco communal oven where the daily bread was baked.

  “No TV, no mobile phones, no liquid eyeliner, can you imagine?” I nudge Ravenna.

  “I don’t even want to,” Ravenna shudders. “Can we move on?”

  It turns out that we are touring out of sequence because, after a forage through the forest, we discover the Wampanoag homesite—home to the original settlers.

  After seeing so many Westerns as a child, it’s almost unnerving to walk among these moccasin-clad Native People with their beaded wristbands and feathered dream-catchers. These are not lookalikes cast in a role, but actual descendants of Native tribes creating a living history exhibit. I feel part-intruder, part-voyeur as I watch a woman hoick her baby into a papoose while another tends to the campfire, but they are unfazed and welcoming. With the possible exception of a bored-looking teen, slumped atop a log, looking as though she’d rather be at the mall with her friends.

  “Shall we go into the longhouse?”

  It is here we discover one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, sitting amid the raccoon furs and raffia weavings, rhythmically stirring something porridge-y. She looks like the fantasy of Pocahontas: long black hair braided to one side; sheeny, caramel skin set against the buttery suede of her fringed dress. She tells us that the bowl she is holding, similar to a hollowed-out coconut, is what they would use to portion their meals—it replicates the size of the stomach so you would only eat enough to fill that. And then when you were hungry you would eat again. Which sounds so much more reasonable than our stomach-stretching three-course meals.

  I ask if they have any kind of teatime tradition and she says no—if the children were craving something sweet, they would give them berries. Ravenna is utterly rapt. For the first time she joins in with the questions—does Wampanoag have an English translation? Did she make her earrings herself? We’re just learning about how the more elderly members of the family would sleep closest to the fires at the center of the longhouse, when I catch sight of Pamela beckoning me outside—she wants me to give her agent an update on the phone, which feels so inappropriate in this setting that I all but clamber into a blueberry bush so as not to ruin the vibe for my fellow visitors.

  When I stumble out again, I find Ravenna pacing impatiently.

  “This is absolutely outrageous,” she spits. “I just can’t believe it!”

  “Believe what?”

  “Do you realize that these people had no disease and no obesity before the bastard English came along with their smallpox and diphtheria and sugar and ruined them? They welcomed these strangers off the boat, shared their skills for harnessing nature’s bounty and in return they enslaved them, took their land, wiped out half of them. I mean, for god’s sake, Laurie!” She looks wild-eyed at me. “How can this be?”

  I sigh, defeated. “It’s not right, is it?”

  “Well. I know we can’t go back in time, but surely there must be something we can do?” She looks so earnest, like she
wants a solution right now.

  I don’t know what to say, other than it makes me feel thoroughly ashamed to be English. But I am sufficiently impressed by Ravenna’s first unselfish request to get my thinking cap on as we head back to the bus.

  “There is one thing,” I venture as we pass the Craft Center. “If you are going to move into interior design, you could think about incorporating some of their handicrafts when you get a commission. Perhaps they’ll even become your signature look; that way you’re helping improve their economy, bringing their work to a new audience and keeping the conversation going about them . . .”

  “That’s actually a good idea. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  She sighs.

  I wait.

  Finally she speaks: “I don’t know if that’s what I really want to do. You know, as a career.”

  Ah.

  “Indian Pudding?” Pamela appears before us, this time offering a dollop of brown gloop from the café. “This is the closest thing to a native dessert, made from cornmeal, milk and molasses.”

  I take a spoonful—it’s actually tasty and textured, with a spice that makes my tongue tingle. “Nutmeg?”

  “And a bit of cinnamon and ginger,” Pamela confirms.

  “I was thinking of trading bread pudding, what do you think?”

  “I’d say that would be spot on,” I smile, though my gaze has strayed back to Ravenna, busily chewing at her thumbnail.

  She does have my sympathy. It’s no picnic when you don’t know what you want to do with your life. And it makes it all the more easy to be swayed by people like Eon. As they say, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

 

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