The Traveling Tea Shop

by Belinda Jones

  “Can’t you help, Laurie?” Ravenna looks expectantly at me before turning back to Harvey: “It’s what she does.”

  “I did wonder about asking your advice but . . .” He looks awkward. “We don’t have a budget per se; everyone involved is volunteering their time.”

  “That’s not a problem,” I’m quick to assure him. “I’d be happy to help if I can. I mean, what are we talking about here? How many kids? What age? Can they be divided into groups or do they need to be kept together? How many supervisors? Can they be trusted not to wreck the rooms? Is it one group for the month or do they change every week?”

  “See!” Ravenna claps her hands together. “See how good she is!”

  “Well . . .” I reach for my teacup, tilting it up to cover my face.

  “Have you ever been sailing?” Harvey asks me.

  “Does the Staten Island Ferry count?”

  He chuckles. “Not really. Anyway, we don’t have to get into this now—I can e-mail you later with all the details, if it’s not too much trouble? I know you’re up to your eyeballs with this job.”

  “We’ve just got tonight and Vermont and then we’re pretty much done, right Laurie?”

  I nod. “I can take a look while you’re having dinner.”

  “You’re not joining us?” He looks disappointed.

  “No. I have the feeling I’m going to be full of reject Pound Cake.”

  Plus, of course, it’s only right that the four of them should enjoy a proper family dinner. Provided everything goes according to plan at the spa. And it has to. I think Pamela knows it’s crunch-time.

  “Okay, we both have our challenges now,” I give her a bolstering hug as she prepares to head on her way. “Just be clear and honest and be prepared to answer a million questions.”

  She nods. “And you make sure you preheat that oven and grease the tins.”

  Suddenly my challenge doesn’t seem quite so daunting.

  Then again, I hadn’t counted on having a second pair of hands in the mixing bowl . . .

  Chapter 45

  We agreed to park Red beside the Bretton Arms and use the shuttle to and from the main building, not least to spare the valet parker the trauma of wrangling seven tons of London Transport’s finest. (You should have seen his face when we first pulled up!) I don’t know which is more intimidating to me—being left in charge of the bus, or being alone in Red’s kitchen.

  Ah cooking, how you intimidate me. Suddenly I’m all fingers and thumbs. Even this shortest of recipes takes on the gravity of Tolstoy. I’m getting a twisty, out-of-my-depth feeling, and all I’ve done so far is set out the ingredients.

  “Knock, knock! Laurie, are you up there?”

  Harvey! My heart flusters and I instantly get the shakes. “Yes, yes! Come on up!”

  “I wanted to see if you’d like a hand.” He smiles willingly.

  “I thought you were going to play golf with your dad?” Not the most welcoming response.

  “Well, I convinced him that he’d really rather take a nap so I could do what I’d rather be doing—”

  “Cracking eggs? Mixing gloop?”

  “Just can’t get enough of it!”

  “All right.” I take a breath. “But let’s be clear. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing here, so I need you to cross-check my every move.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” he says with mock lasciviousness.

  My heart is properly palpitating now. How on earth am I supposed to concentrate in such close quarters?

  “Right. First things first—we need to sieve the flour and salt.”

  I begin tapping the sieve as Harvey goes to pour the flour through, only instead of a gradual sprinkling it comes out in a big dump, creating a great genie-like puff in the air. Which then gently layers onto his shirt. I go to flick it away with the tea towel, but I’ve picked the only damp one and now I’ve made a white paste across his navy sheen.

  Oh jeez.

  “It’s my fault, I should have changed before I got here—I only packed one smart outfit.”

  “We can rinse it off under the tap,” I beckon him to the sink. “It’ll dry in no time with all this oven heat.”

  He tries to maneuver under the water flow, but can’t get close enough. “Perhaps it’s best if I just take it off. Do you have anything . . . ?”

  I hold up one of Pamela’s flouncier aprons.

  “Not exactly the most masculine design,” I note, “but it will do the trick.”

  He gives a hapless shrug. “In for a penny, in for a pound cake!”

  I chuckle at his wit. “You’re quite au fait with English sayings, aren’t you?”

  “I had a Brit in my class,” he says as he unbuttons his shirt and reveals a broad chest with a tantalizing whisk of hair—the ultimate in come-lay-upon-me burliness.

  “What about your trousers?” I push my luck.

  “You want me to take them off too?” He looks most amused.

  “Well. It is a risky situation for them,” I say, holding up my white-dusted hands.

  “This is not how I saw my afternoon going,” he says as he reaches for the zip. “Well, not exactly anyway.”

  As he turns to set them off to the side I get to admire his boxers. Banana Republic, I’m guessing. His legs are nice too. Strong thighs. I reckon he could pick me up and carry me without them buckling at all. And what a nice change that would be.

  “Laurie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Something’s bleeping.”

  “Oh, it’s just the oven reaching the desired temperature,” I say, wrenching my attention back to the job in hand. “Right! We need to cream the butter and the sugar with the handheld mixer set to high, until light and fluffy.”

  Let the shrill whirring begin.

  “Next add the vanilla extract,” I continue to read.

  “How much?” Harvey queries.

  “One teaspoon. Then the eggs.”

  This is when all hell breaks loose. There’s nine of them. We were supposed to add them gradually and reduce the mixer speed to low, but we don’t do either, and the fact that I’ve opted for way too shallow a bowl means that in a matter of seconds we look as if we’ve been ambushed by a paint-baller.

  “Noooo!”

  In my desperation to cut off the power I knock over the bowl, creating a vanilla-scented Vesuvius oozing into a skiddy pool on the floor. As I frantically attempt to push back the countertop drippings, Harvey goes to reach across me to the paper towels, but slips as he does so. I try to grab him from falling flat on his lovely boxers, and end up lunging over him, covering his arms with slimy gunk, my chin jolting into his chest. “Youch!” Some part of me just wants to say to hell with it and writhe on the floor like a pair of cake-mix mud-wrestlers, but a new voice enters the fray:

  “Hellooo! Anyone home?”

  We freeze.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Charles’s head pop up from the stairwell. I watch with horror as he takes in his half-naked son, our compromising position, and the overall mucky devastation.

  “Just wanted to check that everything is going okay.”

  I can’t speak.

  “Right! Good! See you later!”

  “Oh my god!” I mouth to Harvey, waiting for the jolt of his father disembarking. “What will Pamela think?” I squeak.

  “Don’t worry, he won’t tell her.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He raises a brow. “You don’t think my father can keep a secret?”

  He’s got me there.

  “God! He must think I’m so unprofessional!” My hands cover my face.

  Harvey smirks. “Nice face mask. Very Mrs. Doubtfire.”

  “Oh no!” I wail as I catch sight of my reflection.

  “Here. Allow me . . .” He
reaches for one of the tea towels and gently wipes away the gunk.

  It feels oddly soothing. When I think of how I scrub at my face with my Neutrogena wipes, and here he is, big ole mechanic hands, barely glancing my skin.

  “What?” He catches me studying him.

  I take a breath. “I want to be nosey.”

  “Okay,” he pauses, waiting for me to ask my question.

  “How is it possible that someone as lovely as you doesn’t have a significant other?”

  He looks shy for the first time. “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Well, you could, but I asked first.”

  He laughs and then sits back as he answers, “I really just had to take a break. I kept making the same bad choices over and over, so I thought it would be a good idea to step back and try to figure out what I was doing wrong.”

  Sounds familiar.

  “And have you figured it out?” I ask.

  “Nope,” he deadpans. “Except for one thing: lately my grandfather’s advice has been coming back to me—he used to talk about choosing a woman with a strong work ethic.”

  “Really?”

  “He said as pretty as women are, they are not here as decoration—each must find their true purpose. And the harder they work at their purpose, the happier they’ll be. And the happier they are, the happier you are.”

  I smile. “Wise words. You know what my grandfather used to say to me?”

  Harvey cocks his head.

  “What the hell are you doing with that idiot?”

  • • •

  After a speedy cleanup we go back to square one with the recipe. Things go a lot more smoothly this time—we read one line ahead before making any moves and use Harvey’s muscles instead of the electric mixer. Now the loaf tins are safely baking away, we can resume our chat.

  “You know, I don’t think there was ever a sense in our family of making a conscious choice with relationships,” I say as I set down the oven gloves. “They just seemed to happen, and then you dealt with the fallout as best you could.”

  “It’s pretty daunting stuff, isn’t it? In terms of how much damage the wrong person can do to your life.”

  “It really is,” I concur.

  “I’ve had a few horrors. My own mother was no peach—when I think of how she treated my dad . . .” He shakes his head.

  “There’re some crazy women out there,” I admit.

  “And some crazy guys,” he acknowledges. “And then there’s us.”

  Oh, how I love the idea of an “us.”

  He reaches for one of Pamela’s rosebud teacups. “Did you see the painting in the Princess Room of all those guys in suits sitting round sipping tea?”

  “No,” I say, slightly disappointed that he’s changing the subject.

  “Apparently it’s a Prohibition-era painting and that wasn’t tea they were drinking.”

  “Ohhhh.”

  He leans closer. “There’s this speakeasy burrowed into the lowest level of the hotel . . .”

  “Mmm-hmm?” I try to focus.

  “It’s called The Cave, and it’s where all the illegal boozing went on in the Twenties. They had a spyhole down there so they could see when the police were coming up that long driveway for a raid, and when there was an alert they used to empty all their liquor into this one container and then sit there pretending to be sipping tea.”

  “Ingenious!”

  “Well, here’s the best part—when the coast was clear, they would line up at the container and scoop out a teacupful of all the mixed whiskies, brandies, rums and gins!”

  “Sort of like a Long Island Iced Tea but without the Coke!”

  “Exactly!”

  “I say all this because I was thinking we could meet there tonight, after dinner. Say around ten?”

  “You want me to meet you in a dark cave with a history of corruption and excess to drink hard liquor?”

  “I do.”

  “Sounds like heaven.”

  • • •

  When the timer pings, I feel a curious stomach-flip of nerves. Oh, please let the cakes have cooked well.

  I reach for a toothpick.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  “Etch my initials in the side—you know, like gold bars have markings stamped on them?”

  “Really?”

  “No!” I chuckle. “Pamela said it’s a good way to see if the cake is sufficiently cooked. I stick it in; if it pulls out clean, it’s done.”

  “Ah, the moment of truth!”

  I do the deed. “I think that’s all right, don’t you?”

  “It certainly smells done.”

  “Too done?”

  “No, delicious done.”

  I smile proudly as I turn them out onto the cooling rack. “Right, now for the finishing touch.” I reach into my bag and pull out my secret stash from McKaella’s Sweet Shop—a can of gold spray paint.

  “You’re spraying it gold.” Harvey doesn’t miss a trick.

  “Yes,” I cheer. “Like a gold bar—for the gold standard that was set here. What do you think?”

  “Aren’t you worried that might be a teeny bit on the toxic side?”

  “It’s not like the kind of paint you use on cars,” I tut. “It’s edible.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  I shrug. “We were dealing with a lot of colored sponges today, and it got me wondering about metallic cakes.”

  “Because people love the idea of chewing on metal.” Harvey’s brow twists.

  “Well, you Yanks are always going on about buns of steel!”

  He splutters out loud at this one, and then asks if he can have one quick spray.

  “Of course.”

  He turns his back to me. Shakes the clickety can and turns back holding up his index finger.

  “What James Bond movie am I?”

  I roll my eyes. “Goldfinger.”

  “I would have done The Man with the Golden Gun, but I didn’t come armed today.”

  “How very un-American of you.”

  He looks serious for a moment. “I shouldn’t even joke about it. America’s great shame is its gun crime.”

  “I must say it does seem bonkers to an outsider. So much senseless violence.”

  He sighs heavily and then asks, “Should we go?”

  I nod, the mood sober. Until he turns to pick up his clothes.

  “Ah.” He hesitates. His hands may be clean but his body is a mess of batter-spatter. “I didn’t really think this through . . .”

  I have visions of him riding the shuttle bus in his undies and then streaking through the main reception.

  “You know, my room is just across the way,” I try to sound casual. “If you’d like to take a shower?”

  He sighs with relief. “I would. But how am I going to get between here and your room?”

  I think for a minute. “We could put a second apron on to cover your back?” I try that, but now he looks as though he’s wearing a young girl’s pinafore dress.

  I bite my lip.

  “I know you want to laugh.”

  “I so do!” I confess. “You know, short of wrapping you in greaseproof paper like a deli sandwich, I have no solution. I think you’re just going to have to make a run for it.”

  He tuts himself. “If my grandfather could see me now . . .”

  “At least if you hold a tray of the cakes it will put your look in some context.”

  He cocks a skeptical brow.

  “Come on, everyone’s heard of the Naked Chef, the Barefoot Contessa . . . You can be the Bicep’d Baker!”

  He pulls a joke strongman pose—gosh, I wish taking a photograph was as simple as blinking your eyes.

  “All right,” he say
s. “I shall attempt this with as much dignity as I can muster.”

  And then promptly falls down the stairs.

  “Just kidding!” he calls back to me as I rush to his aid.

  I shake my head. “Perhaps it’s best if I go first?”

  Chapter 46

  Scurrying through the lobby, we give a cheery wave to the receptionist, then take the stairs two at a time.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad,” I say as I reach for my room key.

  He looks back at the dark carpet. And the white flour footprints we have left behind.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll ask to borrow the Hoover from Housekeeping.”

  “You like to take care of everything, don’t you?”

  “Try to.”

  “These rooms are nice,” he says as he surveys the home-from-home décor—a mix of floral and plaids, with one of those sumptuously deep beds that would inevitably elicit a sigh of contentment on contact. And I’m not just saying that because he’s standing so temptingly close to it.

  The bathroom is particularly lovely, with streaky marble, bright chrome accents and streaming sunlight.

  “Do you want to go in first?”

  “No, no,” I insist. “After you. Let me just grab a towel.”

  I spread it over the tartan armchair by the window and settle in, relishing the thought of this gorgeous man naked on the other side of the door. I hear the shower turn on and power-jet over him. He’s singing “Come Fly with Me.” Well, a version of singing. I’m relieved to know he has at least one flaw—it makes me like him all the more.

  And then the door opens and from the steamy haze he steps forth.

  “Good as new!”

  Better, I think to myself. Better than anything I’ve ever seen. I want to touch him but he’s all sheeny-clean and fragrant and I’m still a dusty mess. Nevertheless he stands daringly close, smiling, just smiling, right into me.

  “Why don’t I wait for you?” he offers. “I can help carry the cakes.”

  “If you like . . .” I love that he wants to linger.

  “I’ll sort the Hoover, then wait downstairs while you’re getting ready. Give you a bit of space.”

  For the first minute after the door closes behind him, I just stand in wonder. That is so considerate. The former men in my life would have switched on the TV then repeatedly asked what was taking so long as I flustered to find something to wear under their disapproving gaze.