His Cup of Tea by Lucas Riley

The inn was by the seashore, and from the shade of the grand porch out front you could have painted a view of the harbor, except now the inn was old, and Virginia creeper and some ivy twined around the columns and hid the front door from the road. Jim admired the inn very much, and only wished he could come more often. The road was sandy, and since he had a bouquet of flowers across his handlebars, and was on most days a careful man, he rode slowly and kept away from the more sandy parts. He drew closer to the porch, and remembered how the morning glories would open their blossoms amongst the ivy in the summer months, and how their blue was more intense than the sky. Now it was autumn. The cool ocean breezes no longer had the playful good humor of August, and had driven away the paying guests, who no longer drank their gin and tonics on the porch, and no longer played Scrabble indoors when the warm rains came, because they had gone home, where they belonged. Emma would no longer be busy preparing soup and baking bread, because her father, who ran the place, would not need her help, and as evening drew on, Jim would make a roaring warm fire for them in the hearth. Once her father had gone to bed, as he always did, they would take the wicker chairs closer to the fire and listen to the wood crackling, and her eyes would be on the flames, and they would speak to each other then. They would stay up late that way.

Jim wheeled his bicycle around the side of the inn, where there was a brick path leading back to an old garden shed. The door hinges were oiled and shone in the sun, but the wood of the doors was original and had never been replaced. Once they had been painted green, but now the wood was nearly bare from seasons of weathering. It was never locked, and Jim set his bouquet of roses down on the bricks before opening the door. The only other bicycle inside was a fancy racing one and belonged to Emma. He breathed easier now, because he knew she would be alone, and he would not have to wonder who owned the other racing bike he noticed on some days, and why the owner knew about the garden shed. Jim had wondered about this in a circumspect sort of way just yesterday when he came by, and since he was a careful man and shy in his manners, he had found the perfect spot to hide his previous bouquet of roses, so Emma would find them when her company departed, and he had gone home then, knowing she would understand and would miss him. He had eaten canned minestrone soup for dinner, and was not entirely satisfied by the taste, but soup at the inn was good enough to lure paying guests from every county for miles during the month of August, because Emma had come up with the recipe, and he knew supper this evening would be grand.

Now Jim maneuvered the rusty frame of his own bicycle with care, so it rested gently on the fancy racing one, and began to whistle a tune he had heard in passing the pub one night. The words to the tune were in French, and he did not speak French, but the melody was pleasing all the same and in the darkness of the shed it cheered him, and he kept right on humming to himself as he went out and closed the worn wooden doors without a sound, narrowing his eyes into the brightness of the autumn sunshine. A pair of goldfinches were resting in an oak tree nearby, melting into the leaves as smoothly as butter, and he remembered the summer days in years past when he had fed them seeds from his hand, just to feel their sharp feet almost drawing blood on his palm. He had wanted ever so much to show Emma how easily they came down from the branches, when there was a reward for them, and how easily he could draw down the yellow flashes of them, but somehow he had never found time, and he resolved to show her soon, when the time was right. Jim was never one to rush. He wanted the day to be just so when he showed her, a day when there would be a storm coming off the ocean, and every bird would be nervous in the oaks, and he would offer them seeds, as she watched, and they would come down to him and take refuge in his hands.

Jim bent and picked up his new roses. The place he had chosen to hide the roses yesterday had been perfect. The spot was across the herb garden, at the base of the apple tree where Emma always went to be alone in her thoughts. The herbs and a few fruit trees were hidden behind the inn, and Jim always took great pleasure in wandering among the thyme and the rosemary. He was a retiring and humble sort of man, and being among such plenty made him very grateful, and so he would pick bunches of the herbs to take home, in order to remind himself of the feeling, and of course he would never trouble Emma by asking permission, for what were such concerns among friends? Now he ambled past the herb beds, and cast about near the roots of the apple tree for the flowers, humming his idea of French to himself, and was about to abandon his search, proud of Emma for having discovered his hiding place, and picturing them in a slim vase on her kitchen table, when he looked to the compost heap by the pear tree and saw them among the banana peels. He dropped the bouquet he was holding, and the tall grass around the apple tree rose around it.

“Is that Jim?” It was Emma. She was standing on the back steps. “What are you doing?”

He cast about for a clever and bold reply that did not come. “Nothing,” he said.

“Are you coming in?”

“Is that what you want me to do?” he asked. He would never intrude on her.

“What?” she leaned forward slightly. “Speak up, Jim, I can’t hear you over there.”

Jim started forward, back across the wide ocean of the herb garden, past the thyme and the rosemary, and among the sage, and past the marigolds that had been planted to keep the rabbits away. The marigolds had been his suggestion, and now they looked garish and pathetic.

“Would you like me to come in?” he repeated. He felt the fertile earth under his tennis shoes give way gently with each step, so that he went backwards a bit whenever he went forward.

“Well, I can’t see why not,” she said reasonably. “Of course, you could have knocked.”

He came on towards her, away from the leaves of the apple tree. The garden was wide and her eyes were a long way off, but he imagined they had softened just a bit around the corners as she reprimanded him for his wandering nature, of which he knew she was fond.

“Sorry,” he said.

“How have you been, Jim?” She was looking down at him as he gained the steps, and her eyes were very far away, and she held garlic and a large wooden spoon in her hand as though she had been making soup, which was strange, because he had expected the guests would be long gone.

“Fine,” he replied, turning his head to look back at the pear tree and the composting dirt where the roses lay. “Nothing better than a nice fall day, though it does get cold later on.”

“Oh, well then,” she said warmly. “Let me get you some tea.” She went back through the doorway into the kitchen slowly, her eyes still on his face. There was a counter at her right hand, but she seemed not to notice, and kept holding the cloves of garlic and the spoon as she moved toward the cabinet where he knew the tea was kept. “Do you like chamomile?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re very generous.”

She laughed, as he always liked to hear her laugh, as though tap water were falling over wine glasses and almost breaking them, but not quite. It was a gentle laugh, and he smiled and bit his lip.

“What’s wrong, Jim?” she said, turning solemn again.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you like chamomile?”

“I love a good herb tea any day of the year, my dear.” He made his voice brighter and more gentle on purpose, in order to cheer her up, but she did not seem to notice, and only set the garlic cloves down on a cutting board, turning away to stir the soup. She placed a mug before him and took a steaming kettle from the stove. She had obviously been expecting him.

“Have you been well lately?” she asked, pouring the tea, and he knew she was concerned.

“Oh yes, fine,” he replied, watching how her eyes retreated as she glanced into his, and how grey they were, and he was eager that they should make up the fire soon, because the dancing flames would bring a more cheerful color to them, and then she would not look at him so.

“You look sort of pale,” she went on in a conversational way, but not before returning the kettle to the stove. She did not pour herself a mug. “Are you cold?”

“No,” he said. “You’re too kind. Truly. The tea is enough for now.”

“Take a couple spoonfuls of sugar too,” she said in a gentle voice. “And get warm while I go down to the root cellar and bring up some potatoes for the soup.” She was smiling at him now. “Will you stay for dinner with Aaron and me?” she asked. “He should be home by seven.”

The tea was too hot to taste. Jim gazed down into the rising steam. “Who?” he asked.

“Aaron. You know, my fiancée.” She laughed again, and the wineglasses almost broke this time, but they held out. “Have you seen your invitation yet? He wrote them. Sent them, too.”

“Invitation?” he asked. “To what?”

“Our picnic on Sunday,” she said. “Every wedding should have a picnic.”

The tea was very hot, but Jim took a long draught anyway. “What?” he said cautiously.

“So many people get married in June,” she said. “Or May.” She reached over and opened a window above the kitchen counter, eagerly breathing in the cool air. “But we wanted the fall colors, and they should be just perfect by Sunday. And the air is so crisp.” She looked out hopefully at the oak trees. “There are even some songbirds left. Did you notice?”

Jim wished she would close the window. “When?” he asked in a meek chamomile voice.

She turned, a breeze carrying a smile across her face, and covered the soup before crossing to the stairs leading down to the root cellar. “Sunday, Jim. Surely you knew?”

He was confused now, and the sound of the wineglasses of her laughter had not ceased to ring inside his head when she closed her mouth, and the sounds of them were pressing against the backs of his eyes now, and her own eyes were very grey to him, as she stood by the cellar stairs, poised there to go down into a damp place where he would have been frightened to go, a place in the heart of the earth where the potatoes were kept, among the memory of other seasons that were dead.

“Oh,” he said. “Of course.”

“Can you make it to the picnic?” she asked , and her grey eyes danced as she glanced back at him from the head of the stairs that led downward. “You’d charm us all, wouldn’t you?”

Jim was far too empty to answer, and he knew then that chamomile would never be like other herb teas for him, and that he would never drink this poison again, and he smiled because he knew chamomile had been his favorite before, and because now he would have to find another sort of tea to be his favorite, and perhaps it would be mint.

“You were always one to charm us all,” she said. “No matter if we understood or not.”

And she turned from him then and descended into the cool air that rose from the darkness of the place where the potatoes were kept. Jim rose from his wicker chair by the kitchen table and the wood creaked under him, and he left his mug of tea there and began to open each cabinet one by one. There was a certain calmness to him, that he knew was the envy of lesser men, and he began ever so slowly to take down each wine glass in turn. He put them all in a cloth shopping bag Emma had foolishly left out in her kitchen. He went in his circumspect way out the back door, and ambled through the herb garden into the night that was drawing closer around his shoulders. Every few paces, he reached down and took a handful of herbs, and wrenched them from the ground, munching on them in a calm and reflective frame of mind, knowing Emma would never realize they were gone because the marigolds always failed to keep the rabbits away anyhow. He would go back by the longer way this evening, leaving his bicycle here until Emma was in a more civil frame of mind and they could talk heart to heart. They needed to talk. And they would. And in the meanwhile he would break one wine glass every night, and hear in it her laughter, and he would not be alone.