The Cordless Diaries

Afternoon Tea -2

‘Do please call me Felicity or Flick if you’d prefer. It is so nice to meet someone close to one’s own age and I should like us to be friends.’

‘Then you must call me Emm as my father does.’

‘Oh, I did so enjoy meeting your father,’ then she added hastily, ‘your mother too, of course.’

I laughed. ‘Mother is a terrible snob and bore.’ She smiled but said nothing. ‘Mother’s sole aim in life is for me to become brood mare to some wealthy stallion so I may restore the family fortune. I have no intention of fulfilling her ambition. My father has, as it were, retired from marriage. He drinks too much but he is a dear. He taught me to shoot, to ride and to play cricket. He is my only friend.’

Felicity, somewhat to my surprise, touched my hand. ‘No longer, my dear Emm.’
We then decided that our tea party should at least pay lip service to tradition and began to traduce the other guests at Dinner those few evenings before. We giggled about the widow Forson’s moustache and the Parson’s disapprobation when Father fell to sleep in the privy. Mrs Wellbeloved received some well-deserved abuse too. I quite began to see the point of the tea party as a social lubricant.

‘Do you,’ Flick asked, ‘ever drink wine? I have a bottle of champagne that Grenville believes stolen by our maid and her beau but which I hid that I might enjoy it if suitable company ever presented itself to me. This feels just the occasion.’

I agreed to this somewhat unconventional suggestion and took Caroline more water and a hay net that she might be refreshed too. She is a close friend and one must take care for her. As I returned to the garden I unpinned my hair and let it fall, shaking it loose. Flick was wrestling with the cork and stopped to look at me in a rather odd way, then resumed her fight with the metal cage. A delightful pop was her reward and she hastily poured the foaming, golden wine into two glasses. Condensation clouded the glasses as the bubbles subsided and she handed me my glass. I raised it to her.

‘To friendship.’

She echoed the toast and we sat again, resuming our verbal assault on those we both knew. She was, it seemed to me, reluctant to discuss her husband. She told me that although he practised law in the nearby city of Bath he spent most of his time in London, serving one of his wealthier clients. They had no children and he had had none with his late, first wife. I was astonished by one remark she made.

‘Grenville has, I have discovered no desire for progeny, nor, it seems, the mechanism that leads to them.’

She said no more and I did not press her. She took my hand and held it. At first I feared she was going to cry but, to my surprise (how many surprises can a girl get at one tea party?) she let her head fall back and began to laugh.

‘Forgive me, my dear Emm. It must be the wine loosening my tongue.’ Her laugh was throaty and pleasant to the ear. Her unfashionably short blonde hair caressed her shoulders and her blue eyes sparkled with a certain mischief. She squeezed my hand.

‘There is nothing to forgive. I enjoy your company so very much.’ She turned her face to me and lifted an eyebrow, then smiled and it was a smile of bewitching warmth. I sat with her in the late afternoon sunshine and our conversation rambled, like a bee moves from flower to flower, over literature, music, the church. She revealed herself to be intelligent, well-read and an atheist which made me so very happy. Her disdain for religion stemmed largely from her belief, which I shared, that its sole intention was to subdue women and sustain male supremacy.

‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘I have every confidence you are as intelligent, if not moreso, than your brother but he receives an education and you are taught to sew and play the piano. And yet, from our discussion I know you have read and understood just as I have. Grenville does not like that I read what he calls seditious literature or, worse, obscene material. Happily his almost constant absence relieves me of the need to hide my books.’

As Caroline and I rode through the lanes on our return journey to the Hall, I discussed Flick with her. Caroline is my one confidante. I tell her even more than I reveal to Mary. As we approached a small rise I heeled her into a canter and felt the pressure of my saddle as often I do. ‘She kissed me, Caro,’ I told her as familiar sensations raised my spirits. That kiss, the wine, the sun and the motion of the mare beneath me led me to a delicious climax and I had to slow Caroline to remain firmly in the saddle. I know Caroline was smiling when I removed her bridle and led her into the loose box. I nuzzled her soft nose and stroked her sweating neck. Here is to friendship.