Nostalgia (Part3)

The kettle came to the boil and with her free hand she poured full measures of water into each of the mugs. She rummaged about in a drawer under the sink and produced teaspoons which she dropped into each cup; each spoon made a loud plopping sound as if pebbles in a lake.

“I really should make amends for shouting at you earlier,” she said. “So, as the sun is shining, we will sit in my small dining room. And, if that is not enough reward, I shall make you carry your own mug and please to bring the saucer for the used teabags; I cannot carry two full mugs today, let alone the saucer.”

I collected the saucer from the counter opposite and made to gather both mugs in my right hand but she was too quick, far too quick for me. She gathered her mug in her right hand and started to make her way to the brightly sunlit and glazed dining area. I walked beside her, deliberately slowing my pace to match hers; to catch her if she might fall, I thought.

“Oh God,” she cried. “You are too much, way, way too much. I know exactly how fast I am walking and nobody, except a cripple manqué, walks as slowly as that. Bloody well sit down, at your own pace, won’t you!” She smiled; to take the barbs from her words? Perhaps.

I pulled a chair from under the table and sat down. As she approached the table, she placed her mug of steaming Chai onto the place mat and moved towards the door which lay at the far end of the long room. With the same small, frail steps she came up to the door, unlocked it and threw it wide open.

“Let the sunshine in, let the sunshine in, the sunshiiiine,” she warbled in a slightly off key, almost cracked voice. “I do so like the sun; life never seems so bad when the sun shines!” She sat down; diagonally across the table from the chair at which I was seated.

“So, do you always go to the aid of damsels in distress; even when they are not in distress?” she asked. “It does not seem to me to be a particularly good place to pick up women for a quick lay, outside of the supermarket; the recycling bins do have a somewhat unromantic feel, don’t you think? I do hope that you were not waiting long.” Before I could speak, she went on. “No, I think I would much prefer to be flattered, chatted up, alongside the bottles of balsamic vinegar or perhaps the mozzarella di buffalo and sun-dried tomatoes; it shows more style, I think. The recycling bins are so very last year! I have always liked Italian men; chauvinistic perhaps but they do have a certain joi de vivre; a certain je ne sais quoi! Eh, Bella! Da dove sei vunuto? Paradiso tropicale? ”

I could only blush and stammer some half-formed phrase which might have been ‘No, of course not’ but, in my confusion, I could not be so sure.

“Oh, Dominic,” she said. “I am teasing you; I get so little opportunity to tease! Do you honestly think that I would have invited you across the threshold of my little house if I remotely believed you capable of what I have just accused you of; in my condition? I could scarcely fight off a kitten right now. Drink your Chai and tell me; where do you live? Where do you work? What do you do when you are not rescuing helpless maidens in seeming distress? Are you married? You look married to me but I don’t see a ring. Divorced? Perhaps you take the ring off when you go shopping to snare the unwary. Children? I bet you have lots. I like a good story; do you tell good stories?”

Diary, if I was confused before, then I was now doubly confused. While it was good to know that she had just been teasing me and my reputation, such as it is, was perhaps intact, I was not very happy about being teased at all. I sipped my Chai, while, for all the world, wishing that a hole would open up below me and swallow me whole; or at least wishing that I had not embarked on this tom-fool venture in the first place. I should have said ‘no’ to the tea; I should have let her wheel her merry way home and bugger whether she dropped the shopping.

“Well, I am waiting,” she said. “Cat got your tongue?” I relented. She sure as hell knew what to do with those ‘cow eyes’ of hers; why so big, so round, so bright, so brown?