Lost Afternoons

                      Lost Afternoons               

                    By Sheila MacArthur
                                             


“Good morning, Missis.”
“Good morning, Tandy.”
“Tea’s ready, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Tandy.”  The old woman sat at the gate-legged table inherited from her mother.  It had come over on the ship that carted immigrant brides to the West Coast of Canada.  Women following men drawn to the wilderness in search of a better life.
The wood was inlaid with pieces of yellowed ivory.  She spread her fingers along the edge. They were like the roots of the ancient tree that still stood in the backyard and prevented the light from entering the summer porch.  How many times had her father threatened to cut it down only to have her mother stay his ax?  “The leaves sing while we play.”  Her mother would say.  “Can you hear their voices, Claudia?”  Her mother played the harp and she the piano.  The tree would bend its shaggy head and peer in the window warming its voice on the rise of the wind off the ocean.
“Miss Claudia,” said Tandy, “your tea’s getting cold.”
The old woman jerked her head and looked around in a daze.  Then she frowned at her servant.
“Stop nagging.”  She flapped her hands in Tandy’s direction.  “Don’t.  You know I hate to be hovered over.”
In the spicy vapors of the tea swirled the lost age of parasols, lacy gloves and sun-bathed afternoons.  The voices were heard in the click of the spoon against china.  The old hand holding the china cup shook, and the brown liquid spilled down the front of the beige cardigan, and Tandy was there with a cloth.
  “Thank you, Tandy.”  She set the cup down and drew from the cuff of her sleeve a lace-edged hanky which she used to pat her lips.  “Tandy?”
“Yes, Miss Claudia?”
“Tandy, do you recall Miss Brill?”  She turned her head to look at the piano that dominated the room.  The covered keyboard, a table for delicate figurines that vied for space in the crowded room. 
“Of course I recall Miss Brill.”  Tandy paused, a duster in her hand.  “These days I might forget my own name but never Edwina Brill.  Now that was a lady.”   
         “Do you remember how she used to come every
Sunday to the Band Shell to hear us play.”
“I don’t believe she missed a one.  She loved her music.  But then she came by it honestly.”  She sneezed suddenly and put her hanky to her nose.
“People used to laugh. It was the fox fur more than anything.”
Tandy snorted.  “Folks will poke fun.”
“Each year it came out earlier, and close to the end she wore it constantly.”  She reached for her cane and stood up, brushing away Tandy’s helping hand, and went to pull an album off the shelf.  “Such a long time ago.  We were so young and afraid. Would we become Miss Brill?”
    A long time, yes.  How many years?  Like leaves falling off an autumn tree they were beyond counting. Swirled away and disintegrated as if they had never been. 
    She closed the book and left it lying on the table, and moved, swaying, to the porch door, opened it and stepped out into the sun-dappled shade.  Her mother’s tree still held its ground although the music had long been silent. 
Why am I still here? she thought with sudden wildness.  As she looked over the now barren patch of dirt, where once a kitchen garden thrived, the years melted away.
                    *** 
“How do you do?”  She had said when she was introduced to him.  He had stood tall and dazzling in white, the sun behind him a halo, obscuring the details of his face. 
“Claudia, you and Lieutenant Elliott Lessing have something in common.  You share the same surname on his mother’s side.”  Miss Brill sparkled at her tea parties.  One boat after another arrived at her dock and dislodged splendid young officers.  To entertain them she invited all the young girls from the community and was tireless at matchmaking.   
“Perhaps you’re a long lost cousin.”  His voice was deep and serious.  He made a small bow over her hand which he held overlong.  “I look forward to exploring our acquaintance.”
“Indeed,” laughed Miss Brill and clapped her hands.  “Claudia, show the Lieutenant my garden.  The roses are in their prime. Run along, they don’t last long.”
They spent the rest of the day together, and then the next and the next.  It turned out that they were cousins three or four generations removed. 
“I sail for Europe in a fortnight.”  Elliot said on the third day. 
“This war,” Claudia had heard enough about war to last her a lifetime, “will it never end?”
They sat sheltered under the tree in her parent’s backyard, the remains of their picnic lunch left for the ants.  The clouds, suspended like wisps of cotton, played in the spreading branches. A gentle breeze teased fluffs of seedlings from their buds and tossed them around playfully before allowing them to drift to the ground. 
Elliott reached out and plucked a bit of fluff out of her hair.  His fingers lingered on the curve of her check. 
         “One thing about the war,” Elliott had said, “it makes you appreciate what you have.”     
Claudia turned away from the old garden, “You know what Momma said when Mr. Elliott asked for my hand?”
“Of course I know what your momma said.  I know it so well he might just as well have proposed to me”, said Tandy.
Claudia ignored her servant’s tirade.  Thirty years together had bred a comfortable familiarity.  Their memories were now so intertwined that it was hard to say who owned the history.   
There was a light step on the sidewalk.  A middle-aged woman came around the corner. 
“Is that you Puss?”
“Who else would it be, mother, for heavens sakes.”  Her daughter sank into a lawn chair and wiped her brow with a tissue.  “My, but it’s hot. I’m sorry I’m late. I stopped to put daffodils on father’s grave.”
Tandy shuffled out carrying a tray with the teapot and some sandwiches.
“That will make Mr. Elliott grin in his box.”  Tandy’s laugh was deep throated and infectious “I never knew a man so wild about yellow.”
“Why do you have that old album out?  Look, it’s so

dusty it has dirtied the sweater I just bought you.”

“Don’t fuss,” Claudia brushed absently-mindedly at the

smudge.  “I just wished you could have known him.  A child should know her own father.”
“More important,” Her daughter replied and reached across to pat her mother’s mottled and knarled hand, “a woman deserves more than a fortnight as a wife.”