The Afternoon Tea Club

by Jane Gilley

  Suddenly Stacy remembered her cats. ‘Oh no. What about all my little kitties?’

  ‘That bloody mad lot have gone to Cats Protection!’ roared her father, now John had left. ‘And we’ve had to get the place fumigated and the carpets ripped out! The whole ruddy place needs completely sorting out. It’s a disgusting mess! So like it or not, you’re coming home with us!’

  Chapter 10

  Stacy awoke in her old bedroom, her hand still aching from the cat bite and scratches. She knew it could have been a whole lot worse but at least the hospital had managed to wash it out and give her a tetanus injection. Thankfully, there was no cellulitis, nor septicaemia – both potentially life-threatening; a cat bite could be pretty serious. She still had a lump on her head though.

  She sat up in her childhood bed and studied the dulled flowery wallpaper and the single bulb hanging from the ceiling in its faded pink shade. The room had always smelled damp and it still did now. Glancing around, she saw the small single wardrobe still sitting in the corner with two school desks next to it where her mother had started to school her and her brother before the authorities had forced her parents to send them to the primary school in the village. Stacy was shocked to note that her bedroom hadn’t changed since the day she’d left her sombre family home, dragging an old heavy suitcase of her mother’s down the drive and struggling to push it into her boyfriend’s car, whilst her mother was out collecting apples and her father was out in the barn working on one of his tractors.

  The whole place was stuck in time but those memories, from the day she left, suddenly whooshed back, like it happened yesterday.

  She remembered she’d walked a fine line that day. She’d known about the problem with the tractor but her mother had flitted in and out all morning, preventing an easy escape at the pre-arranged time of 11 a.m. with Mike.

  Yet how she’d ever fortuned to meet Mike was one of the biggest wonders of her life, at the time.

  ***

  Mike had drifted into the village, in a clapped-out old mini, looking for farm work. Someone had given him her father’s name and he’d turned up unannounced looking for any part-time work her father could offer. Her parents ran their small family arable farm of 300 acres with a couple of farm hands, apart from harvesting time, when her father joined forces with a neighbouring smallholding to help with the harvesting and drying process of their grain. But their recent employees had left and so her father was able to give him some work in the role of odd-job and maintenance man and said he could stay in the tiny room at the side of the barn with its outside privy and chipped sink, no bath or shower. Mike had stayed and helped her parents with all manner of niggly tasks around the farm for a good few months before his wandering spirit got the better of him.

  But in that time Stacy experienced the first heady stirrings of love with twenty-nine-year-old Mike.

  She’d met Mike on the day of her eighteenth birthday. She’d been having an argument with her mother, as usual, about the lack of freedom afforded her and her brother throughout their lives, hence the reason for her brother Peter’s early departure. She’d been having a lot of rows with her family of late.

  ‘Growing pains, Jean. Ignore her!’ her father had scoffed. ‘When she behaves like a young lady, she’ll be treated like one!’

  It wasn’t a happy household to live in and hadn’t been for years, with all the rules and regulations, even down to how long they had to spend sitting at the dining table for meals, chewing their food slowly so it would digest properly. And no speaking, no conversation, at all, was permitted whilst they were sat at the table. No friends were allowed over for tea. Bedtime was always at 7.30 p.m., after homework and chores. They weren’t allowed mobile phones and Stacy had to do the washing up, after tea, every day apart from the weekend when she did other housework for her mother.

  Peter had to chop wood for the fire, every day in the winter months, and help his father around the farm. The TV was rarely switched on and when it was it was because there was a football match their father wanted to watch or something to do with the royal family. Every weekend, from when she and Peter were around seven or eight years old, was spent helping their parents run the farm, instead of running free with their friends in the village while they were youngsters or having fun with their friends in town when they were older. And their tasks became more demanding the older they got.

  One year, their father took ill due to the stress of trying to cope with the farm by himself after two farm hands left. Peter was fifteen at the time and had to run the farm for months, missing out on school, until their father recovered and was able to hire more staff. Stacy had always washed and cleaned for her mother without the assistance of any mod cons. Her mother only bought a washing machine the year before Stacy left home.

  Peter got out as soon as he turned eighteen, a year before his sister. As Stacy’s eighteenth was fast approaching she remembered praying she’d be able to leave then, too; hoping there was nothing her family could do to stop her leaving, whilst simultaneously worrying whether she’d be able to make it by herself in the outside world, even though she had inheritance money from her grandmother.

  On the morning of her eighteenth birthday she’d been given a card with a country scene on it – no mention of the fact she’d turned eighteen at all – from her mother’s shabby card box. Inside, with a crumpled ten-pound note, all it said was ‘Happy Birthday love Mum and Dad xx’. There was no explosion of bright encouraging emotions for her future. It was dowdy and not even something she’d have longed to cherish as a special childhood memento. Her mother had also told her they couldn’t afford a party for her. But there’d never been parties for Stacy and Peter – they’d never been allowed to go to school friends’ parties, either.

  She’d heard about parties and seen how wonderful parties were, on school friends’ social media. Her friends, at least, knew how she and Peter were treated at home and commiserated with her about her parents and so she often went to town with them, during lunchtime at secondary school, so she could try out things like alcohol, curry, chicken tikka or a Big Mac. Stuff she never had at home. Her friends had opened up the world for her – also helping her experiment with make-up and trying clothes on in shops – before she left school. Her parents had never taken her out for meals or shopping in town. Weekends were always wrapped up helping her parents on the farm.

  So her parents’ apathetical response to the milestone that was supposed to be her wonderful eighteenth birthday had resulted in her throwing the birthday card on the floor, to stop herself from bursting into tears.

  ‘I was hoping for a mobile phone, at the very least. You’ve never, ever given us anything nice, Mum!’ she’d whimpered.

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that, Stacy! You should be thankful we’ve looked after you the way we have over the years. There’s plenty in Africa who don’t even get anything decent to eat!’

  Grrr. That old line!

  It made Stacy furious with her mother. She always wheeled out the flagrancies of Africa whenever she felt like using them. Stacy felt trapped by the injustices her parents meted out. What a crap eighteenth! No cake. No brightly wrapped special gift. No love. No joy. And not even a birthday party for once in her lonely and miserable life.

  At that moment Stacy had hated her mother.

  So she’d bolted out of the house, bolted away from her mother’s holier-than-thou speeches. Luckily she had her little bolthole at the top of the hayloft where she’d fashioned a little hidey-hole for herself. There were a couple of books up there so she wouldn’t get bored. Her mother would never find her up there although Peter had known about it.

  Yet, as Stacy ran from her mother in tears, she’d run slap bang into Mike, coming out of the barn. He’d been shown around the farm by her father, the day before and was about to start work that very morning.

  ‘Whoa there! What’s the rush? Stacy isn’t it?’ Mike grinned, holding her away from him to look her up and down. It was th
e first time he’d seen her. And then something weird had happened to her. She’d suddenly felt hot and peculiar and quite out of sorts.

  ‘Um, yes. And you – you’re here to help my, um, dad, aren’t you?’ she stumbled, blushing madly, trying to wipe her tears away.

  ‘Yep. I’m Mike. That’s me,’ he said with a grin, noting her discomfort.

  He took a creased tissue from his pocket and offered it to her. She shook her head.

  ‘Oh, it’s okay. I’m, er, I’m fine!’ she said, shrugging.

  ‘No, Stacy. You’re upset about something. Here. Let me help.’

  Then he’d softly wiped away her tears with his tissue. His touch had made her jump. She wasn’t used to being touched by anybody, let alone a stranger, so she excused herself and backed away towards the barn and had gone up into her hidey-hole, opening one of the books. But she’d not been able to read at all. She couldn’t stop thinking about Mike’s unshaven but sexy face.

  When she eventually went back into the farmhouse, her mother was busy making lunch and would not meet her eye. Her birthday card, however, had been propped up on the mantelpiece. The farm hands always ate with the family in the evenings but her father brought Mike into the farmhouse, explaining about the repairs he needed help with, and sat him down and told him he’d be sharing lunch with them that day, too.

  The four of them ate silently, with Stacy shooting sly glances at Mike every now and then, whilst he shot equally sly glances at her, when her parents weren’t watching.

  A few days later, Mike crept up behind her, whilst she was pinning washing on the washing line.

  ‘Well, hello there. Fancy walking with me to show me the countryside around here, when you’ve finished your chores? Your dad’s gone into town for something so I think I deserve a little break.’

  Stacy had been hoping for an excuse to see Mike by herself. So she finished up and took the washing basket back into the house. They set off at a brisk pace down the drive, together, then sauntered into the village whilst she pointed out her friends’ houses, the church, the school. On the way back, he took her hand and guided her into a field, beside a hedge. He sat down and patted the earth beside him.

  ‘Come. Let’s sit and talk a while and maybe even make daisy chains!’

  Stacy beamed at him. She hadn’t made daisy chains since she was a child. But as she sat nervously beside him, he reached out and stroked her cheek. She felt herself shudder uncontrollably. But it was a nice tingly kind of shudder.

  ‘Or maybe not,’ he murmured, pulling her towards him.

  They sat, seemingly millimetres apart, as he cupped her face and with a hungry moan he’d pressed his lips against hers. She’d nearly fainted. A murmur escaped her lips. She’d never been kissed by anyone before. Was that even a kiss? It felt as though she’d been infused with an electric current.

  In between gasping, fevered kisses, she’d willingly succumbed to Mike’s frenzied examination of her, but she stopped him going too far.

  To Stacy, it felt as though she’d finally been freed from something!

  She’d never met anyone like Mike before. He was so knowledgeable and easy-going. She knew she was smitten by him; enthralled by him, bedazzled by him. He’d opened up a very different aspect of life to her. His actions made her feel valued for once in her life, because here was someone who was prepared to give her some much-needed attention for once. When they finally made love she experienced pure joy and lust and feelings surged within her she never knew she was capable of. She felt alive and worthy. She was no longer so anxious to leave the farm, because he was there.

  But they could only get together when her father was in the top fields, mending a fence or patching holes to stop kids or stray dogs running all over his crops. Stacy’s mother wasn’t a problem because she was usually busy making fruit pies or jam to sell at local markets or craft fayres. And if she wasn’t making anything she’d be collecting or freezing fruit or preparing meals for everyone twice a day. And when it seemed to be getting too dangerous, they had an arrangement whereby Mike would meet her down the lane and Stacy would slip into his clapped-out Mini on the lower road and they’d drive away for exploratory time by themselves, elsewhere. Her excuses to her mother as to why she’d gone missing, each time, were that she was mooching around the village or had gone for a walk down the back lanes.

  However, when Stacy finally plucked up courage to leave her parents’ home for the last time and with Mike, to boot, what Stacy had never guessed was that he was one of those men who didn’t understand the word ‘exclusivity’.

  Living with him in the bedsit, which he’d promised would be their first home together, where he encouraged them to share their lives and their bodies with other people drifting in and out, as well as plying her with booze and drugs, brought home a certain reality to Stacy and was not her idea of happily-ever-after.

  So one Saturday night, whilst Mike and the others were getting stoned on the stained mattresses, Stacy had dragged her heavy suitcase outside to her colleague’s waiting car, and they’d driven away without a backwards glance.

  ***

  ‘Come and get some breakfast, Stacy! Are you up yet?’ her mother called up to her, interrupting her daydreams.

  Stacy tutted at feeling forced to jump to her parents’ commands once again. Yet she went downstairs having found her old fusty dressing gown and tatty slippers, which still fit. The kitchen still looked the same but the smell of bacon dazzled her nostrils from the Aga in the corner. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a fry-up. Or perhaps it had been here, when she’d last lived at home?

  As she was sitting down to eat, her father came in the door with a grunt, removed his cap and went to the sink to wash his hands.

  Stacy wasn’t really sure what to say to her parents.

  She’d been away such a long time, dreading the wrath she expected to receive if she ever showed her face at their door. Maybe she wouldn’t mind her mother so much now she’d stood up to her father for once. So that might be something positive. But she could see her father had permanent frown lines down the middle of his forehead. His features were dark and glum. They were what – in their late fifties or sixties? She had no idea. It was something she’d never been interested to find out. They were just her parents. She didn’t think about them in terms of how old they were or who they were as people. Nor did she care. They’d never cared properly about her and Peter when they were children; never allowed them their childhood or freedom or a special treat occasionally. The injustice of it all had chewed away at her, when she’d had time to mull over the hardships her parents forced them to endure, back then. But she also knew she couldn’t just sit down to breakfast with them, without saying something.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  Stacy’s father glanced in her direction as he sat down and her mother placed a huge plate of bacon, potatoes, fried eggs and toast in front of him and then sat down herself with scrambled eggs on toast, something she’d always eaten for breakfast back when Stacy and Peter still lived at home. So some things hadn’t changed.

  He started eating his breakfast but didn’t speak to Stacy. Stacy paled a little. Was he going to blow his top because of everything that had happened? She was sure he must’ve been highly annoyed about her sudden departure years ago, even though she’d left a note saying she was leaving home and would let them know when she got settled somewhere. But she’d not said why she was leaving, nor where she was going or with whom, although she was almost sure he’d never found out about Mike. Her mother had never asked her about boyfriends. And since she was once again trapped – as she saw it – in her family’s midst, he might think it was his right to mete out some harsh words or punishment about the way she was conducting her life. She tried to think of something else to say, to break the ice and gauge what his thoughts were. But it made the eating of her otherwise delicious breakfast, uncomfortable.

  ‘So do you, um, see Peter, at all?’

  ‘No, but h
e’s doing all right, love,’ her mother answered, quickly, her eyes fixed on her breakfast. ‘He bought a flat out Kent way with his part of your gran’s inheritance. He’s into computers. And he, he lives with, um—’

  ‘Yes, well we don’t want to bring all that up again, do we? Can’t we just sit and eat, woman, without going on about all that?’ shouted her father, thumping the table, making everyone jump.

  Her mother dropped her fork but got to her feet, angrily.

  ‘How dare you, Jerry!’ she said pointing at him. ‘He’s doing very well for himself, as you well know. He lives with a man, Stacy, and they’re in love and thinking about getting married, which is what your father refuses to accept!’ she shot back.

  ‘It’s not right, all this new gender stuff!’ her father said, glancing nervously at his wife. ‘It was never like this in our day. So, no, I don’t accept it.’

  Stacy raised her eyebrows as she shovelled a forkful of fried eggs into her mouth. Wow, she hadn’t known that about her brother. Yet Peter had always been a very good-looking boy with his blue eyes and blonde hair and gentle ways, despite her father always saying he wanted to ‘make a man out of him’ with all the work around the farm he gave Peter to do.

  ‘Gosh,’ she said, covering her mouth and chewing as fast as she could, so she could answer her father. ‘But that’s how things are, nowadays, Dad. He’s still our Peter, though, isn’t he?’ Stacy risked saying, keeping her eyes low.

  Her mother nodded. ‘That’s very true, Stacy. So you’ve got no choice but to accept it, Jerry. And that’s final. You’ll give yourself heart failure if you keep going on about all this stuff all the time. Now eat your breakfast. And no more talking until we’ve finished or we’ll be getting indigestion next.’

  ***

  It was a hot sunny day, again, with a light breeze slicing through the heat, keeping the temperature around twenty-two degrees and bearable. After breakfast, Stacy and her mother did something they’d never done before; they walked around the farm, arm in arm whilst her mother explained what they’d been doing since Stacy and Peter had left, and told her about the plans they’d been discussing for their future.