“You must be very good at what you do,” said Mrs. Basil E.
“I am,” I said, as Dash said, “She is.”
“That’s an admirable purpose,” Mrs. Basil E. said. “Perhaps you do have a future in it that does not require a Barnard education.” The waiter came by to take our orders. “Shall I order for us?”
Dash and I both nodded. She’d order for us regardless.
Mrs. Basil E. told the waiter, “We’ll have the Claridge’s Blend for my Oxford friend here, who I recall is partial to English breakfast teas. And the vegetarian sandwich options for my niece, who insists on compassion for animals and the earth, despite how delicious bacon is.”
My love affair with England deepened when the tea service started. It wasn’t just the beauty of the porcelain and the delicious aroma coming from the teapot. It was the precision with which the waiter poured the tea into our cups, like a master circus performer walking a tightrope with complete focus and yet complete ease. It almost didn’t matter how the tea tasted; I was so impressed by the artful dome of the pour, ending with our cups filled to exactly the right proportion, with no splash whatsoever. The pour alone was its own kind of art.
“Do you take milk with your tea?” Mrs. Basil E. asked Dash.
“There’s no need to offend me,” said Dash.
“Good man,” said Mrs. Basil E. approvingly.
Dash took his first sip, requiring no milk or sugar additions, as I did for my tea. After he swallowed, he said, “That’s the best tea I’ve ever tasted.”
I felt the same about the assortment of sandwiches that accompanied the tea. English cucumber with lemon and watercress cream on white bread. Peppered goat cheese with pumpkin and sage. The delicate sandwiches were served on a three-tiered china stand that I wanted to cover in a napkin before I left and steal back to America. (Shoplifters of the world unite, as that Morrissey once crooned. Don’t listen to that rapscallion, Lily, I reminded myself.) “Whoever thought up these sandwiches should get a statue in Trafalgar Square,” I said.
Mrs. Basil E. said, “I’m glad you approve, although I’m appalled by the way you drink your tea, Lily. Now, Dashiell. Tell me about Oxford. Is it everything you’d hoped?”
“I like England very much,” said Dash. “Not so sure about Oxford.”
“Why is that?” she asked him.
“There’s the fantasy and there’s the reality. I coasted on the fantasy since I was a kid. The reality as an adult is disappointing. Like, I always knew I wanted to study English literature. But that’s all I study there. I might have liked to also study psychology, and Asian history, and African art, and South American magical realism. I feel more restricted than I anticipated.”
“So perhaps it’s not Oxford that’s the problem,” said Mrs. Basil E. “It’s that the British university system is not a match for you. Perhaps it’s you who should take a gap year, to figure out exactly what it is you’d like to study, and where.”
“I miss New York,” Dash admitted.
“Of course you do,” she said.
“I like it here!” I chimed in. “I got into a dog school just outside of London. So that’s also an option I’m considering.”
Mrs. Basil E. set her raisin scone back down on her plate and glared at me. “I have only just gotten used to the idea that you won’t attend Barnard. I will not hear of you moving here to go to dog school. That’s preposterous. YOU ARE A NEW YORKER. England is a dalliance. Not the real love affair.” She took a sip of her tea and turned to Dash. “The same goes for you.” Then: “Did I tell you Gerta has finally retired to Scottsdale, Arizona?”
“What does Gerta have to do with where Dash and I belong?” I asked her, confused. Gerta was my great-aunt’s longtime housekeeper, who’d been living for the last year in a very dark, very small basement apartment in Mrs. Basil E.’s town house and had never once been the subject of our meal conversations.
“She’s gone to live with her sister and to reunite with the sun. So here is what I think.” Mrs. Basil E. took one of my hands, and one of Dash’s hands, and placed our hands together. “The solution is clear. I will deny it was my suggestion to your respective parents, of course. But I think you two should move into the basement apartment. Find your purpose there, together.”
I almost spat my tea out of my mouth but would never sully the sanctity of Claridge’s Reading Room with my American buffoonery, so I didn’t.
Dash sweetly squeezed my hand but told my great-aunt, “You know how much I love your niece. But I don’t think Lily and I are in any position at this stage of our lives to talk about moving in together.”
“Agreed,” I said. Was she insane?
Mrs. Basil E. said, “I’m not talking about just being roommates of convenience because Lily’s great-aunt owns a choice piece of real estate. I’m saying you two should get married. Elope!”
My poor, beloved great-aunt. She’d indeed gone insane.
fourteen
December 23rd
“What are you talking about?” Lily yelled, surprised and outraged.
I was calmer … because I know a bluff when I see one.
“She’s not serious,” I assured Lily. “I’m sure there’s a psychological term for what she’s doing … but I don’t know it, since I wasn’t allowed to take a psych course. In any case, she’s saying these things so we’ll go on the record as not wanting them. We establish that we don’t want to run off together. Then we establish that we don’t need to live together, or even be in the same city in order to be a couple. Which leads to the conclusion …” I turned to Mrs. Basil E. “It’s your line.”
Mrs. Basil E. sighed. “You might as well go to Barnard.”
“Are you kidding me?” Lily asked.
I continued to talk to her great-aunt. “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs. Basil E., but your files are seriously mixed up right now.”
Mrs. Basil E. dropped the subject then, but it was hard for us to pick any other subject back up. We sipped and savored in silence until the plates were cleared and the tiered tower of teatime delicacies was returned to the kitchen, no doubt to be polished by house elves.
I looked at my watch.
“We should probably get going,” I said. “My grandmother will be waiting for us. Thank you for the tea, if not the sympathy.”
As we stood up to leave, Mrs. Basil E. said, “Lily, I have some evening engagements, but I should be back in my room by ten o’clock. I expect you to join me for a nightcap. Alone.”
“Okay,” Lily said quietly.
“Don’t act like it’s a walk to the gallows,” Mrs. Basil E. chided.
“I’ll be sure we’ve married and taken out a mortgage on a dream home by the time you next see her,” I said.
I was trying to draw some of Mrs. Basil E.’s withering glances my way, and in this I was highly successful.
“You can stop being so irascible,” she said to me. “You are threatening to bring out the harm that lies within your charm. I promise you, I have not crossed the Atlantic just for the sake of pithy banter. You are both at very important crossroads, and I fear you are going to take the wrong paths.”