by Anne Forrest
tea
You
never tire of talking about your Gypsy blood. So proud. As if it were Royal.
You’re nearly ninety yet look as if you've seen only seventy-five summers; you
put this down to life in the open air, natural food from the hedgerows; a
care-free life roaming and overseeing your own destination. A good man; you
always said Grampy was a good man. You said you were painted by a famous artist
sitting on your caravan steps in a red skirt with a pipe in your mouth – when
you were about eighteen, you said. You said Grampy was a ‘high Romany’, not a
common one. You loved your life and wouldn’t change it for all the tea in
China, you said.
When I call, you spread a chenille cloth on the table,
get out willow basket and display your velvet and lace and pegs to show how you
earned your living. You demonstrate how you wound crepe paper flowers around a
wire thread; bunched the heather with ribbon. You always say your white, netty
curtains were knitted by spiders, and I always pretend to believe you. You read
tea-leaves at the bottom of my cup ignoring the delicate images in the bowl;
choosing your words carefully.
I love it when I can persuade you to bring out the lamp,
choking and spitting under the fluted rim, cross that it’s been disturbed. After
all this time. You present it as if it were the Crown Jewels.
When
it acquiesces, the wick settles, glows; resigning its gypsy-blood blaze to light
up your council-flat walls.
About the author:
Anne
Forrest lives in the Conwy Valley, she is studying for a Masters at Chester
University ‘Writing and Publishing Fiction’ 2019-2020, after gaining a First
Class Hons at Bangor Uni: MArts in ‘English Literature with Creative Writing’.
Her common-folk biography, My Whole World, Penmaenmawr (in 2nd
print) was published by Old Bakehouse Publications, Abertillery, in 2000. Her
Gothic novel, Lilies if the Valley made the strong longlist in the
Cinnamon Press Debut Novel Award 2019. She wrote a series of ‘Timothy Crumble’
stories, set in the NT’s Bodnant Garden ‘to educate and entertain children’.
Visit
her website at anneforrestwriter.weebly.com
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