A Cup of Tea - Amy Ephron [1]
Rosemary nodded and reached into her purse for her chequebook. She wrote him a cheque, ripped it from her chequebook, and casually left it on the counter.
Rosemary watched as Rhenquist wrapped the velvet bag and letter opener deftly in brown paper, his pale hands amazing for their dexterity. Nothing rare was ever broken here.
He handed her the parcel and bowed his head slightly. It was clear he would have kept them for her forever. Rosemary smiled and started to leave. As she opened the door, the bells on the shop door jingled slightly.
It was still raining but Rosemary didn’t seem to mind as she walked down the street to the flower shop. Smoke was rising from the potholes contributing to the mist and griminess of the city.
On the corner, there was still the shape of the woman standing under the streetlight. It was more than an accident of birth and a length of pavement that separated these two women.
The salesgirl followed Rosemary as she made her way through the crowded florist shop a few doors down from the antique store. “I’ll have those and those.” Rosemary pointed to some lilies and irises. “Four bunches of those. And I’ll take those sweet pink roses.”
The salesgirl held some lilacs up for her to see.
“No, no lilacs.” So this next didn’t come out too harshly, Rosemary smiled. “I hate lilacs. They have no shape. And that smell, you know they’re there before you even walk into the room.” She laughed. “But give me those stumpy little tulips, the red and white ones.” In her mind she was figuring that they would sit prettily in the gray stone vase in her bedroom while the longer stemmed lilies could be arranged downstairs in the dining room in the pewter vase.
Her thoughts drifted to how she might get out of Florence Pemberton’s invitation to lunch the following day. Flo was always so serious. Flo’s life was so uneventful. Rosemary would have cut her years ago if it hadn’t been for the fact that Florence Pemberton was Philip Alsop’s cousin and Rosemary had known since she was a little girl that she was going to marry Philip Alsop. But now that the wedding was six months off, couldn’t she afford to be a little less attentive to Florence Pemberton or did it require that she be more so?
She seemed distracted as the salesgirl trimmed her flowers and wrapped them in paper. She took some money out of her wallet to pay. And then the salesgirl walked in front of her out of the shop to the car, carrying the immense white paper armful.
Rosemary stopped on the pavement. Her eye was caught by the creature with enormous eyes holding her sweater around her with reddened hands. It was raining harder now and with it came the darkness spinning down like ashes. Rosemary walked over to her. “Are you all right?”
The woman nodded. She looked at Rosemary and hesitated before speaking. “C-could I—?” the creature stammered. “Could I ask you for some money—enough for a cup of tea?”
Rosemary couldn’t help but notice it wasn’t the voice of a street-person. “Have you no money?” she asked.
“None at all, ma’am,” was the answer.
Rosemary considered this a moment. She looked over at her car and her driver who stood waiting for her. The rain was coming down in sheets around them.
It was like something one would read about, to find a girl in the dusk and bring her home for tea. Ought she to have been frightened that the girl would turn out to be a thief or half-mad. She didn’t look half-mad. She looked like someone who life had done a wrong turn to, who had never had the proper opportunity. And think how she would feel if she could successfully show this poor creature that life could be wonderful, that all women were sisters, that the world was full of possibilities. She would help her get on her feet. It was an act of altruism. What good was it to have power, if one couldn’t be beneficent some of the time.
She could hear herself saying to her friends, “It just seemed like such an adventure,” as she turned and said, “Why don’t you