A Cup of Tea - Amy Ephron [2]
The woman stepped back from her.
“Why don’t you?” said Rosemary. “Come home with me now in my car and have tea. At least until it stops raining.”
The woman protested. “I couldn’t,” she said. “It wouldn’t be—”
Rosemary interrupted her. “—right?! Why not?!” She put her hand on the woman’s arm and started to propel her towards the car.
Rosemary’s driver had opened the car door and was holding an umbrella over their heads.
“Don’t be frightened,” said Rosemary with the sort of confidence you have when you’ve never had to be frightened of anything. “Why shouldn’t you come home with me?”
The inside of the car was leather. There was a pale brown cashmere afghan folded neatly on the seat, a small nosegay of flowers in a bud vase attached to the seatback that separated the rear of the car from the driver. The engine had been idling and the inside of the car was warm. The girl managed a small smile as Rosemary hurdled her into the warmth and safety of the backseat of the car.
And, for a moment, in the backseat, Eleanor, for that is the name she would tell you if asked, Eleanor Smith, had a moment to be nervous.
Did the driver look at her disapprovingly…of course, he did, but it wouldn’t be his place to speak about it. He did seem to take a long time though to shut the car door and walk around to the front, close the umbrella, get in, finally, and shift the car into gear. Long enough for her to worry that this could end (as it must certainly end) before it had even started.
“Oh Gertrude, don’t look like that…” thought Rosemary as she saw the expression on her housekeeper’s face when she appeared at the door to help with the packages. “Not that anything I do should surprise her by now!…”
“We don’t need help, Gertrude, thanks,” said Rosemary. “Just tea…and sandwiches.” And she hurried the poor girl out of sight up the stairs to spare her being stared at. And then shouted down to Gertrude again, “Not just butter. Make some with chicken, would you? We’ll have it up in my room.”
Halfway up the stairs, Rosemary stopped and took her gloves off. She took a deep breath. “It’s just too cold out. I’m frozen through. I can imagine how you must feel!” She put her arm lightly on the young woman’s back. “We’ll go up to my room. It’s cozy there.”
Gertrude stayed where she was at the bottom of the stairs and looked after them distrustfully. Rosemary turned and saw her and laughed. “We don’t need help, Gertrude, honest. Just tea.”
Gertrude walked off to the pantry grumbling, as if she didn’t have enough to do besides make an unscheduled meal…and what was Rosemary up to, anyway?
But ever since Rosemary’s mother died, going on nine years ago, Gertrude had been the mother-hen variety of housekeeper, peckish and overbearing but in a completely endearing way. Maybe she was always that way but when Mrs. Fell was alive there was a direct chain of command and order in the household and ever since she’d passed, it had sort of been betwixt and between with Gertrude not knowing whether it was Rosemary, the woman of the house, giving her orders or Rosemary, the child, whom she was obliged to be telling what to do. Not that she’d ever been able to stop Rosemary from doing anything.
There was a fire burning in the fireplace in Rosemary’s room, a funny assortment of flowers that looked as if it had been thrown together from a garden in a vase on the table in front of the couch. Rosemary threw her coat and hat off carelessly onto the back of a velvet chair. The young woman stood not far from the fire, holding her sweater around her. She seemed unsure of what she was to do, if it were all right for her to warm herself by the fire or take a seat.
“You are soaked through,” said Rosemary in the way a big sister would to a little girl and then because she knew it would take some prodding, she helped the girl off with her sweater and hung it over the screen of the fireplace to dry. “There.”
The young woman stood holding onto the back of the sofa as though it was all that stood between her and the floor as Rosemary reached