U3A Writing: The Tea-Party
The girls were having a dolls' tea party - but things were too quiet.
Astra Warren, their governess, went to check up on them, inviting herself to tea. But what was this in the tea pot....?
For further reading pleasure type Astra's name in the search box on the right-hand side of this page. There are more of her humorous and memorable accounts of her lifein the Australian outback.
It was a Mid-West late summer afternoon, still and warm. After everybody's post-lunch siesta, dad, boys and the dogs had gone
down to the yards to check on a new bull. Mum, recovering from Ross
River virus, was asleep on her bed. Governess stretched out on a
verandah chair with a book, from where I could keep a
listening ear on the two girls aged six and four.
They were playing their current favourite activity, a dolls' tea-party. This involved rounding up dolls and soft toys of assorted sizes and colours, washing their hands and faces, dressing them
in best clothes, and putting out two small teasets on an old
cloth spread on the verandah boards. They filled the teapots with cordial and broke biscuits into small pieces.
For a while, I could hear their busy chatter and the clink of crockery, but slowly I became aware that sounds had virtually
ceased. You will no doubt know that uneasy feeling of foreboding when children go quiet?
I put down my book and padded round to the kitchen verandah. All was
as it should be. There sat the dolls, cup, saucer and plate before
each; there sat the two hostesses on the steps, presiding over the teapots set between them. The younger girl even had an old flowered
sunhat set rakishly over one eye.
I entered into the spirit of things. "Good afternoon ladies! I was just passing - may I join you for tea?"
I sat down on the steps. Did I detect a slight hesitation, a glance
pass between the girls? No answer from either, so I held out a tiny
cup and saucer.
"I take it black please. No sugar."
A reluctant hostess filled my cup. The smell alerted me; a sip
confirmed it. They had filled the teapots from a cask of red wine in
the storeroom. There was residue in all the tiny cups.
Restraining an impulse to panic, I praised the "tea" and enquired
what brand it was. A glassy-eyed girl said it was the best grown-up
cordial.
Two little girls were carried to their beds and slept peacefully
until next morning.
It was our fault, I suppose. Whenever they had asked what we were
drinking at evening with such enjoyment, we had answered, winking at
each other and making a conspiratorial joke out of it, "It's cordial. Just grown-up cordial".
