Tea with Jam and Dread (3 page)

Sad to say, in the eyes of the public, I was
not
bereaved. In their eyes, I had no excuse for rolling around in the dirt while sounding like a rock star with a beehive stuck on her head. Now here was my best friend, trying to blackmail me with
her
grief. Her aim was to get me to take
my
inn into a whole new direction. I’m telling you, Agnes’s
chutzpah
had me so hot under the collar that the heat that was generated threatened to melt two of the silver fillings in my teeth.

The only way that I could think of, wherein I would not feel taken advantage of, was if I bested her at her own game. If dear, sweet Agnes was intent on getting all loosy-goosy with the la-dee-dah crowd, then I was more than happy to goose her right back. Perhaps that doesn’t sound very Christian of me, but if I lead an exemplary life
all
of the time, then, pray tell, how can I be an inspiration to those folks who need to be shown that one
can
recover from a spiritual stumble by repenting and seeking God’s forgiveness?

‘So, what do you think about my idea?’ Agnes said. ‘Mags, you have to admit that it’s rather brilliant. The Brits – especially the aristocracy – are essentially clueless about our Pennsylvania Dutch culture, so we can get away with just about anything, and charge them just about any amount of money as well. Heck, what’s that famous saying of yours?’

‘A tourist will pay any amount of money, and overlook any amount of abuse, just as long as he – or she – can view it as a cultural experience.’

‘That’s the one. You are so clever, Mags. I have no doubt that you will have these highfalutin, high-born folk eating out of your hand like they were pigeons in a park.’

Alas, that is when I caved and gave in to the Devil and his minions. This is not to say that Agnes had anything to do with the Fallen Angel’s presence. Lucifer, like the Lord Himself, is always hanging around, but in the case of the former, I could almost hear Him coaxing me to puff up with pride.

‘Come on, Magdalena,’ he hissed with his split tongue (like bad writers would have it, the Devil and his underlings can hiss in dialogue without an ‘s’). ‘First you play hostess to an earl, next to a duke, then finally you offer your bed to a king!’

‘Yeth, yeth, yeth!’ his minions chorused. ‘Your bed to a king!’

My bourgeoisie blood began to burble with excitement. Perhaps I’d had it wrong all along. Could it be that I was destined to host greatness? Well, not that inheriting a title from some undoubtedly ruthless forbear made one great, but it certainly gave one a leg up – so to speak. Perhaps it was the Devil whispering in my ear, but it did occur to me that not
everyone
has the stomach to rise through the ranks by suppressing the peasants, nor can just
anyone
dispatch enough of the enemy to earn themselves a coronet. And once on the throne, it takes a calm head to order other heads to roll. Could it be that the genes that allowed this class of folk to emerge triumphant while trampling on the backs of their brethren have produced a superior breed of mankind in their descendants? Perhaps today’s crop of the titled
were
entitled to the privileges that they enjoyed through no fault of their own.

Silly, sinful, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen! That was a moot question I’d just asked myself. There is no such thing as evolution. And even if there was, that was a racist, elitist thought. We are all equal in God’s sight. The Bible says that God is our only king.

‘I can read your mind,’ Agnes said as her eyes began loading up with tears. She has the ability to manufacture them as needed to advance her agenda, so it is hard to take them seriously. ‘As a woman of deep faith,’ Agnes continued, ‘you have a hard time getting behind the idea of there even being an aristocracy. The Bible says that we are all equal and God is our only king. Am I right?’

‘Stop reading my mind!’ I cried. ‘The Bible also says that we should kill witches!’

‘Mags, since you obviously know the Bible from cover to cover, then you are aware that your favourite book in the Bible was written by King David.’

‘She’s quite right,’ said the Devil, for He also knows the scriptures, and He is not averse to using them for His nefarious means.

‘Yeth, thath true,’ said Satan’s minions.

‘Yeth!’ I finally cried out, for Agnes’s edification.

‘Magdalena,’ Agnes said quickly, ‘it appeared to me that you were having some sort of spiritual crisis over this. You need to remember that we’re not really going to be going gaga over these guests; we’re going to do this because it will be fun. Think of it as a play in which you and I get to write our own starring roles.’

‘OK,’ I said, and just like that, all my inner turmoil ceased.

‘Fabulous! Now obviously, you’re the hostess. I, by the way, am your personal assistant.’

‘All right. Let loose the pure-bred hounds.’

I meant that metaphorically, mind you. The hounds, in this case, referred to the aforementioned English aristocrats,
not
the hounds of Hell. Unfortunately, those few times when my words turn out to be prophetic are always when my choice of words leaves something to be desired.

I
n full disc
losure, I have never been on Facebook, nor have I ever taken a ‘selfie.’ This is just as well, because I have a face that could
sink
a thousand ships. Any resemblance between my visage and that of a horse is purely coincidental, although Mama was particularly fond of a certain thoroughbred and was known to have spent a great deal of time alone in the barn with him. I’m just saying. The facts are that I have a long, narrow face and I tend to snort when I laugh. If you slapped a saddle on my back and hollered ‘giddy-yap’ I’d break into a full gallop. Indeed, one tourist from England even mistook me for Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. Surely by now you get the point: I am no raving beauty.

I am a simple Mennonite woman of Amish heritage, and I live in the village of Hernia, in the south-western corner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, USA. Both the Mennonites and the Amish are Christian denominations that had their origins in Europe around five hundred years ago. Both groups are opposed to infant baptism and they emphasize peace and nonviolence. The Amish are more recognizable because of their distinctive, old-fashioned dress, and the fact that they use horses and buggies for transportation. The Amish also forbid the use of electricity in their homes.

My grandparents were Amish and my parents were Amish, but I am a Mennonite woman of Amish
ancestry
. There are other Mennonites who do
not
descend from the Amish, but that is another category. I am also what is known as an Old Order Mennonite – that is to say my denomination is very conservative, just not as conservative as the Amish.

I am beginning to wonder if I should switch from being an Old Order Mennonite and join one of the more progressive Mennonite churches. Perhaps I feel this way because I married a Jewish doctor, one who is not only a humanist but who also happens to be a member of the Democratic Party. Don’t get me wrong – I am still a devout believer, with my heels dug deeply in, but if I keep sliding down this slippery slope of modernity and rationality I am afraid that someday I might find myself twerking shamelessly at some fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. That would indeed be calamitous, given that we Mennonites aren’t even permitted to have sex in a standing position, lest it lead to dancing.

My best friend Agnes is also a Mennonite of Amish derivation, but she belongs to a modern-day branch of the church. She’s practically indistinguishable from the Baptists in Hernia, except that Agnes doesn’t drink. She is also extremely bright. Why, just look at the advertisement that she eventually placed in a British tabloid, and also on the website that she set up on the internet. I, on the other hand, am a bit of a twit, and a dressmaker’s dummy, when compared to my friend, and I must confess that I didn’t see her advertisement until it had garnered results. More’s the pity.

FOR PEERS ONLY. You are herewith invited to spend your holiday at The Heiristocracy Haven, in Hernia, Pennsylvania, USA. It is a place where lords and ladies of gentle birth may loll about and lollygag to their hearts desires, far from the prying eyes of telescopic cameras. In fact, toe-sucking is mandatory every Sunday before tea! Hunt to the sound of the hounds – even at night! (This is the land of bear and moose.) If it’s more thrills that you desire, then ride the area’s longest zip line and still be back in time for high jinks, Pennsylvania style. Details upon request.

The clever and demonstratively worldly woman that she is, it wasn’t long until Agnes managed to snag the Earl of Grimsley-Snodgrass and his wife, Countess Aubrey of Grimsley-Snodgrass, and their three almost grown-up children: Lady Celia and the identical twins, Viscount Rupert and Mr Sebastian. Given that our game plan was to be our ordinary, lackadaisical, overly familiar American selves, Agnes sent them information about how to hire a motor car in either Harrisburg or Pittsburgh and drive themselves down to Hernia and the PennDutch.

‘It’s only a two-hour drive,’ she wrote, ‘through the bucolic Pennsylvania countryside. What better way to see the USA?’ She neglected to mention that both cities experience major rush-hour traffic situations, and that the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which connects Hernia to either city, is so rough in places that tyres have been known to burst upon hitting the so-called ‘potholes.’ One family of visiting Canadians managed to launch their teensy foreign car into the abyss of a pothole and, according to that one news channel that Agnes favours, they surfaced again in Harbin, in the far north of China.

Another challenge that motoring tourists would have to face (which Agnes did
not
mention) was the Allegheny Tunnel. This is where my parents were killed almost thirty years ago, squished to death between a tank truck carrying milk and a semi-trailer loaded to the gills with state-of-the-art running shoes. This tunnel is so long that it is rumoured to have given birth to the Chunnel.

What came as a total surprise was that the sleek black sedan carrying the party of bluebloods sported
Maryland
plates. Maryland is the state directly to the south of us, the state which is shaped like an open-mouthed, bushytailed rat that is fighting off a winged squirrel. Since one has to use one’s imagination to picture this in the first place, one should then flip the image over on its head to see what I mean. At any rate, it seemed that Agnes’s ‘nobs’ (as she called them) had minds of their own, and had found a better rate flying into Washington, D.C., which is to our southeast. Who could blame the dears?

‘Talk about cheeky,’ Agnes muttered as the black stretch limousine rolled to a stop. ‘I even sent them my American Automobile Association maps and highlighted the worthwhile overlooks, and noted which rest areas maintained clean lavatories.’

‘Not now, Agnes,’ I said. ‘I forget what you told me. Do I curtsy to the daughter as well, or just the mother?’

‘Neither,’ Agnes said. ‘They aren’t royalty, for heaven’s sake, and even if they were, we are not obliged to curtsy because they are not
our
royalty – not anymore, and
more’s the pity
.’

‘Agnes,’ I hissed, and properly at that. ‘You’re not only an anglophile; you’re a monarchist!’

‘I am not.’

Nonetheless, Agnes’s eyes fairly bulged as she watched my noble guests emerge into the bright sunshine of a perfect Pennsylvania afternoon. Also in attendance were my elderly Amish cook, Freni Hostetler, my hunky husband, Gabe the Babester, and our fourteen-year-old daughter, Alison. Yes, and let me not forget my sweet Little Jacob, although he didn’t give a rodent’s rear end if our guests were aristocrats.

Thank heavens for the Babester, who had grown up in New York City, and thus was comparatively cosmopolitan. George Clooney looks like my husband on a good day (George’s good day, not the other way around), and immediately the two noble women began to swoon over my hunk of burning love (not my words, mind you). In fact, the young man who scrambled out close on their heels seemed to swoon over Gabe as well.

As for the older man, whom I took to be the earl, he could have stepped right out of the pages of a badly written novel. He was wearing an Oscar de la Renta suit, but one that had seen a good deal of wear. He had a long, pale neck, which brought to mind an ostrich, and his grey moustache was so much in need of a trim that it obscured not only his lips but hid his receding chin like overhanging shrubbery. His hair – or was it a hair
piece
– brought to mind our very own Donald Trump, the brash billionaire running for President of these United States. I would say, however, that the
pièce de résistance
was his monocle, a piece of glass as thick as my index finger, which he held in place with the aid of a jewel-encrusted stick.

‘Hello,’ my Jewish prince said, extending his strong George Clooney hand. ‘Welcome to the PennDutch Inn.’

‘Yes, very well old chap, tend to the bags,’ the man with the monocle muttered.

‘Excuse me, old chap,’ the Babester said. ‘Tend to your own bags, or else have your chauffeur get them.’ Gabe kept walking and then, scooping up the hand of the Countess of Grimsley-Snodgrass, brought it swiftly, and smoothly, to his lips. ‘Welcome, Aubrey.’

‘My, but you Americans are a charming lot,’ the Countess of Grimsley-Snodgrass cooed. ‘But please, you may call me Lady Grimsley-Snodgrass.’

‘Well then,
Lady
Grimsley-Snodgrass,’ Gabe said, and flashed a smile that revealed twenty thousand dollars’ worth of American dental care. Then he turned to the daughter. ‘Welcome, Lady Celia,’ he said.

The cheeky girl gave my hunky husband the ‘once-over’ and made a spontaneous decision to go the familiar route with him. ‘It’s Cee-Cee,’ she said. ‘That’s spelled with four “e”s, and with a hyphen. You do have hyphens in America, yes?’

I saw that as my cue to jump into the ‘meet and greet.’ ‘Indeed, dear, we do,’ I said. ‘We have hyphens
and
siphons, and since the last hurricane, both of those species have been breeding with pythons down in the Everglades Swamp in Florida. The pythons, you see, were pets that escaped from their owners. Anyway, the hybrids then conjugated with a few verbs, not to mention alligators, and just last week a tour boat was capsized by a sixteen foot hypesiphopythogator.’

‘Ach,’ Freni squawked, and fled back into the kitchen.

‘Don’t mind my mom,’ Alison said. ‘She’s nuts, but you’ll get used ta her.’

Lady Celia rolled her eyes. ‘I hardly think so.’

‘Well, I find your mother to be positively amusing,’ Lady Grimsley-Snodgrass said to Alison, and then offered me her fingertips.

I suppose that I should have been flattered by Lady Grimsley-Snodgrass’s gesture and kind words, but I was not about to smooch any part of her that might have recently come into contact with any
other
part of her that needed a good scrubbing with soap and water before being allowed at my dinner table. It was time to think fast; in other words,
squeak now, or forever hold my grease
.

I leaned forward and pretended to inspect her nails closely, but I did not touch. ‘You may call me
Princess
Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen, if you please,’ I said. ‘And my, what a beautiful French manicure you have. I must say that of the hundreds of women who have been my guests over the years, your hands rank among the most beautiful.’

Poor Agnes; I had promised to be good and not embarrass her, but I just couldn’t help myself. We are supposed to be an egalitarian country – although money always pulls rank, and there are certain family names that are synonymous with ‘old money’ and ‘good breeding.’ The truth is, however, that it is human nature to have a higher opinion of oneself than of one’s neighbour.

‘What Magdalena means,’ Agnes said, her face the colour of a cardinal’s breast, is that she is descended from a Delaware Indian Princess.’

‘Really?’ Lady Aubrey said. ‘So you have a title then?’

‘Indeed. I do have a title, Your Ladyship,’ I said. ‘I keep it with my insurance policy in the glove compartment of my car.’

‘How charming,’ Lady Grimsley-Snodgrass said. She was an attractive woman in her mid-forties, who’d maintained a semblance of her girlish figure, and her short, sassy hair was just starting to grey at her left temple. Although I know nothing about fashion or expensive clothing, still, I could tell that Lady Grimsley-Snodgrass’s skirt and blouse ensemble was not something I could purchase at the chain stores anywhere within a hundred miles of my rural community.

I flushed. ‘OK, so maybe what’s in the glove compartment is the title to my car, but I might well have royal Native American ancestors – uh, so to speak. One of my forbears, a little boy named Joseph, was captured by the Delaware Indians, and after displaying an act of uncommon bravery he was formally adopted into that tribe. Unfortunately, I don’t know the lineage of his Indian family.’

‘Nonetheless, how fascinating,’ Lady Grimsley-Snodgrass said pleasantly.

‘If ya think
that’s
fascinating,’ Alison said, ‘then ya oughta get a load of this: Auntie Agnes there, and Auntie Freni – she’s the old lady who ran back inside – they’re both some kind of double and triple cousins ta my mom. And me too, of course. My mom even says that our family tree is so tangled that she’s her own cousin, and that I’m her mother.’

Dear sweet Alison, bless her heart, began snorting with laughter at her own joke, thereby inadvertently proving that we were related.

I would have died of embarrassment then, but I didn’t have my funeral hymns picked out yet. And anyway, everyone burst out laughing, except for Lady Celia.

‘Oh, Mother,’ she said, ‘that silly child is putting you on.’

‘There, there, Celia,’ the moustachioed Lord Grimsley-Snodgrass muttered, ‘be a good girl, will you, and rouse your other brother from his laborious slumbers.’

‘Other brother?’ the Babester asked, and craned his neck in a futile attempt at peering into the darkened windows.

‘My twin,’ said the first young man. He thrust a cluster of fingers at me, forcing them upon me. The ding-dang things felt, and smelled, like over-boiled asparagus. ‘I am merely
Mr
Sebastian, but the spoiled one still in the motor car, drooling upon the soft leather seat is my older brother by two minutes.
That
one is Lord Rupert, the Viscount Swithamiens.’

‘Wait a minute,’ the Babester said, ‘if your father is an earl, how come your brother is a viscount?’

‘Oh, father, this is
sooo
tedious,’ said Lady Celia, who still hadn’t budged an inch to retrieve her sleeping brother. ‘Must we explain everything to these – well, to these Americans? You know that they will never understand.’

‘I think we must, dear,’ Lady Grimsley-Snodgrass said. ‘The least we can do is be polite, and frankly, I don’t think most Brits understand the peerage rankings either.’

Lady Celia let loose with a sigh that could blow the spots off a Dalmatian. I have often read that music is the international language; that statement, of course, became a falsehood with that gobbledygook called ‘rap.’ I submit that the true international language is the insouciant sounds and gestures of petulant adolescents, even ones who are in their early adolescence.