Tea with Jam and Dread (7 page)

Although Agnes is a kind, Christian woman and my best friend, that didn’t stop her from giving me the evil eye. ‘Magdalena, how could you!’

‘It’s actually fairly easy,’ I said. ‘Although all that talking did get me a little bit hoarse, but, oh my dear, it certainly is satisfying. At the moment, I am the envy of virtually everyone in the county.’

Agnes made ripping motions above her head, which was not a good sign. Not every woman is blessed by good hair after a certain age, and Agnes, I hate to say, falls into that category. Heaven forefend that the dear girl hastens the day when, like her nudist uncles, she fails to sport any hair at all. I am not gossiping, mind you, merely reporting the facts: given the rather odd shape of Agnes’s head, and her peculiar colouring when aroused by food, there was a good possibility that Agnes, while at a church potluck supper, would have her head mistaken for a peeled cantaloupe by myopic Irma Berkey, who would then attempt to stab it with a plastic fork.

Again, the Babester, the ‘big’ man in my life, came to my rescue. ‘What about you, Miss Goody Two Shoes? How many people did you brag to? We wouldn’t have royalty staying here if it wasn’t for you, so I’d bet that half the county knows. I’m surprised there wasn’t a news crew here to film their arrival, or do you have them scheduled to do a morning talk show in Pittsburgh?’

Agnes dropped her hands and slapped her cheeks; she probably wanted to slap Gabe’s cheeks for being so cheeky. ‘How many times do I have to explain to you, Gabe, that the Grimsley-Snodgrass family are not royalty, they are merely aristocrats?’

‘Whatever you say,’ the Babester said, and slipped into the kitchen to answer his cell phone.

Aubrey surprised me by raising her slim pale hand like a tentative schoolgirl. ‘You are correct, Agnes; however, I dare say that both Peregrine and I have more
English
royal blood flowing through our veins than our beloved reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth the Second does.’

‘Harrumph,’ Agnes said, proving that she is, if anything, a quick learner.

‘Never mind the bloodlines,’ I said somewhat impatiently. ‘You’re not horses. Agnes, how many people have
you
blabbed to?’

‘Harrumph,’ Agnes said again, ‘a bump and a horse’s rump. I did all the work arranging this visit, so why shouldn’t I brag? And yes, I did brag: I bragged on my blog, I tweeted, I wrote about it in my church newsletter, and you
can
expect
Good Morning Pittsburgh
,
Special Edition
to show up here tomorrow at ten.’

‘Jolly good,’ Sebastian said with a grin. ‘I’ve never been on the telly before.’

‘Mother,’ Celia said, ‘will you help me fix my hair? That adapter for my hairdryer better bloody well work, or – or—’

‘Or what, dear?’ Aubrey asked sweetly.

‘Or else!’

Aubrey turned her gentle gaze on me. ‘Magdalena, just in case, do you have a hairdryer that we might borrow? They don’t seem to come with the rooms.’

I smiled, eager to help. ‘Yes and no. I don’t have any fancy-schmancy electric hairdyers, if that’s what you need, but since you are here to experience the old-fashioned ways, why not use the Amish hairdryer?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Aubrey said.

‘She means the sun,’ Agnes snapped.

‘
Tres amusant
,’ Sebastian said.

‘Sarcasm does not become you, dear,’ I said graciously. ‘And I wasn’t being facetious about using the sun to dry your hair. Just slather on sunscreen and then take a folding chair out into the driveway about nine in the morning. Your hair will be dry in twenty minutes. That will leave you plenty of time to finish getting dressed, Celia, especially if you wise up and leave all that other gunk off your face. Too much black around your eyes makes you look like a raccoon – either that or a nineteenth-century bank robber.’

‘I say there!’ Celia said, rearing back like a startled colt.

Aubrey’s laugh brought to mind tiny crystal bells. ‘Magdalena, you are so refreshing – in that American sort of way.’

‘She means “rude,”’ Agnes said.

‘Nonsense,’ Aubrey said. ‘But rally, shouldn’t we be putting more thought into searching for Peregrine? According to the research that I did before coming here, there are bears in these woods, and animals called coyotes. No offense to you Americans, but it seems as if everyone here has a gun, and if someone looks at someone else just a wee bit wonky … Well, I’m just saying that Peregrine wandering around the woods late at night might well appear to be threatening.’

‘It’s that d— monocle,’ Sebastian said. ‘He won’t listen to reason and get a proper pair of specs.’ Sebastian actually said a four letter word, which I refuse to repeat!

At that moment my hero burst through the swinging kitchen doors like the sheriff in an old-timey saloon. ‘No need to stress yourselves further, folks.
Missing
Peregrine is no longer missing! He is safe, if not sound of mind, and shall return here momentarily.’

Then, lo and behold, the doorbell rang.

‘N
o proselytising here,’ I said when I saw who was standing
on my veranda. I started to close the door.

For the record, I knew ding-dong well that the waist-high woman in a nun’s habit was Gabe’s Jewish mother. Standing next to her, looking a bit chagrined, was the heretofore missing Peregrine. For the record, Gabe’s mother’s birth name was Ida, but her spiritual name was Mother Malaise. She was the founder and self-appointed head of a made-up religion called the Sisters of Apathy. These so-called nuns were cloistered in a convent that had been converted from a farmhouse that was located directly across the road from the PennDutch.

Although she has vehemently denied it on many occasions, Mother Malaise had created her cult for the sole purpose of causing her Jewish son to feel guilty for having taken a Christian wife. It began as a way of showing her son how broken-hearted she was that he had abandoned four thousand years of tradition to marry a
shikse –
which is a not very nice way of say ‘a gentile woman.’ However, Gabe has never felt guilty about anything, and since he couldn’t even bring himself to
act
guilty, things quickly went downhill from there.

Soon Ida, aka Mother Malaise, invented the bizarre theology of disparagement. This consists of one religious tenet broken into three parts: despair in all things; despair at all times; despair everywhere. The adherents to this whackadoodle concept have the chutzpah to refer to themselves as Trinitarians, although clearly three sandwiches shy of a picnic hamper is what they really are.

‘Shtop!’ Mother Malaise barked. ‘Eets me, your mudder-in-law und a duck of some kind.’

‘I am an earl,’ Peregrine said, ‘not a duke, and most certainly
not
a duck.’

‘Yah? Und I’m zee Queen of Sheba.’ Mother Malaise laughed; something which certainly wasn’t in her favour. That woman has been the bane of my existence, starting with the day that Gabriel told her that we were engaged. There was room for only one Mrs Rosen in her world, a fact which she soon made very clear by sending her son a one-way airline ticket from Pittsburgh – our nearest airport – back to New York City, where she lived at the time.

When Gabriel returned the ticket, unused of course, his precious ‘mama-leh’ moved to Hernia; lock, stock and barrel. Hernia is not New York City; it has no public lodgings. Guess who had to move in with
me
for a while, because you-know-who couldn’t bear the embarrassment of being a bachelor living with his mom? So what if it was the other way around? Many was the time I’d find them both in their pyjamas, and she happily cutting his toenails, or combing his hair like he was a little kid, which I guess makes perfect sense, since she still cuts his meat for him! And him a heart surgeon! Oh, well, who am I to tell tales out of school?

I have learned from my younger sister Susannah and my daughter Alison how to emit world-class sighs. That said, I gave birth to the mother of all sighs, one that raised the tides along the coasts of Cornwall and Devon.

‘All right then, come in if you must,’ I said, stepping aside. ‘But not you, dear.’ I meant, of course, that ‘none dressed as a nun’ should enter my inn at that late hour. In the event that she did, it would raise my hackles so high that I would have to sleep clinging to the ceiling in order to keep my blood pressure company.

‘Vhat you say?’

Trust me; Mother Malaise was anything but apathetic.

‘I want you to go home, Ida. Go back to your misguided Sisters of Apoplexy or whatever you call yourselves. There is no more room at this inn.’

I could smell my sweetheart’s earthy manliness before I heard his voice. ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’

‘Your vife!’ his mother said. ‘Like alvays, yah?’

‘Peregrine!’ my darling husband said, for once ignoring his mother. ‘There you are.’

And for once, as he eschews public scenes, the man who shares my bed dared to slip his arm around an
English-English
man’s shoulders, as if he were a regular person, and lead him to the dining room. This left his precious ‘host womb’ in the most hostile of moods. Ida Rosen, aka Mother Malaise, may be built like a badger on steroids with a gym addiction, but when properly riled she is virtually unstoppable. Or, as she would say: ‘unshtoppable.’

‘Out of my vay!’ she roared, sounding like a jet engine.

The next thing that I remember I was lying flat on my back. I could hear Ida’s Yiddish-Russian-Ukrainian, and sometimes just plain what-have-you accent, assaulting my ears all the way from
my
dining room.

Perhaps I should explain that when the Good Lord created me, he implanted within my brain a fertile imagination. I have always threatened to write a book one day, but as anyone who has ever said that knows, who on earth has the time to actually sit down and do that? Oh, and don’t give me that hogwash about discipline and talent. Writing skills can be taught in any number of venues, and as for discipline, that wouldn’t be an issue for me, just as long as I had the time.

My point is: my fertile imagination sometimes leads me to think up scenarios that are more likely to take place on the so-called silver screen than within my beloved family. Then again, having only been to see one movie in my entire life –
The Sound of Music
– what do I know about movies? I had to drag Mama to see that show all the way up in Pittsburgh where nobody knew us, but she was so scandalized by the scene in the gazebo where two teenagers kissed that she dragged me out of the theatre and wouldn’t stop shaking until we got home two hours later.

So what scenario might I create for Ida Rosen, a reasonable person might ask? My answer, of course, is reasonable as well: Ida Rosen, aka Mother Malaise, Mother Superior to a convent of forty-four habit-wearing nuns, would be the head of a drug cartel.
That
is not farfetched. No siree, and Bob’s your uncle! Hers is not a religious order, mind you. These women – four of them are men – do not don the long grey robes and wimples for reasons of modesty. If that were the case, then they wouldn’t hold an annual Run Through Hernia Nude Day, which, thank God, has been rained off two out of the three years since its inception.

I ask you, what better place to hide drugs than in the folds of yards and yards of loosely hanging cloth? And who is going to suspect people with names like Sister Dispirited and Sister Disenchanted of being ‘players?’ With the exception of my combative and excessively jealous mother-in-hate, every time I run into one of those folks I have a strong urge to lie down and take a nap.

And yes, it has even occurred to me that the old biddy packs heat. In layperson’s terms, that means that she carries a firearm – a gun. Given that she is only four feet and two inches, it would have to be a very small hand gun, but then again, her bosoms enter a room a full two seconds before she does, so it could be a Colt 45. Any rate, after being run over and having gathered my wits, I staggered to my feet, took a few cautious steps and then flew like the witch that I supposedly am into the next room.

I can tell you that Ida was genuinely surprised. Perhaps she thought that she’d at last been successful in grinding me into chopped liver.

‘
Nu?
’ she said calmly. ‘Vhat took you so long? Vee vas having a family meeting.’

‘Oh, is that so, dear? With all my cousins in attendance?’

‘Vhat? Da duck, and da duckess, dey are your cousins?’

Gabe groaned. ‘Come on, Mags, I know that Ma can be a pain in the
tuchas
, but she’s an old lady for crying out loud.’

‘
Oy
,’ Ida cried as she struck a surprisingly large fist against her gigantic bosom. ‘So now your own mudder, who gave you life, is a pain in the
tuchas
? It vasn’t my
tuchas
dat hoit so much da day vhat you vas born – und for tearty-tree hours. Alle dis because you haffe such a beeg head. Like a ten-gallon vater bottle da doctor tell me. So, he has to make wiz de surgery—’

‘Well,’ said Agnes, ‘that does it for me for tonight. Remember, Your Noblenesses, we meet down here tomorrow morning at ten for the interview. They requested bright colours – something that would pop on TV. Maybe a vivid red or a royal blue.
Royal
blue, ha, ha. Get the joke?’

‘Not really,’ Peregrine said. I could tell that he was seeing red because even behind his monocle his blue eye looked cold enough to set a gelatine salad.

It had been a long day for Agnes, and she looked crestfallen.

‘American humour – now that’s an oxymoron,’ he said.

I decided to come to my friend’s aid. ‘Another definition for oxymoron: a castrated bull that is connected by a Spanish conjunction to France’s favourite comedian.’

No one laughed.

‘Ox – y – Jerry Lewis,’ I said. ‘Get it?’

Again, no one laughed. No one offered up as much as a courtesy snicker.

The Bible says that Satan will use
anything
that He can to trip us up, and that we are to be ever diligent on that account. I was well aware from experience that Satan loved using my low self-esteem and my propensity for acting punitively. It had never occurred to me, however, that Satan might put it in mind to invite my guests to church!

‘Postpone that interview until Monday, Agnes. Tomorrow is Sunday, remember? A traditional Mennonite church experience is what is scheduled.’

‘Oh, how exciting,’ Aubrey said, pressing her sculpted fingertips together in breathless anticipation.

‘Rally?’ said Sebastian. ‘Have you quite forgotten that we’re Church of England? I don’t suppose you have one of those in this godforsaken place. Also, I’m afraid we’re frightfully Low Church; Papa doesn’t go in for the smells and bells – too Papist, ha, ha. Small joke there, in case you missed it, what with your frontier sense of humour.’

‘How dare you!’ Gabriel said, ever the loyal husband. ‘As long as my soul mate is here, God has not forsaken this place.’

‘Tank you, son,’ Ida said. ‘Und I love you too.’

‘He was talking about me, Mama
dearest
,’ I said so sweetly that I later lost a molar on that account. ‘As for the rest of you, I have decided that the best way for you to experience Mennonite culture is to attend Magdalena Yoder’s traditional Old Order Mennonite Church. By the way, this will be followed by a potluck luncheon, which is supplied by the ladies of that church. This will offer you a tremendous opportunity to socialize with the locals; it is something to which other tourists are not privy. In the afternoon you are free do what the Lord hath commanded you to do, which is to rest – i.e. nap, stroll about the farm or take buggy rides about the countryside.’

My attention was drawn to what sounded like a snorting ox. I was somewhat relieved to see that the real creature of my concern wasn’t quite as dangerous, given that it was only Agnes, and that Mr Lewis was not in sight. Nonetheless, Agnes was pawing the floor of my dining room with her remarkably petite and overburdened feet, and her remarkably plump fists were held stiffly out at her sides (given her shape, a forty-five-degree angle was the best she could achieve).

‘Magdalena,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘I am literally beside myself with frustration.’

I glanced to her right, and then her left. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘Don’t you tell me how I feel,’ she hissed, managing to hiss without that pesky ‘s.’

‘I’m not telling you how to feel,’ I said. ‘All I am saying is that you aren’t beside yourself
literally
. Although, who knows, maybe those award-winning mystery writers might start using that word incorrectly as well.’

‘Aargh! You know what I meant. Anyway, tomorrow is the only day that the film crew from Pittsburgh has the time to come out and film.’

‘Tomorrow is the
Lord’s
Day,’ I said. ‘Read your Bible if you’ve forgotten.’

‘Actually,’ Gabe said, ‘if you could read it in the original Hebrew, as I can, you would know that today, Saturday, is the Lord’s Day.’

‘Yah, dat is so,’ chimed in So-and-So, much to my everlasting irritation.

‘You no longer practice Judaism, dear,’ I said. ‘You worship the Goddess Apathia, and her lover, Entropy, which makes you a heathen and subject to stoning.’

‘Oh, my, now this rally is exciting,’ Aubrey said. ‘I must say, you Americans are frightfully entertaining. We haven’t seen a good stoning in ages.’

‘We can be frightful all right,’ I said, perhaps a wee bit annoyed that she obviously found Ida’s shenanigans more appealing than a proper church service. ‘Agnes, as tour director, I will expect you at eight tomorrow morning to help us enjoy a hearty Pennsylvania Dutch farm breakfast. Then at half past nine we will load up and depart for the church.’

‘Actually,’ Peregrine said as he lightly stroked the left tip of his moustache, ‘I shall defer on the pleasures of the Lord tomorrow and pay more attention to rest. After all, if memory serves me right, there is nothing in that passage about church.’

‘That’s not
fair
,’ I wailed. ‘The Ten Commandments were given in the desert, when the ancient Israelites were just a wandering tribe; churches didn’t even exist then.’

‘Say what?’ Celia said. Who knew she was even still listening, given that she had a sixteen-year-old brain, which is compelled by biology to shut down after just six words uttered by ignorant adults.

‘What?’ I said.

‘What I
mean
,’ she said, ‘is why did God give the Ten Commandments to
those
people and not us?’

‘Well—’

‘And since God didn’t give them to
us
, why do
we
have to follow them? Answer me that. I’m just asking, mind. But rally, God didn’t tell the English not to steal, did He? So suppose I was in Harrods and saw this jumper that I rally liked—’

‘Celia!’ Aubrey said with surprising sharpness. Now
that
really endeared the woman to me. It is one thing to raise our daughters to be strong and independent thinkers, speaking their minds under the right circumstances, but it is quite another thing to permit sacrilegious ideas to percolate through their brains like water through coffee grounds. The end result of that is anything but a stimulating beverage – it’s unadulterated swill!