Mary's Missing Teapot

Mary's Missing Teapot  

Thigh-high towers of old copies of the National Geographic magazine had transformed the sun-filled living room of a typical 1950s-built English bungalow into a maze on a scale that would have challenged Hampton Court’s labyrinthine privet creation. Some of the pillars of printed matter were crowned with crocheted decorative doilies to protect the colourful photographs of flamingos, Inuit fishermen and Polynesian idols that adorned glossy covers. The doilies were in turn topped with various items of crockery, each representing a recent tea break; an indication of how many days had passed since each cup’s contents had been mashed was provided by the physical condition of the half eaten slices of cake that accompanied them on floral patterned china plates.

‘I bet you’re thinking I’m a right messy madam,’ broke the silence. ‘I leave a gap between the stacks of books just an inch wider than the hoover so I can run it round once a week.’ Silently I agreed that it was the cleanest and tidiest hoarder’s house I had visited in my capacity as a domiciliary chiropodist and, as her words flowed with ease, it soon came to light that Mary would become one of my most interesting and endearing clients.

As our first meeting progressed I learnt that she had been born in Manchester in 1915 and had moved to Wiltshire to take up employment when she was in her early twenties. Apart from four years’ hard graft on a farm ‘to help put Mr Hitler in his place’ she had worked her whole life as a needlework teacher. ‘If you can knit it or you can sew it, then I’ve taught it to the young ladies at Swindon College’ she would often tell me with pride in her voice. Despite having lived in the West Country for more than seventy years she hadn’t lost her Lancashire accent and had ‘never met the right chap to marry’.

When I asked her how long she’d been subscribing to National Geographic she told me that her collection wasn’t made up exclusively of that particular publication. She liked any magazine that had a bit of colour in it so she had also amassed a few hundred issues of the BBC Wildlife magazine and some periodicals pertinent to her former profession. She had travelled more than most people of her generation, having toured much of Europe and New Zealand, and she always used to tell me to see as much of the world as I could while I could because the day would come when I would only be able to explore exciting foreign places through the pages and pictures of travel journals. Her vast library arranged neatly around her lounge and dining room with an overflow into her hallway, kitchen and bathroom had become the only means of escape for this frustrated traveller late in her life.

As she pointed out herself, the only problem she had with her feet was that they were too far away from her hands for her to be able to reach them herself, so on every visit my work was quickly done. She’d then invite me to have a look at her garden which was as colourful as the pages of National Geographic and tidier than her sitting room. She’d tell me the names of her plants (the common names and the scientific names in Latin), proudly look around at what her green fingers had accomplished, make mildly uncomplimentary remarks about the featurelessness of neighbouring plots and then, with her eyes firmly closed, she’d take in a deep breath.

‘I love to feel the breeze on my face and the soil on my hands,’ she said during our first encounter, adding ‘and we need the rain and the warmth and light from the sun to make the gardens grow’. After a few seconds of reflective silence, she continued, ‘Talk about the elements that all things share.’

‘I wouldn’t really know where to start,’ I confessed.

‘No, it’s the words from the song,’ I was told. ‘It’s by that Red Indian lass. Fire, Water, Earth and Air, it’s called. It was top of the hit parade not so long back. I sing it to myself when I’m out here with the flowers and the bees. Sometimes I see myself back at the top of the volcano in New Zealand. You know, the one with the funny name. Shall we have a cup of tea now?’

Business was almost always brisk for me, so on the first few occasions that I visited Mary, I didn’t have time to stay for a post-operative cuppa, but eventually I came to find this dear elderly lady’s enthusiasm for life so captivating that I decided to manage my work diary to extend the length of her appointments by fifteen minutes, thus enabling me to join her in her mid-afternoon refreshment. Clapping hands together, she laughed with glee the first time I accepted her invitation.   

Having noticed she was a bit slow and not too steady on her feet, I suggested that I should make the tea but she didn’t react in any way and made a swift beeline for the kitchen. I wasn’t sure her ignoring me was down to deafness or a show of independence; probably the latter. ‘We’ll need the teapot!’ she exclaimed loudly, and proceeded to open each of the many cupboards, scour their contents and then impatiently slam closed the doors. After five minutes of her searching without success I began to wonder if I would have time to drink the anticipated beverage before moving on to my next client, so tentatively I offered to help. She saw this as a great act of kindness and allowed me to delve into the back of every long forgotten space in her kitchen to assist in seeking out the elusive receptacle.

Side by side we uncovered all manner of things including ramekin bowls, woks, fondue sets, carafes, a silk-lined box of fourchettes à escargots, a mini butter churn, cookery magazines, wildlife magazines, an antique Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie in a tin, hand-stitched linen place mats embroidered with tourist maps of Sicily, a dusty bottle of sherry with one glass taken from it, and a ‘Greetings from Odessa’ egg timer in the shape of a chicken, but nothing for making a brew in. I thought I was on to something when I came across a knitted tea cosy on which the words ‘Up the Robins!’ were stitched in the colours of Swindon Town FC but, like the team itself, it suggested promise of great things but left an empty feeling.

After another ten fruitless minutes of us searching together she looked at me, her eyes lit up with a smile and she said, “Hang on a minute. I haven’t got a teapot.”

Soon afterwards, having made myself comfortable in the sea of Mary’s painstakingly handcrafted antimacassars that covered every inch of the armchair on which I sat, I found it very hard to keep my face straight as I drank tea made with a teabag in a mug while her words of astonishment continued to rattle around in my head.

I find it so desperately sad the way the passing of years can affect the minds of people as intelligent and lovely as Mary. However, with that one short, confusion-generated sentence she had instantly captured a place in my head that meant she would never be forgotten, even though it was quite likely that she would forget me.

Since that first chat with her in the garden I have done a little research and discovered that Fire, Water, Earth and Air was a song by Julie Felix, a British-based folk singer born in California in 1938 to a father of Mexican and Native American origin and a mother of English and Welsh ancestry. It was released as a 7” vinyl single in 1972 but it appeared that only Mary and maybe a couple of dozen other people bought copies.

Image:

This is my teapot. I considered giving it to Mary but then I thought she’d only go and lose it.

Link to Mary’s favourite song:

Fire, Water, Earth and Air, by Julie Felix