Tassology

‘I think our speaker’s arrived.’ There was a pause. ‘But I’m not sure she’s what we were expecting.’
We gathered around the window, each trying to get a view down into the United Reform Church Hall car park. A tall, elegant woman with an ash blonde urban-chic bob was climbing out of a spotless silver Mercedes coupé.
‘I thought she told you her Grandmother was authentic Romany Gipsy.’
‘That’s what it said in the letter from the Tea Council,’ said Beth, our Tuesday morning women’s-group leader. She elbowed us out of the way so she could get a better look, then gave a low whistle. ‘If that’s a gipsy caravan, I’m starting a life on the road right this minute.’
‘I think we should have dressed up a bit,’ I said looking down at my jeans and wondering if the skirt I wore for work would be any better.
‘Here, Claire, you’d better give that coffee table a bit of a wipe.’ said Beth. ‘It’s got orange squash on it from the Sunday school.’ She threw me a tea towel. ‘And get these chairs into a circle.’ We heard the swing doors bump. ‘Pity we haven’t time to Hoover the carpet. If you can call it a carpet,’ she added as she clumped downstairs to greet our guest.
Not only did Amber look perfect; she smelled perfect too: a subtle mix of sandalwood and tuberose wafted across the still-damp table. She was a tassologist, she explained. ‘I am not here to tell you your fortunes. I’m here to teach you to read your own tea leaves.’ We were all rapt attention. ‘And those of others,’ she added, looking out of the window at the remains of a clematis that was flailing in the November wind against the glass.
We sipped our tea, hot and pungent, as a stream of exotic names issued from Amber’s cinnamon lips: Darjeeling, Orange Pekoe, Oolong, Japanese Sencha Green, Chun Mee, Gunpowder and Keemun-orchid. We were careful to leave, as instructed, a teaspoon of liquid at the bottom of the cup. We should have used something finely aromatic and large-leaved but we only had PG Tips and that would have to do. At least we had white china tea cups and saucers found, unexpectedly, in the church hall kitchen. Enough for all.
We clasped our cups in hands rough from gardening and washing-up and tried to direct our energy into the tea as we watched Amber’s long fingers emphasise the finer points of the ritual. Her winter-white cashmere turtleneck set off a double string of pearls and brown velvet cigarette pants, sleek over noodle-thin legs; we all prayed to look so good at sixty-plus.
The handle was to be held towards the enquirer. Any leaves towards the rim of the cup were trivial frivolities, those deeper down towards the bowl, of more emotional significance. We were to read the cup clockwise from the handle looking through our past, present and future.
We sipped and we listened. Tea drinking was a ritual. Tea trays could be prepared with as much care as the tea itself. A flower, thoughtfully chosen, could enhance the reading and the shapes in the tea-leaves would tap into our intuition. We should read our leaves every morning before the events of the day cloud the mind. The history of tea was the history of civilisation and tea drinking was civilised. I glanced across at Emily who had arrived late in a fluster of velvet and chilly air, the only one of us who came anywhere near to being ‘groomed’. I had been assured that she would not be coming today and felt that her presence was anything but civilised.
The clematis whipped the window and a dog started barking outside but most of us paid no attention; we were floating on ancient symbolism and unearthly destiny.
One by one we slipped cups into saucers with imperceptible clinks and nursed the leaves and their precious drop of liquid in our laps. Emily was still drinking from her cup, an inexplicably fine bone china cup with little gold curlicues and her eyes rose above the rim, brown and liquid as the tea, to follow Amber’s every word. ‘Claire,’ she had said to me a month ago, ‘I know how hard this situation is for you and I promise I won’t make it harder. I’ll keep a low profile. I can do that for you at least.’ I had tried to believe her; and yet here she was, as welcome as Banquo.
The moment of truth arrived.
‘Hold your saucers in your left hands.’ said Amber. ‘Take the cup by the handle in your right and swirl the leaves anticlockwise.’
We swirled.
‘Direct your energy into the cup. Ask it a question, if you like.’
We directed, we questioned.
‘Now turn the cup upside down onto the saucer and let it drain.’ Amber placed her cup and saucer onto the table and, obediently, we followed suite. Anticipation ran around us like the last chord in a concerto. I looked up to find Emily staring directly at me. She turned her head towards Amber whilst maintaining eye contact with me and finally blinked slowly before asking if Amber really believed in clairvoyance.
‘Of course.’ Amber executed a magnificently Gallic-style shrug. ‘Why else would I be here?’
‘But all this ...’ Emily gestured with the pretty cup that she had yet to upend. ‘It’s all so much mumbo-jumbo.’
The room seemed suddenly unbearably warm and oppressive, but Amber seemed not to notice. She leaned forward with one pale hand draped over the side of her knee and laughed. ‘I believe everyone sees symbols. It’s whether you have the creativity to interpret them …’ She retrieved her cup from the table. ‘Now, shall we look at what the leaves have to tell us?’

To start with, all I could see was leaves. The short, dark PG Tips clustered around the bottom half of the cup with few spilling up the sides except an inch or two near the handle. My joyful past. In the base I thought I saw a group of wildly dancing figures like Zulus holding hands and then, without warning, a huge mass emerged, almost rearranging the leaves in its insistence to make itself known. It took up nearly half of the cup and made me gasp as it drifted, then took on solid form.

It was the image of a dog. Not a sideways-on, comfortable, child’s drawing of a dog, but a vast, black full in-the-face Hound of the Baskervilles type of dog. Roaring out of the cup straight towards me, mouth wide open, lips pulled back to expose fangs, sharp and cruel.
Amber was speaking to me. ‘Yes. You have something. Would you like to tell the group what you are seeing?’
‘Dancers,’ I said.
‘Good. Dancers often symbolise a wish. A wish that may be granted. Anything else?’
I could hardly form the words and remained mesmerised. Spittle flecked the dog’s face, ears were drawn back flat against its head and its maddened eyes bored into mine. ‘A dog,’ I said, eventually.
‘Is it at the base or near the rim?’
I barely heard her. The animal’s foreleg seemed to be about to plunge into the air; claws, devil-black and drenched, glistened in the harsh strip light above. Marian jabbed me with her elbow.
‘Whereabouts in the cup is it?’ she said, looking over my shoulder.
‘Base,’ I said. The atmosphere felt too thick to breathe.
Amber smiled at me and her chair creaked as she relaxed. ‘Claire may find that someone calls on her for help,’ she said to the group. ‘But,’ she said, turning back to me, ‘it’s what you make of your images. Don’t forget, it is your interpretation.’
I gazed back at the animal in my tea-leaves. It didn’t look like an indicator of help.

We washed up and spilled out into the spiky cold air, flicking through the pages of our free booklets or pushing them deep into sensible bags while bidding each other good-bye and making plans for the following week. Emily walked past me, boot heels click-clacking on the pavement. We said nothing but I watched her from behind; her hound’s-toothed coat clinging to her body and emphasising her waist. I watched her until she opened the driver’s door, climbed into Rob’s estate car and pulled out into the road. I bet she owned a cashmere jumper.
Only she would call it a sweater.

At home it was quiet. Unnaturally quiet. I jingled my keys and waited with the door ajar.
‘Kitty?’ I said into the silence. ‘Kitty?’ I walked around the house looking for our dog. Typical Rob joke to call the lurcher, Kitty.
In the utility room I stood over the place where Kitty’s basket should have been. There was a faint circle of dust and dog hairs. I opened a cupboard. The tins of dog food were missing too. Even the half-full can from this morning on the draining board. A blast of anger hit me. Kitty was Rob’s dog, even before we were married — but I had paid for the dog food.

What else was there to do than make tea?
I made it with a tea bag — I’d had enough of dogs — but the tea was barely brewed before the door bell rang. The tea was scalding and took the back off my throat, but then I sipped it slowly and remembered Amber’s words and let the slight astringent forresty notes of pine cones wash and calm my brain.
There was a rattle of bracelets on the window. I opened the door and let Marian in.
‘I’m sooo sorry!’ she said, pulling off her coat and sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘We had no idea she’d be there.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said getting another cup.
‘Probably best in the long run. You know, getting it over with.’ Marion said, taking the lid off the teapot and sniffing. ‘Oo, what’s this? Amber didn’t need to teach you anything about tea, Claire, you’ve probably every variety known to man.’ She poured a thick stream of over-brewed oolong bio into her cup and tipped her chair to reach for the milk from the fridge. The liquid turned grey.
‘Rob’s taken Kitty.’
Marian jerked her head and spilt her tea. ‘Bastard! When?’
I told her what little there was while she dabbed at the table with a tissue, and rattled her bracelets in righteous fury.
It was odd, she pointed out, because Emily lived above her shop and had always maintained there was no room for children or pets. It could only mean one thing.
Marian fell silent and we sipped our tea together for the second time that day. She was a good friend and I felt grateful for her companionship. She poured her second cup before she broached the big one.
‘How’s Janey going to take it?’
I picked up my cup and took it to the sink under the window and turned the tap. Outside, the garden was bright with dogwoods, sibirica and flaviramea, my favourite winter shrubs, and under the window I noticed the spidery flowers of witch hazel emerging from leafless branches.
‘Claire?’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Janey …’ still taking in the colours of the garden and deciding I should sweep the leaves from under the liquidamber before they killed the grass.

Janey didn’t take it well. As predicted. Marian had said she could go round to theirs if it all got too awful. Or I could, come to that. But in the end Janey went to Emily’s to be with Rob. And Kitty.
As I knew she would.

You can expect some attitude from the most balanced of children in their teenage years, but Janey had directed venomous sparks towards me almost from birth. We had duelled and argued throughout her childhood. But Kitty saved us. She was Rob’s dog but I walked her, gaining solace from the countryside. Janey used her for comfort. Self-soothing, the therapist had labelled the hugging and stroking that transformed Janey from screaming brilliant-eyed to sullen silence. We fought and shouted as she approached puberty and then, all at once, as if were both simultaneously exhausted, we had fallen silent. A stand-off at fourteen.
I washed her PE kit and turned on the side light in her bedroom, so it looked welcoming, and arranged some witch hazel in a bud vase and placed it where the scent would intensify in the heat from the lamp.
Then, at half eight, I drove across town to collect her.

Rob answered the door. He stood with the light from Emily’s hall making a halo of his hair. ‘Is she ready?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Really, I am.’ Kitty appeared between his legs, but he blocked her way. I turned to walk back down the steps then stopped.
‘Taking Kitty was low,’ I said. He looked at his dog then down at his shoes. ‘But raiding my cupboards for the dog food... Can’t you afford your own?’ It was ridiculous, I knew, to worry about dog food that I wouldn’t need, but it rankled and I felt invaded. I shook my head. ‘Not worthy of you, Rob.’
His head rose sharply and I thought I caught an unexpected expression of surprise in his eyes but I was already walking away from him. Why should he be surprised? He knew me well enough. Back in the street I saw his car parked behind Emily’s and noticed the criss-crossed dog grill behind the back seat illuminated like tartan in the street lights.
At home I switched off Janey’s side light and took the witch hazel into my room. The perfume was sweet and heady as I drifted off to sleep.

I woke with the telephone.
‘Have you made your morning cuppa and looked at your leaves?’ It was Marian.
‘No. My alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.’
‘Oh.’ She sounded contrite. ‘I thought Thursday was one of your days at the surgery.’
‘No. Tuesdays and Fridays.’ I sat up and peered at the clock. ‘God sake’s, Marian, it’s only seven-fifteen.’
‘Yes, I know. But I thought you’d be awake for Janey.’
‘She’s not here. She’s with her precious Kitty,’ I said before Marian could ask. ‘and Rob. And Emily.’
‘Bummer!’
‘Isn’t it.’

Without Kitty to walk and no work to go to I decided to tackle the garden. Janey would come back after school to collect her things. Most of her school books were still in her room, I’d checked. We could talk then.
Every year I marvelled at the colour range of the liquidamber. L. styraciflua or sweet gum was a maple to me for years before I knew any better, but Marian put me right. Look how the leaves grow alternately up the branch, she told me. A maple has leaves that grow opposite each other and, in any case, she continued dismissively, a maple can never do colours like that.
I worked all day. Heaps of leaves, lemon yellow, gold, fire-red and aubergine grew around the garden. Dead fuchsia branches formed another mound. Hollow stems of dahlias, Michaelmas daisies, rudbekia yet another. I barrowed them all to the end of the kitchen garden, leaving snail trails on the grass, and built a bonfire.
As the misty light drained away the birds fell silent and a dog yelped once in the street. The leaves took hold and smoke turned to flames. I felt preternaturally calm. I stared into the heart of the fire and directed my energy.

First there were dancers. Legs bent in exaggerated angles flickered between the sticks, sending smuts and cinders reaching into the air. I saw the man next, shimmering in the heat, and then the dog trotting beside him. Kitty made a wary curve around the bonfire and, reaching me, leaned against my leg. Rob stood watching through the flames. The outline of his body was hazy and insubstantial but he was real enough. Janey moved out of his shadow, her hair sparkling Titian in the firelight, as they moved to my side of the fire.
I took Janey’s hand in mine and she left it there.
‘It wasn’t you, was it?’ I said to Rob. ‘Who took Kitty?’
‘No.’
‘I should have realised when I saw Emily driving your car.’
We gazed at the dancers. They had turned from orange to crimson now and weren’t dancing quite so high.
‘Are you coming back?’ I said.
Janey squeezed my fingers and I moved closer, folded my hand around hers, pulled her warm hand deep into my pocket and stood as we had when she was little.
‘No.’ he said again. ‘But Kitty should stay here,’ and the lurcher, hearing her name, waved her tail. Rob bent to kiss Janey, ‘Bye, Brainy. See you Saturday,’ cupped Kitty’s jaw with his hand and then walked away.

‘I knew you’d be hooked,’ Marian said when she came to check on me the next day. She flicked the pages of Amber’s book until she came to the section on Symbols and their Meanings.
‘Janey found it in the pocket of my coat,’ I said, making a pot of Darjeeling from the Sanjukta Vikas Co-operative. ‘And I’m still waiting for the friend to seek my help.’
‘Oh, the dog in your tea leaves.’ She laughed. ‘Not so much a dog as a wolf, I thought. All those slathering jaws and wild eyes.’
I swirled hot water around the bowl and tipped it back into the kettle and thought about what she had said. ‘Go on, then. What’s Amber say for a wolf?’
Marian turned the pages and paused to push Kitty’s head off her lap. ‘A wolf symbolises a warning of jealous intrigues,’ she said.
I measured two spoonfuls of the grey-green leaves and poured boiling water into the pot, replaced the lid and positioned the teapot, three bone china cups and saucers onto a beech-wood tray. Then I moved the handles so they all faced the same way.
‘I want you to drink your tea black,’ I said. ‘I’m not having you drown this in milk.’
‘All right then, Bossy-boots,’ said Marian, ‘But then you’re not to use a strainer.’
‘I hadn’t planned to,’ I said, pouring one for Janey and taking it upstairs to her room.

....................................................END........................................................