What She Said at the Tea Urn, and Why Wendy Was at Table One

“Wendy’s had her results,” Sandra said.

She said it to the doorframe rather than to Priya, in the flat, brisk voice of a woman getting something out before she can be stopped.

“Thursday. She rang me Thursday night, about nine. She’s not telling anybody until after the summer because of her daughter’s exams, and she made me swear, and I’ve sworn, so you’re not to say anything.”

“Sandra—”

“She’s been my neighbour thirty-one years,” Sandra said. “She sat in my kitchen the week Dan’s father died and she did not say one single useful thing, she just came in every day at four and put the kettle on, for five months. Five months, Priya.”

Priya said nothing at all.

“So when she said she’d come today, I thought: right. She’s not sitting by the kitchen door with the sound man.”

---

There is a version of this story, Priya knows, where that is the end of it. Where the older woman produces a reason, and the younger woman is ashamed of herself, and the cards go back the way Sandra had them, and everybody learns something.

That is not what happened, and Priya has thought a great deal about why.

Because standing in that doorway with her hand still half out, what she felt first was not shame. It was something much more complicated and much less flattering, which was: you have done it again.

Sandra had not told her about Wendy on Thursday night. Sandra had not told her on Friday. Sandra had taken a real thing — a proper, serious, thirty-one-years-of-kettles thing — and instead of saying it out loud to the two people organising the day, she had gone into a building at half past five in the morning with a key she should not have had and moved eighty cards.

“Why didn’t you ring me?” Priya said.

“I’ve told you. She made me swear.”

“You could have said: there’s a reason, I can’t tell you what it is, please put Wendy on table one.” Priya’s voice had gone, finally, slightly unsteady. “I’d have said yes. Sandra. I’d have said yes in about four seconds and I’d never have asked why.”

Sandra stood in the doorway with her hand in her bag.

“Would you?” she said.

And that, Priya thinks, is the actual conversation. Not the cards. Not the key. That one word, from a woman who had decided, somewhere over thirty years, that asking did not work and doing did.

“Yes,” said Priya. “Try me next time and find out.”

---

Sandra took her hand out of the bag.

The key was on a ring with a bit of red wool through it. She put it into Priya’s palm and closed Priya’s fingers over it with both her hands, briskly, the way you hand something to a child who is about to run off with it.

“It’s the Scout hut one as well,” she said. “Same key. You’ll have to tell Maureen.”

“Thank you.”

“I’d have moved them back,” Sandra said. “If you’d rung me this morning. You know that.”

“I know,” said Priya. “But I’d have had to ring you.”

---

The christening was fine.

Aanya screamed at the font, which four separate people said was lucky, and then slept through the entire meal, which the same four people said was a miracle. The godparents sat at table one. Priya’s mother sat next to them and talked to the vicar for forty minutes about cricket, and the vicar, who did not follow cricket, was heroic.

Wendy sat at table one, between Ruth and Femi, and laughed a great deal, and at one point Priya looked over and found Wendy already looking at her, and they did a small nod at each other across the room that Priya has never mentioned to anybody.

Sandra sat at table two and was, by common agreement, the life of it.

---

At about four, when the room was half cleared and the sound man was winding his cables, she came and stood next to Priya at the trestle with the tea urn on it. They watched Dan try to fold a tablecloth.

“He can’t do that,” Sandra said.

“No.”

“He gets that from his father.”

They stood for a bit. The urn made its noise.

“The neighbour thing was too much,” Sandra said, to the urn rather than to Priya. “Not Wendy. Wendy was right. Wendy’s still right. I mean the other two, and the flower rota woman, and moving your mum by the kitchen.” She adjusted a cup that did not need adjusting. “That was too much. I knew it at the time. I did it anyway because I was already doing it.”

“It was too much,” said Priya.

“Right.” Sandra nodded once, briskly, as though a file had been closed. “Is there any of that cake left, or has Wendy had it?”