"Sylvester darling, go warm up the pancake leftover from this morning and bring it along with my tea things." she said to Sylvester in a motherly tone, completely different from what she had used when speaking to me.
Slyvester nodded and turned to leave while the old man continued watching his TV, completely ignoring us. I turned to her, eager to hear what she was going to say.
"You said my Dad gave you money? Why? What work did you do for us?"
"Calm down young lady. Let the tea arrive then we'll talk." She chuckled and also started watching the dang news too. Seems like every tea loving lady can only gossip properly when they are drinking tea and not before. Mum and her friends never engage in serious gossip until the tea arrives too.
With no choice , I snorted secretly, shifted in my seat and tried to relax, willing Sylvester to hurry up with the tea things in my mind.
"Why are you not in school like everyone else?" She suddenly asked after a little silence.
" I am resuming soon " was all I said.
" I was surprised when your retirement from modeling was announced. I heard you hated the job. Helen must be very disappointed." she continued."
I didn't feel like I was expected to answer so I just rolled my eyes when she spoke about Mum. Of course she was disappointed but with Dad rooting for me back then, there was nothing she could do about it and Sylvester's grannie doesn't have to know about it. She asked some other questions about the farm which I also answered vergely because I know nothing about them.
Soon Slyvester came in bearing a large breakable tray with tea things, a heap of pancakes and a large jar of dandelion syrup. This jar was 3 times bigger than the one he gave me some weeks ago.
He placed the tray on the central table and then started serving the tea and pancakes. There were two sauces where he placed two pieces of pancakes each and added a generous amount of syrup. After that, he placed a fork each beside the pancakes and carried them over to our seat where there was a side stool on my side of the seat. He placed the two sauces of pancakes on the stool then moved the stool from my side to the middle of the seat, placing it between myself and his grannie.
The moment Sylvester got in-between us, grannie grabbed a pancake from the scale next to her and took a big bite. She started munching on it while focused on the TV
Slyvester went back to the central table where he brought out tiny pouches with strings pulling the mouths together. The pouches were either white or brown and I had no idea they contained grounded tea leaves until Sylvester placed one each in a white,large ceramic tea cup and poured hot water on them from the flask on the tea tray. Instantly, the scent of mints filled the air but surprisingly, the water slowly turned darker, meaning that the tea wasn't made of mints alone. I gave grannie a questioning look and she smiled at me, took a sip of her tea and ate more of her pancake then signed satisfactorily.
"What are we drinking?" I asked as I picked up my cup and took it near my nose to sniff out whatever the black stuff was. "Black seed and mints" replied Sylvester. I nodded and then took a sip. "Where is the sweet taste coming from?" I asked with sparkling eyes. Grannie smirked and adjusted herself in the seat. "That is my secret ingredient. Sylvester is not allowed to say." Then it hit me and I gasped with embarrassment. As a tea maker, it was wrong of me to ask for trade secrets. Thank goodness she didn't take it seriously. "Oh, sorry." I muttered as I savored the mildly sweet dark tea in silence. I really liked the sweet taste and minty scent swirling around me. This was the first time I would actually like a cup of tea and drink it without screwing up my face. I decided right there to ask Slyvester to steal some for me later.
I was so focused on sipping the tea that I completely forgot about the pancakes. I sipped off almost half of the cup before remembering the reason I was drinking tea with grannie. I placed the cup down and turned to her eagerly. "I have drank your tea and I must say, it's quite an interesting one. Thank you for sharing it with me grannie." She beamed and patted me on the back. "Good good good. Such a decent girl. Nothing like her mother." I wanted to tell her to stop talking about my mother in such a disrespectful tone but I dared not. What if she gets offended and refuses to tell me what I wanted to know? I stomached my grievance and waited for her to continue. "You should listen too." She turned to Sylvester who had taken a seat close to grandpa and was watching the news with him. Sylvester had just taken a big chunk off his piece of pancake when grannie addressed him so all he could do was nod his head while still focused on the news.
"Your fathers were friends." She started. I don't know why I was shocked to hear that but I was. "They were?" I asked sitting up in my chair. "Humm." Grannie nodded and took a sip from her tea cup. Instantly, pictures of our family friends who had consistently attended our parties and gatherings raced through my mind but I couldn't come up with a face that could belong to Slyvester's Dad. I have a photographic memory and I have seen his pictures several times. So it wasn't that I couldn't remember him, he was simply not in any of those parties. "If they were, why don't you get invited to our parties?" I asked in disbelief. We have two major parties in the house every year. One is the Christmas party and the other is the harvest party that holds in the middle of the year. Then there were the various birthday parties. "Ain't your mother holding a retirement party for your uncle Ron in a few days?"
"Yes. She is…" I felt pricked by her tone. There was a hint of mockery in it. Why? Does she know something she wasn't supposed to know?
"...We have always been invited to your parties. We just stopped attending because we don't belong to that circle again." She continued. "What do you mean? What circle?" I asked.
"We used to be rich too. As rich as your folks but some bad investments followed by two years of constant bad harvest saw our money go down the drain." The old man suddenly chipped in. He sounded angry, sad and resigned. He signed and then turned to face me. "When it first started, your father's parents tried to help out but nothing worked. It took years to find out that one of our close friends was cooperating with our foreign investors to steal our Business over a long period of time. To save the family, we sold the business to the backstabber but it was bought at a give away price. To help out, your father gave my son a job at one of his offices in California but he got in a fatal car accident some years later. After his funeral, your father gave us some money and we used part of it to build this house. He wanted to give more but I kept rejecting him until he gave up."
The long talk seemed to have gotten grandpa winded up because he was breathing hard. He heaved and relaxed into his chair then closed his eyes. To say I was shocked was an understatement. There was so much I didn't know about the present, talk more of the past. The urge to know more suddenly fell on me. Especially about my mum and dad. I mean, if they knew so much about my dad, they must know something about his wife too. Whatever they knew, I wanted to know too. I emptied my teacup into my mouth at a go and turned to grandpa who still had his eyes closed.
"What about mum? Where was she when this was going on? " I asked, trying to figure out how to lead him to the things I wanted to know. "Was she married to dad during that time or was she dating someone else?" I asked with my heart in my mouth.
Both grannies looked at each other warily. I caught the knowing look in their eyes before grandpa refocused on the TV and grandma refilled her teacup. There was something there and I would be damned if I let this opportunity pass.
"You mum was already married to your dad and heavy with child. Your uncle Ron and your parents got married in the same year with just two months apart. Your uncle Ron's wife was your mum 's best friend and she died at childbirth years later." Grannie supplied.
"Did you know why uncle Ron moved to our farm?"
Grannie's hand shook and her tea spilled, making her hiss in a low tone.
I hurriedly used the napkin Slyvester had placed on the shared stool to help her dab at her hand. Encouraged by her unease, I went all out. "Did you know that Uncle Ron and Mum were cheating on my Dad?"
"What?!" Sylvester snapped. The two grannies just looked at each other and grandpa shook his head, signaling grandma not to say more.