Drinking tea with my dad

Friday Fragment #47

‘Say when.’ Backlit by the wire-mesh window of the door, Dad tips the teapot and a stream of amber and rust and tan and treacle liquid funnels into the mug. ‘Brown’, as I knew it then, at an age before we find a language that gradually makes our perfectly small worlds larger and largely imperfect. The pour, colour and wondrous smell are mesmeric, the spout thin, the stream slow. Almost three-quarters full. ‘When!’ The pot returns to the table. What table? I can’t recall a table there, in that kitchen. His words, that window, yes, the metal teapot, patina of brown on the inside, the pour, that light – that light – through the liquid. But not the table. The wall beside, several feet of bitten, crumbling bare plaster, where Pete and I used to draw with chalks: blue, pink, red, yellow, green, purple and white to a pack (what other lexical hue, shade or nuance could possibly be required?). A table; there must have been a table, surely? No matter. I take the sugar to the mug. A bag of sugar? Silver Spoon, yes, but spooned straight from the bag or a caddy? I can’t recall. But the sugar, yes, lifting out of bag or tin or pot or bowl; one, two, three, four spoons into the mug and stirring. To the fridge, behind me, on the other side of the door that led through to the sitting room (never the lounge – a word unfamiliar to us then – but the sitting room). A bottle of UHT milk, left by the milkman that morning, never pasteurised; a trauma of cream and of the schoolteacher-supervised imbibing of hostile warmth and sourness, where being released into the playground was reward only for those who had drained their mid-morning bottle in full. The milk then, carefully: too much milk will dilute the flavour, which should be strong and sweet. Was Dad still there? I see only a hand and an arm beneath a vest sleeve, psoriatic, a liver spot or two, a shaking hand, returning the pot to a table I don’t remember. A table? A pantry, a mop, a slab of green soap, a shaving brush, a spoke missing its dial on the the front of the gas hob. But not the table. But not Dad. Where is the rest of him? Only that outreached arm to pour tea? What were his other words? There is only one place I saw him fully, a single place where I see him now: always on the sofa, under blanket and sheet, laid out, thin, at rest (don’t disturb your father, your father is sleeping), engaging only occasionally, orange cup, that filthy orange cup, next to the sofa, beside him on the floor. He loved his tea. Three sons would love tea too. I have faithfully held onto this much of him, I’m sure, this scene, this picture, this moment. He poured the tea. A sugar for the pot along with the tea leaves, several more into the mug. Milk back to the fridge. Where next with this memory? What has been lopped from before or after? Can a memory of three words, four sugars and a pour of tea against the light – something so small – exist and yet refuse to yield anything adjacent? How is it possible that I can’t remember the table? Chalk dust on the edge of the skirting beneath that plaster wall, and on the terracotta tiles below. We rested the chalks somewhere – where? A sill, a shelf, a cavity or a crevice, a spur or jut of plaster, brick or wood? That light, though, that colour and that light. And that sweetness and earthiness and flora of smell and taste. That simple gift to all the senses. That cling to someone, to some part of someone, some fragment in the time and space and recall of someone, some fragment among the thousands; specks of coloured chalk dust underneath that bare plastered wall.

‘Friday Fragment’ is an additional weekly instalment to my A Thousand Fragments monthly newsletter. (For those who have been kind enough to support my writing with a donation or paid subscription, I have paused that process until mid-June in lieu of several posts still to be published.)