Saturday, January 10, 2015

Afternoon Tea Party of Little Miss Anthony

Maybe because Rose Mary, her beloved Mother, was half-English, was that how her appetite and habit ran also in Anthony's vein.

Anthony was exquisitely a big fan of teas and every occassion involving it: she loved to invite her friends and colleagues when she grew up to afternoon tea parties held before her green house, or held her little birthday parties with tea-themes. By tea themes means that as much as possible should every element of the party contained tea: she will dress herself with rose-tea fragrance, and slip some tea leaves at the back of her ear, and so did her friends in her social group in high school: Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte, and later on, Miranda(familiar with their names? Sure, they're typical American names). The served dish would be tea-flavoured cake, black tea cookies, and the cammomile tea would be the girls' favourite choice of beverage. Sometimes they would also made tea-flavored consomme from the recipe Dave, Anthony's brother of whom the other four really idolized-especially Charlotte, who became madly in love with him since the first time they met(she said) gave them. The scheme with consomme usually marked a pyjamas party of the five.

Samantha had Danish and Spanish blood, Charlotte and Miranda were Germans, and Carrie was half Irish and French. But they fully grown as American teenagers, and came from rich white collar families. They were really intrigued by how Anthony and her royal half Russian and English blood continued their daily noble tradition, starting from their poise, calm manner to their yules and debutes.

But little that they knew about Anthony's small fragment of childhood, one that maybe Anthony herself nearly forgotten now.

It involved her tea- fanatism as a child, when she was about three or four, playing afternoon tea party with her favourite toys: Teddy the Bear, Mrs. Norris, Goldstein, and Bloomsburry, the maid-dolls which she portrayed to have noble bloods. (So funny that each of them might be Ann's resemblance of her ideal friends, and maybe that was why in her more grown up lives she tended to choose befriend four people)

And magically, the toys spoke back to her.

That was why she always loved to spend her afternoon alone just by the four of them in the backyard (that time her family made her live in the villa in Nantucket). The maids were busy cleaning the house and somehow felt naturally thankful that Ann wasn't being nosy as the other four-years child might be, so at least for two hours every day Anthony would be left alone playing by her dolls there.

The habit was observed heavily by some child kidnapper who wanted to kidnap her to extort her father's fortune.

One day, Julian, the name of the kidnapper, who accidentally, always operated alone, sneaked down the backyard and arrived behind little Anthony who were unsuspicious of his presence. She merely turned her head a little to see who was coming, and offered him to join her playing tea.

Yes, Sir, come play with us...

At the time the dolls were also inviting him, that was when the actually- superstitious Julian ran for his life. For God sake! The dolls are talking!

As she grew up, Anthony eventually forgot to play with her toys. They were now stored, although properly, in the warehouse.

But sometimes some childhood memory about the occassion echoed at the back of her head. Sometimes she felt lonely, and yet she knew that maybe she needed to see her old friends-the dolls- to kill the feeling.


Anyway, to totally dismiss a hospitality with something we were once close to, was rather not a good thing.

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