Chapter Eight

In Which We Return to The Business at Hand, Beginning with The Library and Ending with Tea at Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy


Unlike the mudroom, in which the reader so recently spent a great deal of time and thought and allowed his or her veins and pores to circulate so very freely, the Reading Room of the Miss Havering’s Bog Lending Library was as quiet as the inside of a stump. Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum had long since forgotten the purpose of their expedition into the western most stacks. They waited patiently for a further hour and a quarter, give or take a few minutes, just in case Misther Inspiration might choose to revisit them and perhaps bring with it a hamper of strawberries and chocolate dip. But waiting in such a determined fashion was exhausting, and before they knew it the three friends had curled up in a saggy brown leather chair reeking of childhood and spilt cocoa, and were sound asleep.

Approximately two hours later (or precisely two hours plus a half hour if one was to believe the bad-tempered, aggressively polished short case clock who spent his days doing nothing much of anything on the fat, insanely polished and roundish card table – the one on which The Librarian kept her ear trumpet), a further visit from Misther Inspiration had yet to transpire. Severe pangs of hunger had, however, politely demanded their attention, and although they were not what the three friends had been hoping for, they were more than thankful that Missus Hunger Pang’s Little Bag of Stomach Gnawings was mannerly enough not to have caused a major disturbance. For to disturb The Librarian was never wise, and if Missus Hunger Pangs was not as welcome as Misther Inspiration, a visit was a visit, and never to be taken for granted. And as Mr. Peveral Murkin pointed out, had it not been for her, they might have spent the afternoon completely on their own and slept through the following Tuesday. As it was, the three of them took it as an omen (“always do what first springs to mind and pours easier than cream”), and immediately went out of The Library and round the corner (two corners, actually, as it was round the side of The Lending Library and a few steps up a side street, officially posted as The Side Street to the Left, Round the Corner from the Lending Library). This naturally which made for quite a long sign, and one which had been known to put quite a few older people to sleep. Hence the comfortable chairs and ottomans placed under the lamppost.

The destination of Mr. Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum was, of course, the only possible destination (much like “all roads lead to Rome”), in other words, Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy (‘Fresh Scones out of the oven and into your mouths at three o’clock sharp, Battenburg Cake every other Wednesday’). Mr. Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum ordered fish paste sandwiches and watercress soup and sausage rolls and pheasant pies and medlar jam tarts and chestnut pavlovas and an enormous pot of best Darjeeling (enough for twelve cups each, it being an unseasonably warm and sticky day). It was, you see, the easiest of all things to do, especially as the tea came in a silver pot, reminiscent of days gone by, and the cups, though they tended to leak if one looked at them too carefully, were of exquisite bone china with all the right crests and stamps and signatures on their bottoms. ‘Provenance’ it was called, and it gave the cups and plates a suitably toffish lineage, all of which prompted Mrs. Throttle - (thwarted in love as a gel and never married, besides rumour to the contrary and the title she had appended to her name for its raffish charm. “Mark you,” her father had opined on the day she was born, “she’ll live and die an old maid and be none of the wiser for it”) - to put on airs and graces, and generally talk through her nose in a manner that hinted of a distant French extraction and, possibly, a blend of broken hopes and catarrh. Her cream teas were, however, uncompromisingly exemplary, and were definitely worth the extra effort it took to sit in one of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s low chairs, directly under her dripping nose, as she recited the day’s menu.

With the first insertion of succulent nutriment into their mouths (sandwich for Mr. Peveral Murkin, pie for Ermentrude Pinkley, pavlova for daff Maud Bunkum), all remaining concerns regarding Owld Misther Bucket and Olivia Spider and the plight of Tiny, Rumpus Libbedy, vanished from their minds. In fact, if a passing personage had been rude enough to ask them at that moment if they recalled ever meeting the Spider family, or if they had had them to Sunday High Tea a week ago Thursday last, he might have been met by uncomprehending stares and at least two unfortunate replies.

As it was, Mr. Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum ordered double portions of everything, plus fourteen Welsh Rabbits, and remarked to each other that life really wasn’t so very bad, “if only it didn’t rain quite so often and why did the sun insist on being so very hot?”