Tea Time & Fairy Stories
Disclaimer: As it is all the fashion to have these posted just above each and every writer's story, I will conform and have one too. I do not own J.M. Barrie or anyone from the movie or real life...only the unfamiliar characters I have created. Any resemblance is purely coincidental....Please, enjoy.
P.S. Yes I revised this story...and all reviews were cancelled, but my responses to them are still on the next chapter! I'm so sorry for the change, but my computer is evil.
"Oh, Good God, I said carrots, brussels, and spuds! You only bought carrots!" The maid put her oily and rather sore
hands into the crickety straw basket. She dug out the ingredients of the large basket, and a frown gradually twisted onto her fat, glistening forehead.
"I know, I'm so sorry, mam." Said another voice, rather unlike the former—this one was very monotone and, deep within it's soulless farce, was the strongest, most putrid terror and fear. "I'm sorry."
"Oh…" The voice was strained and quite breathless, "You're no use, are you?"
There was a pause, as the other maid tried to find the correct answer to this particularly unkind comment—"No, mam."
Another maid, somewhere off in the corner of the hot kitchen, said. "Not like we don' hav maids and cooks up the earhole in this 'ouse! What's the 'use of 'nother?"
"I gave you a list," Said the first and fattest maid, "I gave you a list, Miss Leary! See, you're holding it—it says carrots, brussels, and spuds…can't you read, my dear?"
There was another pause, as Miss Leary tried to think, "A little, mum."
"A little! Never mind, it doesn't matter." The maid took the basket from Miss Leary, and placed it on the sliced wooden table, "Though, I don't know what I'll do for dinner, my dear! Mr. Barrie does love his brussels so…"
Miss Leary merely swallowed her nervous spit down in a giant gulp, and she slunk off clear to the other side of the room, like a frightened kitten. She was a shy, wide-eyed, skittish sort—who never said a word more than was necessary. She was a few weeks fresh migrating from Kildare, Ireland, and she had made no attempt, thusfar, to make any spectacle of herself. Indeed, many a person (including Jack and George) thought that she held the power to make herself as invisible as a pane of glass.
Well, now—do you see that graying, wiry maple stick of a woman, up yonder by the black stove? The one who is bent over the cooking pan like one of Macbeth's witches stirring a bubbling, foamy orange and yellow liquid, gingerly shaking in the spices (with almost awesome care), and rolling her beady blue eyes all over the kitchen? Yes? Well good, because that maid's name is Mrs. Roberta Finch. She is a cook and, by the suspicions of many a child, is also an old witch—who Mr. Barrie caught while up in the North of Manchester.
And do you see the plump one? The maid as fat as an overstuffed Christmas goose (and just as greasy as one too)? That one is Emily Bailey, as calm-tempered as a July wind one moment and as ferocious as a tiger the next. But, quite luckily for Miss Leary, Mrs. Bailey had grown a certain, distant fondness for new maids, and she was ready to dismiss any mistake a beginner might make.
Mrs. Finch snarled like a dog, as she walked her way past young Miss Leary, "Miss Leary's not for the kitchen, Em… You 'ave to read to be in the kitchen." She spun around, her brown-silver hair slightly coming off form its bun, "We already 'hav a nanny, a cook, an' a maid—I don' see a reason to get 'nother."
"Mr. Barrie chooses who he needs to choose for staff, Mrs. Finch." Said Mrs. Bailey, as she patiently dumped out the contents of the straw bag.
"You 'onestly think 'e's got anythink to do with this? Pftt!" Mrs. Finch grumbled, as she returned to her hot cauldron, "It's all tha' woman's fault—Mrs. du Maurier—or whatever she's called…Coming inside this 'ouse, like she owns it! God, sometimes I wish she'd died, not 'er daughter!"
"Really, Roberta, that's not very nice…" Mrs. Bailey huffed, as she did not want to be on Mrs. Du Maurier's bad list of people—
But, Roberta Finch didn't care, "An' what does nice 'ave to do with any of this, Em? Mister Barrie doesn't know wha's 'itting 'im! Firs'—'e starts goin' with 'nother family, then 'is wife leaves him for tha'…Mr. Cannan—an' now we've got five children scurrying 'bout the place!"
"Five children? There are only four, my dear!" Mrs. Bailey said, feeling as if she were in an illiterate soup of people.
"I'm includin' Mister Barrie, Em…"
"Of course." Said Mrs. Bailey, as she got out a copper coin pan, "Well, let us not be discontent, dear. I find life much more livable, actually. Mr. Barrie has made money since his play, and I don't complain when more help is given to us. The children aren't that horrible, as I have seen worse, and their nanny takes care of them. And as for Mrs. du Maurier—she's not as bad as all that…"
Mrs. Finch grumbled, hissed, and growled her way back to her stirring, and she buried her pointy face in the cooking pot, very discontentedly. Meanwhile, Miss Leary slowly crept her way up to big Mrs. Bailey, gently came by her side, and, in an almost ghostly sort of way, said—
"Is there anythin' I can do, mum?" Miss Leary said, meekly.
Mrs. Bailey looked at her for a moment, with a slightly blank expression—but soon that went away, and the comfy-sized woman nodded her many-chinned, pink face and smiled, rather pleasantly to young Miss Leary. The woman trotted over to a steaming kettle, turned off the blueberry blue fire, and poured tea into a porcelain teapot.
Mrs. Bailey pointed her sausage-like fingers to the tray, and said, "If you could please take this up to Mr. Barrie, he's in one of his moods…and do please come back for further work, I have plenty for you to do, Miss Leary."
Young Miss Leary picked up the tray and nimbly left the kitchen, and it wasn't until she had properly reached the stairs that she had started to wonder what Mrs. Bailey meant by "he's in one of his moods". She suppressed a small shudder as she quietly climbed the carpeted staircase—She had only seen a glance of Mr. Barrie, when she was being interviewed for the job of household maid, and mostly Mrs. du Maurier had done the talking and interviewing. Mr. Barrie didn't seem much interested in anything except the boys, Jack, George, Micheal, and Peter—all of whom, Miss Leary had seen spying on her during the evening and calling her things like "The captive" and "The prisoner". This confused her very much, but she found that they were harmless.
But besides those rare glimpses of the family, she was mostly concerned on scrubbing things, cooking things, trying to read Mrs. Bailey's lists, and collecting her salary at the end of the week.
Before much more came to her attention, she was at the top of the staircase, and just outside Mr. Barrie's large, dark brown, door—a very forbidding looking door, she had always thought—but, bravely she put the tray on the tiny table next to the man's door, and knocked, rather briskly, on the wooden masterpiece.
"Evening tea, Mr. Barrie," She said, unsure of what his temper might be.
A muffled call came from within the door, and in a thickly voiced Scottish dialect, James Matthew Barrie said: "Come in!"
And, so, Miss Leary did just that.