The Other Tea

“In under four minutes,” said Tavi, “a letter crossed the whole of the Glowmarket. Through a crowd. Past a cart. Over a dog. Into the right hands, with seconds to spare.” Tavi sat back. “I know, because I carried it.”

This was at the long table in the Last Cup, after supper, when the lamps in the square had gone from gold to blue. Two travelers were listening, a woman and her grown son who had come up the east road that afternoon with a barrow of seed potatoes. They had not been in the Glowmarket that morning. Tavi had been waiting all day for somebody who hadn’t been in the Glowmarket that morning.

The trouble with telling a story at Mora’s table is that the people in it are usually sitting there too. Tonight, two of them were.

Mora sat at the end with the sugar bowl in front of her and a fork in her hand, which is how she spends the last half hour of every evening. The sugar bowl at the Last Cup takes cards. A card left beside it goes down into the sugar before long, as if the sugar went deeper than the bowl does. Mora fishes them out at closing and keeps them in a pile by the till for whoever comes asking. The pile is always a little gritty.

And by the window, with his coat buttoned and his hat on his knee, sat Mr. Hazelby. Mr. Hazelby checks the scales in the Glowmarket every morning, and has never in his life let a weight go by unchecked. He did not usually come in of an evening. He had come tonight, he said, to see that the times were given correctly.

“It began at dawn,” said Tavi. “With a sealed commission. Entrusted to a professional.”

“Half past seven,” said Mr. Hazelby. “The bells had finished. It was a note, folded in four. I gave it to you at the bread stall.”

“At the bread stall,” said Tavi, “where a professional was—”

“Buying a bun,” said Mr. Hazelby.

“Where a professional was buying a bun.” Tavi nodded to the travelers. “I had a better word than bun. But he was there.”

That is the thing about Tavi, and the reason the whole Glowmarket is fond of Tavi. The stories go up like kites. But the moment anybody tugs on the string, down they come, and Tavi never seems to mind the landing.

Mr. Hazelby had asked whether Tavi would be passing the Last Cup that morning. Tavi’s counter is across the square from Mora’s door, so Tavi said, quite truthfully, “I am always passing the Last Cup.”

“Before noon,” Mr. Hazelby had said. “Before I come in. And no fuss.”

“What was in it?” said the son.

“Sealed,” said Tavi. “Couldn’t possibly say.”

“It was folded,” said Mr. Hazelby. “Not sealed.”

“I didn’t read it,” said Tavi, “is what I’m saying.”

Mora looked up from the sugar. “No,” she said. “You didn’t. It would have been all round the market by eleven.”

Now, a letter in a pocket can fall out, and a letter on a counter can blow away. Tavi wanted this one safe. So Tavi folded it twice more, until it was exactly the size of a card, and slid it in behind the wrapper of a Hollow pack. It was the pack with the best wrapper. Tavi put it right at the back of the counter, where nobody would ask for it. Tavi would carry it over once the Last Cup’s morning crowd had gone, because Mr. Hazelby had said no fuss.

“And this,” Tavi told the travelers, “is where it gets dangerous.”

“It doesn’t,” said Mora, still fishing.

At a quarter to eleven, a girl called Dilly Ashdown, who was about seven, came to Tavi’s counter with her mother and her stardust. The stardust was in a twist of paper. She had been saving it since the spring. She put the paper down very carefully and said, “Which one is your best?”

“Now,” said Tavi to the travelers. “What would anybody have done?”

“Sold her the best one,” said the son.

“I sold her the best one,” said Tavi. “It had the best wrapper.” Tavi let that sit. “It was at the very back of the counter.”

The woman with the potatoes put a hand over her mouth.

What came next, in Tavi’s telling, was a desperate chase. It ran the whole length of the Glowmarket. There was a cart in it, piled high with glass. There was a dog in it, a big one. And at the corner by Linnet’s stall, Tavi went up and over the teal awning and came down on the far side.

“Lightly,” said Tavi.

“There was no chase,” said Mora. She had found a Sunbeam Squire and was knocking the sugar off it against the table. “It was one small girl, walking slowly. Nobody went over anything. Nobody fell.”

“There was a cart.”

“Hobb’s cart was outside Brindle’s, unloading. It wasn’t going anywhere.”

“There was a dog.”

“Mrs. Alder’s dog was asleep under Linnet’s awning,” said Mora. “You stepped over it.”

“I stepped over it,” Tavi told the travelers, “very quickly.”

Mora told the next part, because she had watched it from her door with a tray in her hands. Dilly Ashdown did not run. She walked the length of the Glowmarket the way anybody walks with the first pack they have ever bought: slowly, holding it in both hands, stopping to show it to people. She showed it to Linnet. She showed it to the man with the hot chestnuts. She showed it to Mrs. Alder’s dog, who did not wake up. And a stall’s length behind her the whole way, in an apron, came Tavi.

“Why didn’t you just ask for it back?” said the son.

Tavi looked at the table.

“Because then she’d have had to open it in the street,” said Mora. “And nobody opens their first pack in the street. You open it sitting down. Tavi was going to wait till they sat down and ask her mother nicely.”

“I was being discreet,” said Tavi.

“You were strolling after a seven-year-old with your hands behind your back,” said Mora. “Half the market came out to watch.”

Dilly and her mother came into the Last Cup. Her mother went to the counter for a cup of milk. Dilly sat down by the window, right beside the sugar bowl, and opened her pack, and laid out what was inside one at a time. There were five cards with pictures on them. And there was one card with no picture at all, only joined-up writing, which Dilly could not read yet. She put that one down by the sugar bowl to come back to.

By the time Tavi came through the door, it was gone.

Tavi leaned in toward the travelers. “Gone,” said Tavi, “into the vault.”

The travelers leaned in too.

Mora tipped the sugar bowl toward them, so that they could see inside.

“The vault,” said Tavi.

While everybody was looking into the bowl, the Sunbeam Squire slid over the rim. Mora had set it down a little too near the bowl. It went into the sugar the way a coin goes into a pond, and was gone. Mora said, “Every night,” and picked up her fork again.

“It was nearly noon,” said Tavi.

“It was eleven-forty,” said Mr. Hazelby. “I had it from three separate people.”

Tavi dug for it. At first Tavi dug with a teaspoon, politely. Then with two fingers. Then with a whole hand, up to the wrist, while Dilly Ashdown watched with great interest and her mother held the bowl still. Mora watched from behind the counter. She could have helped. But she had always wanted to see what it looked like when somebody else did it.

At eleven forty-six, Tavi came up with the letter.

Two old cards came up with it, stuck on at the corners: a Rain Cloud gone soft at one end, and a Kind Gust with somebody’s tally on the back. Nobody in the Last Cup would own to either of them. A good deal of sugar came up as well, and most of that went into Tavi’s hair.

“There’s still some in there,” said Mora, and pointed her fork at Tavi’s head. Then she pointed it at the pile of cards by her elbow. “And there’s still some in these. I’ll be finding it till spring.”

“What happened to the two old cards?” said the woman with the potatoes.

“Priced them,” said Tavi. “Straight away. Excellent condition, allowing for sugar.” Tavi turned a cup round on its saucer. “Then I gave them to Dilly. She’d seen six cards go down on that table and only had five left. So she went home with seven out of a five-card pack. Best value in the Glowmarket. Tell people.”

The woman with the potatoes laughed.

“And then,” said Tavi, sitting up, “the delivery. From the vault to the counter. Under four minutes.”

“It is eleven steps from that table to the counter,” said Mr. Hazelby. “I have counted.”

“I said under four minutes,” said Tavi. “I never said how far under.”

Mora had unfolded the letter on the counter, sugar and all, and read it there. It said:

Mora. After nineteen years of the house tea, I should like to try the other one. Please. No fuss. H. Hazelby.

She read it twice. Then she put it in her apron pocket, and reached the other tin down from the top shelf, and blew the dust off the lid.

The travelers looked at Mr. Hazelby. Mr. Hazelby looked at his hat.

“Nineteen years,” said the son.

“The Last Cup keeps two teas,” said Mr. Hazelby. “The house tea and the other one. I have had the house tea six thousand eight hundred and twelve times. I wanted to know what the other one was like.”

“You could have asked,” said the son.

“She puts it down before I’ve got my coat off,” said Mr. Hazelby. “Every day. It is very hard to ask for something else when the usual is already there and steaming.”

At noon, Mr. Hazelby came into the Last Cup. He hung his hat on the third peg. He sat down by the window. And before he had his coat unbuttoned, Mora set a cup in front of him, and it was the other tea, and she walked away without a word.

“Well?” said the woman with the potatoes. “Did you like it?”

Mr. Hazelby considered. He is a man who considers things. “I drank all of it,” he said. “It was fine. I asked for my usual next time.” He lifted the cup in front of him a little, to show them. It was the house tea.

“So why go to all that trouble?” said the son.

“I had wondered for nineteen years,” said Mr. Hazelby. “Now I don’t have to.”

Then the woman with the potatoes asked the last question, the one Tavi had been waiting for all evening. “So who delivered it, in the end?”

Tavi looked around the table. There was Mora with her fork. There was Mr. Hazelby with his usual. There were the two travelers, who had been promised a chase and got a sugar bowl, and looked, if anything, happier about it. There was nothing left to make bigger. Tavi took that with good grace, as Tavi always does.

“Hand-delivered,” said Tavi. “By me. With a teaspoon.”

The son laughed until he had to hold the edge of the table. Even Mr. Hazelby made a small noise into his cup. Then he put the cup down and looked at Tavi.

“It came,” he said. “I was glad.”

It was late, and Tavi still had packs to put away. Tavi stood up to go.

And at exactly that moment, which is the moment Mora always picks, Mora poured a cup. It was the other tea. She set it down at Tavi’s place, and beside it she set a teaspoon.

Tavi sat back down and stirred. The spoon crunched.

“That’s the one,” said Mora. “It’s been washed twice. It still does that.”

“No fuss?” said Tavi.

“No fuss,” said Mora.

Tavi drank the whole cup, while Mr. Hazelby watched the way he watches a scale settle.

“Well?” he said.

“It’s fine,” said Tavi. “Next time, the usual.”

Mr. Hazelby nodded, very pleased, as if a professional had checked his figures and found them correct.

And that is the true story of the letter that crossed the Glowmarket in under four minutes. It took all morning. It went by way of a girl who would not be hurried and a sugar bowl, and it still got there before noon. Tavi tells it the true way now, because the true way gets the bigger laugh. There is still a dog in it. But the dog is asleep.