God Bless the Child
Dear Loo #3, From the Castle
Dear Loo,
Last night, or early this morning, the shrill ring of the phone on my nightstand jarred me out of a dead sleep. . Riiiiiiing. Riiiiiiing,
“Hello?” My voice must have sounded as groggy as I felt.
“Where are you? Oh! I forgot you’re traveling,” apologized my friend Diane from her home in Reno, six time zones away.
“Ummm. Africa,” I tried, then corrected myself, “No, England!”
She graciously let me off the call and I fell back into a deep sleep, dreaming of a huge zucchini gone rogue in someone’s garden. When I awoke my throat was dry and sore, a reward for too many hours on planes and yesterday’s chilly, soaking rain.
My writer friends and I are in Weston Super-Mare, a town on the coast of England, for a week of writing, laughs, and probably, tears. When I told my favorite editor, CJ Hadley, I was coming here I could almost see her eyebrows shoot up as she said, “They’ve got money there. We never went there.” Her upbringing in England left her with no desire to return.
Timi, our retreat leader, found us a small castle and here we’ll be for the duration. We did our one touristy act yesterday, visiting the Roman baths in the city named for them and having low tea in a sumptuous room filled with beautifully set tables and a live chamber quartet. As we drank tea (English Breakfast tea for me) with cream, we ate sweet and savory little cakes and sandwiches. Afterward we (and ten thousand others) walked through the preserved ruins where for something like four hundred years people bathed in the mineral waters. I wouldn’t dip a toe into them now.
The water is greenish in the large pool and I overheard people talking about the sulpher-tinged smell. All the while all I could think was that in the closed space underground rooms Covid was certainly finding new hosts. Good thing I already had it, and more recently, a booster, flu, pneumonia, and RSV shots. Since being brought low by the virus I can’t hear a cough without being suspicious. On the planes I took to get here and there, I was frequently suspicious.
We left the baths in driving rain. The narrow undulating roads were hedged in and there were flooded in places. We finally arrived at the castle after dark. It’s lovely and surprisingly, well-heated. The place is actually pretty large by American standards though it would only fill a small corner of the King’s palace.
I am writing from the dining room this morning. It has ornate wooden paneling and the ceiling is more than twenty feet above my head. At the dining room table – there are five leaves in it and in the corner is another leaf propped against the wall. The table is set with patterned place mats, china, and crystal with 5 silver settings for each of the 8 of the 10 chairs placed around it. I’m not sure why the two arm chairs at either end aren’t set for a meal but there are only four of us so that's no deal breaker. Each chair is elaborately carved and thankfully, padded. A fireplace filled with silk flowers and with a beautifully carved mantle sits across from me.
When I finally awoke out of my fog this morning at 9:30, the sun was streaming through a crack in the thick, heavy drapes. My room is large with two single beds, comfortable ones, with thick goose down comforters over the fitted sheet that keeps it on my feet. I’ve got to get one of these when I get home, Loo. Inside of the castle it's so quiet I heard the sounds inside my ears, the wooshing of life through blood vessels, I suppose.
I gingerly lifted limbs that still ached from too many hours in planes, padded across thick carpet, and pulled back the thick woolen drapes to look out the tall wooden windows. The castle is set into a small emerald-green immaculately groomed park. Large white and black birds, Eurasian Magpies, maybe, caw, and fat pigeons move slowly across the grass picking at the lawn every step or two. Though the sun was bright and the sky this morning was robins egg blue, the wind was cool. I was glad I wore a sweatshirt. Carol, another retreatant, had wandered outside before me and said I needed to see the three horses on the other side of the hedge. Of course I will, but my raw throat wanted tea first and then coffee so, I wandered back inside.
The castle has three kitchens. I’m told there’s another one upstairs closer to the bedrooms but I’ve not found it yet. Of those downstairs, more accurately, there’s what I think is the butler’s pantry with a sink. It contains a refrigerator, a full set of china, a Nespresso machine, mutliple coffee presses, an electric kettle, elaborate copper molds for jello and cakes, and a large assortment of cook books. A few doors away there’s another kitchen area with a sink, what appear to be concrete countertops, and many beautiful sage green cupboards (with more plates, cups, and saucers). There’s a huge, beautiful gas range under a large wooden exhaust hood.
The owner had laid out fruit, bread, and a wire basket with large white eggs. Two loaves of bread were wrapped in brown paper bags and tied up with twine. Small, handwritten tags told what kind of bread was inside each. I chose the Bara Brith bread to eat with my tea. The note said it’s to be eaten with butter. My first thin slice of the dense Welsh fruited bread was bare.
Back at the dining room table, I try it. Although it can be made with mixed fruits (sultanas, raisins, and currants), this one has just currants. The rest of the ingredients are “strong, hot tea” in which the fruit is plumped overnight and then drained, flour (self-rising), mixed spices (coriander, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves), soft brown sugar called muscovado, a molasses-rich sugar made only from sugar cane), and an egg (free range), with a honey glaze. It’s heavenly. For my second slice, thicker this time, I take the Yeo organic salted butter out of the largest refrigerator and slather it on the bread. To use an overused phrase, OMG! I'm unsure how members of the royal family stay so slender. If there’s any left after the others try it, I think I shall eat it every morning for the rest of my stay.
But even as I carry it back to the dining room and start to write, I find myself thinking of the dichotomy between here and Uganda, where meals of matoke and stewed chicken are cooked over open fires, and this castle's many kitchens. Enslaved people from Africa were brought to this area before they were shipped to the Caribbean and America. They could never have dreamed of this place just up the coast from here in Bristol. The castle’s stone walls were here then. I am sad.
I think about them, leaving the African continent behind. I remember that some remained: my friend Elly’s grandmother who lives on a bare mattress on the floor in her small hut in Kampala, the villagers in Kitteredde with their small 12x10’ living rooms filled almost entirely with enormous overstuffed couches, their bare walls, and windows without glass. Their poverty. I don’t know how to reconcile that, Loo. Or if it should be reconciled.
Then I wonder how the decision was made about who would live in plenty and who will live in lack. There's a Billie Holliday song about that. I call it up on my phone and allow myself to feel it.
God Bless The Child
Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own
Yes, the strong get smart
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own
Money, you've got lots of friends
They're crowding around the door
But when you're gone and spending ends
They don't come no more
Rich relations give crusts of bread and such
You can help yourself, but don't take too much
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own
Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose. Nothing’s changed since this old castle was built of hewn stone. I don't fault the owners for having, Timi for finding this magnificent place, or myself for coming. Life is what it is. We end up where we end up. God has sorted it all out, I must believe. But them that's got? Well, we can share. I know you do.
Love, Teri