A Nice Cup of Tea with Gregory Peck

‘I’m terribly sorry to disturb you,’ I said. ‘But aren’t you Gregory Peck?’ 

‘Yes, I believe I am.’ 

 It had taken me six laps of the cloisters to build up the courage to ask him. He was wearing an immaculate dark grey woollen suit and was sitting legs crossed on my favourite bench in the garth, the garden in the centre of Gloucester Cathedral’s medieval cloisters. 

‘Would you like to join me for a cup of tea?’ He asked. It sounded strange in his accent. The scene was so quintessentially English that it made him sound more American. 

‘I’d love to.’ I sat next to him as he produced a flask and two cups from his bicycle basket. He saw me looking at his bicycle as he poured the tea. 

‘I know it’s not allowed, but cycling inside a cathedral is a real thrill. I’ve done more laps of these cloisters than you have.’ 

I smiled at him as he passed me my cup and, remembering the tradition, tapped the rim three times with my finger nail. I watch the steam rise from it and blew at it gently. 

‘Who’s Tom going to choose?’ I asked. 

‘We don’t know yet. Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly have been told to be on standby.’ 

‘He’ll choose Audrey. I know my husband.’ 

I fell silent then. I thought about the history of these cloisters, imagining those medieval monks going about their lives of work and worship. I thought about the first time I brought Tom here. I was riddled with guilt and thought this place would add sincerity to an already sincere apology. And there’s no beginning, middle or end when you’re walking around cloisters so I could say sorry for as long as I had to without having to worry about a physical destination. I stopped him next to one of the study carrels in the south cloister and told him I’d been drinking before the accident. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want him to see me cry, I didn’t want those ancient monks to hear me cry. When I calmed down, we sat here and he forgave me.  Too easily.  Far too easily.

I got the impression Gregory Peck was hearing what I was thinking. I looked up. 

‘It took me many years to forgive myself,’ I said. 

‘I know it did,’ Gregory said. ‘I know.’

 

 *** 

 Her expensive perfume made the letterbox rattle and my nostrils twitch. I was genuinely excited. I clapped and shouted Lights, Camera, Action! I’ve always wanted to shout that. The two women took their positions. She knocked a second later. I took a breath and opened the door. It was Audrey Hepburn. I stood and beamed at her. 

‘Audrey flipping Hepburn,’ I said. ‘What an honour!’ She smiled back and my heart wanted to burst out of my chest. I bowed. A long, slow bow. I’d planned on breaking into a rendition of Moon River but I got shy. 

'Hello, Tom. It's time.' 

The screaming had started a few seconds before and I pretended not to hear her. 

'Pardon me?' I asked.

‘It's time.' She offered her hand. 

‘I’m terribly sorry, Miss Hepburn, but I think you’ve got the wrong house.’ I pointed to the drama taking place in the living room. She stepped half a high heel inside to witness the drama taking place in the living room. 

'I'd offer you a cup of tea,' I said, 'but my wife is just about to have a baby.' I produced some scissors from my top pocket. 'And I'm meant to be cutting the cord. Pressure's on! So, uh, cheerio then.' 

‘I'm so sorry, Tom. There must've been a dreadful mix up at the office.' She curtseyed, turned and walked back down the driveway to her car. As soon as I shut the door the screaming stopped. 

'Bravo, bravo, bravo! That was wonderful! You almost had me fooled!’ 

The two actresses got up and I handed them their fee. The actress playing the midwife handed me the doll with its dangling rubber umbilical cord.

'It's a beautiful baby girl,' she said. 

I snipped the cord and hung it around my neck. 

'She's a miracle,' I replied. 'We will call her Audrey.' 

They left through the front door and I made no secret of the ruse. I clapped as they left. 

‘Fantastic performance,' I shouted. I looked at the doll I'd named Audrey, gave her a little kiss and threw her over the fence. A bloody good job well done, I thought to myself. 

I went back inside and made the umbilical cord into a bow tie. I breathed again. Then came the clinking of cups and the kettle begin to boil. 

 *** 

We sat in silence at the kitchen table. Audrey Hepburn on one side, me on the other. I looked down at the tea. I could see without even tasting it that she’d used whole milk. How did she know I preferred whole milk? Well, she knew, and she must have brought it with her, along with the tea bags, the teapot and the shortbread biscuits. 

It was a one-in-a-thousand cup. A masterpiece of hot liquid. It’s as if the tea knew how elegantly it had been made, who’d made it and who it was being made for. It’d been left to brew in a tea pot for at least five minutes, poured into a hot mug, finished with the creamiest milk available. It was exactly how I liked it. After she’d stirred, she tapped the spoon on the rim of the mug three times. Not two, not four. Three times. Ding ding ding. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I wanted to ask her, Miss Hepburn, how do you know these things, and how do you know the thing about the three dings? I didn’t ask her anything at first. We just sat there drinking our tea. 

After I eat this three-quarter-dunked shortbread biscuit, I thought to myself, I’m going to start talking to her. This is how I did difficult things. I’d say to myself I’m going to do this little thing and because I did this little thing that will cause me to do this bigger thing. I ate the biscuit and took a breath. 

‘Would you like to hear how I met my wife?’ 

‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘Will you pardon my French – or rather Grace’s French?’ 

‘Oui,’ she said with a smile. 

‘I’d like to tell you how I met her. We met by accident. That’s how I always used to put it, what I always told people. I was 21 and she was 18. I was cycling down a hill close to where she lived. She overtook me and then indicated to turn left into her street. I thought she’d wait for me to pass on the inside and I could tell she was in two minds whether to turn or not. I was in no position to stop because I was going so fast. She turned in and stopped, leaving my only option to ride into the side of her Mini and go over her bonnet. I hit the ground so hard that both my shoes flew off. They couldn’t find one of them at first. I was wearing a helmet, which had almost cracked in half but had almost certainly saved my life. 

‘I met her mother and father two or three minutes after I met her. Grace was knelt beside me, shit and fuck being the first two words she ever said to me, followed by I’m so, so sorry. Seeing me flat on my back with a bicycle-shaped dent in the side of her car, her Mum ran out screaming “Oh my God, Grace you’ve killed him!” Then her father came out, the way they told it he was the picture of absolute calm, as if all the moments that came before were there to tell him how to act now. He knelt down and held my head still. He said, “Hello, mate. We’re going to look after you now. What’s your name, son? Tom, it’s Tom, is it? You’re in safe hands, Tom, you’re in safe hands.

‘When the police and ambulance arrived, I was taken to the hospital. I’d broken my wrist, my collarbone and was treated for a mild concussion. Having been a mountain biker in my mid-teens, I’d already broken my left collarbone during a particularly fast downhill trail with some friends. Now I had the right one to add to the collection. It turns out that her father had worked at the same timber yard my uncle worked at and he recognised my face and name from some work experience I did there. He got our address and came to the house with Grace a week after the accident and made her apologise on the doorstep, her eyes already a little puffy from unseen tears. Mum insisted them came in and made them tea and we sat in the living room, talking at various levels of awkwardness. I told them that I’d been to college and I was in my second year of a cabinet-making apprenticeship. Grace said that she was volunteering at a local homeless charity and then would go off to university to study English. Even when she was talking, she had her eyes lowered but when she raised them I saw that she was vulnerable and beautiful but on the two occasions that she looked at me during our first cups of tea together, I saw something else. When they left, Grace’s father left an envelope containing £200 on the coffee table. That was a lot of money in those days, and more than enough to cover the cost of the bike repair. It only needed a new front wheel. I said to myself that I’d find a way to give her that money back. 

‘When they left and we watched them pull away from behind the net curtains, Mum said, ‘Well, what a lovely young woman. Extraordinary energy. I bet she’s a Gemini like you. She almost killed you, but I think we can forgive her for that.’

There’s more to know, I thought. There’s more to know. She came back a few minutes later with the shoe they couldn’t find. It had landed on someone’s front lawn and was handed to Grace’s father after I’d left in the ambulance. 

She passed me the shoe, looked me in the eye and said, 'I’m going to the cathedral this evening. Will you come with me?' 

So we arranged to meet at seven o’clock outside the south entrance of Gloucester Cathedral. I closed the door and looked at Mum. 

‘She ran you over and now she’s asking you out.’ 

I continued looking at Mum with my arm in a sling and a shoe in my hand. 

'Just go with it,’ she said. ‘Just go with it.’ 

‘Would you like to see her?’  Audrey said.  

The breath got stuck sharp in my throat. I couldn’t reply. 

 She smiled and held out her hand. ‘She’s just having a nice cup of tea with Gregory Peck.'