Tea & Antipathy by Anita Miller

the hairbrushes down and we exited through Drugs.

11
Further Adventures
    T HE NEXT DAY two telephone men came, hollering to each other as they dragged rubbery coils around. Mrs. Grail complained to me bitterly. I responded that I really couldn’t see why all this should go on. “It was only supposed to take an afternoon for her to move in.”
    â€œAh, that’s the way of them,” Mrs. Grail said. “That’s the British for you. She’ll have it nice and easy when she comes in September and you’ve had all the mess and all the aggravation. And I’ve swept down them stairs three times already and they’ve tracked in all the mud. And now you can’t get the sheets, and them twisty rags on the boys’ beds. I wouldn’t put them in a kennel. And you paying all that rent.”
    â€œA woman yelled at me in Harrods yesterday,” I said moodily. “At the meat counter.”
    â€œOh, I’ve been here twenty-five years,” Mrs. Grail said. “And I’ll never get used to it. Never.”
    â€œThe children are holding up very well, though,” I said. “My husband and I were discussing it yesterday. Well, Bruce’s stomach is upset—maybe the milk is too rich—but Eric is doing well. He’s such a good traveler. We’ve taken him to Wisconsin and Boston and Maine and never a bit of trouble with him. He loves to travel.”
    â€œAh, the dear little tyke,” Mrs. Grail said.
    â€œHe’s kind of fresh, though,” I said.
    â€œAh, they’re all awful,” Mrs. Grail said. “I had four of them and I love them dearly, but if l had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have any. I’m a Catholic but you’ve got to use common sense. They’re all a great trial.”
    â€œWell,” I said. “Anyway, Eric seems to take it all in his stride.”
    â€œThe dear little thing,” Mrs. Grail said. “But why do they like the Beatles so much? I can’t stand them, but Elvis Presley is lovely, isn’t he?”
    â€œYes, he is,” I said, measuring out drops for Bruce’s stomach. “I think I’ll take them to Madame Tussaud’s today. The Victoria and Albert wasn’t good.”
    â€œOh, they’ll love Madame Tussaud’s. You go out here to Knightsbridge and take a Number Nine bus…” We gathered ourselves together and straggled off in the rain, leaving Mrs. Grail wrapped around the doorpost, her eyes begging us not to leave her alone in the house.
    Madame Tussaud’s seemed to be a success; the children waited quietly in the long lines before every exhibit. Eric looked nervously at the image of the Queen Mother; its eyes were glittering strangely under the lights.
    â€œWho’s
that?”
he cried, pointing.
    â€œIt’s the Queen Mother, dear,” I said loudly. “She’s an awfully nice lady.”
    They wanted to go to the Chamber of Horrors, and on the way we stopped in the Diorama Room before the diorama of Hamlet. Hamlet was standing on a stony platform, and the Ghost loomed in the background. “Do you see that?” I said, showing off. “That’s Hamlet, and that’s the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and he’s telling Hamlet that Hamlet’s uncle Claudius murdered him by dropping poison in his ear and…”
    After I finished giving a summary of the play, we went on down to the Chamber of Horrors which the boys seemed to like. When we got home, I cooked hamburgers in an electric frying pan that I had found hidden in a cupboard in the laundry room. It was rather greasy, but I washed it thoroughly, plugged it in, and it worked.
    The next morning we received a letter from Mrs. Stackpole. She seemed angry because of the Great Sheet Controversy and repeated the point of view delivered to us by Mr. MacAllister. “As for the frying pan,” she wrote, “I am terribly sorry not to have provided one,