The Afternoon Tea Club. Jane Gilley

the letterbox and was snatched up by Gracie.

      A gleam had come into her daughter’s eye.

      ‘Talking of getting you out and about more, Mum …’ she’d begun in a tone she usually reserved for meaningful chats with the schoolchildren she taught. ‘Here! Look at this!’

      So Marjorie followed the receptionist, alongside a swarm of mainly bowed grey heads in drab or worn jackets or rain macs, even though it was a clammily hot day. Their questions subsided as they seemed to accept their forced afternoon out. Marjorie passed a young woman with a black and white cat brooch on her rather oversized bright yellow cardigan, with matching Alice band. She looked familiar but Marjorie couldn’t think from where. Another lady was still wearing her sun hat, as they all shuffled into the hall towards a couple of nodding women, welcoming them with beaming smiles and wide-open arms. One of these women looked to be solidly middle-aged, wearing a pale blue cotton summer dress with capped sleeves and a badge in the middle of her chest that read: Eileen. The younger woman’s badge said, Taynor.

      ‘Ladies and, oh hello, gentlemen! Welcome! Welcome! Please come in and help yourselves to refreshments. Yes, come on in. Yes, just help yourselves. Then just take a seat at the tables, anywhere you fancy. Oh no, you don’t have to worry about all that, it’s totally free. No, you won’t need your purses; you don’t have to pay a penny! You’re just here to enjoy yourselves!’

      A long table down one side of the hall was covered with white cups upside down on saucers, dishes of sugar lumps, small porcelain jugs of cold milk, huge plates of Crawford’s Rover biscuits and homemade Victoria sponge cakes with fondant icing. Three middle-aged women stood behind the table, wearing white aprons, asking the guests whether they wanted tea or coffee and encouraging them to help themselves to whichever biscuits or cake they wished. Marjorie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen anyone wearing an apron. Or was it on one of those cooking programmes?

      Marjorie noticed how the sight of cakes and biscuits soon perked everyone up, including herself. They all chuckled and marvelled at the sight of so much free food! And this small indulgence then gave them reason enough to happily gabble to each other about what was on offer at the community centre today and how nice the weather was and, ‘Oh, I do like that necklace of yours!’ or ‘Well, isn’t this lovely!’ even though they didn’t know each other.

      Looking around her and wondering where to sit, Marjorie saw oblong tables set out for eight occupants. The chairs looked comfortable enough but the disposable paper tablecloths creased and moved as she tried to position herself at the table without spilling her tea or dropping her cake. A little lacking, Marjorie thought dimly.

      Pleasant, soothing background music was filtering into the hall from somewhere, which created a lovely restful ambience. Yet as the guests were finishing off their refreshments, the commotion of chatter having died down, Marjorie could see they weren’t entirely comfortable with their surroundings, even though it was a rather nice place. Marjorie hadn’t made up her mind about this new environment yet. But to avoid confrontation with her daughter, earlier, she’d relented about coming along to sample the afternoon tea outing at Gracie’s insistence. She’d do it the once, just to say she’d tried it. Plus, if it didn’t work out, that would be the benchmark by which all other suggestions her daughter made would be met with understandable resistance. Marjorie wondered if the other old dears had arrived today under the same circumstances: unhappy with their lot but equally unhappy to have to make any positive changes for themselves, unless somebody else initiated that change for them.

      As Marjorie sipped her second cup of hot tea, she could see that most of the women looked quite thin or perhaps they didn’t eat well enough. It was easy to think you didn’t need to eat so much when you were elderly and sitting around most of the day. Or perhaps they couldn’t afford to eat well. A few had walking frames or walking sticks and one younger lady was in a wheelchair. Apart from the youngish girl in the yellow cardigan and the cat brooch, who Marjorie couldn’t place but who sat at her table, Marjorie felt sorry for these other women. ‘Everyone has their crosses to bear,’ her best friend, Lou, always said.

      The servers were still coming around the tables, asking if anyone would like refills or more cake, when the two ladies who Marjorie believed to be the organisers stood at the front of the ensemble and coughed to clear their throats.

      ‘Well, we must say we’re absolutely delighted to see that so many of you have made the effort to come along to our afternoon tea party today. And we hope you’re enjoying your refreshments. Mrs Spence, in charge of the servers at the back, there, made the cakes, which I’m sure you’ll all agree are rather yummy!’

      A few people looked up, realising someone was speaking.

      ‘Eh? What did she say?’ said someone.

      ‘Shh! They’re saying something!’ hissed someone else.

      ‘Right so, just to let you know, my name is Eileen and I work for a division of our local healthcare services. And the lady next to me, Taynor, is my amazing assistant. It was at my mother’s suggestion that we organised this event because she told me she is always loneliest in the afternoons when, she said, it can be soul-destroying with nothing useful or meaningful to do. Does anyone else, here, ever feel like this sometimes?’ Eileen asked, pausing to glance around at her audience.

      Some of the people in the room were fidgeting now or still chatting; some were burrowing around in their bags, some were half listening but more anxious to finish their cake. It seemed to dawn on them – rather slowly – that something was being asked of them. Eileen waited patiently. A few people murmured inaudible responses.

      ‘Well, folks,’ Eileen tried again. ‘I’m just telling you about my situation at home with my mother. I must say, I never suspected that my mother was bored, or fed up and felt that she wasn’t needed any more. But she said everyone feels like this from time to time. So it’s been a bit of a revelation to me that people who are retired or elderly or people otherwise in a position where they are at home all day long, like carers, often feel like this. I think my mother initially held back from admitting this to me because she thought I’d be upset to realise that the rest of my family and I were partly to blame for her discomfort. I have to admit, I was gutted. And very apologetic too, I might add! My family and I actually live with my mum in her house and yet we never allowed her to help out around the home, even when she wanted to. “Just rest up,” I’d say to her. “You’ve worked hard all your life.” I mean for one thing she’s in a wheelchair now and I guess we thought that was reason enough to assume she’d just want peace and quiet at this time of her life. “Not so,” she told me huffily. “I still need a reason to get up in a morning, whether I’m in a wheelchair or not,” she said. So we sat down together, as a family, and realised that apart from activities for residents in local nursing homes, there’s not an awful lot of meaningful activities for our ageing or housebound citizens to do on a regular basis, to prevent them from feeling lonely or bored at home. I mean, we’re well served by the nursing and health community but there’s nothing much that’s activity-based. Would any of you agree with this statement? However, there has been talk and a bit of a national push about offering more stimulating activities to people who are not otherwise engaged in an ordinary working life and in some parts of the country localised organisations have already made a good start with this. Unfortunately, our area hasn’t really jumped on that bandwagon yet. So we’re starting to look at this now.’

      The fidgeting had stopped. All faces had turned to study the two ladies in front of them. Was something actually being asked of them? One of the elderly gentlemen, seated at the back said: ‘Hear, hear, ladies. Yes, it can be very quiet and lonely in the afternoons. I think this is a grand idea of your mother’s. I, for one, would definitely come along again if you’re going to be doing this on a more regular basis? Is that what you’re saying?’

      Eileen nodded.

      ‘It certainly is. And this idea of my mother’s is part of it. So, following on from the conversation with my mother, I suggested to my bosses at work that if we trialled something like this – an afternoon out with a cuppa or two – and if our community welcomed it, we