"Two cups," I said, and the woman setting down my breakfast went to the sideboard for another saucer.
By the time I understood what I had asked for, she was bringing it over. I watched her set it opposite mine. Outside the window, a gardener was wrestling a wet sack into a wheelbarrow, holding it away from his coat with the care of a man who had regretted this before. He nearly managed it. I was still watching him examine his sleeve when the woman asked whether she should lay another place.
"No. Just the cup."
She glanced at it. I considered claiming that I wanted to compare the tea as it cooled, but she was waiting for me to say something useful, and I knew nothing about tea.
"Thank you," I said.
She moved the pot within reach and went to fetch the bread.
My right glove lay folded beside the plate. I had taken it off because the seam caught whenever I bent my finger, and now the raised line was there to look at. I turned that hand onto its side and lifted the pot with my left. There was more in it than I needed. I filled both cups.
Hana would have complained that hers was too strong.
Then she would have left it by the phone while she cut a recording, and by the time she remembered it, the tea would have been cold. She was still doing that with the radio play. Half our kitchen had appeared in the sound effects by the time I last saw her working on it; I had once been asked to shut the same cupboard six times, none of them apparently like a person coming home.
Two taps on the mug with her fingernail meant she was starting another take. Usually I had about ten seconds before she told me to stop making noise. Sometimes I spent those seconds moving around the kitchen as loudly as I could.
I could see her looking up from the phone, thumb held above the screen. She used to wait there and let me decide whether I wanted whatever I was doing saved forever.
The cup across the table was steaming. I added a little water to it, watched the color thin, and put the jug back.
The woman returned with the bread. Finding the spare cup in the way, she shifted the butter dish toward me and put the basket beside it.
"Shall I keep the pot warm, my lord?"
"For a little while."
She adjusted its cover, then turned a chipped saucer on the tray so the rough edge faced inward. I reached for some bread. Holding it down with the heel of my right hand let me tear a piece off with the left, though it made a mess of the crust. I spread a lump of butter into the hollow and ate it before trying to make it look better.
Outside, the gardener had taken off his coat. The sack was in the wheelbarrow at last. He was eating something from a twist of paper, his coat laid carefully over the handles.
I finished the bread. After a while I drank what was left in my own cup, though it had gone cold too.
The woman approached when I pushed back my plate. I nodded, and she cleared the dishes, leaving the spare cup until last.
"Two tomorrow, my lord?"
There was a wet ring where it had stood.
"One."
"Of course." She settled it beside the first, keeping the handles apart.
I eased the glove back over my finger while she carried the tray away. A crumb had caught in the fold at my wrist. I picked it out before I left.