2 Miss Harriet’s

The more time Katherine spent around Miss Harriet’s shop, the more she enjoyed it. The place was like a microcosm of the town, which Katherine found fascinating. She marveled at how, even though many of the people she had known in her childhood had been replaced by strangers over the years, the town as a whole still seemed just the same as when she left. She observed the shop’s customers with interest, wondering if certain types of people were drawn to Harborhaven, or if the town itself changed them. She never could decide.

Miss Harriet’s way of making everyone feel special and important had a profound effect on Katherine. She watched the older woman eagerly, trying to catch the trick of it, but never could quite succeed. As she served her customers, Miss Harriet seemed always to know just what to say or do to put a smile on the face of each one.

Katherine knew good customer service when she saw it, but this was something more. Watching Miss Harriet talk to her customers was like watching tightly-closed buds unfurl their petals. The customers seemed to become better versions of themselves after talking to her. It all seemed so effortless—except when Katherine tried it. Still, she kept watching and learning, hoping someday to live up to the gracious woman’s example.

Soon the month ended, and Katherine hardly noticed its passing, for she had become fully absorbed in her work. She liked the bustle of always having something to do, and on her days off, she would often volunteer to help Miss Harriet set the tables and get the shop ready for the day. Then she would go to the library and check out books, and, coming home with a small stack, would take them up to the little “dreary” apartment, which Katherine did not think dreary at all. Miss Harriet had fixed it up quite nicely, intending to live there herself; but it did not have enough windows to suit her.

“Lamplight just isn’t the same,” she had explained.

The apartment had one large window, which overlooked the street, and another window in the bedroom: a small, round window which looked out towards the cliffs behind downtown Harborhaven. In the street-view window, Miss Harriet had put in a deep window seat, filled with cushions.

A basket full of soft, warm blankets stood nearby, and Katherine felt as if the cozy little nook had been made just for her. She would curl up with her library books and a plate of fresh-baked scones carried up from the kitchen. Once cozily settled in, she would sit and read for hours.

She had always been a bookworm, but now she clung to reading more than ever, as a welcome distraction from the turmoil within her heart. Returning to Harborhaven had not erased the pain. She still ached over the past, still longed for relief. She tried to hide it, but was sure Miss Harriet knew somehow that there was something hidden behind her new employee’s almost-convincing smiles.

Miss Harriet shared Katherine’s love for reading, and the two would often discuss their current reads while they washed the dishes each night. That summer, Katherine revisited the classic novels of Jane Austen, and the two enjoyed lively and animated discussions over the nightly dishpans.

Katherine looked forward to this ritual of dishwashing and conversation. It was the one time she felt at ease. She enjoyed interacting with the customers, but when she and Miss Harriet retired to the kitchen at the end of the day, she felt she could finally be herself. Through their literary discussion, she found Miss Harriet to be a keen observer, whose insights into the characters made Katherine think about both them and the stories in new ways.

In addition to the fictional characters Katherine was reading about, the two also occasionally discussed the town and its inhabitants. So much had changed between the time Katherine had left for college and the time Miss Harriet had arrived, they had plenty to talk over. From some of these conversations, and from what Katherine overheard from the gossipy group of old ladies who called themselves “the Luncheon Society,” she soon learned that another tea shop of sorts existed in the little town. And though no competition actually existed between the two establishments, relations between them had not been exactly friendly.

“You know, it’s a good thing you got settled in here. Imagine if she’d tried to ask for a job over at the Harborside!” Rosie, the leader of the Luncheon Society, had exclaimed the day Katherine introduced herself to the group.

“Oh, my, yes, she would have regretted that for sure!” piped up another, and the whole group fell into nods and agreements.

Katherine was intrigued. “What’s the Harborside?” she asked.

The table erupted into an affected wave of shock and surprise. “Just the town’s only shop that carries tea. It’s been around so long, the grocery store doesn’t even bother to stock any, out of respect.” Rosie’s voice carried a well-practiced note of disdain.

“—and out of fear of public outcry if they ever did!” interjected the lady next to her. After a short burst of laughter and shouts of, “Can you imagine!”, the little group’s conversation jumped off into another subject, and Katherine, left to her curiosity, went to the kitchen to start their tea brewing.

After closing time that day, Katherine had asked Miss Harriet about the Harborside. Miss Harriet seemed surprised, saying, “I wonder you didn’t remember it from your growing up years. It’s in one of the old Victorian blocks at the other end of downtown. In fact, that’s where we buy all the tea for the shop.”

“So why did the ladies say I would have regretted asking for a job there?”

“Well…” Miss Harriet paused, as if considering carefully what to say. “I suppose it’s because the owner isn’t very nice sometimes—or at least, he has a rough manner about him that makes people think he’s not nice.” Miss Harriet seemed to be trying very hard to be gracious.

She went on to explain that she herself had found it difficult to get along with the Harborside’s owner. “We fell out over tea, actually,” she said, “and our disagreement has become a sort of feud between the two shops. Though for my part, I think I have tried to be reasonable, and really don’t wish the Harborside any ill.” A mischievous smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she added, “But then, it’s just so easy to provoke the man about his silly prejudices, I feel I simply can’t resist.”

Katherine frowned. “Prejudices? Over tea?”

“Yes. The Harborside has long been a bastion of the ‘tea elite’, you see, and it is in no hurry to change to accommodate a customer with more common tastes, let alone one who perpetuates such tastes by serving ‘inferior’ tea to others!” Miss Harriet rinsed a teapot and plunged it into the soapy water before continuing.

“They are so serious about their tea over there. Who has time to be so deeply passionate about such trivial matters like ‘subtle nuances of flavor’ and ‘slight variations in processing methods?’ I don’t, now that’s for sure. Just give me some good, plain, English tea and I’ll be set for life.”

This knowledge of the Harborside’s disapproval did not faze Miss Harriet—nothing ever did seem to faze Miss Harriet. She would laugh off the owner’s snubs and order her “plain old British tea” from the Harborside week after week, almost delighting in the prospect of making the grumpy old man order the very same “inferior” teas he so despised and railed against. But this appeared to be the extent of her participation in the feud.

Still, it was enough to cause great consternation and irritation at the Harborside when the weekly order was filled. Katherine couldn’t imagine anyone being rude to such a kind and good-natured lady as Miss Harriet. She thought the Harborside’s owner must thoroughly deserve the derogatory comments she had heard about him from the luncheon society gossips. But then, she hadn’t actually seen the Harborside or its owner yet.

3 The Harborside

As different as Miss Harriet’s and the Harborside were from each other, their two owners seemed even more so. Elegant, gentle, and cheerful, Miss Harriet seemed to glide from table to table, her mild, smiling manner and sweet temperament charming her guests.

From what Katherine had heard, Miss Harriet’s counterpart at the Harborside hid in his office most of each day, almost dreading a ring of the bell over the door that would force him to interact with a customer. Rough, blustery, and quick-tempered, he had apparently succeeded in driving off many of his customers.

“It’s a pity,” Miss Harriet had said one day to Katherine. “He really is quite knowledgeable, and I think if he would only smile a little, his customers would have a chance to see that, instead of the wall he throws up as soon as they walk in.”

He was called Captain Jeremiah Braddock, though hardly a person alive would have dared to call him by his first name. Most just called him “Captain Braddock”, but Rosie from the Luncheon Society preferred to refer to him as “that horrible man at the old tea shop”.

As a retired sea captain, he seemed the least likely sort of man to run a shop that sold tea. However, he had grown up helping in the shop and took fierce pride in the Harborside and its heritage, as well as in belonging to the Braddock family. The Braddocks had inhabited the town of Harborhaven for so many generations, their name had become as much a fixture in the little town as their shop. Over its many years, the Harborside came to be as much a symbol of the family’s identity as a castle or manor house might be to an old European family, and anyone who ventured inside could tell that the place was steeped in history.

The Harborside Tea Shop had been founded in the long past days of the clipper ship, when the burgeoning tea trade was still a new and exciting venture, and had been passed from generation to generation of Braddock sons and daughters.

As children, each new set of Braddock offspring were put to work in the shop, where they were given an education in the art of matching each customer with the variety of tea he or she would enjoy best. This seemed to their customers to be an almost magical ability, though in reality it was more of a science. It used to be that people would visit from across the country just to find their “perfect tea” at the Harborside and marvel at the “Braddock gift.”

The Captain himself had received the same education and still helped the few brave customers who dared to enter his domain discover just the right tea, but he practiced the art so grudgingly, many did not feel it to be worth coming back for more. They found the drive up the coast to the next town’s grocery store much more inviting.

As a youth, Captain Braddock had chosen to follow in the footsteps of a long line of seafaring Braddocks. He had gone to sea as soon as he could, and earned his way up the chain of command until at last he found himself captain of a large cargo ship.

It had been a bulky thing, modern in every way, yet Captain Braddock’s love of the wooden sailing ship—a natural result of growing up at the Harborside—had become so much a part of him that it was nearly impossible to imagine him as captain of anything else. When anyone met Captain Braddock, they naturally pictured him at the wheel of a tall ship, with towering masts and billowing sails.

Grey-haired and weather-worn, with a long scar down one cheek and a distinct limp when he walked, Captain Braddock looked the very model of an old sea-captain, right down to his heavy frown and his crusty manner. Though an unlikely sort of tea seller, he nevertheless seemed perfectly in his element in the Harborside. Perhaps this could have been because the little shop seemed out of another era, just as the captain did.

Despite the fact that each generation had left some kind of mark on the shop or the business, everything in the Harborside was old-fashioned in some way. It all had an air of antiquity about it, from the broad, high mahogany counter to the ornate shelves of dark oak which filled the opposite wall, to the antique cash register, tucked back into a recess in the shelves behind the counter, as if it were somehow too new to be given a place out front.

An old-fashioned wood stove stood next to the old-fashioned armchair, and an old-fashioned mirror hung on the wall behind the counter. Even the cedar-planked walls of the shop dated from the town’s frontier days.

Captain Braddock could look around the shop and trace his family’s history back through the generations to the first Harborside Braddocks, who had founded it, almost before the little harbor hamlet had even become a town.

Those were the days before shipping had been relegated to the uninteresting, unromantic freight barges of modern times. Inside the Harborside, however, those days seemed alive again, for all around the shop had been placed paintings and models of the ships which had served such a vital purpose in the Harborside’s earlier days. These relics of the past gave the shop a museum-like quality: each had its own store of tales to tell, its own stock of memories to evoke.

The staircase, which had been tightly-spiraled into a corner, looked as though it had belonged on one of those old-fashioned sailing ships. Built of the same dark mahogany as the counter, it had a small but substantial door at the top which the Captain always kept locked.

The staircase was a thing of great beauty and fine craftsmanship, but it blended so well into its surroundings that most customers didn’t even notice it, or if they did, they had not the courage to ask about it.

* * * *

Katherine would never forget the first time she had been sent to the Harborside to pick up Miss Harriet’s tea order. She had walked down the street with Miss Harriet’s shopping list in her hand and a stubborn trepidation in her heart, which she could not get rid of as she wondered what she would encounter when she got there.