Darjeeling and Absinthe (To Pass the Time)

Sage is permitted to wander freely through cities, unescorted, by her fifteenth birthday. At first she revels in this opportunity, stealing away to the museum and art galleries she has visited many times before. She sips hot chocolate and cider in the parks, watches the estival may pole dances or street musicians, feeling grand and musing on ways to spend upcoming afternoons. Whole days pass in libraries, reading anthologies and myths and thinking up her own. It is not long before Sage is able to recite whole lines of poetry and legend, having read entire collections in Dublin, Berlin and London. The museums offer no new exhibitions and the art galleries lose their thrill. In the daytime she is content with trips to the park, drawing in the sketchpads the Beaulieus buy her, taking lunch at cafes and tea rooms in the small alley ways or corners. It is when night falls and she has nowhere to turn but home.

It is by accident she stumbles upon the cabaret, lost in sheets of rain that have turned the streets to rivers, she seeks refuge in a corner of Downtown London while waiting for the train.

It is a rich place with reds and golds that serves sumptuous wines and plays slow, lazy, sensuous music. The people there are artists, poets, composers or travelers. She is able to practice her French, Spanish, Russian and Moroccan. She sips Darjeeling among those drinking cloudy green absinthe, eats pastries light as air and decorates with fresh berries and bubbles or blown sugar. It is a wonderful discover and Sage spends many nights a week there, dining with strangers and listening stories or far flung cities and customs, responding with her own.

Returning home after these nights always feels as though she is tearing herself away from kindred spirits by force and she comforts herself with the promise that she will return soon.

On trips that become less frequent as she matures and her foster parents deem her too old to parade around like an adorable pet and old enough to stay at la maison Beaulieu on her own, she misses her cabaret and searches for similar eventide restaurants and cafes to occupy her time. The strangers she meets there are equally interesting, though not always as polite and she has made many hasty exits before, claiming appointments for which she will be late. 

Art by Melanie Delon

Text by Lucie MacAulay