The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “We’ll be rich!” she said, brightening again.

  Joe laughed. “Not right away. But one day we will. I promise you that, Fee.”

  Fiona hugged her knees to her chest, grinning. A year wasn’t so long, not really, she told herself. Especially when she thought of how long they’d been talking about their shop. For ages, ever since they were children. And two years ago, they’d begun saving, putting money away in an old cocoa tin that Joe kept under his bed. Everything had gone into that tin – wages, Christmas and birthday coins, errand money, even a few farthings found in the street. Bit by bit, the coins had mounted up, and now they had twelve and two – a fortune.

  Over the years, she and Joe had painted a picture of their shop in their imaginations, embellishing and refining it until the picture was so real she could close her eyes and smell the tea in its chest. She could feel the smooth oak counter under hand and hear the little brass doorbell tinkle as people came in. It would be a bright and gleaming place, not some tatty hole-in-the-wall. A real beauty, with the windows done up so nicely that people simply couldn’t walk by. “It’s all in the presentation, Fee,” Joe always said. “That’s what brings the punters in.”

  The shop would be a success, she knew it would. As a coster-monger’s son, Joe knew everything there was to know about selling. He’d grown up on a barrow, spending the first year of his life propped up in a basket between the turnips and the potatoes. He could bellow “Buy my fine parsley-o!” before he could say his name. With his know-how and their combined hard work, they couldn’t possibly fail.

  Our shop, ours alone, Fiona thought, gazing at Joe as he gazed at the river. Her eyes caressed his face, delighting in every detail – the strong line of his jaw, the sandy stubble covering his cheeks, the tiny scar above his eye. She knew its every plane and angle. There wasn’t a time when Joe Bristow hadn’t been part of her life and there never would be. She and Joe had grown up on the same shabby street, one house apart. From childhood they’d played together, roamed Whitechapel together, eased each other’s hurts and heartaches.

  They’d shared pennies and treats as children, now they shared their dreams. Soon they would share a life. They would be married, she and Joe. Not right away. She was only seventeen and her father would say that was too young. But in another year she’d be eighteen, and Joe twenty, and they would have money saved and excellent prospects.

  Fiona stood up and jumped from the steps onto the stony flat below. Her body was humming with excitement. She trotted to the river’s edge, scooped up a handful of stones, and skipped them across the water as hard and fast as she could. When she’d skipped them all, she turned to Joe, who was still sitting on the steps, watching her.

  “One day, we’ll be as big as all this,” she shouted, thrusting her arms out wide. “Bigger than Whites or Sainsburys. Bigger than ’Arrods, too.” She stood still for a few seconds, taking in the warehouses on either side of her, the wharves across the river. At a glance, she seemed so slight and fragile, nothing but a slip of a girl standing at the river’s edge, dragging her hem in the mud. But eyes that lingered upon her as Joe’s did could see the force of her ambition in her every expression, her every gesture, from the thrust of her chin to her rough worker’s hands, now clenched into fists as if someone had challenged her.

  “We’ll be so big,” she continued, “that every merchant on the river will be falling over ’imself to sell us ’is goods. We’ll ’ave ten shops in London … no, twenty … and more all over the country. In Leeds and Liverpool. In Brighton and Bristol and Birmingham and …” She stopped, suddenly aware of Joe’s gaze, suddenly shy. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Because you’re such a queer lass.”

  “I’m not!”

  “You are. You’re the fiercest little lass I’ve ever seen. You’ve more bottle than most lads.” Joe leaned back on his elbows and gave her an appraising look. “Maybe you’re not a lass at all, maybe you’re really a lad in disguise.”

  Fiona grinned. “Maybe I am. Maybe you better come down ’ere and find out.”

  Joe stood up and Fiona, full of mischief, turned and ran down the shore. A gravelly crunch behind her told her he’d jumped down and was pursuing her. She squealed with laughter as he grabbed her arm.

  “You certainly run like a lass.” He pulled her close and made a big show of inspecting her face. “And I guess you’re pretty enough to be a lass –”

  “You guess?”

  “Mmm-hmm, but I could still be wrong. I’d better make sure …”

  Fiona felt his fingers brush her cheek. Ever so gently, he tilted her chin up and kissed her lips, parting them with his tongue. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the pleasure of his kiss. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this, not until they were married. Father Deegan would give her a string of Hail Marys to say at confession, and if her da found out he’d skin her alive. But oh, how lovely his lips felt, and his tongue was like velvet, and how sweet his skin smelled, warm from the afternoon sun. Before she knew what she was doing, she was up on her tiptoes, arms around his neck, kissing him back. Nothing felt as good as this, her body pressed against his, his strong arms around her.

  Hoots and catcalls interrupted their embrace. A barge had come out of Wapping Entrance, gateway to the nearby London docks, and was sailing past. Its crew had caught an eyeful.

  Beet-faced, Fiona pulled Joe into a maze of pilings, where they stayed until the barge was past. A church bell sounded the hour. It was growing late; she knew she should be home helping her mother get the dinner. And Joe had to get to the market. After one last kiss, they walked back to the Old Stairs. She scrambled up the steps to put her stockings and boots back on, tripping over her skirts as she did.

  As she stood to go, she stole one final glimpse of the river. It would be a week before she could return – a week of rising in the darkness, trudging to Burton’s and trudging back home, where chores of every description were always waiting. But it didn’t matter, none of it mattered; one day she would leave it all behind. Out from the shore, white froths rose and curled on the water’s surface. Waves danced. Was it her imagination, or did the river seem to leap with excitement for her, for them?

  And why wouldn’t it? she wondered, smiling. She and Joe had each other. They had twelve pounds, two shillings, and a dream. Never mind Burton’s or the dreary streets of Whitechapel. In a year, the world would be theirs. Anything was possible.

  * * *

  “Paddy? Paddy, what time ’ave you got?” Kate Finnegan asked her husband.

  “Hmmph?” he replied, his head buried in the day’s newspaper.

  “The time, Paddy,” she said impatiently, one hand gripping the edge of a yellow mixing bowl, the other whisking together its contents.

  “Kate, luv, you’ve just asked me,” he sighed, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a dented silver watch. “It’s two o’clock exactly.”

  Frowning, Kate banged the whisk on the side of the bowl, knocking globs of cream-colored batter from its wires, then tossed it in the sink. She picked up a fork and poked it into one of the three mutton chops sizzling on top of the stove. A rivulet of juice ran down the side of the chop, sputtering into steam as it hit the hot metal of the frying pan. She speared the chops, dropped them onto a plate, and put them into a warming hatch next to the oven, alongside a jug of onion gravy. Next she picked up a rope of sausages and cut the links into the pan. As they began to fry, she sat down at the table across from her husband.

  “Paddy,” she said, lightly banging the palm of her hand on the table. “Paddy.”

  He looked over the top of his paper into his wife’s large green eyes. “Yes, Kate. What, Kate?”

  “You really should get after them. They can’t just trundle in when they please, keeping you waiting for your dinner. And me standing ’ere, not knowing when to start the toad.”

  “They’ll be along any minute now. Start the dinner. If it’s cold when they get here, they’ve only
themselves to blame.”

  “It’s not just the dinner,” she confessed. “I don’t like them larking about with all this murder business going on.”

  “Sure, you don’t t’ink the Whitechapel Murderer is running about in broad daylight? And stalking a tough little bugger like Charlie? God help him if he is, it’ll be the murderer screaming murder after two minutes with that lad. To say not’ing of Fiona. Remember what happened to that bully Sid Malone when he tried to take her into an alley? Busted him in the nose, she did. Broke it. And him twice the size of her.”

  “Yes, but –”

  “Here, Kate, there’s an article on Ben Tillet, the union lad, organizing the men down the tea warehouses. Listen to this …”

  Kate looked at her husband reproachfully. She could’ve told him the roof was on fire and received the same response. Whatever the paper said, she didn’t want to hear it. Talk of unions worried her; talk of strikes terrified her. With a husband, four children, and a lodger to feed, she barely made it through the week as it was. If a strike was called, they’d starve. And if that wasn’t enough to worry about, there was a murderer on the loose. Whitechapel had always been a tough neighborhood, a two-fisted mixture of Cockneys, Irish, Polish, Russians, Chinese, and a smattering of others. No one was rich, most were hardworking. Many were hard-drinking, too. There was plenty of crime, but it was mainly thieving. Thugs sometimes killed each other or a man died in a brawl, but nobody did this sort of thing, cutting up women.

  With Paddy still reading, she stood up, moved to the stove, and prodded the sausages, grizzling in a slick layer of juices and fat. She picked up the mixing bowl and poured the batter into the frying pan, blanketing them. The batter hissed as it hit the hot drippings, then spread to the edges of the pan, where it bubbled and puffed. She smiled. The batter was airy and would brown nicely. A cup of ale always did the trick. She shoved the skillet into the oven, then turned her attention to a pot of potatoes. As she mashed them, she heard the front door bang open and her daughter’s steps, light and quick, in the hallway.

  “ ’Ello, Mam. ’Ello, Da,” Fiona said brightly, depositing her week’s wages minus sixpence in an old tea tin on the mantel.

  “ ’Ello, luv,” Kate said, looking up from the potatoes to greet her.

  Paddy grunted a greeting from behind his paper.

  Fiona grabbed a pinafore from a hook near the back door. As she tied the strings behind her, she checked on her baby sister Eileen, asleep in a basket by the hearth, then bent down next to her four-year-old brother Seamus, who was sitting on a rug playing soldiers with some clothes-pegs, and gave him a kiss.

  “Now give me one back, Seamie.”

  The little boy, all red hair and mischief, pressed his lips against her cheek and blew a loud, wet raspberry.

  “Oh, Seamie!” she cried, wiping her cheek. “That wasn’t very nice! Who taught you that?”

  “Charlie!”

  “That figures. What needs doing, Mam?”

  “You can slice the bread. Then set the table, start the tea, and get your da ’is porter.”

  Fiona set about her work. “What’s the news, Da?”

  Paddy lowered his paper. “The union. Numbers are growing every day. Won’t be long before the Wapping lads are in. Mark my words, we’ll see a strike before the year’s out. The unions will save the working class.”

  “And ’ow will they do that? By giving us an extra penny an hour so we can starve slowly instead of getting it over with all at once?”

  “Don’t start, Fiona …” Kate cautioned.

  “Fine attitude, that. It’s that Joe Bristow puts them anti-union ideas in your head. Costers, they’re all the same. Too independent. Don’t care about the rest of their class.”

  “I don’t need Joe to put ideas in me ’ead, I’ve plenty of me own, thank you. And I’m not anti-union. It’s just that I prefer to make me own way. Whoever waits for dock owners and factory owners to answer to a bunch of ragtag unionists is going to wait a good long time.”

  Paddy shook his head. “You should be joining up, paying dues, putting some of your wages to work for the common good. Otherwise, you’re behaving just like one of them.”

  “Well, I’m not one of them, Da!” Fiona said hotly. “I get up and work every day but Sunday, just like you. I believe working people should ’ave better lives. Of course I do. I’m just not prepared to sit on my arse and wait for Ben Tillet to bring it all about.”

  “Fiona, watch your tongue,” Kate scolded, checking on the batter.

  “Do you really think, Da, that William Burton will allow ’is premises to go union?” she continued, unheeding. “You work for ’im; you know what ’e’s like as well as I do. Tighter than bark to a tree. ’E wants to keep ’is profits, not share them.”

  “What you don’t see, lass, is you have to start somewhere,” Paddy said heatedly, straightening in his chair. “You go to meetings, spread the word, get all of Burton’s workers behind the union – the lads at the docks, the lasses at his factories – then he’ll have no choice but to accept it. You have to make the small gains before you make the big ones. Like the match girls at Bryant and May’s. Protesting against the terrible conditions and the fines for talking or going to the loo. They won after only a t’ree week stoppage. A bunch of wee lasses! There’s power in numbers, Fiona, mark my words. Unions will save the dockers, the whole working class.”

  “Never mind saving it,” she said. “Just save me from it.”

  Paddy brought his fist crashing down on the table, making his wife and daughter jump. “That’s enough!” he thundered. “I won’t have talk against me own class in me own house.” Glowering, he took up his newspaper and snapped the creases out of it.

  Fiona was steaming, but knew better than to open her mouth.

  “When will you learn?” Kate asked her.

  She shrugged as if none of it mattered and started to lay the knives and forks, but Kate wasn’t fooled. Fiona was angry, but she ought to know by now to keep her opinions to herself. Paddy always said he encouraged his children to think for themselves, but like all fathers, he actually preferred they think like him.

  Kate glanced between her husband and daughter. Lord God, are they alike, she thought. Same jet-black hair, same blue eyes, same stubborn chin. Both of them with their big ideas – that’s the Irish in them. Dreamers, they are. Himself always dreaming after tomorrow, when the capitalists repent their evil ways and pigs fly. And that lass, scheming for that shop of hers. She has no idea how hard it will be to make a go of it. You can’t tell her anything. But it’s always been that way with her. Too big for her britches.

  Her eldest daughter worried Kate greatly. Fiona’s single-mindedness, her sense of purpose, was so strong, so directed, it was frightening. A sudden stab of emotion, fierce and protective, pierced her heart. How many dock girls make a go of a shop? she wondered. What if she gets as far as opening it only to see it fail? It’ll break her heart. And then she’ll spend the rest of her life bitter over something she never should have wished for in the first place.

  Kate confided these worries to her husband on many occasions, but Paddy, proud of the fire in his eldest girl, always argued that spirit was a fine thing in a lass. Spirit a fine thing? She knew better. Spirit was what got lasses sacked from their jobs or got them black eyes from their husbands. What good was spirit when the whole world was just ready and waiting to knock it out of you? She sighed deeply – a long, noisy mother’s sigh. The answer to those questions would have to wait. Dinner was ready.

  “Fiona, where’s your brother?” she asked.

  “Down the gasworks after lumps of coke. Said ’e was going to sell them to Mrs. MacCallum for ’er fire. She won’t pay for coal.”

  “That lad’s got more ways to make two bob than the Bank of England. He’d skin a turd for a farthing,” Paddy commented.

  “Enough! This is my kitchen, not a gutter!” Kate scolded. “Fiona, put the gravy on the table.”

  Ther
e was the sound of trundling from the front of the house. The door opened and the trundling came inside. Charlie was home, with his wooden cart in tow.

  Little Seamie’s head snapped up. “The Whitechapel Murderer!” he shouted gleefully.

  Kate frowned. She did not approve of this, her sons’ ghoulish new game.

  “Yes, little boy,” came a ghostly voice from the hallway. “It’s the Whitechapel Murderer, guv’nor of the night, come to look for naughty children.”

  The voice broke into evil laughter and Seamie, squealing with terror and delight, charged about on his stubby legs, looking for a place to hide.

  “Come ’ere, pet!” Fiona whispered, running to the rocker in front of the hearth. She sat down and spread her skirts out. Seamie crawled under, but forgot to pull in his feet. Charlie tramped into the kitchen, still cackling like a fiend. When he saw the little boots sticking out from under his sister’s skirts, it was all he could do to keep from laughing and wreck the game.

  “ ’Ave you seen any naughty little boys, missus?” Charlie asked his mother.

  “Go on with you,” Kate said, swatting him. “Don’t scare your brother so.”

  “Oh, ’e loves it,” Charlie whispered, shushing her. “Oh, Shaaymeeeee,” he called, wheedling and coaxing, “come out, come out!” He opened the cupboard door. “ ’E’s not in ’ere.” He looked under the sink. “Not in ’ere.” He walked over to his sister. “ ’Ave you seen any bad little boys?”

  “Only the one I’m looking at,” Fiona replied, smoothing her skirts.

  “Is that so? Are these your feet sticking out ’ere, then? Seems like awfully small feet for a big fat cow of a lass like yourself. Let me ’ave a closer look … aha!”

  Charlie grabbed Seamie’s ankles and pulled him out. Seamie screeched and Charlie commenced tickling him to within an inch of his life.

  “Take it easy, Charlie,” Kate cautioned. “Let ’im catch ’is breath.”

  Charlie paused and Seamie kicked him in the leg to get him to start again. When he was truly breathless, Charlie stopped, giving him a fond pat on the head. Seamie, sprawled out on the floor panting, regarded his brother with utter adoration. Charlie was the center of his universe, his hero. He worshiped him, followed him around, even insisted on dressing like him, right down to the bit of fabric he made his mother tie around his neck in imitation of Charlie’s kingsman – a bright red neckerchief that all the flash lads wore. The two boys were almost identical, both taking after their mother with their red hair, green eyes, and freckles.