The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  The constant struggle to stay ahead of the bills wore her down at times, but the alternative was unthinkable. Real poverty. The crushing, inescapable kind where your furniture was thrown out in the street when you couldn’t pay the rent and you caught lice from sleeping in dirty lodging houses. The kind where your kids were raggedy and your husband stayed away because he couldn’t bear the sight of his thin, hungry children. Kate had seen these things happen to families on her street when a man lost his job or took ill. Families like hers, with no savings to speak of, just a few coins in a tin. Poverty was an abyss that was much easier to slide into than crawl out of and she wanted to keep as much distance between it and her family as possible. She was terrified the strike would take them right to the edge of it.

  “I know what we’ll do, Mrs. Finnegan,” Lillie said, giggling. “I read in the papers that there’s a reward offered for the one who catches the Whitechapel Murderer. It’s a lot of money – a hundred quid. We could catch him, you and me.”

  Kate laughed, too. “Oh, aye, Lillie, what a pair we’d make! The two of us going down an alley at night, me with a broom and you with a milk bottle, one more terrified than the other.”

  The two women talked for few more minutes, then Kate drained her cup, thanked her friend, and said she had to be off. Lillie opened the kitchen door for her. She would have to go around to a gate, then down a narrow alley that ran alongside the house into the street. She never failed to scrape her knuckles on the brick wall. She wished she could just walk through the house and use the front entry, but a neighbor might see and tell Mrs. Branston. This was a middle-class house on a good street and the help did not come and go through the front door.

  “Ta-ra, Mrs. Finnegan.”

  “Ta-ra, Lillie. See that you lock the door,” Kate called, her head hidden, her voice muffled by the large basket of linens on her shoulder.

  Chapter 6

  Autumn is on its way, Fiona thought, pulling her shawl around her shoulders. The signs were unmistakable – falling leaves, shorter days, the coal man bellowing from his wagon. It was a gray September Sunday and the damp, creeping air had turned chilly. “THE SEASON OF DEATH,” the headline screamed from the newspaper, “WHITECHAPEL MURDERER STILL AT LARGE.”

  Sitting on her step reading her father’s paper while Seamie played next to her, Fiona wondered how anyone could go off down an alley with a stranger while a murderer was on the loose. “The devil is a charming man,” her mam said. He’d have to be, Fiona thought, to get any woman round here to take a walk with him in the dark, in the fog, all alone.

  On her street, and all throughout Whitechapel, people found it impossible to believe that anyone could commit such acts, then simply disappear. The police looked like buffoons. They were criticized by Parliament and by the press. It was taking a toll on Uncle Roddy, she knew. He hadn’t gotten over finding the Nichols woman’s body. He still had nightmares.

  The murderer was a monster. The press had also turned him into a symbol of all that was wrong with society – violence and lawlessness in the working classes, profligacy in the upper ones. To the rich, the killer was a member of the vicious lower orders, a raging brute. The poor saw him as a member of the quality, a gentleman who derived obscene pleasure hunting streetwalkers like prey. To Catholics, he was a Protestant; to Protestants, a Catholic. To the immigrants who lived in East London he was a crazy Englishman, liquored up and dangerous. To John Bull, he was a dirty, godless foreigner.

  Fiona had no image of the murderer. She didn’t want to know what he looked like. She didn’t care. All she wanted was for him to be caught so she could walk out at night with Joe without her mam thinking she was lying dead in an alley if she got in five minutes late.

  The noisy crash of building blocks next to her startled her.

  “Bugger!” Seamie yelled.

  “Charlie teach you that?” she asked.

  He nodded proudly.

  “Don’t let our da ’ear you say it, lad.”

  “Where is Charlie?” Seamie asked, turning his face up to hers. “Down the brewery.”

  “I wish ’e was ’ome. ’E said ’e was going to bring me some licorice.”

  “ ’E’ll be ’ome soon, luv.” Fiona felt a twinge of guilt for fibbing. Charlie wasn’t at the brewery. He was at the Swan, a riverside pub, giving some lad a thrashing; but she could hardly tell Seamie. He was too little to keep secrets and might blurt it to their mam. Charlie was fighting for money. Fiona had heard it from Joe, who’d heard it from a friend who’d placed bets on him and won. It explained his sudden propensity for coming home with black eyes, which he always put down to “just lads scrapping.”

  She wasn’t supposed to know her brother was fighting, so she couldn’t ask him what he planned to do with his winnings, but she had an idea: Uncle Michael and America. She’d seen his eyes light up the other day when their mam opened the letter and read aloud their uncle’s description of his shop and New York. She’d seen him later, too, rereading the letter at the kitchen table. He didn’t even look up when she passed by, just said, “I’m going, Fee.”

  “You can’t. Mam’ll cry,” she replied. “And you don’t ’ave the money for a ticket anyway.”

  He’d ignored her. “I bet Uncle Michael could use a lad the way ’is business is going. And with Auntie Molly ’aving a baby and all. Why not ’is own nephew? I’m not staying ’ere working for shite wages in the brewery me whole life.”

  “You can work for me and Joe in our shop,” she said.

  He’d rolled his eyes.

  “Don’t make faces! We’ll ’ave our shop, you wait and see.”

  “I want to make me own way. I’m going to New York.”

  Fiona had forgotten all about that conversation until she learned he was fighting. The little bleeder was serious. America, she thought, where the streets were paved with gold. If he went there, he’d become a toff in no time. She would try to be happy for him when the day came, but she hated to think of her brother going so far away. She loved him dearly, even if he was a troublemaker, and people who went to America almost never came back. Memories and the odd letter would be all they’d have of him when he was gone.

  She would miss him if he went, but she understood his wanting to go. Like herself, he couldn’t accept a future of nothing but back-breaking labor. Why should that be her lot? And Charlie’s? Because they were poor? It was no crime to be poor – the Lord himself had been poor and working-class, as her da always reminded her. Father Deegan also said poverty was no sin; but he expected you to be humble about it. If you were poor, it’s what the Lord intended for you, and you should be accepting of His will. Keep your place and all that.

  She looked up and down Montague Street at the shabby, soot-blackened houses with their cramped rooms, thin walls, and drafty windows. She knew the lives of almost all their inhabitants. Number 5 – the McDonoughs – nine children, always hungry. Number 7 – the Smiths – he was a gambler, she was always at the pawnshop and the kids ran wild. Number 9 – the Phillipses – struggling, but respectable. Mrs. Phillips, who never smiled, was forever washing the stoop.

  Was this her place? She sure as hell hadn’t asked for it. Let somebody else keep it. She would find a better one, she and Joe together.

  Joe. A smile came to her lips at the memory of what they’d done in the alley the other night. She felt warm and achy inside whenever she thought of it and she thought of it constantly. She’d gone to church intending to confess what she’d done to Father Deegan, but on the way decided it wasn’t any of his damn business, for it wasn’t a sin. He would say what they’d done was wrong, but she knew it wasn’t. Not with Joe.

  What’s gotten into me? she wondered. One minute she was convinced she shouldn’t be doing anything like that, not even thinking about it. The next minute, she was imagining herself alone with Joe again – his kisses, his hands on her, touching her where he wasn’t supposed to. Had they done everything you could do before the final thing? And what was tha
t like? She had a vague notion of what went on. The man pushed a lot, she’d heard, but why? Because it didn’t fit? And if it didn’t fit, did that mean it hurt? She wished there was somebody who could tell her. Her friends didn’t know any more than she did, and she’d rather die than ask Charlie.

  She felt Seamie lean into her. He was blinky-eyed and yawning. It was time for his nap. She gathered his blocks, then took him inside and put him to bed in the parlor. He was asleep before she even got his boots off. She crept quietly out of the room and pulled the door closed. Charlie was out. Uncle Roddy was at the pub. Eileen, upstairs in her parents’ bedroom, was asleep. Even her mother and father had gone up for a nap, just as they did every Sunday – the sort of nap that she and Charlie knew better than to disturb.

  For the next hour at least, she was free. She could make herself a cup of tea and read. She could take a walk to Commercial Street and look in the shop windows, or she could visit with friends. She was standing in the hallway trying to make up her mind when she heard a knock on the door. She opened it.

  “ ’Ello, missus,” said the lad on the step. “Fancy any fruit and veg today? Turnips? Onions? Some Brussels sprouts?”

  “Be quiet, you fool, you’ll wake me brother and the rest of the ’ouse, too,” Fiona said, delighted to see Joe. “You’re off early today. Business bad this morning?”

  “Business? Um, no, not exactly, just, uh … finished up early, that’s all. Finished up early and thought I might take a walk. To the river,” he said, smiling brightly.

  Too brightly, she thought. And he never finishes early. Or takes a walk to the river on a Sunday when he’s dead on his feet after a whole weekend of selling. Something’s up.

  “Come on, then,” he said, tugging at her arm.

  His pace was brisk. He was silent, too. Fiona had no doubt that something was on his mind. Had he fallen out with his father again? She was anxious to know, but he wasn’t one to speak until he was good and ready.

  The docks were quiet when they arrived at the Old Stairs. The river, too. The tide was out. Only a few barges and wherries plied the waters. Along the wharves, loophole doors were pulled shut; cranes were silent. The river, like the rest of London, was doing its best to observe the Lord’s day.

  They settled themselves halfway down the stairs. Joe leaned forward, elbows on his knees, silent. Fiona looked at the side of his face, then turned her gaze to the river, waiting for him to speak. She took a deep breath and smelled tea. Always tea. Crated in Oliver’s or loose in small mountains on the floor. She imagined the brown dust sifting down through floorboards, floating out of cracks in the loophole doors. She closed her eyes and inhaled again. Sweet and bright. A Darjeeling.

  After a minute or so, Joe said, “I ’ear Charlie’s getting ’imself quite a reputation down the Swan.”

  She knew he hadn’t come to the river to talk about Charlie. This was just his way of getting around to what was eating him. “ ’E better ’ope our mam doesn’t find out,” she said. “She’ll drag ’im out by ’is ear.”

  “What’s ’e do with ’is winnings?”

  “I think ’e’s saving up for a boat passage to America. ’E wants to work for me da’s brother in New York –”

  “Fiona …” Joe interrupted, taking her hand.

  “Aye?”

  “I asked you to come walking with me because I wanted to tell you that I might …” He hesitated. “There’s a chance that I … there’s this job come up, y’see …” He stopped again, scraping the heel of his boot on the step below him. He looked at the lapping water, took a deep breath, then blew it out. “This is no good. You’re not going to like what I ’ave to say no matter ’ow I put it, so ’ere it is: Tommy Peterson offered me a job and I took it.”

  “You what?” she asked, stunned.

  “I took the job.” He started speaking quickly. “The pay’s good, Fee, much more than I make at the market with me father –”

  “You took a job with Tommy Peterson? Millie’s da?”

  “Aye, but –”

  “So our shop’s off?” she said angrily, pulling her hand away. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m telling you! Sod it, Fiona! I knew you’d make this ten times ’arder than it ’as to be. Shut up and listen, will you?”

  She stared ahead at the river, refusing to look at him. Millie Peterson had a hand in this; she just knew it. Joe grabbed her chin and turned her face back to his. She slapped his hand away.

  “I’ll be doing pretty much what I do right now – ’awking goods,” he explained. “Tommy saw me working at me dad’s pitch and liked my style. Only I’ll be selling to other costers, not the public …”

  Fiona stared at him stonily, saying nothing.

  “… so I’ll be learning a lot about the ’olesaling business – ’ow to do business at the source. With the farmers in Jersey and Kent. With the French. I’ll be able to see ’ow the buying and selling works in the biggest market in London, and –”

  “Where? At Spitalfields?” Fiona cut in, referring to the nearby market.

  “Well, that’s something else I ’ave to tell you. I won’t be working at Peterson’s Spitalfields pitch. ’E wants me at Covent Garden.”

  “So you’ll be leaving Montague Street,” she said dully.

  “I don’t ’ave any choice, Fee. We start at four in the morning. I’d ’ave to leave Whitechapel at two to get there on time. And with ’arvest wagons coming in at all hours now, we’ll be working way into the night. I’ll ’ave to grab me sleep when I can.”

  “Where?”

  “In a room Peterson’s got in ’is market building. Over the offices.”

  “Complete with bed, washstand, and daughter.”

  “I’ll be sharing it with ’is nephew, a lad my age. It won’t cost me a penny.”

  Fiona said nothing. She returned her gaze to the river.

  “It could be a good thing, this job, Fee. Why are you carrying on so about it?”

  Why? Fiona asked herself, staring hard at a barge. Because my whole life you’ve never not been on Montague Street, because my heart thumps every time I see you, because your face, your smile, your voice all take away the dreariness of this place, because our dreams give me hope and make everything bearable. That’s why.

  She swallowed hard, trying to hold back the tears that were just underneath her anger. “It’s just a lot to take in, isn’t it? It’s so sudden. You just take a whole new job and move away. You won’t be right down the street anymore or at the market. Who’s going to sit ’ere with me after work on Saturdays and … and …” Her voice caught.

  “Fiona, look at me,” Joe said, brushing a tear from her cheek. She turned her face to his, but would not meet his eyes. “I didn’t take this job without thinking about it. Peterson offered it to me two days ago. I’ve been turning it over in me mind ever since, trying to figure out the best thing to do. Not for me, for us. And this job’s it. I can’t stay ’ere, Fee. I’m fighting with me dad all the time. And I can’t set up on me own. I’d be the competition, taking food out of me own family’s mouth. At Peterson’s I’ll make twice what I did with me father. I’ll be able to put away money for our shop faster than ever. And I’ll be learning things we can use when we go into business.” He squeezed her hand tightly. “Don’t you see ’ow this can ’elp us?”

  Fiona nodded; she did see. Despite her initial anger, she saw that he was right – it was a good step even if it was a hard one. Anything that helped them get their shop sooner rather than later was good. But she still felt sad. The idea might make sense to her head, but her heart felt like it was breaking.

  “When do you go?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Blimey, Joe.”

  “Don’t look so sad, misery,” he said, desperate to cheer her up. “It won’t be forever and I’ll come ’ome soon as I can. And I’ll bring you something, all right?”

  “Just yourself. That’s all I want. And p
romise not to fall for Millie. I’m sure she’ll find some reason to show up at Covent Garden now and again, fawning and flirting,” she said.

  “Don’t be daft.”

  She jumped off the stone steps and walked downriver toward the Orient Wharf. She bent down to scoop up a handful of stones to skip and resolved to stop carrying on. She’d been selfish, only thinking of her own feelings. She ought to get behind him; it wouldn’t be easy for him. The Covent Garden job would be new and exciting, but also tough. From what she’d heard of Tommy Peterson, he’d be working every hour God sent.

  Joe joined her and began to skip stones, too. After he’d pitched his entire pile, he bent down for more. One stone, deeply embedded in the river mud, gave a loud wet sucking noise as it came up. In the split second before the muddy hollow it left was filled by a lap of water, he saw a glint of blue. He dropped the stone and probed the silty mud. His fingers found a small hard lump. After a few seconds, he freed it.

  “Look, Fee,” he said, washing the object clean. Fiona bent over next to him. He held in his hand a smooth, oval stone, flat on the bottom and humped on the top. A long groove ran from its top to its middle, where it split into two grooves that curved out toward its sides. It was indigo blue and just over an inch long. As it dried, its surface took on a frosted look, evidence of long and constant abrasion from sand and water.

  “What a pretty blue,” Fiona said.

  “Don’t know what it’s from. Maybe the bottom of on old medicine bottle,” he said, frowning as he turned the stone between his thumb and forefinger. He took Fiona’s hand, placed the stone on her palm and curled her fingers around it. “There. A jewel from the river for you. It’s the best I can do right now, but someday I’ll do better. I promise.”

  Fiona opened her hand and regarded her treasure intently, enjoying its weight in her palm. She would carry it with her everywhere when Joe left. When she was feeling lonely, she could slip her hand into her pocket and it would be there, reminding her of him.