The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “We do,” she said, not wanting to be any more trouble. “Thank you for watching Seamie, Mr. Soames. And good luck to you in New York.”

  “And to you, Miss Finnegan.”

  Nicholas Soames watched his new acquaintances walk away, unsettled by the look on the girl’s face. It wasn’t just disappointment or frustration, it was fear. She looked frantic. He should help her somehow. The little boy was tired. Maybe he could … no, it wouldn’t work, it was a long trip and they were strangers. Who knew how they would behave?

  Oh, what the devil. He had a weakness for strays. Maybe he’d regret his action, maybe not. He’d knew he’d certainly feel miserable if he didn’t help them. They looked as if they had nobody and it was hard to be all alone in the world. He knew that well enough.

  “Miss Finnegan!” he shouted. “Miss Finnegan!” She couldn’t hear him; she was too far away. “Bugger these suitcases,” he groaned, picking them up and stumbling after her. “Miss Finnegan!” he hollered again, closer this time.

  Fiona turned around. “Mr. Soames, what’s wrong? Are you dizzy again?”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said, putting his things down. “Look, please don’t think me forward or indecent; I’m not trying to suggest anything untoward …”

  Fiona looked perplexed.

  “… but as I told you, I have a double room on board the ship and I don’t need all the space. If you went as my wife … if we posed as a family, they’d let us on together. You could share my room. It’ll have two single beds and probably a cot stowed somewhere. I promise you you’ll be perfectly safe in my company.”

  Relief flooded her face. She didn’t hesitate. “Oh, Mr. Soames, thank you! Thank you so much! We couldn’t ’ave waited another two weeks. We’ll be as quiet as mice, you won’t even know we’re there. We’ll pay our share. ’Ow much is it?”

  Nicholas watched as she reached into her camisole and pulled out a wad of twenty-pound notes. She seemed to be a very poor person with a great deal of money. Oh my God, he thought, horrified, she’s a thief!

  She extricated one note. “I want to pay more than ’alf,” she said, “because Seamie and I are two people.” Her face was so full of gratitude and relief, so honest and open, that he felt ashamed of his momentary suspicions. She wasn’t a thief. She was an East London girl. Rough, but decent. Maybe she’d saved up the money.

  “Put that away,” he said. “We’ll settle up later. Now listen, this is what we’ll do … I’ll go get our boarding passes. When they hand me only one, I’ll say they made a mistake, that I made a family booking – that’s why I booked a double room. They’ll accept it; I’m sure they will.” He frowned.

  “What is it?” Fiona asked anxiously.

  “We’ll have to get round the lack of wedding rings somehow. If they think we’re trying to save money by all going in one room, they might question us or look for signs that we’re not really married. For now, just put your gloves on.”

  “I ’aven’t got any gloves,” she said. “But I do ’ave these.” She rooted in her carpetbag for a moment and produced two thin gold wedding bands. “They were me parents’.”

  “Brilliant!” he exclaimed, slipping the larger one on. “We’ll fool them for sure now. Just remember, you’re Mrs. Soames and I’m Seamie’s father.” He went after the boarding passes. In a few minutes he was back, triumphant. “Got them,” he said. “I’d better hold on to them. That’s what the head of the family would do, don’t you think?”

  She nodded.

  “Isn’t this jolly!” he exclaimed, grinning like a child who just pulled off a prank. “We really did fool them. I hear first class is excellent on this line. The rooms are supposed to be quite comfortable and the food very good.”

  “Is it very dear, Mr. Soames, the dinners and such?” Fiona asked.

  “It’s Nicholas. And no, it’s not expensive, it’s paid for in your ticket. Didn’t you know?”

  “No, I didn’t. All paid for? That’s wonderful!” she said, smiling.

  “We’ll have loads of fun,” he continued, his spirits high. “There’s music and dancing. You can play games and cards. There will be plenty of people to talk to. We’ll see and be seen.”

  Fiona’s smile faded. “Mr. Soames … Nicholas … you’ve been very kind to us, but I don’t think we can go after all. I’m afraid you won’t want to see or be seen with us.”

  “What? Why ever not?”

  She gestured at her clothes. “First class is grand, isn’t it? And we’ve got no nice clothes. This is it.”

  “Really?” he asked, incredulous. He’d never met anyone who could honestly say that all she owned was the shirt on her back. He frowned, looking them up and down. She was right. It would be a problem. They’d have to have new clothes. “You know, I’m sure we could get to a shop and back in time,” he said.

  “Do you think so?”

  “If we hurry. First class will take another hour to board, and then they’ll give second class an hour, and then there’s steerage. Let’s give it a try.”

  As they scrambled to check their bags, Nicholas said, “Is that jacket all you’ve got? How do you stay warm? You’ll need a proper coat and so will Seamie, and good warm gloves and scarves. It’s only March, you know. The air will be brisk on board.” As they left the porters to struggle with their things, he began ticking items off on his fingers. “You should have two or three skirts and a few shirtwaists. A coat, a dress or two for evening, and a couple of hats, don’t you agree?”

  He looked at Fiona. She nodded. “Whatever you think,” she said.

  Her expression – a trusting mixture of hope and uncertainty – touched him. He offered her his arm. “All right, then. Come along, Mrs. Soames. We haven’t got all day!”

  Fiona stood on the Britannic’s first-class aft deck, port side, gripping the railing tightly. The wind was bitterly cold, but she barely felt it as it snatched at her hair and tore at her skirts. She looked in disbelief at her hands, encased in leather gloves, at her new skirt, her boots.

  In the space of two hours, in a crowded department store, Nicholas had transformed her, in appearance at least, from a London dock rat to a proper young lady. She now owned a new wool coat, good leather boots, three woolen skirts, four shirtwaists, two dresses, two hats, and a leather belt. Not to mention new nightclothes, underwear, stockings, tortoiseshell hairpins, and a second big carpetbag to hold it all.

  He had made all the clothing decisions, pulling together outfits, deciding which coat, which hat. Fiona had acquiesced to everything; after all, he knew what one wore traveling, she didn’t. When he finished, he picked out an outfit for her to wear to the ship and suggested she have her old things packed. She ducked back into the fitting room and put on her new coffee-colored skirt with a beige-and-cream-striped shirtwaist, a soft brown leather belt, and new tobacco-colored boots. A navy coat that grazed the floor went over the outfit, which was topped off by a broad-brimmed hat. When she looked in the mirror, she saw a stranger staring back at her. A tall, slender woman, elegantly dressed. She had touched the glass, her fingers meeting the stranger’s. Is this really me? she’d wondered.

  Two days ago she hadn’t enough money to rent a one-room flat in Whitechapel. Now she was traveling to New York first class, sharing a room with a soft bed and its own modern loo, a room more luxurious than anything she’d imagined. They’d had tea and biscuits in the cabin an hour ago. Supper was at eight, with a concert to follow. Yesterday, she’d only been able to scrounge a kipper for Seamie’s tea; tonight her little brother, napping in his cot now, would dress in a new flannel jacket and matching short pants, then dine on delicacies. It all felt absolutely unreal to her, like moving in a dream.

  Everything had changed. Her old life was gone, literally swept away overnight, and she was on the threshold of a new one. She looked different; she felt different. As surely as Nicholas had transformed the outside, pain and loss and bitterness had worked on the inside, effecting changes that she herself sen
sed, but barely comprehended.

  Gone was the coltish girl who’d sat by the river, dreaming of her future with the boy she loved. In her place was a sober young woman, hardened by grief and disillusionment. A woman who no longer thought of courting and kisses and a little shop in Whitechapel. A woman who no longer carried dreams in her heart, only nightmares.

  As she stood on the deck, William Burton’s words came back to her. “… if only we could get Tillet the way we got that bastard Finnegan.” And Bowler Sheehan’s response, his obscene laughter. “… that was a good job, wasn’t it … put the grease down myself… watched Mr. Union Organizer slip and fall five stories …”

  Fiona wanted to scream until she couldn’t hear those voices anymore. But she knew that as long as she lived, she would never forget them. The truth was branded on her heart. Everything that had happened to her, to those she loved, had happened because of William Burton. There would be no justice, not now, not ever, for she would never be able to prove what he had done. But there would be revenge. In New York, somehow, she would make something of herself. Poor people could become rich in America. Weren’t the streets paved with gold? She would see how people made money, and she would figure out how to make it, too.

  “It’s not over, Burton,” she whispered to the ocean, its waters black in the winter twilight. “It ’asn’t even begun.”

  On the horizon, England slipped out of sight. Her homeland. The ground in which her family was buried. The streets where she and Joe had walked. All gone. She could see nothing now but water. The ocean unnerved her; she couldn’t see across it to the other side as she could see across the Thames. She felt unbearably alone and frightened of what was to come. She closed her eyes, wishing for something, someone to hang on to.

  “You look troubled, my child,” said a voice at her elbow. Startled, she turned toward it. A kindly-looking man in a black cassock, a priest, was standing beside her. “At prayer, were you? That’s good. It eases the soul. You can tell the Almighty your troubles and He will hear them. God will provide.”

  Really? she thought, stifling a bitter laugh. He’s done a terrible job of it so far.

  “Here, let us pray together now and ask His help in easing your burdens,” the priest said, handing her a rosary.

  She shook her head. “No, thank you, Father.”

  The priest regarded her, nonplussed. “But surely you believe in the power of the Almighty to help you in your time of need? Surely you believe …”

  Believe in what? she wondered. She had once believed with all her heart in the strength of love, the permanence of home and family; she’d believed that her dreams would come true and her prayers would be answered.

  Now she believed in one thing only – the money stitched up in her camisole. Those pounds had saved her life – not Joe, not God, not her poor dead parents, not a union, not mumbled prayers or rosaries or penny candles.

  Fiona thought of her father, of a conversation they’d had once in front of the fire. It seemed like years ago. His words had confused her at the time; she had mulled them over in the months after his death, never fully understanding them, but now their meaning was perfectly clear.

  “What I believe, Father,” she said, handing him back his rosary, “is that three pounds of meat makes a very good stew.”

  Part Two

  Chapter 22

  New York, March 1889

  “Move it, would ya? Move yer goddamned ass, goddammit!” the cabdriver shouted. Ahead of him, a wagon laden with bricks was moving too slowly for his liking. He pulled up hard on his horse’s reins, forcing the animal to swerve sharply. The cab’s wheel caught the curb as it skirted the wagon, tossing Fiona and Seamie around on the seat like dice in a cup.

  They’d only gone two blocks from the terminal and already their glimpses of the city and its people had confirmed what they’d heard aboard the Britannic – that New York was beastly loud and beastly fast. All around them, people moved as quickly and heedlessly as the traffic. Men darted across intersections, dodging oncoming carriages. One, in a bowler hat, read a newspaper as he walked, turning the pages and a corner without missing a beat. Another ate a sandwich as he hung off a trolley. A woman wearing a straight skirt and cutaway jacket strode briskly toward her destination, shoulders thrown back, chin lifted, the plumes on her hat trembling with every step.

  As the hansom cab nosed its way up Tenth Avenue, Fiona and Seamie took in the vast freight yards and factories that lined it and the frenetic activity that attended them. Teams of horses drew huge rolls of paper to printers’ shops or bales of cotton and wool to textile mills. Men lowered newly woven carpets, crates of twine, china cabinets, and pianos from factory loopholes to delivery wagons. They heard them shouting orders to one another in brash American voices. They saw laundries billowing steam into the crisp air, glimpsed red-faced women inside their open doors twisting water out of sheets. They smelled coffee roasting, biscuits baking, and less savory odors from soap factories and slaughterhouses.

  New York, Fiona sensed, was nothing like London. It was young, an upstart. A new city whose every street and building spoke of speed and modernity. She remembered how Nick had reacted when the boat docked, how he’d held up the entire first-class section when he stopped on the gangplank, enraptured by the very sight of the place.

  “New York!” he’d exclaimed. “Just look at it, Fee! The city of commerce, of industry. The city of the future. Look at all the buildings! The thrusting architecture, the soaring lines. They’re artistic ideals realized. Temples of ambition. Paeans to power and progress!”

  She smiled to herself now. That was Nick all over. Nattering on about artistic ideals when all she – and a thousand others – wanted was to get off the bloody boat.

  Seamie, sitting on the edge of the seat, turned to her and said, “Will they like us, Fee? Auntie Molly and Uncle Michael?”

  “Of course they will, luv,” she replied, wishing she felt as confident as she sounded. A little voice inside her reminded her that her aunt and uncle had no idea that she and Seamie were about to show up on their doorstep. What if they don’t want you? the voice asked.

  She silenced it. Of course they would. Michael was their father’s brother. They were his family and he would do right by them. Oh, he might be a bit surprised at first – who wouldn’t be? But they would be welcomed and made much of. She had dressed herself in a navy skirt and white shirtwaist and Seamie in the tweed jacket and short pants she’d bought in Southampton so they would be sure to make a good impression. She told herself how very lucky they were to have family to go to, unlike poor Nick, who had none.

  Nick, she had learned over the course of their journey, had had a falling-out with his father; that’s why he’d left London. His father owned a bank and expected him to run it one day, but Nick had other ideas. He was passionate about what he called the new art – the work of a group of painters who lived in Paris. He’d worked as an art dealer for a time in that city and now he was going to open a gallery of his own in New York. He would represent these new painters exclusively. Impressionists, he called them. He’d shown her the half dozen canvases he’d brought with him. At first, she’d thought them very odd. They looked nothing like the paintings she had seen in windows of shops and pubs – ones of children and dogs, or courting couples, or hunting scenes. But the more he told her about the ideas behind the paintings, and the painters themselves, the more she grew to like them.

  Nick kept one of the canvases – a small still life of white roses, apples, bread, and wine – on the night table that separated their two beds, where he could always see it. It was signed “H. Besson,” and Fiona had found herself strangely drawn to it. It made her think of Joe. Of how much she still missed him, longed for him. She had wondered how this simple little painting could stir up such feelings. Nick said it was because the artist had painted it with his heart.

  Though they’d been apart for only half an hour at the most, Fiona missed Nick already. Horribly. Today was
Thursday. They’d promised to meet the following Thursday at his hotel. It was only a week away, but it seemed like forever. She missed his enthusiasm and his optimism, his irrepressible sense of adventure, his funny, impractical ways. She remembered their first supper together. As they were walking to the dining room, she’d been seized by panic. She had no idea how to act or what to say. How would she ever pass as his wife, as one of the quality?

  “It’s simple,” he’d told her. “Always be rude to the help. Sneer at every new idea the world presents. And never stop talking about your dogs.”

  She would have preferred a bit of useful advice – like which glass was for water and which for wine. That first dinner had been a disaster. She’d been confused by the profusion of cutlery, crystal, and china. By the time she’d figured out which was the soup spoon, Seamie was drinking his consommé right out of the bowl. He’d lowered it, made a face, and said, “This tea is ’orrible!” She’d made him put it down and use his spoon and tear pieces off his roll and butter each piece – as Nick did – instead of slathering the whole roll. She couldn’t get him to do much else. He was balky and cranky and couldn’t understand why he suddenly had to call his sister Mother and a strange man Father. He didn’t like the lobster salad and refused to eat his quail because it still had its head on.

  To make conversation, Nick had asked her about her family. While she’d been busy formulating a reply to that difficult question, Seamie answered it for her. “Our mam’s dead,” he’d said plainly. “She was stabbed by a man called Jack. Our da’s dead, too. ’E fell at the docks. They cut ’is leg off. Charlie and Eileen are dead, too. Bad men chased us. They wanted our money. We ’id be’ind a mattress. It ’ad rats in it. I was scared. I don’t like rats.”

  When Seamie finished, Nick’s mouth was hanging open. After a few seconds of excruciating silence, he asked if it was true. She told him it was. Looking at her plate, she explained what had happened to her family, leaving out William Burton’s involvement. Seamie knew nothing about it. Nobody did and she wanted to keep it that way. It was a black, horrible thing – a thing for herself alone. When she’d finished, she’d raised her eyes to Nick’s, expecting to see an expression of distaste on his fine, patrician face. Instead, she’d seen tears in his eyes.