The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “No, I haven’t. They’re being rather difficult right now. Apparently Will’s eldest son doesn’t like the idea of his father seeing me. I guess I don’t have the right pedigree.”

  “Oh, really? And just who the hell does the little rotter think he is?” Nick said angrily. “He’d be damned lucky to have someone like you in his family. Bloody Americans and their bloody social pretensions! Two generations of lumber money and they think they’re aristocrats.”

  Fiona smiled at his gallantry. She looked like herself again. “And who are you, then, you toff?” she teased, taking his arm. “The Duke of Dour? The Crown Prince of Cranky?”

  “Something like that,” he said, suddenly self-conscious. Her nonsense titles sounded oddly familiar to his ears. It had been a long time since anyone had called him by his rightful title. He doubted anyone ever would again. That was fine by him. His own particular pedigree had brought him nothing but grief. He’d shed it when he left England and wanted no further part of it.

  “Look, Prince Fusspot, there’s that house again,” Fiona said.

  “Hmmm?” he said, glad of a new subject.

  “The derelict house. Right there. We’ve passed it twice. How can someone just leave a house to rot?” She released his arm and walked up to it, squinting at it in the sunshine. Nick looked at it, trying to see what interested her so much. It was nothing but a tumbledown wreck, though it did have a pretty rosebush in the front, a crimson climber that hung over the doorway.

  “Mr. Soames?” the realtor called.

  “Come on, Fee,” Nick said. “We’re being summoned. Time to see yet another space that’s too dark, too pokey, and too dreary.”

  The realtor showed them four more properties, none of which suited him, then left them back on the corner of Irving and Eighteenth, with the promise to notify him if any more properties became available.

  “Shall we get a bit to eat, Fee?” Nick asked, weighing the merits of the Fifth Avenue Hotel versus one of the new Child’s Restaurants with their spotless white-tiled floors and brisk, efficient waitresses. “Tea and scones? Or an ice cream soda? Or maybe one of those sundaes with whipped cream and nuts and … Fee?”

  He’d thought she was right beside him, but she wasn’t. She was standing a few yards away – in front of the derelict house again. Her hands were resting atop the iron fence that separated the front yard from the sidewalk. She was staring up at the tall boarded-up windows dreamily.

  “What on earth are you looking at?” he asked, joining her.

  “It must’ve been stunning once, this house.”

  “Not anymore. Come away before the cornice falls off and kills us both.”

  But she wouldn’t be budged. “Someone must’ve loved it once. That rose didn’t get there by itself, and look at these …” She leaned over the fence and touched a tall blue spike of delphinium. “Someone just left it, Nick. Just walked away from it. How could a person do that?”

  Nick sighed impatiently. He wanted to leave. He was tired and hungry, but it was more than that. He was uneasy; he had the unpleasant feeling that they were being watched. He looked around, telling himself he was being silly. But he wasn’t. There was a man sweeping the sidewalk two houses down and he was eyeing them unhappily.

  “Hey! What are you doing there? There’s no loitering on this street,” he shouted.

  “We’re not loitering,” Fiona said. She released the fence and took a few steps toward him. “We’re admiring the building.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Nick grumbled.

  “Do you know why it’s boarded up?” she asked the man.

  “Of course I do. I’m the caretaker, aren’t I?”

  Fiona walked over to him and introduced herself. Nick had no choice but to follow. The caretaker told them his name – Fred Wilcox – and that he looked after the building for its owner, an elderly woman named Esperanza Nicholson.

  “Why has she abandoned it?”

  “What’s it to you?” Wilcox asked.

  “It makes me sad seeing such a beautiful house falling to ruin.”

  “It is sad,” Wilcox said less gruffly, softened a bit by Fiona’s honest admission. “Fifty-odd years ago, Miss Nicholson’s father gave her the house as a wedding present. She was going to live in it with her husband when they got back from their honeymoon. She had the place all done up – furniture, carpets, wallpaper – everything. And all of it the very best quality, mind you, no rubbish. Then, a day before the wedding, her intended jilted her. It destroyed her. She lived with her father, became a recluse. The old man’s gone, died years ago, but she still lives in his house. She had this one boarded up and left it to crumble. Won’t live in it. Refuses to rent it or sell it.”

  “It’s as if she’s punishing the house for what happened,” Fiona said. “Mr. Wilcox, is there any way we could see the house? Can we go inside?”

  “No, I can’t let you do that,” Wilcox said, shaking his head. “You might get hurt in there.”

  Nick despaired of ever getting a cup of tea. He was feeling put out because he hadn’t found a site for his gallery. He wanted to leave Gramercy Park and the unproductive afternoon behind him. He knew better than to suggest they not go into the house, though. Once Fiona got a bee in her bonnet there was no stopping her. He dug in his pocket, pulled out a dollar, and handed it to Wilcox, hoping it would speed the process up. It did.

  “All right then, here’s the key for the garden floor,” the caretaker said, handing Fiona an ancient, blackened skeleton key. “If anything happens to you, if you break your fool necks in there, I don’t know nothing about it. You got in through a loose board, right?”

  “Righto,” Nick said. He turned and trotted off after Fiona, who was already charging through the gate. He kicked his way through the wildflowers and weeds to the door, which she was struggling to open. “If we so much as glimpse a rat, I’m off,” he said.

  “Here, help me turn this key. I can’t budge it. I think the lock’s rusty.”

  Nick used all his strength. “It’s stuck. Wait … there it goes.”

  Fiona nudged him out of the way in her eagerness to get inside. She pushed the door open and rushed in. Crumbling bits of rotted wood and rusted metal fell on her head. Nick brushed the debris away, laughing at her as he did. Inside, the inner door had rotted off its hinges and was lying inside the foyer. They gingerly walked across it and into the house.

  “Oh, this is beautiful, Fiona! Really!” he said sarcastically, looking around. The ceiling was mostly gone. The lath was exposed where big chunks of plaster had fallen. The wallpaper was hanging down in strips. A chandelier lay on the floor, smashed to bits. Mildew had blackened the once white sheets covering the furniture. “Come on, let’s go.”

  But Fiona wasn’t leaving. She advanced from the first room through a set of sticky pocket doors into the second. He followed, thinking she was mad, not understanding her obsession with this place. Halfway there, his foot went straight through a floorboard. He pulled it out, cursing.

  “Nick! Isn’t this something?” she called from the other room.

  “Yes, if you’re a termite,” he said, stumbling through the doors. As he wiped splinters off his cuff, Fiona marveled at the ornate pier mirrors, their silver now peeling from the glass. He opened his mouth to complain that the dust was making him wheeze, when something in her expression made him close it again. He hadn’t been able to comprehend her obsession with this moldering house, but watching her now, seeing the emotion in her face as she wiped cobwebs off a mantel, he suddenly did. She identified with the house. It was a creature that someone had abandoned. As someone had once abandoned her.

  She bent to examine the carvings on the mantel, then squealed with fright as a family of stray cats shot out of the grate. They scrambled past her toward the back of the house and squeezed out of an empty pane in a grime-caked window. Laughing shakily, one hand pressed to her chest, she followed them. “I think there’s a yard out there,” she said. “Let’s go se
e.”

  The door was stuck. The lock worked, but its hinges were rusted. Working together, they managed to pull it back eighteen inches or so from the jamb. Fiona squeezed through first. Once she was out, he heard her gasp. “Oh, Nick! Hurry! Oh, look at them all!”

  He squeezed out, wondering what she could be exclaiming about. And then he saw them. Tea roses. Hundreds and hundreds of them. The entire backyard – and it was a large one – was full of them. They were sprawling over walls, pathways, a rusted iron settee, each other, basking and preening in the sunshine. He recognized them instantly. His father had favored them and had kept scores of bushes on his Oxfordshire estate. Aristocratic old girls, tea roses. He remembered the gardener telling him how their ancestors had been smuggled out of China a hundred years ago by Englishmen in love with the lush flowers and intoxicating tea scent. They could be tricky to grow, tough to get a repeat bloom out of, but these were blooming in the heat of summer!

  “Smell them, Nick, they smell like tea!” Fiona said. “Look at these … have you ever seen a pink like that? Look at that pale yellow one …” She was running from bush to bush, burying her face in the blooms like a demented bumblebee.

  Nick pulled a blossom to his nose, closed his eyes, and inhaled. For a second he was back in Oxford on a perfect summer day. He opened his eyes again in time to see Fiona rush up to him. She giddily tucked a rose behind his ear, threw her arms around his neck, and hugged him tightly.

  “My goodness, old shoe! I never knew roses had such an effect on you!”

  “They do!” she said, taking his hands in hers. “And beautiful, big old houses in Gramercy Park. And tea. Oh, Nick, this is it! Don’t you see? This house will be your gallery … and my tearoom!”

  Chapter 45

  “Couldn’t I have just five minutes of her time?” Fiona pleaded. “I promise I won’t overstay my welcome.”

  “You already have. Miss Nicholson does not receive visitors.”

  “But I only want to ask her about her property … the Gramercy Park house …”

  “Then I suggest you contact her attorney, Mr. Raymond Guilfoyle, forty-eight Lexington Avenue.” Miss Nicholson’s butler moved to close the door. Fiona blocked it with her foot.

  “I’ve already done that. He told me she doesn’t wish to rent the property.”

  “Then you have your answer.”

  “But –”

  “Kindly remove your foot, Miss Finnegan. Good day.”

  As the door swung closed, Fiona heard a woman’s voice, high and querulous, call, “Harris, who’s there? What is it?”

  “A nuisance call, madam.” The door closed. Fiona was left standing on Miss Nicholson’s stoop. Well, that’s the end of that, she thought, crestfallen. Both Wilcox and Guilfoyle had told her Miss Nicholson would not rent the house, but she’d foolishly thought that if she could see the woman in person, she could change her mind. She’d gotten her hopes up; now they were dashed.

  A breeze grabbed at her hat. She caught it, held it down, and repinned it. “Damn it all!” she cursed. She wanted that house. Desperately. Ever since she’d seen it – over a week ago – it was all she thought about. It looked a wreck, yes, but with a bit of work it could be gorgeous. Wilcox said the plumbing was fine. It had been put in new when Miss Nicholson’s father bought the house and he regularly ran the water to keep the pipes and drains clear. The bricks needed repointing and the roof needed work. The walls, floors, and woodwork needed refurbishing, and the kitchen was antiquated, but structurally, the house was sound. Although Miss Nicholson didn’t give a toss what happened to it, Wilcox admitted he couldn’t bear to see it just fall to ruin, so he’d tried, in small ways, to keep it up over the years.

  She and Nick had talked about how to make it work. She would take the garden and parlor floors, and he the top two floors – the third floor for his gallery and the fourth for his flat. They would split the rent and apply to First Merchants for a loan to finance the repairs. They both would’ve preferred that their plan not hinge on borrowing money, but it couldn’t be helped. They were both currently suffering from an acute cash shortage.

  Fiona had poured money into TasTea. In the last month alone, she’d hired two more girls to work in the shop, bought her own wagon and a team of horses for deliveries, and hired a man to drive it. She’d also spent a small fortune to develop and advertise her new scented teas. She and Stuart had experimented for weeks – testing and rejecting blend after blend – before they’d come up with a mixture that was strong enough to stand up to the flavors she’d devised, but not so strong it overpowered them.

  She’d also spent heavily on Burton Tea stock. The London dockers had finally walked out. After months of agitating for better wages and an eight-hour day, the union had given the word to strike after a group of men had been denied their plus money. The men had united – preferred men, casuals, stevedores – and they’d shut down the river. All the waterfront businesses were suffering. The price of Burton stock had fallen to nearly half its original value and Fiona was using every dollar of her profits to buy as much as she possibly could. She had also wired five hundred dollars to the dockers’ union, anonymously. Michael had been furious when he found out how much she’d sent, but she didn’t care. It was for her father and her mother and Charlie and Eileen and she would’ve sent a million if she’d had it.

  Nick, too, was pinched for money. He was expecting the first of what would be quarterly checks from his investment account in London, but it had not yet arrived. Nick said his father was undoubtedly holding onto it in hopes that he’d die and save the bank the postage. Although he had left London with two thousand pounds, he had spent most of it already – on the customs tax assessed on his shipment of paintings, on renovations to the space he’d rented from Mrs. Mackie, and on scores of canvases from young painters he’d recently met in New York – Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, and Frank Benson among them. He was down to three hundred dollars.

  Nick, Fiona had discovered, was hopeless with money. It was August now. They’d been in New York for nearly five months and he still hadn’t opened a bank account. When she moved him into her uncle’s flat, she discovered he kept his cash in a pair of brown brogues – bills in the right, coins in the left. He told her he despised banks and refused to go near one. She told him she was opening an account for him at First Merchants. What was he going to do when he sold a painting? Take a client’s bank draft, stuff it in his shoe, and hope it magically turned into cash?

  He handled money like a child who believes there will always be more. Making do was a foreign concept to him. A week after arriving at her uncle’s he’d given Ian some cash and asked him to go get a few things for him. Ian, unable to decipher his handwriting, had come into the shop to ask Fiona to interpret. Upon reading the list, she’d marched into his room to take him in hand, telling him he only had so much money left, and perhaps he ought to tighten his belt a bit until more arrived from London. He’d sulked. He needed those things, he told her. He couldn’t do without leather-bound books. He hated nasty, shabby books with cardboard covers. He also needed a new pair of silk pajamas. And a bottle of scent. And good paper. And a silver fountain pen from Tiffany’s. Was that really so much to ask for? She wouldn’t drink bad tea, would she?

  “A pot of tea costs a damn sight less than Mark Twain’s complete works bound in red moroccan, Nicholas,” she’d scolded.

  He did not understand that one could go a day without Beluga or French champagne and live to tell the tale. Chastened by his collapse, he agreed to follow Dr. Eckhardt’s instructions to the letter – every one, that was, except the no-champagne edict. Weak, sick, he had nonetheless sat up in his bed and defiantly declared he was a man, not a barbarian, and if this was how he was expected to live, he would rather die. Eckhardt had finally given in, convinced the mental anguish he was inflicting upon his patient would do him more harm than a few glasses of sparkling wine.

  Readying herself for the walk back to Chelsea, Fion
a tried to accept the situation. She and Nick would have to start looking at more properties, that was all there was to it. But her heart kept reminding her of the graceful lines of the cast-iron balconies, the soaring windows that let in so much light, the lovely gilded mirrors, and the roses … oh, the roses! She could just see the backyard full of women in white dresses and broad-brimmed hats taking tea. A tearoom in that house would be a success, she knew it would. It couldn’t possibly fail.

  But it already has, she told herself. Sighing, she decided she’d better get going before the butler called the police on her – a task she was sure he would relish. When she was halfway down the steps, the door opened again. She turned. “I’m going,” she said. “No need to get shirty.”

  “Miss Nicholson will see you,” the butler said.

  “What?” she asked, confused. “Why?”

  “I am not in the habit of discussing my employer’s business on the stoop,” he replied frostily.

  “Sorry,” she said, bounding back up the stairs.

  The butler closed the door behind them and ushered her into a dark foyer wallpapered in a morbid shade of burgundy. “Follow me,” he instructed. He led her down a long hallway, hung with portraits of forbidding-looking men and women, through a set of massive wooden doors and into a parlor every bit as gloomy as the foyer. “Miss Finnegan to see you, madam,” he said, then disappeared, closing the doors after him.

  The curtains were drawn. It was dark and it took Fiona’s eyes, used to the bright sunshine, a few seconds to adjust. Then she saw her … sitting across the room on a straight-backed divan. One jeweled, blue-veined hand rested atop an ebony walking stick. The other stroked a spaniel that was lying in her lap. She wore a crisp black silk dress with a ruff of white lace at her throat. Fiona had been expecting a doddery old dear, but the pair of gray eyes now assessing her were piercing. And the expression on the lined face, crowned by a sweep of silver hair drawn back into a neat bun, was sharp.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Nicholson,” Fiona began nervously. “I’m Fiona –”