The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Patrick Finnegan,” Fiona said. “My father.”

  “Is that so?” Tom said. He stepped up next to her to peer at the marker, so close that Fiona could smell the smoke in his clothes and the beer on his breath, and for a split second she felt afraid. Roddy had told her about the two men – Burton’s men, he’d said – who’d come looking for her while she was in hospital. What if these were the very same men? Then she spotted Andrew. He was standing only five or six yards away, watching the lads’ every move. They saw him, too. Tom Smith touched the rim of his cap. Andrew nodded back, unsmiling, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Well, we’ll keep looking, I guess. ’E’s bound to be ’ere somewhere. ’E surely didn’t get up and walk out, now did ’e?” Tom said, grinning. “Ta-ra, missus.”

  “Ta-ra,” Fiona replied, feeling silly. They were just a pair of friendly lads and had meant her no harm. Probably the one was sent by his mother to tidy his grandfather’s grave or some such thing. Roddy’s dire warnings were making her jumpy. She resolved to put them out of her mind. She returned to her work and after a few minutes, when the lads had left the churchyard, Andrew returned to his carriage.

  When she finished tending the plots, she spread a cloth on the ground, fished out a flask of tea and some sandwiches from her hamper, and sat awhile with her family. As she ate, she told them everything that had happened to her. All about her visit to William Burton’s office so many years ago and what had happened there. About New York and Michael and Mary and her entire extended family. She told them about her tea business. About Will and Nick. She told them about Seamie and how they wouldn’t even recognize him, he was so American now. He was going to discover something someday, she was sure of it. A cure for a disease, or a dinosaur, or maybe a whole new country. He was handsome, she said, as handsome as Charlie had been. She told them they could be proud of her brother, every bit as proud as she was.

  And then she told them how she’d taken William Burton’s tea company. He was ruined, she said, and as soon as he was caught he would go to prison, and then the gallows. “It’s not enough, Da,” she said, laying her hand on her father’s grave. “But I hope it’s something. I hope it helps you rest a little easier.” Tears stung behind her eyes as she continued. “I miss you, Da. I miss you every single day. And I love you. Kiss Mam and Charlie and the baby for me, will you? And tell them I love them, too.”

  She sat quietly for a few more minutes, watching the early-evening sun slant through the trees, dappling the grass, and then, after promising she wouldn’t wait ten years to come back, she rose to go.

  She called for Andrew and the two of them piled all her clobber back into the carriage. He helped her in, closed the door after her, then nosed his horses through the narrow streets of Whitechapel on his way back to Mayfair. As Fiona gazed out the window, she glimpsed familiar street signs and buildings. She saw men on their way home from work and heard their voices as they called to each other or greeted their children. She saw the brewery where Charlie once worked and realized she wasn’t far from Montague Street. She was suddenly seized by an overpowering longing to see her old street, her house, the place where she had grown up.

  “Andrew!” she yelled, rapping on the small sliding window at the front of her compartment. “Andrew, stop!”

  The carriage came to a halt. “What is it, Mrs. Soames? What’s wrong?”

  “I want to get out. I’m going to walk for a bit. I’ll make my own way home.”

  “You can’t do that, ma’am. Sergeant O’Meara told me not to let you out of my sight. ’E said to bring you to the graveyard and straight back.”

  Fiona was barely listening to him. She had seen Whitechapel again. And heard it and smelled it. It was beckoning to her. “Sergeant O’Meara will never know if you don’t tell him, Andrew,” she said. “Please don’t worry about me. I’ll be home before dark.” And then, over his protests, she was out of the carriage, her purse in hand.

  As she disappeared down Brick Lane, she was glad she’d worn an older skirt and blouse. Glad of the dried mud on her hem and that her hair had come down while she was gardening and she’d only caught it up in a loose, messy twist. She fit in; no one looked at her twice. She hurried along, swept up in the current of workers.

  As she finally rounded the corner of Montague Street, her breath caught. There it was, her house. It looked exactly the same. Sooty red bricks and black shutters, the steps scrubbed spotless. And just down from it, Joe’s house. For just a moment, she was seventeen again, on her way home from the tea factory, hoping he would be out, sitting on his steps, waiting for her.

  The street was full of people. She walked among the fathers hurrying home to their tea. Mams hollering for their kids. Little girls in pigtails; older ones with baby brothers or sisters on their hips. A group of young boys kicked a ball back and forth. One launched it through the open window of number sixteen. There was a crash. “Oh, me teapot!” a woman cried from within. Then the man of the house was on the step, yelling for blood. But the boys were already gone, dispersed like a flock of sparrows.

  She marveled at the noise and the commotion. No one ever yelled on Fifth Avenue. At least not uptown, where she lived. No children kicked balls around or skipped rope. There was no bawdy laughter from housewives clustered together. No sympathetic clucking over a young wife with a big belly. No old men showing off a prize budgie.

  There was so much life in these streets, so much heart. Had she always known that? As a girl, she’d only wanted to escape this place. Why? She had never been happier than when she lived right here. In a shabby two-up-two-down without even a room to call her own and a drafty privy in the backyard. She’d had nothing, nothing at all, and yet she’d had everything.

  She reached the end of the street and looked back. She could almost hear her father singing as he walked home from the docks. And her mother, hands on her hips, shouting for Charlie. She could almost see a lad, tall and blond and heartbreakingly handsome walking toward her, his hands in his pockets, the whole world in his eyes.

  She kept walking and eventually crossed the Commercial Road. She knew she should stop there and get a hackney back to Mayfair. The twilight was coming down now – she could just make out a few faint stars. Instead, her feet carried her south, toward Wapping and the river. She knew the way by heart, and though a pub or two had changed names, or a shop had been painted a different color, everything was completely familiar to her.

  Wapping’s High Street was nearly empty as she crossed it. Oliver’s was still there. It was strange to think she owned it now. To the side of it, just as she remembered it, was the narrow passageway that led down to the Old Stairs. She stood at the top of them and the sight of her beloved London river, calm and smooth, darkening under the evening sky, took her breath away. Never had it looked so beautiful.

  She trotted down the steps and sat at the bottom, resting her chin on her knees as she had when she was a girl. She watched the boats gently bobbing on the receding tide, saw the black cranes silhouetted against the dark blue sky. A hundred million memories filled her mind. She remembered sitting here with her father when she was little, nestled close to him, sharing a cone of chips or a pork pie, as he pointed out the proud sailing ships and told her where they’d come from and what they carried. She remembered sitting here with Joe when she was older, and she remembered the last time she’d been here, the night he’d shattered her heart. Where are the pieces? she wondered. Still here? Buried in the sand?

  She tried to think of other times, better times. She remembered all the times they’d talked about their shop, the first time he kissed her, the first time he told her that he loved her. They had all happened here, by the river. She closed her eyes, felt the warm summer breeze on her face, heard the waves gently lapping. Just as it had when she was a girl, the river comforted her. Restored her. Inspired her.

  She turned her thoughts to the future instead of the past. She had a new tea company to run now, new markets to conquer. T
he day after she was released from hospital, she had called a meeting of all her new employees and informed them that she was now their boss. She told them all about TasTea and assured them that she had both the business acumen and the financial muscle needed to make Burton Tea – now TasTea, London – stronger, better, and more profitable than ever before. Those who wished to stay were welcome to, she said. Those who were loyal to William Burton should leave. Not one person had.

  There was much to learn. About the company. About its real estate, both in London and abroad. And about the English and European markets. She knew she would have to get Stuart Bryce over here immediately. She’d called him shortly after she’d taken over the company; she could still hear his voice: “Bloody hell, Fiona! You’ve done what?” He’d been beside himself when he learned they had a whole new tea company to run – complete with offices, a wharf, and a plantation in India. She had no doubts that with the acquisition of Burton Tea, she and Stuart could make TasTea not just the biggest tea company in America, but in the entire world.

  Excited by the very idea, she slipped off her boots, peeled off her stockings, and jumped down on the pebbled mud flat. She walked for a little ways, then picked up a handful of stones and started skipping them just as hard and as fast as she could.

  “What do you think, Alf?” Joe asked, holding a scoopful of green coffee beans under his foreman’s nose.

  Alf Stevens inhaled, then nodded. “A bloody sight better than the last batch we ’ad. Not a trace of mustiness. Good, bright color. Smooth skins. A nice, fresh ’arvest altogether. Oscar Sanchez’s plantation, I’d say. Just north of Bogotá.”

  “Alf, you’re a bloody amazement,” Joe said, clapping the old man on the back. Alf Stevens had been the foreman at the Morocco, a wharf on the Wapping’s High Street, for over thirty years and could name not just the country or region, but the actual plantation where the coffee had been grown with just a whiff and a glance. “We’ve found ourselves a new supplier. I’m through with Marquez.

  Last batch ’e sent was pure rubbish. I’ll ’ave the lads from the roaster’s come round with a wagon Monday morning.”

  “I’ll be ready for them.”

  “Good man. ’Ow’s everything else? Any trouble since the Oliver’s incident?” Joe asked, referring to the damage done to Oliver’s Wharf after William Burton had been accused of Paddy Finnegan’s murder.

  “No. Nothing, really.”

  Joe sensed a hesitancy in his reply.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing, guv. It’s … it’s silly,” Alf said, embarrassed.

  “Tell me.”

  “You know ’ow when the lads broke into Oliver’s, they tore off some of the loop’ole doors? Well, I was on me way ’ome a few nights ago – it was late – and I ’appened to look up at the building. I know this sounds barmy, but I saw a man standing there. In one of the loopholes. I was so bloody startled I tripped on a cobble and nearly fell on me face. When I looked up again, ’e was gone.”

  “What did ’e look like?”

  “ ’E ’ad an ’ard, pale face. And dark ’air. And ’is eyes, I remember those. They were like the river at midnight. If I believed in spirits and all that rubbish, I’d say it was ’im, that Finnegan bloke. Come back from beyond to ’aunt the place.”

  Joe gave Alf a skeptical look. “You’re saying you saw a ghost?”

  Alf shrugged defensively. “I’m not saying anything.”

  “It was probably the night watchman. Doing ’is rounds.”

  “They don’t ’ave a watchman. Last one quit after the place was smashed up.” Alf held his hands up. “I know what you’re thinking, guv, but I was as sober as the Pope, I swear it.”

  “I’ll ’ave a look for ’im myself on me way out. I’ll give ’im your best if I see ’im.”

  Joe’s teasing tone was lost on Alf. “ ’E don’t strike me as the sociable type,” the old man said. “You do see ’im, I’d advise you to keep on walking.”

  Alf and Joe finished inspecting the new coffee shipment, cutting into random bags and assessing the contents. When they were satisfied, Joe took his leave, reminding Alf that the roasters would come for the beans on Monday. Alf grumbled that he didn’t need reminding and that Joe wasn’t to think he was soft in the head now just because he was seeing spirits.

  As Joe walked west down the High Street, he made a point of looking at Oliver’s upper stories. He saw nothing. Just loopholes. Some shuttered, some open. Spirits, he thought, shaking his head. The only spirits troubling Alf came from the whiskey flask in his back pocket. As he continued to stare at the building, he wondered why William Burton hadn’t repaired the damage, and then it suddenly struck him that William Burton no longer owned this building. A woman by the name of Soames did. Fiona Finnegan Soames.

  He tried to push the thought from his mind. It hurt so much to think that she’d been here, in London, and that even now, ten years on and widowed, she still didn’t want anything to do with him. He’d read about her in the papers. He’d gone to her hotel room so full of hope. Ever since the night Roddy had come to him to ask for his help, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from hoping again. If only they could talk. If she would just let him tell her how sorry he was, how he’d never stopped loving her. He would have done anything for a second chance with her. Anything to earn her forgiveness.

  But it wasn’t going to happen. He’d left her when she needed him most. Left her to struggle on alone in the slums of Whitechapel. Left her to the tender mercies of Bowler Sheehan and William Burton. Her heart was big, but not big enough to forgive what he’d done. And what he’d failed to do. No one’s heart was that big.

  As he stood by the warehouse, the door to the Town of Ramsgate opened. A man came out, doffed his hat and went on his way. The usual pub aromas wafted out after him – smoke, beer, and food. Joe realized he was hungry. He decided he’d just nip in and order something to eat. That would take his mind off things.

  He ordered haddock and chips, and a pint of bitter to drink while he waited. He had to hold his glass; men were wedged in like sardines at the bar. He looked around for a table, but everything was taken. It was a busy Friday night. Workingmen and sailors had filled the place. He asked the barmaid if there were tables upstairs, but she said it was even worse up there. His best bet, she said, would be to eat his meal outside on the Old Stairs. She could wrap it for him if he liked.

  The Old Stairs. Bloody great. They’d be just the thing to take his mind off Fiona. He drained his glass, took his meal – a hot, greasy little bundle – and headed outside. As he settled himself halfway down the stone steps, he was seized by a rush of memories. Her blue eyes widening with delight as he approached her. The smell of her after work – all tea leaves, and sweet, sweaty skin. The feeling of her hand in his. An old, familiar sadness stole over him.

  Let it go, Joe, everyone said. His mum. Cathy. Jimmy, too. The past is long gone. Move on.

  But to what? He had known the rarest of things – love, real love – he’d held it in his hand and he’d thrown it away. What was left for him? A lifetime of second-bests. Of dead dreams and painful memories. He remembered how the job at Peterson’s, the money, Tommy’s approval had once mattered so greatly to him. Now, nothing in his life – not the success he’d achieved, nor the money he’d made – meant as much to him as sitting on these very steps with the girl he’d loved. Just the two of them with nothing but a few pounds in a battered cocoa tin and their dreams.

  Alf is right, he thought, unwrapping his supper. There is a ghost here. A lonely, heartbroken spirit. The ghost of everything that could’ve been and never was.

  He looked out at the boats, gently rocking in their moorings. Night had come down and silver rays of moonlight streaked the soft waves. The sky was full of stars. His favorite, the bright star, was twinkling magically. It was brighter, stronger than he’d ever seen it. His eyes traveled to the bottom of the Old Stairs. How many times had he come here, only to find her there, on t
hat very step, watching the waves and dreaming?

  As he continued to gaze at the stairs, he realized that there was something on the very last step. He shifted forward and squinted. It was a pair of black boots. Women’s boots. One was standing up, the other had fallen on its side. Heaped next to them were what looked like stockings.

  Oh, Christ, he thought, alarmed. I hope no poor lass has done herself in. He knew that river suicides often left their boots on the shore in the hopes that someone who could use them would find them. A sad little bequest. His eyes scanned the riverbank. About twenty yards to his left, he saw her. A slender barefoot woman standing near the pilings. She had her back to him, but he could see that she was skipping stones on the river, one after another, hard and fast. The moonlight glinted off her black hair as she bent down to scoop up more. He relaxed. A distraught person wouldn’t be skipping stones.

  Still, he wondered what she was doing alone by the river at this hour. It wasn’t the safest place for a woman to be. He watched her, transfixed by her sure, graceful movements. He saw that her hair had slipped free of its knot, and that her hem was trailing in the mud. A water bird suddenly took wing. She lifted her head at the sound of its cry.

  He stood. His meal fell out of his lap onto the steps. “It can’t be,” he whispered.

  It was a trick. It was this place, all the memories. His longing heart and the darkness conspiring. But his eyes told him it was no trick. He jumped down off the steps and walked toward her. Hoping. Fearing. He’d done this before. So many times. Caught sight of a slender black-haired woman and impulsively called to her, only to have her turn and gaze at him with eyes that were questioning, coldly polite, and never, ever hers.

  He drew closer to her, slowly, carefully, not wanting to scare her. Remembering a girl who stood here once, mud on her hem, vowing to become as big as all London one day.

  Hearing his feet on the stones, she turned, startled. Her eyes widened. And then he heard what he’d longed to hear for ten long years … the sound of her voice calling his name.