The Tea House on Mulberry Street (13 page)

She would go back to Muldoon’s in the morning, and have a good think. In the meantime, she fished a bag of salty pretzels out of her bottom drawer, and tore it open. She might be cracking up with rage and humiliation, but she wasn’t going to start missing meals over it…

Chapter 12

A S
TRANGE
M
ARRIAGE

Penny was doing the ironing. She told Daniel she was taking the afternoon off to potter round the flat. She was feeling very restless, and couldn’t stand still behind the counter. Pressing the crumpled clothes with a hot iron helped her to relax. She lifted the jacket of Daniel’s striped pyjamas out of the basket, and spread it over the board. Penny wished Daniel would throw his old pyjamas in the dustbin and sleep with his chest bare. He had lovely shoulders, she thought wistfully.

“Oh, Daniel,” she said, out loud, although she was alone in the flat. “Did you know that on our fifth wedding anniversary I offered myself to a twenty-year-old plumber with a bleach-blond mohawk, and tartan bondage trousers?” And she almost wept with embarrassment when she remembered how he ran out of the kitchen door, when the phone ringing distracted them.

Her arm wobbled and she had to set the iron down. She went to the mirror above the electric fire, and looked at her thirty-five-year-old face.

Why did I do that? she thought. I stood too close to him when he was filling out the receipt. My cleavage was practically in his face. God forgive me, but he was gorgeous. His skin was flawless. I sometimes can see why men have affairs. In the presence of such beauty, it’s impossible to resist.

She touched the skin on her throat. It was still smooth. It was not too late to find desperate passion of that kind. Was it?

I even had a line ready for when it was over… I thought to myself, ‘I will tell him he is sweet, and that I will never forget him’. I gave him that meaningful look, the look they use in old black and white films, where you know they’re going to make love. Eye-contact, no blinking, no talking. He was terrified! Is that what’s wrong with me? Am I too melodramatic?

When the spell, that day, was broken by the shrill ringing of the telephone, Penny had rushed out to the counter to answer it. It was a neighbour of her parents, phoning to say they had been involved in a car accident – could she meet him at the Royal Victoria hospital? Mr and Mrs Muldoon were both seriously injured, but he couldn’t tell her that on the phone.

Speechless with worry, and guilt and lust, Penny nodded that she would call a taxi straightaway. When she went back to the kitchen, the back door was open and the plumber was gone. (He left his bill on the counter.)

Penny spent the next twelve months scuttling between the shop and her parents’ home. Until they died within three months of each other, a year later, Penny didn’t have a single day off.

She was too busy grieving for her parents to worry about herself, for a few years after that.

Daniel was almost glad of the distraction the accident caused. He knew Penny expected more of him, but he wasn’t sure how to provide it. He knew he was a disappointment to his wife, but he could not change. It was too late. At night, his dreams were filled with images of his mother, Teresa, laughing, her lips red and perfect. Then, shock. A priest. Telling him his mother had gone away and nobody knew where she was, and then giving him a shilling. Then, his miserable Aunt Kathleen. She didn’t want him. She gave him stale bread to eat.

Often he woke up in a cold sweat, and lay awake all night. Even when Penny begged him to talk to her, he shook his head and walked away. She asked him what he was saving all their money for. He could not tell her. He didn’t know himself. He knew only what his Aunt Kathleen had told him when he was a little boy: that extravagance was the ruination of Teresa.

Now, neglecting her ironing, Penny wandered over to the sideboard, lifted the silver-framed photograph of the two of them on their wedding day, and held it up close to her face. Big happy smiles on the faces of the two of them. Daniel, relaxed and quite handsome; he was very tanned at the time of the wedding. Penny’s own skin was glowing with happiness. There was her beautiful hat with the big flowers on it – moments before it blew into the sea. And there was Millie, smoking her cigarette, just about to walk out-of-shot, in the background of the picture. She was wearing a pink bridesmaid dress that clashed with her hair. Did Penny and Daniel get married too soon, like Millie said?

“Did I ever know you, Daniel?” she said aloud, sadly.

Chapter 13

D
EAR
N
ICHOLAS
,
I
T
’
S
B
RENDA
H
ERE

19 March, 1999

Dear Nicolas Cage,

It’s Brenda here. Brenda Brown from Belfast Town.

I just thought I would tell you how our little exhibition went. It went well enough. There was lots of free wine, and we all got rather smashed, and so did one of the sculptures by Tom Reilly-Dunseith. He went berserk, but a couple of us had a good giggle when he wasn’t looking. It looked better broken than it did before. He sold everything in the show anyway, even the broken one. I didn’t sell anything. I blame my boring name.

Still, it wasn’t all a waste of time. I got a nice letter from an art gallery in Galway. They have offered to display some of my paintings, and maybe even stage a solo show, and I’m going to travel down there and meet the owners. I’d like a few days away from The Big Smoke, just now, because my parents are splitting up.

They decided it would be a good time to tell us, halfway through Sunday lunch at their house, that they are getting divorced. There’s not even a good reason. They’re just bored with each other. That’s the nineties for you. Boredom has suddenly become unacceptable. They’ve been bored with each other for twenty years, from what I can see, but nobody said a word about it until now.

I really think I will change my name, now. What do you think of Emily Fitzwilliam-Morris, Anne Connolly-Smith or Mary Montague-Skye?

Please send me a signed picture.

I am a genuine fan.

Yours sincerely,

Brenda Brown.

Brenda posted her letter as soon as the gold ink on the envelope was dry. It was the third letter she had posted to Nicolas Cage. She imagined him opening her letters while eating breakfast beside a turquoise swimming-pool in LA. He was bound to notice her letters first, before all the others in his pile of mail. The pretty red envelopes would stand out in the mountain of fan mail he must receive every day. He might be wearing dark glasses and a brightly patterned shirt. Unbuttoned. Did Americans eat marmalade with their toast, she wondered. Or toast, even? No. Probably pancakes and syrup. Yes, that was it. Pancakes and syrup on a white plate beside three red letters with gold ink on the front. It was a pleasing image. She might put something like that in the background of her next painting.

Chapter 14

T
HREE
M
UGS

Rose Thompson sat down with a sigh, in the back room of the flower-shop. There was a stack of mail to be answered and several bills to be paid. On the positive side, there was lots of flower-arranging to be done. There were ten identical, formal bouquets to be made up for the conference-room of a luxurious hotel, and the stock for the coming months to be ordered from the wholesalers. On top of that, she had to go back to the house she had shared with her husband John for four years, to collect her things. Her remaining dresses and shoes, an overgrown cheese plant, a wooden giraffe ornament from Africa and thirty-one books on flower-arranging. It wasn’t much to show for four years in the city.

She would go after work. It was cowardly of her to have avoided it for three months now. She would clear out the back of the delivery van at lunch-time, to make room for her stuff. Hopefully, John would be out. He was a very attractive man, and she didn’t want to complicate things with a goodbye kiss that might lead to something more. They were not compatible, and that was the end of it. It was not a good idea to stay married to a man just because you fancied him like mad.

She switched on the kettle, and reached for the first letter in the pile. Today would be the day she tidied up a few loose ends.

At six o’clock, she closed the shop and put on her cardigan. It was only a ten-minute drive to the house. It was a bright evening, and she was feeling pleased with herself after all her industry that day. She might have a meal in Muldoon’s when she was finished the clear-out. She almost enjoyed the journey and soon she was driving down the familiar Edwardian terrace towards her marital home. She was disappointed to see that he had let the garden go. She had only been gone twelve weeks, and already there were weeds establishing themselves in the cracks of the tiled path. The tiny lawn badly needed a trim. There were two crisp-packets in the hedge. And the plants in the hanging-baskets above the door were dead. They were dried up and yellowed, the baskets twirling round and round in the breeze. John had forgotten to water them, she fumed. After she had gone to such trouble to find plants that only needed to be watered once a week. Any thoughts of a goodbye kiss evaporated. The man had no regard for the garden at all. She opened the front door with a sigh, stepped in and closed the door quietly behind her.

The house was a mess. Pizza-boxes on the coffee-table, newspapers on the floor. Cups and plates on the mantelpiece. The cheese plant hung neglected and limp in its corner.

There was a sudden movement in the kitchen. Rose swung round. There was an attractive, young woman standing there, wearing one of John’s shirts, and nothing else. Actually, she wasn’t a woman. More like a girl of twenty. Peroxide white bob and tanned legs. Toenails painted baby pink. Blue eyelashes like spiders from another planet. She appeared to be waiting for the kettle to boil.

“You must be Rose,” said the young woman.

“Yes,” said Rose. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are.”

“I’m Cindy. Johnny didn’t say you’d be coming today.”

“I didn’t tell him. I just decided to turn up, unannounced.”

“Oh. Well, he’s upstairs. I’ll call him.”

“No, don’t bother. I’ll go –”

“Someone to see you, Johnny!” the girl called out. “It’s Rose!” Bit of a hippy, she thought, and she did up a few more buttons on her shirt.

“Oh my God!” A man’s voice. There was a scramble in the front bedroom and Rose’s shamefaced husband came hurrying down the stairs and into the sitting-room, wearing only his trousers. He handed a dressing-gown to Cindy and she slipped it on quickly. He stood beside Cindy. They looked like a proper couple, somehow. More than John and Rose had ever looked. Rose thought she was going to cry with jealousy and embarrassment and grief. Now she could see why he hadn’t had enough time to water the flowers in the hanging baskets.