The Tea House on Mulberry Street (21 page)

Chapter 24

P
ENNY
’
S
C
HOICE

Penny was in a trance. That’s what it felt like. Like she was living inside a transparent shell. She could see people and hear what they were saying but she felt nothing. She knew she was going to have an affair with Richard Allen, the estate agent, and she was preparing herself for the consequences. Dulling her conscience, practising calm, and gathering courage.

She had phoned him up to arrange a viewing, and they’d chatted on the phone for half an hour. Penny told him she’d like something unusual, and he told her about his own apartment by the river, with a ten-foot-high window in the open-plan sitting-room. When Penny said she’d love to see something fantastic like that, he’d laughed, and said it could be arranged. Yes, she thought she might be able to have a little fling with Richard.

She would dress provocatively, flirt with him, flatter him. Men loved to be flattered; to be admired. To open doors for women and carry heavy things for them. They didn’t like Women’s Libbers at all, no matter that it was 1999. She would ask him to explain the various mortgage-deals, even though she knew them inside out, and didn’t need one anyway.

Millie was always telling her she was very attractive, that she could have done a lot better for herself. Well, Penny was going to test that theory. She’d see if her pretty clothes and her womanly curves had any effect on the well-groomed and highly confident Mr Allen. She was going to do everything she could think of, to make him want her.

And if he did want her, what then? She was going to go to bed with Richard, even though she could barely breathe sometimes, with the shame of what she was planning. But she had to make love to him. There was no other way of finding out if the passion she wanted really existed, or if it was all a trick of the publishing industry. And if she felt desire or pleasure or anything at all, she was going to leave Daniel, and move away from the city. She knew there was little chance of her and Richard having a future together. And she didn’t want them to have a future. It was Daniel that Penny loved. It would always be Daniel. But she didn’t want to live with him any more, with all this frustration seething inside her. No, she would find some little apartment by the seaside, and live on her own.

And if she felt nothing, then she would know that her strange marriage was her own fault, and she would go on working in the cafe, and dream no more of love and foolish things.

Penny was going to get herself tidied up, as Millie put it, and phone Richard, and talk to him. Come on to him, that’s what they said, nowadays. She had done it once before, she told herself, and she could do it again. She could have seduced that plumber, if she’d had enough time. If the telephone ringing hadn’t destroyed the charged atmosphere.

She was consumed with the story of Clare Fitzgerald and her lost handbag. Her future with Peter, and all that might have been. His address on a cassette, placed in a beaded handbag, left behind on a bus. One careless action, changing the course of history. Peter had left Clare a note, and Mr Muldoon had just put it in a drawer and forgotten about it. Seventeen years, it had lain there, in the dust. Penny was terrified by the story, and convinced that it must be significant in some way. Was the tea house an unlucky place? Millie hadn’t said that straight out, but she’d hinted at it more than once.

Chapter 25

T
HE
A
FFAIR
B
EGINS

It was the first Saturday in August. Penny began the day as she always did, with a round of baking, serving and tidying-up. But at one o’clock she sat down near the counter, delicately sipping a large cappuccino, and ignored Daniel’s pleas for help in dealing with the lunch-time rush. At two o’clock, when Daniel was in the storeroom looking for tea bags, Penny walked out of the tea house, and left the place unattended. She took her cheque book with her. She intended to spend a lot of money. When Daniel came out of the kitchen with a pot of tea and a plate of currant scones, she was not there. A little knot of fear formed itself in his stomach.

Penny walked into the city centre, and picked out a hair-salon that looked modern and busy. She went in and waited patiently for one hour on a leather sofa, all the time watching the other customers as they were groomed by the stylists. A young apprentice summoned Penny to the sink to wash her hair, and asked her if she was going for a completely new image. She seemed to think this was necessary.

The stylist who came to view Penny’s hair frowned and bit her lip with concentration. She ran her fingers through Penny’s long brown hair with a hopeless air. The hair was very dry and thick, she announced. Cutting in layers, keeping the hair long, a blunt bob, or blonde highlights were all ruled out. Penny said that she was too busy to take better care of her hair. She needed something nice and easy that would take care of itself. She was a career woman, she explained, to cover her embarrassment. The stylist, who was twenty years old, gorgeous, and a mother-of-two who worked for ten hours a day, eventually decided that Penny’s hair was a lost cause. It would all have to come off. Penny reluctantly agreed.

She closed her eyes as the hot, soapy water washed her old life away. She kept them closed as the scissors began to snip, and pieces of tinfoil were placed on her head and painted over with hair-colouring gel. Thirty minutes ticked by. Then, her hair was washed again. The hairdryer buzzed, and the overpowering smell of hair lacquer enveloped her.

“There,” said the girl, whose name was Carrie. “What do think of it?”

Penny examined her new image in the mirror and nodded her head. She could not speak. She looked years younger than thirty-five. Wisps of mahogany-tinted hair curled themselves round her cheekbones.

“If you don’t mind me saying, you could go through to the beauty-treatment room, and get your eyebrows done. If you’re not in a hurry. They’re very thick, and they could look so nice if they were properly shaped.”

“I will, indeed. Thank you for the advice.”

“We sell cosmetics as well. If you’re getting ready for a special occasion, I mean. Why don’t you have your face professionally made up? It would really finish off the look. You have great bone structure.” She tried to end on a positive note.

Penny nodded and smiled and gave the young girl a generous tip.

In the beauty room, Penny’s eyebrows were tamed with a session of waxing and plucking that brought tears to her eyes. The beautician, whose own eyebrows were as thin as fuse-wire, rubbed some cooling gel onto Penny’s bright red brow, and brought her a cup of tea. When the swelling began to subside, Penny submitted to a pale foundation, smoke-coloured eye-shadow and glittery, bronze lipstick. Her eyelashes were thickened up with a heavily-laden eyelash wand. She had to blink several times to get used to the weight of the mascara. Her eyes were suddenly huge and sexy. The effect brought a lump to her throat. The beautician told her she was beautiful. And it was true. Penny Stanley was indeed a beautiful woman.

She chose a small compact of foundation, a pot of grey eye-shadow and a bronze lipstick in a pretty, gold case. They gave her a complimentary make-up pouch with a gold rope handle, to keep her new purchases in. Daniel would have been disgusted to see the way Penny simpered over such a silly trinket. But to Penny, it symbolised all the glamour and loveliness that her own life had never provided. Finally, they gave her a business card with the names of her stylists pencilled in for future reference.

When it was all over, she went to the desk to pay. Daniel’s Aunt Kathleen used to say that the best things in life were free, but that was only half-true.

She had spent just one hundred and forty pounds, but she felt like a millionaire. When she went back outside to the busy street, she saw that people noticed her and gave her admiring glances. Spending money was great fun, she decided.

Filled with a new confidence, she went window-shopping for a while. Then, she pressed the buzzer of an exclusive boutique near the Europa Hotel. It was nearly closing-time, but the assistants let her in.

After a quick flick through the rails, Penny chose a new outfit. A grey wool trouser suit to match her eye-shadow, a black vest and shoes, and a tiny little handbag. She decided to keep the new clothes on, so the assistants snipped off the labels with a pair of scissors.

“You do realise, madam, that you cannot return these clothes, now that you have worn them out of the shop. There’s no going back.”

“I know,” said Penny, and she handed over another cheque. She transferred her new cosmetics pouch into the dainty handbag and closed the clasp. It made a satisfying snapping sound. She left the shop with her old clothes in a carrier-bag and waved goodbye to the bemused staff.

She dropped her old clothes into a skip on University Street. A group of builders fell silent with admiration as she went by. She walked along the street in her new suit, and the wind stirred the leaves on the chestnut trees.

Penny felt young and free and alive. She sat on a bench in the Botanic Gardens, clutching her new handbag. It was made of black velvet. She thought of Clare Fitzgerald. She wound the strap around her wrist several times so that she would not lose it. It was six o’clock. She was meeting Richard at the wine bar at eight. She began to feel hungry, despite her nerves.

Penny had dinner in an Italian restaurant beside Queen’s University. She was tempted inside by the pink lights in the windows and the smell of garlic drifting along the street. A small queue was forming behind her on the steps of the restaurant, as Penny was beckoned inside by the manager. The waiters were charming and handsome and lively as they rushed around the restaurant with their round silver trays held high.

“Table for two?” one said, looking at his watch.

“Just for one, I’m afraid,” said Penny, smiling sadly. “But the night is still young.”

“Certainly, madam,” said the waiter, and he brought her to a discreet little table beside a small artificial tree covered with fairy-lights. Penny sat down graciously and ordered a glass of wine. It was nice to have someone else do the cooking for a change. She savoured the smells of simmering tomatoes and red-wine gravy, and parmesan cheese and olive oil.

“I’ll have the crab claws and salad,” she said, after a lengthy perusal of the leather-bound menu.

When her plate was empty, she asked the waiter for an espresso coffee and a glass of sparkling water. She wished Daniel was with her. How nice it would be to hold hands at this little table and pretend they were on holiday in Rome!

There were grape-vines hanging from the ceiling and a mural of the Italian countryside on the walls. The tablecloths were green-and-white checked, and the napkins were green, and there was a statue of a beautiful woman, made out of snow-white marble beside the bar. Penny noticed everything. She was used to observing things, and being quiet, and eating on her own. She wanted to remember everything about this day. At ten minutes to eight, she paid her bill and left the restaurant.

With her handbag clutched tightly in her hands, she pushed open the door of a wine bar on the better end of the Lisburn Road, and went inside. The interior was dimly lit. Would Richard remember their date? Would he turn up? He’d seemed quite keen on the phone, when she told him she had decided to buy an apartment. It was Penny’s idea they meet for a drink. Richard thought it was a nice idea to meet in the wine bar to discuss Penny’s options. He was an easy-going man, who believed in going with the flow.

Dark blue tapestry seats and mahogany tables; brass lamps above the modern art on the walls; rows and rows of dust-covered wine bottles on rustic shelves. The drinkers were mostly male, and quietly spoken. They looked her over as she went up to the bar, sat on a high stool, and ordered a glass of wine. She made a little show of looking at her watch so that the men in the bar would think she was waiting for someone. She did not want them to think she was on her own. That was asking for trouble. She drank the wine and ordered another.