The Tea House on Mulberry Street

by The Tea House on Mulberry Street (epub)

  “Flower seeds? Holy smoke! All of them, you say?”

  “Yes. Hundreds of packets. Look, it’s empty. I’m glad I bought that cash-register last year. I couldn’t have counted it all up otherwise. The woman looked a bit younger than him, and she had a local accent. A bit of a hippy, by the look of her. But he was very distinguished, with a bow-tie, and a hint of a Belfast accent. It’s my guess they weren’t married; at least not to each other. They looked too happy. But times is changing. We must remember that. Will you not be awful lonely?, I said. Them wee cottages is miles away from anything, I said, for there’s nothing out that way but stones and ghosts. I said at the time, Bronagh, as you well know, that those holiday-homes were a complete waste of money. But, no, he said to me. We’ll be just fine. Thank you for asking, says he, but we have everything we need. So there you are now, Bronagh. What do you think of that?”

  Chapter 50

  A LETTER FROM NICOLAS

  August 01, 2000

  Dear Mrs Stanley,

  I hope you can help me. I’m trying to get in touch with an artist called Brenda Brown. I don’t know if she is a personal friend of yours, but she mentioned to me, in her letters, that she often ate in your restaurant. Her home got burned down and I do not know where she lives now. Even her mother doesn’t seem to know where she is. She sent me a bunch of letters at Christmas but she has not written to me for some time.

  I would be really grateful if you could ask her to contact me.

  I do not usually reply to fan mail, but now that her letters have stopped, I miss them.

  I would like to meet Brenda and thank her for the cool painting that she sent me. I’m coming over to Belfast soon, to make a film, and I’d like to arrange a meeting.

  Thank you for your help,

  Best wishes,

  Nicolas Cage.

  PS. I’d be real grateful if you could give Brenda this snakeskin jacket. I wore it in a movie once, and she said that she liked it. Tell her it is to say thank you for the painting that she sent me. I’ve had the picture valued and my art dealer says it is real good. He says he would like to arrange to show Brenda’s work in his gallery in Beverly Hills some day. If I can find her.

  20 August, 2000

  Dear Mr Cage,

  I hope you are well. I am sorry to tell you that I have not been able to find Brenda. She was in the shop a few months ago, before the fire, but none of her friends or family members have seen her since. She seems to have disappeared completely. I will take good care of your jacket until she comes back. I hope you find her.

  Best wishes,

  Penny Stanley.

  29 August, 2000

  To: Mr Raymond Moriarty, Director.

  The Weather Centre, RTE.

  Dublin.

  Dear Mr Moriarty,

  I enclose the recent rainfall readings for the area. I hope I have filled out the sheets correctly this time. I really love this job, and find the solitude exhilarating. I used to really hate rain, but now I find the whole subject absolutely fascinating. I am reading and walking and enjoying the scenery, so your fears that I would find the location too lonely were unfounded. I never want to leave. This little cottage is more than adequate for my needs and the turf fire is very cosy in the evenings. I am managing very well without electricity or a telephone, and I have mended the back door, which was broken. I am reading by candlelight in the evenings, and have bought myself a bicycle, and a little dog for company. I hope you will find my work satisfactory and offer me the position on a permanent basis, when my period of probation is up. Thank you very much for all your help.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tatiana Cobalt-Clearwater.

  30 August, 2000

  Dear Mum,

  I hope you are well. I am having a fantastic time here. I feel so healthy and refreshed. My cheeks are pink all the time. The scenery is breathtaking, far nicer than any painting I could ever paint. In fact, I haven’t even made a sketch since I got here and I don’t miss it one bit. The cottage is very cosy and warm when the fire is lit, and don’t worry, I am using a fireguard and I have bought three smoke alarms. My wee dog is the sweetest thing. I’ve called him Nick and he goes everywhere with me and he’s really good. He sleeps in a little basket on the floor beside my bed.

  I am really enjoying the work, and I feel like I’m doing something useful, for the first time in my life. I’ve met this nice fella called Sean, who lives a couple of miles away. He works for the government and he’s carrying out research into coastal pollution, and he’s explained to me all about the weather and the environment, and how everything we do affects the future, and it’s fascinating. And how lucky we are in Ireland to have all the water we need. And he’s quite dishy as well. We’re going out for a meal on Saturday night. You never know, we might end up going out together. I think he likes me. He gave me his best anorak to keep me warm while I collect the rainwater data on my bicycle. Wasn’t that lovely of him? I’m so glad I got over that thing I had for Nicolas Cage. At least when I talk to Sean, he talks back to me.

  Thanks for not telling anyone where I am, and thanks for dealing with the bank for me. I will send some money to you every month, and you can pay my bills for me when you’re in town. I’m really grateful to you for everything.

  Hope you and the girls from the dancing club are getting on well, and that you all enjoyed your trip to Nashville. I won’t ask you if you bought a cowboy hat because I know rightly you did. Take care of yourself and hope to see you soon.

  All my love,

  Brenda.

  PS. Here is a wee watercolour of Connemara I bought for you in a craft shop. It’s for your sitting-room wall. I don’t think I will paint again, myself. Although I have been making picture-frames out of driftwood and things like that.

  Mrs Brown held the letter from Brenda up to her face. She closed her eyes and sighed with relief. Brenda had never sounded so happy. At long last, she seemed to have found her niche in life.

  Mrs Brown lifted the letter from Nicolas Cage from the hall table and the one from Clare Fitzgerald forwarded by the landlord, and she put them gently in the sitting-room fire. In a few months, they would both have forgotten all about Brenda Brown, and that would be an end to the art career that had almost driven her youngest daughter off the rails. Let her enjoy the peace she’s found, thought Mrs Brown. She deserves it more than anyone.

  Chapter 51

  ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

  Penny and Daniel were delighted with how well the business was doing. Daniel handed over control of the finances to Penny, and said he would try not to worry about it any more. Penny paid the staff well, and took out more insurance, and bought only the best quality ingredients for the restaurant. She bought some pretty blue gingham tablecloths, to give the tables a cosy French look.

  Daniel sold the house on Magnolia Street and accepted that his mother was never coming back. They decided to keep her Welsh dresser to remember her by, and they put it in the cafe and displayed some pretty plates on it. He brought Penny to see his Aunt Kathleen’s grave, and they left a bouquet of flowers on it, and arranged for a headstone to be placed there. Daniel told Penny everything about his mother and her disappearance, and the penny-pinching upbringing by his aunt. Penny held him close to her in the windblown cemetery and they cried together for the lost years.

  Daniel found it hard to leave his thrifty ways behind him completely but he was trying hard not to save every last crumb. And as Penny reminded him, even with the increased overheads, they were still doing very nicely. Daniel was forty-eight by now, and Penny was thirty-six, and they knew that spending time together and getting to know each other again was far more important than making money. They went for another holiday in the Lawson Lodge and in December, 2000, Penny discovered that she was pregnant.

  Beatrice and Alice continued with the charity work, but they didn’t boast about it any more. They spent most of their spare time planning holidays, and enjoying themselves, instead. Yes,
it was important to do good things and live a pure life; but it was also important to enjoy life. They spoke of Leo sometimes, but it was William they still called their ‘Dear Father’.

  They wore Eliza’s glass brooches to Sunday service each week, and they felt a kind of secret pride that they had such melodrama in their family history.

  Sadie Sponge enjoyed her job at the tea house so much that she gave up eating family-sized bags of tortilla chips, and began to lose weight. She was soon back down to twelve stone, and thought she might even aim for eleven. Maurice and Daisy were in love with their Greek island and sent her a postcard saying they were now going to language classes so that they could learn to be real Greeks instead of just ex-pats. Maurice’s arthritis was practically gone and Daisy had joined a chess club.

  Patricia Caldwell had burst into tears, that fateful Christmas morning in 1999, when she opened Arnold’s pile of gifts and discovered that he had given her a bread-maker and a vacuum-cleaner. Did he seriously think she was going to bake her own bread? And she already had a vacuum-cleaner. Arnold pointed out that Patricia had said, many times, that she wanted to be his proper partner, not just his bit on the side. Well, now she could be his proper partner, and that involved a lot of cooking and home-making. But that thought just seemed to depress her even more.

  Even the black underwear and the set of massage-oils were somehow annoying to Patty-Pat. They were really presents for Arnold himself, she wept. Weren’t they? After all, wouldn’t she be doing most of the massaging? How could he be so selfish? After she had generously allowed him to move in with her, and even keep his hideous mahogany desk in her lovely all-white apartment.

  She was still crying when two carloads of Arnold’s relatives landed on her doorstep at lunch-time, expecting a big turkey dinner. They all trooped in, walking muddy slush onto her pristine white carpets, and announced they were starving. As if it was somehow her fault. Patricia was starving herself, as she had missed her Christmas Eve dinner in a fancy restaurant, thanks to Sadie Sponge turning up at the flat and taking nude photographs of her.

  She had to give Arnold’s greedy relations microwave dinners from the freezer, and they didn’t mind telling her they were very disappointed, as Sadie had told them all that Patricia was a proper whizz in the kitchen. They were so disappointed, in fact, that they drank Arnold’s entire crate of champagne from Walley Windows and Conservatories of Distinction, to console themselves. They got very drunk, and made some derogatory remarks about Patricia’s virtue.

  Patricia had asked them all to leave, and Arnold had asked them to stay, and so they had stayed and eaten everything in the flat, like a plague of locusts. An entire Christmas cake, several boxes of nuts and chocolates, and all the cheese and biscuits. Arnold and Patricia ended up having a blazing row in the bedroom, and missed the EastEnders Christmas Special.

  EastEnders was Patricia’s favourite programme. And after that, their relationship was in the water, and sinking fast. A few weeks later, Patricia broke down and rang Jason Maxwell and he came straight round in his Rolls Royce and Arnold was politely asked to leave.

  He spent a few weeks sleeping in his office, phoning Patricia constantly. She refused to return his calls, telling him firmly that she had met someone else – a man who wasn’t married, and who didn’t buy her bread-makers and vacuum-cleaners for Christmas. Jason Maxwell knew how to treat a lady. Eventually, she changed her number altogether.

  Arnold decided to move to the other side of the country and he set up a little double-glazing business in Enniskillen town. He decided to let Sadie keep the bungalow in Carryduff. He felt, in his heart of hearts, that she had earned it, and anyway he was very taken with the Fermanagh countryside. He bought a derelict pig-shed beside the lake and turned it into a dream bachelor-pad, with a lovely hexagon-shaped conservatory at the back, looking right onto the water. The local people were very friendly, and there was more rain there than there was in Belfast. The demand for new windows was high and Arnold was soon back to his old self. He had great fun flirting with the women of Fermanagh, and he became a familiar figure about the town of Enniskillen, with his blue Jaguar, his collection of designer suits and his award for Salesperson of the Year.

  Aurora Blackstaff and David Cropper became an item and a regular fixture on the Belfast theatre scene. The Brontë Bunch became an international model for literary societies, and Aurora lost count of its imitators. Sometimes, when they were sure that they wouldn’t be interrupted, Aurora and David dressed up in their Victorian costumes and waltzed round and round the conservatory. Afterwards, David would carry Aurora up the stairs to the master bedroom, and ravish her with her petticoats still on.

  Henry and Rose fell quietly in love in the wilds of Connemara. Henry bought a little cottage and a year’s supply of turf, and they sat beside the fire each night reading gardening books and drinking red wine. They planted all the trees that they thought might survive the heavy rainfall and the strong winds coming in from the Atlantic. When Henry woke up in Rose’s arms each morning, he thanked God for her long red hair and her freckles and her pale white skin. And for the tea house on Mulberry Street from where he had first glimpsed her. The first time Rose told him she loved him too, he proposed to her, and she said yes.

  Clare Fitzgerald and Peter Prendergast set the date for their wedding. They had wasted enough time, they said. She teased him sometimes, about his job. She thought he should have been able to find her a lot sooner, seeing that he was a detective, and he agreed that he probably could have, but that his male pride kept getting in the way.

  “I thought you had gone off me – you were a bit of a snob, as I remember,” he said.

  Clare wanted to hit him with her handbag but she couldn’t find it.

  Peter got a transfer to New York, and moved into Clare’s beautiful apartment. They got married in a simple ceremony, with just the two of them, and all the emotion that had been denied by fate for so long. Mike, Clare’s colleague, and his boyfriend, who acted as witnesses, showered the newly-weds with pink and gold confetti, and Clare kept a handful of it in a glass box, on her bedside table.

  Penny’s father would have been very pleased with the tea house, if he had still been around to see it. The crowds were lining up to get into the place, and everyone said the atmosphere of happiness and love was the best thing about it. Penny had a special bullet-proof, burglar-proof glass case made for the shop. She displayed Nicolas Cage’s snakeskin jacket in it, and Brenda’s painting of him. Stanley’s became a mecca for fans of his films. Penny was regularly offered a fortune for the jacket, but she refused to sell it. After all, it wasn’t hers to sell. She was only looking after it for Brenda Brown.

  Brenda Brown, or rather, Tatiana Cobalt-Clearwater, was living in Connemara with her little dog, Nick, and she had never been happier. She was far away from Belfast and the Assembly, and the riots and the flags, and the police and the psychiatrists, and the credit-card bills. But best of all, she was far away from art. By day, she cycled round the countryside, collecting rainwater statistics, with Nick barking at her heels. And by night, she listened to the crackle and hiss of the fire, and watched the patterns it made on the walls of the cottage. Sean called by from time to time, and they had great chats about the environment. They took part in a peaceful anti-pollution protest in Dublin, and held hands on the march. Sean said he thought Brenda would look beautiful with long hair, so she stopped shaving the back of her head.

  She worried that she was losing her feminist backbone, and might be falling in love with Sean, but then he installed a wind-powered electricity generator in the cottage, and she had to admit, men could sometimes be very useful indeed. She kissed him gently, under the new electric light, and thought that he was very handsome in his old denim dungarees. Sean didn’t need a snakeskin jacket, or a vintage car, to make him attractive. He was lovely, just the way he was.

  She asked him for a photograph of himself, and he gave her one, and she put it in a little frame she made out
of pebbles and seashells. It was nice to have a face in a frame at last.

  When Penny’s baby was born, Daniel told every customer who came into the shop that his wife had had a healthy baby boy, and that she was going to call him Daniel too. Danny, for short. He gave cups of tea and coffee away for free, for three whole days. They held a big party for all their friends, in the cafe, to celebrate the joyous occasion of Danny’s christening, and even Millie Mortimer and Jack (and the weans) were invited. They showed up, looking slightly shamefaced, but left their toolbox at home. Penny filled the cafe with fresh flowers, and balloons and streamers, and everybody wore brightly-coloured party-hats and danced till dawn. Danny slept through it all, in the cafe that would one day be his. Passers-by looked in the windows and wished they had been invited, too. The buffet was magnificent, and Daniel had even made a big sponge cake with a little sugar-paste model of himself, Penny and Danny on the top.

  Stanley’s Tea Rooms soon became the most fashionable coffee house in the city and people came from all over the world to marvel at its marbled magnificence, and Nicolas Cage’s snakeskin jacket in its shiny, glass case.

  THE END