The Tea Rose Page 3

  Charlie hung up his jacket, then took a handful of coins from his pocket and dropped them into the tea tin. “A little bit more than usual, Mam. Got a few extra hours this week.”

  “Thank you, luv, I’m glad of it. I’ve been trying to put something aside for a jacket for your da. Malphlin’s ’ave got some nice second ’and ones. I’ve mended ’is old one so many times it’s nothing but thread and patches.”

  He sat down at the table, picked up a thick slice of bread and began to wolf it. Paddy looked over his paper, saw him eating, and cuffed the top of his head. “Wait for your mother and sister. And take off your hat when you eat.”

  “Fiona, get Seamie settled, will you?” Kate said. “Where’s Roddy? Still asleep? Usually the smell of dinner gets ’im moving. Charlie, go shout ’im down.”

  Charlie got up from the table and went to the staircase. “Uncle Rodd-eee! Dinner’s ready!” There was no response. He tramped upstairs.

  Fiona washed Seamie’s hands and sat him at the table. She tied a napkin around his neck and gave him a piece of bread to keep him quiet. Then she went to the cupboard, took down six plates and carried them to the stove. Three plates got a chop each, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Kate pulled the skillet from the oven and divided its contents and the rest of the potatoes and gravy between the remaining three.

  “Toad in the ’ole!” Seamie crowed, regarding the crispy puff of batter, hungrily counting the nuggets of sausage peeping out from their doughy covering like so many timid toads.

  Neither Kate nor Fiona ever thought to question the chops on the men’s plates and the batter on their own. Men were the breadwinners and needed meat to keep up their strength. Women and children got a taste of bacon or sausage on the weekends if the week’s wages stretched that far. The fact that Kate worked over a copper and mangle hefting and wringing loads of wet laundry all day long or that Fiona stood on her feet packing tea for hours at a stretch was not considered and would have made no difference if it had been. Paddy’s and Charlie’s wages made up the lion’s share of the household income; they paid the rent, bought clothes, and provided most of the food. Kate’s and Fiona’s earnings went for coal and household necessities like boot black, kerosene, and matches. If Paddy or Charlie took ill and missed work, everyone would suffer. It was the same in every home on every street in East London – men got the meat and women got what they could.

  Kate heard Charlie’s heavy steps on the stairs again.

  “ ’E’s not ’ere, Mam,” he said, returning to the table. “Doesn’t look like ’is bed’s been slept in, either.”

  “That’s odd,” Paddy said.

  “And ’ere’s ’is dinner getting cold,” Kate fretted. “Fiona, pass it back to me, I’ll put it in the oven. Where is ’e? Wasn’t ’e ’ere this morning, Paddy?”

  “No, but he usually doesn’t come in till after I leave, so I wouldn’t have seen him.”

  “I ’ope ’e’s all right. ’Ope nothing ’appened to ’im.”

  “I t’ink we’d have heard by now if somet’ing had,” Paddy said. “Maybe somebody on the next shift was sick and he had to take his place. You know Roddy, he’ll turn up.”

  Roddy O’Meara, the Finnegans’ lodger, was not related to the family, but the children still called him Uncle. He’d grown up with Paddy and Paddy’s younger brother, Michael, in Dublin, and had emigrated first to Liverpool and then to London with them, staying in Whitechapel with Paddy while Michael continued on to New York. He had known the Finnegan children all their lives – had dandled each one on his knee, rescued them from bullies and mean dogs, and told them ghost stories by the fire at night. He was more of an uncle to them than their real uncle, whom they’d never seen, and they adored him.

  Kate mashed the tea and sat down. Paddy said the blessing and the family began to eat. She regarded her brood and smiled. When they were eating, they were quiet. There might actually be two minutes of peace now. Charlie was tearing through his dinner. There was no filling him up. He wasn’t a tall lad, but he was big for his sixteen years. Broad-shouldered and just as tough and scrappy as the bull terriers some of the neighborhood men kept.

  “Any more spuds, Mam?” he asked.

  “On the stove.”

  He got up and shoveled more potatoes onto his plate. Just then the front door opened.

  “Roddy, that you?” Kate shouted. “Charlie, get your uncle ’is plate …” Her words trailed off as Roddy appeared in the doorway. Fiona, Paddy, even Seamie stopped eating and looked at him.

  “Jaysus!” Paddy exclaimed. “What the divil happened to you?”

  Roddy O’Meara didn’t answer. His face was ashen. He held his policeman’s helmet in one hand. His jacket hung open and there was a crimson smear across the front of it.

  “Roddy, lad … speak, would you?” Paddy said.

  “Another murder,” Roddy finally said. “Buck’s Row. A woman named Polly Nichols.”

  “Jaysus,” Paddy said. Kate gasped. Fiona and Charlie were wide-eyed.

  “She was still warm. You can’t imagine what he’d done. The blood – it was everywhere. Everywhere. A man found the body on his way to work just before dawn. I spotted him running down the street, yelling. Woke the whole place up. I went back with him and there she was. T’roat cut. Rest of her opened up like somet’ing in a slaughterhouse. Lost me dinner right there. Meantime, it’s getting lighter and people are gathering. I sent the man down the station to get more help and by the time it arrived, I nearly had a riot on me hands.” Roddy paused, passing a hand over his weary face. “Couldn’t move the body till the detectives in charge of the case came. And the coroner. By the time they were done, we had a whole squad out front just to keep the people back. Furious, they were. Another woman dead. This boyo’s dancing circles round us.”

  “Papers t’ink so,” Paddy said. “All righteous, they are. Going on about the squalor and depravity of the poor giving rise to a fiend. Them damn rags never paid any attention to East London before. Takes a lunatic on the loose to get the upper classes to take any notice of Whitechapel. And they’re only talking about it now because they’d like to put a fence around it, keep your man inside so he can’t take a walk west and trouble the quality.”

  “No chance of that,” Roddy said. “This lad sticks to his pattern. Always goes after the same kind of woman – drunk and broken-down. He sticks to Whitechapel, knows it like the back of his hand. Moves like a ghost, he does. A brutal murder happens and nobody’s seen not’ing, heard not’ing.” He was silent for a few seconds, then he said: “I’ll never forget the sight of her.”

  “Roddy, luv,” Kate said gently, “eat something. You need some food inside you.”

  “I don’t t’ink I could. I’ve no appetite at all.”

  “Cor, it’s ’orrible,” Fiona said, shuddering. “Buck’s Row isn’t so far away. Makes a body jumpy to think about it.”

  Charlie snorted. “What are you worried about? ’E only goes after whores.”

  “Give over, Charlie,” Kate said testily. Blood and guts at the table. Now whores.

  “Christ, but I’m tired,” Roddy said. “Feel like I could sleep for a week, but I have to appear at the inquest this evening.”

  “Go up and rest,” Paddy said.

  “Aye, I t’ink I will. Save me dinner, will you, Kate?”

  Kate said she would. Roddy stripped off his suspenders and undershirt, gave himself a quick wash, then went upstairs.

  “Poor Uncle Roddy,” Fiona said. “What a shock that must’ve given ’im. Probably take ’im ages to get over it.”

  “It would me. Can’t stand blood. I’d have passed right out beside her,” Paddy said.

  I hope they catch him, whoever he is, before he does someone else, Kate thought. She glanced down the hallway toward the door. He’s out there right now. Maybe sleeping or eating or out at a pub like everyone else. Maybe he works at the docks. Maybe he lives two streets over. Maybe he walks past our house at night. Though she was warm from
cooking, she suddenly shivered. “Someone just walked across your grave,” her mother used to say when that happened.

  “I wonder if the murderer –” Charlie started to say.

  “For God’s sake, no more!” she snapped. “Now finish the dinner I cooked for you.”

  “Kate, what’s the matter?” Paddy asked. “You look as white as a ghost.”

  “Nothing. I just wish this … this monster would go away. I wish they’d catch ’im.”

  “Don’t worry, luv. No murderer’s going to come after you or anyone else in this family,” Paddy soothed, taking his wife’s hand. “Not as long as I’m around, he isn’t.”

  Kate forced a smile. We’re safe, she told herself, all of us. In a sturdy house with strong locks. She knew they were strong, for she’d had Paddy test them. Her children slept soundly at night with their father upstairs, and Roddy, too. No fiend would be reaching in to harm any of them. But still, Fiona was right. It made a body jumpy to dwell on him. It chilled one to the bone.

  “Pippins! Lovely pips ’ere! Four a penny, none finer in London!”

  “Cockles, fresh cockles, all alive-o!”

  “Who’ll buy me fine ’errings? Still jumping! Still breathing!”

  It was the same every Saturday evening; Fiona could always hear the market before she saw it. From two streets away, the cries of the costermongers had already begun to reach her ears. Spilling from stalls and barrows, they echoed and bounced over rooftops, down alleyways, around corners, beckoning.

  “The best parsley right ’ere, ladies! Buy my fine parsley-o!”

  “Orrrrrranges, two a penny! Who’ll buy me fat oranges?”

  And over the music of the market a new, discordant note rose, one that quickened the steps of the evening shoppers and made them eager to be home by their fires, their doors bolted behind them. “Another ’orrible murder!” cried a ragamuffin newsboy. “Only in the Clarion! Get’cher news ’ere! Drawings of the murder scene, blood everywhere! Buy the Clarion!”

  As they turned onto Brick Lane, Fiona’s excitement grew. Here was the market, all lit up and stretched out before her. A laughing, bawling, wheedling creature. A big, roistering, ever-changing being that she could step into and become a part of. She tugged at her mother’s arm.

  “Give over, Fiona. I’m walking as fast as I can,” Kate said, eyeing her shopping list.

  Cockney voices, brash and bluff, continued their lusty bellowing. Strutting and crowing like prizefighting cocks, the costers dared market-goers to find fault and challenged other costers to better their prices – practicing the East London trick of fending off trouble by inviting it. “Old trout?” Fiona heard one coster shout at a customer who’d questioned his wares. “Them trouts is fresh as a daisy. You want to see an old trout? Look in a mirror!”

  Fiona saw the fishmonger with his trays of crinkled whelks, tiny blue-tipped cockles, fat herrings, and buckets of oysters – a sample few shucked and glistening on the half shell. Next to it was a butcher’s stall – its edges festooned with crimson and white crepe paper, its boards stacked with neat rows of plump chops, stubby sausages, and grisly dripping pigs’ heads.

  A multitude of greengrocers – the more ambitious with barrows boasting carefully constructed pyramids of fruit: shiny pippin apples, fragrant pears, bright oranges and lemons, damsons and grapes. And, in front, baskets of nubby cauliflowers, broccoli heads, purple pickling cabbages, turnips, onions, and potatoes to boil or bake.

  Flickering light from gas lamps, naphtha flares, and even bits of candle stuck into turnips illuminated the scene. And the smells! Fiona stood still, closed her eyes and inhaled. A salty ocean smell – cockles soused with vinegar. A whiff of spice – apple fritters sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Fried sausages, jacket potatoes, warm ginger nuts. Her stomach growled.

  She opened her eyes. Her mother was making her way toward a butcher’s stall. As she watched her move through the mass of people, it seemed to her that the entire East End was there – familiar faces and foreign ones. Solemn, pious Jews hurried from their worship; sailors bought jellied eels or hot pea soup; workingmen of all sorts, clean-shirted and clean-shaven, idled in pub doorways, some with squirming terriers tucked under their arms.

  And everywhere countless numbers of women of every age and description squeezed, prodded, bartered, and bought. Some were attended by their husbands, who held baskets and puffed on pipes. Others were beleaguered by children, yowling in their arms, pulling at their skirts, pestering for cakes, candies, or hot muffins. Cockney kids crying Mum and Irish kids crying Mam. For Italian and Polish and Russian kids it was Mama, but their pleas were all the same – a pretty sweet, a colored lolly, a shiny brandy snap. And the harried mothers without enough money for the week’s meals buying an iced bun to be split among three, just so their children could have a taste of something nice.

  Fiona looked around for her mother and spotted her at the butcher’s. “Roast beef tomorrow, is it, Mrs. Finnegan?” she heard the man ask as she joined her.

  “Not this week, Mr. Morrison. Me rich uncle ’asn’t died yet. But I do need a cut of brisket. About three pounds or so. Five pence a pound’s my limit.”

  “Mmmmm …” The man pressed his lips together and frowned. “All me cuts is on the large side tonight … but I’ll tell you what I could do, luv …” He paused dramatically, leaning forward on spread-fingered hands. “… I could do you a five-pounder for a very nice price.”

  “I’m sure that’s too dear for me.”

  “Nonsense, duck,” he said, his voice dropping conspiratorially. “Y’see, the bigger the piece, the less I ’as to charge per pound. It’s ’olesale economicals. You pay more for the ’ole thing because it’s bigger, but you pay less, really …”

  With her mother and the butcher busy dickering, Fiona searched the street for Joe. She spotted him five barrows down, hawking his goods. Although the night was no longer warm, his collar was open, his sleeves rolled up, the color high in his cheeks. For the last year or so, at Joe’s insistence, Mr. Bristow had let him do more of the patter instead of keeping him behind the stall. And wisely so, for he was a natural. Every week he single-handedly moved hundreds of pounds of produce – more than any clerk at a fancy West End shop moved in a month. And he did it without the benefit of a high-end shop name behind him, or pretty window displays, or billboards, ads, anything. He did it with nothing but his own raw talent.

  Fiona felt a thrill of excitement as she watched him work, coaxing customer after customer out of the crowd. Catching a lady’s eye. Reeling her in. All the time joking and laughing – keeping the patter going, the interest high. Nobody played the game like Joe. He knew how to entertain and flirt with the brassy ones, and how to make his voice serious and sincere for the suspicious ones, feigning hurt and disbelief if a woman wrinkled her nose at his offerings, daring her to find a better bunch of carrots, a finer onion, anywhere in London. He had a showman’s way of slicing open an orange and squeezing its juice in an arc across the cobblestones. Fiona saw that it caught the eyes of passing shoppers ten feet away. Then he’d snap open a sheet of newspaper, shovel “not two, not three, but four large and lovely oranges, all yours for tuppence!” into it, twist it closed, and hand it over with a flourish.

  Of course, his beautiful sky-blue eyes and his smile don’t hurt business, either, Fiona thought. Nor did the mass of dark blond curls caught up in a ponytail and spilling out from under his cap. A warm flush came over her, coloring her cheeks. She knew she should keep her thoughts pure, as the nuns had warned, but that was getting harder to do. There was a triangle of skin showing in his open collar, underneath the red neckerchief he wore. She imagined touching him there, pressing her lips against him. His skin would be so warm and smell so good. She loved the way he smelled – of the fresh green things he handled all day. Of his horse. Of the East London air, tinged with coal smoke and the river.

  He had touched her inside her blouse once. In the dark, behind the Black Eagle Brewery. He’d
kissed her lips, her throat, the hollow of her neck, before undoing her blouse, then her camisole and slipping his hand inside. She’d felt as if she would melt from the heat of his touch, from the heat of her own desire. She’d pulled away, not from any sense of shame or modesty, but from a fear of wanting more and not knowing where that desire would lead. She knew that there were things men and women did together, things that were not allowed before marriage.

  No one had ever told her about these things – what little knowledge she had, she’d picked up from the street. She’d heard neighborhood men talking about mating their dogs, heard the lads’ rude jokes, and, together with her friends, had eavesdropped on the conversations of their sisters and mothers. Some of them spoke of being in bed with a man with the long-suffering air of a martyr, others giggled and laughed and said they couldn’t get enough.

  Joe suddenly caught sight of her and flashed a smile. She blushed, certain he knew what she’d been thinking.

  “Come on, Fee,” her mother called. “I’ve still got the veg to get …” Kate headed across the street to Bristows and Fiona followed.

  “ ’Ello, luv!” Fiona heard Joe’s mother call to her mother. Rose Bristow and Kate Finnegan had grown up together on the same dreary close off Tilley Street in Whitechapel, and now lived only doors down from each other on Montague Street. From stories her mam had told her, Fiona knew they’d been inseparable as girls, always giggling and whispering together, and even now, as married women, easily fell back into their old ways.