The Tea Rose Part 1

The Tea Rose.

Jennifer Donnelly.

For Douglas, My own blue- eyed boy.

Acknowledgements.

I am indebted to Martin Fido, author of The Crimes, Detection, and Death J of Jack the Ripper and Murder Guide to London, for a midnight tour of the lanes and alleys Jack knew and for sharing his encyclopaedic knowledge of 1880s East London and its people with me. Samuel H. G. Twining, LVO, OBE, Director of Twinings Tea, and Syd Mumford, a former Senior Buyer and Blender for the firm, graciously explained the mysteries and arcana of the tea trade to me and provided a hands-on lesson in tea tasting.

Thanks, also, to the staff of the Museum of London's Museum in Docklands Project for allowing me access to their library and collections. Londoners Fred Sage, a former Thames Stevedore, and Con McCarthy, an Ocean s.h.i.+ps Tally Clerk, walked down many a dockland street with me, sharing memories of working life on the river. Hoisting a pint with them in the Town of Ramsgate was both a privilege and an honor.

Sally Kim, my editor, is every writer's dream come true-a mentor, an advocate, a partner in crime.

She has my sincere grat.i.tude, as does the rest of the team at St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books.

Without Simon Lipskar, agent and lionheart, The Tea Rode would never have been. He took a chance on me and my doorstop of a ma.n.u.script. He made us better and got us heard and I appreciate his efforts more than I will ever be able to say.

Laurie Feldman, Diana Nottingham, Brian O'Meara, and Omar Wohabe were there for me from day one with advice, support, and champagne. No one could ask for truer friends. Thanks, guys. Heather, John, and Joasha Dundas read early drafts of the novel and gave me valuable criticism and confirmation, for which I am grateful.

A very loving thank-you to Wilfriede, Matt, Megan, and Mary Donnelly, and Marta Eggerth Kiepura, my wonderful family, for believing in me, encouraging me, and always telling me stories.

And to Douglas Dundas, for teaching me what faith means, the biggest thank-you of all.

Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.

- Theodore Roethke.

Prologue.

Polly Nichols, a Whitechapel wh.o.r.e, was profoundly grateful to gin. ~Gin helped her. It cured her. It took away her hunger and chased the chill from her joints. It stilled the aching in her rotten teeth and numbed the slicing pains she got every time she took a p.i.s.s. It made her feel better than any man ever had. It calmed her. It soothed her.

Swaying drunkenly in the darkness of an alley, she raised a bottle to her lips and drained it.

The alcohol burned like fire. She coughed, lost her grip on the bottle, and swore as it smashed.

In the distance, the clock at Christ Church struck two, its resonant chime m.u.f.fled in the thickening fog. Polly dipped her hand into her coat pocket and felt for the coins there. Two hours ago, she'd been sitting in the kitchen of a doss-house on Thrawl Street, penniless. The landlord's man had spotted her there, asked for his fourpence, and turned her out when she couldn't supply it. She'd cursed and screamed at him, telling him to save her bed, he'd get his doss money, telling him she'd earned it and drunk it three times over that day.

"And I got it, too, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she muttered. "Didn't I say I would? Got yer poxy fourpence and a skinful to boot."

She'd found her money and her gin in the trousers of a lone drunk wending his way down the Whitechapel Road. He'd needed a bit of coaxing. At forty-two, her face was no longer her fortune.

She was missing two front teeth and her pug nose was thick and flattened across the bridge like a fighter's, but her large bosom was still firm and a glimpse of it had decided him. She'd insisted on a swig of his gin first, knowing a mouthful would numb her throat, get up her nose, and block the beer and onions stink of him. As she drank, she'd unb.u.t.toned her camisole, and while he was busy 'groping her, she'd slipped the bottle into her own pocket. He was clumsy and slow and she was glad when he finally pulled away and staggered off.

Christ, but there's nothing like gin, she thought now, smiling at the memory of her good fortune. To feel the weight of a bottle in your hands, press your lips against the gla.s.s, and feel the blue ruin flowing down your throat, hot and harsh. Nothing like it at all. And close to full that bottle had been. No mean thru'penny swig. Her smile faded as she found herself craving more. She'd been drinking all day and knew the misery that awaited her when the booze wore off. The retching, the shaking, and, worst of all, the things she saw-black, scuttling things that gibbered and leered from the cracks in the walls of the doss-house.

Polly licked her right palm and smoothed her hair. Her hands went to her camisole; her fingers fumbled a knot into the dirty strings threaded through the top of it. She tugged her blouse together and b.u.t.toned it, then lurched out of the alley and down Bucks Row, singing to herself in a gravelly, gin-cracked voice: "Oh bad luck can't be prevented, Fortune, she smiles or she frowns, 'E's best off that's contented, To mix, Sir, the ups and the downs..."

At the corner of Bucks Row and Brady Street, she suddenly stopped. Her vision blurred. A buzzing noise, low and close like the wings of an insect, began in her head.

''I've the 'orrors of drink upon me," she moaned. She held her hands up. They were trembling.

She b.u.t.toned her coat up around her neck and began to walk faster, desperate for more gin. Her head lowered, she did not see the man standing a few feet ahead of her until she was nearly upon him.

"Blimey!" she cried. "Where the 'ell did you come from?"

The man looked at her. "Will you?" he asked.

"No, guv'nor, I will not. I'm poorly just now. Good night."

She started to move off, but he grabbed her arm. She turned on him, her free arm raised to strike him, when her eyes fell upon the s.h.i.+lling pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

"Well, that changes things, don't it?" she said. His s.h.i.+lling plus the fourpence she already had would buy booze and a bed tonight, tomorrow, and the day after, too. As sick as she felt, she couldn't turn it down.

Polly and her client walked back the way she'd come in silence, past tumble-down dwellings and tall brick warehouses. The man had a powerful stride and she found herself trotting to keep pace.

Glancing at him, she saw he was expensively dressed. Probably had a nice watch on him. She'd certainly have a go at his pockets when the time was right. He stopped abruptly at the end of Bucks Row, by the entrance to a stable yard.

"Not 'ere," she protested, wrinkling her nose. "By the metal works ... a little ways down ... " '

"This'll do," he said, pus.h.i.+ng her against two sheets of corrugated metal, secured by a chain and padlock, that served as the stable's gate.

His face shone weirdly bright in the thickening darkness, its pallor broken by eyes that were cold and black. A wave of nausea gripped her as she looked into them. Oh, Jesus, she pleaded silently, don't let me be sick. Not here. Not now. Not this close to a whole s.h.i.+lling. She forced herself to breathe deeply, willing the nausea to subside. As she did, she inhaled his scent - Maca.s.sar oil, sweat, and something else ... what was it? Tea. b.l.o.o.d.y tea, of all things.

"Let's get on with it then," she said. She lifted her skirts, fixing him with a look of weary expectation.

The man's eyes were glittering darkly now, like s.h.i.+ny pools of black oil.

"You filthy b.i.t.c.h," he said.

"No dirty talk tonight, pet. I'm in a bit of an 'urry. Need some 'elp, do you?" She reached for him. He slapped her hand away.

"Did you really think you could hide from me?"

"Look' ere, are you going to -" Polly began. She never finished. Without warning, the man grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the gate.

"Leave off!" she cried, flailing at him. "Let me go!"

He tightened his grip. "You left us," he said, his eyes bright with hatred. "Left us for the rats."

"Please!" she rasped. "Please don't 'urt me. I don't know about any rats, I swear it ... I ... "

Polly never saw the knife coming. She had no time to scream as it plunged into her belly, biting and twisting. A soft gasp escaped her as he pulled it out. She stared at the blade, uncomprehending, her eyes wide, her mouth a great, round O. Slowly, delicately, she touched her fingers to the wound. They came away crimson.

She lifted her eyes to his, her voice rising in a wild, terrified keen, and looked into the face of madness. He raised his knife; it bit into her throat. Her knees buckled and all around her darkness descended, enveloping her, dragging her into a thick and strangling fog, a fog deeper than the river Thames and blacker than the London night that swirled down on her soul.

Chapter o.

er ne.

The scent of Indian tea leaves-black, crisp, and malty-was intoxicating. It floated out of Oliver's, a six-story wharf on the Thames's north bank, and wafted down the Old Stairs, a flight of stone steps that led from Wapping's winding, cobbled High Street to the river's edge. The tea's perfume overpowered the other smells of the docks -the sour stench of the mud bank, the salty tang of the river, and the warm, mingled scents of cinnamon, pepper, and nutmeg drifting out of the spice wharves.

Fiona Finnegan closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. "a.s.sam," she said to herself. "The smell's too strong for a Darjeeling, too rich for a Dooars."

Mr. Minton, the foreman at Burton's, said she had a nose for tea. He liked to test her by holding a handful of leaves under her nose and making her name it. She always got it right.

A nose for tea, maybe. The hands for it, surely, she thought, opening her eyes to inspect her work-roughened hands, their knuckles and nails black with tea dust. The dust got everywhere. In her hair. Her ears. Inside her collar. She rubbed at the grime with the hem of her skirt, sighing. This was the first chance she'd had to sit down since six-thirty that morning, when she'd left her mother's lamp lit kitchen for the dark streets of White chapel.

She'd arrived at the tea factory at a quarter to seven. Mr. Minton had met her at the door and put her to work readying half-pound tins for the rest of the packers due in on the hour. The blenders, who worked on the upper floors of the factory, had mixed two tons of Earl Grey the day before and it had to be packed by noon. Fifty-five girls had had five hours to pack eight thousand tins. That worked out to an allotment of about two minutes' labor per tin. Only Mr. Minton thought two minutes was too much, so he'd stood behind each girl in turn-timing her, shaming her, bullying her.

All to gain a few seconds on the output of a tea tin.

Sat.u.r.days were only half-days, but they seemed endless. Mr. Minton drove her and the other girls terribly hard. It wasn't his fault, Fiona knew, he was only following orders from Burton himself.

She suspected her employer hated having to give his workers half a day off, so he made them suffer for it. They got no breaks on Sat.u.r.days; she had to endure five long hours on her feet. If she was lucky, her legs went numb; if not, they ached with a slow, heavy pain that started in her ankles and climbed to her back. And worse than the standing was the grindingly dull nature of the work: glue a label on a tin, weigh out the tea, fill the tin, seal the tin, box the tin, then start all over again. The monotony was agony to a mind as bright as hers and there were days, like today, when she thought she'd go mad with it, when she doubted she'd ever escape it, and wondered if all her big plans, her sacrifices, would ever amount to anything.

She pulled the hairpins from the heavy knot at the back of her head and shook her hair free.

Then she loosened the laces on her boots, kicked them off, peeled her stockings off, and stretched her long legs out before her. They still ached from standing and the walk to the river hadn't helped any.

In the back of her mind, she heard her mother scolding. "If you 'ad any sense, child, any sense at all, you'd come straight' ome and rest yourself instead of traipsing off down the river."

Not come to the river? she thought, admiring the silvery Thames as it s.h.i.+mmered in the August suns.h.i.+ne. Who could resist it? Lively waves slapped impatiently at the bottom of the Old Stairs, spraying her. She watched them inching toward her and fancied that the river wanted to touch her toes, swirl up over her ankles, draw her into its beckoning waters, and carry her along with it. Oh, if only she could go.

As she gazed out over the water, Fiona felt the weariness in her ebb a weariness that left dark smudges under her brilliant blue eyes and a painful stiffness in her young body-and a sharp exhilaration take its place. The river restored her. People said that the City, the center of commerce and government to the west of Wapping, was London's heart. If that was true, then this river was her lifeblood. And Fiona's own heart quickened and leaped at its beauty.

Everything exciting in the world was right here before her. Watching s.h.i.+ps traverse the river, their holds laden with cargo from all the far-flung reaches of the Empire, filled her with wonder. This afternoon the Thames was choked with traffic. Punts and lighters-small, quick boats-were plying the waters, ferrying men to and from s.h.i.+ps moored midstream. A hulking steamer, intent upon her berth, shouldered smaller craft out of the way. A battered trawler, back from chasing cod in the icy waters of the North Sea, steamed upriver to Billingsgate. Barges jostled for right-of-way, moving upriver and down, discharging cargo-a ton of nutmeg here, sacks of coffee there. Barrels of treacle. Wool, wine, and whiskey. Sheaves of tobacco. And chest upon chest of tea.

And everywhere, standing on the jutting docks conferring with their captains, or moving between the casks and crates and towering pallets, were merchants _ brisk, imperious men who swooped down from the City to examine their goods the second their s.h.i.+ps arrived. They came in carriages, carried walking sticks, and flipped open gold watches with hands so fine and white, Fiona could hardly believe they belonged to men. They wore top hats and frock coats and were attended by clerks who dogged their heels, carried their ledgers, and poked into everything, frowning and scribbling. They were alchemists, these men. They took raw goods and changed them into gold. And Fiona longed to be one of them.

She didn't care that girls weren't supposed to involve themselves in business matters-especially girls from the docks, as her mother was always reminding her. Dock girls learned to cook, sew, and keep house so they could find husbands who'd look after them at least as well as their fathers had. "Foolishness," her mother called her ideas, advising her to spend more time improving her short crust and less time at the river. But her da didn't think her dreams were foolish. "Got to have a dream, Fee," he said. "The day you stop dreaming you might as well take yourself down to the undertaker's, for you're as good as dead."

Lost in the river's spell, Fiona didn't hear a pair of feet approach the top of the Old Stairs. She wasn't aware that the young man standing there smiled as he watched her, not wanting to disturb her, just wanting to gaze at her for a moment before he made his presence known, wanting to savor the image of her-slender and straight-backed against the backdrop of mossy stones and black mud banks.

"Coo-eee," he called softly.

Fiona turned around. Her face lit up at the sight of him, softening for a few seconds the resoluteness, the determination that was always present in her expression-a determination so apparent that neighbor women remarked upon it, clucking and sighing and gravely saying that a strong face meant a strong will. And a strong will meant trouble. She'd never get a husband, they said. Lads didn't like that in a la.s.s.

But this lad didn't seem to mind it. No more than he minded the glossy black hair that curled around her face and tumbled down her back. Or the sapphire eyes that seemed to sparkle with blue fire.

"You're early, Joe," she said, smiling.

"Aye," he said, sitting down beside her. "Me and Dad finished up early at Spitalfields. The veg man's miserable with a cold, so 'e didn't 'aggle. I've got the next two hours to call me own. 'Ere,"

he added, handing her a flower. "Found that on me way over."

"A rose!" she exclaimed. "Thank you!" Roses were dear. It wasn't often he could afford to give her one. She touched the crimson petals to her cheek, then tucked it behind her ear. "What's the weekly report, then? 'Ow much 'ave we got?" she asked.

"Twelve pound, one s.h.i.+lling, sixpence."

"Add this to it," she said, pulling a coin from her pocket, "then we'll 'ave twelve and two."

"Can you spare it? Not skipping dinners again to save money, are you?"

"No."

"I mean it, Fee, I'll be angry if you are-"

"I said I'm not!" she bristled, changing the subject. "Before long we'll be at fifteen pounds, then twenty, and then twenty-five. It's really going to 'appen, isn't it?"

"Of course it is. At the rate we're going, another year and we'll 'ave our twenty-five quid.

Enough for three months' rent, plus start-up stock."

"A whole year," Fiona echoed. "It sounds like forever."

"It'll go quick, luv," Joe said, squeezing her hand. "It's only this part that's 'ard. Six months after we open our first shop, we'll 'ave so much money, we'll open another. And then another, until we 'ave a whole chain. Be making money 'and over fist, we will."

"We'll be rich!" she said, brightening again.

Joe laughed. "Not right away. But one day we will. promise you that, Fee."

Fiona hugged her knees to her chest, grinning. A year wasn't so long, not really, she told herself. Especially when she thought of how long they'd been talking about their shop. For ages, ever since they were children. And two years ago, they'd begun saving, putting money away in an old cocoa tin that Joe kept under his bed. Everything had gone into that tin-wages, Christmas and birthday coins, errand money, even a few farthings found in the street. Bit by bit, the coins had mounted up, and now they had twelve and two-a fortune.

Over the years, she and Joe had painted a picture of their shop in their imaginations, embellis.h.i.+ng and refining it until the picture was so real she could close her eyes and smell the tea in its chest. She could feel the smooth oak counter under hand and hear the little bra.s.s doorbell tinkle as people came in. It would be a bright and gleaming place, not some tatty hole in the wall. A real beauty, with the windows done up so nicely that people simply couldn't walk by. "It's all in the presentation, Fee," Joe always said. "That's what brings the punters in."

The shop would be a success, she knew it would. As a costermonger's son, Joe knew everything there was to know about selling. He'd grown up on a barrow, spending the first year of his life propped up in a basket between the turnips and the potatoes. He could bellow "Buy my fine parsley-o!" before he could say his name. With his know-how and their combined hard work, they couldn't possibly fail.

Our shop, ours alone, Fiona thought, gazing at Joe as he gazed at the river. Her eyes caressed his face, delighting in every detail-the strong line of his jaw, the sandy stubble covering his cheeks, the tiny scar above his eye. She knew its every plane and angle. There wasn't a time when Joe Bristow hadn't been part of her life and there never would be. She and Joe had grown up on the same shabby street, one house apart. From childhood they'd played together, roamed Whitechapel together, eased each other's hurts and heartaches.