The Tea House on Mulberry Street (6 page)

Sadie tried not to think of her husband, Arnold. She was breaking her diet, breaking it spectacularly, and Arnold would be very disappointed with her. But Arnold would never find her here. He would not be seen dead in a place like this. Tucked away in a shadowy corner of this forlorn cafe on Mulberry Street, she could eat these sinful foods in secret and get away with it.

Sadie had been living on low-calorie soup and undressed salads for two weeks. She was permanently hungry and very irritable. And she had only managed to lose two miserable pounds. The sheer disappointment she felt, when she stepped on the scales, had driven her here today, in fact. Now, every cell in her body relaxed as the hot creamy coffee caressed her lips. As Arnold used to, she thought sadly. A long, long time ago. Before he became obsessed with conservatories and patio doors and burglar-proof locks. Sadie’s dainty lips opened and closed quickly. The cherry cheesecake melted on her tongue and filled her hollow self with culinary joy. She closed her eyes with pleasure when she swallowed the last spoonful, and then heaved a sigh of relief. Her sense of physical satisfaction was absolute.

Sadie had been on diets for years, and every one of them had been a dismal failure. Her bedside locker was filled with books on nutrition. Her attempts at losing weight followed a familiar pattern. First she bought a diet book. She began the new eating plan on a Monday and followed it religiously for about six days. Then, while doing the shopping on a Saturday afternoon she gave in to her cravings for bacon sandwiches with tomato sauce, and chocolate éclairs filled with fresh cream. She ate all evening and went to bed on Saturday night feeling disgusted with herself. She threw the scales in the bottom of the bathroom cabinet on Sunday morning and tried not to think about her figure for approximately two months. Then she bought another diet book.

She weighed twelve stone when she was twenty-one. And she weighed twelve stone now that she was forty-one. But she was a tiny woman and Arnold called her his Little Toby Jug. Or his Fat Little Turnip. She did not like to think of that. Or of all the years spent counting calories and stirring fresh fruit into plain yoghurt. She walked everywhere, rushing around the stores with her shopping-bag, but it didn’t help at all. Her legs were rounded and white, the bones well-cushioned with soft flesh. She fretted over what to wear on special occasions. She was always looking for something that would hide her short neck, her large ankles, her square back, her wide hips and her dimpled knees.

She looked at her watch. Maurice and Daisy had been on their own for two hours. Arnold’s parents lived with them in the bungalow, following a serious operation on Daisy’s knee five years earlier. They would be fidgeting for their lunch. With great reluctance, Sadie gathered up her coat and bag, and hurried to pay the bill. She dropped her receipt into a wastepaper basket on the way to the door. Arnold’s sharp eyes missed nothing. She would buy some flowers on the way home, and say she had gone out to get them for Daisy, to cheer her up following a cold. Her trip to the tea house would be a secret.

Unfortunately for Sadie, Arnold had a guilty, little secret of his own.

As she was leaving the shop, Sadie saw her husband’s distinctive Jaguar come gliding up Mulberry Street and she shrank back inside the door. She could not bear to be caught coming out of a cafe. He would know instantly that she had eaten rich food. She peeked out from behind the blind. His spotless car approached at a leisurely pace, glittering in the weak, morning sunlight. He was smiling, and patting the knee of a very thin blonde woman, and saying something intimate to her. Sadie could tell by the way he raised one eyebrow that he was saying something obscene. He took his eyes off the road then, something he never did when Sadie was in the car, and looked hungrily down the front of the woman’s blouse. The woman threw back her head and laughed out loud, showing long, predatory teeth. She reached over to Arnold and straightened his tie and he caught her hand in his greedy fingers and held it to his mouth. As Sadie pressed her round face to the glass in astonishment, Arnold kissed the ring-encrusted hand of his companion as if he were a pantomime prince and she were his Sleeping Beauty. Then, they were turning into Camden Street. And then they were gone.

Sadie stumbled out of Muldoon’s and stood in the street, looking after them with her mouth wide open, like a landed fish.

Her husband, Arnold, was a pompous businessman. He sold over-decorated conservatories to the nouveau riche. He was utterly unremarkable-looking, and a tiny bit overweight himself, but he made up for these shortcomings with his overbearing personality. When Arnold was in the room, no-one else could say a word. He had an opinion on everything, and he was always right. It didn’t matter if the subject was world politics, or the general decline in the flavour of mass-produced bread, Arnold was always right.

But Sadie loved him. She loved the spirit of determination in Arnold. He never gave up. Unlike Sadie and her failed diets, when Arnold decided he was going to sell a conservatory, he kept on going until he had sold it. He had a knack for assessing people, and he would appeal to their vanity, their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. He convinced them that a conservatory was the answer to all their problems, and he got that all-important signature. He was arrogant, but he was effective.

Sadie forgave his arrogance, and he forgave her disappointing appearance. Their love life was dull and predictable and had produced two sons, now living in Australia. How would she tell them the awful news?

She waited, desolate, for the bus. When it pulled in at the stop, she accidentally spilled all the coins in her purse into the gutter. She couldn’t even be bothered to pick them all up. She handed a shiny pound coin to the driver. He punched out a ticket. Sadie didn’t say thank you, and neither did the driver. On the way home, she did not allow herself to think about Arnold and his secret love. She did not know what to think. Her brain had turned into a lump of cheese. High-calorie cheese, mature cheddar. She felt foolish and fat and a failure. She got off at her stop, in a daze.

As she trudged up the avenue, the heavens opened, and she was drenched, along with the bouquet of pink carnations she had managed to buy for Daisy. She’d left her umbrella on the tea-house doorstep, she realised, as the raindrops stung her eyes and ears. She arrived home dripping wet and in despair.

Chapter 6

T
HE
S
TORY OF
D
ANIEL
S
TANLEY

The day passed in a blur of serving and cleaning and washing-up. At seven o’clock, the cafe became quiet, and Penny and Daniel sat down to their supper, in the kitchen. Needless to say, when Penny put her suggestions to Daniel, he was not impressed.

He did not think it was a good idea to employ a cleaner and a couple of waitresses and give Penny some time off. Why would she need time off? There were weeks when the takings were down. And that was the great thing about not having any staff: it kept the overheads to a minimum. He patiently went through the familiar arguments for her.

And then the bombshell: she wanted them to try for a baby before it was too late. He was deeply shocked that she was still harbouring the idea at all. He thought she’d forgotten about all that, thought that they were now very cosy running their own business together.

He pointed out to her that it would be impossible to run the tea house and take care of a baby, that they could not afford it. And, by not having children, look at all the trouble they were saving themselves: the sleepless nights, the months of teething, the crawling stage when they might put dropped coins and bits of carpet fluff into their mouths and choke until they had to be thumped on the back…

“How do you know all this stuff about babies, if you don’t want a child?” Penny wanted to know.

“I heard Millie telling you about it. Her children sound awful. If she turns her back on them for a minute, they’ve broken something, or hurt themselves.”

“They’re only small for a short while, Daniel. Then they start to grow up and develop their own personalities.”

“That’s even worse! You have to find a good school for them. And then they fight in the yard and rip their blazers. And they won’t do their homework, and the teenagers are all out of control…”

“Oh, Daniel, you’re talking total nonsense! You should hear yourself! You sound like the Crawleys. Our child would never be like that. We’d love our child and teach him, or her, how to be a good person.”

“There are no guarantees in this life, Penny. How can you be sure you wouldn’t change your mind afterwards, and want to go back to when it was just you and me and our little shop?”

“Because I just know I’d love our baby, no matter what.”

“That’s a silly thing to say.”

“Not as silly as claiming you’d rather serve tea and toast and cream buns to strangers, than bring a new baby into the world!”

“I thought you loved Muldoon’s as much as I do, Penny! It was your family’s after all. You were born into it, and the catering business.”

“Daniel, I do love it. And I know you work hard and you’re a terrific chef. But I don’t want to be here for fifteen hours a day. I’m not getting any younger, and I want a child.” Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Don’t I have a say in this?”

“Of course you do. But I’ll be the one who’s going to carry it, and give birth to it, and feed it. I haven’t got much time left, Daniel…” And she began to sob.

“You’re getting very emotional, Penny. Please calm down. All I’m saying, is that you might get fed up some day. You might want to run away and get your freedom back.”

“Well, why would I do that? Haven’t I all the patience in the world?”

“Have you?”

“How do you think I’ve managed to live with you all these years?” she wept.

“Look, we’ll have an early night. Would you like that?”

“Are you going to use birth control?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“Forget about it, Daniel. I know it’s just another chore for you!”

And she flounced out of the cafe and went up the stairs to the flat, to run herself a hot bath. She would take a bottle of chilled wine into the bathroom with her, and a crystal glass to drink it from, and a new paperback as well. She would stay in there all evening and let Daniel serve the last customers and tidy up on his own, if he liked the catering business so bloody much.

“Honestly,” she told the bathroom mirror, “I can’t believe it! Now, he’s trying to convince me I don’t want a child, when a child is all I’ve ever really wanted. I didn’t even tell him I think it’s time we spent our savings on a proper home with a garden. I’m beginning to think Millie is right about that man! He’s not dealing with a full deck.”

She arranged her glass of wine and a thick novel on a chair beside the bath, and stepped gently into the hot water, with ten inches of bubbles on the top of it. But she did not read that evening. She just stared at the ceiling, and sipped her wine and made her plans until the water went cold.

Daniel sulked in the kitchen for a long time. He knew he’d said the wrong thing to Penny. As he had so many times before. When he had locked up the tea house for the night, he sat at one of the tables and contemplated his life, and the journey that had brought him to this crisis. For he sensed that it was a crisis. Penny had talked of starting a family for years, but he had always managed to convince her it was better to wait a while: until they had more savings in the bank, until the political situation was more stable, until they could train up a new person to take over Penny’s duties. But now he knew that the time for avoiding the issue had run out.

Yes, it was a strange situation, and it had been a strange sort of life, too.

The great reluctance of Daniel Stanley to part with his cash was legendary throughout the catering trade. In all the years he had worked as a chef in the Imperial Hotel in Belfast, he had never been known to buy a round of drinks, not even on special occasions.

Once, the waiters glued a five-pound note to the floor, and laughed until their sides were sore as they watched Daniel trying to get it off. Their laughter faded, however, as he steamed it off with a kettle, dried it on the radiator, and put it carefully in his pocket. They knew then he was mad. But the staff of the hotel, all born and reared in the city, were familiar with madness of one sort or another, and after a while they accepted Daniel and his thrifty ways.

Once a year, the staff hired a bus and went to the seaside. Usually, they made for Newcastle, with its spectacular view of the Mourne Mountains. They loved its gaudy amusement arcades, with the joyous sound of coins clattering loudly into pay-out slots. The jukebox played lively tunes that floated out to sea, over the heads of the happy crowds. The puppet fortune-teller in her little glass box always predicted good things.

John Anderson, the head waiter, was responsible for booking the coach and collecting the money for the fares, and keeping the appointed driver sober, so that he could drive them safely home again. Everyone looked forward to the trip, and they sang songs all the way there and back again. It was easily the best day of the year.