The Tea House on Mulberry Street (24 page)

“City Hall, please, driver.” Beatrice did not want to talk.

“City Hall? Anything special?”

“No. Just a spot of lunch. And please keep your eye on the road.”

The guests were mingling in the gardens. Speculation was rife as to who would be the Guest of Honour. Alice carried her handbag over her arm and struck up a royal pose beside the war memorial. One journalist with poor eyesight came rushing over, thinking she was a mystery VIP, and was very embarrassed when he discovered she was only a humble pensioner. Beatrice took her sister by the arm and marched her over to the main entrance where they stood in line with their tattered invite at the ready.

The guests went into the banqueting hall and took their seats with the maximum of fuss and confusion. There was almost a scuffle at the top table as the Mayor’s wife and another female councillor fought over the chair nearest to the VIP section. There were some unpleasant accusations, regarding possible tampering with the seating plan.

There were so many fresh flowers on the tables, there was barely room for the cutlery. Beatrice hoped the flowers had been carefully checked for spiders. Wouldn’t the Queen think it was just typical of the muck-savages in Belfast if a big, fat spider fell out of the carnations and landed on its back in her soup? Alice glanced around the room, checking for unattended packages and prayed their big day out wouldn’t be spoiled by a bomb-scare.

The Lord Mayor was perspiring heavily in his formal robes. His decorative chain was getting heavier by the minute, and his best trousers were much too tight. He’d have to go on a diet, one of these days. Or buy new ones in a bigger size. (Would expenses run to a new suit, he wondered.) He tapped the microphone and called for silence. The guests were so tense by now they were clawing the edges of the tablecloth, and leaving marks on it. They all held their breath, and Alice gave Beatrice a good prodding with her elbow, to get her to look up. Beatrice told Alice that if she prodded her again, she would find herself flat on her back, on the patterned carpet.

The Mayor coughed to prolong the agony. He was painfully aware of the rumours that were going around. He knew that everyone expected the Queen to appear, and he had tried his best to get her there, but she was just too busy that day. Something about a dog-show in Leeds. And so, he proudly announced that they would all be joined by none other than… the reigning Ulster Beauty Queen, Miss Northern Ireland herself.

“Miss – Miss –” He’d forgotten her name. All these dolly-birds looked the same to him: big white teeth and long thin legs. Like horses, they were. He liked his women petite, and wearing housecoats. “Miss… Northern Ireland!” he roared into the microphone, causing a screech of feedback.

Suddenly, she appeared from a side room, waving prettily, in a 1940s dress. She wore red lipstick, high heels and an RAF hat. There was a moment’s stunned silence as she made her way up the room, swinging her pelvis from side to side, in a bizarre fashion. As if she was on the catwalk.

Someone giggled, and Beatrice realised it was her sister, Alice. She began to cough and clap, to cover up the strangled sounds of Alice’s mini-breakdown. Then, the rest of the crowd recovered and began to clap, too. The tension that had been building for months, exploded. The applause was tremendous, and the reporters surged forward to photograph the Beauty Queen. She smiled the most enormous smile the Crawleys had ever seen. Two whole rows of bleached white teeth, they could all see back to the very molars. The guests were temporarily blinded by the flashes of the cameras.

“Tell me this is not happening,” said Alice, and then it was Beatrice’s turn to collapse in hysterical laughter.

“Cover your ears, Alice. I’m going to swear like a drunken docker,” said Beatrice. And she did, six times.

The meal was served, and every delicious mouthful was painful for the sisters to swallow. Their faces ached with the effort of smiling at everyone. Alice wished she could think of an excuse of some kind, so they could both go home. But she couldn’t. She felt like someone had taken her heart away and replaced it with a peach-stone. Her only consolation was noting that the Mayor’s wife, Georgina, looked even more depressed than she did. And that Georgina’s enormous black hat, with artificial lilies on it, resembled a crashed hearse.

Miss Northern Ireland listened politely while the speeches were being read out, but the proceedings had lost all credibility.

“You can call the Royals a bunch of idiots, if you like,” said Alice, “but who else has anything even approaching their dignity? This whole thing has been a washout.”

When it was all over, only half of the guests clapped, and the other half poked at their dentures with the complimentary toothpicks. Beatrice thought of her dear father, William, reading the telegram, in an army tent somewhere in France; the telegram that told him of the twins’ birth. She shed a tear or two of disappointment then, and the guests correctly assumed she was thinking of a deceased relative and they looked away, to spare her any embarrassment.

Alice was hiding in the toilets when the photographic exhibition was duly declared open. While she crouched in one of the palatial stalls, she overheard one of the guests reveal that she had stolen her three-hundred-pound shoes from a shop in Bangor, and another one boasted that she was having a lesbian affair with her tennis-coach. Strangely, these snippets of scandal cheered Alice up a little bit.

When the sisters finally met the guest of honour, they were thoroughly bored. They were lined up against the wall like POWs and photographed with jolly television presenter Frank Mitchell and Miss Northern Ireland, whose name still escaped them. The photographer filled the frame with the lovely face of the Beauty Queen in the RAF hat, and Frank and the Crawleys were squeezed in round the edges.

When Beatrice saw herself and Alice, the next day, in the
Belfast Telegraph
, she said that the two of them looked like their mouths were full of vinegar. Their beautiful hats were sliced off the top of the picture. Beatrice laughed every time she looked at the newspaper, but Alice was outraged.

“If it wasn’t for war and culture and pride and nationality, and stupid bloody
flags
, our dear father wouldn’t have had to risk his life on the front line,” she said to Beatrice, “while poor Mother found comfort in the arms of another man.”

“Well,” said Beatrice, “if you think about it, if it wasn’t for the war, we might not be here at all…”

After that, they made a pact not to worry about it any more. Some things were just too deep and profound for the human heart to understand.

And when one of the neighbours called round to congratulate them for appearing in the newspaper, and said, “We showed the Germans, all right. We gave them a right pasting,” Alice left the room.

Chapter 30

C
ONNEMARA
M
EMORIES

As Aurora and David viewed the tape of the documentary, in the sitting-room, Henry slipped away from the house. He wandered around the park for a couple of hours and then he went to the tea house. Rose was sitting there, on her own.

He hesitated for a few moments and then went over.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind me interrupting you, but I’d like to buy you a coffee, to thank you for all your hard work with the plants.”

“Oh, it’s you, Mr Blackstaff.”

“Please call me Henry.”

“Thank you, Henry. That’s very kind of you.”

He ordered coffees and bagels, and sat down again. He had no intention of saying anything personal; he was merely enjoying this chance meeting, but she was so easy to talk to. He found himself asking her all kinds of things.

“Your accent – you’re not from Belfast?”

“No. I’m from Connemara.”

“How did you ever come to live in this part of the world? I mean, it’s supposed to be very beautiful there.”

“It is. Totally unspoilt. But there’s the rub. There aren’t too many factories, you see – nowhere to get a job. I came here to live when I met my husband. He has a small business in the city centre. He sells gadgets, and electronic things. He’s mad for anything modern, silver and small.”

“My wife is the exact opposite. She lives for the past. Dusty old books, and that sort of thing. Have you been married long?”

“Four years. Actually, we broke up a while ago.”

“Oh dear. I’m so sorry. I had no right to ask…”

“That’s okay. I’m not going to fall to pieces, or anything. I knew it was going to happen eventually. We had nothing in common any more.”

“Indeed,” said Henry, and his heart swooped like a bird in flight.

“He asked me to give up my flower-shop, and work for him. Selling burglar-alarms. That was the last straw. I knew then, it was the end.” She smiled sadly. “You must think I’m terrible. Just to walk away from my marriage so easily.”

“Not at all. I think you’re very brave. If there’s really nothing left between you. Are there any children?”

“No. John said we should wait until the business was established. You?”

“No. We never got round to having children. There were too many other things to do. And then, one day, we woke up, and we were ancient.” He knew he was saying too much, but the words were coming out, and he could not stop them.

“Stop it! You’re not ancient at all. Just well-preserved. A hardy annual, in gardening parlance.”

Henry laughed. “What will you do now?”

“I’m going home to Connemara. I like Belfast, but it doesn’t feel like home. A friend of mine owns some holiday cottages right on the beach. And I’m going to stay there for a bit, and keep an eye on the place for her, until I decide what to do next. I have a sister in Australia. I might go there. I haven’t made my mind up. I’m staying with a friend until I sell the shop.”

“Tell me about Connemara.”

“Well, everything is grey and it rains all the time. Not many trees. Stone walls everywhere. But sometimes I really miss the silence, and the mist coming in from the sea. I suppose you have to be born there to understand what I mean. Most people say it’s lonely, and they wouldn’t live there for a pension, but I like it.”

“So why don’t you do that, then? Live there?”

“I could do. All I need is a house to live in, some money to live
on
, and a charming companion to live
with
! Now, if I could find myself an easy-going man of independent means, who likes the quiet life, then I’d be set up. You don’t know anyone who fits that description, do you?”

Henry’s face flushed very red. She was joking, of course. But maybe…“What would you do then, if you found such a person?”

“Simple. I’d spend the rest of my life planting trees. You know, of course, that this entire island used to be covered in trees? I’d plant hundreds of trees. And millions of flowers. Wild flowers.”

The television programme had been a great success. Aurora was thrilled with the resulting publicity. David Cropper became a great friend, and the two of them were planning a series of radio programmes for schools and colleges.

Henry pottered about the house, feeling like a resident ghost. Aurora’s conservatory repelled him somehow, like it didn’t want him there. He was beginning to think it had a personality of its own, and he refused to have his morning coffee in it. Aurora teased him about it, endlessly. She spent all her spare time in the conservatory, reading obscure novels under a linen parasol.

Henry invited Rose to Muldoon’s Tea Rooms for lunch, several times, and they talked and talked about everything under the sun. He knew so much about her. Little things. Like, when she was fourteen, she jumped out of a first-floor window in school, to hide from the nun who would have caught her smoking. She broke a leg, and never smoked again. He told her about his book-store, his monkey-puzzle tree and his greenhouse, but did not mention his novels. He was finished with fiction. He wanted a real life, with real things happening in it.

Chapter 31

B
RENDA IS
G
ALWAY
-
BOUND