The Tea House on Mulberry Street (31 page)

There was a beautiful beaded dress hanging on the picture rail and a pair of high-heel shoes on the floor.

The digital clock on the stereo said 5:00 am.

There was a pine Christmas tree by the sitting-room window, with second-hand fairy-lights winking prettily on it, as well as some antique baubles from a car-boot sale. The Christmas tree made a heart-warming splash of colour in the dreary little room, and that was why Brenda had forgotten to switch it off. She’d also forgotten to switch off a small portable room-heater. Her only thought, as she left the flat that night, was that a very famous person might just turn up at the exhibition in Galway the next day…

But the flex on the extension-cord was old and damaged. And it was very hot now, because it had been working hard all night, keeping the little glass lanterns on the tree flashing, as well as the heater.

A thin wisp of smoke curled out from the cracked socket on the wall, and then a tiny flicker of red flame appeared on the frayed flex.

The fire started slowly, burning the shabby hearth-rug, and the worn carpet underneath it. The flames were small and graceful, barely moving as they struggled to find a foothold. But when they reached the pile of turpentine-soaked rags in the fireplace, they exploded into life. The digital clock display faded to blackness, and the fairy-lights went out with a pop. The flames began to lick at the wallpaper, working their way along the wall, blackening and obscuring Brenda’s sketches and meagre possessions.

The beautiful blue and silver dress surrendered to the fire and fell off its padded coat-hanger, with a shower of sparks. The cheap sofa and the wooden coffee-table were alight in minutes, filling the tiny flat with dense, black smoke. The wooden crates beside the door only protected the paintings inside for two minutes, before they fell apart and spilled their contents into the inferno. Every single painting was burned; thousands and thousands of Brenda’s dabs and sweeps and strokes, all destroyed in seconds. Her precious sketch-books, her graphite pencils, her Radiohead and Placebo CD’s; everything that made Brenda what she was. Her painting easel was the last thing to be destroyed as the fire raged through the flat and the windows cracked right across. When the sitting-room floor collapsed, it made a hole in the connecting wall and smoke began to pour into Penny’s flat.

Penny lay asleep on the sofa, curled up in her old cardigan. Oblivious to the fire, she was dreaming of a big house in the country, full of white sofas and thick carpets and blue gingham curtains.

Daniel came hurrying up the street at that very moment, worried that he might have left the oven on. Unable to sleep since he’d thought of it, he had walked to Mulberry Street to warn Penny, and maybe even to talk to her and try to explain. When he saw the fire, he broke into a run. The flats next door were well alight by now. There was nothing he could do to save them. He banged on the door but there was no sign of that mad painter, Brenda Brown, or any of the other tenants. His blood ran cold when he saw smoke at the window of his own sitting-room. He got out his keys and fumbled desperately to find the right one, but somehow it wouldn’t fit into the lock.

“Damn you, Millie Mortimer,” he shouted, sensing Millie’s hand in the locks being changed. He thumped the door, and even tried to force it with his shoulder, but it was double-bolted and wouldn’t budge. He tried the knocker, and rang and rang the bell. He would have kicked the windows in but they were shuttered against him.

“
Penny, Penny, wake up
!” he called.

But she was deep, deep in a drunken sleep and couldn’t hear him. She didn’t move as the smoke drifted across to her.

“
Penny, there’s afire!
” he shouted. “
You’ve got to wake up!
”

But Penny slept on.

“Damn my miserly soul, for not buying a smoke alarm! Oh, God! Help me! What will I do?”

Flames were licking round the edges of the room. Penny coughed but did not stir. Daniel called out for someone to help him.

“Help! Help me! Anyone?” But no-one heard him, and even if they had, they couldn’t get in. Jack was very good at his work. The tea house was impenetrable. Only the strings of fairy-lights along the street stirred in the breeze. Daniel sprinted round to the back of the shop and went tearing up the alley as fast as his legs would carry him. He was over the wall in seconds and trying the back door, but it too was firmly secured. He looked up at the window of their bedroom. He could see no movement and couldn’t see if it too was shuttered. He threw a stone up at the dark glass. Nothing. Then a bigger stone. A small hole appeared in the glass, and a pattern of cracks, but still no Penny. In desperation, he began to climb up the drainpipe, cutting his arm badly on a protruding nail. Ripping off his coat, he wrapped it round his hand and pushed in the glass in the window. There was no shutter, thank God. Using all his strength, he pulled himself over the sill. He felt for Penny in the big double bed she had slept alone in, for the last few months. She was not there.

He ran into the spare room at the front of the building, but again, the room was empty. It was hard to breathe with all the smoke that had begun to build up in a thick blanket at the ceiling. He crawled into the sitting-room on his hands and knees, and found Penny on the sofa.

“Penny, Penny darling! Wake up! You’ve got to wake up. There’s a fire.” He prayed hard that it was not too late.

With a shake of his head, he lifted Penny off the sofa in his strong arms, and stumbled with her down the stairs and through to the kitchen. He drew back the bolts on the door and carried her out through the yard and down the alleyway.

“I’m sorry, Penny!” he wept. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault – I should have replaced the old wiring in the kitchen years ago!”

He saw that some of the neighbours were now on the street. Someone would have called the fire brigade. He laid Penny down gently on the footpath at a safe distance from the burning building, and she felt the cold ground underneath her and opened her eyes and coughed again.

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

“Thank God. Thank God,” he said softly.

“I’m frightened,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“It’s a fire. The shop is on fire. I’m with you now – it’s me, Daniel.” He knelt beside her, holding her hand.

“Daniel… what are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh, Daniel! We’ve got to save the tea house.” Penny tried to struggle to her feet.

“Never mind the tea house! Thank God you’re alive! Penny, sweetheart, just wait for me here – the fire has spread to the next-door house –”

“Oh, no, no! Brenda! Oh, Daniel, what about Brenda?”

“Just stay here, Penny, and let me see what’s happening…”

He returned in a few moments, relief evident in his face.

“It looks like no one has been hurt – Brenda’s flat is badly burned but Brenda was actually seen leaving in a taxi fairly late last night – she probably didn’t return. They’ve called the fire brigade and an ambulance. We’ll have you checked out, and you can come home with me – to Magnolia Street.”

“What will the other Mrs Stanley say?” said Penny, and she began to weep.

“Penny, I’m telling you the truth about Teresa. She was my mother. I didn’t tell you about her because I was ashamed. She went away and left me with Kathleen when I was a child. I bought the house for her, hoping she would come back. So as she’d know where to find me. Kathleen was my aunt and I hated her.”

“Where is Teresa, then? Why did she leave you?”

“She couldn’t cope on her own. She was broke. She probably married again and didn’t want me in the way. Please, Penny, don’t let it all end like this. I’ve been mad, insane. It’s true I married you for the business, for the money – I’m sorry!”

“You didn’t feel anything at all for me, on our wedding-day? On our honeymoon?”

“I felt guilty.”

“Is that all? Guilt?”

“I loved you a little bit. You were young and pretty.”

“If you only knew how much I cared for you, Daniel, that day!” Penny sobbed.

“But I love you so much, now, Penny. And I have, for a long time. I just never realised how much. I’ll die if you leave me. All these years I’ve wasted. Please let me make it up to you. I’ll give you everything I have. Please! I’ve booked us a holiday in that nice hotel by the sea. We can start all over again.”

Penny was too tired to think by now, so she clung to Daniel, and together they watched their beloved tea house burn to the ground. One of the neighbours gave her a blanket to keep her shoulders warm. By the time the fire engines came screaming down Mulberry Street, there was nothing of the tea house left to save. The firemen verified that Brenda’s flat had not been occupied. Penny was laid gently in the ambulance and taken for a check-up in the Royal Victoria hospital. Daniel went with her. She wanted to be with her husband, she said, when the policeman told her the building would have to be demolished. That was all that mattered now.

Chapter 41

A
FTER THE
F
IRE

15 December, 1999

Dear Nicolas,

It’s all over. (Sorry this notepaper is not my usual brand.)

My career is in tatters, before it even managed to crawl out of the gutter of broken dreams. Sorry if I sound a bit poetic; I’ve been drinking gin all day. In fact, I was drinking gin all day yesterday, too. That’s what did for me. I should have switched off that blasted heater.

The flat burned down. Faulty wiring, they said. With all that turpentine in the room, well, my paintings didn’t stand a chance. They are no more. Gone, all gone. No-one was hurt but only because the other occupants of the building were out at the time. I could have killed them all.

All of my paintings and everything else I possessed went up in smoke. My lovely, beaded dress from Monsoon. My high-heeled shoes
.

My silver frame for your photo. Which you never sent. All gone. I wasn’t insured, of course. And now I’m homeless.

The gallery said they were very disappointed, when I rang them. They had invited a lot of important people to the opening night. And a little musical group to play ballads. And all the designer nibbles were ready and now who’s going to eat them?

They’ve told me to contact them when I am ready for another exhibition.

But, I’ve lost heart in the whole thing. I am never going to paint again. My soul is suffocated, and my heart is withered, and my paintings are somewhere in the universe; reduced to a light-memory, spinning away to the outer edges of space.

I’m staying with my mother. See phone number below
.

Love, Brenda.

Brenda went out to post the letter, even though she was so sick with gin and disappointment that she could barely stand up straight. Her mother was wonderful, of course, and her father turned up on the doorstep, with a big bouquet of pink roses and white daisies for his tragic daughter. Her two sisters came to visit, and brought Brenda some spare clothes.

“Nothing survived the fire,” Brenda told them, over and over. “I went there this morning, with the hired van, and the whole building was just a black shell.”

It was unbelievable. Nobody could believe it.

“All ruined?”

“Just ashes.”

“What will you do, pet? Where will you go?” Her father offered to take her to Dublin for a holiday, but Brenda turned him down.

“I’m in the middle of a personal crisis, Dad,” she whispered. “I have to make some life-changing decisions. But thanks, anyway. It means a lot.”

“What decisions?” everybody asked then.

But Brenda was hard to understand. She kept muttering something about bad omens and bad luck, and wondering why the fire had to happen that particular night, of all nights.

“I was going to be famous, you see? Like Liam Neeson. There was a group booked to play ballads, lovely Irish ballads. And fancy nibbles. Italian, I think. Nicolas might have turned up. That’s why I bought the fancy dress. And the high-heeled shoes.”

“Nicolas who?” asked one sister. Mrs Brown made a face. Don’t ask.

“And I wonder, is that what I did wrong? Buying those silly shoes? Was I too sure of myself?”

“Brenda, you’re not making sense,” said the other sister.

“Was it fate? I think it was fate. The exhibition was never meant to be.” Brenda shook her head, sadly. “You see, in a lot of my paintings, there were cracked windows in the background. And I never knew why they had to be cracked. It was just something I sensed. And when I looked at the flat today,. there they were – the cracked windows! It was a prediction, do you see?”

“Holy smoke, Mum, do you think she needs a doctor?” Both sisters, this time.

“I’m going to my room, now, to write a letter,” said Brenda, and she left the room quietly.