The Tea House on Mulberry Street (32 page)

16 December, 1999

Dear Nicolas,

You must know by now that I am in love with you.

I can’t help it. I love you, and I have done ever since I saw you impersonate Elvis, singing ‘Love Me Tender’ to Lula Fortune.

I know the media portray you as a playboy, but that is not the . truth. The real you is sensitive and kind, and crying out for a gentle person to share your life with. And that person is me. That is why I have never fallen in love with anyone before. That is why you have never settled down with anyone before. Fate was saving us for each other.

Please write to me.

I know you would like me if you met me.

Even if we don’t fall in love, I’d be content just to be your friend.

I sent you a painting and you didn’t even say thank you. I sent you lots of letters and you didn’t answer one of them. Why? All I wanted was a little picture of you, and your autograph. A small connection to you, that’s all I wanted. To touch something that you had touched.

Please call me.

I am a genuine fan.

Love, Brenda.

The phone rang a few times that day, and every time it did, Brenda ran to the hall table, and grabbed the receiver with both hands. It couldn’t be him, of course. He wouldn’t have received the letter yet with Mrs Brown’s phone number on it, but Brenda had lost all track of time.

“Nicolas?” she begged.

But no, it was only one of Mrs Brown’s many friends from the line-dancing club, checking on the arrangements for the trip to Nashville. Would Brenda like to go with them, they offered kindly, when they learned of the disaster. There was a spare seat.

But Brenda would rather take part in a Miss World competition, on prime-time television, wearing a big cardboard number on her wrist and a wet-look bikini, than go to Nashville, on a bus, with her mother’s friends. (Dolly Parton and Slim Whitman for seven days straight.)

She sat in the front room all day, just looking at the busy patterns on the carpet. She couldn’t eat or sleep. She wished, a thousand times, that she could just turn back time and unplug the faulty extension cord. Please, please, please, she whispered, with her eyes closed tightly. God help me. Please. But it didn’t work.

As the evening wore on, she decided to go out and have a couple of drinks to settle her nerves. She got off the bus just outside The Crown bar on Great Victoria Street, and went inside. She was a girl on her own, but that didn’t worry Brenda. She was dressed for a night of serious drinking, not for a night of flirting with attractive men. She wore a full-length overcoat that had once belonged to her grandfather, her mother’s gardening brogues, and an old 70’s suit of her father’s. She wore an extra-thick layer of eyeliner, just to let people know that she was a fashionable chick, not a homeless tramp. She brought a writing pad and envelopes with her, just in case. She got a few looks when she pushed open the heavy doors, and went up to the bar counter, but nobody said anything, or spoke to her.

“What’ll it be, Miss?” asked the barman, rubbing his hands on his old-fashioned white apron.

“Double gin and tonic, please, barman.”

“Certainly, Miss. Ice and lemon?”

Brenda nodded.

When the drink was served, she turned around and leaned her elbows on the bar, sipping the ice-cold gin. She studied the floor for a while, and then she gazed round the bar, at the different faces of the other drinkers. And then she saw one of her old bosses, Patricia Caldwell, sitting by the window; having an argument with some poor man in a crumpled suit. Brenda took a deep breath, and a general feeling of resentment that had been simmering for two days, suddenly found a focus. She ordered another drink, and a pint of Guinness as well, and climbed up onto a barstool, watching Patricia in the mirror behind the bar.

17 December, 1999

Dear Nicolas
,

This is the last letter I am ever going to send to you.

I have been arrested. It’s six o’clock in the morning. I’m writing to you from the police station on the Lisburn Road.

I threw a whole pint of Guinness over a woman in a pub.

Patricia Caldwell, her name was. She used to be my boss. She made me work in the stockroom, unpacking deliveries. Me! A Fine Art graduate! (First Class Honours.)

After two weeks there, she sacked me for having what she called an Attitude Problem.

(That old chestnut.)

So anyway, there she was, gasping in the seat, drenched in Guinness, and I said to her,

“Remember me? I’m Brenda Brown, talented artist, and friend to the stars. I just wanted to tell you that I was the one who put a brick through the window of your tacky, little gift shop last year. Or was it the year before? You capitalist bitch!”

She called the police. The bouncer held my arms behind my back until they arrived. The shame of it. They actually got a doctor in to see me in the cells. I told him I was an artist and that you were a personal friend of mine. (He prescribed anti-depressants.)

Anyway, I’m not sorry. I’m glad I broke the window, and I’m glad she knows it was me, and I’m not sorry, not one bit. I’m a Belfast hard-woman now, resorting to violence. Hurrah!

I don’t know if they are going to press charges.

Rock and roll, eh?

Love, Brenda

PS. My career is over so I don’t expect we’ll get to meet now, but I hope you have a wonderful life, and that you have everything you ever dreamed of My feelings for you remain undimmed by time or disappointment.

PPS. Don’t bother sending me a signed photo, as I’m moving house. However, I remain your number one fan.

PPPS. Wild At Heart is still my favourite film, in spite of all the other weirdos in it. I love your nose and ears in that film. Please don’t ever have plastic surgery.

PPPPS. I am changing my name now, definitely.

All my love, forever, Brenda Brown, (that was.)

They let Brenda go at eight o’clock, and she posted her letter, and idled along the Lisburn Road, looking in the windows of the trendy coffee shops there. Some of them were very nice, colour-washed and genteel, but it wasn’t the same as Muldoon’s. The atmosphere was too contrived. She went again to Mulberry Street, and stood looking up at the wreckage of the shop. There were several skips on the street, waiting to be filled with the debris that had been her life.

Penny and Daniel could have been killed, and so could the other residents of the flats. Brenda was so grateful that they hadn’t. Although she’d lost everything, it could have been a lot worse. Penny and Daniel arrived then, in their little car, and Brenda tried to walk away without being seen. But Penny rushed after her and gave her a big hug.

“Everything is fine,” Penny cried. “We’re going to rebuild the cafe, and make it far better than it ever was! We’re going to have a glass roof and a new kitchen.”

“Oh,” said Brenda. She’d thought Penny would strangle her on the pavement.

“And we want you to be our very first customer when we reopen.”

“I’m really very sorry about the fire, Penny.”

“Not at all. It could have been something in our own place that caught fire. In fact, that’s what Daniel first thought! It was all falling apart, anyway. The insurance will pay for some of it.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re taking it so well.”

“Oh, that reminds me, Brenda – our builders are also working on the flats next door, and they found some things in your flat that survived the fire. They showed them to me and I said I would hold onto them for you. Wait there, I’ll get them. They’re in the boot of our car.” She hurried across the road to fetch them.

“I was told there was nothing left, Mr Stanley,” said Brenda to Daniel.

“Well, there is. They found them under the bed, yesterday, apparently.”

Penny came back with a slightly singed shoebox full of red envelopes, and the portrait of Nicolas, miraculously unharmed, except for a few cracks round the edges, where the paint had dried too quickly in the heat. Penny was delighted with herself for being the one to give Brenda back her treasured possessions.

“There,” she said. “Wasn’t it great luck that I was having a chat with the foreman, when they found these. They might have gone in the skip, otherwise!”

Brenda stood on the footpath, waiting for the bubbles of excitement that usually filled her when she was dreaming of Nicolas. But she felt cold and empty inside, like the cave she had once visited on a school-trip to Fermanagh. Outside the dimly lit flat, the whole Nicolas Cage thing seemed a bit sad. His lovely face, the thick bundle of letters that she had written with such passion failed to move her at all. She knew then, the love affair that had never been, was over. She was twenty-five. It was time to grow up.

“Well, Penny, it must seem very ungrateful of me to say this,” she began, “but, I don’t think I want them back. I’ve decided to stop being an artist, and I’m going to be an ordinary person, and get an ordinary job.”

“But, Brenda, this is so good.” Penny held the picture up to get a good look at it. “Aren’t you going to start again, like we are?” Daniel put his arm round Penny and smiled at her lovingly. Brenda didn’t think she had ever seen them embrace before.

“I’m going to start again, I daresay, but it won’t be here. I’m going away. A job has come up, and I’m going to take it. I wish you both the very best, though,” she added, and she shook their hands solemnly. Daniel patted her awkwardly on the arm, and Penny kissed her on the cheek.

“Thank you, Brenda,” said Penny. “Without you, we might never have found out just how happy we were.”

Brenda smiled, and nodded her head.

Slowly, very slowly, she walked away, rubbing her arms as if she was very cold. She didn’t look back once.

“What will I do with these?” Penny called after her, holding the picture and the box aloft.

“Throw them in the nearest skip.”

“Oh, Brenda!”

“Good luck, now.” And she was gone, around the corner, onto the Lisburn Road. On her way back to her mother’s house, to rest.

“There’s no way I’m dumping these,” declared Penny.

“What will we do with them, Penny?”

“I’ll think of something. Give me a minute, Daniel.”

“We have to go shopping, for clothes. We’ve nothing to wear on our holiday.”

“I know!”

She opened the shoe-box, and took out a handful of letters, and posted them.

“Penny! You can’t do that!”

“Why not? There’s stamps on them and all,” said Penny, shovelling in more letters.

“You heard her. She said she’s finished with all this stuff.”

“She doesn’t mean it, Daniel. She’s just disappointed. Wait till Mr Cage gets all these letters in one go. Then, he’ll take notice of poor, wee Brenda.”

“Aye. He’ll have her charged for stalking him.”

“Not at all. He’ll be delighted with the attention.”

“He won’t.”

“Wait and see.” And she put the last bunch in the postbox.

“Are you going to send him the picture, too?”

“No. I’m going to keep that and hang it in the shop. I’ll see if I can’t get Brenda a few commissions. Get her back on her feet again. She’ll be back to see us when we reopen, don’t you worry.”

Chapter 42

A P
OEM FOR
B
RENDA

Brenda Brown spent her last night in Belfast at her old home on the Saintfield Road. She wanted to spend time with her mother before she left the city forever. They shared a lovely meal of roast chicken with all the trimmings, followed by vanilla ice cream with wafers, and a bottle of white wine each. Her father and sisters were invited, too, and for a while it was just like old times.

Brenda was so hungover from a week on the gin, she could hardly keep the wine down, but she needed something to numb the pain. She was so shocked by the loss of her paintings, it was hard to function normally, but Mrs Brown did her best to cheer Brenda up. They sat in the kitchen talking, when the others had gone home.

“Now, I said I wouldn’t interfere, but are you sure you won’t stay?” Mrs Brown asked gently.

Brenda thought about it for a while, as she sat warming her toes on the radiator. She could rent another flat, get another job, start making the repayments on her credit-card bills, take the antidepressants like the doctor suggested, and start painting again. One painting a week, for a year, and she would be ready to ring The Blue Donkey Gallery. And she could apologise to Nicolas Cage’s representatives for bothering him, and assure them she would not write to him ever again. But she knew, in her heart, that she didn’t have the energy to do all those things.