The Tea Rose Part 36

" ... an honestea, a most refres.h.i.+ng specialtea!" Fiona shouted. "Yes! Yes! Perfect! Can you fit it all in the banner, Mad?"

" Si, si I have room for it," Maddie said.

"There, Fiona, you have your ad! You can put it in newspapers, on billboards and buses, and you can use the design for your packaging, too."

"Thank you both! This is so exciting!" Fiona exclaimed, squeezing Nate's arm. "Imagine, my own brand of tea! Oh, blimey, I hope it sells! It has to, I have five thousand pounds of it sitting outside the door and an uncle who's ready to string me up."

"Of course it will," Nate said. "With an agency like Brandolini Feldman behind it, it can't fail.

And the thing is, Fiona," he added eagerly. "A brand's just the beginning, only the tip of the iceberg.

There are more kinds of tea than this one blend, right?"

"Yes. Dozens of different kinds."

"Well, just imagine a score of teas all sold under the TasTea name. Imagine the little tearoom you want to open turning into a fas.h.i.+onable destination, then growing into a chain! Imagine tearooms throughout New York and Brooklyn and Boston and Philadelphia ... "

" ... up and down the whole East Coast, throughout the whole country!" Fiona exclaimed.

"And you'll have wholesale accounts with hotels," Nate said. "And department stores," Fiona crowed.

"And railways and pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps," Maddie added.

"And you two will be doing nothing but TasTea ads and campaigns and packaging and ... "

"It will be a huge success," Maddie said, beaming. "For all of us!" Laughing, Fiona took her friend's hands and started to waltz around the store with her, whirling giddily until they were both so dizzy that Nate had to steady them. The three of them were making so much noise that no one saw the boy step into the doorway, his cap in his hands. He was about ten years old. He stood for a while, watching them anxiously, hoping he'd be noticed, then finally came up behind Nate and tugged on his jacket.

"Excuse me, sir," he said.

''I'm sorry, son," Nate said. "I didn't see you there. What can I do for you? "

"Is this where Fiona Finnegan lives?"

"Yes, that's me," Fiona said, leaning on the counter, trying to catch her breath.

"You have to come with me, miss. Quick. You have to," he said, starting for the door.

''I'm Stevie Mackie. My ma said to get you. She says our lodger, Mr. Soames, is dying."

FIONA TOOK THE STAIRS at 24 Sixteenth Street two at a time. All thoughts of tea and tearooms were gone from her mind. She had only one thought now, only one fear-that she was going to lose her best friend in all the world.

In the cab they'd taken, Stevie told her that his mother had learned of Nick's illness just this afternoon. The rent was past due and she'd gone to see him about it. When no one answered the door, she'd let herself in. She'd found him in his bedroom. He was very sick.

"With what, Stevie?" Fiona had asked, terrified of his answer.

"I don't know. My ma didn't say. She wouldn't let me go into him. She's awful scared of the cholera. She found a notebook on his table though. Your address was in it and his doctor's. She sent me after you my brother after the doctor."

I should never have listened to him, Fiona thought, racing up the steps. He wasn't well. I knew he wasn't. I should never have believed rubbishy explanations. She got to the door, Stevie on her heels, and k.n.o.b. It didn't budge, the door was locked. "The key, Stevie," she said voice trembling. "Where's the key?"

"Ma!" he shouted up the stairwell. "Ma, I've got Miss Finnegan. She needs the key."

Fiona heard footsteps on the landing above her, and then a tall woman in her forties, plain and rawboned and wearing a faded calico dress came down the stairs toward her.

"Have you got the key?" Fiona asked her urgently.

"You're Miss Finnegan?"

"Yes."

'Tm Mrs. Mackie ... "

"I need the key," Fiona said, her voice rising.

"Yes, yes, of course," Mrs. Mackie said, fl.u.s.tered. She dug in one pocket then the other. "He was calling for you. I don't know how long he 's been like this. Some days, I think-"

"The key!" Fiona shouted.

"Here," she said, holding it out. Fiona s.n.a.t.c.hed it, then jammed in the lock. "He's very bad, miss." Mrs. Mackie said, agitated. "I wouldn't go in there if I were you. It's not a sight for a young lady and G.o.d only knows what it is he has."

Fiona opened the door and ran inside, leaving Mrs. Mackie in the doorway. The flat was dark, the curtains were drawn, but she knew the way. She'd been there before. "Nick?" she shouted, running through the foyer down the hallway, past the kitchen, into a double parlor and out again another hallway past a bathroom to his bedroom. "Nick?" she called but there was still no answer.

"Please, G.o.d, please let him be all right," she whispered."Please."

A powerful, wrenching stench hit her as she opened the door of room-the smell of sweat and sickness and something else, something low and black and fearfully familiar-the smell of despair.

"Nick?" she whispered, rus.h.i.+ng to him. "It's me, Fiona."

He was lying in his bed, a large ebony four-poster, wearing only his trousers, which were wet with urine. He was still and looked as white and bloodless as the sweat-soaked sheets underneath him. The beautiful man she met in Southampton was gone; an emaciated wraith had taken his place.

She pressed her palms against his cheeks, found that he was clammy but warm and sobbed with relief. She pushed a lock of damp hair off his forehead and kissed him. "Nick, it's me, Fiona,"

she said. "Can you hear me? Answer me, Nick, please answer me."

His eyelids fluttered. He swallowed. "Fee," he croaked, "go away." His lips were cracked; his mouth was dry. She ran into the bathroom, found a gla.s.s and filled it with water. Back at his side, she held his head up and held the gla.s.s to his lips. He clutched at it, gulping the water greedily. He coughed, then vomited a good deal of it back up. Fiona turned him over on his side until he was done retching so he wouldn't choke, then helped him to drink more, a bit at a time. "Easy," she said.

"There's plenty here. Go slowly that's it."

Once he'd drained the gla.s.s, she laid his head gently down on his pillows. "Please go, Fiona,"

he whispered. "I don't want you here ... can take of myself." He began to s.h.i.+ver. His hands scrabbled futilely at the at the sheets. Fiona grabbed the quilt he'd kicked down to the bottom of his bed and covered him with it .

" I can see that. You've done a bang-up job of it so far," she said. His teeth started to chatter.

She got in the bed next to him, put her arms around him and held him, trying to warm him. "I swear, Nick, as soon as you're better, I'm going to kill you for this."

"Not going to get better."

"Yes you are! Tell me what's wrong!"

He shook his head. She was about to badger him when a loud, booming "Hallo" was heard from the hallway.

"In here!" she shouted.

A bald, bespectacled man with a silver beard entered the room. "Dr. ,--,-er Eckhardt, ja?" he said. "Excuse me, please." He shooed Fiona away and began to examine Nick.

Fiona watched anxiously from the bottom of the bed, her elbows cupped in her palms as the doctor questioned Nick, stared into his eyes, ma.s.saged his neck, and listened to his chest. "What's that for?" she asked, when he produced a syringe.

"To steady the heartbeat," he replied. "How long has he been like this?"

"I... I don't know. I saw him last Sunday. It's Sat.u.r.day now ... "

The doctor uttered an expression of disgust. "I told him this would happen. I instructed rest and a proper diet." He produced a second syringe. "To undo the dehydration," he said. "I need a basin of hot water and some soap. Washcloths and towels, too. He will have bedsores from lying in the damp. They must be cleaned before they become septic."

Fiona did as she was told. She collected everything the doctor require:' and then, over Nick's feeble protests, helped Eckhardt strip off his clothe" wash him, change his dirty bedding, and put him into clean pajamas. She prided herself on a strong stomach and did not flinch at the raw, angry sore"

that mottled his thighs and backside, but the sight of his hipbones jutting through his flesh, his bony kneecaps, and the hollows between his ribs made her chin quiver. She'd seen that he'd lost weight.

She'd known he was unwell on the s.h.i.+p. Something had been wrong all along. Why, oh why hadn't she pressed him?

"There, that's better. We let him lie still for a few minutes, no? Give the drugs time to take effect. We talk outside. Come."

As soon as they were out of Nick's earshot, Fiona grabbed the doctor" arm. "Is he all right?

He's not going to die, is he?"

"Are you related to Mr. Soames?" Eckhardt asked.

"Yes. I'm ... I'm his cousin," she lied. "He's dying, isn't he?" she asked tearfully.

The doctor shook his head. "No, but he is very ill. He will make it through this, but if he doesn't begin to take care of himself, he will deteriorate. Rapidly. I will tell you; as I have told him, that the spirochete is an opportunist. Good diet and plenty of rest are essential to forestalling it. As far as treatment goes -"

"Please, Dr. Eckhardt," Fiona said, worried to death about Nicholas and confused by the man's long-winded explanation. "What's wrong with him? What does he have?"

Eckhardt peered at her over the top of his spectacles with an expression of surprise. "Why, syphilis, of course. Forgive me, I thought you knew."

"MISS FINNEGAN, you take him out of here right now!" Mrs. Mackie shrilled. "It's shameful! A disgrace! I won't have the likes of him under my roof!"

Fiona sat on Nick's settee. "Mrs. Mackie," she said, trying to keep her voice steady, her anger under control, ''I'm not sure he can be moved right now."

"Either you move him or I'll move him. And all his goods, too. Right into the street!"

Fiona took a deep breath, trying desperately to figure out a way to deal with her very sick friend, his flat, his things. She didn't want to move him, he was too ill, but it appeared she had no choice. Mrs. Mackie had been standing in the next room while she and Dr. Eckhardt were talking.

She'd heard everything.

Fiona watched the woman as she continued to rant. Fiona's terrible temper reared at the sight of her, kicking inside of her skull like a wild horse. This woman had come in here to get her rent money. She had seen Nick. Seen the condition he was in, and she had returned to her flat, leaving him to suffer- soaked in his own p.i.s.s, s.h.i.+vering in his sweat. She hadn't even given him a gla.s.s of water. Now she was throwing him out. Fiona felt her hands ball into fists. She wanted nothing more at this very second than to knock Mrs Mackie on her righteous a.r.s.e. But she couldn't; she needed her cooperation.

Look, Mrs. Mackie," she finally said. ''I'll take Mr. Soames with me right now, but please allow me to keep his things here for the next two days. We'll pay you an extra month's rent for the inconvenience."

Mrs. Mackie pursed her lips, mulling her offer. "Plus I keep the security deposit," she finally said. "All of it."

Fiona agreed, relieved. Nick's paintings, mistakenly routed to Johannesburg instead of New York, had finally arrived and were downstairs in crates. She couldn't let this shrew put them out on the street. She had no idea where she herself would put them, but she'd deal with that problem later.

Right now she had to take care of Nick.

When she walked back into his room, she found him propped up against pillows. His eyes were closed, but his breathing sounded better and his skin didn't have quite the same pallor. He still looked heartbreakingly frail though, and she wondered how on earth she was going to get him dressed and into a cab.

He told you," he said weakly. He turned his face away. "I expect you'll be leaving now. I quite understand."

His words were like a match to the fuse of her anger-anger at Mrs. Mackie, at Dr. Eckhardt and the matter-of-fact way he'd told her about Nick's illness, and anger at Nick for letting himself get so sick. The fuse caught and her fury exploded. "You stupid, stupid man!" she shouted. "Is that what you think? That I want to leave you just because you're ill? Is that why I pleaded with a G.o.d I don't even believe in to save your sorry a.r.s.e? So I can walk out on you?"

Nicholas said nothing.

You answer me, Nick! Why did you lie to me?"

" I had to!"

"Not to me!"

"I ... I thought I'd lose you, Fiona. For G.o.d's sake, it's Syphilis"

"I don't care if it's the plague; don't you ever lie to me again! I knew something was wrong and you told me there wasn't! You could've died!"

"Please don't be so mad at me," he said quietly.

Fiona realized she was yelling at a very sick man. She walked around to the other side of the bed so she could see his face. ''I'm not mad at you. But no more fibs, all right? We're in this together.

You're coming home with me and you're going to get well."

Nick shook his head. "I can't burden you like that."

"It's not a burden," she said, sitting on the bed. "You can sleep in my room. Mary and I can take turns looking after you, and -"

"Fiona, there's something I need to tell you. There are things you don't know about me. I didn't get this disease from ... from a woman."

She nodded and Nick pressed on, awkwardly trying to explain his s.e.xual predilections, until she stopped him.

"Nicholas ... I know. I saw the photo. It fell out one day as I was putting your watch away. He looked so happy, the man in the picture. I thought you must've taken it and that he must be your lover."

"He was," Nick said sadly.

"Was? Where is he now?" she asked.

Nick closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, they were bright with tears. "In Paris. In the Pere-Lachaise cemetery. He died last autumn."

"Oh, Nick, I'm so sorry. How? What happened?"