The Tea House on Mulberry Street by Sharon Owens Page B

and housework.
    Great efforts were made by several charities in New York to trace the father of the unfortunate boy who sat quietly in his Aunt Kathleen’s parlour, on the Carlisle Circus in the north of the city. Months went by. But the father of the young child proved impossible to find in such a huge city, and eventually custody was awarded to Kathleen. Although Kathleen and Teresa were sisters, they were as different as two sisters could be. While Teresa was beautiful, wild and romantic, a daydreamer and a flirt, Kathleen was plain and practical. A no-nonsense sort of woman. A hard ticket. That’s what they called her.
    “Look after the pennies,” she used to say to young Daniel, at least ten times a day.
    “And the pounds will look after themselves,” he used to answer quietly, just as she had taught him. It was the only thing they said to one another. The only closeness they shared.
    Kathleen wasted nothing, not even the string from parcels, or the smallest piece of soap. She was single, and worked in a cigarette factory. She was not used to children, and did not speak to Daniel very often, except to say, when he asked for a bicycle or a bag of toffees, that it was a hard station to be lumbered with Teresa’s child. Kathleen did not waste her hard-earned money on fresh flowers for the parlour and tortoiseshell combs for her thick, brown hair. She did not hanker after shop-bought cakes and slices of cooked ham. She did not buy toys for her miserable nephew, either. Such extravagance, she used to say, was the finish of poor Teresa.
    Daniel became thin and withdrawn, and he grew up with the dusty smell of the charity shops on his clothes and the shame of poverty in his heart. He thought of his mother often, and prayed that someday she would come waltzing up the street to take him home, and buy him treats, and spoil him. But his prayers remained unanswered.
    When he was a teenager, his aunt got him a place in the technical school, to study for a career in the catering trade. He slaved for many long hours in various eateries throughout the city, having learned the lesson early on that the only sure way to success was through hard work, and plenty of it. By the time he was twenty-four, he was a chef in one of the best hotels in the city, and well-respected by everyone who knew him. When his aunt died suddenly, leaving her home and a small fortune to the Catholic church, Daniel had already closed his heart to the world. He buried his aunt without the distraction of flowers or a headstone. It was what she would have wanted.
    He moved into rented rooms and busied himself with his career. His dedication to the job earned him promotion and a modest pay increase. However, no matter how many extra shifts he worked, and no matter how hard he saved, he never seemed to have enough money in the bank. He began to economise. He gave up his tiny flat on Eglantine Avenue, and rented an unheated room in the student quarter. The Holy Lands, as the area was known, was not quite as pretty as Eglantine Avenue. The students who lived there didn’t bother themselves with keeping curtains neat or gardens trimmed. He missed the two-storey houses and the chestnut trees and the bay windows of Eglantine, but he reminded himself that such things were not as important as financial security. He walked everywhere, refusing to take the bus, even on freezing winter mornings. On his rare days off, he read library books, and went strolling around the Botanic Gardens, sometimes sitting in the Palmhouse to keep warm. He gave up cigarettes, newspapers, fish suppers, and anything at all that was not essential. He hurried to the bank each Friday to deposit his wages, and he hid his account book under a loose floorboard in his room. He did not bother with women. Women were unpredictable creatures with expensive tastes, and were known to disappear suddenly on sunny days.
    One day, when he was hunting through the storeroom for some peppercorns, he came across a