Scarlet Feather

by Maeve Binchy

  'What was the food like?' Cathy asked instead.

  'Not you too. Tom practically had a forceps and swab out examining it.'

  'Sorry. I know we're very boring.'

  'Not a bit, and the truth is the food was very dull. Not only did I ask them for a brochure which I'll send you, I also asked Ricky how much he paid them and you'll be stunned…'

  'Stunned good or stunned bad?'

  'Good, I imagine—I know what you two could do for that price. Sorry, this animal's going to have me in the harbour in a minute.'

  'He's never yours, how do you keep something that size in Glenstar apartments?'

  'No, I just borrowed him to get me out for a walk before lunch.'

  Cathy realised that she knew nothing at all of Shona Burke's private life. Maybe everyone worked too hard these days to have a private life. Or more likely, maybe they worked too hard to have any time to speculate about anyone else's.

  'I swear I'm keeping my eyes open for a place for you. You will find one when you least expect it, believe me.'

  Cathy felt shabby thanking her. But a promise was a promise. She looked into the faces that passed her by. Some people might never be their clients in a million years, but others might well need Scarlet Feather some time in their lives. There would be birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, reunions—even funerals. People no longer thought that caterers were the preserve of only the rich and famous. They had given up the nonsensical superwoman image of pretending that they had cooked everything themselves while holding down a job, looking after their children and running a home. In fact, nowadays you were considered intelligent to be able to find someone else to take part of a compartment of your life. Some of these people taking a morning walk and watching the waves might well be sending for the brochure that she and Tom would soon get ready. The brisk couple with their two spaniels might well be booking a retirement party or a thirtieth wedding anniversary. The well-dressed woman who looked so fit might need to organise a ladies' lunch for fellow golfers. That couple holding hands might want a drinks party to announce their engagement. Even the man with the red eyes and white face, who was vainly hoping that fresh air might work miracles on whatever damage he had done to himself last night, might be a senior executive who was looking for a firm to run his corporate hospitality.

  The possibilities were endless. Cathy hugged herself with pleasure. Her father used always to say that it was a great life just as long as you didn't weaken. Not that her father had ever shown much get up and go except to Sandy Keane's, or Hennessy's the bookmaker's. Poor Da: he would fall down if he knew how much she and Tom Feather were prepared to pay for these premises. And her mother would go white. Mam would be apologetic to the end of her life that somehow the maid's daughter had snared the great Hannah Mitchell's only son. It had been a terrible crime—ten thousand times greater than taking a half-hour off for a mug of tea, a smoke and a look at a quiz show on television. There was no changing her. In the beginning, Cathy had tried to force the two women to meet socially but it had been so painful, and Cathy's knuckles would clench every time her mother leaped up from the table to clear away the dishes at Oaklands any time they were invited there, that she had given up the attempt. Neil had been relaxed and indifferent about it.

  'Listen, nobody sane could get on with my mother. Stop forcing your unfortunate mother to do things she hates. Let's just go and see your family on our own, or have them to our house.'

  Muttie and Lizzie were as welcome at Cathy and Neil's house as any of the young lawyers, politicians, journalists and civil rights activists who moved in and out. And Neil dropped in occasionally to see his parents-in-law. He would find something that interested them to tell them about. Once he had brought a young man that his own mother would have called a tinker but Neil called a traveller, to see the Scarlets. Neil had just successfully defended the boy for horse-stealing and asked him to come and have a pint to celebrate. Shyly the boy had said that travellers were often not welcome in pubs, and when no persuasion had worked Neil had said that he must come and meet his father-in-law: they would bring half a dozen beers and talk horses. Muttie Scarlet had never forgotten it, he must have told Cathy a thousand times that he was happy to have been of service to Neil in the matter of entertaining his prisoners. Cathy's father always called them prisoners, not clients.

  Gradually her mother began to relax when Neil came to visit. If she started to fuss, throw out his cooling tea or sew a button on his coat, or, as she did on one terrible occasion, offer to clean his shoes, he just got out of it gently without the kind of confrontation that Cathy would have started. Neil found the whole scene seemingly normal. He never saw anything odd in the fact that he was having boiled bacon in an artisan's cottage in St Jarlath's Crescent with his in-laws, who were the maid and her ne'er-do-well husband. Neil was interested in everything, which is what made him so easy to talk to. He didn't show any of the fiercely defensive attitude that Cathy wore like armour. To him it was no big deal. Which, as Cathy told herself a hundred times, it was not. It was only her mother-in-law who made it all seem grotesque and absurd. Cathy put the woman out of her mind. She would go back to Waterview and wait until Neil came home.

  Their house at number seven Waterview was described as a town house. A stupid word that just added several thousand pounds to the small two-bedroom house and tiny garden. There were thirty of them built for people like Neil and Cathy, young couples with two jobs and no children as yet. They could walk or cycle to work in the city. It was ideal for Neil and Cathy and twenty-nine similar couples. And when the time came to sell there would be plenty of others to take their places. It was a good investment according to Neil's father, Jock Mitchell, who knew all about investments.

  Hannah Mitchell had delivered herself of no view about Waterview, apart from heavy sighs. She had particularly disapproved of their having no dining room. Cathy had immediately decided that the room should be a study, since they would eat in the kitchen from choice. The study had three walls lined with bookshelves and one window looking out over the promised water view. They had two tables covered with green felt, and they worked on them in the late hours together. One would go and get coffee, then later the other would decide it was time to open a bottle of wine. It was one of the great strengths they had, the ability to work side by side companionably. They had friends who often sparred and complained that one or the other was working to the exclusion of their having a good time. But Cathy and Neil had never felt like that. From the very first time they had got to know each other out in Greece, when he had ceased to be that stuck-up boy at Oaklands whose mother had given everyone such a hard time… When Cathy had stopped being nice Mrs Scarlet's brat of a daughter, they had had very few misunderstandings. Neil had understood that Cathy wanted to run her own business right from the start. Cathy had known that he wanted a certain kind of law practice. There would be no short cuts for Neil Mitchell, no ever-decreasing office hours like his father had managed to negotiate; no pretending that he was somehow doing business by being out on a golf course or in a club in Stephen's Green. They would talk late into the night about the defendant who had never had a chance because the odds were stacked against him, how to prove that he was dyslexic and had never understood the forms that were sent to him. Or they would go through the budgets yet again for Scarlet Feather, and Neil would get out his calculator and add, subtract, divide and multiply. Whenever she was downcast he would calm her and assure her that one of his father's partners, a man who lived and breathed money, would advise them every step of the way.

  Cathy let herself into number seven Waterview and sat down in the kitchen. This was the only room where they could really see the pictures on the walls. There was no room for paintings in the study because of all the books, files and documents. The hall and stairs were too narrow, you couldn't really see anything they hung there, and the two bedrooms upstairs were lined with fitted wardrobes and dressing tables. So there was no room there.

&nb
sp; Cathy sat at her kitchen table and looked up at their art collection. Everything there had been painted by someone they knew. The Greek sunrise by the old man in the taverna where they had stayed. The prison cell by the woman on a murder charge that Neil had got acquitted. The picture of Clew Bay in Mayo by the American tourist they had met and befriended when his wallet had been stolen. The wonderful still life by the old lady in the hospice who had an exhibition three weeks before she died. Every one of them had a history, a meaning and a significance. It didn't matter to Neil and Cathy whether they were great art or rubbish.

  A telephone in a quiet house can sound like an alarm bell. Somehow, from its very tone, Cathy knew this wasn't going to be an easy phone call.

  'Is Neil there?' her mother-in-law snapped. I'm afraid he's out with Jonathan. There was an attempt to hustle him out of the country this morning.'

  'When will he be coming back?' Hannah's voice was a rasp. 'Well, when he's finished, he won't know when. 'I'll call his mobile…'

  'He turns it off at meetings like this, he couldn't…' 'Where is he, Cathy, he has to come here at once.' 'Has there been an accident… ?'

  'There has indeed been an accident, and most of the kitchen ceiling has come down,' Hannah cried. 'They left bath taps running and the weight of the water… I need Neil to get those children out of here to wherever they're going to be sent. We haven't had a moment's peace—and as for you, Cathy, those children have eaten entirely unsuitable rich desserts and have been sick. I need to talk to Neil. Now.' Her voice was by now dangerously high and shaky. I can't contact him for you, I really can't. But I know what he'd say.'

  'If you're going to tell me to calm down…'

  'He'd say we'll take them here. So that's what we'll do.' Cathy sighed.

  'Can you, Cathy?' The relief in Hannah's voice was clear. 'They've been allowed to run wild—they need professionals to look after them, to try to bring them back to normal. And I don't want Neil to say I put them on to you…'

  'It won't be like that.'

  'No. But get him to ring me the moment you can.'

  Cathy smiled. She had now what her mother called her-meat-and-her-manners: she had offered and been refused—even if she had only offered because she could see it coming anyway. She dialled Neil's mobile phone to leave the message.

  'Sorry to disturb you with trivia, but the- twins have apparently brought down the ceiling in Oaklands. Ring your mother soonest. Hope it's all going well for Jonathan.'

  Then she went to the spare room and made up two beds. The twins would be there before nightfall.

  Tom rang to say he wanted to borrow the van and would that be all right.

  'I want to go up into the mountains, I think. It's just I can't think or talk about anything else and I'm afraid I'll drive Marcella demented. Do you want to come? Is Neil bearing up?'

  'He's still out fighting the good fight. I'd better not come with you, though, we have another horror-story brewing. Remember the twins from hell who turned up at Oaklands last night?'

  'Have they burned the place down yet?'

  'They might have by now. But they're probably packing their things and getting ready to come to Waterview as we speak.'

  'Cathy, they can't Tom was aghast. 'You don't have room, apart from anything else.'

  'Don't I know it, but as my father would say, even money we see them here tonight.'

  'So what are you doing?'

  'Nailing things down, mainly. Removing anything breakable. You know, the usual.'

  'I'll just sneak into the courtyard and take the van away,' Tom said.

  'Don't even look up at a window, they could fire something at you,' she said with a laugh.

  'Just one word of warning, Cathy and then I'll shut up about it all. Don't let Neil take them on and then go off saving the world and leaving them to you.'

  She sighed. 'And will you take one word of warning from me. Drive carefully, we haven't half-finished paying for that van and when you get excited you take your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel.'

  'When the business is successful, we'll get a tank,' he promised.

  Cathy made yet another cup of tea and thought about Tom. They had met on her first day at catering college; with his shock of thick, light brown hair he had an artlessly graceful way of moving. His enthusiasm and the light in his eyes had been the keynote of their years on the course. There was nothing Tom Feather would not attempt, suggest, carry out.

  There had been the time he had 'borrowed' a car from one of the lecturers because it had been left in the college yard for the weekend and Tom thought it could take six of them to Galway and back. Sadly, they'd met the lecturer in Galway and it could have been very difficult.

  'We brought your car in case you wanted to drive home,' Tom had said, with such brio that the lecturer had half-believed him and almost apologised for the wasted journey since he had a return ticket and a girlfriend with him.

  There had been the picnics and barbecues where Tom insisted they must be true to their calling and insisted on marinating kebabs when others would have been content with burned sausages. Cathy could almost smell those nights full of food and herbs and wine on the beaches around Dublin, and the winter evenings in the ramshackle flat that Tom shared with three other guys.

  Cathy had envied him the freedom. She had to go back to St Jarlath's Crescent every night and, even though Muttie and Lizzie had allowed her a fair amount of freedom, it still wasn't the same as having your own place.

  'You could come and live here,' Tom had told her more than once.

  'I'd only end up doing their ironing and lifting their smelly socks off the floor.'

  'That's probably true,' Tom had agreed with reluctance.

  He had never been short of girlfriends but took none of them seriously. He had a way of looking at people that seemed to suggest no one else in the world existed. He was interested in the most trivial things people told him and he was afraid of no one. He was kind to his rather difficult parents but it never meant that he missed any of the fun. When they all wanted to go to a black tie event in one of the big Dublin hotels, none of them could afford to hire dress suits; but Tom had a friend who worked in a dry-cleaners. It had been dangerous and dramatic and at least four jobs were on the line, but as Tom said cheerfully, nobody lost and everybody won.

  They had been talking about Scarlet Feather from the earliest days. No other form of catering had interested either of them; while their friends wanted to do hotel work, work on cruise liners, be celebrity restaurant chefs, write books and be on television, Tom and Cathy had this dream of serving top-grade food in people's homes. As Ireland became progressively more affluent, they felt sure this was the right way to go.

  They worked together in restaurants to get the feel for the kind of food people liked. Cathy was amused at how casually Tom took the compliments and the come-on glances directed his way. Even the stern Brenda Brennan in Quentin's was sometimes heard to say she wished she were twenty years younger.

  Had Cathy fancied him herself in those days? Well, yes, of course, in a sort of way. It would have been impossible not to. And it might well have come to something. She smiled at the recollection.

  They had planned to go to Paris on a very cheap flight. They had listed the restaurants they would visit: some to admire from the window, one to tour the kitchens because a fellow student had got a job there; and two where they might actually eat dinner.

  They had never been to Paris before. They discussed it, heads close together over maps, night after night. Once they got there, they would walk here, take the Metro there; this museum would be open, that one closed—but it was mainly the food they were going to investigate.

  They hadn't exactly said that this was the trip when they might become lovers. But it was in the air. Cathy had her legs waxed and bought a very expensive lacy slip. They had been all set to leave on a Friday afternoon and then that morning three things happened.

  Lizzie Scarlet fell off a ladde
r in Oaklands while hanging Hannah Mitchell's curtains and was taken to hospital by ambulance.

  Tom was offered a weekend's work at Quentin's because Patrick's sous chef had let them down.

  Cathy was called to interview for a job cooking in a Greek villa for the summer.

  They told themselves and each other that Paris would always be there.

  Cathy went to the Greek island to cook and met Neil Mitchell, a guest in the villa who kept putting off his return home to be with her.

  And Tom met Marcella Malone.

  And even though Paris was always there, it remained unvisited by Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather.

  She sometimes wondered about that weekend and what would have happened. But if they had been lovers, even for a short time, it would have been hard to forget once they were serious business partners in a thriving enterprise. And this way they brought no history with them. Nothing that could make either Neil or Marcella in any way uneasy.

  Cathy heard a key turn in the door.

  'Where are the twins?she called.

  'They're in the car,' Neil answered sheepishly. 'You knew they were coming? Mother said you did, but I didn't really believe her, to be honest.' His face was alight now, as if he had expected a protest. 'And you don't mind?'

  'I didn't say that. But you had to bring them. How was Jonathan?'

  'It looks as though it's going to be okay.'

  'Well done.'

  'It was a group effort, teamwork,' he said, as he always did. 'I'll get the twins—you're a hero.'

  'For a few days I'll be one—they're not too easy to handle, are they? Did it get sorted out at Oaklands?'

  'No way, a big shouting match with Mother before they left, right down to the "someone has to look after us" line, which is only too bloody true, poor things.'

  'Wheel them in.'

  She watched them coming up the steps, muttering to each other that it was a much smaller house, asking each other if Neil and Cathy had children, wondering was there a television in the bedroom. Cathy forced herself to remember that they were nine and frightened. They had been abandoned by their father, mother and brother, their aunt had thrown them out.