Scarlet Feather

by Maeve Binchy

  'It will happen that you'll be a great big success… you do know that, don't you?' she said, and he thought he saw tears in her eyes. 'I'm not just saying that… you really know.'

  'I know.' He did know. She had wanted the best for them from the start. 'Of course I know,' he said, and he held her close to him before she went to pack her leotards, trainers and body lotion. Tom looked out of the window until she waved up at him from the gates of Stoneyfield, as she always did. He wondered had she any idea how beautiful and endearing she was already, without having to punish herself with all this ruthless regime.

  Ricky rang. He had the pictures they needed, six black and white arty studies of food which they were going to put up in the premises. He could bring them around tomorrow if the picture rail was up, and did Tom want the measurements. Tom did, and he got his paper and pencil.

  'I was going to give them to you tonight at the do, but I figure it makes us look idiotic talking work at a party,' Ricky explained.

  Tarty?'

  'Yeah, you know, the new club?'

  'No, I never heard about it.'

  'Well I told Marcella, she said you'd both be there.' Ricky was puzzled. Tom could feel his heart beating faster.

  'Misunderstanding of some sort,' he mumbled.

  'Sure. Now they're all portrait-format. I'll give you the top-to-bottom measurements first, then the side-to-side. Your father's getting a rail made, isn't he?'

  Ricky went on and on with his specifications and Tom wrote down lists of numbers of centimetres on his pad, but his mind was on autopilot. He could not believe that she had just left pretending to go to the gym, and was in fact heading off to something without him. And how would she account for her late arrival home? He felt such a shock at the betrayal that he could hardly hear Ricky's words.

  'Right, I'd better go and put on my going-out gear. Crazy idea having a party at this time. No one's properly awake yet. See you over at the HQ tomorrow, okay.'

  'Okay Ricky, thank you a million times,' Tom Feather said to the cheerful photographer who had just broken his heart.

  He needed to give his father the measurements. The pictures were to be suspended from a pole that would have grooves cut in it at a specific number of centimetres apart, and JT had been asking when anyone would inform him of what he had to do, so that it would not be yet another botched job. With fingers that seemed the weight of lead he dialled his parents' number, realising that first he must cheer him up before his father would agree to write down the measurements. Please may it be his da—he couldn't go through the whole cheering-up process twice if he got his mother.

  But it was neither of them. It was a woman with a bark that nearly lifted him off the phone.

  'Yes,' the voice said.

  'Sorry,' Tom began, I've got the wrong number. I was looking for the Feathers.'

  'This is the Feathers. Who's that?'

  'Tom, their son.'

  'Great bloody son you are, wouldn't you think you'd have left your number beside the phone for them?'

  'But they know my number,' Tom cried, stung by the injustice of this.

  'They don't know it now,' shouted the woman.

  'What's happened… ?' This was a new kind of fear. Tom could hear voices in the background. Something must have happened. Eventually, and only when he had assured her that his phone number was at the top of a list in a plastic-covered notebook which for some reason his mother kept in the kitchen drawer, did the woman with the barking voice agree to tell him what was going on, and he learned that his father had chest pains and his mother had run out into the street to get help. Almost all the neighbours in the small street had come into Fatima, and someone had gone to the hospital when the ambulance came, and others had stayed making tea with poor Maura, who wasn't herself at all and couldn't cope with what was happening.

  'Can I talk to her?'

  'Why don't you just get yourself there?' said the woman with the unpleasant voice. Which made sense. He wished he had been nicer to his father, less impatient. Tom grabbed up his car keys and coat. He paused for a moment to consider writing a note. He and Marcella often communicated by letters left to each other on the table. But he didn't want to tell her about his father. And moreover, he couldn't forgive her for lying to him. And he knew she had. She had looked too excited going out to the gym, she smelled too well, there had been tears in her eyes over something. But then, she must not think he had run away either. 'My father's not well, gone to see him, hope you enjoyed the party,' he wrote. That would show her. He drove to the hospital.

  Unless his father had another heart attack tonight the prognosis was fairly good, they told him in Intensive Care. Competent, calm young men and women his own age who knew about valves and arteries. A nurse asked him gently if he would perhaps like to take a seat outside. Tom realised that he must have been standing right in everyone's way.

  'He's resting now, he's fine.'

  'I know. Thank you,' Tom smiled.

  She smiled straight back at him, a big, open smile. She was a square, freckled girl with a country accent and slightly messy hair. Tom recognised the look she gave him; it was the kind of look that almost every woman in Ireland gave his brother Joe. Interested, aware and slightly fancying. He looked back at her with a hollow heart. A perfectly nice girl, with a white cardigan over her uniform. But of course he could not fancy a woman like that in a million years. Compared to his Marcella, this girl was like something from a different planet. A totally separate species. He went out into the cold night to get some fresh air and telephoned his mother on his mobile.

  'He looks fine, Mam.'

  'What do you mean, he looks fine? Didn't I see him with my own two eyes clutching his chest, fighting for his breath?'

  'But he's sedated now, Mam, he's breathing normally.'

  She gave a whimpering sound and he heard her neighbours comforting her.

  'I'll ring you in an hour.'

  'Why?' she wanted to know.

  'Just to tell you that he's still fine.'

  'He's finished, Tom, you know he is. He shouldn't be up ladders at his age, he was just desperate to get that place right for you.'

  'It has nothing to do with being up ladders, they said. It's looking good, everyone says that here.'

  'Oh, so you know all about medicine, a boy who wouldn't even stay on in Sixth Year. Someone who couldn't go into business with his own father to help him out. You suddenly know what's causing heart attacks, do you?'

  'Mam, I'll ring you back.'

  It was freezing out here, but it was better than the heat and noise and medical smells of the hospital. He went to a bicycle shed and sheltered there against the wind, huddled in the corner and willed his father to get well. And when he was well, he would talk to his father man to man, and not leave until the conversation had gone somewhere beyond a series of shrugs. He would from now on insist that his parents came up regularly to Stoneyfield to visit them. He would cook things they liked, roast chicken, shepherd's pie. He would beg Marcella to talk to them about things that would interest them. Marcella. He remembered with a shock. He stood and watched people arrive and leave in their cars from the big ugly-looking concrete car park. What a hideous place. But to be fair, if money were to be spent on hospitals he would prefer it spent on machinery that would monitor his father's heart than on attractive landscaping for the grounds. He saw someone very like Shona Burke locking a car and then walking purposefully towards reception wearing a raincoat and carrying a shoulder bag. It was Shona. He moved forward to talk to her, then he moved back. He didn't want to tell her about his father before he knew what there was to tell. Also, he didn't want her to ask about Marcella. It would be normal for someone's live-in girlfriend to be there when there was a question that his father might die. But then, what was normal with Marcella? But Shona had seen him and called out.

  'You look shivery, Tom.'

  'I know, but still it's too hot inside there.'

  'Oh, don't I know all about it, I come
here quite a lot…'

  'I'm sorry, is it… ?'

  'It's all right, Tom.' She spoke gently, letting him know that there would be no discussion on who she was visiting. 'But still, you look badly. Come on inside for a bit.'

  'Right.' He walked in beside her.

  At first, neither of them asked each other. Then she turned to him.

  'Is it something bad?'

  'I don't know. My father, chest pains, angina. It all depends on tonight—if he makes it through till tomorrow he'll have a great chance.'

  'Poor Tom, when did it happen?'

  'I just heard about it over an hour ago. All hell broke loose; my mother is so upset I think she should be in the next bed to him.'

  'You mean you've only just heard?' Shona asked.

  'Yes, it hasn't quite sunk in.'

  'That means Marcella doesn't know yet, does she?'

  'No,' his voice was flat.

  'Oh, poor Marcella. I offered to drive her home from the gym but she said no, she was getting a bus, buying you a potted plant as a surprise.'

  In front of everyone in the reception area, Tom Feather kissed Shona Burke and gave a whoop of delight. 'She was at the gym?' he cried. 'Tonight?'

  'But you know that, Tom, she told me you wanted her to stay at home and celebrate that people were saying you're classy caterers.'

  He drove home so fast he was amazed that there wasn't a police siren following him the whole way. He let himself in the door and she was sitting there at the table, a big fern in a pot beside her.

  'Marcella!' he said.

  'How is your father?' Her voice was icy.

  'He'll be fine, it's all under control… You were at the gym?'

  'As I told you I was going to be.' Her face was like a mask.

  'Marcella, if you knew… you see, I thought…'

  'What did you think, Tom?'

  'I supposed you'd gone to a party, to a club…'

  She put her head on one side as if asking a question.

  'You see, Ricky said he'd asked you.'

  'He did, yes. But I didn't want to go, because you're too busy and too tired, and I knew you'd hate it, so I went to the gym as I told you I was going to do.'

  He couldn't stop the tears that came to his eyes.

  'I'm so sorry. You see, I didn't think… I didn't think you could love me enough to give up something like that for me.'

  'I did, yes of course I did.' Her voice was very level; she did not appear to see how upset he was.

  'You do love me, I know it now.'

  'No, Tom. I said I did, not I do.'

  'It hasn't changed. Surely?'

  She picked up the note and passed it to him. 'You are the most bitter, mistrustful man I ever met. How could anyone love you?' She stood up and went to the bedroom.

  'Marcella, you're not leaving.' He was ashen-faced now.

  'If you imagine that I could stay a night here with you when you think I'm a liar.'

  He stood at the bedroom door looking at her.

  She had taken off her clothes, and reached for one of those micro-skirts he hated her to wear. She picked dark tights from the drawer and moved towards the bathroom.

  'Where will you stay?'

  'I have friends. I'll find somewhere to stay.'

  'Please, Marcella.'

  She phoned a taxi to pick her up and then closed the bathroom door. Later, when she heard the doorbell ring, she came out.

  'I am so sorry,' he said.

  'So you should be, Tom, seriously sorry, because I have always told you the truth, and if you think it's possible to lie to anyone you love, then you're in deep trouble.'

  And she was gone. Eventually the phone rang. It was his mother.

  'You said you'd ring in an hour, I had to ring the hospital myself.'

  'Is he all right, Mam?'

  'A fat lot you care, Tom.'

  'Mam, please.'

  'He is for the moment. Tom, what will we do if he dies?'

  'I'm coming round to Fatima, Mam,' he said.

  Before he left he had two things to do. He rang his brother Joe in Baling. He got an answering machine.

  'Joe, this is Tom. Dad's had a coronary. I'll give you the number of the hospital. All you need to do is say you're his son and they'll tell you what's to be told. I hope you'll do something, Joe, but it's your life, not my life, so I'll just leave it at this.'

  Then he sat down to write a note to leave on their table.

  'I hope and pray you come back, and if you do, darling, darling Marcella, just know that I didn't know the meaning of love before I met you, and that I can't see much point in life without your love.'

  Tom kept his mobile phone on all night, and not long after dawn he stopped at another builder's yard to make the pole with the notches to hang the pictures on, and drove to the premises. Cathy was there already.

  'What does the other fellow look like?' she asked. 'What?'

  'It's a joke, it's what you say to somebody who's been in a fight. You hope that someone else came off worse.'

  He looked at her blankly.

  'God, Tom, it was a joke. You're worse than Simon and Maud. Were you on the whiskey or something?'

  'No, I've been up all night with my father. He had a coronary and Marcella has left me.' He said it in a very strange tone, as if he were just recounting two unimportant events.

  Cathy looked at him, exasperated. 'What really happened, Tom?'

  She was both kind and unbelieving at the same time. Tom was about to lose it, to break down and sob helplessly with his head on the table, when Ricky arrived with the pictures.

  'Jesus but did you miss a wild night,' Ricky said, holding his head. 'You were the very wise one not to come along to that particular party, my friend.'

  'That's me, Mr Wise Guy,' said Tom Feather sadly taking out the pole that his father had not been able to do because he had gone into heart failure before he got the measurements.

  'You're nearly over twenty-four hours, Dad, so that means you're going to be fine,' Tom said to his father the next afternoon.

  'If you knew what it was like, Tom, it was like two hands squeezing your ribs.' His father looked a lot better today. 'They tell me you were here all night?'

  'Where else would I be?'

  'But Marcella, you know?'

  'She sent you her love, Da.'

  'I know she did, and she's a grand girl, I heard from one of the nurses that the pair of you were hugging and kissing in the hall when you heard I was going to be all right, I'll never forget that.'

  Tom looked at him blankly.

  'Oh, that nice girl Catherine, she said she was very disappointed to know you had a ladyfriend. She was on duty and she told me everything.'

  His father was patting his hand and Tom smiled at him. The nurse in the cardigan had seen him kissing Shona Burke when he had discovered that Marcella had really been to the gym.

  The christening was what Cathy said should be called The Function from Hell. They had been asked to cater for fifty, but they could see as the room filled up that there were at least seventy people there. They hadn't cleaned the kitchen properly so Cathy, June and Tom had to spend the first twenty minutes wiping surfaces and putting down a disinfectant. When they opened the kitchen windows to let out the medicinal smell the baby's father came in and said the whole place stank like a urinal. When they tried to set up the buffet, the two small dogs of the house began a game of pulling the tablecloths.

  'People who don't like animals are really not my kind of people,' said the baby's mother, who was three gins in before they had left for the church.

  The ceremony had been forty minutes shorter than Cathy and Tom were told, so their bar wasn't ready.

  'I was told you were top-drawer,' said the baby's father. 'We're in business just as you are, and we don't pay for what we don't get.'

  They had ordered kedgeree served from a hotplate as a starter. It was a good choice, but before it got under way, the baby's mother began telling everyon
e, 'Don't bother eating all this rice and fish stuff, they have a proper roast coming later.' So a lot of people obediently put down their half-finished starters. Tom and Cathy looked at each other, wild-eyed, in the kitchen. Their only hope was that people would stock up on the kedgeree. Now they were waiting for the miracle of the loaves and the fishes.

  'What in the name of God will we do?' Cathy asked him.

  'Get them drunk,' Tom suggested.

  'It's not fair on them, it means they will have to pay for all that extra wine.'

  'What's fair, Cathy, tell me, what's fair about anything? What's fair about my father who worked hard all his life lying in hospital? What's fair about you having those kids that don't belong to you, ballsing up your life and your parents' lives? What's fair about that guy that Neil was trying to save being thrown out of Ireland? And what is fair about these two beauties telling us they were having fifty people when they have seventy-five? Get them drunk, I say.'

  And they did. Spectacularly.

  Before they started on their mission, Cathy Scarlet approached the baby's father firmly.

  'Can I suggest something? Your guests seem to be enjoying themselves enormously, and you have chosen some particularly good wine.'

  'Yes, yes, what?'

  'And in case there's any doubt about the wine you would like us to serve, can I ask you to sign permission to bring out more?'

  'We thought a half-bottle a person?' He was a small, fat man with small, piggy eyes.

  'Yes indeed, that is what we suggested, but it's all going so well here, we would like your permission to bring out—'

  'Do what you want.'

  'And is it all to your satisfaction so far?'

  'Yes, it's okay… just keep getting the drink round.'

  'Thank you. You are a wonderful host,' Cathy said through tightly clenched teeth.

  Nobody had ever told them it was going to be like this. Tom eased his way through the crowds of guests, smiling and telling them that the kedgeree was delicious.

  'You're pretty delicious yourself,' said a woman with chocolate smeared over her face. She looked silly, and was about to become sillier. Tom thanked her for the compliment.