Scarlet Feather

by Maeve Binchy

  'Geraldine's, no less?'

  'Yeah, but they weren't thinking of withdrawing their funding or anything, it was about this fashion show he's putting on.'

  'I know, Marcella's going to be one of the models, isn't it great?'

  'Great,' said Cathy, wondering whether Tom knew that it was mainly lingerie that his girlfriend would be modelling.

  'Come in, Mrs Mitchell.' Tom's smile rarely failed to hit its target.

  'Oh, hallo, er… Tom, isn't it?'

  'It is indeed, Mrs Mitchell, and how well you're looking, if I may say so.'

  She patted her hair again. It was so wise to go to a good salon regularly. Cathy was so foolish in this regard, as in so many things.

  'I didn't know that we were all going to… I mean

  'No, no, I'm just serving you and then making myself scarce.'

  'I heard you do marvellous bread for Haywards.'

  'Thank you so much, they're very kind about it. I've left you a little selection to try, and also a packet to take home.'

  Eventually the Tom Feather smile had worked. Hannah Mitchell was smiling back.

  'You are a kind boy,' she said, as so many middle-aged, middle-class matrons had said to him over the last few months.

  Cathy stood waiting, in a pink and lilac summer print dress that did her no favours, her face as white as a sheet, her hair tied back with an elastic band.

  'You're welcome, Hannah,' she said in a flat voice.

  'It's a pleasure to be here, and my goodness doesn't the place look nice!'

  She looked around, and Tom hoped that Cathy would respond warmly to her, otherwise all this would be in vain. To his relief, Cathy was smiling.

  'This is our front room, where we sit clients down and persuade them to have much bigger parties than they intended,' she said.

  'Very nicely done,' Hannah looked around her with grudging admiration. 'Nice colours, too.'

  'My mother made the curtains and covers,' Cathy said proudly.

  Hannah looked at them in disbelief. 'Oh, Lizzie was always… marvellous with her hands,' she said eventually.

  Tom sighed with relief, poured them a sherry and went to the kitchen.

  'Tom, will you either eat that sandwich or throw it away, but for God's sake stop analysing it,' Joe said, laughing at the way his younger brother was unpicking all the ingredients.

  'Look at what they charge for that, Joe, no seriously, look at it. A tired tomato, a piece of plastic cheese, a dead leaf of lettuce, half a hard-boiled, discoloured egg… A smear of cheap salad cream… And they dare to call that a Summer Salad Sandwich. What do visitors to this country think, tell me what do they say… ?'

  'Oh, shut up and eat something else,' Joe said good-naturedly.

  'Like those cremated sausages you're eating? People have no standards,' he was still ferocious.

  'What am I going to do about Ma?' Joe asked.

  'What about her?'

  'Well, I've been going up there a bit,' Joe began.

  'I know you have, Joe, and honestly it does mean so much to them…'

  'But they say you drop in every second day…' Joe said.

  'When I'm passing I do, it's no trouble…'

  'Come on, who ever passes Fatima on the way anywhere?'

  'I've had to do it, Joe, it's no big thing.'

  'I'm sorry I left it all to you.'

  'Well, you were in London, and anyway you're doing your bit now, it lightens the load.'

  'Okay, okay. So what'll I do about Ma? She wants to come to the fashion show.'

  'Well, let her, can't you?'

  'Of course I can't.'

  'I'll keep an eye on her.'

  'No, not that, the clothes. Ma can't see them.'

  'But why not, she came to our launch party. I don't think she enjoyed it very much but she was glad to be there…'

  'But Tom, the garments…'

  'What about them?'

  'It's swimwear, lingerie, half-naked girls all over the place… Mam would only drop stone dead.'

  'It's not all that, is it?' Tom asked with a hollow feeling in his stomach.

  'Most of it.' Joe looked at his brother's face. 'Marcella told you, didn't she?' he said.

  Neil went into Quentin's restaurant and sought out the elegant Brenda Brennan immediately.

  'I'm having lunch with a real gangster, Brenda, he's going to try to get me drunk. Can you just put tonic at the bottom of my vodka glass each time… so that he thinks I'm having a real drink?'

  'It's not fair to charge him then, Mr Mitchell.'

  'You'll manage something, take it off something else… You know all the ways around things.'

  'I've been long enough in the business for that, it's true, so perhaps, Mr Mitchell, if you'd like to keep your eyes down I'll lead you swiftly to a table without your having to meet your father, who will be exiting from a booth fairly imminently.'

  Neil followed her as directed.

  'You should run the world, Brenda!' he said, just glimpsing his father leaving with a blonde half his age.

  'I often think I do,' Brenda Brennan sighed.

  'That was delicious. That tomato soup, very sweet taste, and my heavens, that's good, that bread… You hardly ate any,' Hannah said.

  'Hannah, I'm eating it all day, and all night… Tom is so proud of it, and olive bread isn't enough for him these days, you have to have green olive or black olive… he's such a perfectionist...'

  'And what do we have now?'

  Was there a time when she had dreaded this woman? How long ago it all seemed. 'It's monkfish, I think you'll like it, and quite a small helping to leave room for dessert…'

  'I brought you this.' Hannah spoke gruffly, and thrust across the table a gift-wrapped Haywards parcel.

  Cathy knew she must open it, however ill-timed; the monkfish with its saffron sauce, the green beans with tiny lardons of bacon and toasted almonds, the potatoes and ginger were all wafting up their vapours at them. It was a time to savour the food, not to open presents. But she unpicked the elegant wrapping and opened the gift. From the paper came an overwhelming and pungent smell of incense. Cathy felt slightly weak.

  'It's wonderful, Hannah, what exactly… ?'

  'It's one of those new very powerful aromatic oils for the shower, apparently young people like them…' Hannah began.

  It was too much, the heady smell of that and the food. Cathy clutched her stomach and ran from the table, and knelt vomiting into the lavatory pan. She heard her mother-in-law calling outside the door.

  'Cathy. Cathy, let me in, are you all right?'

  Marcella looked up from arranging bottles of nail colour and saw Joe Feather in the salon.

  'You're very, very beautiful,' he said in an odd sort of voice.

  'Joe?' she was alarmed.

  'Sorry, I'm actually just saying this as a fact… it is a fact… but I sort of let slip to Tom that the lines you'll be modelling are fairly sexy… And to be honest, I don't think he knew that.'

  She looked at him, surprised. He began to wish he had never spoken.

  'Now I'm getting out of it and letting you take it from here,

  Marcella… okay?'

  'Sure.' She was very calm.

  'It's just that he adores you… you see.'

  'Of course.'

  Joe shrugged. 'It's just, I don't honestly think Tom knew.'

  'Thank you, Joe,' she said in a voice that made him feel small.

  'I'm so sorry, Hannah, you'll have to forgive me, that's why I wasn't eating so much bread. You see, I've had an upset tummy.'

  'But you should have said, you should have cancelled the lunch…'

  'No, please Hannah, look, I'm fine now.' Cathy forked herself a helping of the monkfish, which tasted like soap in her mouth, and forced herself to swallow it. She had moved the heavily scented bath oil to another part of the kitchen entirely. Eventually she felt her stomach return to normal. The conversation wasn't exactly easy. Every subject had a background; any chance remar
k, a history. They talked about the twins returning to The Beeches and how genuinely good Lizzie had been. Good and generous, all the right words. Hannah remarked that Cathy hadn't found time yet to go to the Haywards salon, and Cathy looked her in the eye, promising that she would go soon. They talked about Neil and how hard he worked, and how lucky Cathy was that Neil did not play golf like his father, otherwise she would be a total widow. And suddenly out of the blue Hannah mentioned Amanda.

  'Cathy, can I ask you something… Do you think Amanda has some reason for not coming home to see us?'

  This was a moment where Cathy could do some good or some ill; she had to be very careful. She barely remembered Amanda Mitchell, two years older than Neil, bossy, distant and didn't come to their wedding, but had sent a really great present… a top-class atlas and an expensive radio that got all kinds of frequencies and wave bands and a card saying, 'May you see the world and love it.' Cathy had thought that lovely of her. Although it might have been rather over-prophetic, if Neil still had it in his head that they should set off to see the world and love it full-time. She had often asked about Amanda. Up to now, her mother-in-law had been vague and dismissive; Amanda was too busy, too successful in Canada to keep in touch with a new sister-in-law whom she barely knew. Neil had been no help about her either. Manda was great, he said, her own person, great, no, of course he wouldn't telephone her, what would they say? It seemed very distant not to want to talk to your only sister about something… Cathy would prattle non-stop about her sisters in Chicago at any time. Now that Cathy had heard fairly authoritatively that Amanda was in a gay relationship in Toronto, what did she say or do?

  'Perhaps she's met someone over there?' she suggested.

  'I don't think so. Amanda was never particularly interested in men, she didn't bring boyfriends home when she was here… We always thought of her as a career woman.' Hannah was thoughtful.

  'Maybe that's it, then, she's tied up in her career and the people she meets there, the other women who run the bookshop. Maybe that's her life now.'

  It trickled away as other subjects of conversation had done. Soon Hannah made a move to leave.

  'Won't you have more coffee?'

  'No indeed, it was all quite perfect. I really enjoyed this lunch, and you look much better now, dear.'

  'Yes, I'm so sorry… And thank you again for the beautiful bath oil.'

  Even remembering the smell of it made Cathy feel slightly nauseous again, but she held on. She watched as Hannah left taking small steps across the cobbled courtyard. In all those years of fighting this woman with the small, pinched face, she never could have envisaged a day like today. A day when she would stand at the doorway of her own business and might very well be, as it happened, pregnant with this woman's grandchild.

  Simon and Maud couldn't believe it. Outside the school stood Muttie and Hooves, waiting for them as usual.

  'I thought you'd need to be settled onto that bus,'Muttie said simply. They looked at him, delighted. 'For the first day anyway, until you got the hang of it,' he said, and the little group headed off happily to the bus stop.

  Sara was sitting in the garden rolling a cigarette when Neil arrived. He went to join her on the old wooden bench.

  'How does it look inside?' he nodded towards the house.

  'Okay… for the moment… but you get the feeling that your uncle could be poised for flight at any time; he's fairly unsatisfactory about his plans.'

  'He always was,' Neil agreed ruefully.

  'I'll keep an eye on it,' Sara promised. 'Just because kids live in a lovely big house like this doesn't mean that they still don't need someone to look out for them.'

  'They should sell it and move somewhere much smaller, more manageable, but they won't hear of it. All puff and style and grandeur and nothing to back it up,' Neil said.

  'You don't approve of him,' Sara said.

  'He's never done a proper day's work in his life. My father takes it all fairly lightly, but he has put in hours in an office. Anyway, I think it's ridiculous in this day and age, one family living in all these rooms,' Neil looked back up at the house.

  'You and Cathy don't have a big house, then?' Sara asked.

  'Lord, no. Small place in Waterview.'

  'Oh, I know those, they're nice. Still, not a place for a family, though, not like this place here is.'

  'We don't have children,' said Neil Mitchell, proceeding to take the papers out of his briefcase and tell Sara the social worker where they needed her help for a report on the homeless that was going to be presented by an umbrella organisation. They pulled the old garden table up to them and worked away happily. From inside the house, Kenneth Mitchell watched them absently from one window, only mildly interested in these people in his garden. Kay Mitchell watched anxiously from another. It was nearly time for the children to come home, she had asked Mrs… Mrs Barry to make sandwiches for them. Mrs Barry wanted to know should the crusts be on or off; Kay decided eventually that there should be two plates, one with, one without.

  'Please come in,Muttie,' Maud begged.

  'No, child, honestly. Hooves and I will get another bus back.' He was very insistent.

  'But we want to show you our house.'

  'Another time, son, not the first day.'

  'And Hooves could go for a run in the garden, our garden… please,Muttie.'

  But he was firm. It wasn't sensible, not the first day, there would be people taking notes, he didn't want it to look as if he and Lizzie were trying to muscle in, get more than their fair share of the twins.

  'You mean, like… everyone wants us to be with them.' Simon was puzzled at this possibility.

  'Of course we do, but the best thing is that your own mam and dad are back to take care of you, now that they're in a position to do so,'Muttie spoke with a heavy heart. Nothing he had heard from Cathy made him think that this was any fit pair to be looking after the children.

  'But you will come in sometime, will you,Muttie?' Simon begged.

  'Of course I will, son, when you're more settled, when Hooves is more acceptable.'

  'And we're definitely coming to St Jarlath's Crescent at the weekend, that's agreed with Sara,' Maud said anxiously.

  'Of course you are, child, and Lizzie and I are looking forward to it greatly, so we are.'

  'I wish…' Maud began.

  'So in you go now, like a good girl,'Muttie said before anyone could say what they wished.

  'Sandwiches!' Simon said, pleased.

  'Thank you very much, Mother,' Maud said.

  They sat down at the table and their parents watched them admiringly. Neil and Sara had come in from the garden.

  'How many may we have?' Simon asked.

  'Well, they're all for you, of course.' Kay Mitchell was proud to be seen to be such a provider.

  'Yes, but won't it take our appetite away for tea?' Maud asked.

  'Muttie's wife Lizzie always says only one biscuit each when we come in, otherwise it will spoil tea.'

  'Well, this is tea,' poor Kay stammered.

  'No, I meant real tea, you know, bacon and egg tea,' Simon asked.

  'Or tinned beans or whatever,' Maud said in a small voice, as if realising that all was not entirely well.

  Kay looked wildly from her husband to Sara. 'Nobody said anything about bacon and eggs, there was to be a tea ready and it's ready.' She looked about to cry.

  'Well that's fine, Mother, we'll just eat them all now,' Simon said.

  'It's enough for me, really,' Maud assured her.

  Sara and Neil exchanged glances. Kenneth Mitchell looked out into the garden as if inspiration and solutions would come from the wilderness he saw.

  'I had lunch with Hannah,' Cathy said to Neil that evening when they were both back at Waterview.

  'Well done.' He went to the fridge to pour two glasses of Chardonnay.

  'She was fine. She talked a lot about Amanda.'

  'Sorry, she does drone on about her. Hey, have you gone all total abs
tainer on me? That's the second glass of wine you've waved away; you must be sickening for something.'

  'I just don't want it now. Neil, did you know Amanda's gay?'

  'No, I didn't. Did my mother tell you that? I just don't believe it.' He was open-mouthed at the very thought.

  'Of course she didn't.'

  'And since when?'

  'I've no idea, but those women I did a reunion for the other day mentioned it, and I checked with another woman who knew her in Dublin when she worked in a travel agency, and this woman is gay herself and she said yes, it's true, and Amanda has this marvellous partner and they work in a bookshop together…'

  'Well, imagine that! Manda, who would have thought it? Good luck to her, I say.'

  'And so do I, Neil, I say good luck to her, and all our friends will… It's her mother and father who might not be so jolly about it.'

  'No… you speak only the truth,' he said, grinning ruefully.

  'So anyway, I thought you'd like to know,' Cathy said.

  'Cathy, how did you try to tell this news to my mother? I've pleaded some pretty impossible cases in my time, but this one I must hear.'

  She laughed. 'No, I didn't even get to first base. Listen, are you going to sit down with that wine, or are you going to take it to work with you?'

  'I'm taking it to work with me, by which I mean next door. I have a hell of a lot to finish on this homeless thing… I met Sara today with the twins, by the way, and she's a lot of help…'

  'Oh, how did it all go? I'm dying to hear. Sit down for a minute and tell me.'

  Neil sat down. 'It was amazing, she explained that there is funding, but that no one can really get at it. It needs the right questions to be asked at the right time… She gave me lots of notes.'

  'Funding?' Cathy was bewildered.

  He explained at length about a European Union grant that might be available for the homeless, and how the ad hoc committee musIn't throw away this piece of information at once, they must keep it as a card to play later once they had got some muscle. Eventually, after a lot of listening to details of strategy, there was a moment when she could get in a word about Maud and Simon.