Binchy ( 2000 ) Scarlet Feather

by Maeve Binchy

  Walter was furious that they had played in the shed.

  'It wasn't playing, it was dancing,' they said defensively.

  'That's my shed, stay out of it,' Walter ordered.

  'I didn't know it was your shed, Walter, honestly, I thought it belonged to all of us,' Simon said.

  'Yes, well, you know now, and give over this dancing business, it's really annoying Dad. He might go away again.'

  'Not over our dancing?' Maud was wide-eyed.

  'No, but he keeps saying that old Barty's gone to England, and he might follow him.'

  'And would he?'

  'He just might.'

  'And what about Mother?'

  'Mother's been away with the fairies for days now, you must know that,' Walter said scornfully.

  'And would her nerves get bad and she'd go to hospital again if Father went away?' Maud wondered.

  'You can bet on it, so try to cut down on the dancing where anyone can hear you, will you? Okay?'

  'Sure, Walter.'

  'And no whingeing and whining to Sara, either. It was quite bad enough asking that Tom Feather to stick his nose in on Saturday.'

  'We didn't ask him, honestly,' Maud said.

  'Muttie rang Cathy and he took the message, that was all,' Simon said.

  They were so obviously telling the truth that Walter left it. 'The only hope of keeping this place going at all is not to tell Sara long stories, do you understand?'

  'Yes,' the twins said doubtfully.

  Hannah Mitchell telephoned her daughter in Canada.

  'No, Ms Mitchell has taken a long weekend with her partner.' 'Oh, she's a partner in the company. Now isn't that wonderful,'

  Hannah said.

  'No, I mean she and her partner have gone to their chalet on the lake.'

  'And when will she be back?' Hannah asked. She knew nothing of any chalet on any lake.

  'Tonight I guess, tomorrow they're both back in the store.' Hannah hung up, delighted with this news, and couldn't wait to spread it around. There had been so little about Amanda to boast about recently; in fact, so liItle communication at all.

  Neil called into Oaklands on Monday at about six o'clock and told them about the conference in Africa. Hannah listened impatiently until she got a chance to deliver her own good news from abroad.

  'Did you hear, Amanda has been made a partner in that bookshop,' she said.

  'That's pretty big. When did that happen? Did she say?' Jock was pleased.

  'Well, no, I didn't catch her herself, I called and they said she and her partner were taking a long weekend, and she must have got some kind of executive chalet by the lakes.'

  Neil swallowed his drink hastily. He must head his mother off at the pass before she said anything further that would be seen as pathetic later. 'They're notorious in stores forgetting things wrong. Let's wait till we talk to Amanda before we tell anyone,' he said.

  'But the girl wouldn't have said—'

  'You see, she might have meant with a partner, meaning her partner, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, you know the way people say partner nowadays.'

  'But she meant in the bookshop… I know she did.'

  'She may have a partner in the bookshop.'

  'But if Amanda had a boyfriend she'd have told us.'

  'Not necessarily, Mother,' Neil said. 'You have to be sure in your own mind, you have to be sure that everyone's ready to hear.'

  'Well I'm always dying to hear about any boyfriends or partners or whatever they're called now. Where's all the secrecy?' Hannah was annoyed.

  'Let's wait, Mother, I feel sure it's best.'

  He saw his father looking at him quizzically, but Jock asked no questions.

  It took them all day to find what they kept calling Suitable Venues. For the rehearsal dinner they would have the basement in Ricky's studio. For the recovery lunch they would use Geraldine's apartment. They checked their watches: it was six o'clock. Good time to contact Chicago. They would send menus later, in a day or two, but for the moment Marian and Harry were to consider it done. They faxed it off and decorated the writing paper with wedding bells and horseshoes and good-luck charms to cheer the couple up. Marian phoned about five minutes later, in tears of gratitude. Cathy was an angel, a saviour, an uncanonised saint, and undoubtedly Marian's favourite sister, and Harry's family were just dying to see the menus so that they could make their choice, and truly money was no object, so don't hold back…

  'Do you get any message from that conversation, Cathy?' Tom asked when it had been repeated to him.

  'Yes I do, I'm afraid,' she admitted.

  They looked at each other and laughed as they both chanted together: 'They want the menus now.'

  At six o'clock on Monday Geraldine realised that she and Freddie Flynn were now finally over. He had not called at all during the weekend, after his hurtful and devious message letting her know that he would not be joining her. She had steeled herself not to call him all day. She had forced herself to believe that the best course of action would be to be pleasant, cool and have no screaming recriminations. To prove that she knew how to behave.

  Freddie called into Glenstar and pressed the bell. Nobody ever had a key to Geraldine's place.

  'Freddie?' she sounded pleased but surprised.

  'I was wondering… ?'

  'You didn't telephone.' It was an unbreakable rule.

  'No, but this time I thought we might… I mean, if it's not convenient I could…'

  'Certainly. Come on up, Freddie.'

  He sat down and twisted his hands. Pauline had been told that he was seen holding hands with a woman, and she had been impossible to console. He just had to go with her to Limerick. Prove the gossipmongers wrong, for one thing; to reassure her for another. Geraldine nodded distantly and pleasantly as if Freddie were talking about a different species. And then it appeared that when they were in Limerick, Pauline had said she was lonely and frightened that he might leave her and she wanted him to come home early after work every day. Geraldine nodded graciously to this request.

  'So you see…' he said.

  'I see, Freddie, please believe me, I see.'

  He sat there awkwardly in the silence. She made no mention of the watch. That had been given at a time when he had thought she was the loveliest woman in Ireland and would not have cared if his wife had discovered. It was a gift from a different part of their relationship. It would be crass and commercial even to suggest that it might be returned.

  'I can't tell you how I'll miss you,' he said.

  'And I you, Freddie.'

  'You deserve much better than me, of course,' he began to bluster now, trying to joke his way out of the situation, which was that he was telling her the affair was over. She remained utterly cool.

  'Now don't say that, don't sell yourself short, and you'll always, I hope, be a wonderful friend.' She uncurled her legs from the sofa and stood up… a sign for him to leave. Freddie Flynn moved to the door with an overpowering sense of relief that there had been no scene. She kissed him gently on the cheek.

  'Good luck always, dear Freddie,' she said.

  'You're a woman in a million, Geraldine. I just wish…'

  'Goodbye, Freddie,' she said softly, and went in, closing the door behind her swiftly. She stood in her empty apartment, tense and taut with rage and annoyance. Of all of them, she had liked Freddie best. He wasn't as bright as Peter Murphy, or as sophisticated as some of the others, but he was fun to be with. She thought he would be there always. What had made Pauline confident enough to get him back on her terms? Pauline had a lot of family, brothers and sisters, and of course she had Freddie's children. Pauline had respectability; the future, the past. It was, in the end, better than having great legs, a big flat in Glenstar and designer clothes. Disappointing, but true.

  So when Tom and Cathy had phoned asking whether they could stage the ridiculous Day After party or whatever it was in Glenstar, Geraldine said yes. It would serve a number of functions. It would please her niec
e Marian, who seemed to be having a nervous breakdown in Chicago. And it would take her mind off the faithless Freddie Flynn.

  Marcella didn't know what to do after work on Monday. She delayed as long as possible in the salon, but then she had to make up her mind. She went back to Stoneyfield eventually and went through the whole ritual, telephoning in advance and getting the answering machine, ringing on the apartment intercom and getting no reply, then going into the flat. He hadn't been back. It was Monday evening, and Tom Feather had not returned to his own apartment. He must be going to live at the premises from now on. This was idiotic. This was his place, for heaven's sake, his flat, and he had just abandoned it. Her note remained untouched on the table, the same carton of skimmed milk stood in the refrigerator. It was a cold, dead place. She shivered a little, packed a grip bag with some of her essential things and wrote a second note. 'Tom, it's your place, stop sleeping on a sofa in the premises. Come home. I'll go away if you want me to; all you have to do is tell me why. Face to face. I love you. Marcella.' Then she dialled Scarlet Feather.

  Cathy went back to Waterview that evening, her head swimming with arrangemenIs and plans for the wedding. They had come up with such inventive ideas, she and Tom. Marian would be delighted with them. Neil was home.

  'You can't keep working these hours, you're not able to do it,' he said. He was very concerned for her.

  'No, I'm fine, nothing a big mug of tea won't cure,' she said.

  'Okay, I'll make one. Do you have a pain in your back?'

  'A bit now and then, not much. Why do you ask?'

  'I read a bit about it in a book.'

  Her heart soared. The shock bit was wearing off; the father bit must be starting now. 'I went to Oaklands today.'

  'You didn't tell them, did you?' Telling Hannah was going to be something that had to be planned, if anything had to be planned.

  'Of course not, but I was looking at those pictures Mother had on the piano, of Manda and myself when we were children. She had so much help in the house then, and no job, and look at all you have to do. It's just not fair.'

  'It's not important what she had back then.' Cathy couldn't care less about the past.

  But he was persistent. 'And it was easier for men, the way privileged people lived then too. When my father came home from work he could just close himself away in a study to work, and whichever baby it was was brought off to a nursery not to disturb him. I'm only saying it's just the system some people have, everything dead easy for them, and others just don't.'

  'Stop trying to rewrite history, and anyway, your father was never home to go to a study or a nursery. Wasn't he out on the first tee two minutes after he left the office?'

  'But it's the principle of it,' Neil insisted.

  'And my father had six of us crawling over him in the kitchen and it never distracted his mind for one minute from what was running next day at the Curragh.' Cathy kept it light.

  Neil made the tea, but he was still brooding. He talked on about his mother and father, how they were totally accustomed to their lifestyle and thought it their right, how his mother had misunderstood Amanda and her partner being at a chalet on the lake, how Sara had been on to say that some rich old man had died and left his Georgian house to an organisation for the homeless and all the neighbours were up in arms. The gross selfishness of this city was getting to him. Where he had been in Africa people had different priorities; he had come face to face with people who really did have generous and liberal attitudes and voted in socially responsible governments. There was this girl from Sweden he had met, and she would frighten you how she talked of how the rich paid taxes there to make sure that nobody would go without the best medical care… She looked at him for a long time as he talked.

  'Scarlet Feather,' Tom said.

  'Tom, don't hang up, please.'

  'Marcella.' His voice was flat.

  'Can I come round there and talk to you?'

  'No, I'm just going out actually.'

  'Are you going home?'

  'No.'

  'I've left you a note there, it's on the table beside one I left you yesterday.'

  It doesn't matter, Marcella.'

  'But we can't leave it like this…' she said in disbelief.

  'Why not?' he asked, and hung up. He sat and looked at the phone for a long time. What on earth did she expect him to say?

  In Stoneyfield Marcella sat and looked at the phone. He'd have to talk sometime, even to say goodbye. Why couldn't he talk now?

  'Geraldine, that never came from a charity shop?' Lizzie Scarlet held the brand new outfit from Haywards up so that she could look at it again.

  It did, Lizzie,' her sister lied straight to her face. 'You just don't know where to look. These dames wear something once, they think their burn looks big in it or their girlfriend sniggered at it and that's it. Out.'

  'It's gorgeous,' said Lizzie, stroking the dress and coat in a dark grey silky material. 'I could be the bride myself in that, not just the mother of the bride.'

  'You might meet a rich American, Lizzie, and then we'd never see you again,' Geraldine teased her.

  Muttie looked up from his newspaper. 'Lizzie doesn't want a rich American,' he said firmly. 'She wants Hooves and myself in all our glory and with all our disadvantages, isn't that right, Hooves?' Hooves gave a bark of approval.

  'Hooves says you're quite right,' said Lizzie. 'He says what more could a woman want than what I've got?' And for the first time in her whole life Geraldine felt a pang of envy for the sister who had married a no-hoper and scrubbed floors all her life.

  Tom and Cathy had worked very hard on the wedding plans. They now had three events to cater for, and had hired many more staff. The Friday night was going to be a theme party: Ricky's basement would be done up as a speakeasy in Prohibition times. They would paint bars on the windows and arrange that there was something that looked like a peephole, a little door you pulled back to see who was there. Guests would be given a password to let them in. Then Ricky had big developing equipment which could have labels stuck on saying Bathtub Gin; there would be Al Capone pictures on the walls and reference to the St Valentine's Day massacre; they would have the Chicago greats in jazz on the music centre and everyone would be so pleased with the way they had been made to feel at home. The food itself would be delicious ribs of beef, Chicago-style, and some kind of chocolate-mint ice cream that the recipe books said was a real favourite in that city. It was so hard to learn about Chicago food, because any recipe book or website they looked up seemed to say it was an ethnic cuisine with strong Polish overtones.

  'Polish cooking's nice,' Tom said. 'Lots of red cabbage and sour cream. Should we try some of that, do you think?'

  'Maybe they want to get away from it,' Cathy said. 'We'll check when they ring back later on.'

  'They were a bit silent about the menus,' Tom said after two days had passed and there was no response from America.

  Cathy agreed. 'And there was I being called a saint, an angel, a genius, but now they don't even bother to acknowledge all our hard work.'

  'Should we ring them?' Tom wondered. 'We'll have to get going on the props as soon as possible.'

  'I almost hate drawing them on us, I know it's silly. In more normal times I'm all for doing the hard thing first and dealing with it,' Cathy said.

  'Listen, you're allowed to have silly feelings—at least you haven't been eating lumps of coal as we make the food,' Tom said.

  'No, I mustn't get any special treatment, it's a natural process -women years ago had their babies and just got on with it, no one indulged them.'

  'Maybe,' Tom said. 'All this male solidarity, going to the pub andgetting drunk to stay out of the way

  'Oho, you're all fine and noble now because you don't have to be there, wait until you're going to be a father, we'll have a reality check.'

  He flicked a spoon of dough at her and she threw a handful of raisins back at him.

  'Now, look what you've done, I'll have
to take them out of the tomato bread,' he complained.

  'Could be the start of a world-class recipe,' Cathy laughed.

  'Will Neil be at the birth?' Tom asked.

  'Yes,' Cathy said firmly. 'Whether he knows it or not, he'll be there. Now which of us will ring Marian?'

  'Since you're not having any special favours, then I think you should,' said Tom picking the last raisins out of his mixing bowl and eating them.

  Talking to Marian was like talking to an entirely different person than the one she'd spoken to two days previously. She was alternately tongue-tied, confused, hissing in a whisper, or else she was speaking in a false, high-pitched tone about how grateful they all were for all that was being done.

  'Here, I can't make head nor tail of this,' Cathy said eventually. 'Tom, will you talk to her, please.'

  Tom didn't do much better; he kept shrugging at Cathy. Is she drunk, or high, do you think?' he wrote down on a pad beside the phone. Cathy had to get up and move away to hide her fit of laughing at the very thought. Finally Tom had a brilliant idea. 'Could I talk to Harry about it all, do you think? Maybe he and I could sort it out, man to man.'

  'Harry's here,' said Marian in her normal voice. 'He came into my office to discuss the situation, I'll put him on now.'

  'Harry, I'm Tom Feather. I'm no relation of anybody. If you don't like our menus, you tell me now and we'll send you more. I was wondering about Polish food myself, big soups, dumplings. Just say it, Harry.'

  'Tom, I'm going to say it: everyone here has had to go and lie down even at the thought of a speakeasy party, at the mention of St Valentine's Day, and the whiff of bathtub gin.'

  'I see. We thought you'd love it.'

  'No, it would be like having the worst theme party you could dream up… something about the IRA with bombs and things.'

  'Or corned beef and cabbage,' Tom said quickly.