Scarlet Feather

by Maeve Binchy

  The cookery lesson was much discussed. Tom and Cathy had to accept that Neil and Marcella were even more hopeless than they had suspected. Everything was going to take three times as long as it should have; they would get flustered and confused. Even the very language of cooking, the simplest terms, seemed to upset them. Tom and Cathy had presented them with the instructions, which had proved far from clear. They didn't know what it meant to 'reduce' something. Neil was in a rush to leave, and he read the list briefly.

  'I suppose reduce means you throw half of it away?' he said absent-mindedly as he hunted for his papers.

  'I can't believe that anyone thinks you are an adult,' Cathy laughed. 'Of course it doesn't mean that, why would you make twice as much and throw half away?'

  Neil shrugged. 'It's all very odd, anyway. See you tonight at their place.' He kissed her and was gone.

  Cathy wanted to shout that he mustn't be late, Marcella was giving up a dance class to be there. But somehow it sounded trivial, so she didn't. Tom reported that Marcella thought to reduce something meant you had it wrong and should start again with fewer ingredients.

  'We have an uphill job,' he said sadly.

  Cathy drove past a house where she knew her mother would be working. Lizzie's face lit up when she saw her.

  'Well now, isn't that a wonderful surprise,' she said, settling into the van. I feel like a great lady driving in this. I hope they all see me.'

  Cathy looked at her fondly. She met so many people who would have looked askance at getting into a big white delivery van, but to Lizzie Scarlet it was a treat.

  'Did the others like cooking at home when they were young, or was it only me?' Cathy asked.

  'Marian was quite good. She's so efficient about everything she touches, it came automatically to her, but the others didn't have the feel that you do. They didn't have much time, really; they all left so young. What was there to stay for, when there was all that fortune to be made over there?'

  Lizzie sighed. Ever since the first boy had emigrated to Chicago to his uncle's house, and told the youngsters about the wages that could be earned in Illinois, her children could barely wait to be eighteen and out at the airport. They had been amazed when Cathy had never shown the slightest interest in leaving. Her mother looked tired, as well she might after a day's cleaning.

  'Are those kids too much for you, Mam?'

  'No, I tell you, I like their company and your dad is great altogether with them. He'll take no guff from them. I'm inclined to be a bit more…'

  'I know you are, Mam. You're too kind to everyone.'

  'And it's nice having children around. I was always getting ready to look after babies again when you and Neil… that is, if you and Neil…'

  'Mam, I told you lots of times there isn't any possibility of that, not for ages yet, if ever. We're far too busy now.'

  'God be with the old days when you didn't have any choice in the matter,' her mother said.

  'Now you sound just like Tom's mother, talking about the good old days. They were not good old days, Mam, you had eleven in your family and Da had ten in his. Where was the chance for any of you?'

  'We did all right,' Lizzie's voice was small and tight and she had taken offence.

  'Mam, of course you did, and you did so well by all of us, but it wasn't easy for you, that's all I'm saying.'

  'Yes. Yes, I see.'

  They had arrived at St Jarlath's Crescent. Her mother was still hurt by the thoughtless remark.

  Cathy looked at her pleadingly. I don't suppose there's a hope you'd make me some tea?'

  'Well of course, if you have the time.'

  'And would there be any apple tart left, do you think?'

  'Oh, come on Cathy, stop behaving like a five-year-old.' Lizzie was rooting for her key and dying to put the kettle on. Forty-five seconds, the longest sulk she had ever known her mother to hold. Cathy felt a prickle of tears in her eyes.

  They gathered in Tom's flat in Stoneyfield. All the ingredients were out on the table and Marcella was looking at them doubtfully. There was no sign of Neil yet.

  'Should we start?' Tom wondered. Neil and Marcella made such heavy weather out of everything, they might not eat until midnight otherwise. Patiently Tom and Cathy explained, and industriously poor Marcella struggled to follow their instructions. Then Cathy's mobile rang. Neil was tied up, he'd be there in an hour, could they start without him.

  'Traitor,' called out Marcella from the other side of the room.

  'Swear to her I'll be there and do my share,' he begged.

  But Cathy had taken too many of those calls to make any such promise. They ran out of wine, and Neil, who was meant to be looking after that side of things, still hadn't turned up. Cathy knew he might easily forget so she called him. The background noise was a pub.

  'Sorry honey, I'm on my way.' He sounded annoyed to be nagged.

  'Just to remind you about the wine,' she said coldly.

  'God, I'm glad you did. I forgot totally, can you open what you have there just in case…'

  'We have,' she was brisk.

  'All right, Cathy,' Neil said.

  He was in Stoneyfield an hour later, exactly two hours after the time they were meant to start. He had brought a bottle of expensive wine which he opened and poured for them. Marcella had fumbled her way through a starter and a chicken with wine main course, and she was exhausted.

  'You're to do the dessert Neil,' she said, collapsing in a chair.

  'Of course I will, and the washing up.' Neil smiled them all into good humour.

  'Tell me what was this reducing business, anyway? I asked someone at the meeting and they thought it had to do with calories.'

  They explained. 'Well why don't they use proper words like… well, make a concentrate?' Neil objected.

  'Or like boil the divil out of it?' Marcella said.

  Tom and Cathy took notes on the cookery lesson. It would have to be radically altered before they presented it to James Byrne. The salmon mousse was beyond them, they would have to take that off the list. The coq au vin was fine, but it took them all day and all night. The tiramisu looked and tasted disgusting. Tom couldn't see why, but it was soggy and bore no relation to what they had been asked to do. The food was terrible, but somehow the evening was not ruined. Cathy noticed that Marcella ate practically nothing and only sipped at her wine. Neil offered to keep his promise of washing up but Tom and Cathy knew they would be there until dawn if they let him, so they cleared the place up at high speed.

  'Cleans up a treat, doesn't it?' Cathy admired their handiwork.

  Tom looked around the flat. 'It's very practical, but I wouldn't want to live here for ever. It's like as if we're passing through without leaving any mark at all.'

  Once he had mentioned it, the place did look very minimalist. Clean white walls and empty surfaces. No pictures on the walls, not many books on the shelf, no ornaments on the mantelpiece or window ledge. A little like a hotel suite, in fact.

  'I know, I feel the same about Waterview sometimes. Move Neil's books out in one van load and it's just the way we got it. But then would you want it like St Jarlath's Crescent, where there isn't a space to put anything down?' she asked.

  'Or Fatima. I know,' Tom agreed.

  The happy medium was something that eluded the world, they all agreed.

  They had no idea how hard it was to make contacts. People either didn't consider themselves in the league which hired a caterer, or if they did then they already knew someone who was doing just fine. Geraldine and Ricky gave them names, but they drew blank after blank. Tom was determined not to be downcast.

  'Listen, we'll do leaflets and get some kid to deliver a thousand or two.'

  If Cathy thought it was useless she didn't say so. Sometimes, after a fruitless day of searching for work, she would say that it was only Tom's enthusiasm that kept her going. And it was sincere, he really believed it. He wasn't just trying to keep her spirits up. They were so good, they had such imaginati
ve ideas and worked so hard. It was only a matter of time until everyone realised this and recognised them for what they were. But Tom never sat back and just waited for things to happen: he was always on the move looking, asking and hunting.

  'I hate breaking into your time, Geraldine, but could I come and spend just thirty minutes going through your client list again? You know we're good, it wouldn't be compromising you to recommend us.'

  'It does my street cred good to have a handsome young man like yourself come to the apartments,' Geraldine said. 'Come round on Sunday morning and we'll see what we can find.'

  The Glenstar apartment block was immaculately kept. There was regular landscape gardening, all the outside woodwork was repainted every year, brass gleamed everywhere and a smart commissionaire stood in the hall. Tom wondered how much they paid a year in services charges. Then he reminded himself not always to think in terms of how much things cost and how much they might bring in. It was the way his parents went on, and he certainly didn't need that. It was just that these sessions with James Byrne had been exhausting and worrying.

  He had organised a filing cabinet and installed proper ledgers for them, warned them thunderously about keeping every receipt, and details of every piece of equipment bought so that its eventual depreciation could be properly noted. He explained how they must bill separately for waiters or waitresses asking clients to pay them directly; this way they avoided tax problems. It had been fascinating to hear James Byrne talk. It made Tom feel that anything was possible, and that they were safe from all the minefields of being prosecuted over VAT or any other kind of tax. Three jobs in February wasn't too bad. Was it? But he was out on the hunt for more work. And he had a Sunday-morning appointment with Geraldine O'Connor, so that she could go through her list of clients and decide who could be approached and with what angle. Geraldine looked magnificent: she wore a dark green velvet tracksuit, her hair was still slightly damp from swimming in the Glenstar pool. The smell of coffee filled her big sitting room. The Sunday papers were scattered over the big, long, low table in front of the sofas.

  Geraldine got down to business at once, and they spent an hour at her dining table seeing where any opportunity might lie. 'Peter Murphy's hotel is useless, of course, since they have all their functions there and are catered by themselves. The garden centre never wants to spend any money, they serve thimbles of warm white wine and that's that.' The estate agents might, only might, let them send menus and a letter, saying how much it would»enhance any future function to have unusual and memorable canapes served. 'Let's put it this way, it might give people something to remember from their dreary dos.'

  Tom looked at her with admiration. She was afraid of nobody. Where had she got this confidence?

  'But Tom, these now are a bit more lively…' She gave him the address of an import agency. 'They take a lot of clothes, even some from your brother, he was telling me the other night. The sky's the limit with these lads. And they're totally legal now, no more black economy. I'll tell them they should get better known. They need an upmarket party. I'll promise them buyers from Haywards if they come.'

  'And Haywards themselves?' Tom said hopefully.

  'No, not a chance. Shona Burke and I have talked about it over and over. She's done her very best but they have a cafe, you see, so it doesn't make any sense for them to bring in an outsider.'

  'I know, that's true. It's just that it would have been such a feather in the cap for Scarlet Feather,' he said wistfully.

  What Tom really meant was that it would have been good for Marcella too. If her fellow was doing the high-profile catering it would make her look good by association. But it wasn't to be. They went through the list of names. The pharmaceutical people possibly, the educational project no way, the people who organised the big literary competition were attached to a brewery and had their own contacts, the cross-border cooperation people had no money. Tom admired the matter-of-fact way Geraldine went about her business. She spoke affectionately, even discreetly about her clients, she emphasised to Tom that this was all in confidence, but she was in no way impressed by any of them. She told him that they had to have this conversation in her home rather than at her office as she would not want the staff to know she was divulging the secrets of the filing cabinet. She looked so at ease with herself, unlike any other woman he knew. Not like her sister, Lizzie, who worried and apologised; unlike Cathy, who was driven to show Hannah Mitchell that she was a career woman in her own right. Not like his mother, who saw only the bad side of everything and relied on the power of prayer. Not like Shona Burke, who always had this faraway, sad look on her face. He remembered Joe asking how Geraldine had got the money together to buy this agency, but it wasn't a question he would ever put to her, even though the great splendour of her apartment and her readiness to back them in this enterprise sometimes did make him speculate. But he frowned to himself. He would not become obsessed with money like so many people were nowadays.

  'What on earth are you making faces about, Tom?' Geraldine didn't miss much.

  'I was thinking about money, actually, and why it mustn't be a god itself but if you don't keep an eye on it you go down the tube,' he said.

  'I know what you mean. Money itself is not important at all, but in order to make it and to get the life you want you have to pretend that it is for a while, just so as to keep it rolling on in.' Her face looked hard for a moment.

  Tom said no more on the subject. He gathered up his notes to leave. When he took his coffee cup into the kitchen he saw ingredients for a lunch set out there. 'Have you a busy day?' he asked.

  'A friend to lunch,' she said briskly. 'Which reminds me, find a few canapes that freeze well and give them to me, then I can talk you up all round the place.'

  'Of course, but why don't you let us do a lunch for you, any time, it's the very least we can do.'

  'I know, Tom, so Cathy already said. You're both sweet, but the kind of guys I entertain like to think that I cooked everything for them with my own fair hands.'

  Shona Burke was getting out of her little car, and she called out to him as he left. 'Do you have your brother's phone number in London?' she asked.

  'No, not you too. What do you all see in him?' he groaned.

  'Purely business,' she said. 'Anyway, you're much better-looking than he is. They're doing a young people's promotion in Haywards in late spring, and he told me that he might just have a line of what he called fun clothes. Swimwear, lingerie, you know.'

  'Sorry, Shona.' He took out a Scarlet Feather card and looked up Joe's London phone number for her in his diary.

  'You don't know it?'

  'Hey, no, I've no memory for numbers,' he said.

  She nodded.

  For some reason Tom said, 'Anyway, I don't call him that much or he me, I don't know why it is. Have you got sisters and brothers?'

  Shona hesitated. 'Well, yes, in a way I do.'

  It was an odd response but Tom let it go. Some people hated to be interrogated about their families; Marcella did. Her mother was dead and her father, who had married again, just wasn't interested, she said, and wanted it left like that. Cathy, on the other hand, had something to say every day about her parents: she loved Lizzie and Muttie, in spite of her mother's humble, grateful attitude to life. Cathy would also go on about her mother-in-law Hannah's innate viciousness, and about the sisters and brothers in Chicago, particularly Marian, the eldest, who had done well in banking but poorly in her love life until recently, and was now going to marry a man called Harry who looked like a film star. And look at his own brother Joe, who had not a family bone in his body. Tom got into his van waving her goodbye. She stood there taking no notice of the light rain that had begun to fall, not covering up her hair as most women would, still looking oddly lonely and vulnerable. She was a handsome girl, not strictly beautiful. Marcella always said that Shona Burke could look much better than she did if she wore more make-up and got her hair changed from that old-fashioned style. Her hair did
look dull and flat. But she had a lovely smile. He wondered for a moment if she had been Joe's companion back in the hotel after the party. Why not? They were both free. She didn't have to tell anyone about it. Then he pulled himself together. He must stop speculating like this. She was saying something; he opened the van window to hear properly.

  'I was only saying that you're very restful, Tom, a peaceable, handsome person,' Shona said.

  'Not a word about the killer instinct that's going to make me a force in the land?' he called.

  'Oh, that goes without saying.' She laughed

  .

  Marcella came home from Haywards beauty salon the following evening and told Tom amazing news. This woman had come in to book a hairdo, manicure, a facial, the works, and said she was going to a drop-dead-cert smart christening party on Saturday, and she had actually said there were going to be fancy caterers at it. Tom could hardly believe it. Already people were talking about them and they hadn't even got properly started! He couldn't wait to ring Cathy. But tonight she and Neil were taking those children to see their mother in some drying-out place. He would tell her tomorrow.

  'Will we celebrate?' he asked Marcella.

  'Ah love, I'm just off to the gym,' she said.

  'Couldn't you… Just for one night… To raise a glass to posh people in Haywards referring to us as fancy caterers?'

  'Tom, we agreed. The subscription costs so much, the only way to make sense out of it and get any value is for me to go every day.'

  'Sure,' he said, then knew he must sound a little warmer. 'You're absolutely right,' he said. 'And as soon as we really are a fancy caterers, then you'll come to every classy, fancy thing we do as a guest and get yourself photographed all over the place.'