Scarlet Feather

by Maeve Binchy

  'So you'll not call the guards?' He grabbed at the lifeline he saw.

  'Tom?'

  I'm with you,' Tom said.

  'Give me back your wages,' she said.

  Walter hurried to find them for her.

  'No,' Tom said. 'Keep them, you did five hours' work, so you're being paid for it.'

  'Thank you Tom,' he looked at the ground.

  'Go now,' he said.

  I'm sorry, Cathy.'

  'You're just sorry you were caught, Walter.'

  'No, funnily enough I was beginning to enjoy it tonight for the first time, seeing the whole operation get under way.'

  He spoke with an odd sincerity. 'Why did you do it, Walter? Jock pays you plenty.'

  I'm in debt,' he said.

  'Well, look on the bright side… At least you're not in the Garda station,' she said.

  'I'll never forget this, Cathy.'

  'Sure.'

  He left. Cathy sat there, very still.

  'You were great,' Tom said. 'And Neil was great too.'

  'I knew he wouldn't defend Walter,' Cathy said.

  'I didn't.' Tom was thoughtful. 'I thought he'd see him as the underdog.'

  'No, we were the underdogs, Neil could see that straight away. Our entire business could have gone under because of his little cousin.'

  'He has an extraordinary sense of justice,' Tom said admiringly.

  'So do you,' Cathy said. I'd never have given him tonight's wages, not in a million years. And yet you're right, he did earn them before he started nicking things.'

  'Come on, let's go home,' he said, and began to drive the van back to the little town house in Waterview where Neil would be waiting up to talk over the night's events with Cathy. And then he would drive himself back to the flat in Stoneyfield where Marcella would also be waiting to know how this, their biggest booking ever, had gone.

  'Do you get the feeling this night went on for days and days?' Cathy asked wearily.

  'I do, weeks and weeks actually.'

  They drove on in silence, then Tom said, 'But compared to a lot of the all-time losers we met tonight, I think you and I are fairly lucky. Or is that me being too over-cheerful?' he asked.

  Chapter Four

  APRIL

  Molly Hayes said at lunchtime the next day that she had never enjoyed anything so much, and all her friends had rung to congratulate her. It had been an evening that could so easily have ended differently.

  They had worked hard this morning, and it was good to have a little breathing space. They decided to visit Haywards mid-season sale. They found some white blinds with a discreet scarlet trim, and extra lighting strips. The preparations were all done for the two delivery jobs… a fancy bridge tea for twelve people, tiny sandwiches and little cakes to go to a private house. They had been ages working out how you put recognisable hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades on each as a motif, but between radishes and black olives as fiddly little decorations they had come up with something acceptable. They also had to sneak a supper to a woman who was pretending to her in-laws that she had cooked this meal herself. She had given them her own dishes, paid in advance—the only rule was that they just leave simple easy-to-follow instructions and never tell anyone that they had been. They would leave her a big jug of spinach soup, a slow-cooked casserole and a lemon tart. It was extremely puzzling to them, but then there was no point whatsoever in criticising her. She was part of the way they earned their living. They felt like children stealing time out of school as they sat down to have a coffee after their buying spree. Cathy saw Shona Burke, sitting alone and reading a book; she was eating a small salad and drinking something from the health juice bar.

  'She's an odd mixture, isn't she… friendly one minute, shutting you out the next.'

  'Yeah, maybe she has a sugar daddy tucked away,' Tom said.

  'Why do you say that?'

  'How else could she afford a flat in Glenstar?'

  'It's only a studio flat, Tom, and they're all like little boxrooms, anyway she could be old money.' Cathy didn't want living in Glenstar being associated with sugar daddies or having gentlemen giving you gifIs.

  Shona looked lonely. And rather prim. She finished her lunch, closed the book, looked at her watch and was about to go back to her work when she spotted them. She looked a totally different person when she smiled.

  'Aha, Scarlet Feather undercover in our cafe,' she said.

  'Your breads are rubbish compared to mine,' Tom teased her.

  To his surprise she nodded. 'You're absolutely right, that's what I was saying last Friday at a meeting, lovely soups and salads here but just the plainest and dullest of bread. You know, that's how I'm going to get you in here. They can put up a notice saying that the breadbasket is by Scarlet Feather. Listen, there's a meeting tomorrow at ten-thirty. Can you let me have a selection of your best, and I'll suggest it.'

  They talked about prices and presentation and quantities and delivery. The enthusiasm was enormous. Shona became anxious about it.

  'Don't be too disappointed if it doesn't work, I'll give it my very best shot for you both, I think it would be really good for the restaurant too.'

  'You're a star, Shona,' Tom said, gathering up his bags of light fittings.

  'Are you back to the kitchens to start baking now?' she laughed.

  'No, now I'm going to see my father. I'll go into the premises tomorrow, early. You're not going to get one-day-old bread for your demonstration… It's going to be the real thing, fresh-baked, about five different kinds…'

  'How is your father?' Shona always asked.

  'Oh, he's fine thanks, Shona, you were very kind to me that night at the hospital. He's taking it a little easier, which is no harm. My mother thinks it's all to do with some prayer she said… A bit wearing, but if it works for her… why not?' Tom shrugged.

  Cathy agreed. 'It's not doing anyone any harm, and she prayed like mad that our business would survive, so won't you be sure to tell her how well we're doing?'

  'I will, of course. Listen, I'm going to run up to the salon and see Marcella for a quick word before we go.'

  'Don't say anything yet about the bread business,' Shona warned.

  'No, of course not. Cathy, will you pay for the coffee out of office funds, and I'll see you in the van in ten minutes.' He was gone. The two women watched him, and saw the admiring glances as he moved like an athlete through the tables, smiling his apologies if he had to push past people.

  'He has absolutely no idea the effect he creates,' Cathy said. 'They're all mad about him wherever we go; the young ones are delighted to know that he's not attached to me, and of course all these old dears, they love him to bits and he just hasn't a clue.'

  'When he and Marcella go anywhere together they're just like film stars, the pair of them,' Shona said,getting up to leave. 'Listen, let me look after your coffee for you.'

  'No, no,' Cathy protested.

  'Cathy, please. This time tomorrow you may well be official suppliers—you're certainly entitled to a cup of coffee.'

  Cathy accepted, and as she picked up her parcels said, 'Tom said you had family in the hospital when he went to see his father?'

  'Yes, that's right.'

  'And is it all right… for them too?'

  Shona looked at her. 'No, no, it wasn't all right, in this case she died.'

  'Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that.'

  'Thank you, Cathy.' Very flat, very unemotional.

  'And was it anyone close?'

  There was a pause. 'No, not close, not close at all.'

  Marcella was sitting at her little table doing nail extensions for a very elegant woman who was busy holding out her hands and admiring them. She was delighted to see Tom, and jumped up to greet him. She looked so gorgeous in her short white uniform with the blue Haywards logo, her long slim legs in dark navy tights and her cloud of dark hair like a halo around her tiny face. Sometimes he could hardly believe how beautiful she was, and that she might love only him. He
saw everyone in the salon admiring her.

  'Will I get a video, or would you like to go out?' he whispered.

  'There's a book launch,' she said.

  'Let's hit that, then,' he said with a good-natured shrug. He knew not to ask Marcella whose book and on what topic. A book launch was a photo opportunity. Someone might take a very glamorous picture of Marcella, which could appear in the Among Those Attending column. It would be clipped from the newspaper and added to the growing file in the portfolio. He took the name of the bookshop and the time and said he'd see her there. No point in suggesting dinner afterwards. Marcella hardly ate dinner, and anyway, she'd be going to the gym.

  'Could I drop you off at Fatima and then take the van tonight?' Cathy asked him when they had fitted the two blinds, and realised that the light installation needed an electrician. Tom said it was fine, he was meeting Marcella later in the city centre, he'd take a bus back in from his parenIs' house.

  'Are you sure? I could go home and get the Volvo,' Cathy said.

  'Where are you off to?'

  'To see some of the further adventures of Hooves the wonder dog, and to try and reassure those two kids that their life isn't totally over if they do have to go back to their barking-mad parenIs.'

  'But wouldn't you be a little bit relieved, in a way? Go on, be honest with me, I'm not family.' He smiled at her.

  I've never been more honest… I think it would be so wrong for them to have to go back to that set-up. We've just got some manners on them, some small appearance of normality, they have a dog, they have two happy homes to live in; what makes those selfish clowns think they can wake from their drinky, dysfunctional lives and take them straight back?'

  'You won't be relieved then, I take it?'

  'No, I'll be heartbroken, as it happens.'

  'How'ya, Dad?'

  His father sat at the table reading an Irish Heart Foundation publication about avoiding stress.

  'Tell me how on earth can anyone avoid stress? If you're in business you can't do it, that's what business is about. How do you avoid stress, Tom?'

  'Well Da, there's a lot of people who say I never even achieved any stress, let alone have to avoid it.'

  'Well it's true, you have had an easy business life compared to the building trade, but surely you must worry about… will this job do well, or will you get that contract?'

  'Sure Da, every day. Today I'm worrying about whether the bread I make tomorrow will be good enough for Haywards to sell… I just try to put it out of my mind when I'm not actually doing it.'

  His father grunted. 'Yes, yes, that's what they say here, but of course yours isn't really a business worry in the proper sense of the word.'

  'No, Da,' said Tom, who wondered if his father had any idea at all of the years spent having to work night after long night in bars to make the fees for catering college, to borrow huge sums of money for the company, to ask people to be guarantors for the loan, to look at Marcella and know that she was the most beautiful person on earth, and surely someone with style and class would take her away from him. And his father still thought he knew no stress.

  'Marcella sent her love,' he lied to his father.

  'I know she did, a grand girl no matter what your mother says.'

  'What exactly is she saying these days?'

  'Ah, you know, the living as man and wife bit… the usual… nothing new.'

  'Wouldn't you think she'd have got used to it by now, Dad?' Tom looked at him helplessly.

  'People of your mother's frame of mind never get used to it, son, sure you only have to look at Joe to know that.'

  'Joe? What do you mean?'

  His mother came in just then. 'He's on the mend, isn't he, Tom? What were you saying about Joe just then?'

  'I was saying it was nice of him to send Da that basket of fruit, that's all I was saying,' Tom said hastily.

  'Huh,' said his mother.

  'Marcella was saying it's a great present to send people, far healthier than sending them a bottle of wine or chocolates or something. Oh, and she sent you both her love.'

  'Huh,' said his mother again in exactly the same tone.

  'You must be delighted that Dad's so fit.'

  'Well of course it's all thanks to Our Lady.'

  'Sure Ma, and the hospital and everything.'

  'The hospital could have done what it liked, it wouldn't have been able to cure your father if Our Lady hadn't intervened.' She nodded her head several times as if she were agreeing with other people who also held this view. Her husband and son looked at her at a loss. There was a silence.

  'Was it the Thirty Days' Prayer?' Tom asked eventually.

  'Fat lot you know about prayer. There wasn't time for the Thirty Days' Prayer, you eejit. I had to get something much quicker.'

  'And she found it in the Evening Herald.' Tom's father knew what to say.

  'Oh, laugh away, the pair of you.' She was huffed now.

  'Maura! Am I laughing?'

  'No, but you would if you had a mind to. It was a Never Known to Fail prayer, and all you have to do when you get your wish is publish it again in the paper so that someone else will see it and know how very powerful the Holy Virgin is in times of crisis, and…'

  'That's pretty clever of the newspapers. It means they get columns of prayers in the classifieds,' Tom said admiringly.

  Maura went on as if Tom had not spoken. 'And the other thing Our Lady asks is that we just sit down for five minutes with a non-believer and explain how her Son so loved the world that…'

  'Yes, well, Mam, but I was only really dropping in to see how Dad was…'

  'We could do it now, Tom.'

  'But Ma…'

  'Please son,' his father asked.

  Tom sat obediently and listened while his mother told him of Our Lady's personal distress about a variety of subjecIs. 'Why can't you believe it, Tom? Just tell me,' his mother asked in the tones of one who would be able to sort it out immediately if she knew the exact point of disagreement.

  'It's not that I don't believe,' he began.

  'But what's the problem then?'

  'Mam I've told you, it's not like that. I don't not believe things,' he began, imploring her to understand.

  'But what do you believe Tom? What exactly?'

  'Well, I believe there's something… something out there to make sense of it all.'

  'But you know what's out there, Tom.'

  His father's eyes were on him. 'I suppose I do, Mam.' He let his mind drift on to the kind of baskeIs he would use to present this bread tomorrow, and whether they should wrap them in the goodScarlet Feather napkins. He nodded gravely at everything his mother had said, and gave her longer than the five minutes she had sought. She was pleased now that the bargain with Our Lady had been kept. And went out to the kitchen head held high.

  'Thanks Tom,' his father said.

  'But Dad, you don't have to go along with all this…'

  'I do, Tom, it's called give and take… Your mother gives a lot to me, so I give her this bit of listening, that's all there is to it.'

  'No, there's much more to it, you have to put on a whole act about things you don't believe.'

  'You'd do the same for Marcella now, son, wouldn't you?'

  'Well, I suppose I go along with all these nights she spends at the gym when she's already perfect, but I wouldn't pretend to believe something I didn't believe. I wouldn't do that.'

  'You might, you know,' his father said. In times to come you might well pretend just for an easy life.'

  The twins were doing their homework in the kitchen when Cathy arrived at St Jarlath's. Her mother had begun making their wedding outfits, and had the sewing machine whirring away. Her father was out in the back painting the kennel that one of his pals from the bookies had made for Hooves. Another friend had given him an old horseshoe which he was going to nail over it for luck. The puppy sat on a newspaper quivering with pleasure in the warm kitchen.

  'You're welcome, Cathy, but this
is a house of hard industry at the moment. Everyone has to be kept at their work until after six-thirty, if you know what I mean.'

  Cathy knew exactly what she meant. She meant that it was hard enough to get Muttie to paint and the children to do their school work without having a welcome interruption like a visit to cope with.

  'I'm just going to do my accounts at the table,' she said quickly, and sat down opposite Maud and Simon. 'Hallo,' she whispered, as if she too were just a fellow hater of homework.

  'Should we make tea?' Maud hissed hopefully behind her hand. Simon looked up eagerly.

  'No, not until half past six,' Cathy whispered, and they all went back to work. She didn't even see the figures, they were just a blur. She had phoned Neil just before coming here. Simon and Maud's mother and father were very grateful to these people who had done so much when they were unavoidably absent, but everything was now fine again. They were looking forward to seeing their children again, and were expecting them to come home at the weekend. And tonight he was meeting someone who would let them know about the timescale.

  'Timescale?' Cathy had asked.

  About the job; apparently this guy knew how long it could be held open for Neil.

  At half past six they all went on a tour of inspection of the snow-white kennel.

  'It's beautiful,' Simon said with awe.

  'A palace for Hooves,' said Maud.

  'But of course he can't get into it until the paint is dried,'Muttie explained.

  'Or he'll come out looking like a Dalmatian, all white spots,' said Cathy.

  'Dalmatians are actually white with black spots,' Simon corrected her. Then he remembered that you didn't correct people. 'At least, what I meant to say was… that some of them are white with black spoIs. Of course, they could be the other way round, too.'

  'Good boy, Simon,' Cathy said with sudden tears in her eyes. They had taught these children so much, they were almost human beings now, and for what? So that they could be sent back to these dysfunctional parenIs?