Binchy ( 2000 ) Scarlet Feather

by Maeve Binchy

  'Hi Mike, I'm Tom Feather, your sister's partner.'

  'I thought she was married to Neil.' Mike glowered at him.

  'Sure she is, I'm her work partner. Be nice to me, I'm in charge of the food and drink.'

  'Drink, huh?' Mike said.

  'I've got something here you'd love. Low-cal cranberry juice with freshly squeezed grapefruit whipped up with a little sugar syrup and white of egg.'

  'What's it called?' Mike was still unwilling to thaw.

  'It's called, "Let's not show it to the others, let's find something bearable for ourselves,"' Tom winked.

  'You been put off alcohol too?'

  'Hell, isn't it? Other people seem so stupid and go on so long and say the same thing over and over again.'

  'And their elbows fall off tables,' Mike said in a fury.

  'Oh, I know all about it…' said Tom. 'Still, we've got something here, you and I, that none of the others will have, and think how well we'll feel tomorrow.' Mike brightened up. 'And if we want to sing, we'll remember the words, unlike the rest of them.'

  'Will there be singing?' Mike thought the day might not be so sepulchral.

  'It's a wedding, isn't it? We have to sing the praises of My Kind Of Town Chicago Is, and then someone has to tell us about Dublin's Fair City, don't they?'

  Mike was a much-cheered man when Tom left him. All Tom had to do now was make sure that there were a few singers in the hall. People who would be able to wrench the stage from Maud and Simon when their time came. There was a roar of conversation, and as they moved among the guests they realised that it was already a mighty success. The first of many weddings they would do in this hall. Next time, hopefully, wearing their smart Scarlet Feather uniform. Today, however, they were wearing their idiotic shamrock-decorated outfits which they had all finished sewing minutes before they put them on. They all reported conversations to each other as they flashed by in the kitchen, which was lit up by the late afternoon sun.

  'Harry's aunt that you were being so nice about is fast asleep; that's how much she's enjoying it,' Tom said.

  'I told them to let her sleep, not to wake her. It's jet lag. She can wake up for dessert and the entertainment,' Cathy said.

  'Simon and Maud have asked us to hold their cake and ice cream, please, until after their dance,' June announced.

  'Makes sense,' Con agreed. I'd hate to see them bringing up that lot on the floor, wouldn't you?'

  In Rathgar, Shona stopped outside the house. She didn't have to go in. She had his phone number: she could call him now on her mobile and say that she didn't feel well. Which was actually true. She was an adult of twenty-eight years of age. She hadn't seen him for fourteen years. Nothing except a carefully written letter from an old man. Why had he said that he would cook for her? Somehow that had touched her. When she knew him almost a decade and a half ago, he couldn't cook. He had learned to cook especially to make her a meal, he said. It could be just a line he was taking in order to persuade her. But he had never been cunning enough or cared enough to do that in the past. Why should he begin now? And why on earth did he want to see her again? It was because she was so curious about this that she was here… And now that she was here, she would go in. Shona walked in and rang the doorbell of James Byrne's garden flat.

  'Con, can you move that bottle of wine away from my mother and get my father another pint?' Cathy asked.

  'They're devouring the salmon, will there be enough for second helpings?' Lucy asked.

  'Yes, but fill the serving dish up with cress and dollops of sauce as well, to hide the fact that there ain't that much fish,' Tom advised, 'and carve another dish of lamb as well. Make it look nice; we can always use it again.'

  And eventually there were the speeches, simple and straightforward, thanks being lavished everywhere and no awful best-man jokes. And finally, the moment was here for Maud and Simon.

  Harry announced, 'When I first heard about this wonderful hospitable Irish wedding, I knew I would take my bride in my arms and dance around a flower-filled hall… I never realised how beautiful both would look, but there are so many wonderful surprises today, including being introduced to Maud and Simon Mitchell, who are cousins by marriage of mine, now… our beautiful flower girl and our elegant pageboy. Now they are going to dance for us, and I want you to give them the great big welcome they deserve.'

  Maud and Simon strode out confidently in their cloaks, kilts and huge Tara brooches, as if they were totally accustomed to being greeted with such applause.

  'My fellow guests at Marian and Harry's wedding,' Simon read from a piece of paper, 'I am Simon Mitchell. I want to welcome you all to Ireland, those who weren't here already, I mean. My partner Maud and I will dance a jig with the very suitable name of "Haste To The Wedding". Although in your case you're already here. At the wedding,' he beamed at them as an afterthought.

  'Oh, loving God, let them start to dance before he thinks of any more asides,' Cathy breathed.

  But she needn't have worried: Simon had nodded at the pianist, and they stood, arms high, hands joined and right foot pointed out until the introductory bars were played, and then they were away. There was thunderous clapping. And then Maud stepped forward.

  'My fellow guests at this wedding, I hope you enjoyed the jig. Now my partner Simon and I will dance a reel with the name "Come West Along The Road". Which you haven't really done, since you came east to get here, but that's the name of the dance.'

  She put away the paper and again they stood solemnly waiting for the music to start. They danced on, oblivious of the fact that the audience was fighting back tears at their eagerness and determination to explain everything and get it totally right, and fits of laughter at their pompous little ways. Cathy caught Tom's eye. He raised a glass to her. She smiled.

  'You're smiling,' Tom said in mock surprise.

  'I know, isn't it amazing? The muscles still work,' Cathy said.

  'Come in, come in,' James Byrne fussed and led Shona into the room where he had carefully placed four brightly coloured cushions and two vases of flowers. She had brought him a bottle of wine. He made great play of looking at the label.

  'My goodness, Australian Chardonnay, how wonderful. That looks very good, very interesting indeed.' He studied it as someone might look at a bottle of some vintage wine at a special wine auction. It set Shona's teeth on edge. It was a good, supermarket Australian white wine, no more, no less. Why did he have to keep taking off and putting on his glasses? Probably because he was nervous, she realised. As nervous as she was. Normally when you went into someone's place for the first time you found something to admire. Shona's eyes raked the room. She was at a total loss for words. She could see nothing she recognised, yet he could hardly have bought these things new. Perhaps it was just rented furnished accommodation. They sat down opposite each other, and she saw on the table the plate of fat olives plus a little basket of Tom Feather's bread. James Byrne was definitely making an effort. He had done all the talking so far… about the wine, the weather, whether she had found the house easily. It was now up to Shona to bring up some subject.

  'When did you come to live in Dublin?' she asked.

  'Five years ago,' he said. 'Just after Una died.'

  'She died? I'm sorry.' But the voice was cold.

  'Yes. Yes, it was sad.'

  Shona did not ask what happened, had it been peaceful, had she lingered a long time. None of the questions you ask when someone tells you that a wife has died. The silence hovered between them. Shona steeled herself not to speak again. She had asked one question, the ball was in his court, this invitation had come from him, let James Byrne be responsible for directing the conversation. Eventually he spoke.

  'Una was never strong, you know, she found ordinary things like going upstairs or making the beds very difficult. Would you have known that now, when you were with us?'

  'No, I didn't. I suppose, since it was the only life I knew, I thought everyone's home was like that. I didn't know what other
homes were like until I lost the one I had.'

  He looked at her with a face as sad as a bloodhound's. 'She was never the same after you left,' he said.

  'I didn't leave, I was taken away, sent away.'

  'Shona, I didn't ask you here to go over a war of words that did nothing except tear us to pieces half your lifetime ago.'

  'Why did you ask me, then?' She realised that since she had come in she had not addressed him by any name. But what name could she call him? Not Daddy, not Mr Byrne.

  'I suppose I invited you because I wanted to tell you how great a gap you left in our lives, how nothing was ever, ever the same since the day you were taken away.'

  'Since the day you handed me over without a struggle, saying it was the law,' Shona said, her face hard.

  'But Shona, that's the terrible thing, it was the law,' he said with tears in his eyes.

  In the church hall the pianist was playing the Anniversary Waltz and Harry led Marian onto the floor and everyone clapped.

  'The bride will dance first with her father,' he announced.

  Muttie, who had been explaining to his sons some of the finer parts of a horse that was going to make a killing next year, was startled. 'I'm not much of a dancer,' he whispered anxiously.

  'Just relax, Dad, Marian will push you round as she does the rest of us,' they said to him.

  They did two tours of the hall with everyone cheering them, and then the general dancing began. Tom had given the twins their cake and ice cream and a pound each, in return for their going to sit with the old lady in the purple suit and telling her about Ireland.

  'What are you going to do, Tom?' Simon was suspicious.

  I'm going to circulate.'

  'Does that mean dance?' Maud asked.

  'No, just talk to people. I don't feel like dancing; anyway, what's all this after, you two?'

  They were pleased. 'Would Marcella come back if you agreed to marry her, do you think?' Simon asked.

  'No, I asked her lots of times and she wanted to have a career instead.'

  'And did she have to choose? Couldn't you do both? Like Cathy, and Muttie's wife Lizzie?'

  'There are women who can do both,' Tom explained, 'but modelling is a hard one, it involves travel.'

  The twins shrugged. It was better that she went then. Tom said it was

  .

  In the garden flat, they had managed to get to the point where a wooden and stilted conversation did manage to go backwards and forwards between them. He called her to the table and sat her down. She moved from being alternately touched at the trouble he had gone to, and enraged at the cold, clinical attitude to life that had guided him over years of silence and neglect. They talked of her school life after she had left the convent school in the country town. She spoke calmly about the home she returned to, the mother still lurching between drugs and rehabilitation, the father who had set up a new home with a more stable woman. Her older sisters who resented her return, claiming that she had been given airs and notions about herself. She told of her natural mother's death this year, and how she had dutifully gone to visit her in the hospital but felt nothing. He said that they had always known a foster child was only lent to them, and that if her home circumstances improved she would go back to them. They had unworthily hoped that this would never happen. He told of his wife's descent into the state of a permanent invalid, of the emptiness of the life they lived. He said it was impossible to stay in the house after her death, and he had come to Dublin and lost himself in work.

  'Well I did that too,' Shona said as she finished the smoked fish and watched him put on his oven gloves to get the next course.'I decided that work was the only answer, that and having something to show as a result. I wanted a place I could be proud of. Glenstar is far too expensive for me, but I like giving that address; I like coming home to a smart place like that each evening.'

  'And what about love, Shona? Does that play any part in it?'

  'No, I've never loved anyone.'

  He smiled a little indulgently.

  'Don't smile at me, James,' she said. 'The day you stood and let me go without telling me that you loved me and wanted me back, that day killed any thoughts of love that I would ever have.'

  Chapter Nine

  SEPTEMBER

  After the wedding, life had to return to normal. And normal wasn't always easy. Tom never finished the letter to Marcella. He had been right; there was no more to say. She didn't say goodbye when she went across the water. He heard during one of his early morning sessions at Haywards that she had left her job in the salon. Two of the kitchen staff had heard she was going to be a model. Geraldine read in the property pages that Freddie Flynn and his wife Pauline had bought a country house with twenty-four rooms and eight acres, outside Dublin. June's husband Jimmy had a fall at work, naturally on a cash-in-hand job with no insurance, and was lying in bed for the duration. Joe Feather gave a great deal of his merchandise to a wide boy who managed to sell it off to all and sundry before leaving the country, all bills unpaid.Muttie needed the money to pay a vet's bill for Hooves, and borrowed some of Lizzie's savings for a sure thing which turned out not to be sure at all. James Byrne berated himself a dozen times a day for not taking that hurt, withdrawn girl into his arms and crying over the time lost and the pain endured. He had been so afraid that she would push him away. Old Barty wrote to say that he was on his way back and hoped he could come and stay again for a few days. Kenneth Mitchell wrote him a cold note saying that times were difficult, and that old Barty had left last time owing a great deal of money, so a visit would not be possible. Kenneth got by return of post an even colder note saying that Barty had now recovered his fortunes, but if he were no longer welcome there then so be it. Walter Mitchell got what was defined as a final warning from his uncle Jock. One more late morning or early leaving and he was out. Jock's face made it look as if this time it was meant. Neil and Cathy put off telling Jock and Hannah about the baby for a few more days. And so they didn't tell Muttie and Lizzie either.

  Unexpectedly, Hannah rang and said she would like to invite Neil and Cathy to Oaklands.

  'That sounds nice, Hannah, anything in particular?'

  'No, should there be? I mean, it is my own son… and his wife, no need for an occasion or an excuse.'

  'Of course not,' said Cathy, who had never been invited socially to dinner there before.

  'Oh, and Cathy, do you do foods which people just serve in their own… I mean, the leaflet does say…'

  'Of course we do, Hannah, tell me what you'd like.'

  Hannah wanted a pheasant casserole, because Jock had been given a brace. It took forever, and they all cursed her back at the premises. But some things were more important than others, Cathy said, and not being fazed by Hannah Mitchell was top priority.

  'Do we put in an invoice?' Tom asked.

  'No,' Cathy said. Con was delivering it in the van later that afternoon; it would be bubbling merrily at Oaklands when they got there. Next week Hannah would telephone and fuss and waste more of their time.

  They sat around the table that Lizzie had polished so often, and almost always to the dissatisfaction of Hannah. Cathy wondered did Hannah still think back on those days, or had she moved on? She was certainly an easier person to deal with now. Cathy would never really like her, but the hate was gone. Sometimes little waves of annoyance came back. Like when Hannah wondered why it was that Cathy and Neil never took a holiday abroad together, like normal people.

  'Neil has to travel abroad a lot on work,' she said.

  'Cathy is very tied up in her business,' he said.

  She saw the look of triumph on Hannah Mitchell's face. For once the combined forces of Neil and Cathy were not ranged against her. She had managed to divide them at last. Over this, anyway. Cathy warned herself that it must not happen again. One of the many reasons she wanted to save her marriage was to prove Hannah Mitchell wrong.

  '

  'Tired?' Neil asked her when they were in the car
driving home.

  'Not really, why?'

  'You're sighing,' he said.

  I'm always sighing,' Cathy said.

  'The food was nice,' he said.

  'Thanks,' she said innocently.

  'Did you do it… ?' he asked surprised.

  She looked at him thoughtfully, one of the brightest young men at the Bar, but not a lot of practical sense. Of course she had done the food, that was why it was not over-done beef followed by icecream with liqueur poured over it. But there was no point in saying any of that now.

  He told her about the project for the homeless. Something he and Sara were proposing which other people on the committee were resisting. Cathy let her thoughts drift away, and wondered should she give cookery classes at the premises when she was too pregnant to go out on jobs. It might be a good idea. Little groups of eight or twelve, rich, lonely women like Hannah who hadn't a clue. She wondered how James Byrne's dinner party had gone, but she would never ask. Neil was still talking on, Sara had said this, he had said that. He seemed to see an awful lot of Sara, but never reported anything back about the twins. Still, Cathy reminded herself that they were mainly involved in this committee now; Simon and Maud were only a small item on Sara's busy caseload.

  Geraldine asked Scarlet Feather if they could cater for a spur-of-the-moment supper party at Glenstar.

  'Any theme?' Tom wondered.

  'She's looking for a new sugar daddy; we could think up a few sugar-based dishes.'

  'You're awful about her,' Tom said.

  'No, I'm not, those are her own words. Freddie Flynn's gone back to his wife full-time, have you noticed, he even took his account away from her PR firm, which is going a bit far.'