Scarlet Feather (35 page)

Hannah stood at the hall door of Oaklands and looked on with annoyance as Jock Mitchell put his golf clubs in the back of the car.

‘I didn’t know you were going to play on
Sunday
as well,’ she complained.

‘You haven’t arranged anything?’ he asked. Jock was a sociable man; he didn’t like to think that guests would arrive at Oaklands and find him missing.

‘No, but…’ Hannah bit her lip.

‘That’s fine then. See you when I see you.’

‘When will that be?’

‘I wish I knew.’ He was vague.

‘But food, Jock? Will you be back for lunch?’

‘Lord no, it’s a competition. Sometime in the evening. Bye now, dear.’ He was gone.

Hannah went back into the house. She would get the Sunday papers and sit in the garden and read. She got little joy these days from sitting under a tree on the well-kept lawn at Oaklands. She hated to admit it to herself, but she was very lonely. What had happened to this house where once Lizzie had been polishing and scrubbing, and Neil tumbling in and out with his friends, Amanda bringing girls home from school and all Jock’s colleagues and friends dropping in for a drink? If she had invited people to lunch, Jock would not have run off to the club. But he wouldn’t stay at home if it was only Hannah. Perhaps she should ask Cathy about simple things to have ready in the freezer. Yes, she’d do that tomorrow. She thought about Jock’s brother Kenneth and his unstable wife. Hannah was glad that she had kept out of all their messy affairs. She could well have been landed with those children. She looked around the big, empty garden.

‘Neil? It’s Simon. Do we have any money of our own anywhere, you know, pocket money or anything like that?’

‘Don’t you get something every week?’

‘Yes, but it’s only a pound and that’s not enough.’

‘Enough for what, actually, Simon?’

‘We wanted to buy a present for Muttie and his wife Lizzie to say thank you when we leave.’

‘Oh, they don’t want that at all…’ Neil reassured them.

‘That’s not it, it’s that we’d
like
to give them a present, they’ve been very nice and they bought Hooves and he cost real money, all Muttie’s winnings one week.’

‘Yes I know, but they realise you don’t have any money…’

‘We’ve got
much
more money than they do, haven’t we got a huge house, Neil? And money in the bank and everything. St Jarlath’s Crescent is very small.’

‘Simon, you’re not going to buy them a new house, are you?’ Neil laughed.

‘No, they like this house. We wanted to buy Muttie a good pen for his work at the bookmakers’, it would be about two pounds, and we wanted to get Muttie’s wife Lizzie leggings.’

‘Leggings?’

‘She has pains in her knees and she thinks it’s the cold and damp, so if she had red woolly leggings they would keep her warm and stop the pains.’

Neil gulped a bit. ‘The leggings cost four pounds, and then we’d like to get a present for Cathy too, she did an awful lot of driving us around. Maud says she needs hair lacquer, it’s a kind of glue that holds your hair together. They’re different prices. We’d like a kind of middle-price one, about two pounds.’

‘So that’s about eight pounds altogether. Is this what we’re looking at?’ Neil asked.

‘About that, yes.’ Simon sounded doubtful.

‘You sound as if there’s something more. Let’s have it.’

‘We’d like to leave a tin of dog food for Hooves, and to give you something too. I know you didn’t do all
that
much, but we thought you should have a present, a small one.’

‘Well, that’s very nice indeed,’ Neil said, trying not to be annoyed.

‘So what do you think?’ Simon wasn’t going to lose the main clause.

‘I think twelve pounds should see you right, with some over.’ Neil said firmly.

‘That sounds just right, thank you, Neil.’ Simon, who would have settled happily for ten, was delighted.

‘So it’s a question of transferring the funds.’ Neil took it all very seriously.

‘What does that mean, exactly?’

‘Well, you don’t have bank accounts, so I can’t send you a cheque. It will have to be a cash transaction, I’d say.’

‘An envelope of money, do you mean, Neil? That would be great.’

‘No problem, it’s owing to you. I’ll get it to you today.’

‘Will Cathy drive it over? You see, we don’t want her to know…’

‘She’s not here. I’ll tell her nothing and I’ll drive it,’ he promised.

He hung up the phone and sat thinking about them for a while. They were funny little things, certainly, and Cathy had done wonders with them. But they were a full-time job. It had made them both realise what a wise decision they had made about their future. Be marvellous to other people’s children, but don’t have any of your own.

Joe Feather was very focused at the lunch. He never lost sight of what they were trying to do, not for one moment. He had a very quick mind, which was good in business but he said that he lacked broad sweeps of imagination, and also he was totally out of touch with the clothes scene in Dublin. First he needed to know the rivals in his field, then where they were succeeding and failing. He needed to identify trends in the ready-to-wear market, which might be different in country towns from Dublin. He wanted to be sure why Haywards thought it a good idea to go downmarket when they had designer rooms and a very wealthy clientele. He listened intelligently while Shona explained that Haywards was busy encouraging the younger shopper, women in their twenties who would buy three or four outfits for summer or a whole holiday wardrobe rather than those who paid a fortune for two items. Geraldine went through different types of PR plan, one very expensive indeed, involving lunches with fashion journalists and buyers and interviews with the financial press on the mechanics of getting the clothes to Ireland.

‘Too expensive and too many awkward questions asked.’ He grinned at her.

‘You’re right,’ Geraldine agreed.

‘But I had to show you what could be done. Right. This is what I suggest.’ And she reeled through plans for a press party before the fashion show, advance photographs taken by Ricky and sent to papers and magazines so that each would have a different one, models, make-up, hairdressing. Joe Feather took quick notes, agreeing to this, arguing that. It took half an hour and one glass of wine each.

‘You have my yes please on that at this moment, but I’m only a third of the company on this lot so could you bear to talk to my two partners if they were to call you?’ Joe said.

‘Of course I’ll talk to them,’ Geraldine said, ‘but let me do out a proposal and e-mail it to them first so that we all know what it is we
are
talking about; it will take less of everyone’s time. They’d have this tomorrow by eleven. Is that all right, Joe?’

‘Super-efficient.’ He raised his glass to her.

‘Oh, and Joe, you should put yourself all out to talk to the press. Very difficult prima donnas, some of them are. A personable man like yourself, with an Irish accent and well able, would go down a treat.’

‘Me?’ He was genuinely surprised.

Cathy smiled. The Feather brothers had no idea how good-looking they were; it added to their charm.

‘She’s right, Joe, I don’t go for your kind of looks at all, but you have that superficial, attractive charm that makes them fall off their branches and roll over for you,’ Cathy said, laughing.

‘Ah, Cathy, you wound me… I’m superficial… You don’t go for my looks, what else are you going to hit me with?’ He pretended to be offended.

They were unexpectedly helpful, it turned out, on the subject of the Chicago wedding. Cathy wished that Tom were here to share the ideas and the conversation that went backwards and forwards. Her hand raced across the notebook writing things down, as Joe had been doing about his fashion show earlier. Joe wanted to know all about the hall they had hired… It was an old church hall attached to a parish where James Byrne knew the parish priest. The priest had been happy with the thought of any money whatsoever for the parish, so the price was reasonable. Cathy and Tom had been to inspect it, and thought it was fine. It could be used as two areas, one for the reception and drinks and the other for the food, then the first one would be cleared for dancing. It would hold a hundred people comfortably, had fair kitchen space and cloakrooms. They could decorate it as they liked – Marian had suggested she would like an Irish-American theme, and maybe flags. Joe said that he thought it was over the top to drape the hall with US and Irish flags. Shona said it wasn’t over the top at all, it was exactly what they would like. The Americans were travelling many thousands of miles for a ceremony; it must be marked. Geraldine asked was there a budget, and Cathy said yes there was, but of course they would go over it for Marian’s sake. Joe debated buffets. He thought they were far better, you didn’t get stuck with anyone. Geraldine said that the point of this was for people to get to know each other, and perhaps it should be a carefully thought-out seating plan. Shona said the thinking nowadays was not to mix up the families but let each side sit with its own. Geraldine had been at a smart wedding recently where everyone changed seats after each course – all the men moved to the next table – it meant that everyone got to know more people. Joe had been to a wedding where the receiving line was on a little stage surrounded with flowers. Cathy thought that Marian would prefer it to be as traditionally Irish as possible; people often thought like that when they had left home. Of course, it depended what you meant by traditional.

‘You’re the only married person at the table, Cathy,’ Joe said. ‘What would you like, what was your own wedding like… ?’

‘You don’t want to know about my wedding, oh, believe me, you don’t,’ Cathy said ruefully.

‘It wasn’t
that
bad,’ Geraldine said.

‘Well, that was only thanks to you,’ Cathy said, grateful always to her aunt for having saved the day. ‘We had the reception at Peter Murphy’s hotel, lovely salmon I remember, my mother had to be sedated, my father bribed, Neil’s parents stayed for thirty-five minutes. The priest we had was very decent, by the way. He said the right thing to everyone, it was just that no one was listening. Hannah’s nose got further up in the air and my mother’s head nearer the ground.’

The others laughed at the image, but Cathy was serious. ‘No, if you only knew, it’s quite true. We wanted to get married quietly, in London maybe, and go back to Greece, but we thought we owed it to them. Neil was the only boy in the Mitchell family and I was the only Scarlet left at home. We didn’t want to short-change them. Boy, were we wrong!’ Her face was set hard.

Geraldine lightened the mood. ‘Well as far as we know Marian’s doing what she wants, not what she thinks whole groups of the previous generation want.’

‘But does she
know
what she wants? She thinks Ireland is coming down with Irish dancers leaping up into the air and that two of them are called Simon and Maud. She’s probably told all the Americans that the place is like Maureen O’Hara in
The Quiet Man
.’

‘Well give it to her,’ Joe said as if it were obvious.

‘The customer’s always right,’ said Shona.

‘The atmosphere is more important than the food, I’ve always said that,’ Geraldine said.

‘Well thanks for the vote of confidence in the caterers,’ Cathy laughed.

‘No, silly, you know what I mean.’ Geraldine was brisk. She summed up all the arguments for and against every suggestion they made. No wonder she had got on so well in business, she had a very clear mind. Cathy finally had a proper plan in front of her.

They cleared the table in minutes between the four of them and shortly afterwards, Shona and Joe left to go back to work. Cathy watched them from the window. Geraldine was sitting on one of the sofas when Cathy turned away from the window. She had poured two glasses of wine.

I’m not sure…’ Cathy began.

‘Sit down please, Cathy.’ The voice was firm; it wasn’t an invitation, it was more a command.

‘Sure.’

‘What is it, Cathy? Tell me, please.’

‘What do you mean?’ she blustered.

‘Don’t insult me. I’ve known you since the day you were born, I skipped school and went in to see Lizzie in the hospital. You were already terrifying her with your roaring and bawling… So you won’t go on pretending that’s everything’s all right, we have been down too many roads together to lie to each other at this stage. It’s one of two things: either I have offended you or annoyed you by something I did or said, or else it has nothing to do with me and you’re in some bad trouble.’ She sat there on her sofa, her legs tucked underneath her, looking ten years younger than her age. Always immaculately groomed, dressed today in a navy and cream outfit as if she were going to Quentin’s instead of hosting a working lunch.

‘Which would you like it to be, Geraldine?’ Cathy said eventually.

‘Well obviously I’d prefer it to have been something I said or did, then I could explain it and apologise if necessary. Naturally that’s what I’d want, rather than to think you had an illness or your marriage had problems.’

Cathy said nothing.

‘So can I ask you again, which is it?’

‘It’s neither and both in a way.’ Geraldine waited.

‘All right,’ Cathy said eventually. ‘You’re going to think this silly, but I was upset when you told me you took presents from men.’

Geraldine looked at her. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘I’m very serious. It’s only one degree away from taking cheques… it’s so tacky, Geraldine. You don’t need that. You’re the icon for us all, you’re the role model, for God’s sake.’

‘And you’ve changed your opinion of me since I told you that Freddie bought me this watch…’

‘Well, yes, and that Peter gave you the flat and that someone else gave you that sound system, and the rug, and for all I know everything here.’

Geraldine’s face was cold. ‘You actually think less of me. Me, your friend, because I accepted gifts.’

‘Yes, I do, it’s so tacky, and it’s so unnecessary. You don’t love these men who fancy you, Geraldine, you haven’t loved any of them, they’re just… they’re just… Well, I’d say a meal ticket, but you don’t need a meal ticket, you have your own business.’