Scarlet Feather (59 page)

‘Ah yes. Yes, indeed.’

‘There’s a problem about the girl, is there?’

‘She and Tom aren’t together any more… that’s all. Now, what kind of music would you like?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘For the wedding. Will we have a pianist or an accordionist… Or would you prefer a music centre? Tom can organise that, no trouble, and put on all the CDs you want.’

Stella’s voice dropped. I’m going to confide in you, I’d be afraid we might look silly if we had music. Sean had a very quiet wedding first time round, his wife was a kind of recluse I think. He’s just dying for fun and excitement, he doesn’t have an idea of how much his children resent us marrying. I don’t think that any of those girls are going to come to the wedding.’

Cathy laid her hand on Stella’s. ‘They’ll come just to see it. Believe me, they won’t be able to let their father get married without coming to watch it. They’ll be there… Will yours?’

‘My son will be there. My daughter, I don’t know.’

‘Bet you any money she will,’ said Cathy.

‘Not a word from those children,’Muttie said.

‘ I suppose they have such a great life up at The Beeches, they wouldn’t have the time for us any more.’ Lizzie was both humble and philosophical.

‘Cathy said you wouldn’t ask an ordinary rat to live at The Beeches,’Muttie grumbled.

‘Yes, but you know the way Cathy goes on about the Mitchells in general,’ Lizzie explained.

‘They didn’t come last Saturday, and never a solitary word out of them,’Muttie said, very upset.

‘Well, I rang Cathy and she said they were grown-up enough to make up their own minds,’ Lizzie said.

‘There was so much we had to do, to arrange,’Muttie said. T don’t believe it was anything to do with being grown-up at all, I think they didn’t have their bus fare, that’s what I think.’

‘Well don’t go saying that,’ Lizzie ordered.

‘Of course I won’t,’ said Muttie, who then sat down and wrote a letter to Master Simon and Miss Maud Mitchell at The Beeches.

‘Just in case there’s a problem about transport between our residences, I enclose £5 (five pounds). We are always here… M. and L. Scarlet.’

‘Walter?’

‘Yes, Father?’

‘Has that… er… social worker been in touch about anything?’

‘Don’t think so, why?’

‘I realise the twins didn’t go up to Mr Muttie, or whatever he’s called, at the Jarlath’s place last Saturday.’

‘Well, I suppose they got tired of it.’

‘I don’t think they had any money for the fare, as it happened.’

‘Did they just spend their pocket money, Father? Was that it?’

‘They didn’t really
get
any pocket money, you see, old Barty actually left me a bit short.’

‘Oh, God, Father, be very, very careful. That Sara and Cathy, those two are real ball-breakers.’

‘I know. Let’s keep a watch.’

Walter picked up the mail. There was an odd-looking letter from someone to the children. Walter opened it carefully. It might be something about this ridiculous arrangement, he and his father should be forewarned. He found the fiver and pocketed it. He put the letter and envelope into the fire.

Jock Mitchell called at The Beeches. The twins were doing their homework at the table.

‘Where’s your dad?’ he asked.

They told him that Father’s friend old Barty had rung up and sorted out an old quarrel, and so Father had gone off to meet him in order to celebrate the fight being over.

‘And your mother?’

Apparently Mother had got upset when Father went to meet old Barty. And she had gone down to the shops. Jock Mitchell didn’t like the notion of his sister-in-law going down to the shops. That’s how the drinking had started before, she just went to one particular section of the supermarket.

‘And everything all right here, is it?’

The twins looked at each other and nodded their doubtful agreement that everything was all right. Uncle Jock didn’t come to see them often; he might not come again for months. No point in hoping he’d come in regularly, as someone to keep an eye on things.

‘Did you come to see Father, Uncle Jock?’

‘No, I came to see where Walter keeps his computer, actually.’

The twins supposed it must be in his bedroom. But that was locked.

‘He says he uses it every night, that’s why he took it from the office.’

Maud and Simon looked at each other. They had never heard the sound of any computer, nor seen one coming into the house. But they knew it was better to give no information at all, so they looked blankly at their uncle. They were funny little things. He wished Hannah had taken to them more. They could have come to Oaklands and played on the swings around the big trees… It didn’t look as if that hard-working son of his and his equally career-minded wife were going to produce any grandchildren for them in a hurry, and Manda had told them that in her case it wasn’t a starter either. But no point in complicating things; Kenneth had always been an odd fellow, and his wife very unstable from day one. Wiser to stay well away from them and their children. Jock sighed: he had definitely failed to do this in the case of Walter. There was no way of getting him into any kind of shape in the office now. Neil, always the champion of the underdog, had unexpectedly advised him to throw the boy out. Jock suspected that Walter had stolen the computer and sold it. But he had no proof, and it didn’t look as if he were going to get any this evening from his visit to The Beeches.

‘Will we say you called to see Walter?’ Simon asked.

‘Or should we just say nothing at all?’ asked Maud.

‘ I think we should say nothing at all,’ Jock said.

He contemplated giving them a couple of pounds each, as one had done to children long ago. But maybe it was patronising nowadays, and there was in operation a very firm agreement about everything, including pocket money. Maybe it would just throw things out of kilter. So he just rattled the coins as the children looked at him hopefully, and then said goodbye.

Geraldine had dinner at Quentin’s with Nick Ryan. Brenda Brennan just nodded her head politely to her as they came in. No one would know that the women were friends. Some men felt threatened if they thought that their date was better known in the restaurant than they were. Geraldine admired that kind of professionalism. She practised it herself. Before this dinner she had read up a great deal about the dry-cleaning business in Ireland. He was a very pleasant man. Not afraid to pay a compliment. Also, he was upfront about everything, which she particularly liked. He said it was a treat for him to go out to dinner with a glamorous lady, normally at this time of the evening he was letting himself in the door at home and groaning to his wife about the day at the office and coping with two fairly difficult children. Geraldine nodded her understanding of this.
All
children were difficult, anyone who said otherwise wasn’t a serious parent. This made him feel good, and also the way Geraldine seemed to accept the existence of a wife and family in the life of a man she was having dinner with. She looked, as always, perfectly groomed, and much younger than her years. She answered questions about herself in a practised, easy way, not giving very much away but still telling enough to make a picture of a woman with a working-class background who had worked hard to get where she had arrived. She made it very clear that she wasn’t trying to get married and settle down. That she preferred a very independent life at this stage, and liked to see a great variety of friends.

‘And you do have a lot of friends. I was very impressed at your party,’ he said. ‘Very pleasant gathering indeed.’

I’m glad you enjoyed it, I hope you met a lot of people,’ Geraldine said. It was far too soon in their relationship to tell him all that went on behind the scenes at the party, the bath towels, Doctor Said, Cathy being taken in an ambulance to the hospital.

‘To be very honest, I wasn’t all that interested in meeting other people,’ he said.

‘That’s very flattering,’ Geraldine said.

‘And very sincere,’ said Nick Ryan.

‘ I don’t know how Geraldine does it,’ Brenda Brennan said to her husband Patrick in the kitchen. ‘She has yet another rich, handsome businessman out there purring at her and pawing the ground.’

‘Ah, but she didn’t get a safe and steady and reliable husband, like you did,’ Patrick consoled her.

‘ I know.’ Brenda’s tone didn’t seem to suggest somehow that she had won out in this comparison.

‘Or a passionate, creative, temperamental chef like myself,’ he suggested.

That was more like it. ‘Indeed she did not,’ said Brenda, pleased.

Mrs Barry wouldn’t be at The Beeches for a while; she was going away to her daughter’s for three weeks’ holiday.

‘The press is full of tins of things there for you, and the milkman is paid to the end of the month.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Barry.’

‘And you know… you know your mother’s not well. She should have a doctor. I’ll ring Sara and let her know.’

‘No, Mrs Barry, we’ll ring Sara,’ Maud said.

‘We have other things to tell her, so we’ll tell her about Mother not being well.’

‘Good. That’s all right then, she’ll be round to see to things.’

Maud and Simon didn’t ring Sara. It only upset everyone when Sara came in; it was fine for five minutes, but when she left everyone and everything got worse. Better for her not to come at all. And when she called to know was everything all right, they said it was all just fine.

Sara met Neil at the big public lecture on homelessness.

‘Glad it’s all going all right at The Beeches,’ she said.

‘Oh, is it? Good,’ he said.

‘You haven’t been there recently, then?’ she asked.

‘No; there have been a few other things on our minds. Listen, I have to tell you because you’re one of the few people that knew she was pregnant; Cathy had a miscarriage.’

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Sara said.

‘Yes, but nobody, least of all the twins or any of the family knows a thing about it so, of course…’

‘Of course not.’

‘And in many ways, of course…’ Neil began.

‘ I know, in many ways it could be for the best at this particular time, you could still take that job abroad now.’

‘ I may not go forward for it,’ Neil said.

‘Still, there’s an awful lot of work to be done at home,’ Sara said, pleased that he was not going away. She looked at him with undisguised admiration.

He smiled at her. It was nice when someone thought you were great.

Cathy was going to ring the twins. She actually got as far as the phone, but then she thought of having to talk to Kenneth Mitchell, and she changed her mind. She tried to think back to the first days of her engagement to Neil. Had she really tried to please awful people like that, had she tried to get Kenneth and Kay on her side in the battle against Hannah? She hoped that she had not. That whole battle seemed so long ago, and in many ways so unimportant. What did points scored over her mother-in-law
mean
, anyway? Neil had been right in that, and how silly Cathy must have been to hug those little hard-won victories over her mother-in-law as if they were trophies. She’d ring the twins when this wedding was over, when she had some time to give to them.

Simon and Maud sat at the kitchen table. They had eaten sardines and cold tinned beans, which went well together. They had tied up the rubbish and left it outside the gates of The Beeches; the bin men came tomorrow. They rescued a newspaper, in case they should clean their shoes for school. It was full of a race meeting coming up shortly.Muttie had said he was going to take them to that, so they would get the feel of a real country race meet. He had told them how great it would be, but now there was no mention of it. They supposed he had gone off them, as people so often did.

‘I can’t understand those children not getting in touch with us. They were all over us at the wedding,’Muttie said.

‘Maybe they have no money,’ said Lizzie, who didn’t know about the fiver he had sent to them.

‘They don’t need any money to pick up the phone,’ said Muttie, who had sent them the very fiver he could well have put on a horse that he had liked the look of but not the sound of. It had won at thirty to one.

Stella O’Brien’s daughter came to visit Scarlet Feather. Tall, pale, mid-twenties, discontented, they didn’t like her on sight at the premises. Like almost every woman who came into the place, she looked at Tom Feather with admiration and a sly little smile. It did her no good.

‘Cathy is mainly dealing with this wedding, perhaps you should talk to her.’ Tom got them coffee in the front room, and with some relief left them to it.

This girl Melanie looked full of grievance, and she hadn’t begun yet.’ I hope you know my mother isn’t made of money.’

‘Nor are any of us, Miss O’Brien, but we did go over the costs very carefully, and she and her fiance seemed very satisfied.’

‘It’s not the cost of what you’re providing that’s wrong.’ Melanie said.

‘So what is upsetting you then?’

‘The numbers. My poor mother thinks that there are fifty people coming to see her marry that little fortune-hunter she met at a poker party… She’s off her head and throwing good money after bad.’

‘Well, she did say that there was a certain fluidity about the numbers; we’ve taken that into account.’

‘Fluidity my foot, there’s twenty-eight invited from our side, and I can tell you that a good twenty of them won’t be there, only eight at the very most… I don’t know how many he’s fielding, but from what I hear his lot don’t want it either.’

Cathy felt a great urge to stand up, lean over the table and slap Melanie O’Brien so hard across the face and so often that she would fall to the floor. But she held it back.

‘Dear me! Mr Clery’s family object, too?’

‘That’s what I heard.’

‘Why don’t you go and see them?’ Cathy suggested.

‘ I don’t want to go near them, have anything to do with them.’

‘No, I was thinking of your mother’s money. Well, if
his
family isn’t going to come and yours isn’t, then you’re quite right not to let her put up that much outlay.’ It was a heavy risk, but Cathy decided it was worth it.