Scarlet Feather (62 page)

‘Neil, you’ll never believe it but the van broke down, so I’m going to stay the night here at Holly’s. I don’t know what time we’ll get it on the road tomorrow, but I’ll give you a ring in the morning. Hope you’re all right,
you’re
out late but I expect the meeting went on a bit. The wedding down here went fine, by the way. I love you. Bye.’

‘You’re very independent, both of you.’ Tom admired the way they could lead separate lives.

‘It works, it usually works, but at the moment it’s a bit up and down. He thinks I should go on a holiday with him.’

‘Well go,’ Tom said.

‘ I most certainly will not. What have we just been discussing? This is our very busiest time upcoming. I want
you
to take a couple of days off soon, but I’d be very pissed off if you decided to go off on a real holiday somewhere just now.’

‘All right, I won’t,’ he grinned.

‘We’ll have one more glass of wine, Tom.’

‘Sure, and a hangover, but why not.’

‘Let’s take it upstairs,’ Cathy said.

They took one of the tasselled keys, and giggling like schoolchildren they went to open the bedroom door. Cathy picked one of the beds, kicked off her shoes and lay down, looking at him.

‘We really should have a notebook to write all these things down. We won’t remember anything tomorrow.’

‘Write what down?’ Tom sat on the other bed and poured the wine. ‘Don’t spill it, Cathy, you’re very drunk.’

‘Unlike you, who are stone-cold sober. Write down the ideas, the Wednesday cookery classes, the freezer-fillers, whatever.’

She put the glass down beside her and went straight to sleep. Just like a two-year-old would, or a puppy dog. One minute she was awake and talking about notebooks, the next she was fast asleep. Tom covered her with an eiderdown. He considered going down and getting a second key and finding another room. But they were talking about four hours, really. He lay down on the other bed and was asleep a few minutes later

.

Walter Mitchell couldn’t sleep. Those
stupid
twins had actually telephoned Cathy Scarlet and told her that half her stolen stuff was still in his garden shed. He couldn’t believe it. Maud had been rooting around when he discovered her. Some cock and bull story that Cathy was going to call round after a wedding today and see them, and she wanted to see if there was anything else useful in the shed. Poor Cathy and Tom had this terrible burglary where vandals had got in and…

‘ I told you
never
to go into my shed, you promised me you wouldn’t, but you are such liars, no wonder no one wants you.’

‘People do want us,’ Simon said.

‘Name one.’

‘Muttie does and his wife, that’s two,’ Simon said.

‘They don’t want you anywhere near them,’ Walter said.

‘They do, Cathy said that. He even sent us a five-pound note for bus fares, but it never got here.’ Maud was stung. ‘And Muttie is taking us to the races for our birthday.’

‘And did you tell Cathy that you were rooting in
my
shed?’

‘I told her that there was a punchbowl there like one of her treasures.’

Walter went white. ‘And what did she say, tell me you little halfwit, before I have to beat it out of you.’

Maud was terrified. ‘She didn’t say anything, Walter, she only said she was busy but she’d come round after the wedding.’

‘Go to your bedrooms at once,’ he ordered.

‘What are you going to do?’ Maud asked.

‘I’m leaving this house. I can’t bear the sight of you, either of you, liars, messers, meddlers. No wonder nobody wants you anywhere near them.’

‘But—’

They didn’t wait. They peered out and saw him packing a suitcase in his bedroom, and then he went out to the garden. Out of the window they saw him filling black sacks full of things from the shed, then a taxi came and he stacked all the bags in it. He really was going. Father rang and said he had met old Barty, and wouldn’t be home until very late tonight or possibly in the early morning, so not to send out a full-scale alert for him.

‘You will be coming home tomorrow?’ Simon asked.

‘You really are the most tiresome child I ever met in my whole life,’ Kenneth Mitchell said, and hung up.

‘Walter’s right,’ Simon said. ‘Nobody does want us. Nobody at all.’

Next morning Kenneth Mitchell came home at dawn from old Barty’s club, where he had dozed in an armchair for a few hours and felt much revived. He found a note on the kitchen table. ‘We are leaving home. Goodbye, Maud and Simon.’

He called his brother Jock. Jock was not well pleased to be woken at seven o’clock in the morning.

‘Talk to Neil and Cathy, they’ll know,’ he said, and hung up.

Neil listened with no pleasure to the confused story.

‘Shouldn’t you ring Sara?’ he suggested.

    ‘ I thought I’d talk to the family first,’ Kenneth said.

‘Okay, I’ll contact Cathy for you. Doesn’t Walter know anything?’

‘He doesn’t appear to be here either,’ said Kenneth Mitchell.

Betty was on duty at Holly’s hotel. She was full of praise for the way those young people had left the place, and treats in the fridge as well. The phone rang and she went to answer it. Very early for Holly’s hotel. It was that nice young Neil Mitchell, looking for his wife. Apparently the van had broken down and she had stayed the night.

‘

   ‘I couldn’t understand why that big van was still here. Hold on a moment, Mr Mitchell, she must be in Room Nine. I’ll put you through.’

Neil waited, and then the phone was answered.

‘Hallo,’ the voice said. It was Tom Feather.

‘Hallo?’ Neil said again, puzzled. ‘Is that Room Nine?’

‘Yes, it is. Who’s that?’ Tom had a headache, he had woken an hour later than he intended to, he had to find a car mechanic, mend the van and get back to Dublin. Who was this ringing him and annoying him?

‘I was looking for Cathy,’ the voice said.

It was Neil. Tom was awake immediately. ‘My God, Neil, what bloody bad luck we had last night, the van was dead as a dodo…’ As he spoke, he began to shake Cathy into wakefulness in the next bed.

‘Yes, I know, Cathy left a message. Where is she, by the way? I asked for her room.’

‘Oh, she’s down sorting out the van. I just came up here to her room to get her mobile for her, I think she was going to ring you on it.’

‘I tried that first. She has it turned off.’

‘No, I think the battery’s dead, anyway, will I tell her to ring you on a real phone, a hotel phone I mean?’ He was playing for time. Cathy had by now sat up, straightened herself and realised where she was.

‘No, there’s a bit of a crisis here. Will I hang on, or can you transfer me back down to the desk?’

‘
No
,’ Tom shouted. ‘No, Neil, hang on, I see her coming up the stairs. Cathy, Cathy,’ he shouted loudly. ‘I found your phone here in your room, but the battery’s down, but Neil is here on the hotel phone, come and speak to him.’

Cathy had understood much more quickly than he had thought she would. ‘Sorry, Neil, I’m out of breath running up the stairs. Everything okay?’

He told her. ‘Neil, I’m in the heart of the country with no transport, can’t you ring Sara?’

‘What about your parents?’

‘They’d have phoned someone if the kids had turned up at St Jarlath’s Crescent, but ring them anyway, please, Neil.’

‘And of course no sign of Walter, the one time you’d need him.’

‘
Neil
! Neil, I hadn’t time to tell you. I think Walter was one of the vandals who broke into the premises. Something Maud saw in the shed, you must check the shed, they might be hiding things there. Listen, I’ll charge this phone up and ring you later to know is there any news.’ She hung up. They looked at each other.

‘Quick thinking,’ she said to him.

‘Quickly taken up,’ he praised her back.

It wasn’t really necessary, you know, we could have said what happened. Neil would have understood.’

‘I know, but this way was easier,’ he said.

‘You’re right. Less explaining. God, I feel terrible,’ Cathy said, and went into the bathroom. ‘And I look worse,’ she screamed when she saw her reflection in the mirror.

‘What’s happened to the children?’ Tom asked.

‘They’ve run away. Of all the days out of the three hundred and sixty-five, they chose today.’

But the day was only beginning. When they had tidied up and splashed enough water to make themselves a bit respectable, they opened the door of the bedroom. Betty was in the corridor, bringing a breakfast tray to the newly-weds in Room Twelve. She paused to look at them. Betty, who had seen Cathy in the hotel just over a month ago telling her husband that she was pregnant, was utterly shocked. Miss Holly also seemed a lot less cordial today. She must have been informed.

It was an endless morning of negotiating with garages. The fault was identified, the part was found. She phoned Neil at the law library.

‘Nothing at all, Sara’s really worried. Can you call her? She wants to talk about Walter, apparently.’

‘Do Mam and Dad know?’ Cathy asked.

‘They have the whole of St Jarlath’s Crescent out with sticks beating bushes by the canal.’

‘Not really?’

‘No, but nearly. Are you all right, Cathy? You sound very ropy.’

‘I have too much to do.’

‘We choose our lives, Cathy. I’ve offered you a holiday.’

‘We’ve been through that…’

‘No, we’ve been through one poorly thought-out—’

‘Neil, I’ll ring you later,’ she said.

They got back to Dublin in the early afternoon, in no humour to hear of June’s fun with the orchestra, nor of Lucy’s argument with her parents about her coming home on a motorbike with a man. They had no time for James Byrne about the final demand. Hannah Mitchell wittering on about a letter from Canada, or Peter Murphy who wanted to have a cocktail party to annoy Geraldine. They didn’t want to hear where Freddie Flynn had bought villas nowadays, nor to discuss a Hallowe’en extravaganza with Shay and Molly Hayes. But they had to do all those things because that was what work was about. When the day was finally drawing to a close, two phones shrilled. Cathy looked at Tom with big, tired eyes.

‘Why do I feel these are things we don’t want to hear?’ she asked him, and picked up the one nearest to her.

‘Don’t hang up on me, Cathy, it’s Marcella, please try to get Tom to talk to me,
please
.’

Tom answered a call from Sara, saying it was all in the hands of the guards now and Maud and Simon were assumed to have spent one night sleeping rough and were heading into a second. Everyone was very worried indeed.

Simon and Maud discussed telephoning Muttie and his wife Lizzie. If they really
had
sent a five-pound note that went astray, then they might not be as hostile as everyone else. They got Lizzie on the phone; she was cagey about Muttie’s whereabouts, he had gone away for a day or two. This was puzzling.Muttie never went away anywhere. And what about the birthday treat?

‘He’s not refusing to talk to us or anything?’ Maud asked. ‘Child, aren’t you the most extraordinary little thing, why would he do that?’ Lizzie said. It sounded reassuring, but it wasn’t a yes or a no.

Simon thanked her for the five-pound note. It was very kind of you, it’s made a lot of difference,’ he said.

Lizzie said they must be thinking of the wrong people; she and Muttie had sent no fiver. They explained how it had got lost in the post, and how Cathy had taken one from her handbag.

‘Ah, there must have been some mistake.’

‘I’m sorry, Lizzie,’ Simon said politely. ‘
Do
you know when Muttie will be back?’

She sounded guarded. ‘Hard to say, a day or two I think.’

‘She’s lying,’ Maud said afterwards.

‘Muttie never goes anywhere…’

‘Except the races.’

Muttie Scarlet had spent a night in hospital… an embarrassing matter of his private parIs being examined by young doctors and unmentionable things being put into them. He wanted it neither discussed nor known. Lizzie was under strict instructions to say that he was away on business. He came home to find all hell had broken loose. The twins had disappeared. Sara, their social worker, was going mad and interrogating Lizzie. Poor Lizzie was going over every word of the conversation.

‘I didn’t know they were contemplating anything like this… How was I meant to be inspired? They always said they were fine, I thought they were tired of coming here… They didn’t sound upset at all, they were full of old rubbish, thanking me for a fiver that we never sent them.’

It had been an endless day, with people going back over things, fruitlessly examining the note left in the kennel: ‘We have taken Hooves with us.’ It seemed somehow a very bleak little letter, giving no information, not even a hint of where they were heading. A search of possible places led nowhere: friends at school could reveal nothing. Kenneth had pulled himself together sharply and revealed with every sentence he spoke how little he knew of the life that went on at The Beeches. There seemed to be no trace of Walter. He had not shown up at work, so it was quite possible that the twins were with him. Kay, now frightened into sobriety by the amount of activity in the house said no, that Walter had left earlier, in a taxi with a lot of black bags. But since she was not considered a reliable witness, nobody took much notice of this memory. By the time the guards had been called and Maud and Simon were officially declared missing,Muttie had alerted many of his associates who said they would help to search for the children, who must have been in the neighbourhood of St Jarlath’s Crescent at any time after ten p.m. when Lizzie went to bed. Neighbours who knew the children were drafted in. Every time the phone rang, everyone in St Jarlath’s Crescent jumped. This time it was Cathy – she was on her way over to them.Muttie relaxed for the first time that day. Cathy would get it sorted.

‘I have to go over there,’ Cathy said. ‘Go straight away, take the van.’ ‘Could you ring Marcella?’ she said, too casually. ‘What?’ he sounded shocked.

‘I’ve written down her number here, she’s waiting by the phone.’ ‘Thanks, but I’ll pass on that.’ ‘She was crying, Tom, I said I’d do my best.’