Scarlet Feather (67 page)

‘But did you talk about anything else?’

‘Is this a guessing game, or what?’ Cathy asked.

‘Okay, straight out, she rang me and said she had put her foot in it.’

‘About what?’

‘You know, now it’s you who’s playing guessing games.’

‘I
don’t
know, tell me.’

‘She said that she had let it slip to you that I was still interested in the refugee job.’

‘Well of course you are,’ she was perplexed. ‘I assumed you wouldn’t have thought of it so seriously and then suddenly just let it slip out of your mind, I supposed you’d be thinking about it, yes.’

‘The thing is, they’ve put the offer to me again, with different terms.’

‘And you’re going to take it.’

‘Of course I’m not going to take it just like that, but we need to talk about it seriously.’

‘Meanwhile you talk to Sara about it seriously.’

‘Cathy!’

‘I’d love a nice long bath,’ she said.

‘Please don’t be like that.’

‘Look, Neil, of course we’ll talk about it seriously, but not at this time of night. Now I’m going off to lie there and think about the world, and I’d prefer to do so as your friend than somebody having a silly pointless argument with you.’

‘Enjoy your bath, friend,’ he surrendered.

Tom Feather invited Shona Burke out to dinner. He meant it as a combination of a work dinner and a thank-you gesture. He took her to a small French place.

‘I promise I won’t spend the time examining and criticising the food,’ he said with an apologetic smile. ‘People tell me they see me cutting up things, analysing them and they spot me as a rival from a mile away.’

Shona said that she was exactly the same, she kept looking out for something that would be useful to her at work. And took notes. One man thought she was writing down what he was saying.

‘And was he saying anything he didn’t want written down?’ Tom asked. He had been talking about motorcycles, apparently, and Shona had been writing down the name and address of an efficient air-conditioning system. ‘And did you see him again?’ Tom wondered.

‘No, but I did learn something from the experience – I don’t take my notebook on dates any more.’

‘Very wise, I’d say. But then, what would I know. I haven’t been out on a date myself for so long.’

‘Do you miss her a lot?’

‘Marcella?’ he said, surprised.

‘Sorry Tom, it’s your business. I don’t usually pry into other people’s lives.’

He didn’t seem offended. ‘Well, the answer is yes and no. I miss what I thought we had rather than what we really had. Maybe that’s the way it always is when something’s over.’

After dinner, Tom took Shona back to Glenstar and refused coffee on the grounds that he had early-morning bread to make and needed his sleep. He drove home to Stoneyfield. As he parked he could see someone sitting on the steps outside in the cold night air. It was Marcella.

‘Come in, Marcella,’ he said wearily.

They walked in silence up the stairs to the flat where they had lived together so happily once. She looked around her as if seeing it for the first time. Neither of them had spoken yet. Tom sat down at one side of the table, which still had the pink velvet cloth on it. And with his hand, made a gesture for her to sit at the other. There had never been any point in offering Marcella food or drink, she had taken none of it, so he didn’t start now. He looked at her as he waited for her to speak. She looked very tired, beautiful, of course, with the tiny face and all that dark hair. She wore a black leather jacket and a white sweater, a red scarf tied around her long, graceful neck. She carried only a small leather handbag on a chain; she hadn’t brought any luggage with her.

‘Thank you for letting me in,’ she said.

‘Naturally I’d ask you in,’ he said.

‘But you don’t talk to me on the phone?’

‘It’s late, I’m tired, I have to get up very early to bake bread, you and I don’t want to go through it all again, now do we?’ He spoke gently, trying to be reasonable rather than showing the hard, hurt side of himself as he must have done before.

‘I just want to tell you something and then I’ll go,’ She sounded very beaten and down. Not pleading or sobbing, but just as if all the life had gone out of her.

‘Then tell me,’ he said.

There was a silence. ‘It’s quite hard. Do you think I could have a drink?’

He went to the kitchen and looked around him, confused about what to offer her. ‘Anything at all,’ she said. He took a can of lager from the fridge, picked up two tumblers and brought her an ashtray as well. She seemed to take ages lighting her cigarette. Eventually she began to speak.

‘Paul Newton
does
have a model agency, and I know he does have quite well-known models that go through it. It’s well established over there. But it wasn’t what was going to work for me. It didn’t work at all, not at all, not even from the start.’

She looked so bleak and sad that Tom felt he had to say something. ‘Well you
tried
it, that’s what you wanted to do.’

‘No, I never got a chance to try. He didn’t want me for that kind of modelling, not for shows and what I thought… Only glamour modelling. First he sent me to people who did lingerie pictures for catalogues… and they wanted what they called glamour shots, which is topless.’ There was such shame and sadness in the story, Tom closed his eyes rather than see her face. It was terrible, so I said to them there had been a mistake, that I was a real model on Mr Newton’s books and they only laughed, saying I could take it or leave it.’ There was a silence. ‘I left it, of course, and went back to Paul Newton to tell him. I thought that he’d be furious with these people.’ She paused to sip the lager that he had never seen her touch before. ‘He was very busy that day. I waited ages to see him. I remember all the people coming in and out, all the kind of people I had wanted to meet all my life, stylists and designers and other models. And then after a long time I got in to see him, and I told him and he said… he said…’ She stopped, hardly able to repeat the words. ‘He said what else did I expect at my age… and I said that he had promised to have me on his books as a model, and he got really impatient and said he
had
done that for God’s sake, so what was I complaining about? And do you know what happened then? Joe called him about something and obviously asked after me, and Paul Newton said that not only was I fine but I was right here in the office, finding it all a bit strange in the beginning but getting to know the ropes.’ Tom drank his beer in silence; he could sense how hurtful it must have been. ‘Anyway, he finished with Joe and he said to me that now I must be a big grown-up girl, act my age and get on with it… But I said, “You promised,” and then he got really annoyed. “I told you the truth,” he said, over and over…’

Tom looked at her. ‘And suddenly it was just like my sitting talking to you, where I told you that I had told you the truth but you said it wasn’t the same as being honest, and that there was a difference. I didn’t see it until then.’

‘Oh, Marcella.’

‘Yes, so anyway I had enough money for a month’s rent, and then I didn’t have any more. I took my portfolio around, and when I showed them the pictures of you and me that we did for Celebrity Couples, people asked what I was doing over there when I could be here. And I had no answer. And then the next month I didn’t have the rent, so I did the topless pictures, and oddly enough it wasn’t as disgusting as I thought. Everyone was quite professional and got the job done as quickly and as high-quality as possible, they were all quite respectful in an odd sort of way. And the money went through Paul Newton’s office. I collected it at the end of each fortnight. I never saw him, except, except for the day… the day that I rang you

‘What happened… tell me?’ Tom asked.

‘He was at the reception desk when I was picking up my envelope, and he asked me to come in. He said he was sorry we had parted bad friends, and that I was very good at what I was doing, and now he had something else to offer me. I was pleased because I thought he had a real job for me at last. And first he showed me magazines with me in them topless, I’d never seen the pictures before, and I felt upset when I saw them and then he said I didn’t have to do this kind of thing all my life. I waited and he said that if I wanted to I could earn real money, and he showed me other magazines, hard-core porn ones, and I felt so sick when I saw where he thought my future lay.’ She stopped again, shaking her head in memory of the shock. ‘He said that these people were very detached about their job, and there would be no pawing or anything, that wasn’t the way it was done, it was just a day’s work for everyone in the end, and I thanked him and said I’d call him the next day and I moved flats and never saw him again.’ A long pause. ‘And then I came home.’

‘And where… ?’

‘I’m staying at Ricky’s for the moment. I clean the place and help him around the studio. I’ve worked in bars a couple of nights too, and in a sandwich bar at lunchtime. You know that I’d be a real asset nowadays to Scarlet Feather?’ The longing in her voice was almost too much to bear.

But he said what had to be said. ‘No, believe me, this is not spite, nor sulking, but it’s no.’

‘I’m not saying we should get back together immediately… I’d go on living at Ricky’s for a while…’

‘No.’

‘I’ll ask you again, it’s all I want to do. Be back the way we were. Suppose it were
you
that had made the mistake, and had upset me by stretching too far in some direction. And just suppose you realised it was the most stupid thing and begged me to start again, wouldn’t you like me to say something hopeful rather than a cold, blank no?’

‘It’s not a cold, blank no, believe me it’s not. There’s nothing I’d like better in many ways than to wipe the past bit from our minds and start again…’

‘Then why can’t we… ?’

‘It’s just not the way things are. It would all be a pretence, an act, like playing at being in love again. Maybe I’m shallow and you’re better off without me. I’ve told you that before.’

‘I didn’t believe it then, or now.’

‘But I don’t love you any more. I’ll never forget all we had together, and if I do ever love someone else, that will always be special…’

‘Love me again, don’t look for someone new. Love
me
all over again.’

He felt no desire for her, no memory of a love shared in this very flat. He felt nothing but pity. ‘It wasn’t a great summer for me, and after you left a lot of things went wrong and I was very unhappy,’ he began. ‘But compared to yours, mine was nothing. I’m more sorry than I can say.’

‘You must be pleased that you were right,’ she said.

‘No, I was right about nothing. I didn’t have an idea all this was going to happen to you, I thought you’d be a great success, you were, and are, so beautiful. And truly I hoped you would because you wanted it so much.’

She picked up her handbag. ‘I’ll always be here, always around, if you change your mind,’ she said.

‘No you won’t, not a treasure like you.’ He tried to make her smile. But her face was sad. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you back to Ricky’s,’ he said.

‘Will we be friends from now on, anyway?’ she asked.

‘We’ll be much more than friends; weren’t we together for four years?’ he said.

‘That’s true, and there’s so much I want to know.’ But though he wanted to tell her all the adventures and dramas, and about the twins going missing and the guards looking for Walter for the break-in, he felt it wasn’t the time for small talk, so they drove though the dark, empty, wet streets in silence.

‘If you won’t come on a holiday with me, will you come away for a weekend?’ Neil asked.

‘Sure, that would be nice,’ Cathy said.

She didn’t really like the sound of a weekend away. It sounded dangerously like a honeymoon and she wasn’t ready for that yet. The doctor had said that Normal Married Life would of course resume, it took different people different times. But Cathy thought that in her case it might take a long time. It wouldn’t really be fair to go away with Neil unless she felt ready. Then again, it wasn’t something she could easily discuss.

If she said to him that she wasn’t ready for love-making yet, he would reasonably say that he hadn’t suggested it, he was only thinking of a weekend away. And in many ways a weekend would be nice. She would think about places to suggest to him. Not yet. In a few weeks time.

They had fallen into a disconcerting habit of one being out when the other was in. Breakfast was the only meal they shared, and even at weekends they were both out a lot of the time. Cathy was cooking less at home in Waterview now during the day, since the facilities had much improved back at the premises. In fact, she often spent time there in the evening, and found herself sitting to read and relax in the big comfortable sofa rather than going back home. If Tom noticed, he said nothing; sometimes he was there himself, other times out. Cathy knew that he occasionally took girls out on dates, but rarely anyone a second time. She knew that Marcella was back in town and staying with Ricky; that’s all he had told Cathy. June, however, who heard everything, had it that Marcella had totally changed and was doing all kinds of jobs she would have turned her nose up at, and was aching to get back into Scarlet Feather. She had told someone that she would wash dishes all day if she could come back.

‘Will he take her back, do you think?’ June’s eyes were round with interest.

‘She never worked here to be taken back,’ Cathy said defensively.

‘No, stop playing games – you know what I mean.’

‘He never, ever talks about it.’

‘You surprise me. The pair of you have been through so much together, I thought he’d weep on your shoulder.’

‘No, I think there’s too much shoulder-weeping in this business as things are.’ But she also knew that they needed their space from each other. She had been tempted to tell him how much Neil had upset her over the whole pregnancy thing. But she didn’t even want to acknowledge it openly. And anyway, a lot of that hurt seemed less sharp now. She and Neil
did
get on very well on many levels. Only this morning he had said how he wished she were free to come to the big demonstration for the homeless, but he knew she had to work.