Scarlet Feather (68 page)

‘Good luck, Neil,’ she said. ‘I hope you get a good crowd.’

‘You never know, mid-week.’ He sounded worried. ‘But then, if it does take off it really will focus serious attention on everything.’

He had sounded so concerned, she was glad again that she hadn’t decided to tell a whole self-pitying tale about him to Tom. Poor, tired Tom who had promised himself a nice quiet day at the premises when they were all out on this job.

‘Oh, June, how are we going to get through this lunch today, this woman’s a monster.’

‘You say that about them all, and they turn out to be pussy cats.’

‘Not this one: we are to use the back entrance to the house, and take the van and park it somewhere so the guests won’t see it and be offended by it; we all have to have house shoes, which we put on when we come in the back door, only that way will she know that muck has not been walked in.’

‘Oh, well, if it keeps her happy.’

‘Wait till she sees your hair, June.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ June looked in the mirror and patted her head. She had never again been able to afford the outrageous purple streaks that she had got with the Haywards token, and they had grown out, leaving her with a slightly piebald appearance.

‘Oh, Mrs Fusspot said that she hoped the staff would be decorous, because some of the guests are embassy wives.’

‘Decorous? I wonder,’ June made faces at her reflection.

‘But if we’re really good, then we might well get into a lot of embassies, that’s what we must think throughout.’

Tom wasn’t coming on this one, there would be Con as barman,

June and Cathy to prepare and serve the lunch. He urged them to leave in plenty of time, the lady seemed to think punctuality was highly important.

‘Cathy, stop calling her Mrs Fusspot, will you? You’ll say it to her face when you’re there.’

‘No I won’t.’

‘Do you know where the place is?’

‘Yes, I looked it up just now.’

‘Have you got your mobile?’

‘
Yes
Tom, and let me tell you,
you
are rapidly becoming Mr Fusspot, perhaps the two of you are well met.’

He laughed and patted the van. ‘Good luck,’ he called after them.

The phone never stopped ringing.

‘Hi Tom, Neil here, have I missed Cathy?’

‘Yes, but she’s got her phone in the van.’

‘No, it’s okay, just tell her I’ve booked us into Holly’s for the weekend after next, that will cheer her up.’

‘Simple question, Tom: I met Marcella, she said she’d like me to take her up to Fatima to see Mam and Dad, that you and she were good friends now. I just wanted an update.’

‘She never wanted to go to see them in Fatima when she lived with me,’ he said simply.

‘You’d prefer not, then?’

‘She must go where she pleases.’

‘She’s very broken, you don’t know the kind of time she must have had over the water, she doesn’t talk about it but it can’t have been great.’

‘No, and I do wish her well, and I really hope she finds happiness like I would for any friend.’

‘Right Tom, matter dropped.’

‘Tom, it’s Muttie here. You see, the twins are making an Irish stew for Lizzie as a treat tonight, and they gave me a list…’ ‘You’d like us to make it for you… Okay,Muttie…’ ‘I beg your pardon, they wouldn’t
hear
of you making it. This is to be all their own work. I have all of the lamb and carrots and onions, but it’s just that it says stock on the list. What’s that?’

Tom told him what little cubes to ask for in the local supermarket, and what they looked like. Cathy’s mother probably had plenty of excellent stock in her freezer, but this was no time for opening the wrong things.

Is that Tom Feather? Nick Ryan here, I want to have a surprise birthday party for Cathy’s aunt at her apartment, and for you both to cater it.’

‘You know, Mr Ryan, we have a policy on surprise parties… we don’t usually do them. They can go so very wrong.’

‘But not with Geraldine, surely… she has so many friends?’ He sounded uncertain.

‘Could Cathy come back to you on this one? Please.’

‘Well, all right then, I thought you’d be glad of the business.’ He sounded huffy now.

‘And indeed we are, Mr Ryan, as I say, Cathy will sort it all out as soon as she can.’

‘Yes, well.’

‘Tom?’

‘Cathy, there’s telepathy, I was just going to ring you.’

‘Tom, have you her letter and the map there?’

‘You mean you aren’t
there
yet? Oh, my God!’

‘Don’t you panic, you’re the one on dry land with the map, I’ve been to number twenty-seven, they never heard of Mrs Fusspot.’

‘Well, if you called her—’

‘Of course I didn’t call her that, Tom, quick, will you.’

He ran to the desk and took down the file with that week’s bookings in it. He came back to the phone and read out the address.

‘That’s where I am.’

‘Well, it’s on her writing paper printed there in front of me.’ He read it aloud again, this time with the name of the suburb.

‘
What
?’ she screamed. There were two streets with the same name. People should be hanged for allowing this in any country. She was on the wrong side of Dublin.

‘Tom, what will I do? If I ring her now she’ll go to pieces. Tom, speak to me.’

‘Just get there. I’m much nearer, I’ll ring her and go round in a taxi with champagne and smoked salmon and hold them at bay until you get there. Drive carefully, don’t take any risks. I don’t want the entire company dead on arrival.’

He had a fairly horrific phone conversation with Mrs Fusspot, where he had to hold the mobile far from his ear. The taxi man looked at him sympathetically.

‘You know your job is nearly as bad as mine,’ he commented, when Tom had put the phone down, exhausted.

‘I don’t think it’s always as bad as this, but give me yours today, I beg you.’

‘Not today, you wouldn’t want it,’ the taxi driver said gloomily. ‘There’s some kind of protest in the centre of Dublin, people marching from O’Connell Street to Stephen’s Green. We’ll be all day and all night getting to your one on the phone, and the one you were talking about with the van of food will be lucky to get there by next weekend.’ Tom lay back and closed his eyes. He must stay calm. Somebody somewhere in this city must be calm.

Mrs Frizzell was around fifty, tiny in an unwise emerald-green wool dress. She had black hair scraped up into an angry-looking chignon and was very bad-tempered when he arrived. He saw with relief that there were no other cars, and noted from the high volume of abuse with which she greeted him that she must be alone, and that he had at least made it ahead of the guests.

‘There, there, there.’ Moving quickly into the kitchen and finding suitable glasses, he said, ‘You see, I told you, the traffic was terrible, they’ll all be delayed, it’s exactly the same for everyone.’ He hadn’t said anything of the sort, but he was picking up what the taxi driver had said.’I think it’s some kind of protest march, Mrs Frizzell, it has totally disrupted the traffic and some streets are closed.’ Her face was stony. Tom opened one bottle expertly and stood it in ice, then he swiftly arranged the smoked salmon pieces on the buttered brown bread, found a sharp knife and cut them into tiny pieces.

He had grabbed lemons and parsley to take with him, but he needed a plate. He looked around for one.

‘I thought you said you provided all your own—’

‘And indeed we do, and our china is on the way, it’s just as I told you, the transport has been unavoidably delayed in this protest march.’

‘Protest,’ she scoffed.

‘I know, it
is
inconvenient, but still, it’s good that we live in a democracy, isn’t it, and people can make their views known.’

Mrs Frizzell did not appear to think it was particularly good to live in a democracy, nor may ever have thought so. Meanwhile Tom had spotted a plain white platter. ‘Let me use your lovely white plate, I’ll take great care of it,’ he soothed her, and produced in seconds an entirely acceptable dish of canapes. He noticed her beginning to thaw slightly.

‘Let me take you back into the very nice sitting room I saw briefly on the way in, and give you a glass of champagne while you wait for your guests. They too will be anxious, being so late for you,’ he said.

The guests were in fact not late at all, and to his annoyance he saw a big black car coming up the drive. He settled her down and ran back to the kitchen opening cupboards, fridges, drawers, anything to see was there any raw material from which he might make up a lunch, supposing Cathy never turned up. He did find a bottle of cheap brandy, and decided to add a few drops quietly to every glass of champagne he served. This was going to be the longest pre-luncheon drink in the history of catering: they might as well enjoy it.

‘I don’t
believe
this,’ Cathy cried when the guard on traffic duty told her that the roads were closed. ‘Has there been an accident?’

‘Oh, no, it’s only the homeless and those who care about them to the point of closing the city down,’ he said, casting his eyes up to heaven. He was a weary man and he had little sympathy for those who made his job more difficult than it already was. ‘Are you conjurers, the lot of you?’ he asked them, interested. They had such a funny van with a red feather on it; they might be children’s entertainers.

‘
No
, Guard,’ said Cathy before doing a perilous turn. ‘But we may have to become conjurers before this day is over.’

‘Who could have got them to close the streets?’ Con asked in amazement.

‘My husband,’ Cathy said grimly.

Most of the women were very much at ease the moment they came in the door. They all signed a book on the hall table so that Mrs Frizzell could show her husband who had turned up… Tom moved among them, easily smiling, reassuring that there were
no
calories in smoked salmon. He fought down his own panic. There were twelve women, two of the four bottles of champagne he had brought were empty, the plate of smoked salmon was nearly finished. It would take an hour to set up the table and serve the lunch, and there was no sign whatsoever of the van.

The television cameras covered the march, which was all the more impressive for being done in heavy rain. The banners were held high and the people were of all ages.

‘I can’t believe it, Neil,’ Sara said. He squeezed her hand; it was better than any of them had ever believed possible. He wished Cathy could have come, but he’d tell her about it tonight, and some of the speeches might even be on the nine o’clock news.

Tom ripped open three tins of sardines, drained them and squeezed lemon juice and ground fresh black pepper into the mixture, and then like lightning he spread it over the contents of a packet of biscuits he had also unearthed.

‘Very nice,’ one woman said. ‘What are they called?’

‘Sardines au citron,’ he said.

‘They’re good.’ She smiled into Tom’s eyes.

He smiled nervously and moved away.

He kept topping up the champagne with further drops of brandy, but never Mrs Frizzell’s own glass, as he didn’t want her to know why her guests seemed so animated. Tom tried to keep a mental note of all he had taken from Mrs Frizzell’s stores; if this day ever ended he would have to restore as well as half a bottle of brandy many more items. He had opened jars of gherkins, chopped a cucumber and made a little bowl of dip out of various yoghurts he found in the fridge. Oh, please God, remember that Mrs Maura Feather of Fatima prayed night and day to Him, and surely there must be some credit in the prayer bank now which God could use to make the van turn up.

I’m afraid to go in,’ Cathy said at the gate. ‘They’re here; and the place is full of cars. God, there are even chauffeurs.’

‘Drive in, Cathy,’ said June.

‘Will I ring first?’

‘Drive in,’ Con begged.

Cathy drove right up to the front door, then remembered and reversed to go to the back door. Tom saw them coming, and thanked God and his mother for having answered the prayer.

‘I’ve seen her somewhere before. I know her, and that dress,’ Cathy said.

‘Of course you haven’t, you’re hallucinating…’ Tom hurried them on.

‘Cold canapes of any kind – no time to heat anything, I have the ovens on, just fling the main course in,’ he hissed to Cathy.

‘And open more champagne, Con, they’ve drunk my lot. Quick, June, start the tables.’

There were twelve in total: she was going to have two tables of six, do her best. Cathy went into the dining room, stunned that Tom had been able to make these people stay so long without anything to eat. She urged them to have the little asparagus tips with Parma ham, and insisted that Mrs Frizzell have just one of the tiny caviar and sour-cream blinis… All the other guests seemed to be enjoying them. To her amazement, Mrs Frizzell said she was very sorry about those dreadful protesters who had delayed her; a lot of the guests had been upset by the traffic diversions too. Mr Feather had explained all about the march and had been marvellous. Cathy said she was delighted to hear it, and scooped up some really revolting-looking things on plates which were on the tables and the piano.

‘God, what on earth are these?’ she said scraping them into a bin.

‘Those were my best efforts, and they loved them until you arrived with the cavalry,’ he said. ‘I’ll go home now, and leave you to cope.’

‘You
can’t
go.’

‘But there’s three of you here!’

‘Tom, our nerves have gone, you
must
stay and help.’

‘Of course I won’t, I’m off now to lie down for a month.’

‘You don’t understand, they love you, they can’t stand the rest of us, you
have
to stay and help us get on with it.’

She saw he had only been joking. ‘Of course I’ll stay, you clown, anyway, I don’t have the strength to walk down that avenue. I have to get a lift home in the van.’

And so it all went into its well-tried routine. They all moved around the kitchen, helping each other, passing things,getting rid of rubbish, totting up the number of wine bottles on the calculator, covering little delicacies in some of Mrs Frizzell’s dishes for her to discover later in her fridge. Con gave them the word, the ladies were leaving, the van was loaded. Three of the eleven guests had been interested enough in the food to ask for cards. They were ready to roll. Tom had listed the sardines, brandy and other items he had taken, so there would be no misunderstandings. Mrs Frizzell thanked them grudgingly. It had, of course, been very distressing that everyone was so late, and extra precautions really should have been taken on a day when everyone knew that the city traffic would be difficult.