Scarlet Feather (73 page)

‘I don’t have time for lunch today, Neil, I’m not being cold, it’s just a fact. The phone is jumping off the hook – you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Congratulations, I’m very proud of you. I’ll try to see it today.’

‘No, don’t, honestly, you’re too busy, we’ll get a copy of the video from Mam and Dad later on. Leave it, Neil, it’s all right, believe me.’

‘And your hair, Cathy?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s very nice.’

‘You told me that.’

‘When did I tell you?’

‘On Tuesday. I asked you did you think it suited me, and you said yes.’

‘And I do,’ he said. ‘When will you be home if you don’t want lunch?’

‘About seven,’ she said. ‘But you’re going out.’

‘I won’t tonight,’ he promised. ‘I’ll cancel that meeting.’

Shona Burke was having lunch with James in his flat. He had discovered that soups were very easy to make; he didn’t know why nobody had ever told him this before. They talked about the great television programme, and how it could be the turning point for them.

‘If only the insurance would pay up,’ James said. ‘I don’t want to be the spectre at the feast, but it’s serious, you know. How did that horrible boy gain entrance? We need to know, and he’s unlikely to tell us.’

‘There’s five of them working flat out there today. I called in to congratulate them on my way here…’

‘What do they think of us going to Morocco for Christmas?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t tell them.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Well, you’re such a private person, you never talk about your own business. Neither do I. I didn’t think you’d want them, or indeed anyone, to know… about us having found each other and everything…’ she looked awkward.

‘I used not to be a private person, Shona, I used to tell everyone everything, I brought your essays to the office to show my colleagues, that’s how outgoing I used to be, once.’

‘Me too. I just learned to be private. But I suppose we could unlearn it. Will I tell them, or will you?’

‘We could even tell them together,’ he suggested.

Cathy came in at exactly seven o’clock. She looked tired, he thought, and her hair was beautiful, very soft and feminine; how had he failed to notice it before, or admire it only in a perfunctory way on Tuesday night?

‘I have turned the answering machine down, we won’t even
hear
anyone if they call.’ His infectious smile didn’t get a response. ‘I got oysters,’ he said. ‘To try to make amends… They aren’t open. I don’t know how to open them, actually, but I thought you might like…’

‘To come home from eleven hours in a catering kitchen and open oysters?’ she asked.

‘No, perhaps not. Not a great idea.’

‘It’s beyond gestures now, isn’t it, Neil?’

‘What do you mean… ?’

‘We’re much too far apart, there’s nothing left. Weekends, feasts, surprises, talk, oysters… It would only be acting.’

‘It’s a bad patch, certainly… We are missing each other a lot in a way that we never did before, but I
did
say that I was perfectly willing to try for another child.’

‘That’s the one thing that has driven us further apart than anything else.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Neil, you can’t say you’ll
give
me a baby
and put up
with a baby just to shut me up.’

‘I never used any of those words, nor felt them. Don’t put things into my mouth.’

‘It’s what you were offering me as a last chance.’

‘You’re imagining it,’ he said.

‘You and I used to be able to talk about everything. It was the greatest thing in the world.’

‘We can get it back, can’t we?’ He sounded unsure of himself.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’re not serious,’ he said.

‘I am. What you want is a different kind of wife entirely. Someone who idolises you, someone who will stay at home with you and have nice dinner parties for your colleagues…’

‘I never said…’

‘No, you didn’t, and I’m not saying it’s wrong to want that, but you don’t need someone independent with a career, you need someone who will throw up everything and follow you. I’m not that person, but there are many of them out there. Sara, for example.’

‘Sara? What are you talking about?’

‘You have that ability to talk with her that you and I used to have once.’

‘Sara… you’re not suggesting?’

I’m just saying she’s very young, she hero-worships you…’

‘She’s very concerned…’

‘She’s got a crush on you, but that’s not the point, that’s not what we’re talking about.’

‘What
are
we talking about?’

‘I suppose about what we do now.’ She felt exhausted and fatigued, almost defeated. Somehow once she had said the words they seemed less frightening. It was out in the open. They were admitting that things between them were very bad indeed.

‘You still care about what I do, the work that has to be done, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do, I really do. But I think you’ve forgotten about you and me in the whole thing. We don’t talk… It’s not that we have no time, it’s just that we make no time. And much as I admire you, it seems to me that you bleed for everyone in the world and for big global problems, but you can’t see the hurts and hopes and dreams on your own doorstep.’

‘Now that’s not really fair, you
said
you supported the same things as I did, then you suddenly went off on a tangent trying to be the world’s biggest caterer. You
said
that you didn’t want children, just like me, and then you got pregnant and I was the worst monster in the world because I wasn’t suddenly delighted. Then you
said
you were sad and lonely and tired, and I said okay, let’s have another baby, and apparently that was the worst thing I ever said in my whole life. So don’t throw all the accusations at me.’

Cathy looked at him as if for the first time. He really and truly felt that she had totally misjudged him in all this. They were further apart than she had thought.

‘I don’t want a slanging match, Neil, I just said that you are so involved in everything else you don’t see what’s happening to us. There’s nothing out there that you wouldn’t fight for, but we are missing each other every step of the way.’

‘No, that’s not so, I won’t have this. I’ve done everything I can, you’re trying to put a label on me – it’s not fair to say I’m Mister Rent-a-Cause. I just won’t accept it.’

‘What will you accept then?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to accept that things are very, very bad between us.’

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ he said, shaking his head as if to get a buzzing noise out of his ears.

She sat very still and said nothing.

‘This is all a total mess. It’s brought about by us both working too hard,’ he began. ‘Cathy, don’t let us lose it, it’s up to us… you know that… If we want something we can get it. We did it before.’

She was about to say that she thought it was too late, but the words didn’t come out.

‘Listen to me, Cathy, we can start again, leave here, leave all the pressures, start all over. I’ll take the job, we can go away, put everything behind us, we’ll have space and peace to work everything out, have our baby when we want to. We can put all this unhappy year behind us.’

She looked at him open-mouthed.

‘That’s what we’ll do, they’re on to me every day to make up my mind. We’ll tell them that we’ll go. We’ll go together.’

‘Please, Neil, no, please.’

But she couldn’t stop him, he was in full flight now.

‘It’s what we’ve needed, to get out of here… People do get bogged down by things, you’re right, we have been missing each other. What with rushing between the twins and the break-in and your parents and my parents and the American wedding and the insurance and the late nights and the never having time to talk…’

‘It’s got nothing to do with all that,’ she attempted.

It has everything to do with it. Once we’re on our own far way from everything here…’

‘There is no way that…’

‘We’ve been working too hard, we haven’t given ourselves time to pause and think…’

‘No, Neil.’ Suddenly she snapped.

‘Will you stop shaking your head at me and talking like a nanny. Honestly, even my mother wasn’t as certain and definite as you are. I’m offering us the chance to save our marriage, we love each other. We fought hard to get each other, against a lot of opposition, we’re not going to throw it all away just after one bad year are we?’

She said nothing.

‘Are we? Don’t just sit there looking at me reproachfully as if I were Maud and Simon. This is serious, this is our future for God’s sake.’

‘It’s your future.’

‘I want it to be ours, I want us to do it together…’

‘But… ?’ she said.

‘But I don’t know what you want, I really don’t. If I did know what you want, I’d try to do it.’

‘I’ve always wanted the same thing,’ she said.

‘No, that’s not true, you want to be out all hours with stupid, vain, rich people making them ever more ludicrous food.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s not a life, it’s not a way to live. This was never our plan. Come away with me, come on, we can make it work.’

‘No.’

‘You’re just being stubborn, you’re making a point.’

‘Not true.’

‘We’ve been through this over and over. This is important. I am at the point that I can’t bear us to go on having these endless rows. I’ll go without you if you won’t come. I mean it. They’re on to me every day. I’ve only been stalling them for you. Now if you’re not going to come, what’s the point of stalling them any more?’

‘No point,’ she said blankly.

‘I don’t want to go without you.’

‘No, no I see that.’

‘But I will, I mean this is what I’ve always wanted. I thought it was what we had always wanted. I would turn sour, be very bitter, we’d have nothing left at all if I were to stay.’

‘You have a very good career at the Bar, you do a lot of good for a lot of people, people like Jonathan.’

‘I can do more on a bigger canvas.’

‘And you’ll go alone?’

‘Yes, if I have to. I’m going to go now, before Christmas if I can, and leave it open for you to join me.’

‘That’s a non-starter. You know that. I know that. You can’t railroad people into things.’

‘Would you ever have come with me?’ he asked.

She thought for a while.

‘I might have, but not until the business was up and running, I had paid back my debts, found someone to replace me.’

‘It mattered as much as that?’

‘Did you think it was a game?’

‘I thought it was something to show my mother you could be a person in your own right. I never thought you needed to prove that to anyone, but honestly, that’s all I thought it was.’

‘We’ll have to tell her, you know.’

‘Tell her what?’

‘That your plans have changed, that you’ll be abroad – we were going there for Christmas.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Funny, I think that’s something that’s going to stick in my throat badly, the fact that she was right all those years ago when she said I wasn’t right for you.’

‘Cathy…’

If you don’t mind I won’t stay for us both to get more upset. We can talk better in the daylight.’

‘Please don’t go,’ he begged.

‘It’s for the best,’ said Cathy Scarlet as she packed a bag and left.

She knew Tom was out with Con doing a rugby club party. There were kitchens at the club, so they would not be coming back here tonight. Before she lay down on the chintz-covered sofa, she left a message on Tom’s phone back at his flat.

‘Hope the company doesn’t mind, I’m spending a couple of nights on its sofa.’

Then she went to sleep. When she woke to get a drink of water in the night she saw that a fax had arrived. It said simply, ‘The company wishes you sweet dreams.’ She knew he would never ask her a question any more than she had ever asked him. Somehow it was very restful.

She had every sign of her overnight stay carefully removed before anyone came. And as she knew there wouldn’t be, there was no comment from Tom Feather. Once or twice he lifted a pot for her, or passed her oven gloves as if he feared she would do herself an injury.

‘Shona said that she wanted to come and have coffee this morning,’ she said. ‘James will drop by too, and it won’t take long.’

‘God, what a morning to choose, we have the heavenly help force with us today.’

‘What?’

‘Had you forgotten? A team of highly skilled polishers have a half-day from school and are heading in this direction, on the invitation of someone who is Just a Boy Who Can’t Say No.’

‘Oh, God, Simon and Maud.’ She had forgotten.

‘Doesn’t matter, the day will end sometime.’

The twins arrived early. They were wearing their oldest clothes, they said, and could do heavy work.Muttie’s wife Lizzie had given them wire scrubbing pads and old toothbrushes for getting into the crevices of things which might have legs.

‘I didn’t know what she meant, exactly,’ Simon said. ‘Like chicken carcasses or something.’

‘No, like sauce boats or the handles of things,’ Cathy explained.

‘Oh, look, you’ve got another punchbowl,’ Maud said, pleased.

‘It’s the same one, actually, look, my name is on the bottom,’ Cathy said.

‘How did you find it?’ Simon asked. ‘Was it here all the time?’

‘No, no, it made a weary journey around the place from black plastic bag to garden shed to one market stall and then another. I bought it back.’

Then she remembered the twins didn’t know of Walter’s part in the burglary. She hoped they hadn’t made the connection between the garden shed and their brother storing things there. But they were too happy and eager to start their work to notice anything at all. Cathy told them their duties, and stressed the need to keep out of people’s way in the kitchen because there was a rush on.

‘Do we have the relaxing hot drink and a scone like we had before when we came?’ Simon wondered.

‘Why not?’ Cathy said. ‘Come on, Tom, let’s take five minutes to relax with Maud and Simon.’

The four of them sat in the front room while the twins told what a success the project had been at school. Everyone loved it, and was very impressed that Cathy was their aunt. Aunt! She would not be their aunt for much longer, when she and Neil divorced. The thought hardly seemed real; she had to run it past herself again. The children chattered on.