Authors: Maeve Binchy
“Oh, never say that, Mrs. Walsh. There's the golden wedding, and then you might have a wedding in the family, a christening. There's always a reason for a party.”
“I doubt if we'll see our fiftieth, Ms. Feather, and we only have a son, so any wedding will be his bride's department—
if
he ever finds a bride. So let's concentrate heavily on the party in hand.”
“Indeed, and it will be a pleasure to help at such a happy occasion,” said Cathy Feather soothingly. She wondered over and over how it was that women like this often ended up with kind men and huge houses and enough money to host a party for seventy people. In several years of catering, it was a thought that had crossed her mind more than once.
Simon and Maud tried on their uniform: the shirts with
SCARLET FEATHER
on them, the smart black trousers. They were told they
must have very clean nails and Maud's hair must be tied well back. They stood and watched in the kitchen as the canapés were assembled. Over and over they repeated what each one contained.
“This is a shortcrust pastry boat with asparagus and hollandaise sauce,” Maud pronounced.
“These are choux pastry with a slice of rare beef and served with a horseradish and cream sauce,” Simon said.
“Suppose someone asks you what's in a kir royale?” Cathy asked. They looked at each other blankly.
“I'd say we'd ask the barperson,” Maud said.
“I'd say it was a mystery ingredient,” Simon said firmly.
“Wiser to
know
what it is,” Cathy suggested. “Here, look at these bottles: this is crème de cassis, and this is an inferior Champagne.”
“But we don't
tell
them it's inferior, do we?” Maud asked.
“No, indeed you do not. I think you two will be great. Tom and I will have to watch out for our own business when you get started …” The twins grinned at the compliment.
On the day of the ruby wedding, the weather was perfect. A warm day with a little breeze coming in from the sea.
“Didn't we make a wise choice all those years ago, Rosemary?” Bobby Walsh said as he gave her a ruby necklace.
“Yes, we did, Bobby.” And for once her voice was soft.
Carl was coming to take them both out for a light lunch in a smart place. These catering people seemed to know what they were doing, even though Rosemary thought that woman had a bit too much attitude. Rosemary's hairdresser was coming to the house at three o'clock. It was all going according to plan.
Other people were getting ready for the party too. Fiona and Declan were doing a fashion parade for Molly. Declan was wearing his very smart jacket, dark green and well cut. Fiona looked very chic in her
own outfit. It was a very bright orange-and-red silk dress worn with a demure black jacket. Ania had been able to make her a matching silk flower to pin on the jacket. It looked like a designer outfit.
“The shoes will crucify me, but it'll be worth it,” she said.
“Why not wear ones you're more comfortable in?” Declan suggested, but his mother and girlfriend didn't even dignify this with an answer.
Then their taxi arrived and they set off to pick up Ania. She had said she would be standing on the corner of her street.
When the taxi drove around the corner they saw a little crowd. Johnny was there; a priest, whom they had met briefly, was part of the group; Ania's friend Lidia and Tim. She was getting a great send off.
She looked stunning with her shiny black hair, her dancing eyes and the red dress, which fitted her like a glove. The long pink lacy sleeves looked as if they were part of a high-fashion statement. This girl shouldn't be scrubbing floors, Fiona thought, she was so talented.
Please
let it be a good night for her. Let the awful Rosemary not say anything unforgivable.
Nick and Linda were going to be on a radio talk show on the night of the Walshes’ party. Clara had invited Hilary to supper. Since the young lovers would be safely in the radio studio, the women could afford to have an evening together without arousing any suspicion.
They tuned the radio to the right station and Clara grilled them some salmon and served it with green beans.
“Lord, wouldn't Lavender be proud of us,” Hilary said.
“Yes, she would, until she saw the rum babas in the fridge for dessert,” Clara agreed. They were on the coffee stage when their children came on air in a discussion about great jazz classics. They talked easily and unaffectedly, sharing their enthusiasms and firing people up to go to jazz clubs and visit record stores.
Linda spoke easily about the live performances on Thursday
nights, and mentioned that Nick would be playing some evergreens at the store next week.
“That's cozy,” the interviewer said. “Is that how you two met?”
“We would always have met,” Nick said with certainty.
Clara and Hilary looked at each other in shock. They would have met anyway? Like hell they would.
But again the two women vowed that they would never reveal their secret.
That night, as Brian Flynn, Johnny, Tim and Lidia waved Ania off in her finery to the party, they knew that one of them would suggest a pint. It turned out to be the priest.
“I have something which needs to be sorted,” he said.
They followed him willingly into Corrigans.
“What's the problem?” Tim asked.
“I am. I am always the problem.” Brian Flynn was gloomy.
“Go on out of that, Brian. You're usually the solution rather than the cause.” Johnny was strong in defense of his friend.
“Not this time. I was so thrilled with the notion of having weddings to pay for the center, I went at it like a bull, but there are all sorts of problems. You need a license for this and a permit for that and Health and Safety. The whole thing is a nightmare. There's people leaping out of the woodwork shouting ‘no way’ before you even get to first base.”
He looked like an injured bloodhound as he gripped his glass, lines of disappointment etched into his face.
“Can't you rent it out privately? Wouldn't that get round it?” Tim was trying to help.
“No, there's a book full of rules about that, and a heavy shadow of insurance looming over it all. We couldn't ask people in to have their wedding if we weren't insured.”
“Remember your friend James, the calm person?” Lidia asked. “When we had that other problem he was terrific. He brought out a pad of paper and put down all the possibilities.”
“We could do that, I suppose,” Johnny suggested.
“We're not good at it. We get distracted,” Tim said.
Brian took out his mobile phone.
“James, I know life would be easier for you if I quit the Church entirely, but we'd love you to come and have a pint and help us see things clearly.”
“Another stalker?” James asked.
“No, nothing like that, but we need the cool approach.”
“Usual pub?”
“Yeah, at the back.”
“I'll be there in thirty minutes,” said James.
“Let's raise a toast to Ania,” Lidia said.
“She'll be fine,” said Johnny, who couldn't understand why Ania was getting dressed up and braving the horrific Rosemary Walsh in her lair.
The first people they saw when they went into the party were Simon and Maud, immaculate in their Scarlet Feather uniforms and holding trays of canapés.
Maud stepped forward as if she had never met Declan and Fiona in her life. “Might I offer you a quail's egg? There's a little celery salt for dipping.”
“Or perhaps some artichoke heart with a cheese sauce?” Simon added.
Fiona wanted to laugh out loud, but she knew they all had to play roles.
“Thank you so much. It all looks quite superb,” Fiona said, but she managed a wink and a thumbs-up sign as well.
“Isn't this an enormous house?” Ania whispered to her.
“Far too big for the three of them,” Fiona said.
“But it's their family home.” Ania was defending Carl's family. She was clutching the beautifully wrapped gift of a little red glass jam dish. A perfect gift for the occasion.
Fiona hoped that Rosemary would be gracious and thank her
properly, but hadn't much hope. She had tried to persuade Ania to leave her gift in the front room with the other parcels, but no, she was determined to hand it over herself. “This place is so unsuitable. It's full of stairs and steps. Bobby needs somewhere flat, for heaven's sake,” she couldn't help observing.
“Maybe one day,” Ania said.
“Lady Rosemary leave this palace? Never. Come on, Ania, let's explore.”
“I don't like to push myself forward.”
“Have one of those quail's eggs, Ania. It will be a long time before any of us sees those again. Then we'll go out onto the balcony and look at the view.”
Declan was talking about rugby to a man in a corner and seemed well settled in. Carl was on the other side of the room. He waved to them but implied that he was stuck where he was for a while. Fiona gently guided Ania out onto the broad balcony, where patio heaters dealt with the evening breeze coming up from the huge bay below them.
Groups of middle-aged, well-dressed, highly vocal people were pointing in wonder at the various landmarks they could see. That was the church, that was the town center. The harbor was around the corner where there was a luxury liner moored in the bay. What a place to live. Rosemary Walsh's heart must have been gladdened by all the admiration and envy.
“Look at those apartments over there. I do their window boxes,” Ania said. “I go there with Mr. Chen, and last week we put in lots of bedding plants. I can almost see them from here. I must tell him.”
Everyone else was wondering how much the Walsh house was worth and whether they would get planning permission to build a block of apartments in their grounds, but Ania was pointing proudly to her work, tending window boxes.
Fiona saw Rosemary was moving toward them.
Suddenly Fiona wanted to be miles from here. She couldn't bear to see this woman talking down to Ania, dismissing her beautiful dress, barely thanking her for the little red glass jam dish.
Fiona slipped quietly away. Ania was happy to look out at the view. Imagine, Carl had grown up here and known this all his life.
Rosemary hadn't recognized the girl in the striking designer dress standing in the sunset on the balcony. She must be somebody's daughter. She approached and realized it was Ania. She looked at her, dumbfounded. This was the Polish maid from the clinic.
“Ah, Mrs. Walsh, may you and Bobby have many returns of this day. I have brought you a little ruby wedding present.”
Rosemary steadied herself from the shock by holding on to a small table.
“I hope it will be useful to you.” Ania's face did not reveal that she had spent a week's earnings on this gift.
“How good of you to come, Ania,” she said in a slightly choked voice.
Ania saw, with disappointment, that she had taken the gift, then put it down on the table and showed no sign of opening it. Possibly Fiona had been right: she should have left it with the other presents in the front room.
“What a beautiful house you have, Mrs. Walsh.”
“Thank you, yes. Well, it was very good of you to come. You're a very helpful girl, they all tell me.”
“That's nice to hear!” Ania felt her face go pink with pleasure.
“So I suggest you give them a hand in the kitchen,” Rosemary Walsh said.
“The kitchen?” Ania was startled.
“Yes, out that way, towards the back.” Mrs. Walsh was shepherding her out.
Ania didn't want to leave the little glass dish on the table. “Your present, Mrs. Walsh?” she said, trying to reach for it.
“Go on, dear, don't keep them waiting. They're dying for some help.”
“Help?” Ania was bewildered.
“Washing-up, dear. Hurry now.”
This couldn't be right. She had a printed invitation. Nobody
could have thought she was coming to do the washing-up. Is this what Carl had meant when he said that naturally she would be at his parents’ party? That he couldn't do it without her? He had meant she would be working in the kitchen?
She felt she had no choice but to do as she was told.
There was nobody in the kitchen. The waiters were all out serving the buffet. Some glasses had been brought back and the colored plates and trays that had held the canapés were on the table.
Sadly Ania filled a sink with soapy water and began to wash the glasses. She was polishing them by the time a tall young woman came in.
“Hi, I'm Cathy” she said. “Who are you?”
“I'm Ania,” she said in a low voice.
“And what are you doing washing the dishes?”
“I am helping you.”
“No, no. We stack all these in racks and put them into our van. They get washed back at base.”
“But Mrs. Walsh said—”
“Mrs. Walsh is a horse's ass!” Cathy said.
“A what?”
“It doesn't matter.”
Just then a tall, handsome man came into the kitchen. Cathy spoke to him. She sounded very angry.
“Tom, this is Ania. That cow sent her in here to do the washing-up.”
Ania was upset to have caused all this trouble. “You see, I thought I was a guest but actually I was the help,” she said.
Tom and Cathy exchanged looks.
“We'll get you back into that room at once!” Cathy said.
“No,
please, please
don't upset Mrs. Walsh any more. I have already annoyed her by coming here. Her son invited me and I must have misunderstood.”
“Where's the son? I'll find him.” Tom was all action.
“I beg you not to,” Ania said. “Really, I am begging you on my knees. It would make everything so much worse. Just let me stay
here. I can put the plates into the racks if you show me.” She was holding Cathy's arm as she spoke.
“But her son? Your friend?” Cathy said.
“… would think I am even more stupid than I am. I am happy to help here and then I will go away.”
Her beautiful lace sleeves were all wet and soapy from the washing-up.
“This is all wrong,” Tom said.
“Sometimes that's the way things are. All wrong,” Ania said.
Tom and Cathy were supervising the lobster and salmon buffet and preparing to wheel it into the main room. The twins were carrying the trays round. The bar waiter was opening two kinds of wine and the waitress was laying out the plates and cutlery.