by Freya North
Funny old Django, his attire so out of kilter amongst the flat caps, waxed jackets and sensible footwear. I mean, it’s not just the waistcoat – he’s teamed it with a Pucci neckerchief today, and truly ghastly shirt that wouldn’t look amiss on some country-and-western crooner. Jeans so battered and war-torn they’d have done Clint Eastwood proud, plus a pair of quite ghastly cowboy boots that shouldn’t see the light of day in Texas, let alone Derbyshire. And yet; Django McCabe, who came to Derbyshire via Surrey and Paris and had three small nieces from Battersea foisted upon him, is now as indigenous as the drystone walls. He fits in, in Farleymoor. Like he suited Soho when he was a jazz musician. But he fitted his life around us when we came to live with him. He’s barking mad and he’s the most important man in my life.
‘If our mother hadn’t run off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Fen said, ‘but if our dad had still had the heart attack, do you think we might have been brought up by Django anyway?’
This was a conundrum upon which each girl had mused frequently, though never in earshot of Django.
‘I would guess,’ Cat said measuredly, though she was merely giving back to Fen a theory her older sister had once given to her, ‘that the whole “cowboy-Denver-I’m-off” thing was probably a key ingredient in his heart attack.’
‘Sometimes,’ Pip reflected, ‘I feel a bit guilty for not caring in the slightest about my mother and not really remembering my father.’
‘I’ve never envied anyone with a conventional family,’ Fen remarked, ‘in fact, I felt slightly sorry for them.’
‘I used to wonder what on earth their lives were like for want of a Django,’ Pip said.
‘Me too,’ Cat agreed.
‘Do you remember when Susie Bailey hid in the old stable, made herself a kind of hide-out from Django’s old canvases?’ Fen laughed.
‘And her mum had to promise her that she’d make Django’s midnight-feast recipe of spaghetti with chocolate sauce, marshmallows and a slosh of brandy!’ Pip reminisced.
‘Do you remember friends’ houses?’ Cat said. ‘All that boring normal food? Structured stilted supper-time conversation? Designated programmes to watch on TV? Bedtime, lights out, no chatter?’
‘Django McCabe,’ Fen marvelled. ‘Do you think we’re a credit to him? Do you think we do him proud? That we are who we are, that we’re not boring old accountants?’
‘Or housewives,’ Cat interjected.
‘Or couch potatoes,’ Pip added.
‘Or socially inept,’ Cat said.
‘I’m sure he’s delighted that my career entails me being a clown called Martha rather than an executive in some horrid advertising agency,’ Pip said hopefully.
Django returned, his huge hands encircling four pint glasses. ‘Philippa McCabe,’ he boomed, ‘every night I pray to gods of all known creeds and a fair few I make up, that you will be phoning to tell me of your new position as a junior account manager on the Domestos Bleach account.’
Pip raised her glass to him.
‘And you, Catriona McCabe,’ Django continued, his eyes rolling to the ceiling, while he produced, from pockets in his waistcoat that the girls never knew existed, packets of peanuts and pork scratchings, ‘speed the day when you trade your job as a sports columnist for a career in the personnel department of a lovely company making air filters or cardboard tubing.’
Cat took a hearty sip of cider and grinned.
‘Fenella McCabe,’ Django regarded her, ‘how long must I wait before you exchange a dusty archive in the bowels of the Tate Gallery for the accounts department of a financial services company? And the three of you! The three of you! Why oh why have I been unable, as yet, to marry any of you off?’ He clutched his head in his hands, sighed and downed over half his pint.
Fen laughed. ‘Hey! I’ve only just landed this job. I’m going to spend my days with Julius!’
‘Oh Jesus,’ Cat wailed, finding solace in cider, ‘Julius.’
‘Bloody Julius,’ Pip remonstrated, chinking glasses with Cat.
‘Oh Lord, not that Fetherstone chap,’ Django exclaimed, rubbing his eyebrows, letting his head drop; a strand of his silver hair which had escaped his pony-tail dipping into his pint, ‘please, dear girl, please fall in love with a man who is at least alive.’
‘Who’s to say,’ Cat mused, ‘that while you’re waiting for the right bloke to come along, you can’t have lots of fun with all the wrong ones!’
‘Please,’ Fen remonstrated but with good humour, ‘my new job starts tomorrow.’ She regarded her two sisters and her uncle. ‘One for which I was head-hunted,’ she emphasized. She ate a peanut thoughtfully, took a sip of cider and looked out of the pub window to the moors. ‘So, my life wants for nothing at the moment.’
TWO
Julius Fetherstone (1866–1954) arrived in Paris in 1886 at the age of 20. There, he begged, bargained and all but bribed his way into the studio of Auguste Rodin, for whom he worked as a technician in return for materials and tutelage. However, though the great Master esteemed his foreign pupil, Julius was never truly accepted by the French who firmly believed, at the exclusion of all visual evidence to the contrary, that the English could no more sculpt than they could cook. When Julius returned to England for a one-man-show in 1935, the British art world looked the other way. ‘Vulgar in theme and execution’ was the The Times review in its entirety. Only 3 works were bought, all of them by Henry Holden. Holden became something of a patron to Julius until the sculptor’s death in 1954.
F.A.McCabe
Unpublished MA thesis
Fen McCabe first came across Abandon by Julius Fetherstone four days after losing her virginity at the age of eighteen. She was in Munich, on her A level Art History study trip when she found herself transfixed by a mass of bronze depicting two figures embroiled in the very moment of orgasm. To her humiliation and regret, it made her realize that the fumbling poke she had recently endured was utterly at odds with what the experience obviously should have been.
From that point on, Fen has been obsessed with the sculptor and his work. On her return from Munich, she unceremoniously dumped the virginity-taker and spent eighteen months apparently celibate. In body at least. However, the more she studied Fetherstone’s work, the more she analysed his drawing and physically handled his sculptures, the more worldly she became. She studied the fall of light on mass, the relationship between form and space. She also learnt about the tension that intertwining figures could create. She came to understand how bodies could stretch to accommodate both their own desire and that of another. She discovered how the sensation of orgasm could manifest itself in facial expression, the throw of a neck, the twist of the stomach, the flail of arms, the jut of a breast, the buck of buttocks.
She devoted both her Bachelor and Master degree theses to Fetherstone, resolutely ignoring her tutors’ advice that she stand back from the material and certainly refrain from referring to the sculptor by his Christian name.
She fantasized about being the woman in Abandon. She forsook film stars as masturbatory stimulus in favour of the image of the male in Abandon. She looked forward to the day or night when she too could enjoy a coupling commensurate with that of the bronze figures; when she would be seduced to a state of abandon by the desire for, and of, such a man. Consequently, she spurned the advances of a relatively long queue of students who all fell short of her ideal. Too puny. Or too gym-induced beefy. Too uncouth. Too affected.
In her mid-twenties, two men came close; but the reluctance of the first to commit and then Fen’s reluctance to commit to the second, rang the death knell on both. Now, at twenty-eight, Fen is single. She isn’t spending much time looking for a partner, nor is she losing sleep over the situation. After all, would a man enhance her life that much? It’s rather good as it is, in Chalk Farm, North London, where she rents a terraced house with damp and with two friends, bohemian neighbours and her two sisters nearby. Life’s busy with her new job and her bi-monthly lectures at the Courtauld and
Tate galleries, which she gives voluntarily. No time for romance and all its panoply. Yes, she recently bought a pine double bed from Camden Lock market, with a king-size duvet for added luxury. However, the wink wink nudge nudging from her housemates met with her rebuttal.
‘Hasn’t it come to your attention,’ she told them, ‘that our landlord sees fit to provide us with mattresses apparently filled with sand and gravel which, in places, congeal into concrete?’
Monday morning, the first of April. After sleeping undisturbed through the last night of March, Fen awakes and finds herself sprawled at a luxurious diagonal across her bed. With Radio 4 making her reverie all the more civilized, she cocoons herself in her duvet and stares at the window, whose frame is clearly visible through flimsy curtains. Pinch and a punch for the first of the month. What kind of idiot starts a new job on April Fool’s Day, Fen wonders as she gazes across her room?
After Thought for the Day, which Fen doesn’t think much of today, she leaves her bed and checks her reflection in the mirror.
My hair needs a wash. What do I feel like wearing? What ought I to wear? Do I dress for the weather? Or for the job?
She peers out through the curtains but soon enough she forsakes meteorological reasoning (it’s sunny and bright) for sky gazing instead. But that gets her nowhere so she goes to her cupboard and looks inside. Then she looks from the palm of her left hand to the palm of her right, as if reading one theory and then another, pros and cons; an idiosyncrasy that she knows causes friends and family much mirth and sometimes irritation, but which provides Fen with the answers she seeks. She regards her left hand.
It’s April, it’s positively spring-like. Time for my Agnès B skirt – bought in the sale and worn only once so far.
She looks at her right hand.
I’m an archivist. My office is to be a small room of dusty papers, acid-free boxes, brass paper-clips and shelving with sharp edges. There’ll be no one to see me in Agnès B.
She dons jeans.
‘I’ve hardly slept,’ Abi moans, sitting at the table-cum-storage-surface in the sitting-room-cum-dining-room, rubbing the small of her back and rolling her head cautiously from side to side, ‘bloody bloody bed.’
‘Ditto,’ Gemma says drowsily from the settee, holding a mug of hot tea, her eyes, though partially hidden by her mass of dark curls, drawn to breakfast TV with the volume off. ‘God, my head. Why do I invariably start the week as I end it – with a hangover? Why don’t I learn?’
‘I slept like a babe,’ says Fen, who has appeared at the foot of the stairs, ‘and awoke to a room spic, span and fragrant with Shake ’n’ Vac.’
Abi and Gemma regard their housemate, who looks annoyingly fresh herself both in countenance and clothing.
‘Take your halo—’ Abi starts.
‘—and shove it!’ Gemma concludes.
Fen grins and makes much of sashaying past both of them en route to the kitchen. ‘Toast?’
‘Can’t eat a thing,’ Gemma groans, ‘bloody hungover.’
‘Can’t eat a thing,’ Abi bemoans, ‘bloody on a diet.’
Fen returns with heavily buttered toast and takes a seat at the table next to Abi, balancing the plate on a pile of CDs which are themselves atop a heap of Sunday papers.
‘It’s one of life’s great injustices,’ Abi decrees, glowering at Fen’s plate, ‘that you basically have toast with your butter and you’re still slim and spot free. Bitch. I hate you.’
‘Hate you too,’ Fen says with her mouth full. The two of them sit affably and procrastinate over 14 Across in Saturday’s Guardian crossword.
‘And me,’ Gemma chips in, having been momentarily distracted by the weather girl’s quite staggering choice of lipstick, ‘I hate you.’
‘Hate you,’ Abi stresses non-specifically.
‘Hate you,’ Fen says with no malice and to no one in particular.
‘Hate hate you,’ Gemma recapitulates. And then they all laugh and sigh and say oh God, what are we like? Sigh some more and moan about Monday mornings.
‘Are we going to Snips this evening?’ Fen asks.
‘Yup. Every sixth week at six o’clock,’ Abi confirms.
‘Do you think it a bit odd,’ Gemma wonders, though her eyes are caught by TV presenters doing extraordinary things with sarongs, ‘our obsession with little rituals?’
‘It makes sense to have a communal outing to the hairdressers,’ Abi shrugs, analysing her housemates’ hair: Gemma’s ebony ringlets, Fen’s dark blonde long-top-crop. She twists pinches of her own hair, bleached and razor-cut short into pixie-like perfection. ‘It’s all about synchronization. What’s the point of spending time apart on the mundanities, when we can actually make them something of an institution?’
‘What, even the dentist?’ Gemma asks, turning away from the television, the sight of cooking in a bright studio kitchen making her decidedly queasy. ‘And leg waxing?’
‘Which reminds me,’ Abi says, stroking her calves.
‘Not yet!’ protests Gemma, for whom the pain of a leg wax is on a par with her fear of the dentist.
‘How did we manage to coincide our periods?’ Fen wonders, dabbing at toast crumbs and thinking she could do with another slice, were there another slice left to toast.
‘That’ll be the Moon Goddess,’ Abi says, very earnestly. ‘We’ll dance in her honour next time we’re on Primrose Hill.’
‘Abi,’ says Gemma, ‘you need help.’
‘I’m not going to bother to wash mine this morning then,’ says Fen.
‘Wash what?’ the other two shriek.
‘My hair – if we’re going to Snips.’ Fen fingers her locks gingerly. ‘Anyway,’ she reasons, ‘who’s going to see me in my little archive? Just a bunch of dead artists and benefactors.’
‘Are you excited?’ Abi asks, excited for her friend.
‘Nervous?’ Gemma asks, nervous for her friend.
Fen upends her right palm. ‘Nervous? Yes,’ she says. Then she upends her left palm. ‘Excited? Yes,’ she says. Then she clicks her fingers and punches the air: ‘But I get to have Julius all to myself!’
‘Bloody Julius,’ mutters Abi, when Fen has shut the front door behind her.
‘Bloody Julius,’ murmurs Gemma. ‘Fancy fancying a dead sculptor.’
Abi sighs. ‘It’s not the dead sculptor she’s obsessed with but some lump of marble he made in the shape of two people having a shag.’
‘Our Fen is way overdue a bonk,’ Gemma reasons.
‘So am I,’ Abi rues.
Gemma counts the months off on her fingers. ‘Er, and me.’
‘Maybe we should set aside some time and synchronize,’ says Abi.
THREE
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ’Tis woman’s whole existence.
Byron
Oh God. Oh Gawd. Oh Jesus. Matthew Holden has just woken up. The start to the day, to the week, could not be much worse. He has a hangover. He has a bad taste in his mouth. He’s late for work. And his ex-girlfriend is lying in bed next to him. With a contented smile on her sleeping face. He has a very bad taste in his mouth indeed. He tries closing his eyes but realizes that to stare at the ceiling, at the blooms of new paint on top of old, is far preferable to confronting all the current hassles of his life which parade around his mind’s eye as soon as his eyelids touch. Wake up. But he’s so damn tired. Wake up. Stay awake. Force eyes open. Monday. Monday. April Fool’s Day. Only this is no joke. No prank. He’s been a fool, full stop. It would be easier to just go back to sleep, slip into nothingness, to will it all to be a bad dream. However, while sleep might be a good antidote to his raging hangover, it won’t actually remedy the situation in hand or make it any less real. In fact, he’d have to wake again and do the whole oh God oh Gawd oh Jesus thing once more.
He daren’t move. Memory tells him that if he does, she’ll reach for him, claim him with encircling arms and clamping legs. Never let him go.
I wanted to get away.
The severity of his sigh is pronounced enough for her to turn to him, wrapping her limbs around him. She sighs herself. Triumphant.
Oh God. Oh Gawd. Oh Jesus no.
And then the phone starts to ring and Matt has an escape route though he knows in an instant that it is Jake’s mobile phone. He slithers from his bed and hurries through the flat, very naked.
Jake had, of course, answered his mobile phone. Jake was also late for work. But at least he was dressed. Jake just had a hangover, no ex-girlfriend in his bed. Not today. He had, in fact, bedded Matt’s ex-girlfriend. Quite recently. But never again. And not that Matt was to know. Certainly not today. Matt slumped into the armchair, placed a cushion over his dick and stuck two fingers up at Jake’s superciliously raised eyebrow. He couldn’t remember whether the clock on the mantelpiece was five minutes slow or five minutes fast. Whichever, he was categorically late. Jake had finished on the phone. He let his eyebrows soften though he refused to erase the vestiges of a smirk from his face. He sat down on the sofa. Though dressed, he placed a cushion across his crotch in a gesture of camaraderie.
‘Julia’s in my bed,’ Matt groaned, head in hands.
‘April Fool?’ Jake asked, in a vaguely hopeful way. Matt shook his head and cast his eyes to the ceiling. Only, unlike that in his bedroom, it had been replastered and repainted fairly recently and there were no hairline cracks or nuances of old against new paint to provide any welcome distraction.
Neutral nothingness.
It was realizing that I felt neutral nothingness that saw me finish a five-year relationship two months ago.
‘I could say,’ Jake mused, looking out of the window and deciding that it appeared to be spring-like enough to roll up shirtsleeves, ‘you’ve made your bed, now you must sleep in it.’
‘And my only reply would be, “I can’t, my ex-girlfriend is sprawled all over it”,’ Matt groaned.
‘How on earth did it happen?’ asked Jake.
