The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  Matt looked at him and couldn’t resist giving an elaborate, if quite medical, description of the sex act.

  ‘Really?’ Jake marvelled, playing along. ‘You put your weenie where?’

  ‘In a lady’s front bottom,’ Matt joshed.

  ‘How the hell did it happen?’ Jake asked again, seriously, stroking his goatee contemplatively.

  Matt shook his head, shrugged and made a knocking-back-of-glasses motion before scratching his tufty cropped hair. ‘Oh God,’ he groaned, ‘oh Gawd. I’m late for work. Jesus.’

  Clean, dry, if crumpled clothing in the washer-dryer provided Matt with no reason to go back to his bedroom. He dressed in the kitchen, hopping around trying to wriggle crumb-soled feet into odd socks. Shoes. Shoes? Matt had a rather sizeable shoe collection. But they were all under his bed. Jake had an enviable selection himself. Distributed quite evenly around the various rooms in their flat. Matt honed in on a pair of smart loafers behind the hi-fi.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘What! My Patrick Cox? With those trousers?’

  ‘Excuse me – they’re Paul Smith, thank you.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine then.’

  ‘Cheers, mate.’

  Though Jake could barely function without being fuelled by a hefty injection of caffeine, he left the cafetière full and smelling gorgeous so he could leave the flat with Matt. He didn’t want to be alone with a sobbing girl, nustling up to his neck, pleading for comfort and affection, advice and inside information. If he answered her direct questions with direct answers, she’d cry and nustle and need comfort and affection all the more. If he didn’t, she’d believe there was still a chance to rekindle the relationship with Matt. And he couldn’t do that to Matt. Plus, quietly, he found weeping women craving affection and comfort rather difficult to resist. And how she had sobbed that day a month or so ago. And they’d ended up in bed. And all the while, deludedly, he’d told himself he was performing not just a selfless act, but a charitable one which was useful too. He was doing it for Julia. He was doing it for Matt. A good distraction. Get her off his case. Help her get over him. Proof for her that she’s attractive to other men. Bla bla. Etcetera. When he had come, however, he had come to the more fitting conclusion.

  Big mistake. Bad idea.

  The two men stopped for bagels and coffee en route to Angel tube. Nourished by the former and woken up by the latter, they chatted.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Matt, ‘why, why, why?’

  ‘I’d’ve done the same, mate,’ said Jake.

  ‘But what now?’

  ‘Dunno? Give up drinking?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Celibacy?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Find a distraction,’ Jake concluded. ‘You can’t go on the rebound with your ex-girlfriend. It defeats the object of the exercise. You need a good old zipless fuck.’ Jake was rather proud of such logic despite his hangover and juggling a bagel, a coffee and a ringing mobile phone.

  ‘Who was that?’ Matt asked, when Jake had finished the call.

  ‘Your ex-girlfriend,’ Jake said, ‘asking me if she could stay at ours. That she’d clean the flat and have dinner awaiting our return from work. Asked whether she thought you’d like her to iron all your shirts. And change your sheets.’

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ Matt moaned, losing his appetite and throwing the bagel away, the coffee too – knowing nothing could help a headache whose provenance was now not alcohol driven.

  ‘Hey, Matt,’ Jake called, as they headed for their separate platforms.

  Matt turned.

  ‘April Fool!’ Jake laughed, winking and making to pull an imaginary pistol. ‘It was just Jim on the phone. About five-a-side on Thursday.’

  ‘Wanker!’ Matt mouthed very clearly.

  I did love her. Really love her. I was madly in love with her, for a while, way back when. But it faded. I didn’t really love her at all towards the end. I guess I kept hanging on in there because I was in love with the idea of it all. That it seemed easier to stay together than to split up. On a practical and emotional level. We went through months of arguing. And then months of indifference. Which was worse?

  Matt! Pimlico station. You’re about to miss your tube stop.

  Splitting up hurt. Though it was something that, amongst the acrimony and indifference, had seemed like a good idea, it still hurt. I was afraid that the decision was wrong. It took some getting used to, but I never actually missed her. Not Julia herself. Her position in my life, yes. The familiarity of having her, yes. But her? In person? No.

  Matt! It’s a red pedestrian light and there’s a double-decker haring along Vauxhall Bridge Road towards you.

  Oh God. Last night. It happened but it can’t happen again. Shit. It happened and it can’t happen again. Jake is right. I should take a leaf out of his book. Dip in here and there. Just like he does. Dips his dick here and there. No relationship-incumbent panoply. Have a laugh. Be light-hearted. I’m twenty-nine. Thirty soon. Rebound? Sure, whatever.

  You’ve arrived at the Trust Art offices, Matt. And you’re following Fen McCabe along the corridor. You have no idea who she is. You’re too preoccupied to really notice anyway. You’re late. Not very seemly for the editor of the Trust’s bimonthly magazine, Art Matters. Don’t make a habit of it.

  FOUR

  Fen McCabe firmly believes one should trust art because art matters. Henry Holden, who died sixteen years ago aged eighty-three, founded Trust Art in 1938 specifically to enable national art institutions to acquire works of modern art by grant, bequest or gift. Since his death, the Trust has published a bi-monthly magazine, Art Matters. Fen is unsure whether this is Happy Coincidence or Fate though she has consulted her left palm and right for an answer. She thinks it has to be more than coincidence and fate that the man who founded the organization for which she now works also championed Julius Fetherstone, befriending the artist in the 1930s, buying his works and bequeathing them to British galleries. Fen feels that Henry Holden is somehow passing the baton on to her. Lucky Julius. Safe hands.

  Along with the Arts Council and the National Art Collections Fund, Trust Art ensures that works of art which may otherwise be sold overseas, are given homes in galleries and museums in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. It has stayed true to its original aim of saving modern art for the nation.

  Originally, Henry Holden was the only salaried member of staff. The other six workers were volunteers and all but one were the eyelash-fluttering sisters of his Oxford rowing fraternity; the odd one out being the mother of the cox. They were all utterly in love with Henry. All had double-barrel led surnames, flats in SW Somewhere and places ‘in the country’. Trust Art now employs fourteen people, of whom three are part-time and three are volunteers. Continuing the tradition, these three are minor aristocracy.

  Trust Art has long been housed in a clutch of rooms which are part of the labyrinthine network in Tate Britain’s back buildings. Not for them the prestigious Millbank address or approach. You cannot see the Thames from Trust Art’s offices; the view from the John Islip Street windows is of the nicely maintained mansion blocks. There’s little more than a sandwich bar and a newsagent nearby and the shops at Victoria necessitate a veritable march; consequently little more than brief window-shopping during a lunch-hour is possible. Fen is quite relieved that most her earnings will see their way into her bank account, and not be squandered on some impulsive lunch-time purchase, as Gemma’s and Abi’s invariably are.

  Fen had arrived at her new job a full quarter of an hour before her contractual start time. And that was with a delay in a tunnel just after Camden Town. There was a veritable welcome brigade awaiting her. If she analysed the palm of her left hand, she was really rather embarrassed by the fuss. Her right hand, however, said that she was quietly rather flattered. Amongst the croissants and coffee set out in the boardroom-cum-library, Fen soon realized that it was all at the whim of Rodney Beaumont, the director of Trust Art; not so much to welcome her as to i
ndulge himself. Consequently, watching him tuck into pastries and talk animatedly about anything but shop with his staff, made Fen feel much less conspicuous. And it was nice to meet the fourteen staff who, it soon occurred to Fen, were as diverse as the art the Trust was saving for the nation.

  From Fundraising, three girls with pearls, hearts of gold and hyphenated surnames provided a nice contrast with the two dowdy accountants, sweet but dull, with little interest in art but a near-obsessive passion for stretching the Trust’s funds in all directions. The sober Acquisitions team, essentially art historians rather than administrators, dressed demurely and talked art earnestly with Fen, in hushed tones and with much eye contact. The two women in Membership could double for headmistress and hockey captain and Fen found herself promising them that she’d deliver Trust Art leaflets to all the streets within walking distance of her own.

  Fen particularly liked Bobbie, the receptionist, who was clad in an extraordinary polka-dot ensemble as daring for a woman in her fifties as for an institution as seemingly staid as Trust Art. Bobbie was as categorically Cockney as Rodney Beaumont (who looked like an extra in a Merchant Ivory production of any Evelyn Waugh novel) was wholly Home Counties. He lolloped around the room like a young labrador, or an overgrown schoolboy (though he must be nearing fifty), tucking into the croissants. Fen mused that there were probably conkers and catapults and dusty pieces of chocolate in his pockets. He was affable and ingenuous and kept grinning at Fen, sticking his thumbs up or saying crikey! what goodies you are going to unearth! terrifically exciting, terrifically!

  And then a tall man, much her own age and appearing to be constructed from pipe-cleaners and drinking straws, such was his thinness, introduced himself. Sidling up to her, he ate his croissant in a silent and contemplative fashion whilst visibly assessing Fen from top to toe. After much teeth sucking and de-crumbing of fingers, he smacked his lips, held out his hand and made her acquaintance.

  ‘Otter. I’m Otter. Charmed to meet you,’ he said in a voice so camp that Fen initially thought he was putting it on.

  ‘What do you do here?’ Fen asked, wanting to stroke his hand for fear of breaking it on shaking it. ‘And why are you called Otter?’

  ‘I work in Publications,’ he said, running bony fingers through a surprisingly dense flop of sand-blond hair, ‘and I am called Otter because Gregory John Randall-Otley is a mouthful.’ He paused, licked his lips and leant in close. ‘A fucking mouthful,’ he bemoaned. ‘Anyway, what sort of a name is Fen, then?’

  Fen whispered, ‘It’s short for Fenella.’

  Suddenly, she felt utterly buoyant; as if she’d just been afforded a glimpse, via coffee and croissants and people coming to say hullo, of future fun to be had at work. Fen had been excited enough about the job itself and now she discovered, almost as an added bonus, colleagues so affable. On the face of it, backgrounds were distinctly contrary and yet (hopefully not just on the face of it) the staff of Trust Art seemed non-judgemental, genuine and unconditionally friendly. Apart from Judith St John, deputy director, whose steely exterior and somewhat cursory handshake Fen had told herself must just be an unfortunate manner, surely.

  ‘And when are you Fenella?’ asked the man called Otter. ‘Only on very special occasions?’

  ‘I am only ever Fen,’ she declared, pausing for effect, ‘unless I’m being told off.’

  Otter narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his skinny hips. ‘And are you told off often?’

  Fen feigned offence and clasped her hand to her heart. ‘The dread of being called Fenella ensures that I behave perfectly all the time.’ She kept her eyes wide whilst Otter narrowed his all the more.

  ‘It will become,’ he said, with great conviction, ‘my aim in life to make you misbehave. I shall then call you Fenella at the top of my voice and with much satisfaction,’ Otter proclaimed triumphantly. ‘Now Ed,’ he said, looking around the room, ‘Ed would have you misbehaving in no time, Fen McCabe. Where is he, the bugger? Late. Must have been misbehaving himself.’

  Fen laughed. ‘Does that mean we’re going to call him Edward or Edwyn, or whatever his full name is, very sternly all day today?’

  Otter regarded her quizzically but before he could answer, Rodney whistled piercingly through his fingers, compounding Fen’s overgrown-schoolboy theory. ‘The meet and greet is over!’ the director exclaimed with gusto good enough for a town crier, or a master of ceremonies, or a soapbox at Speaker’s Corner. ‘There is art to save for the nation – and, more to the point, no bloody croissants left!’

  The Archive room was smaller than Fen remembered from her interview, and the boxes seemed to have increased twofold. She sat down in the typist’s chair and swivelled hard, discovering that however hard she propelled herself, the chair conscientiously returned her dead in front of the computer. She ran her fingers lightly over the keyboard, as if eliciting soft notes from a piano, then rotated herself once clockwise, once anti-clockwise. She stared out of the window to the courtyard below which separated Trust Art from the Tate. The incongruous floral roller blind was half down and she gave it a tug to zap it up and let in more light. However, it unfurled with a clacketting whoosh, like a roll of wallpaper from on high, and subsequently refused to be rolled up by hand, let alone spring back by a pull at its cord. Let it hang. Switch on the light instead. A travesty on a fine April morning but better than wrestling with the blind or being held in the dark.

  Fen regarded the floor-to-ceiling metal shelving standing up valiantly under the tonnage of brown archive boxes. She felt simultaneously unnerved and excited.

  Julius is in there, somewhere. I can’t believe I’m being paid to do a job I’d gladly pay to do. Where on earth do I start? Only half the boxes are labelled and most of those are ‘Misc.’ or have question marks. Six miscs. See here: ‘1954?’, and there: ‘Symposium?’. I’ll start here: ‘Members’ gala dinner (1963) + Trip to Blenheim + Poster for Post Impressionism show + Misc. correspondence’.

  Cross-legged on the floor, having hauled the box off the shelf and been sent staggering under its weight, Fen eased the lid off and grinned at the contents as if she’d just prised open a treasure chest. She was engrossed. When the phone rang, she leapt.

  ‘Hullo?’ she said, as if the call had come through to the wrong extension.

  ‘Miss McCabe?’

  Fen was silent before she clicked that she was Miss McCabe and the call was most certainly for her.

  ‘This is Barnard Castle Museum.’

  ‘Hullo! Barnard Castle Museum!’ she greeted them with excessive delight.

  ‘Just wondering whether you’ve received our package?’

  No, she hadn’t but she assured them she’d go down to Reception to check and would call them as soon as it arrived. By the way, what is it? Oh, only photos and documents. Only? Only? Fantastic!

  ‘I’m expecting a package from Barnard Castle Museum!’ Fen announced triumphantly in Reception, where Rodney was peering with intent into the biscuit barrel.

  ‘Marvellous,’ he said, though whether this was about the Bourbon biscuit or Barnard Castle was unclear.

  ‘Not arrived yet, ducks,’ said Bobbie. Seeing Fen look a little crestfallen, Bobbie suggested a biscuit. Seeking some solace in a Jammy Dodger, Fen climbed the stairs and walked briskly back along the corridor to the Archive.

  And that was when Matt Holden was a few steps behind her. But as he had arrived so late for work, and she was eager to return to the treasure, neither noticed the other.

  ‘Have you met the new archivist?’ Otter asks Matt, an hour later.

  ‘Nope,’ Matt replies, ‘not yet. But I think it’s time for a biscuit break so I’ll go and make my acquaintance. How old is this one? The last one was older than any of the documents.’

  ‘Nah,’ says Otter nonchalantly, rather amused and starting to scheme, ‘she’s a little bit younger, this one.’

  Matt knocked and entered. Fen was sitting amidst dunes of papers and appeared too engrossed to have
heard him. He was quite surprised that she was not old enough to be his grandmother.

  She looks too young to be an archivist! Who am I to judge on what an archivist should or shouldn’t look like? And who am I to complain!

  ‘Hullo, archivist.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ Fen said, spying a large brown envelope tucked under the arm of a man she presumed to be a courier. After all, she didn’t know what the editor of Art Matters looked like. ‘Are you from Barnard Castle?’

  ‘Er,’ said the courier, looking a little perplexed, ‘no, Gloucestershire originally.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fen, nodding at the envelope, ‘isn’t that for me?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘just thought I’d say hullo.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fen, slightly taken aback by his forthrightness and wondering whether it was harassment and whether she should have Bobbie phone or fax or e-mail a complaint to his delivery company. ‘Nothing for Fen McCabe?’ she asked, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘Er, no,’ said the courier.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Fen, disappointed and now disinterested; turning from him to regard the boxes instead. ‘You probably want Fund-raising next door,’ she said with her back to him.

  ‘Do I?’ the courier asked.

  ‘Or Acquisitions,’ she continued breezily, as if she was a long-term member of staff, ‘down the corridor, before Publications.’ Then she stood on tiptoes to retrieve the box marked 1956. ‘Bugger Barnard Castle,’ she said under her breath and obviously to herself.

  The courier raised his eyebrows. At her language, at her turned back, at her neat bottom; at the fact that she was working in a room with the lights on and the blind down on a particularly fine April day. At the fact that she worked here now. But Fen didn’t notice. Not just because she had her back to him. She had lifted the lid off the box and was already enthralled by its contents.

  ‘Blimey,’ she murmured. The box had revealed an original catalogue to the Picasso–Matisse exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Matt left her to it, hearing her mutter, ‘But that was 1945, what’s it doing in 1956? Matisse was already dead,’ as he shut the Archive door.