The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  ‘You know, I always thought you were ugly and nothing but,’ she says. ‘I mean, my cooker may be ugly but I like it. But you, you I never liked. If I’d had my way I’d’ve sent you back just as soon as you arrived.’ She looks out of the window. More snow. ‘Think what I could’ve had here without you taking up all the space. You’re the ugliest chair in the world. With some things, you can appreciate that form simply follows function. My summer sandals for example. If they were pretty I’ll bet you they wouldn’t be comfortable. But look at you – You’re ugly and you don’t even look like you’d be comfortable.’

  There’s someone at the door. A rattle of friendly knocks followed by a ring of the bell.

  ‘Penny? Penny honey – you home?’

  It’s Marcia and She’s gonna let herself in anyway.

  ‘Pen? It’s me. I’ve brought soup. Snow’s said to be bad tomorrow. You in here?’

  ‘In here,’ Penny’s voice filters through to the kitchen where Marcia has put the soup on the stove. She goes through to the sitting-room to find Penny.

  ‘Hey you.’

  ‘Hullo, Marcia.’

  ‘You sitting in the dark on the coffee table for a reason? You want me to get some lights on in here?’

  ‘Sure. I didn’t see It’s gotten dark. I’ve been sitting here, Lord knows how long, cussing Bob’s chair.’

  ‘Cussing Bob’s chair,’ Marcia says sagely. ‘Well, you never did like that thing.’

  ‘If the first sign of madness is talking to oneself, then talking to a chair must make me insane. But hell, It’s ugly.’

  ‘Ah – but is it comfortable?’

  Suddenly Penny finds She’s laughing again. Marcia seems taken aback. ‘You know something, I don’t know! I never even sat on it! I never tried!’

  Marcia’s eyebrows, tweezered into supercilious arches, shoot heavenwards. ‘In thirty years, you never sat on it once?’

  ‘Not once.’

  The notion is simultaneously idiotic and rather amazing. ‘Was that out of pure stubbornness?’

  ‘A little,’ Penny smiles forlornly, ‘but then you see, Bob was usually sitting there himself.’

  Marcia sits down alongside Penny and places a hand gently on her arm. They gaze over to the chair, both trying to privately conjure Bob – any image of him, at any point over the years – sitting in his chair. Marcia finds she can do so with ease; for Penny It’s impossible.

  When is his face going to come back to me? Why can’t I remember how tall he was? Which way did he position his legs when he sat in that chair?

  ‘Did you ever see Bob sit anyplace other?’ Penny remarks wistfully.

  ‘You know what,’ Marcia marvels gently, ‘no I did not.’

  ‘For thirty years I’ve been complaining about it – I told Bob over and again that it was a clumpy, ugly thing, out of keeping with all our other furniture. But he wouldn’t consider looking at an alternative. He’d sit there, relaxed as you like, while I cussed.’ Penny gives just a little laugh. ‘I can throw it out now,’ she says, with dull triumph, ‘I can dump it outside. I can have it chopped up for the fire.’

  ‘Oh don’t chop it up, my dear,’ Marcia takes Penny at her word. ‘Perhaps the refuge – they might find a good home for it?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ says Penny. Then she frowns. ‘You know something, crazy as it sounds, I couldn’t bear to. All these years I’ve been hating it. But just now, this instant, I love it. It’s just where It’s always been. And here it shall stay. I’ll give it a good home – right here. How insane is that?’

  ‘Honey, are you doing OK?’ Marcia asks tenderly, giving Penny’s arm a squeeze of wordless sympathy and concern.

  ‘No. I’m not,’ Penny states confidently, sucking in her bottom lip so hard her face looks turtle-like and inappropriately comic.

  ‘It’s been less than a month,’ Marcia almost doesn’t want to remind her.

  ‘Twenty-four days,’ Penny shrugs.

  ‘Honey,’ Marcia tries to soothe though she feels impotent in the presence of such pain.

  ‘What am I going to do without him?’ Penny asks. ‘What else do I have?’

  Suddenly, Marcia is acutely aware of the fact that her own husband is just fine. Just down the street and just fine. It’s almost embarrassing. She feels guilty. And She’s horribly aware that next week, she’ll be swanning off to their winter home in Florida. ‘Why don’t we all go to Boca for the winter?’ she says. ‘I mean, Mickey and I are planning to leave next week but there’s so much room for you too. Oh say you’ll come. Stay as long as you fancy. I’d love it. It would be good, Penny.’

  ‘I’ll be fine here,’ Penny says, surprising herself at how decisive she sounds. ‘This is my home.’

  ‘You know you can just call whenever? Come whenever?’ Marcia says. She looks out of the window. ‘I’d better go – It’s snowing hard now. You eat that soup. I’ll call you later. I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘Thanks for stopping by,’ Penny says and She’s ready for Marcia to go. She wants to be on her own, free to grieve, free to drift into a space where just perhaps she might feel Bob still. A semi-dreamland.

  She listens to the muffled sound of Marcia’s car driving through the fresh snow and away. She turns the lights out in the sitting-room and stands in the darkness quietly. The snow sends silver glances into the room. The moonlight silhouettes the hills as a lumbering but benign presence. Penny wishes she hadn’t rubbished clairvoyance and the concept of the Spirit. Because just say it is for real, say it really does exist – has she jinxed herself by being a cynic most of her life? Are you there? Can I sense you? Is that you I can hear? How was your day, honey? Can I fix you a drink? You sit yourself down in your chair. That goddam ugly chair. Let me fetch you a Scotch. Then you can tell me about your day.

  ‘I never even sat in that chair.’

  Penny goes to it and sits down. She has no idea whether the chair is comfortable or not. It is as close as she can now get to being with Bob again. She sleeps.

  HOME FROM HOME

  Cat sat at the table, in the furnished flat she and Ben were renting, tracing a pattern someone else had gouged into the wood at some point. Some previous tenant with little respect, she assumed with distaste. As she ran her finger over it, she considered perhaps it wasn’t wilful carving, it might even be as old as the table – a slip of the original carpenter’s chisel? It was a nice piece of old farmhouse pine. Ben watched Cat work her middle finger along the furrow as if she was gouging it anew.

  ‘Are you OK, babe?’ he asked, looking from one tub of fresh pasta sauce to another. He held them to Cat for final selection.

  ‘Arabiata,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Liar,’ said Ben. ‘What’s up?’ He left the sauce to simmer and sat, cowboy style, astride the chair next to Cat. He brought his face to the level of hers. Cat looked at him, stuck out her bottom lip in an over-exaggerated pout that she knew would invite a kiss, and shrugged.

  ‘How are your sisters?’ he asked. ‘How’s Django? Everything was all right up there, wasn’t it?’

  ‘God, fine,’ Cat assured him. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that It’s all changed a little since we’ve been gone. I suppose I was expecting to find my life, my family, just as I left them. As if they’d been happily freeze-framed in anticipation of my return.’

  ‘And?’ Ben said.

  ‘Now Django’s going to be seventy-five,’ Cat said quietly.

  ‘You staying in the UK the last four years couldn’t have prevented that,’ Ben pointed out.

  ‘And Pip is more sensible than she used to be,’ Cat bemoaned. ‘By that I mean She’s all settled and content with her grown-up role as a school-run stepmum.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ben asked. ‘And aren’t you settled and content?’

  ‘Of course I am, you know I am,’ said Cat. ‘But Pip’s the one who should be doing cartwheels down the hallway, who makes teaspoons disappear and then reappear from behind my ear. She
didn’t do one handstand against the wall this weekend.’

  ‘It was the weekend. She was off duty,’ Ben pointed out. ‘It’s normal for people to not want to take their work home with them. Imagine if I came home with my stethoscope, or took the blood pressure of any visitors to our house.’

  ‘But we don’t own a house,’ Cat mumbled, ‘just this horrid rented flat.’

  ‘Cat!’ Ben remonstrated. ‘We’ve been back in the UK two bloody minutes.’

  Cat ignored him by changing the subject. ‘Fen is in the throes of this immense love affair with her baby and she can talk of nothing else.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ben asked. Cat shrugged.

  She wasn’t prepared to say out loud that though her niece was utterly adorable, she had found Fen uptight, boring even.

  ‘They’re not who they were,’ Cat said. ‘Their identities have changed.’ She could hear the plaintive edge to her voice.

  ‘That’s par for the course – growing up, growing old,’ Ben said, though he saw his wife flinch from his cheeriness. ‘Anyway, they probably find you different too. But That’s no bad thing.’

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ Cat said, irritated. ‘I don’t like other people’s furniture. I don’t like stupid Clapham. I want to be in our own place, with our stuff. Perhaps we should have rented unfurnished. Perhaps we should have stayed in the US. It’s all going to take ages.’

  Ben looked at her, suddenly serious. ‘Nothing’s going to happen overnight,’ he said. ‘it’ll take a while to attain Pip’s peace of mind and Fen’s healthy baby. Nine months at the very least.’

  Cat thought for a moment. Perhaps that was it – perhaps she didn’t resent her sisters their changes, perhaps she aspired to what they had. Or there again maybe it was just jet lag.

  ‘I’ll tell you what was peculiar,’ she said. ‘Fen talked about how being a mother had made her really think about our own mother. It had me thinking too.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But say. Just say.’ She looked imploringly at Ben, as if he might know what without her having to just say.

  ‘Just say what?’ he asked.

  Cat paused. ‘Just say It’s hereditary?’ ‘But you just said that Fen is a caring mother to the point of being obsessed,’ Ben said carefully.

  Cat glanced at him shyly. She shook her head. ‘I don’t mean Fen. Say it runs in the family. Say I’ll be a crap mother? Maybe I should concentrate on my career for the time being.’

  Ben thought for a moment, scratched his neck. ‘Actually, genetics rarely play a part in such extreme behaviour,’ he said. ‘For all you know, your mother sucks in her bottom lip – like you do – and That’s the only family trait you’ve inherited from her. Think of Fen – mother superior, however much she might irritate you. Think of Pip – her maternal connection with Tom is great and there’s no blood there. You McCabe girls are all destined to be extraordinary mothers – by virtue of the fact that your own set such a poor example.’

  He watched Cat start to thaw. He ruffled her hair and she ruffled his. Then they put their foreheads together for a moment.

  ‘Being a mother is a state of mind, a condition of the heart, as much as it is biological,’ Ben said. ‘Christ, look at Django – He’s the best mother you girls could have wished for. Stop worrying, Cat. You’ll be a star.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Cat asked, a little bashful but privately delighted.

  ‘I do,’ said Ben, ‘but we have to get you pregnant first.’

  Cat propped her head, chin in her hand, and looked over to Ben. ‘It’s what I love about you,’ she said in an intentionally dreamy tone, ‘that you know me inside out but I never feel I’m getting on your nerves. You love me in spite of my foibles. You’re so tolerant. That’s what I so love about you – that you so love me.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Ben joshed, getting up and checking his pager, ‘you make me sound a wuss. And anyway, I thought you loved me for my enormous dick.’

  ‘I cannot believe that I’m going to spend my Saturday traipsing around Alexandra Palace at a convention of model railway nutters and their train sets!’ Pip declared, only half joking, surveying the hall and its eccentric population.

  Zac raised his eyebrows. ‘Firstly, It’s the Thames and District Society of Model Engineers. Secondly, if it wasn’t for me, you’d have to spend every Saturday dressed ridiculously trying to entertain roomloads of sugar-crazed party children.’

  Pip fanned out her fingers in front of her sulky expression, then furled them away to reveal a winsome look with much batting of doe eyes. Zac crossed his arms and regarded her sternly. She fanned and then furled her fingers once more, reinstating a natural grin to her face.

  ‘Thirdly,’ Zac continued, ‘we haven’t had Tom for two weekends in a row.’

  Pip nodded. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’m only joking.’

  ‘Look at him,’ Zac said softly, noting that his son had teamed up with a new-found posse of young rail boffins, ‘He’s in his element.’

  Tom was a thoughtful child; not shy, popular at school, but thoughtful. Zac had a theory that boys were divided into two camps: football and fantasy. His nine-year-old son was firmly in the fantasy camp. It wasn’t that the restrictions of his eczema ruled out football, it was that Tom’s natural interests were dominated by trains and dinosaurs. My son the trainspotter who knows his connector rods from his couplings, Zac would say with pride. My son who could spell pterodactyl before he could spell his own name, Zac would beam.

  Watching an animated Tom admiring the array of essential pieces of kit and name-dropping each model engine from at least fifty paces with his new pals, Pip was consumed by a totally unexpected pang. It was like an electric shock and she jolted physically.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Zac asked.

  Pip nodded earnestly and went off at a tangent to dislodge the thought. ‘Django called us lot the “nit-pickin’ chicks” last weekend.’

  ‘That’s a fine Djangoism if ever I heard one,’ Zac laughed, strolling on to the next stand.

  ‘He hasn’t called us that for ages. Mind you, It’s been a while since the three of us sat like that,’ Pip said wistfully. ‘We always used to, when we were little – gravitate into a huddle, play with each other’s hair, trace patterns on each other’s clothes, tickle each other’s forearms. We do it absent-mindedly.’

  ‘Nit-pickin’ chicks,’ Zac mused. ‘I’d’ve called you a bunch of monkeys, I think. Did you ever actually have nits?’

  Pip laughed. ‘I do remember that we all had them at the same time – some epidemic at school. But of course Django couldn’t be doing with those torture combs and vile chemical shampoos so he doused our hair in some bizarre concoction of mustard powder and bicarbonate of soda. Or something. Tabasco. I don’t know.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘The daft thing is, I can’t remember,’ Pip laughed. ‘I can only remember feeling slightly miffed that not even a case of head lice was going to make Django conform to conventional methods. I do remember the three of us having pretty short haircuts soon after. Django appeased us by saying our hair was so glorious that He’d been able to sell the offcuts to a master upholsterer in London and we would each be paid £5. We believed him. Even though the salon junior was sweeping it all away.’

  ‘And you were £5 richer?’

  ‘We were,’ Pip laughed, ‘though of course, Django made a rod for his back because we expected payment for every haircut thereafter.’

  ‘You must have done well, between the master upholsterer and the tooth fairy,’ Zac said.

  ‘The tooth fairy never paid cash,’ Pip bemoaned.

  ‘Can I have some money?’ a flushed and rather breathless Tom jogged over to ask. ‘I’d like to buy the guys a juice. They’re 50p each. I need about £2.’

  Pip looked over to where the other three boys were loitering by a spectacular G Scale display. ‘They seem nice,’ she said, ‘nice guys.’

  ‘They are,’ said Tom proudly. ‘They
’re coming again tomorrow. It’s the last day of the show. There’s a prize draw. A model of Lampton Tank. Can we come again too?’

  ‘Sure,’ Zac told Tom, and Pip took a deep breath. Hadn’t they planned to take Tom to Tate Modern and then have lunch with Cat and Ben? Yes, father and son hadn’t had a whole weekend together for three weeks but Tom had met Cat only a handful of times over the last four years. However, watching Tom belt off to buy refreshments for his steam gang, Pip let her breath and the objection go. He was a sweet, sweet boy.

  Again, the pang confronted Pip and she shuddered. Zac sensed it. ‘Pip?’

  ‘Do you think Tom minds?’ she asked Zac. ‘I mean, do you think he ever minds being an only child?’

  Zac looked at Pip and frowned into thought. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said at length, ‘I mean, He’s never mentioned it. He has plenty of pals and He’s thick as thieves with his first cousin.’

  ‘I know,’ Pip rushed, ‘I just meant. I was just thinking about my sisters. Our closeness. I read a lovely saying the other day – Vietnamese, I think. Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet.’

  Zac kissed Pip. ‘Well, worry no more,’ he said, ‘because Tom isn’t to be an only child for much longer. I mean, he may be our only child, but He’s soon to have a sibling. June is pregnant. She told me this morning when I picked Tom up. He doesn’t know yet – June wants to wait till the tests are all-clear. Rob asked me if we’d mind having Tom an extra night now and then while June is feeling ropy.’