by Freya North
Too many psychedelic drugs, Ben mused in a quick, private glance to Matt.
Good thing his hero was Django Reinhardt and not Bix Beiderbecke or Thelonious Monk, Matt thought as he raised his eyebrow to Ben.
But for the sisters, Django’s eccentricity was suddenly baffling and irritating. Throughout their lives, in spite of his quirks, he’d been utterly reliable and had ensured consistency in their lives. Now they felt conned.
‘But are you?’ Cat’s voice suddenly rang out, far stronger than Pip’s, much calmer than Fen’s. She locked eyes with Penny. ‘Is he?’
‘I am,’ said Django.
‘How long have you known?’ Cat asked.
‘I’ve always known,’ Django said.
With that, there was now nothing else to misconstrue, nothing to cling to in the faint hope of a mistake. And in the here and now, the hear and now became far too onerous for Cat. Burying her head in Ben’s chest was her only option because, just then, he was the closest she felt she had to proper, genuine family.
Penny cleared her throat, to invite all eyes back to her. She looked from Fen to Pip, gazed at the back of Cat’s head, at Ben’s hand holding it protectively against his chest, his wedding ring glinting in the sunshine. Then Penny glanced at Django. ‘He’s kinda right,’ she said. ‘I Don’t know.’ She stopped. Attempted to speak again. Stopped. ‘Nowadays there’s Prozac,’ she said, ‘and therapy. But back then, there were magic mushrooms and acid and free love. Only it wasn’t free. None of it was free or liberating. The cost was high.’
‘But why are you here?’ Pip asked.
‘You’re screwing up our lives a second time around,’ Fen cried.
Penny looked crestfallen. She hadn’t anticipated this and she certainly had not intended this. Privately, she cursed Grief for having centred her world around herself. ‘If I could try to explain?’ she asked them and continued before they could deny her. ‘Despite the fog of my screwed-up 1960s state, I met the love of my life. The love of my life. The light in my life. A beautiful man called Bob Ericsson.’ She looked around her. Their faces wouldn’t be blank if they’d known him, she thought. ‘He died, you see. He died five months ago. The light in my life went out. And I am here because suddenly I Don’t want to be hated like Juliette hates her father.’ Penny faltered. So much to explain. How could she have suddenly arrived at Fountains ice cream when there was over a quarter of a century’s details to divulge? ‘Juliette is this young woman I’ve met,’ she said, a little meekly. ‘She’s about your age, Fen, I would imagine. I Don’t actually know.’
‘Don’t you even know how old I am?’ Fen cried.
‘Oh, I know exactly how old you are,’ Penny said, her voice so hoarse it had no tone, ‘to the day. The minute. I just Don’t know how old Juliette is, precisely.’
For the sisters, details were now irrelevant. Other people’s sob stories were irrelevant. The quandary all three shared was who to feel most betrayed by. The mother who had abandoned them when they were small? Or the man who had lied to them, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout their lives? In their past, at tumultuous points in their lives, there had always been that one place to go to – home, Derbyshire, Django. Now it was the one place they wanted to run from. Their hearts were not here so how could it be home? Their hearts had been fractured into splinters and shards by the arrival of this woman saying she was their mother, and this man called Derek admitting he was Cat’s father.
‘I want to go,’ Fen told Matt.
Pip looked over at the tyre swing. ‘Zac?’ she called. He looked up. we’re going, she mouthed with an urgent beckon.
She and Fen looked at Cat, at the back of her head, Ben’s chest keeping her face from view, her hands still protecting her ears. ‘Us too,’ Ben nodded, kissing the top of his wife’s head again and again.
Where were you when you found out that Pip and Fen were only your half sisters? That your father was a man called Derek McCabe whom you’d known your whole life but was now a complete stranger?
I was listening to Ben’s heartbeat, sixty-two beats per minute. Strong and steady. Take me away from here, Ben. Quickly. Back to Clapham – That’s fine. Wherever. As long as I’m with you. Home is where my heart is. And it won’t ever be here in Derbyshire. Never again.
From standing stock still with time suspended, suddenly the emphasis was on movement, on going, on getting away and fast. There was no flouncing, no histrionics, just calm and purposeful organizing.
‘Have you had a wee?’ Pip asked Tom.
‘I’ll just change Cosima,’ said Matt.
‘It’s OK, I’ll do that,’ said Fen. ‘You pack the car.’
Finally, the sisters hugged each other and pointedly stayed beyond arm’s reach and avoided eye contact when muttering goodbye to the approximate location of Django and their mother.
How can something planned to perfection go so horribly wrong? Though the thought had conflicting relevance in terms of timescale, both Django and Penny pondered as they stood in the garden transfixed by the space made by the girls’ leaving.
‘Oh dear,’ Penny said, ‘this I did not plan. How dumb am I?’
‘Ditto,’ said Django, ‘still. Still.’ He sighed and glanced at her. ‘One can’t expect to hoick secrets one’s whole life. They’re far too cumbersome.’ He spoke for them both. She nodded and hung her head. ‘Though I’d say I’m more deluded than dumb,’ Django said. ‘I’ve spent over thirty years keeping them from hurt. How conceited I must be to have assumed I could maintain this.’
He looked at her. Penny at fifty-three. She hadn’t really changed. Physically, the years had apparently treated her relatively well but a good complexion could not mask a certain delineating sadness. And it was precisely this that he remembered, from thirty years ago; more than the colour of her eyes, the set of her mouth. Still the same sad, mixed-up girl, currently hiding behind a more weathered façade. ‘Why on earth did you come back?’
Penny looked at her sandals, looked at Django’s moccasins, made an oddly childish semicircle in the grass with her foot. ‘I Don’t really know right now.’
‘Well it can’t have been to wish me happy birthday.’ ‘No,’ Penny agreed, ‘I’d already booked my flight when I remembered your birthday and realized it was your seventy-fifth.’
‘Why come?’ Django asked. ‘Why now?’
‘Because Bob died,’ Penny shrugged, hastily blinking away tears and feigning that it was the sunlight bothering her.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ Django said, his eyes and his voice softening a little.
‘I tend to lose most things, Don’t I?’ Penny remarked. ‘But I really did try to take good care of Bob, you know.’
I’ve just lost the lot, Django thought sadly to himself.
THE M1
Junction 27
Guns N’ Roses was a very odd choice. Odd, because Ben had no idea that Cat particularly liked their music. Odd because they’d always favoured Moby for motorways. Odd because the thrash and slash of heavy rock should surely be utterly at odds with the fragile, solemn mood. Wouldn’t Cat want to listen to something more ambient, something to soothe the scorch on her soul? Obviously not. Sweet child of mine.
At first, Ben thought she was singing silently. From the corner of his eye, he assumed Cat was miming along to Axl, imitating his physiognomic contortions. But a swift glance across at her and he realized she was hyperventilating, tears streaming, her face racked in torment.
‘Oh babe,’ he said, while thinking to himself that he was driving at eighty miles an hour and wondering if he could pull over to the hard shoulder. He placed his hand on her knee. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’
‘It’s not!’ she cried. ‘Nothing’s OK. And I can’t breathe. Help me.’
‘In through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth,’ Ben chanted at her, calm but insistent. ‘Cat, breathe into that paper bag. Down there – that the bananas came in.’
�
�It has rubbish in it.’
‘Take the banana skin out. Throw it on the floor. Put the bag against your mouth and breathe into it. Come on Cat – in through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth.’
With the music hammering and Cat sucking and blowing into the bag, Ben thought it ludicrously plausible that she should look like some solvent-abusing rock chick.
‘I want to stop.’
‘Babe, I can’t stop on the hard shoulder. There’s a services in a couple of miles. In through your nose and out through your mouth.’
‘I need to stop,’ Cat gasped. ‘Stop the car.’ Ben swerved the car to the hard shoulder. He flicked on the hazard lights, unclipped his seat-belt and leant across to hold his wife. However awkward and uncomfortable the angle for him, he knew it was nothing compared to the pain she was in. There were hundreds of questions he wanted to ask but of course he refrained. There’d be time for that. Way too much time. Just now, he knew there was not much he could say at all. His job was to hold her and fill her ears with comforting hushing, place the tender kisses on her forehead and keep her freezing cold hands warm within his. He promised her, over and over again, that everything would be all right though he hadn’t the faintest idea how to fulfil such a pledge.
‘I can’t believe it. I Don’t know what happened. What does it all mean? I Don’t want anything to change. Life will never be the same again.’
No. Oh fuck no. Not the fucking police. Blue lights flashed up behind Ben’s car and an officer walked over. Ben racked his mind for explanations, excuses, lies – anything would do. He wound down his window.
‘Everything OK?’ the policeman asked, peering in to the interior of the car and politely overlooking the state of Cat’s tears-ravaged face for the time being.
‘Yes,’ said Ben, ‘fine.’
‘Your car OK, sir?’ the officer asked. ‘Broken down?’
Ben faltered. It was his wife who had broken down. Wasn’t that glaringly obvious?
‘Everything all right?’ the officer asked again, now looking directly at the sobbing, shivering heap of Cat half in Ben’s arms.
Ben didn’t know what he ought to say. ‘I. It’s. She.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s personal.’
Suddenly Cat looked up. ‘Someone died,’ she told the officer. ‘I’ve only just heard. It’s my uncle, who brought me up. He’s now dead.’
The officer spoke quietly to Ben. ‘You need to move along, sir. It is an offence to stop on the hard shoulder. There’s a services a few miles on. Take her there.’
Back on the M1, Cat continued to sob, alternating sucks on the paper bag with great soul-crushed wails while Axl Rose still blared out about bad apples and dead horses.
‘It hurts,’ she cried. ‘Christ the pain, Ben.’ ‘I know, babe, I know.’ ‘You Don’t! You can’t possibly! No one does!’
Ben thought about this. It was true. ‘I know. You’re right. I can only begin to imagine. I’m sorry. But they know,’ he said, ‘your sisters.’
‘It’s not the same, I’m nothing like them. They’re the ones who are sisters. They still have an uncle called Django.’
Ben drove on in contemplative silence, one hand on the wheel, the other on Cat’s knee. Perfectly true. The mother’s reappearance was to some extent irrelevant. Much more of a shock to discover at the age of thirty-two that your father is in fact alive and that half of each sister didn’t actually exist.
‘In through your nose, Cat, out through your mouth. Good girl. Good girl.’
‘I Don’t know who I am,’ Cat sobbed. ‘I’m not who I grew up thinking I was.’
Junction 23a
Matt’s eyes scanned a constant triangle: ahead to the motorway, sideways to Fen, to the back to Cosima and then forward to the motorway. The traffic was light and driving conditions were good. The baby was dozing contentedly – her thumb had fallen from her mouth but her sucking reflex continued regardless, her cheeks dimpling and the underside of her chin pulsating rhythmically. Fen’s gaze was directed out of the window but it was obvious she wasn’t admiring the view. She usually commented on the cooling towers near Nottingham but they’d passed them, solid and peaceful and elephantine, yet She’d said nothing. Nor had she remarked on the radio listening station outside Rugby, as she was wont to do; today the slightly alarming, sci-fi forest of antennae in the lie of the two motorways was spared Fen’s customary comparison with a Ridley Scott film set.
Every few miles, Matt had placed his hand on her knee with a supportive stroke or squeeze and asked her if she was OK. Each time, She’d reply that she didn’t know. And Matt would ask if she wanted to talk. And She’d shake her head and return her attention to the hard shoulder.
Matt scanned his triangle of interest again. The motorway and Cosima were doing as he wanted, Fen remained beyond reach. He put his hand over hers.
‘You OK, Fen? Do you want to talk?’
Don’t block it out, Fen. It’s not healthy. Don’t block me out, Fen. It’s not good for us.
‘Fen, you OK?’
‘Life will never be the same again, Matt.’
That’s what worries me, Fen, That’s what worries me most.
Junction 16
Aren’t grown-ups odd. It’s not a question, It’s a statement. We’d already been in the car for years and I was trying to ask what name I should call Django Gramps from now on. Dad gave me one of those looks with his eyebrows that told me to zip it. Then Pip suddenly starts talking about dandelions. But the thing is, she finished talking about dandelions ages ago and we are all still sitting in silence. It’s boring. Motorways are for singing and ‘I-Spy’ and playing ‘I-love-my-love-with-an-A’ all through the alphabet. I’d even secretly practised in case I had ‘q’ or ‘z’. For ‘z’ I found the name ‘Zuleika’. Imagine that! you’d change it wouldn’t you, change it to something like Zara or Zoe. Like if you were called Derek it would certainly be a good idea to change it to something like Django.
I couldn’t even join in about the dandelion – I was going to ask Pip if it was a metaphor because I thought it probably was because Miss Balcombe was teaching us about metaphors in English last week. But just as I was about to, Dad gave me another ‘zip it’ look with his eyebrows. I wonder if it is a metaphor or whether it is a simile or something. I’ll ask my mum. Anyway, Pip starts going on about how in an instant her family is suddenly scattered and flung far beyond reach. She says she and Fen and Cat were like the seed head of a dandelion, that Django was the stalk around whom they gathered and clung to. And then that woman comes along and blows them away and Pip doesn’t know where They’ll all fall but that she does know it is now impossible for them to be the same dandelion ever again. Or something like that.
‘Dad, I really really need a wee soon.’
‘Can you hang on until the next service station – about ten minutes?’
‘OK. Dad?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shall we play I-love-my-love-with-an-A?’
‘Er. Not just now.’
‘I’m bored.’
‘For goodness’ sake.’
‘It’s natural for a kid to be bored in a car – That’s why they invented games like I-Spy and I-love-my-love. And now they’ve invented cars with DVD players in the seats for the kids – so I suggest you get one of those next time.’
‘Could you please pipe down, Tom. I’m driving.’
‘Tom, I’ll play I-love-my-love with you.’
‘Well, if You’re going to do “u”, I’ll do “z” – we Don’t have to do it alphabetically, Pip. We can make it more complex.’
‘I meant you not “u”.’
‘Oh. I’ll start with “z” anyway. But can I just ask one very quick, small question first?’
‘OK.’
‘Am I still his grandsonthing-or-other?’
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘Phew. One other minute question – can I still call him Django Gramps or do I have to change it to Dere
k? I’ve been thinking about it and Derek Gramps doesn’t sound right – but I was thinking Grandpa Derek sounds all right.’
‘Tom, will you please just button it.’
‘It’s OK, Zac, It’s OK. Tom – I Don’t know. It’s very complicated and I can’t tell you anything at the moment. I’m sorry.’
‘I was just thinking that it would be as strange as having to call you Philippa all of a sudden. I mean it is your name but It’s not your name. You’re Pip. Do you see?’
‘Tom – last warning.’
‘Zac – It’s all right. Tom, listen, I need some grown-up time to come up with some answers for you.’
‘Oh. OK. The very very last thing I was just going to ask – is Cat still your sister, though?’
‘Tom!’
‘It’s OK, Zac. Of course she is, Tom. She’ll always be my sister.’
London
In previous times of crisis, the siblings had always turned to each other, and of course Django, for support and advice. In the past, there had always been an easily accepted hierarchy of need because crises had never befallen them simultaneously. They’ve always had each other to turn to, to consult. They’ve never had cause to crave attention; they’ve never had to shout to be heard. Never had to face fears alone or mop tears unaided. Long distance, middle of the night, intrusive, time-consuming, occasionally expensive, sometimes frustrating – but always there, always there. That’s what families are for. Families matter. But until now, the McCabes have never confronted family matters. Nor have their crises collided.
They have not been shaken to the core. It’s far worse – now their core has gone. Like a split atom: something previously so complete suddenly obliterated; propelling components so far flung that they are surely destined to remain beyond reach. The destruction unfathomable.
