The Juniper Gin Joint

by Lizzie Lovell

  ‘Give her longer,’ Kev says. ‘This her first litter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The first pup of the first litter don’t always make it but we’ve still got time.’ Kev puts his hand on Betty’s tightened belly and talks gently to her.

  Then the puppy slips out like a water rat and Betty licks it vigorously to break the sack so it can breathe. Only it’s not breathing.

  In a swift, practised movement, Kev takes the poor little mite in his big hands and gives it one hard shake and I have to restrain myself from shouting at him to be careful but I hold back because gloopy stuff flies out of its mouth and there’s huge relief when we hear a whine. It’s alive!

  Kev hands the puppy over to Tom who wraps it carefully in a towel, cradling it like a baby. Which it is. Betty’s baby. Bob’s baby.

  ‘Keep it warm,’ Kev says. ‘Rub his back.’

  ‘It’s a boy?’ Tom says.

  ‘No doubt about that,’ Kev confirms.

  He’s back with Betty now, and within minutes the next one plops out no problem and now that the initial shock is over and her instincts kick in, Betty knows what to do, licking her pup with gusto. This one’s like a guinea pig, shiny and compact, eyes tight shut.

  Kev carries on with his dog whispering and over the next hour another three pups are born. Five puppies. Another boy and three girls.

  Only then Betty starts panting again and a sixth one appears, bigger than the rest, a right bruiser. A boy. Three of each.

  ‘Well done, Betty. You’re so clever,’ I tell her.

  Betty is busy washing them, one by one, and soon they are sniffing out her teats and latching on, pushing at her with paddling paws. I make us all a well-earned cuppa.

  TWO O’CLOCK IN the morning and Kev has long gone. Despite offers of lifts or the sofa to sleep on, he said he was sorted and left, a big smile on his face.

  I’ve stayed on and watched Betty and her pups, now safely moved and settled into her whelping box. All of them are feeding and she looks worn out but content.

  Tom and I have eaten beans on toast and are currently having a nightcap. He’s on single malt, me on hot chocolate. We sit side by side on the sofa, gazing in awe and wonder at Betty and her litter.

  ‘We should be drinking gin really,’ he says. ‘But I don’t have any in.’

  ‘Not long and you should be able to taste the Dingleton Gin.’

  ‘Dingleton Gin?’ Tom says, after a while, breaking the companionable silence. ‘That has a good ring to it, you know.’

  ‘Dingleton Gin? Hmm. Yes, it does. I like it. Simple. True. Effective. I’ll suggest it to the others. We’ve not got as far as thinking of the name yet.’ I finish the last of my drink and am about to call it a night when another thought strikes me. ‘What are you going to call the pups?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the pups. I suppose we should give them temporary names.’

  ‘How about gin-related ones?’

  ‘Like…?’

  ‘Well, the obvious one is Juniper.’

  ‘Good, yes. That could be a boy or a girl, I suppose.’

  ‘Yep. How about Olive?’ I suggest. ‘So many gin cocktails go with an olive garnish.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ he says. ‘And on that note how about Martin? As in Martini?’

  ‘Oh yes, definitely Martin.’

  ‘What about Denis? As in Thatcher?’

  ‘He loved his gin.’

  ‘OK, so we’re still two names short. Who else likes gin?’

  ‘The Queen?’

  ‘Queenie then.’ He counts on his fingers. Five down. One to go.

  ‘How about Quincy?’

  ‘Quincy?’

  ‘After the quinine in tonic water.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s it then. Six names. Now we just have to divvy them out.’

  We talk about this for a moment. He makes a note of the dogs, their distinguishing features. They’re a mixture of mainly white with brown or black markings. The bruiser has a black splodge over his eye like a pirate patch. Tom even weighs them, with my assistance, placing them carefully one at a time on some digital kitchen scales.

  ‘Most importantly you have to decide which one you want,’ he says, sitting next to me on the sofa again.

  ‘How am I supposed to choose when they’re all so cute?’ I protest.

  ‘First things first. Do you want a dog or a bitch?’

  ‘A dog, I think. Though I’m tempted to get Bob done after this, and the little chap too.’

  Tom crosses his legs. ‘Any idea which one? I mean, you don’t have to decide just yet. You can get to know them first.’

  ‘I guess. Though I sort of have a feeling I might go for the bruiser. Can he be Denis?’

  ‘Course.’

  Denis and Bob. A new double act. I beam at the prospect.

  THE END OF term and Lauren is coming home later today for three whole weeks of holiday. It’ll be a full house. She’ll be wanting her room back so I’ll do the decent thing and offer mine up to Harry and Dale. I can go on the sofa bed in the office. No need for a double bed just for me and Bob.

  The puppies are thriving at nearly two weeks old. Tom gives me daily pup-dates by text, with weight gains and any exciting developments. He signed off with a wide-eyed emoji the day they opened their eyes earlier this week. I have to admit I was excited at the news and popped in for half an hour once he was back from school. There they were, six pairs of eyes peering up at me when I leaned in to say hello.

  I offered to take Betty out for a quick walk to give her some space from the constant clamouring of six babies. Tom was really grateful, as was Betty. We went onto the beach and she ran around in the dusk embracing her freedom and barking at the waves. After twenty minutes, it was too dark so we headed back to the cottage and on our approach I could see Tom through the window as he was yet to draw the curtains.

  He was asleep on the sofa, sprawled heavily, surrounded by marking, vulnerable yet untroubled, and I felt the urge to kiss him. But instead I crept in like a thief in the night, deposited Betty back in the whelping box where the puppies instantly woke up as if an alarm had gone off.

  I stayed a while longer, Tom snoring gently, and once they’d finished feeding and dropped back off into their baby sleep, I scooped up Denis and gave him a cuddle, stroking his pixie, velvet ears, thinking of Mrs Pink and longing to see Lolly.

  And today she’ll be home. Mike has partially redeemed himself by volunteering to pick her up in his van so I’ve made the most of this offer and instructed him to get a Christmas tree on the way back. Lolly can choose it and that way Mike will pay, as I really don’t have enough cash to splash around this year. Meanwhile I have shopping to do, beds to make, food to cook.

  LAST CHRISTMAS WAS the worst on record. Mum gone. Harry in Canada. Mike with Melanie. A dismantled, scattered family. Dad, Lauren and I had been asked round to various people’s homes, all genuine invites, but none of us could face doing someone else’s Christmas. You have your own traditions and even though so much had changed since the previous year, we wanted to keep what precious little we had left. So we bought a real tree from a farm, somehow squashing it into my car, and Lauren retrieved the decorations from the attic – the snowmen, the angels, the baubles, the tinsel, all the tacky pieces collected over the years. And we did Christmas in honour of our family, toasting them with Dad’s sloe gin after the Queen’s speech. But the turkey was too dry, Mum’s pudding overcooked, the brandy butter curdled. We all had indigestion and went to bed after three hours of Downton Abbey.

  This year will be different. Carol will be with us for a start. She usually goes to her mum’s in Bristol but Stella has a new boyfriend who’s whizzing her off on a cruise. Carol’s actually excited to be spending Christmas with us. She’s here already, ten days ahead of time, waiting for the return of the student because not only is she Lauren’s godmother, but she’s also desperate for her opinion on the latest batch of gin. She can’t work out why this las
t one, for all its improvement in flavour, is cloudy. Dad suspects it’s the essential oils from the juniper berries.

  As I’m putting away the first of the Christmas shops, having used up this year’s Co-op dividends, the door clatters open and in she comes, my Pippi Longstocking. She has rainbow hair and a nose ring. And goodness knows what else. But I’m so happy to see her, here where she belongs, that I don’t moan or nag, I just give in to the hug, inhaling the winter cold coming off her freckled cheeks.

  ‘Hello, stranger.’

  ‘Sorry I’ve not been back before, Mum. I’ve been like, so busy.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’m glad you’ve been all right after the initial hiccup.’

  ‘Yeah, soz and all that. I’ve laid off the Jägerbombs.’

  ‘Good decision.’

  She gazes around the kitchen, taking it all in, brushing her fingertips along the table, opening the fridge door, smiling, taking out a black cherry yoghurt, shutting the door again. Then she sniffs, like Bob on a scent, and peers through the glass oven door. ‘Mince pies?’

  ‘Granddad’s finest. With a secret ingredient.’

  ‘Oh?’ She sniffs again. ‘Not gin?’

  ‘Yes, gin.’

  She squeals and rushes off to the shed, yoghurt still in hand, where she knows she’ll find Dad and Bob. She’ll be climbing the walls when she hears about Denis.

  And then there’s Mike. Standing by the kitchen door like a desolate spectre at the feast so I cave in.

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask.’

  He sits down at the table while I make a brew. I can sense his eyes taking everything in, like his daughter just now, though nothing like his daughter. She’s filled with happiness and nostalgia and gladness to be home. He’s filled with loss and regrets. What used to be his kitchen. His home. His wife. He gave all of that up the day he left.

  ‘Is it true?’ I asked him one rainy morning last year, right here, at this table, over cornflakes he’d been chasing round his bowl.

  And to give him his due, he realized what I was asking him and he answered with a simple ‘Yes’. To which I said, ‘Oh.’

  Twenty-eight years of marriage and ‘Oh’ was all I could come up with. All the questions I could’ve asked, all the accusations I could’ve thrown at him, and ‘Oh’ was my response.

  ‘Jen?’ he asks now, his hands wrapped round his mug of tea.

  ‘What?’ I’m busying myself extracting Dad’s mince pies from the oven and sliding them onto the cooling rack. Every object is loaded with emotion and memory. Every smell, every taste, every last Christmas motif.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Mike.’ It’s none of your goddam business, Mike, is what I want to say but I manoeuvre the subject away from me. ‘Did you get the tree?’

  ‘We did. Lolly chose it. Seven-foot Norway spruce. It’s on the driveway. I’ll fetch it in and trim it. Do you need me to get the stand out of the loft?’

  ‘Dale’s already done it, along with all the decs and lights. He’s a marvel.’

  ‘A marvel?’

  ‘Yes, a marvel.’

  ‘Well, then, that’s good.’

  ‘Yes, it is good. Very good.’

  He looks bereft. Left out.

  Sympathy kicks in. I sit down at the table across from him. ‘You need to get to know Dale. You need to spend time with Harry. Invite them round for tea or something.’

  ‘I suppose, yeah. Sometime over Christmas. In fact, what are you doing for Christmas?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ I tell him nonchalantly. ‘Only with the added bonus of Dale and Carol.’ And now of course I have to ask him. ‘You?’

  ‘Melanie’s parents.’ He sighs. A deep-down sigh.

  ‘Melanie’s parents? So she’s taken you back?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘And you wanted to go back to her?’

  He thinks about this for a moment, wrong-footed by the question, comes up with a defensive answer. ‘Well, you didn’t want me, did you?’

  I’m about to shout rude things at him, angry that I have been feeling pity just now, that he is trying to put this on me, when he makes a grab for my hand which I pull away and hide in my lap.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. About everything. And yes, I did.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I did want to go back to Melanie.’

  ‘Right.’ So I do what any abandoned wife would do to her estranged husband. I offer him a mince pie which he accepts with a thank-you before taking a bite that nearly blasts his head off.

  ‘Sorry, I should’ve said. They’re still hot.’ I pour him a glass of water and he sticks his tongue in it.

  He recovers pretty well and continues eating the mince pie in that slightly shocked way you do when something is flailing the skin off the roof of your mouth. Then he adds, with a subtle bit of his own nonchalance, ‘And the other Bartons.’

  ‘The other Bartons?’

  ‘Melanie’s grandparents.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘And her uncle.’

  ‘Her uncle? You mean you’re spending Christmas Day with Dave Barton?’

  He shrugs and says, ‘How did it come to this? I bloody hate Dave Barton too.’

  And I want to scream at him, Because you’ve been a bloody idiot! But I don’t. Because right now, despite the stress of Christmas looming, despite the lack of a job, and despite trying to launch a terrifyingly new venture off the ground, it dawns on me that this weird mix-up of anger and sympathy is morphing into something quite different.

  ‘Can I pop round at some point to see the kids?’ he asks.

  And that’s it. What I’m feeling is sadness. Sadness at what we’ve lost.

  ‘You’re still their dad,’ I tell him.

  Dead on cue, in troop Harry and Lauren from the shed, chattering like baby birds.

  ‘I’ve sorted it, Mum.’ Lauren’s excited. ‘You need vapour infusion for the botanicals, rather than maceration.’

  ‘In English?’

  ‘You need to put the juniper berries into a gin basket in the arm of the still so that the ethanol vapour passes through it during the distillation. That way the juniper oil won’t make the gin cloudy and the flavour should be softer.’

  ‘Right, OK, I’m with you.’

  ‘You see, Mum, ethanol draws the oils out of the cells of juniper berries, which are mainly monoterpenes and also some sesquiterpenes.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You know, like alpha-pinene. That gives a piny flavour.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And sabinene is spicy. As is caryophyllene. And limonene is citrusy, obvs. And camphene is woody. As is cadinene. And terpinene. Beta-myrcene is sort of balsamic and musty, cineole is minty.’ She takes stock of her mother, knowing full well I’m clueless as to what the heck my daughter’s talking about.

  ‘This is impressive, Lauren,’ I tell her, rustling up what enthusiasm I have. ‘I wish I could tell you I understand or that I’ll remember any of it. But I get the basket-infusion bit.’

  ‘It’s not just the way juniper is made up, Mum. It’ll be slightly different depending on what other botanicals you mix in.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘The guide from the distillery. We’ve been out a few times.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

  ‘It is nice. It’s really nice. But we’re just friends, to be clear.’

  ‘OK, all clear.’

  Lauren is sitting at the table next to her father, a cuppa in hand, helping herself to a mince pie. ‘Carol’s pretty good at all this, you know.’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘She really is.’

  ‘I am doing my bit too, you know. I’m more than a washer-upper.’

  ‘I know that, Mother,’ she says. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist. You’re the one who’s g
ot everyone on board. None of this would be happening without you.’ She’s up on her feet again, hugging me. Then she swipes a second mince pie before bounding up to her room, Bob nipping at her heels.

  ‘That told you,’ Mike says. ‘And she’s right, you know. You’re doing really well.’

  Once upon a time I’d have lapped up appreciation from him, but now it’s empty praise that I just don’t want. Luckily I don’t have to respond because Mike disappears to sort the tree.

  And now Lauren’s familiar ‘music’ is thumping. I switch on the radio in a vain attempt to drown out DJ Nobber with ‘Once in Royal David’s City’.

  David.

  An annoying image of Dave Barton floats into view. I swipe it away with the tea towel and think about Tom. A much nicer thought. But still confusing.

  I need to take matters in hand so I text Tom to ask him round for supper. One more mouth to feed won’t make any difference now, will it? He says he’s already eaten and my heart sinks. But then it lifts again when he says he’ll pop round anyway for a cuppa.

  BY THE TIME Mike has lugged in the tree, sawn off the end, pruned the lower branches, got it to stay upright in the stand, tested and positioned the lights, it’s supper time. Vegetable chilli and rice, something to warm the cockles. I cave in yet again and ask him if he wants to stay as there’s enough to go round, and he says yes, but I haven’t really thought this through because just as we’re on to the rhubarb crumble which makes Dale pull a face as he’s never tasted such a tart flavour, there’s a knock at the front door and I realize that it’s Tom.

  I leave the table quickly before anyone else bothers and let Tom in.

  ‘Can’t stay long,’ he says. ‘Don’t like to leave Betty. Thanks for going round to see her earlier, by the way. Between you and Morag next door, it seems to be working OK.’

  I lead him through to the kitchen, conscious that it might be a bit overwhelming, faced with all the family including Mike, who looks up, surprised to see a man in what used to be his kitchen, but I will not get wound up any more by his reactions, so I ignore him and pass Tom a bowl of crumble, the custard jug and a spoon. He sits down in Carol’s vacated chair as she’s headed back out with Dale to check on Violet’s progress.