by Freya North
‘I could look in on Cosima for you while I check,’ Pip suggested to Fen.
‘No,’ said Fen decisively, ‘I'll go. I'll do both.’
‘The meal is organic,’ Django told her, ‘mostly. Shall I purée a little for Cosima for tomorrow?’
‘No, thanks,’ Fen said, hoping she hid her alarm.
‘The sauce is relatively orange,’ Django elaborated.
‘That'll be the Tabasco,’ Fen said, ‘which isn't really appropriate for a six-month-old baby.’
‘It's never too early to prepare the palate,’ Django said.
Despite the size of the scones, the aromas from the pots and pans were too tantalizing to resist and appetites magically expanded to meet the quality and quantity of food prepared. Though the menu was predictably unorthodox and though they started with dessert because Django didn't want to risk the lemon-and-rum soufflé collapsing, traditional manners had always been proudly upheld in the McCabe household. Don't hold your knife like a pencil, elbows off the table, don't talk with your mouth full. Between courses, after polite dabbing with napkins, news and plans were discussed.
‘A toast to absent menfolk,’ Django said, charging his glass, ‘to the accountant, the publisher, the doctor.’ He took a sip. ‘There was plenty of food for them, you know, even if you lot want second helpings.’
‘But we didn't actually want them here,’ Pip said as if revealing a secret. ‘We wanted you to ourselves.’
‘And Ben's mum wanted him to herself,’ Cat reasoned.
‘Next time you come, you bring your boys,’ Django said. ‘This stew will be good for days – You're all to take a tub home.’ He topped up his glass again. ‘Well, another toast. To the clown.’ Everyone chinked Pip's glass. Django cleared his throat: ‘To the art historian.’ They raised their glasses to Fen. And then they all looked at Cat. ‘What shall we toast you as?’ Django asked her. ‘Sports journalist? Redhead?’
Cat looked concerned. ‘I'm not sure.’
‘But you so love the cycling world,’ Pip said, ‘and you had such respect as one of the few female reporters.’
‘And You're married to the doctor of one of the world's top cycling teams,’ Fen said.
‘Ex-team doctor,’ Cat pointed out.
‘No more gallivanting around the globe with that circus of Lycra and bicycles then?’ asked Django.
‘No,’ Cat laughed though she looked a little forlorn. ‘I've fallen out of love.’ Pip and Fen jerked with concern. ‘With the sport,’ Cat clarified. ‘So has Ben. Too many drugs, too much cheating.’
‘So, what'll you do?’ Pip asked again.
‘I'm not sure – maybe write more widely. Maybe not just yet.’
‘And are you back for good?’ Django asked. ‘Or is this a pit stop?’
‘This is home. This is where we want to start a family. Maybe I'll take a leaf out of Fen's book – and yours, Django – and make motherhood my career.’
‘No finer, more noble job than that,’ Django said, ‘mark my words.’
‘You forgot to add knackering,’ Fen laughed. ‘Academia was a breeze in comparison. Not that I have any desire to go back to it.’
‘But You're so talented,’ said Cat, ‘you've had stuff published. You've lectured at the Tate. You're the authority on the sculpture of Julius Fetherstone. You have all those hard-earned letters after your name.’
‘Art is still my great love – just because I choose not to work in that field doesn't negate that,’ Fen shrugged and continued more defensively. ‘I've gone for a change of career. Raising my baby is just as challenging, as stimulating – and far more time-consuming.’
‘I suppose I'll have to see which comes first – a blue line on the dipstick, or a job offer,’ said Cat.
‘I'd like to propose a toast,’ said Pip, ‘to my sisters, to our Django. To family.’
Django makes his announcement over strong Turkish coffee and enormous petits fours. He clears his throat and asks for silence, please, ladies.
‘No doubt my impending milestone birthday has been the cause for much speculation – and I hope you haven't already planned a surprise party.’
‘You're not going on a retreat are you?’ Cat asks.
‘On my seventy-fifth birthday?’ Django objects. ‘Good Lord no. I have no intention of retreating anywhere. Quite the opposite. They'll be coming out of the woodwork, far and wide, because I'm going to throw a party.’
‘Here?’
‘Of course here,’ Django says, ‘a huge rollicking knees-up that will rewrite the significance of May 16th in history. I'm going to have a party That'll be totally, eye-openingly unsuitable for someone of such an age.’
Cat, Fen and Pip gawp at him.
‘You're all invited,’ he assures them earnestly, ‘along with anyone who thinks they might ever have known me.’
The Rag and Thistle
Early the following evening, Django placed his hands on Fen's shoulders. ‘Do it for me,’ he said quietly.
‘It's only the Rag and Thistle,’ said Pip, ‘It's only down the road.’
‘And It's my welcome-home weekend,’ Cat protested.
‘I don't feel like it,’ Fen said.
‘Your sisters request your company and I'd like to have my granddaughter all to myself,’ Django said but he could see that he hadn't dented her defence. ‘You do have faith in my abilities, don't you? Did I not bring up you three single-handedly – and fabulously – when your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver?’ He paused carefully to assess the just perceptible upturn to the corners of Fen's mouth. ‘And isn't Cosima already sound asleep and unlikely to waken anyway?’
‘It's not that,’ Fen said. ‘Of course I have faith in you. It's just I don't really feel like going out.’ She wanted to sound needy rather than defensive so that they'd sympathize.
‘But It's my weekend!’ Cat reiterated.
Fen looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘I don't want to go to the Rag and Thistle because I don't want to leave Cosima,’ she explained, looking at the semicircle of her family surrounding her. ‘It's not something that I've done. Why can't we just stay here – open some dodgy home-made elderberry wine?’
Her sisters and uncle regarded her while she scrutinized a threadbare patch on the Persian rug. Was that newspaper beneath it? Probably. When from, Fen wondered. She'd known the rug all her life.
‘You mean to say you haven't had any time apart from Cosima in six months?’ Cat asked.
‘No – yes,’ Fen elaborated, ‘not really. Matt has babysat a couple of times.’
‘You mean you and Matt haven't been out together since she was born?’ Cat asked, thinking it sounded preposterous.
‘That's right,’ said Fen, with a tightness that told her audience she thought they shouldn't be questioning.
‘That's not right,’ said Cat, ‘That's terrible.’
‘Fuck off, Cat,’ Fen said sharply.
‘Don't swear,’ Django said.
‘I have offered,’ Pip said to Cat and Django, ‘to babysit.’
‘But Cosima was colicky,’ Fen said.
‘No one's likely to judge your mothering abilities on whether you occasionally have some me-time,’ said Django.
‘It's not that,’ Fen sighed.
‘It's good for you,’ said Pip, ‘it said so in that baby book you keep in the loo.’
‘What's all this Fen-bashing?’ Fen asked. ‘God, You're my bloody family. Cosima is a tiny baby and I'm allowed to indulge my maternal instincts.’
‘I simply want the treat, the honour, of looking after my first granddaughter, and your sisters just wanted a couple of hours down the local with you to themselves,’ Django reasoned. ‘As you say – we are a bloody family.’
‘It's not a challenge,’ Pip said, ‘It's just a quick drink down the pub, silly.’
‘Christ, why is everyone calling me silly these days?’ Fen muttered to herself. ‘And it is a challenge, actually, to me. Do you not think it doesn't disturb me that my self-confiden
ce can leak away like breast milk? That I'd reject my sisters' invitation to go out for a couple of drinks? That a strange and terrible part of me doesn't even trust the man who raised me to look after my baby for two tiny hours?’ Her eyes darted around her family from under knotted eyebrows.
‘Look – I'm sorry, Fen,’ said Cat, who looked it. ‘Please come. I'm so excited to be back. I've missed you.’
For a moment, Fen thought she might cry. Then she wanted to stand her ground and refuse. ‘I don't know,’ she faltered.
‘Leave me a long list,’ Django said brightly, ‘with illustrations.’
So, still a little reluctantly, Fen took him at his word and did just that. When she was quite sure Cosima really was fast asleep, she left with her sisters for the Rag and Thistle.
As pubs go, the Rag and Thistle was both lively yet homey. Having been in the Merifield family for four generations, it retained the charm and authenticity that many brewery-owned pubs never achieve despite trying so obviously to replicate. Thus there were no mass-produced sepia pictures of Street Scene Anywhere but photos instead of Merifields old and young, dead and alive, their various dogs and horses, adorning most of the wall space. The cast of Peak Practice had signed beer mats which David Merifield had framed in a jaunty pattern around a cast photo. There was a paper serviette, illegibly autographed by an actress whose name no one could remember and sometimes this was hung upside down in case it was meant to be so. There were no laminated menus with novelty meals and photos of the dishes. Just simple home cooking, available whenever required. The bell for last orders was usually rung when someone remembered to ring it. The Rag and Thistle was a mainstay of the community and its community cherished it. Though the McCabe girls left home over a decade ago, they still think of it as their local and the Merifields welcome them back as if they last served them a drink just the day before.
‘G & T,’ Pip ordered.
‘Glass of house red,’ said Cat. ‘Fen?’
‘Oh go on then,’ Fen said guiltily, ‘V.a.T. But loads of tonic and easy on the vodka. I'm still breast-feeding, remember.’
‘We couldn't possibly forget,’ Pip murmured to Cat though it landed her a harsh glance from Fen.
‘I'll bring them over,’ said the publican Mr Merifield, who always treated the girls like royalty on their visits home. ‘you'll be wanting to nab that table That's just come free.’
‘So Django's going to throw a birthday party,’ Cat marvelled, making a beeline for the table in the corner bedecked with horse brasses. ‘Is he serious about having it at home? He could have it here.’
‘This place couldn't fit everyone in – They'll be coming from the four corners of the earth,’ said Pip.
‘Didn't you know the earth was round?’ said Mr Merifield, setting down their drinks.
‘we're talking about Django's birthday.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Merifield, ‘and the party. No point us opening the pub that night – everyone will be at yours, if memories of his sixtieth party serve me right.’ The girls laughed and everyone buried their heads in their hands.
‘Can you believe He's going to be seventy-five?’ Fen said, arranging a beer mat in front of each of them and removing the ashtray to the window sill with a look of utter distaste.
‘It sounds so old,’ said Cat. ‘Seventy-five.’
‘He is a grandpa,’ Fen defined, ‘though actually he likes to be called Gramps.’
‘Tom calls him that,’ Pip explained to Cat. ‘Tom calls him Django Gramps which is weird really, because He's even less of a real grandfather, in the literal sense, to Tom than he is to Cosima.’
‘I laughed when you told me in that e-mail that Django refers to Tom as his “step-grandsonthing-or-other”,’ Cat told her.
‘I wonder if our children will be confused that they have a grandpa for an uncle, but a non-existent grandmother?’ Fen mused.
‘They have other grandmas,’ Pip said. ‘Matt and Zac's mums.’
‘It's odd,’ said Fen and then she stopped. ‘Nothing.’
‘What?’
‘It's just that, having really thought of her so rarely, just recently I've thought of her more.’
‘Who?’
‘Our mother,’ Fen shrugged. ‘Now that I have my baby. I just can't figure out how a mother can leave.’
‘That's why we'll all make grade A mummies,’ Cat said. ‘we'll be automatically compensating for the fact that our mother was sub-Z grade.’
‘It struck me recently that the only person I've ever called “Mummy” is myself,’ Fen said. It quietly struck her sisters that they hadn't called anyone ‘Mummy’ at all.
‘I can't wait to be called Mummy,’ Cat said dreamily. ‘Do you realize I was pretty much Cosima's age when our mother left?’
‘It's only since having Cosima that maternal instincts, in all their crazy hormonal cladding, have made sense,’ Fen continued, ‘and to be honest, though previously I never much cared about her, it now makes me shudder. A woman ran off with a cowboy from Denver and left behind three girls under the age of four? How could she do it? How can a mother not have maternal instincts? It's criminal. They're chemical.’ Fen looked at her sisters. ‘I gaze at my daughter and I think of us three. Three tiny little girls. How could she have walked out?’
‘I reckon life would still have been better under Django than under her if she hadn't left,’ Pip reasoned. ‘His maternal instincts more than made up for her lack of them.’
‘It never bothered me before, really, because there were never situations when we wished we had her,’ Fen reiterated quietly, ‘but now, recently, It's made me utterly bewildered. Indignant too. That's why I don't like to be separated from Cosima. That's why I hold her so tight.’ Pip and Cat regarded her and felt bad about before. ‘I don't like missing a minute with her – not because I'm a hormonal fruit cake, though you probably think I am. But because, in my book, there cannot be such a thing as an overprotective mother.’
‘Do you want another?’ Cat asked Fen.
‘God no,’ said Fen, ‘this one's gone to my head already.’
Cat laughed. ‘I meant another baby – not vodka.’
‘That would necessitate Matt and me having sex,’ Fen said glumly.
‘Oh God, does all that really go down the nappy-bin?’ Cat asked.
‘Pretty much,’ Fen admitted. ‘To be completely honest, we prefer that extra hour's sleep to banging away for an orgasm.’
‘The royal “we”?’ Pip asked. ‘Do you speak for Matt?’
Fen blinked a little. ‘You know blokes,’ she laughed it off but didn't elaborate. ‘The weird thing is, it all seems a bit irrelevant. As if Cosima has shown us what life's all about. It's like, in retrospect, it was all a means to an end. Fancying Matt, falling in love with him, rampant sex, domestic daydreams – It's as if all that was a preamble, all a clever cloak to ensure the continuation of the species. Having Cosima has shown us that life is about going forwards with her, rather than backwards trying to cling on to pre-baby days.’
‘Us?’ Pip questioned. ‘The royal “us”? Do you speak for Matt too?’
Fen glanced at her with fleeting annoyance. ‘Life is more meaningful now that I'm a mummy,’ she said to Cat. ‘I have a true function, a role. I'm a mummy. I don't feel any need to reclaim my sexuality. This is me now. This is what I was made for. This is the best thing I've ever done.’
Cat thought this sounded extreme, mad even. Pip thought it was sad and she immediately wondered how Matt was. He was going out with Zac for a pint that night. She'd probe. She was fond of Matt and, being the Great Looker-Afterer, She'd see to it that his relationship with her sister did not suffer.
‘God,’ said Cat with nostalgic admiration, ‘and you used to be such a vamp, Fen.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Fen rubbished. ‘Me? A vamp? Hardly.’
‘You were a downright slapper,’ Pip teased.
‘Piss off,’ Fen protested, suddenly knowing to what they alluded a
nd not wanting to revisit the past.
‘Don't tell me your nappy-addled memory doesn't stretch back four years when you were having to choose between two men?’ Pip said.
They looked at Fen who was peering through a cage of her fingers as if shying away from a horror movie that turned out to be her history. ‘Stop it you two,’ she winced, ‘it was ages ago. It was a different me.’
‘It was right here in Derbyshire,’ Pip said pointedly.
‘He moved away,’ Fen said, ‘a while ago. You know that.’
‘Regrets?’ Cat asked.
‘Don't be daft,’ Fen said.
‘Does Matt know?’ Cat wondered. ‘Did you ever tell him?’
‘Are you mad?’ said Fen. ‘It had no bearing on my feelings for Matt. When it ended, it didn't release extra love for me to bestow on Matt. My feelings for Matt never changed – my feelings for the other man did.’
‘I love Matt,’ Pip said.
‘Me too,’ said Fen, ‘me too. I'm very lucky.’ Suddenly she felt overwhelmingly sad. Just then she longed for Matt even more than she longed for Cosima. ‘I'm such a crotchety old bag at the moment,’ she admitted and her sisters could see fear written across her brow. ‘I'm tired and narky the whole time. I can't seem to help it. Who is this Fen who doesn't have the energy to make love to her boyfriend, who has lost the desire to be touched but doesn't really care? I can't remember when I last told Matt that I love him.’
‘You should, you know,’ Pip said sternly, ‘according to that baby book you keep in your loo.’
‘Do you and Zac plan to have proper babies?’ Cat asked. Fen and Pip stared at their younger sister whose cheeks suddenly turned the colour of her hair and she buried her head in her hands. ‘God that sounded awful. Poor Tom – I didn't mean—!’
‘It's not in our game plan,’ Pip laughed. ‘we're a gang of three. I like being a stepmum. It suits me. I'm not really broody, I don't think.’
‘You wouldn't have time anyway,’ Cat said, ‘because You're always so busy looking after everyone else.’ Pip looked a little nonplussed. ‘It's a compliment,’ Cat assured her. ‘Even Django calls you the Great Looker-Afterer. You're only three years my senior but you've always mothered me. Capably, too.’
