by Freya North
Whatever. Pip coming home was a very sensible plan of action. He was touched and encouraged that she obviously knew what was good for her. To catch her breath, catch up on sleep, have a think, eat hearty meals, decide what to do. To have her old bedroom, and her old uncle, all to herself. To be fed and cared for. To choose London over Derbyshire. To have the moors as her thinking space, the solidity of her childhood home to embrace her. To sit in the lap of the old cedar. To sit in the wind-breaks provided by the lichen-licked drystone walls. Solitude and space and comfort and company. She’d feel safe, enveloped by reminders of the enduring stability in her life even if her present was tense. Soon enough, she’d know where she’d been and where she’d be heading next.
Django checked her room. He’d frequently offered to replace her curling posters of Simon Le Bon and Nick Heyward with a framed Kandinsky or a watercolour from the gallery in Bakewell, or just to redecorate it in neutrals, but she’d consistently resisted. His girls never ran from their past. They embraced it. They were proud of it. The posters stayed put, greasy splodges creeping across the surface from each corner due to the ancient blobs of Blu-tack. Django glanced around the room. He’d made the bed instinctively, well over a week ago, just as soon as Fen had called to confide that her sister was having a spot of bother. This morning, he added the patchwork eiderdown. The nights were drawing in. Already, the moors were sending a slight shiver through the house morning and night.
Looking around him, he nodded at the wall Pip had painted orange with navy spots when she was sixteen. Cat had told him how Pip had recently added colour to her living-room and painted her bedroom ceiling hot pink. Django was pleased. Pip might be broken in her heart, but a cerise ceiling signified to him that she was on the mend. All that bland beigeness she espoused he would rate plain boring. From what he’d heard of her flat in the city, it seemed to contradict his eldest niece’s personality. Like someone forcing themselves to speak in dulcet tones when it was far more natural for them to sing and chortle at the top of their voice; like someone training themselves to walk demurely in high heels when trainers or pumps better suited the natural spring to their step. Time out in Derbyshire would put the colour back into her cheeks, too, and she’d stride back to London singing once more, of that Django was sure. He set off for Chesterfield to meet her train, leaving a vast vat of stew simmering on the stove for lunch.
The eldest of his nieces looked younger than he remembered, younger somehow than the other two. It was most peculiar. Though all three girls were slight in physique and with barely an inch or a pound’s difference between them, Pip’s deportment and demeanour had always given the illusion of stature. All that gaiety and bouncing around and daft make-up and larger-than-life liveliness. Just then, Django was quite shocked. Catching sight of Pip lugging her holdall along the platform, he could see that she looked wan and visibly thinner, her litheness and poise compromised. He concentrated on not letting his concern show. What he wanted to do was scoop her up in his arms, envelop her in his sheepskin coat and support her to the car and beyond. But he didn’t. He’d feel awkward and she’d worry that he was worried. She’d back off, fix a smile on her face, pretend that everything was just dandy.
They hugged, as always they did. But though he offered to carry her bags, when she said ‘No, no, not with your dodgy back, old man’, he respected her dignity and allowed her to manage them on her own, though this pained him far more than his rickety sacroiliac joint.
Pip chatted sociably for the first part of the half-hour journey home, but the closer they came to Farleymoor, the quieter she became, interspersing the odd comment or question with lengthy periods gazing out of the car window to the moors and way beyond. Django was aware that she swallowed hard as soon as home came into view, that she cleared her throat when they swung into the driveway, that she made much of blowing her nose and keeping her face in her handkerchief when they came to a standstill.
‘Delayed hay fever,’ she explained.
‘It’s a bugger,’ Django sympathized. He took her bags from the boot before she could object, asking Pip to open up the house for him.
All Django can smell is the stew. Chilli powder, specifically. He makes a mental note to dampen it down with oregano and plain yoghurt before serving. Pip, however, standing in the hallway, eyes closed, soaks up the scent of her entire home. It is an olfactory phenomenon. She knows well that it will only be detectable for a few minutes on arrival. After that, it will be so subtle as to go unnoticed. And though it is unique, unchanging and beautifully familiar, it is an aroma impossible to conjure up anywhere else. Back in Kentish Town, she will be unable to remember how her childhood home smells. She could close her eyes all she liked, flare her nostrils and concentrate very hard but it would be futile. And today, once she’s unpacked and gone downstairs to the kitchen for lunch, the house’s inimitable scent will be at once so familiar and usual that she will not think to notice it, nor be able to detect it.
Right now, though, her senses are filled with it. It’s so vivid that it’s a taste and a sound, too. She can smell stew, but it’s so obvious, so short-term, that it’s almost vulgar. Far more potent are the top notes and undertones of the aromas of the house itself. Oh, for a perfumer to blend them for her, bottle them for her to keep and call upon. Wood smoke. Old furniture. Coal tar soap. Django’s penchant for piquant condiments. The slightly damp downstairs cloakroom. The overflowing fruit trough in the Drawing-room, which, at this time of day, the McCabes call the Library. The stair carpet, threadbare in parts and revealing the warm, worn wooden planks beneath. Coffee that Django grinds fresh each morning. Pipes and cigars. The cat from the cottage over the way. More than all of these, though – the very fabric of the building itself. The blue-grey stone hewn from the local quarry almost three hundred years ago, the rafters still standing the tests of time, the flagstone floors, the earth way beneath, the cast-iron fireplaces, the ill-fitting doors, the window glass with the occasional cracked pane allowing the scent of pine and heather to filter in. All is deliciously salty, earthy and warm. Derbyshire and Django. Salt of the earth. Enveloping warmth.
‘I’ll just unpack,’ Pip says. ‘I’m absolutely starving. Something smells good.’
The stew for lunch was interesting. A little chewy but full of flavour – though not of the type usually associated with casseroles. Perhaps it was the addition of tuna, maybe the slosh of Madeira. Pip didn’t know, nor did she care. She ate all that Django placed in front of her and even requested a small portion of seconds. Django suggested fruit and coffee in the Library and Pip washed up while he prepared a tray.
‘The stew will be even better tomorrow,’ Pip said.
‘True enough,’ said Django, ‘though I was thinking of freezing it because I wanted to try a tortilla for lunch tomorrow.’
‘Either,’ Pip said enthusiastically, whisking a warm dry tea towel from the Aga rail.
Not even Django’s potent blend of Costa Rica and French Continental, freshly ground and brewed until utterly opaque, could keep Pip awake that afternoon. With a half-eaten apple lolling in her lap, she dozed off. Django drank his coffee down to the dregs and ate four satsumas, throwing the peel into the fireplace. He read the Racing Post, the Daily Telegraph and a magazine Fen had left on her last visit, Art Matters. He scrunched the newspapers up and placed them in the grate, too, in preparation for a fire later. He’d use the cherry logs he’d been given by the Sutcliffes. The fire would smell excellent. He ate another two satsumas and added their peel to the pyre for good measure. Every now and then, he glanced across to his niece, sound asleep. He wondered whether to remove the apple from her lap – it had rolled over and her trousers showed a growing splodge where the juice was blotting. Pip’s mouth was relaxed and ajar, a little drool collecting in the corners of her lips. She didn’t look so fragile now. There was colour already to her cheeks. She looked very peaceful and it seemed intrusive to gaze at her. So he left her to her nap and prepared the apple and cheddar soup.
He resorted to a fair amount of cornflour and two tins of baked beans as well.
THIRTY-THREE
Apart from two visits to the Rag and Thistle pub – primarily so Django could show her off – and a couple of trips into Bakewell for provisions and newspapers, Pip happily confined herself to her home and was glad not to go above a walking pace for the duration of her stay. And walk she did. Either briskly up hill and down dale. Or just round and round the garden. Or in a leisurely way over to the folly on the other side of the valley. Or striding with purpose so as not to be late for tea and tart with Old Miss Sydnop. There again, she often merely meandered here and there because destination was irrelevant. Three or four times she raised the pace to a veritable jog when taking next door’s flat-coat retrievers for a walk. Her tally over the week was pretty impressive – but will pale into insignificance against the immense distance she’s got to accomplish on her personal journey.
Even though I’ve never had a conventional job – in that I’ve never done the Monday to Friday, 9.00 till 5.00, commute by tube, sit in an office, take coffee breaks, style of work – yet I find there’s something rather decadent about it now being Tuesday afternoon and I’m prancing across Farleymoor. It’s bizarre, I feel like I’m playing hooky, bunking off, doing a runner, skiving, taking a non-legit sickie!
What are you doing with your privileged time, Pip?
Thinking.
About?
Stuff.
Specifically?
I’m just taking stock.
A stocktake?
Perhaps.
And what do you find?
That there are things missing. And though I can account for them, they’re still missing. I miss them.
Can’t you retrieve them?
No. I can’t. But I suppose I can try to ensure that I’m not so careless with precious things in future. The thing is, I know when and where I lost them. And why. So I guess that’s a start to preventing such negligence from occurring again.
Soon enough, it was Thursday and she’d been back home for almost a week. Her sojourn had rested her and revived her, but she was acutely aware that though home was right here, reality resided, for the time being, back down in London. She felt homesick for Derbyshire though she hadn’t yet left.
‘You’re a bit quiet,’ Django probed gently, pouring her a little cherry brandy in the Snug (the Drawing-room had metamorphosed out of the Library that afternoon into the Snug that evening by Django lighting the fire) and offering her a jag of peanut brittle that she just about had room for after supper. ‘Didn’t the curry agree with you?’ He paused. ‘I admit I may have overdone it adding HP Sauce to the ensemble. Bloody faulty lid, being so loose.’
‘It was delicious,’ Pip assured him. She smiled over to her uncle. And smiled inwardly, too. What on earth was he wearing, she marvelled. Corduroy trousers the colour of maple syrup with a pleated waist; a shirt that was so Thomas Hardy, with its intricate smocking, that it might as well belong to Bakewell Amateur Dramatics; a neckerchief that he’d proudly tell you he wore as a bandanna when he was at Woodstock; mismatched socks; and, by the side of the sofa, tan leather boots with an alarming Cuban heel. God, she loved the man! How wonderful to be so charmingly eccentric, so steadfastly idiosyncratic, so utterly unselfconscious. Nothing for show, nothing so as to impress, no statement to make, no nasty quirks lurking.
‘I reckon my sisters have filled you in?’ she suddenly announced. Django just raised an eyebrow sagely. He didn’t want to implicate Cat or Fen, he didn’t want to change the subject, he certainly didn’t want Pip to feel defensive and thus retreat. So it had taken her almost a week to bring to him what she had no doubt shared with the moors and the cedar tree and next door’s flat-coat retrievers. So what? He believed it to have been her prerogative. Right now, he knew the most seemly and encouraging response he could give would be through physiognomic distortions. So he twitched his lips, lowered his eyes and raised them again, regarding her levelly. ‘I’d do the same,’ Pip admitted, ‘if they were in a dither. In fact, I often have, haven’t I?’ She paused. ‘That’s what families are for, aren’t they?’
Django nodded. ‘It’s not tittle-tattle,’ he said quietly, ‘when passed amongst us.’
‘You’re so right,’ Pip said gratefully.
‘So, Philippa, my dear,’ Django said, peering intently at the cherry brandy label – not that he was reading it, but just surreptitiously to shift attention away from Pip and her traumas, so as shrewdly to put her at her ease. ‘Can I top up your tipple?’ He reached over to her glass with the bottle.
‘I’ve done stupid things,’ she admitted with a grimace. ‘It’s only now that I don’t regret the fling with Caleb – he’s the—’
‘I know,’ nodded Django, ‘Fen explained.’
‘I don’t even regret the one-night stand with Alex,’ Pip admitted. ‘He’s the—’
‘Yes,’ Django interjected, ‘Cat explained.’ He peered briefly at Pip, then rose from his chair to fiddle with the fire; as if to say that the one-night stand with Alex really didn’t warrant further discussion.
‘The only regret I have is over Zac.’ She looked at Django. He settled himself back into the tub chair, sipped his brandy slowly and then returned her gaze. His expression was open. ‘Did Fen or Cat tell you about him?’
‘A little,’ Django said, actually knowing an awful lot but also knowing it was wise to encourage Pip to proclaim it all in the open to him.
‘He’s the one who –’ she paused. Django refused to assist her. She’d just have to think and finish her sentence on her own. And out loud. Pip glanced at the fire. Glanced down into her brandy balloon. ‘Well, he’s actually, simply, The One. Is Zac Holmes, Django. Actually.’
Django raised his glass. ‘To Zac,’ he toasted, ‘actually The One for our Pip.’
Pip shook her head forlornly. ‘He’s gone,’ she whispered, a tear so full, so brackish and heavy, that it splashed fast and noisily straight down into her glass. She took a gulp of liqueur as if to hide the evidence. The brandy tasted no different. ‘I’m not to him as he is to me,’ Pip said.
‘Why do you say that?’ Django asked with a tone of incredulity which he hoped would signify optimism. ‘If he’s the one for you, why on earth wouldn’t you be the one for him?’ He let the question hover in the room. As if the question itself provided the only answer. ‘Of course you are! Just look at you! You’re gorgeous! You’re a catch! You say you’ve lost him? Gracious, girl, out you go to find him again.’
Pip shook her head and tried to sip her liqueur. Her throat was so tight with the knot of tears she was holding at bay that she was unable to swallow. She swished the liquid around her mouth until it had anaesthetized her gums and numbed her tongue.
‘Communication communication communication,’ her uncle emphasized.
‘Won’t do any good!’ Pip remonstrated histrionically. ‘I’ve fucked up and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Language!’ said Django, though the McCabe swear jar was customarily full on account of his own ripe choice of expletives.
‘Pardon me,’ Pip said.
Django passed her a peeled satsuma. She picked at the pith and noticed how it made her fingertips scaly. She popped two segments in her mouth and bit down. The sour-sweet acidity zipped along her jaw, making her eyes water and yet helping her tears go away.
‘You know what,’ she said clearly, ‘I’ve made a mistake.’ The proclamation was immense for her, her eyes darting over Django’s face. ‘Me.’ She didn’t seek Django’s understanding of the situation, just approval of her declaration. He glanced at her and then seemed to find greater interest in Fen’s copy of Art Matters. Pip would have to elaborate. ‘I know that I don’t need a man,’ she said, ‘however, I now think I’d rather like one – but only this Zac one – in my life.’ Django regarded her intently. As she let her gaze drop, so, too, did the corners of her mouth. ‘However, my ridiculous behaviour and daft principles have made t
his impossible,’ she spat at herself. ‘I’ve forfeited Zac, Django. He’s not interested. He doesn’t want me. And I don’t blame him.’ Uncle and niece looked at each other. Keeping her focus steady, Pip continued. ‘I must move on and carry forward the hindsight of it all.’ She cupped her hands around the rest of the satsuma, as if it might emanate warmth. ‘It’s time for a change,’ she began to conclude, ‘so, Zac was my first love. And it’s my fault that I have to say “was”. But c’est la vie and all the other clichés out there. Me and my fucking stupid fear of commitment.’
‘Language!’
‘Pardon me.’
‘Not the word “fuck” this time,’ Django clarified, ‘the word “commitment”, Pip. I’ve never heard anything so flimsy and feeble!’
‘I have a fear of commitment!’ Pip protests in a chant-like way, as if she’s learned it off by heart from an article in Cosmo. As if it is a fact as indisputable as her blue-green eyes. As if it is something she was born with and will die with, and to argue otherwise is futile and plain daft. ‘I have,’ she repeats slowly and somewhat patronizingly, ‘a fear of commitment.’
‘Bollocks!’ Django says derisorily, taking yesterday’s Daily Telegraph and scanning the television listings as if they are far more interesting than Pip. ‘Absolute bloody bollocks.’
‘Language,’ Pip counters, with not much conviction.
‘Overruled,’ Django declares, scrunching down the newspaper as if he’s supremely irritated that her nonsense is preventing him from reading yesterday’s television times. ‘It’s entirely justified in this instance. You’re wrong. You’re talking codswallop.’
Pip is pissed off. The room is too hot. It’s not yet October. There’s no need for a fire, however lovely the smell. Django has poked and stoked and fed it too much. Pip smirks out loud at the parallel. She’s been given too much rich food. Too much bloody cherry bloody brandy. She’s been poked and prodded and probed. She’s bloody well going to go home tomorrow. ‘I’m tired,’ she says. ‘I’m going to go to my room. Pack. I’m off home tomorrow.’ She cringes. She said that on purpose in her petulance and she regrets it instantly. How childish.