by Freya North
‘Philippa,’ Django says sternly and, though she’s halfway to the door, she stops, turns and lets him lecture her. ‘I am telling you that you do not fear your own ability to commit.’ He lets the statement hang in the air, the italicized emphasis is blatant. ‘Just think about your unwavering dedication to your career, your notion of sisterhood and friendship. You are tireless. That is why we all lean on you. Because you are so totally committed to the lot of us.’ Pip finds herself sitting down on the arm of the sofa, staring at the faded knees on Django’s corduroys. ‘You do not have a “fear of commitment”, Philippa McCabe,’ he all but mocks, ‘that’s just an easy way out of all of this. What you have, dearest one, is a deep-seated and totally understandable fear of other people’s commitment to you.’
His conclusion is so strong, delivered so brazenly, that she reads it in her mind’s eye as a shout line in capital letters, italicized here and there. She blinks, she closes her eyes, she opens them and blinks again, frowning deeply. She shakes her head vehemently. She’s desperate to deny it.
Wait! She’s never been in love, for Christ’s sake! Not until Zac. So Django’s theory is flawed. And she tells him so.
‘Don’t you see,’ she concludes triumphantly, ‘I’ve never been committed to a soul! Before Zac, the blokes I’ve dallied with have been in love with me. I haven’t cared for them and therefore haven’t cared when they’ve ended.’ She pauses. She’s confused. She fears she’s contradicted herself but she’s not quite sure how. Is a fear of commitment the same as having never committed to a soul? Her mind is fuddled. It’s all boiling down to semantics. She’s in a knot and she’s squirming.
‘I totally, wholeheartedly, agree,’ says Django, taking her off her guard, ‘you’re never been in love. Until Zac, you’ve chosen chaps whom you’ve simply liked but who have loved you. So when they’re over, it hasn’t hurt you. Not that you’ve ever considered their grief.’
Pip has no idea what’s coming next. All she knows is that hitherto, Django has made sense and now she’s powerless to disagree. It’s simultaneously unnerving and yet just a little comforting, too.
‘Why have you done this, over all these years?’ He’s asking it as a question but she’d much rather he’d answer it for her. ‘I’ll tell you why,’ Django obliges. ‘Because what you actually fear is being left by someone you love.’
Thank you, Django. Thank you.
Pip just stares at him. It makes perfect sense and it appals her.
‘That’s why you have attempted to destroy what you had started to unravel with Zac.’
Go on, Django, go on!
‘Your fear of commitment centres solely on another’s commitment to you.’
More, Django, more!
‘And who can blame you, my darlingest duck,’ Django says softly, crossing the room to his niece and placing a hand so gently across her shoulders, ‘who can blame you, my dear? Your mother left you! She ran off! You were tiny!’
Django tries to still a shudder when experiencing acutely the pain he still feels at his sister-in-law’s abhorrent act. Pip holds tightly on to his hand in both of hers. He smiles down at her, benevolently. ‘I know we as a family have it down to a banter – “mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver” – but the reality is so hideous that the only way we can deal with it is by making light of it.’ Pip regards him, wide-eyed. ‘You tell your Zac that your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when you were tiny,’ Django says, ‘and if he’s even half the lad I suspect he is, he’ll pull you to him and never let you go.’ Pip stares at him. What on earth is she meant to say now? ‘Go and pack,’ Django says, ‘have a good night’s sleep – tomorrow you’ll be back to that peculiar orangey night-time you lot have in the city.’
Falteringly, Pip goes to her room. There’s a part of her that feels she’s been let off the hook. There’s a growing part of her that knows she isn’t thankful for this. She looks at her clothes, her holdall. She thinks about baggage. She inhales deeply and gazes at Nick Heyward and Duran Duran.
What’ll I do, boys?
You know what to do.
Pip returns to the Snug. Django is still reading yesterday’s television listings in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Django,’ she says, with slight trepidation, ‘it’s just that I told Zac that we’re a big happy family.’ She stares at the rug. ‘Really big.’ She feels ashamed. ‘I’ve not quite told him about my mother,’ she reveals, glancing up at Django but, unable to translate his expression, she swiftly stares down to the rug again. ‘About the cowboy in Denver bit.’ She again scans her uncle’s face but he’s regarding her intently and waiting for her to continue. ‘In fact,’ she says quietly, ‘I’ve even referred to her as “Mum”.’
Django’s heart bleeds for her. She can’t tell, though. She feels guilty, as if manufacturing her mother and reinventing the woman as someone called Mum, somehow devalues all that Django has given to her and her sisters.
Django’s heart, though, aches for Pip. For Fen, for Cat, too. For his late brother. Damn that bloody woman! No child should have to invent a mother. No child should have to accept an eccentric uncle as a mother. Damn that woman! ‘Communication communication communication,’ Django reiterates a final time in a slightly hoarse voice. ‘You confide in Zac. You tell him about your mother and you will see – if he’s half the chap I have a feeling he is – you will see how he will understand and embrace the provenance of your fib.’
Pip hadn’t once stopped to think of it like that. All that Zac is flashes across her mind. He wouldn’t think less of her, if anything he’d think more of her. And when Django meets him, she realizes, he’ll think him double the chap he reckons he is now. She looks at Django with a mix of admiration, relief, gratitude and intense love. ‘’Kay,’ she whispers. At the door, she stops, turns to face him again. ‘Night,’ she says, giving a small wave.
‘Night, duck,’ he replies.
‘We couldn’t have wished for a better mum,’ Pip tells him, ‘in you.’
Django smiles at her, tells her to stop being soppy, to have a bubble bath and bugger off to bed.
‘I could have wished for a better mum for you,’ he says quietly as he stokes the fire and settles it for bed later. ‘Damn that woman!’
So Pip returned to London by train. The sway of the carriage, the rumble of the tracks, the blur of the landscape rushing past, lulled her into a final, concluding bout of contemplation. It had taken her but a week at home to acknowledge her lifetime of hiding. She knew now that there was more to self-awareness than merely acknowledging one’s character traits. I’m a jealous type; I’m a clingy type; I fear commitment; I fear being left – that’s a start, but ultimately they are little more than excuses. Declarations alone do not provide solutions. Self-awareness is the realization that one can neither live in the past, nor run from it. The point of self-awareness is not to let history repeat itself in the future.
‘It’s not about forgetting the past or demeaning it. I have to actively embrace the past,’ she said to herself as the train pulled in to Derby. ‘I have to stare it in the face,’ she declared as the train pulled out and continued south, ‘be neither afraid nor embarrassed.’ She sighed and drifted off to sleep with the effort of it all.
‘It’s not about moving on!’ she suddenly said rather loudly, waking as the train stood stationary at Luton. A teenage boy who’d just embarked suddenly decided against sitting opposite Pip. ‘It’s not about moving on,’ she laughed, startling an elderly couple recently seated across the aisle, ‘it’s about me standing my ground, pleading my case, rolling up my sleeves and fighting for what I want and believe in!’
She felt euphoric. She felt light and lifted, and she felt like dashing straight to Zac’s, calling her friends and her sisters en route to meet her there, so she could lavish some sort of verbal group hug on the lot of them. Suddenly, it was all gloriously clear to her – where she’d been, where she wanted to go. Simple, really. She could finally define the cause. She certainly unde
rstood the effect it had had. Now, at last, she felt she had the means for solution at her disposal. Bloody train, stop dawdling! Godspeed her home so she can make amends.
THIRTY-FOUR
Pip McCabe has headed home with a heart full of hope. Her enthusiasm, however, is ever so slightly deluded. She somehow assumes that in her absence, all has been frozen in time, that everyone will be just where she left them, in anticipation of her return, hoping that she’s picked up the pieces and is coming back to take up where she abruptly left off. It’s as if, in her mind’s eye, she has turned the people in her life into a cast of cardboard cut-outs, suspended in the there-and-then. All she needs to do, she feels, is breeze back amongst them, touch them with her magic wand (the non-collapsible one) and restore them to the here-and-now, ready for her revelations and happy to hold hands and stroll forward. That is, after they’ve given her a round of applause.
As if they’d put their lives on hold!
And anyway, who exactly is waiting for her?
Certainly not Zac Holmes.
Zac is not the type to allow himself to become stuck in a rut. He’s too sensible and centred to languish in the past or rue what-ifs. He knows that time waits for no man and the only woman he currently waits for is Juliana who believes it her prerogative to be always fifteen minutes late. He’s neither wondered whether Pip has been pacing the moors, soul-searching; nor has he hoped that all her Derbyshire paths have led her to the Road to Damascus. He hasn’t had the time or inclination to think about her at all, actually.
Zac’s had a hectic week. Work has been crazy. And there’s been an inordinate amount of socializing. In his eyes, the latter provides respite from the former while the former provides the funds to facilitate the latter. For Zac, the two are not just complementary – the one is worthless without the other, not that he’s one to analyse or complain. He just goes with the flow, accommodating his clients’ particulars and peculiarities, welcoming the social opportunities that come his way, grateful for the funds that enable him to pay bills and enjoy himself. And buy that new painting – the huge green one with the orange blob and blue stripe. Once or twice he’s been slightly baffled by how proactive his sister-in-law and his ex have suddenly become. But he’s told himself not to be so bloody cynical. He should be grateful for their care and consideration. He should be plain pleased that they wish to include Juliana and welcome her into their fold.
And he is.
He is.
But it is a little odd.
He feels something of a passenger when he is accustomed to being in the driving seat.
It’s just a little strange, something to get used to, that’s all. Allowing himself to be taken for a ride.
The mantra that June and Ruth had decided upon was ‘compliment compliment compliment’ and even if they had to exercise it through gritted teeth or with fists clenched out of sight, they were determined to stick with it. On the day last week that Pip headed home to Derbyshire, Ruth had phoned Zac at work first thing.
‘About tonight,’ Ruth said, ‘just thought I’d double-check we’re still on.’
‘Er, yes,’ Zac replied, wondering why his confirmation the night before hadn’t sufficed.
‘Wonderful,’ said Ruth, ‘and as I said, I’d really much rather cook than eat out. It would be my pleasure.’ She took Zac’s pause as a possible falter so she carried on regardless. ‘Just something simple,’ she breezed. ‘See you both around 8.00-ish?’ Again Zac paused, again Ruth refused to allow it to be a vacillation. ‘Or 8.30,’ she offered, because the ‘you both’ part wasn’t open to discussion. ‘Wonderful!’ she said, as if he had replied ‘See you then!’
Juliana would really rather not have gone. A restaurant was one thing, someone’s kitchen table quite another; Holloway was something else entirely. But it was too late to cancel. And it wasn’t as though there were many viable alternatives that evening for her. There was a works’ party somewhere in Fulham but she was starting to tire of her colleagues in the London office. Distant cousins had again extended an invitation for her to spend the night at their place in Hertfordshire. But though their cottage was cute, their three children under five years old weren’t, so once again, she made her excuses. Anyway, she hadn’t seen Zac for a week or so – not since his kid’s party – and she rather fancied a Saturday morning shopping spree in Hampstead. So, though she had hoped that her time in London would preclude ever having to venture to a place called Holloway, if Saturday morning shopping in Hampstead was dependent on dinner at Zac’s brother’s there the night before, then fine. They needn’t stay long. Certainly not if the sister-in-law’s cooking was anything like as lousy as Zac’s ex’s.
Actually, June does finger food very well indeed. And very often. Fortunately, Rob-Dad and Tom feel very lucky. They think her finger food worthy of the maximum number of Michelin stars. They never go hungry. Meals in their house are always so colourful. And transportable, too! ‘Delicious and nutritious!’ Rob-Dad always marvels. ‘Fun and yum!’ Tom always says.
Ruth, however, is a truly accomplished cook. Ruth likes to cook with cream. And egg yolks. And French unsalted butter. And not so much a drizzle as a gush of cold-pressed olive oil. And she absolutely delights in desserts. The more sugar the better. More egg yolks. Litres of double cream. Kilos of ground almonds. Ingots of fine chocolate. Sloshings of liqueur.
That Friday night, June, Tom and Rob-Dad watched The Simpsons whilst picking from plates laden with cheesy potato croquettes, chicken nuggets in a coating of crisps and corn flakes, bite-sized fritters of carrot, pumpkin and courgette and skewers of cherry tomatoes and mini corncobs. One hundred and fifty miles north, Pip and Django sat down at the kitchen table to mammoth portions of the rack of lamb from the Merifields, for which Django had devised an interesting gravy enlivened with marmalade, plus a stupendous mash of interesting texture utilizing every vegetable he could find, together with chopped apricots to brighten the colour. In Holloway, Ruth prepared a veritable banquet for Zac and Juliana. Not a single element of the meal was low-fat or calorie-conscious or cholesterol-friendly. Even the side salad was drenched in a delicious, rich, whipped vinaigrette.
Juliana hardly ate a thing. She met every plate-load of food with a polite ‘thank you’ but a look of utter disdain while she prodded the food with suspicion. Ruth pretended not to notice. She knew that Zac noticed – that was enough for her. In between mouthfuls, she gamely chatted nineteen to the dozen, as was her wont, and Jim asked polite questions about life in South Africa and the vagaries of Juliana’s job. They both met Juliana’s spartan answers with grace. Although Ruth’s motives were ulterior, on the face of it Ruth was just being Ruth – chatty, vivacious, hostess extraordinaire. And Jim was just being polite towards his brother’s new woman. Ultimately, Juliana was just being Juliana, too. That, thought Ruth, was precisely the point. Without the dimmed lighting of a restaurant, or the unwanted attention of waiters, or the distraction of other diners, one could see much more clearly what one was getting. Ruth thus considered the evening a success.
When Zac went to collect Tom on the Sunday, June asked after Juliana. ‘Ruth said it was a fun evening,’ she said.
‘The food was amazing,’ Zac said, privately wondering whether ‘fun’ best described the evening. Juliana had been stroppy back at his flat when Zac admitted that he was too full to fuck. And she’d cost him a small fortune at Whistles yesterday morning. Still it was nice to have his ex asking after Juliana. And it was touching that his sister-in-law had made such an effort. Wouldn’t it be nice, too, if Juliana enquired after June, after Tom? It would have been nice if she had made more of an effort with Ruth and Jim, as well. Ever the diplomat, Zac put it all down to her having a somewhat awkward manner. Or else that she was on a diet. Or that she had a very high sex drive. He liked to think she was probably just shy under that steely exterior. Or something. He reckoned she was simply not used to the overtness of characters like June and Ruth; to rich food; to men with indigestion.
Tom was scurrying around the house, gathering various components of Tracy Island that he simply couldn’t leave home without – even though Zac’s flat housed a wealth of paraphernalia connected with Thunderbirds.
‘What are you boys going to do today?’ June asked Zac.
‘Oh, you know, a little bit of International Rescue,’ Zac replied drily. ‘Thunderbirds are go, and all that.’
June laughed. ‘Is Juliana around?’
Zac looked fairly startled. He hadn’t thought to include her in his time with his son. Certainly, she’d made no suggestion either. In fact, he didn’t even know what she was up to that day. Or the next few, for that matter. ‘No,’ he told June, ‘she has plans already.’ June nodded as if this was a good enough answer from him and a good enough reason from her. Tom came crashing into the hall, loaded with plastic toys and brimming with excited energy.
‘Thunderbirds are GO,’ he proclaimed rather seriously, kissing his mother and taking his father’s hand.
‘I’ll do the school run tomorrow morning,’ Zac told June, giving her a kiss. ‘OK, kiddo,’ he said, ruffling Tom’s hair, ‘let’s go To Infinity And Beyond.’
‘That’s Buzz Lightyear,’ Tom corrected, looking nervously about him to check no one had heard his silly old dad’s gaff.
For the week that followed, while Pip traipsed the moors with furrowed brow and heavy heart, Zac had barely a moment to himself at work or play. It was a week in which he hoped to consolidate his bonus and was therefore happy after heavy, fraught days for the evening’s entertainment to be laid on for him. On one, Juliana treated him to champagne and strawberries at her flat – partly, he realized, so she could show off her new Brazilian bikini wax which left very little to the imagination because it left very little at all. On another, he treated his brother and Rob-Dad to Chelsea v. Spurs and too many pints after a storming victory. Ruth made sure that the intervening three evenings were organized, too. With Juliana’s attendance graciously requested, of course.