by Freya North
‘That’s very noble,’ Zac says, with genuine admiration that flatters Pip.
‘More importantly, is there any news of Django?’ Pip asks.
‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ Zac says, ‘but we’re up there this weekend, aren’t we – for Cosima’s birthday? Talking of news and birthdays – did you get my text, about the baby?’
‘I did,’ Pip says, ‘thanks.’
‘He’s adorable,’ Zac says.
‘I know,’ says Pip, ‘I saw him this afternoon – when I took Tom back.’
‘Oh,’ says Zac, following it with a little awkward nodding.
‘Yes,’ says Pip, busy with her lips, glancing all around her.
‘He’s adorable,’ Zac repeats, ‘isn’t he?’
‘Absolutely adorable,’ Pip says, ‘and Tom is made up.’
‘Isn’t he just,’ says Zac.
Go on, Pip! Go on! The scene is primed for a heart-to-heart. You’re calm and Zac seems amenable. Say something!
But Pip is now flipping through the Evening Standard and she can’t see that Zac is staring at her, hoping to catch her eye. ‘Nothing on the box,’ she says, having spent an inordinate amount of time scouring the TV listings.
‘And nothing to eat,’ says Zac.
‘What shall we do?’ Pip asks, happy for Zac to suggest a takeaway and a DVD.
‘We could get a takeaway, watch a DVD,’ he says.
‘OK,’ Pip responds.
‘Or,’ Zac says, sitting on the edge of the coffee table and cupping her face in his hands, ‘or we could just go to bed and make a baby.’
Pip’s immediate reaction is that it can’t possibly be as easy as this. Surely the wrought confrontation she’s been planning, dreading, needs to be played-out. There needs to be some level of workshopping, surely, at the very least. Angst. Tears. Proclamations. Soul-baring. Heart-beating. A fight. Should she say, Are you sure? Should she say, You don’t really mean it, what’s changed your mind? I thought you thought I was joking? But you said your family is complete with Tom? You’re just saying this to keep me happy/keep me quiet?
But luckily for Zac, and ultimately for Pip too, she’s a bit too zonked by all the travel and the enormity of the last few days to decide which sentence to deliver. So, she just sits and gawps and Zac swells more at this sight than when she sat and gawped at the Tiffany box with the platinum-set princess-cut engagement ring four years ago.
‘Have you gone all broody on me?’ she asks wryly.
‘Yes, I suppose I have,’ Zac nods. ‘I want a baby with you.’
‘No you don’t,’ Pip says, trying not to grin, but Zac knows she’s teasing him.
‘Yes I bloody do,’ he tells her.
‘Was it hugging little Nathan?’ Pip asks.
‘Oh God, June’s been on at you with her tribal fertility theories,’ Zac laughs. ‘To be honest, while you’ve been away, I just had a long think about it all.’
‘Zac,’ Pip whispers, her hand on his cheek, loving him so much.
‘I wish I’d realized you were serious earlier,’ Zac says. ‘We’ve missed out on a lot of mating opportunity.’
CAT AND BEN YORK
Cat was watching ER when Ben arrived home. She wasn’t so much watching it, as staring at the television with a slightly glazed expression.
‘You’re still up,’ he remarked. ‘Aren’t you knackered?’
‘Is Melatonin safe?’ Cat asked him.
‘Yes – it’s just not licensed here,’ Ben told her, ‘though I’d argue it’s better for you than Temazapan or Valium. Did you buy some in the States?’
‘Penny gave us Bob’s,’ Cat told him.
‘Penny gave you Bob’s?’ Ben repeats, raising an eyebrow. ‘Did she give you anything else? Say – an explanation for why she buggered off with the cowboy in the first place?’
‘He wasn’t a cowboy,’ Cat said, ‘he was the king of plastic tubing. And she did, actually – she did give an explanation of sorts. She wasn’t nearly as scary as I expected. Just sad, really.’
‘Do you mind if we switch this off?’ Ben said, glancing at the television. ‘It’s too much like work – but my hospital is not nearly as exciting and my staff are nowhere near as good-looking. I find it a bit depressing.’
Cat laughed. And then bit her lip and tipped her head to her shoulder which Ben knew to herald a request of some sort.
‘What is it?’ he teased. ‘What do you want? Oh Christ – how much did you put on the credit card?’
‘Nothing,’ Cat protested, ‘it doesn’t matter. Nothing.’
‘Nothing on the credit card?’ Ben was aghast. ‘You?’
Cat nodded. ‘Honestly,’ she told him earnestly, ‘we didn’t shop, we didn’t have time.’
‘So what were you going to say?’ Ben probed.
Cat thought about it. And then she reckoned that it was such an unexpected and probably daft, impractical and altogether bizarre thought, that she’d be wise to say no more. It was probably just the jet lag speaking anyway. Or Lorna Craven.
‘How are you, babe?’ he asked her. ‘So it was a good trip to make?’
‘Yes, it was,’ she said. ‘I feel a lot more settled. The trip quashed the drama, the mystique. I used to think it was something to fear, to be ashamed of, to run from and yet, I suppose, to be slave to as well. But actually, I had nothing to do with anything. It’s just a bit of a sad story, really, but it’s a story in which I now realize I actually played no part.’
‘I’m so pleased for you,’ Ben said tenderly.
‘Pip seemed to have the hardest time, but there again, she’s always taken on the role as mother so I suppose meeting the real one was a little like coming face to face with her nemesis,’ Cat said thoughtfully. ‘I had a bit of a hissy fit on one day but after that passed I felt a lot more rational. Fen came out with some cracking one-liners – becoming a mother has made her so much more powerful than she gives herself credit for.’
‘Do you think she looks like you?’ Ben asked.
‘I can see Pip in her,’ said Cat, ‘or her in Pip.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, I have Django’s eyes, remember. Is there any news, Ben, with his tests?’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’m sure there will be by the weekend, though. We’ll all be there together.’
Cat was pensive. ‘Ben. It’s just.’ She floundered for words. ‘I don’t want to know – if it’s bad, the news. I’ve thought about it. My feelings for Django are so fragile, so new, so promising. I don’t want that to be taken away. I’ve only recently found him. I can’t cope with even the thought that I won’t have him for ever. It sounds pompous but this trip to the States, it was about my identity. Not just mine – my sisters’ too. But I see myself for who I am – a young woman with my life ahead of me. I want to live it to the full. I want happy times to outweigh sad times. Those around me – my mother, my father – there’s been such sadness and weird stuff. I sort of feel sorry for Penny, for my mother. The time I spend with Django I want to be happy, quality time. Does that sound naive? Does that sound deluded? I don’t want dark clouds looming when I’m with him, I want only sunshine.’
Ben took a moment and then nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘but you know he wants me to know all the details, the facts and the figures?’ Cat nodded and shrugged. ‘I respect your wishes. And I respect his.’
‘Thank you, Ben,’ she said. ‘It’s funny – my family is certainly unconventional. But it’s such a relief to finally feel that I don’t come from bad stock or from damaged genes.’
‘So if there are no hereditary implications,’ Ben said, ‘are you ready to make babies?’
Cat laughed. ‘Dr York, is that as good as your bedside manner gets?’
‘OK,’ Ben said, ‘OK. But I’m actually serious here. You can’t deny male broodiness. It exists. It’s medically proven. I should know. I’m the frigging doctor – and a broody one. Would you like to have a baby? With me?’
Cat didn’t laugh, but she did smile at h
er husband. ‘A family is a very nice idea,’ she announced, which was good news to her as well as to Ben, ‘but can we wait a year or two? I only want to have a family with you – but I’d like a year or two to get my career under way first.’
Ben considered this quietly. ‘I won’t tamper with your pill, then, not for the next year or so,’ he said, with a theatrical sigh. She kissed his chin, his lips. ‘Now go to bed,’ he told her. ‘You look absolutely washed out.’
At 3.15 the following morning, the three McCabe sisters are wide awake. When Matt perceives Fen to have finished her declarations, he pretends to wake from a deep sleep and finds her very keen to seal her words with slow and exquisite love-making. Zac and Pip substitute the familiarity of rampant sex for the fascinating business of procreation and fall asleep in each other’s arms, sticky but hopeful.
In Clapham, Cat lies in bed, awake, and thinks about sex. Sex, she thinks, is about more than just making babies. It’s about happiness. About communication on a higher level than language. It’s about love.
It’s about lust!
She turns on her side and gazes at her husband sleeping. She feels horny. She touches his lip lightly with her fingertip and he gruffles and turns away from her. The sweep of his beautiful back. Slowly she takes her lips to the gentle slope of his shoulder-blade and presses against it. Then she licks her lips and takes her mouth to his skin again. She runs her hand along his arm, his muscles, his strength. She finds his hand, his fingers are sleep soft but she feels along the length of each one. She takes her hand back up to his chest, strokes him and hovers her hand lightly over the little smattering of hair he has there. Carefully, she feels down his stomach. Then along his thigh, as low as she can reach. Does she want him to wake? She’s not sure. She’s enjoying having him all to herself. She kisses his neck and flicks her tongue over the soft bud of his ear lobe. She feels his arm again, his chest. Down to his stomach. His fingers – still limp. And she takes her hand down lower. And finds his cock straining and erect. Fascinating, she thinks to herself, it has a life of its own. Women often chide a man for thinking with his cock – but I rather think a man’s cock thinks for him.
She encircles his penis and tugs it gently. Still Ben sleeps soundly. She goes beneath the covers and very carefully takes the entire length of him in her mouth. She doesn’t know whether to feel a little insulted that not even a surprise blow-job can rouse him. Though he is certainly aroused. She comes back up and spoons against him, her hand loosely around his erection. She lies there, in the stillness and the silence, loving him.
‘Is that it?’ Ben suddenly says.
And now he’s turning onto his back and plugging her mouth with his tongue before she can say, You sod, you were awake the whole time. His hands are everywhere. He pinches her nipple lustily and she gasps. He burrows between the lips of her sex to find her oozing with expectation and desire for him. He fingers her, nudges at her hardening clitoris and she moans and she could come there and then but suddenly his hand is away and he’s brought it up to her mouth where her tongue and his lick her juice from his fingers.
‘I am going to fuck your brains out now,’ Ben murmurs and Cat is too turned on to answer him back, to use her voice for anything other than panting. Hot and sweaty, they giggle and grunt their way through a rude shag.
TO THE BONE
After Ben’s phone call at lunch-time, Matt and Zac spent the rest of the day saying ‘Shit’ and ‘Fuck’ at regular intervals until it was time to meet at the Mariners.
‘Glorious day,’ the landlord enthused.
‘Was it?’ Matt remarked, realizing he’d taken no notice of the weather, no notice of much else at all.
‘It’s a shit day,’ Zac sighed as they took their pints and awaited Ben, ‘just awful.’
Ben arrived soon after, draining his pint to quench his thirst and prepare his voice.
‘As you know, Django has requested that I am fully briefed by his doctors,’ he started, ‘and today we have been told that the grade of cancer in Django’s prostate is high: 8–10 and the stage of the cancer is T4. It’s not good. There’s secondary cancer in the bone – as was feared. It is anticipated that it will spread to the lymph nodes too.’ He rubbed the bridge of his nose and winced audibly. ‘It’s not good. Not good at all. We have nothing we hoped for – nothing that we told him, or the girls, to stay positive for.’
‘No treatment?’ Zac asked.
‘There is treatment,’ Ben said, ‘but no cure. He’ll be offered radiotherapy – as a palliative treatment. It’s very effective at alleviating symptoms like pain, especially in the bone. There’s some discussion of hormone therapy – reducing his testosterone levels can slow down the growth of cancer cells and can even shrink the tumour and minimize the spread but they need to know more about the spread of the cancer to decide whether treatment is viable.’
‘More tests?’ Zac said.
‘Scans, mainly,’ Ben explained. ‘They could operate and remove all or part of the testicles – but I doubt they’d do that for Django considering his age and the stage and grade. Then there are drugs given as injections or pellets under the skin of the abdomen, or as liquid injected into the muscle every month or so. Or there are hormone therapy drugs in tablet form.’
‘Those sound better,’ Matt said. ‘He’ll find a way to integrate them into some recipe or other.’
Ben smiled only briefly. ‘There are awful side effects,’ he said. ‘Sexual impotence, loss of desire, hot flushes, weight gain, tiredness. Even breast swelling and tenderness.’
‘Christ almighty,’ Zac said angrily, ‘if the poor bugger hasn’t suffered enough indignity, enough worry and enough discomfort already.’
Matt spread his hands on the table. ‘Look, whatever treatment he goes for, this thing is going to kill him – is that what you’re saying?’
‘In a hard, hard nutshell, yes,’ Ben sighed.
‘Django McCabe has terminal cancer,’ Matt said, to make quite sure he had the facts. ‘And there’s nothing that can be done apart from alleviate the symptoms? How the hell am I going to tell Fen?’
‘It’s for Django to,’ Ben said, ‘though I know for a fact that Cat won’t want to know specifics. Will Fen? Will Pip?’
‘You know Pip,’ Zac said softly.
‘Look,’ Ben said, ‘when we go up tomorrow, we’ll see how he’s taking it and perhaps we, as a family, can gauge how to proceed.’
HARD FACTS AND WHITE LIES
Fen had bought a book for Cosima’s first birthday. She’d bought her many other gifts too, predictably, but she felt the book was the central present. She bought it because she liked it though it was arguably beyond the intellect of a one-year-old. Even for a bona fide art historian with a double distinction from the Courtauld Institute, the illustrations were beautiful and accomplished: exquisitely gentle, unwhimsical and somewhat melancholy. Coupled with this, Fen found the tale simultaneously heart-rending yet uplifting – the lonely little beaver who thinks the echo of his own crying is the sorrow of another and sets off across the great lake to see, befriending a clutch of other lonely souls en route. Something about the book struck a chord with Fen and she made Matt read it, cover to cover, who said, Very nice, dear, and returned to his issue of GQ.
There was something of the little beaver in each of the McCabe sisters; something of the echo in those who loved them.
When you are sad, the Echo is sad … When you are happy the Echo is happy too.
Thus, when they tumbled out of their convoy on a clammy Saturday morning in July, and bounded over to Django like excitable puppies, what could the man do but allow his depleted cells to become bolstered by their happiness.
‘Do they know?’ Django asked Ben, out of earshot of the others.
‘We haven’t told them yet,’ Ben said.
‘But you have told the menfolk, like I asked?’
‘Yes,’ said Ben, ‘I did. Everything is your call, Django. We’re here for you. Here to help.’
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Django thought about it. ‘Let’s see how things progress. There’s a birthday to celebrate. And tales from their trip to be heard. And why would I want to risk losing their laughter, those expansive smiles, all this happy love by imparting gory details and gloom?’
‘How are you feeling?’ Ben asked.
‘No worse. No better. A little tired, perhaps – but I do find this heat rather enervating. I ache and I creak and I wake up on the dot of 5.15 each morning.’ Django paused, then he slapped Ben on the shoulder. ‘But other than that, not too bad for a cancerous old septuagenarian. Now come along. I’ve made Pimm’s. I had no mint but there was parsley in the garden so I’ve used that instead. Let’s gather the troops.’
Quite conversationally, after the hors d’oeuvres and whilst serving the main course, Django dished out details of his illness whilst spooning out the fisherman’s pie which also had kidney beans added for their gorgeous colour, plus a little chicken for extra protein. ‘Good news, the radiotherapy will put paid to the aches and pains. Potatoes, Cat? It’s just a bit of a bugger about the other bit – but as Ben said, it’s quite possible to live a normal life, to enjoy just as long an innings, in spite of it.’
The McCabe sisters looked from Django to Ben. Ben read the situation in an instant: he knew that Django was tinkering with the truth just as he tinkered with recipes – all the essential items were used, but in quantities Django had decided were best, with one or two added ingredients to make the flavour uniquely his own. Django’s way with cancer was going to be like his way with food. Django would justify to himself that it was a little like jazz, a collection of notes to make into a scale for which he had the freedom, the right, to tinker with the emphasis and the order.