by Freya North
‘I do so love my family,’ Cat declared to Pip who was trying to French kiss a bemused Zac much to Tom's jaw-dropped delight. ‘Family is everything,’ she said, looking desperately fondly at Ben. ‘The family you have, the family you create.’
‘Family is what matters,’ Pip agreed. ‘You're so right.’
‘Oh God, not the waterworks,’ Ben groaned passing Cat a serviette to mop her eyes.
‘I can't believe you said “fucking” three times in front of everyone!’ Tom marvelled.
‘Fucking fucking fucking fucking,’ Cat laughed. ‘There, That's another four.’
‘Cat!’ Zac protested, shooting a glance to Pip for backup.
‘Cool!’ Tom laughed, deciding Cat was definitely his favourite step-aunt-or-something.
Cat hugged him. ‘I just can't wait to have a little Tom or a little Cosima of my very own,’ she told him. ‘Family is what matters most in life.’
‘I agree,’ Tom said earnestly. ‘I've got loads.’
‘That's what they should teach children in school,’ Cat said. ‘Are you excited about your new baby?’
‘Mega excited,’ Tom said. ‘I Don't even mind if It's a girl.’
Zac laughed. ‘That's only because you think your train collection will be safe.’
Tom grinned and shrugged.
Cat and Fen are teaching Tom how to swear in German and French. Matt and Ben have snuck behind the marquee for a secret spliff. Pip's arms are about Zac's neck again. ‘Why Don't we do it?’ she whispers, whilst nuzzling his ear lobe.
Zac regards her with a lascivious grin. ‘Sneak away for a quick knee-trembler against the oak tree?’
Pip frowns fleetingly. ‘I Don't mean that,’ she laughs, ‘I didn't mean a shag. I meant why Don't we do it, Zac. You and me. Us. Have a baby?’
What was previously but the hushest of whispers in the furthest recesses of her own mind, is suddenly out in the open. Though she has enunciated the question mark and made it sound like a request, her words are less a suggestion and more a proclamation of intent. And Zac must respond, he must answer, he must acknowledge her invitation. And for Pip, in an instant, it is irrelevant whether Zac's expression is specifically one of shock, one of bemusement, one of aversion or an amalgamation of all three. The significance is the absence of a smile. It's shocking. Zac's smile was what She'd first fallen in love with. It can't have gone.
‘You're drunk,’ He's saying, ‘You're joking.’
‘I'm not,’ Pip protests. ‘Well, maybe I am drunk. But I'm not joking.’
‘Don't be daft,’ Zac says and he plugs her mouth with an affectionate kiss. ‘And stay off the punch, Mrs.’ He looks around while Pip stares at his shoes and quashes a sudden desire to scuff their well-tended shine. ‘Have you seen Tom?’ he asks her. ‘There he is. Can you keep an eye on him? I'm going to find Matt and Ben for a crafty puff.’
Pip weaves her way to Tom. She feels winded. She hadn't known she was to make her revelation so of course she couldn't reasonably anticipate his reaction. But the reaction, when it came, flummoxed her more than her revelation itself. She's embarrassed. And a little hurt. It's a sensation she does not like, one that she won't allow to show because She'd hate anyone to pry. She's always been very committed and particular in her role as the eldest; She's taken it to mean that she must appear infallible and in control. How would Cat and Fen cope if she wasn't? They depend on her. It's their family way.
And here they are, her little sisters, their arms around her stepson.
‘Where's my dad?’ Tom asks.
‘I Don't know,’ Pip says, ‘and you should be thinking bedtime.’
‘But It's not ten o'clock,’ Tom protests.
‘It's five to,’ says Pip.
‘But Dad says I can stay up until ten,’ Tom moans.
Pip bites her lip. Fine. Whatever. What does my opinion matter anyway? I'm not your mother. I have no natural authority.
‘Pip?’ Fen asks. ‘Are you OK?’
‘What? Fine,’ Pip says and she walks away.
‘Go after her,’ Cat nudges Fen.
‘You,’ says Fen. ‘I need to check on Cosima.’
‘Come on, kiddo,’ Cat says to Tom whom She's noticed has much the same hairstyle as her – though his here-and-there tufting is beyond his control while hers requires expensive products and much time. ‘Let's go and find some crazy chums of Django's to chat to.’
‘It's my bedtime,’ Tom says gravely.
‘Fuck bedtime,’ Cat says with a wink and a nudge. ‘Let's pretend we can't tell the time.’
‘You're wicked,’ says Tom, beaming, as Cat puts her hand on his bony little shoulder and guides him into the party.
‘Sleeping peacefully?’ Matt whispers.
Fen turns from the travel cot and puts her finger to her lips. She nods. Matt comes over. He doesn't glance in the cot. He has eyes only for Fen. She looks so pretty tonight and He's feeling so horny, a bit drunk and stoned too. He comes up to her, tucks a straying lock of hair behind her ears and cups her head in his hands. He winks suggestively. The gesture is partly comic but engaging too. Over her clothes, Matt's hands peruse her breasts while his mouth finds hers. To his surprise and delight, suddenly She's tonguing him greedily, grasping his buttocks and pulling his pelvis against hers. Privately, he salutes the punch and the green stuff from Grenada. He thinks he'll ply Fen with alcohol on a regular basis. She's wearing a soft skirt and all evening He's been noticing how it catches the curves of her bottom, the sides of her thighs. No panty line. No panties? He explores. A thong. God, when was the last time he saw her in a thong? His hands move over her bare buttocks, he slips his fingers under the fabric of the thong and starts tugging it gently, knowing it creates tantalizing friction for her.
Fen's hands are all over him. Sweeping over his torso, grabbing his neck to pull his face even closer to hers, fondling the bulge in his trousers. He fumbles with buttons while Fen drops to her knees and tugs down his boxers. There's no preamble. No inner-thigh massage or ball-licking or shaft-caressing. She takes the entire length of his tumescent cock in her mouth and sucks so ravenously that he has to desperately conjure an image of the mad old woman near work, to stop him coming right then. He pulls Fen up to him, pulls at her top and fiddles with her bra cup to release her breasts. Her nipples are hard between his fingers and his cock is now achingly erect. He'd love to spend time sucking her tits, fingering her sex, maybe go down on her, some reciprocal oral sex, perhaps some mutual masturbation but actually all he wants to do is fuck her, get his cock up inside her in some primal urgency to reclaim her as his own. They fall onto the bed, not bothering about what clothing is on or off, just as long as there's no fabric restricting entry. Fen pulls her G-string to one side, fleetingly Matt brushes through the fuzz of her mound, to confirm the ready ooze from her sex. Her legs are spread, their eyes are locked, their lips are parted and wet. He thrusts into her and they hump vigorously. Usually, Fen likes to go on top. Usually, she wants to go on top, to dictate the pace and the angle to facilitate her orgasm. Usually, she needs penetration interspersed with manual or oral stimulation to climax. Tonight, it is as if she has started to come as soon as Matt is inside her. The longest, most overdue, most body-racking orgasm. She gasps and bucks and scratches and yelps and She's pretty sure She's just come again instantaneously. Yet despite this fantastic vast throbbing wet pleasure zone electrifying her body, her mind tunes into her baby's cry the millisecond before the sound is made.
And then Fen's eyes are wide open and She's shoving and pushing Matt off her. He's a matter of thrusts away from his climax but the strength of a mother is no match for him. She's gone. She's gone away. He lies there, his balls aching with unspent sperm, his cock more flaccid by the second. He thinks It's an amazing but dreadful feat, the way she can flit between sex-greed and maternal obsession. It's really quite some skill. One to revere, but not necessarily like. What he doesn't like at all is a lurking sense that while he was compelled by passion for
her just now, she was pursuing only her own physical gratification. I've come – you can go now. Matt feels used, really. As let down and deflated as his ignored, limp cock.
Once Cosima has settled again, Fen offers herself to Matt; caressing his wilted cock, taking it in her mouth. Though she performs a variety of usually fail-safe tricks and techniques, it is not possible to disguise her drive as one of desire rather than duty. She's not even half-hearted; her heart obviously Isn't in it.
‘Moment has passed,’ Matt shrugs, tapping her head.
Fen looks up. His cock snuggles against his pubic hair like a little creature asleep in a nest. He thinks it looks pathetic. He closes his eyes.
‘Don't I turn you on any more?’ Fen says and he looks down at her pouting up at him.
He knows She's trying to be cute but he wants to tell her, Actually, sometimes no you Don't, especially not when you reject me to faff with the baby. But It's not worth it. It's Django's birthday party. Matt can't possibly instigate a confrontation, or even a heart-to-heart.
‘You can owe me one,’ he tells her as he rearranges his clothing.
She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘Deal,’ she says warmly, led by growing guilt. She's horribly aware that throughout the fuck she was abandoned to the fantasy that Matt was someone else. No one whom she knew. Just someone specifically not Matt. But now is not the time to worry and analyse it. There's a party out in the garden. She double-checks the baby monitor and returns to the mêlée.
Django is telling Tom somewhat fanciful stories about his time with the Beatles. Bibi is nodding earnestly, adding details of her own which She's pretty sure must be true. ‘The thing about the sixties,’ she confides to Zac, ‘is I can't remember a bloody thing about the sixties! I think LSD may well have been a terrific trip – but the downside is I Don't honestly know which memories are real and which are purely chemical.’
‘Where's Ellisdy, Dad?’ Tom asks Zac, wondering if such a trip might be something they could do over the summer holidays. Zac is momentarily thrown. Now does not seem an appropriate time for the ‘just say no’ lecture.
‘Ghastly! Don't go there!’ Django rues, which is good enough for Zac and good enough for Tom.
‘Gracious me, look at the time – It's nearly midnight and I'll turn into a pumpkin. Or, rather, seventy-five years old officially.’
‘I thought it was a birthday party?’ Tom says, confused. ‘You can only have a birthday party if It's on your actual birthday. Otherwise it has to be called a party.’
‘My seventy-fifth birthday is actually tomorrow,’ Django says. He looks at his watch and counts down the seconds with theatrical nods of his head. ‘No. I tell a lie. It's now today. I'm now seventy-five years old.’
‘So it is a birthday party,’ says Tom, dreading his father hearing all this talk about what the time is.
‘Whatever you'd like to call it, I had an absolute blast,’ said Django. ‘And now I'm going to bed.’
Derek
Often, a great party is defined less by the event itself, than by the calibre and longevity of subsequent reminiscences. A balmy May Sunday morning in the idyllic setting of the house and grounds at Farleymoor, provided a conducive carte blanche for lounging, lazing and recounting. Of course, this could not be done on an empty stomach, nor with a hangover, so Django had prepared his remedy for both – a vast breakfast of sausages, eggs, bacon, champ and beans, all flooded with Henderson's Relish and roofed over with slabs of toast plastered with marmalade. His family lolled about outside, turning their faces to the sun, chatting. Behind them, the Blakes of Chesterfield marquee seemed to breathe; its sides swelling rhythmically in the gentle breeze, as if still sleeping off the excesses of the night before.
‘You said “fucking” seven times!’ Tom whispered to Cat who winced, covered her eyes and apologized profusely.
‘Did anyone video the speeches?’ Fen wondered, hovering her hand an inch above Cosima's head so that the baby's downy hair caressed the palm of her hand.
‘Video?’ Django balked. ‘Gracious no, though the Ravellas brought their Super8. Doubt whether it had film in it. They've taken that thing everywhere with them over the years, amassing a footage that runs into – well – minutes on account of their forgetfulness.’
‘Bibi's dancing deserves to be documented for posterity,’ Ben marvelled. ‘She's more loose-limbed than Josephine Baker.’
‘Actually, she really was a contortionist in her prime. That's how we met. It was some festival or other. She was doing frightfully bendy things whilst saluting the sun, or the moon, or something similarly yogic. However, she ended up making quite a few bob as many people presumed she was busking for tips.’
‘What a character,’ Pip said warmly. ‘I hope she pops in sometime today, to say goodbye again.’
‘Look, here are Ferdy and Gregor!’ said Cat.
‘No banjos,’ Tom remarked sadly.
It took some time for the couple to kiss everyone on both cheeks. They then made much of how ghastly their headaches were and that the least Django could do was provide hair-of-the-dog by way of compensation. Zac's constitution was far too delicate just then, to withstand an explanation of the term to Tom, though Matt promised the boy he'd tell him later, when his own headache had subsided.
‘Will you be having an eighty-fifth birthday party?’ Tom enquired. ‘In a decade?’
Django considered the question carefully. ‘I can't see why not,’ he reasoned, ‘as long as I'm still relatively hale and hearty.’
‘I'll be nearly twenty by then!’ Tom said. ‘How fucking amazing is that!’
‘Tom!’ everyone remonstrated, before levelling accusatory glares at Cat.
‘Goodness me, I need a cup of tea,’ Django declared.
‘I'll make it,’ offered Pip.
‘You stay put, darling,’ Django ordered. ‘I may be old, but I'm not incapable.’
‘Can we just have Darjeeling, please?’ Fen requested as diplomatically as she could.
‘She means not that weird purpley stuff that smells like stewed grasses,’ Cat laughed.
‘I didn't bring you up to be dull,’ Django protested, though he had to privately agree with the stewed-grass analogy. ‘Might you settle for Lapsang?’ he asked. They'd have to.
‘Do a flikflak, Pip!’ Tom implored his stepmother. Pip looked at the lawn: soft, level and inviting. It was where She'd taught herself all manner of tumbling over the years, but she didn't much feel like demonstrations today. She had a hangover and what she wanted was to have a private moment with Zac so she could say Did you mean what you said last night? Because, actually, I meant what I said. But Zac had been infuriatingly cheerful all morning, tactile and attentive, thus allowing her no recourse to challenge him.
‘Please do a flikflak?’ Tom pleaded. ‘It makes sense to do flikflaks before you have a cup of tea.’
‘I wasn't actually considering doing any after,’ Pip pointed out. And then she looked at Tom's disappointed little face and flikflaks suddenly seemed a tiny price to pay for his smile. ‘I want applause,’ Pip stipulated, ‘cheering and whistling, if you please.’ And off she went, executing a perfect line of four.
‘I used to be able to walk on my hands,’ said Ben. Rolling his head, giving his wrists and ankles an energetic shake, to gasps of admiration, he found he still could.
‘I can cartwheel!’ said Cat, scrambling to her feet and doing just that.
And when Penny Ericsson came through the garden gate, That's the scene that greeted her: a laughing bunch performing amateur acrobatics in the early summer sunshine.
No one knew who she was. Why should they? But the appearance of a stranger didn't surprise them. People had been calling in all morning to thank Django for the party and wish him many happy returns. Some hadn't even been present the night before, but still they came with their birthday greetings. So the group on the lawn didn't bat an eyelid at the woman. She was just another friend of Django's, wasn't she? Someone from his di
m and distant past, from some far-flung shore, no doubt. Relatively conservatively dressed for a friend of Django's. Silvering blonde hair cut close. Small tortoise-shell glasses. A tunic top and cropped trousers in the same honey-coloured linen. Sensible sandals. Interesting jewellery. She had stopped some distance away. She raised her hand. Fen raised hers.
‘Hi,’ the woman called.
‘Hullo!’ called Cat.
‘Hi,’ she said, coming nearer, ‘hi.’
An American. Django had plenty of friends from the States. Perhaps this was the famous Toni from Squam? Or the infamous Rayner from Sausalito?
‘Hi,’ she said, once again, slightly breathless, squinting in the sunlight.
‘Hullo,’ said Fen. And Cat. And Pip. And the men. And Tom.
It is often a peculiar surprise to hear the sound of one's voice on a recording. The sound doesn't make sense. I Don't sound anything like that. Sometimes, a mirror presents an image so far from one's perception of oneself that the reflection could well belong to a stranger. But That's not how I feel I look.
However, for Ben, Matt and Zac, a glimpse of the future, of seeing how their partners might look in twenty-five years' time, was immediate. But that wasn't the shock of it. The fundamental shock was that this woman's resemblance to their girls was so striking that there could be but one explanation. And yet the girls obviously hadn't noticed a thing.
But what when they did?
What then?
The three men could do little more than glance at each other and feel their heart rates thud like the countdown to a detonation.
‘So,’ the lady said, ‘where is the birthday boy?’
‘He's making tea,’ Cat said. ‘he'll be out in a mo'.’