by Freya North
‘He always makes plenty,’ Fen assured her.
‘Sorry – were you at the party last night?’ asked Pip.
‘No,’ she said, ‘no.’ And she fingered the cord of silver around her neck while being smiled at.
Tom wondered whether this new lady might be interested that Cat had said ‘fucking’ seven times.
‘Here he is,’ Fen said, before Tom had a chance to find out.
Django was far too busy balancing the tray with all the cups and saucers and teapot and plates piled high with biscuits to notice his guest at first.
‘Hi Derek,’ the lady said, ‘happy birthday.’
Derek?
Who's Derek?
I Don't think we know a Derek.
There's no Derek here.
In severe electric shocks, it is impossible to let go. Such shocks are, literally, riveting; they simultaneously root you to the spot while they decimate you. Django didn't drop the tray, he didn't faint or fall to his knees and he didn't wail or gasp. He couldn't. He couldn't make a sound, let alone say a word. He couldn't drop the tray. He couldn't move. He stood there, momentarily paralysed.
‘This is Django,’ Cat was saying to the lady, ‘Django McCabe.’
‘If You're lost, there are loads of Ordnance Survey maps in the house,’ said Fen helpfully.
‘I think They're in that trunk in the shed, actually,’ added Pip.
‘Girls,’ said Django, and the pureness of his audible pain was not for himself, but for those he loved most on whom he was about to inflict it. ‘Girls.’ Carefully he put the tray down. He did not know in whose eyes he should look. So he looked at her. ‘Girls. This is your mother.’
Where were you when Princess Diana died? What were you doing when the planes struck the World Trade Center on 9/11? Were you sitting down to Christmas Day leftovers when you learnt about the Asian Tsunami?
On Django's seventy-fifth birthday, Cat, Pip and Fen wouldn't have had a clue where they'd been on those landmark moments. For them, history ceased to be defined by such events. On Django's seventy-fifth birthday, history was retold.
Our mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when we were small.
And then she came back.
Then What?
Then what? No one could actually say a thing. Time had stopped, the temperature had dropped and Pip, Cat and Fen were paralysed in a state of frozen panic. If the magnitude of the situation was beyond belief, it was certainly beyond words. They had never imagined this occurrence, never craved it, never dreaded it. Therefore, they had never bothered to prepare fanciful speeches in the event of their mother showing up. They'd never even wondered ‘What if?’ This sudden reality was so far from their expectation that they were utterly ill-equipped to deal with it. They could only sit and stare, with time suspended while their hearts thumped with disbelief. No one wanted to break it. In the silence, they were still safe. If anyone moved or any sound was made, time would have to resume. Nothing would be the same again. This they knew. And yet Cat, Fen and Pip hadn't ever wanted anything to change in the first place.
Penny stood there and deduced which daughter was Cat, though just then she didn't know Pip from Fen. It also occurred to her, with unexpected pleasure, that she appeared to be a grandmother too. The particulars of her gene-pool were immediately legible; her three daughters had paired up and had two offspring between them. The bare facts were pleasing. The girls appeared in good health. Their men looked nice. Everyone seemed happy. It was a soothing scene to behold but one she suddenly wished she was seeing as a fly on the wall. Home seemed very far away.
‘Hi,’ she said, focusing on the baby, ‘and aren't you a cutey?’ She stooped to Cosima who was gurgling and bashing her pudgy legs with her little fists. Penny offered the baby a finger. ‘Hi, hi, cutey-pie.’
Fen grabbed her baby away before she could grasp her grandmother's finger. She staggered to her feet, the brittle rubber of one flip-flop ripping away from the sole as she did so. Her face glowering with mistrust and animosity. ‘What the fuck?’ she managed in a hoarse whisper.
Tom gave a delighted gasp. ‘Fen said f—’
‘Tom!’ Zac hissed, now in no quandary over whom to protect. He took Tom away, to the tyre swing at the outer edge of the garden. He could only touch his wife gently between the shoulder-blades as he went.
‘You're Fenella?’ Penny deduced. ‘And look, you have a daughter!’
Fen couldn't respond, she could only hold Cosima protectively. What did all this mean? What was going on? Matt rose and stood oak-like and silent behind his family.
‘You're Philippa?’ Penny asked Pip.
Pip was unable to give much more than a childlike shrug. Where was Zac? Where should she be? By her sisters? But they had their partners. No one was looking to her for help. They were each in a constrictive space of their own. Pip felt entirely alone. Zac was in another space, protecting his son. She was surrounded by a family in splinters and for the first time she had no idea how to go about putting it all back together again. She felt very cold.
‘And I guessed you were Catriona,’ Penny gave a small smile. She turned to Django. ‘She has your eyes, hey?’
1960s and All That Jazz
If ignorance had been the background to the bliss in the McCabe sisters' lives until that moment, knowledge was its polar opposite and it suffused them with panic and pain. In desperation, they tried to plead ignorance. If they pretended they didn't know what she meant, everything might be all right.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Pip.
‘Who's Derek?’ said Fen.
Say something Cat. Quickly. You need to say something naive and pedestrian. Why not tell that woman she simply has the wrong family. But Cat's voice was horribly noticeable for its silence. Her sisters turned to her. She looked back at them, imploringly. ‘What does she mean about me having Django's eyes?’ said Cat, capable of little more than a whisper. They turned to Django who was staring at Penny. They turned to Penny who was gazing at the three of them.
‘I had to come,’ Penny told them. ‘I know it must be a shock and all. But could we talk? Might you listen?’
The sisters turned to Django but his head hung low and his eyes were fixed on the ground.
‘If You're on some mission to appease your guilt, you've wasted your journey,’ said Pip flatly. ‘It has nothing to do with us.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Fen said so icily that Cosima wriggled and began to cry. ‘What are you implying about Cat? Why do you call our uncle “Derek”?’
‘You did not know?’ Penny appeared shocked. ‘Did you God-honestly not know? Your whole lives – and you did not know?’
‘Know what?’ Cat asked, her voice barely audible.
The faintest of whispers coursed through Fen and Pip, but they blocked it out, not ready to listen.
If we did not know any of this, what else might we not know? The thought was trying to sidle.
Cat now had her hands clamped over her ears, her eyes screwed shut. She did not want to hear them and she did not want anyone looking at her eyes.
‘I am sorry,’ Penny said with a hand at her heart for emphasis, ‘this must be a terrible shock. Derek – could you not help me out here?’
All eyes turned to the man in the candy-striped cheesecloth smock, the man with the moccasins on his feet, wearing patched cords with fraying seams and a faded CND patch appliquéd under one knee. Whatever his name was. There had to be an explanation. He was the man who had always made everything all right. Who had made sense of everything. He had always told them, when they were hurt, that he was there to make them better. That it was his job to kiss that bruise. That he was the world expert in cuddling away tears. There there. There there. Django is here. Don't cry. Don't worry. Django's here.
Except he Isn't.
Some bloke called Derek is standing in his moccasins.
He suddenly looks very old and tired, thought Pip.
He doesn't look well, though
t Fen.
I hate him, thought Cat.
Christ, this is one crackpot family, thought Ben. Bugger, Cosima needs changing, thought Matt.
‘I,’ Django said. ‘She.’ He paused. ‘You,’ he said, though he focused on no one. Silence fell and Django felt powerless to do anything about it.
She took off her glasses. ‘My name is Penny Ericsson,’ she told them, ‘and I am your mother.’ Her voice was gentle and clear, tinged with reflection but underscored with relief; a timbre that told everyone that the truth was being told. ‘I was married to Nicholas McCabe when I was a very young girl. I was seventeen and pregnant – not with you, Philippa, with another child. I miscarried. I had you. I had Fenella. I had Catriona. And I left.’
The silence, no less heavy, was calmer.
‘Why do you say that Cat has Django's eyes?’ Pip asked finally, the reluctant spokesman for the sisters.
‘You have Nicholas's chin, Philippa,’ Penny said levelly, ‘Fenella has Nicholas's eyes.’ She stopped. ‘And Catriona has Derek's eyes.’
‘What are you saying?’ Fen then turned to Django who finally met her gaze. ‘What is she saying?’
Django looked around him. His home. His garden. His girls. His grandchildren. All that he loved. He was soaking up the sights, as if within seconds he'd be denied them for ever. All that he held sacred, all he had hoped to keep safe, was teetering on a precipice that was as much of his own making as of Penny Ericsson's. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to step in as protector or if he was about to push what he held most precious straight over the edge. He stumbled, grabbed the cold edge of the curlicue garden chair and sat down heavily. With a hand on each knee, and rocking gently, he spoke with audibly heart-heavy reluctance. ‘My name is Derek McCabe – or at least That's what it says on my birth certificate.’ Suddenly, it seemed like a good if desperate idea to fixate on the triviality of this particular revelation, to step outside the bigger picture and the graver question. A glance at his girls suggested they were almost glad of the diversion. ‘Look at me, I hardly look like a Derek, do I?’ he tried a meek smile. ‘Derek was my given name – but Django is my true name. Can we settle on that?’
‘Django?’ Pip enunciated the word as if it sat awkward on her tongue, as if it were no longer a name. ‘How the hell did you go from Derek to Django?’
Django looked hurt. ‘Jazz,’ he declared, as if to prompt, ‘jazz.’ Fen and Pip nodded as if they thought they understood. ‘When I heard the music of Django Reinhardt, the colour and spirit at my core leapt free,’ he explained, ‘and in the sixties, to be who you felt was the easiest thing in the world. You think Bibi's parents called her Bibi when she was born in 1939? They called her Doris, but what did they know? Can you imagine Bibi being called Doris, for goodness' sake? One day she said, Hey call me Bibi, so we said, Cool. And one day I said, Hey call me Django, and they said, Cool. Feel the vibe. Tune in. Dig it.’
Too many psychedelic drugs, Ben mused in a quick, private glance to Matt.
Good thing his hero was Django Reinhardt and not Bix Beiderbecke or Thelonious Monk, Matt thought as he raised his eyebrow to Ben.
But for the sisters, Django's eccentricity was suddenly baffling and irritating. Throughout their lives, in spite of his quirks, he'd been utterly reliable and had ensured consistency in their lives. Now they felt conned.
‘But are you?’ Cat's voice suddenly rang out, far stronger than Pip's, much calmer than Fen's. She locked eyes with Penny. ‘Is he?’
‘I am,’ said Django.
‘How long have you known?’ Cat asked.
‘I've always known,’ Django said.
With that, there was now nothing else to misconstrue, nothing to cling to in the faint hope of a mistake. And in the here and now, the hear and now became far too onerous for Cat. Burying her head in Ben's chest was her only option because, just then, he was the closest she felt she had to proper, genuine family.
Penny cleared her throat, to invite all eyes back to her. She looked from Fen to Pip, gazed at the back of Cat's head, at Ben's hand holding it protectively against his chest, his wedding ring glinting in the sunshine. Then Penny glanced at Django. ‘He's kinda right,’ she said. ‘I Don't know.’ She stopped. Attempted to speak again. Stopped. ‘Nowadays there's Prozac,’ she said, ‘and therapy. But back then, there were magic mushrooms and acid and free love. Only it wasn't free. None of it was free or liberating. The cost was high.’
‘But why are you here?’ Pip asked.
‘You're screwing up our lives a second time around,’ Fen cried.
Penny looked crestfallen. She hadn't anticipated this and she certainly had not intended this. Privately, she cursed Grief for having centred her world around herself. ‘If I could try to explain?’ she asked them and continued before they could deny her. ‘Despite the fog of my screwed-up 1960s state, I met the love of my life. The love of my life. The light in my life. A beautiful man called Bob Ericsson.’ She looked around her. Their faces wouldn't be blank if they'd known him, she thought. ‘He died, you see. He died five months ago. The light in my life went out. And I am here because suddenly I Don't want to be hated like Juliette hates her father.’ Penny faltered. So much to explain. How could she have suddenly arrived at Fountains ice cream when there was over a quarter of a century's details to divulge? ‘Juliette is this young woman I've met,’ she said, a little meekly. ‘She's about your age, Fen, I would imagine. I Don't actually know.’
‘Don't you even know how old I am?’ Fen cried.
‘Oh, I know exactly how old you are,’ Penny said, her voice so hoarse it had no tone, ‘to the day. The minute. I just Don't know how old Juliette is, precisely.’
For the sisters, details were now irrelevant. Other people's sob stories were irrelevant. The quandary all three shared was who to feel most betrayed by. The mother who had abandoned them when they were small? Or the man who had lied to them, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout their lives? In their past, at tumultuous points in their lives, there had always been that one place to go to – home, Derbyshire, Django. Now it was the one place they wanted to run from. Their hearts were not here so how could it be home? Their hearts had been fractured into splinters and shards by the arrival of this woman saying she was their mother, and this man called Derek admitting he was Cat's father.
‘I want to go,’ Fen told Matt.
Pip looked over at the tyre swing. ‘Zac?’ she called. He looked up. we're going, she mouthed with an urgent beckon.
She and Fen looked at Cat, at the back of her head, Ben's chest keeping her face from view, her hands still protecting her ears. ‘Us too,’ Ben nodded, kissing the top of his wife's head again and again.
Where were you when you found out that Pip and Fen were only your half sisters? That your father was a man called Derek McCabe whom you'd known your whole life but was now a complete stranger?
I was listening to Ben's heartbeat, sixty-two beats per minute. Strong and steady. Take me away from here, Ben. Quickly. Back to Clapham – That's fine. Wherever. As long as I'm with you. Home is where my heart is. And it won't ever be here in Derbyshire. Never again.
From standing stock still with time suspended, suddenly the emphasis was on movement, on going, on getting away and fast. There was no flouncing, no histrionics, just calm and purposeful organizing.
‘Have you had a wee?’ Pip asked Tom.
‘I'll just change Cosima,’ said Matt.
‘It's OK, I'll do that,’ said Fen. ‘You pack the car.’
Finally, the sisters hugged each other and pointedly stayed beyond arm's reach and avoided eye contact when muttering goodbye to the approximate location of Django and their mother.
How can something planned to perfection go so horribly wrong? Though the thought had conflicting relevance in terms of timescale, both Django and Penny pondered as they stood in the garden transfixed by the space made by the girls' leaving.
‘Oh dear,’ Penny said, ‘this I did not plan. How dumb am I?’
‘Ditto,’ said Django, ‘still. Still.’ He sighed and glanced at her. ‘One can't expect to hoick secrets one's whole life. They're far too cumbersome.’ He spoke for them both. She nodded and hung her head. ‘Though I'd say I'm more deluded than dumb,’ Django said. ‘I've spent over thirty years keeping them from hurt. How conceited I must be to have assumed I could maintain this.’
He looked at her. Penny at fifty-three. She hadn't really changed. Physically, the years had apparently treated her relatively well but a good complexion could not mask a certain delineating sadness. And it was precisely this that he remembered, from thirty years ago; more than the colour of her eyes, the set of her mouth. Still the same sad, mixed-up girl, currently hiding behind a more weathered façade. ‘Why on earth did you come back?’
Penny looked at her sandals, looked at Django's moccasins, made an oddly childish semicircle in the grass with her foot. ‘I Don't really know right now.’
‘Well it can't have been to wish me happy birthday.’ ‘No,’ Penny agreed, ‘I'd already booked my flight when I remembered your birthday and realized it was your seventy-fifth.’
‘Why come?’ Django asked. ‘Why now?’
‘Because Bob died,’ Penny shrugged, hastily blinking away tears and feigning that it was the sunlight bothering her.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ Django said, his eyes and his voice softening a little.
‘I tend to lose most things, Don't I?’ Penny remarked. ‘But I really did try to take good care of Bob, you know.’
I've just lost the lot, Django thought sadly to himself.
The M1
Junction 27
Guns N' Roses was a very odd choice. Odd, because Ben had no idea that Cat particularly liked their music. Odd because they'd always favoured Moby for motorways. Odd because the thrash and slash of heavy rock should surely be utterly at odds with the fragile, solemn mood. Wouldn't Cat want to listen to something more ambient, something to soothe the scorch on her soul? Obviously not. Sweet child of mine.