Home Truths (7 page)

I can reason it out. I can see why. Couldn't anybody? Her mother buggers off with a cowboy so Fen has decided she won't be leaving her baby at all. That's OK. That's OK. It's still relatively early days. But I hope all is well with Matt. I'll invite them for a weekend soon. I'll take him to the Rag. Or perhaps I'll babysit and send the two of them there for a little them-time.

How lovely to have our Cat back in the bag. A relief that her accent is unmodified by her time abroad. She's grown, She's bloomed, She's chopped off her hair and She's home. I must have her and Ben up for a weekend too. He's a good chap. I'll try and find an opportune moment to slip in my little query. I'm sure It's nothing but if he could just pop his doctor's hat on for a minute or two I could ask him a couple of questions and be done with it. I don't want to worry the girls, or waste my own GP's time. It's probably nothing. I'm probably daft for even noticing it. After all, I am growing old – I can hardly expect the rude health I used to enjoy.

Pip looks well. Whoever would have thought that the wilful girl who denounced any merit in love and money, found both in the good form of Zac? And a ready-made son too! Tom may officially be a stepson but that doesn't place him on any lower rung in my affection. He's my grandson-thing-or-other. And I'm most certainly his Gramps. I haven't seen him for far too long, though I wrote him a letter in rhyme last week which I'll try and remember to post when I'm in Bakewell next Tuesday.

Funny thing, blood ties. I don't think of Tom as any less
my grandchild than Cosima. Some pompous old genealogist wouldn't even consider me a grandfather. I'd be stuck out on a limb on a sub-branch of some silly conventional family tree. But the girls do and the children do and That's what counts. My nit-pickin' chicks, back together in the embrace of our funny family.

Penny Ericsson

On the other side of the Atlantic, it is still the day before and Penny Ericsson is wondering how to handle the hollow stretch of another evening alone. This is her twenty-fourth since Bob, her husband of thirty years, died. And though friends have ensured that she does not often spend long tracts of time on her own, Penny has felt utterly alone whether she has company or not.

Her house is immaculate. She is not hungry. She doesn't care for television. There's nothing to do but grieve. In some ways, it makes sense of her life. You love, you lose, you grieve for ever more.

Even the staircase feels longer and steeper now Bob's gone.

‘Life's gonna be one long drag,’ Penny murmurs as she ventures downstairs because She's been doing nothing upstairs for ages. She rotates all the scatter cushions from resting like squares on the two large sofas to perching like rhombs. She changes the angle of the many framed photographs on the mantelpiece so that they all seem to be standing in line to the right. She chooses two large art books from the shelves to replace the current photography books on the coffee table. She sits beside them and laughs hysterically. So
many places to sit, so much time. Too much time. She decides the scatter cushions look ridiculous and they should live up to their name so she chucks them around the sofas until she feels they've found their natural grouping. Still she doesn't fancy sitting there. She gazes at Bob's chair and her laughter is stilled by a sigh that seems to start in the pit of her gut and expels every molecule of breath in her body.

‘You know, I always thought you were ugly and nothing but,’ she says. ‘I mean, my cooker may be ugly but I like it. But you, you I never liked. If I'd had my way I'd've sent you back just as soon as you arrived.’ She looks out of the window. More snow. ‘Think what I could've had here without you taking up all the space. You're the ugliest chair in the world. With some things, you can appreciate that form simply follows function. My summer sandals for example. If they were pretty I'll bet you they wouldn't be comfortable. But look at you – You're ugly and you don't even look like you'd be comfortable.’

There's someone at the door. A rattle of friendly knocks followed by a ring of the bell.

‘Penny? Penny honey – you home?’

It's Marcia and She's gonna let herself in anyway.

‘Pen? It's me. I've brought soup. Snow's said to be bad tomorrow. You in here?’

‘In
here
,’ Penny's voice filters through to the kitchen where Marcia has put the soup on the stove. She goes through to the sitting-room to find Penny.

‘Hey you.’

‘Hullo, Marcia.’

‘You sitting in the dark on the coffee table for a reason? You want me to get some lights on in here?’

‘Sure. I didn't see It's gotten dark. I've been sitting here, Lord knows how long, cussing Bob's chair.’

‘Cussing Bob's chair,’ Marcia says sagely. ‘Well, you never did like that thing.’

‘If the first sign of madness is talking to oneself, then talking to a chair must make me insane. But hell, It's ugly.’

‘Ah – but is it comfortable?’

Suddenly Penny finds She's laughing again. Marcia seems taken aback. ‘You know something, I don't know! I never even sat on it! I never tried!’

Marcia's eyebrows, tweezered into supercilious arches, shoot heavenwards. ‘In thirty years, you never sat on it
once
?’

‘Not once.’

The notion is simultaneously idiotic and rather amazing. ‘Was that out of pure stubbornness?’

‘A little,’ Penny smiles forlornly, ‘but then you see, Bob was usually sitting there himself.’

Marcia sits down alongside Penny and places a hand gently on her arm. They gaze over to the chair, both trying to privately conjure Bob – any image of him, at any point over the years – sitting in his chair. Marcia finds she can do so with ease; for Penny It's impossible.

When is his face going to come back to me? Why can't I remember how tall he was? Which way did he position his legs when he sat in that chair?

‘Did you ever see Bob sit anyplace other?’ Penny remarks wistfully.

‘You know what,’ Marcia marvels gently, ‘no I did not.’

‘For thirty years I've been complaining about it – I told Bob over and again that it was a clumpy, ugly thing, out of keeping with all our other furniture. But he wouldn't consider looking at an alternative. He'd sit there, relaxed as you like, while I cussed.’ Penny gives just a little laugh. ‘I can throw it out now,’ she says, with dull triumph, ‘I can dump it outside. I can have it chopped up for the fire.’

‘Oh don't chop it up, my dear,’ Marcia takes Penny at her word. ‘Perhaps the refuge – they might find a good home for it?’

‘Perhaps,’ says Penny. Then she frowns. ‘You know something, crazy as it sounds, I couldn't bear to. All these years I've been hating it. But just now, this instant, I love it. It's just where It's always been. And here it shall stay. I'll give it a good home – right here. How insane is that?’

‘Honey, are you doing OK?’ Marcia asks tenderly, giving Penny's arm a squeeze of wordless sympathy and concern.

‘No. I'm not,’ Penny states confidently, sucking in her bottom lip so hard her face looks turtle-like and inappropriately comic.

‘It's been less than a month,’ Marcia almost doesn't want to remind her.

‘Twenty-four days,’ Penny shrugs.

‘Honey,’ Marcia tries to soothe though she feels impotent in the presence of such pain.

‘What am I going to do without him?’ Penny asks. ‘What else do I have?’

Suddenly, Marcia is acutely aware of the fact that her own husband is just fine. Just down the street and just fine. It's almost embarrassing. She feels guilty. And She's horribly aware that next week, she'll be swanning off to their winter home in Florida. ‘Why don't we all go to Boca for the winter?’ she says. ‘I mean, Mickey and I are planning to leave next week but there's so much room for you too. Oh say you'll come. Stay as long as you fancy. I'd love it. It would be good, Penny.’

‘I'll be fine here,’ Penny says, surprising herself at how decisive she sounds. ‘This is my home.’

‘You know you can just call whenever? Come whenever?’ Marcia says. She looks out of the window. ‘I'd better go – It's snowing hard now. You eat that soup. I'll call you later. I'll see myself out.’

‘Thanks for stopping by,’ Penny says and She's ready for Marcia to go. She wants to be on her own, free to grieve,
free to drift into a space where just perhaps she might feel Bob still. A semi-dreamland.

She listens to the muffled sound of Marcia's car driving through the fresh snow and away. She turns the lights out in the sitting-room and stands in the darkness quietly. The snow sends silver glances into the room. The moonlight silhouettes the hills as a lumbering but benign presence. Penny wishes she hadn't rubbished clairvoyance and the concept of the Spirit. Because just say it is for real, say it really does exist – has she jinxed herself by being a cynic most of her life? Are you there? Can I sense you? Is that you I can hear? How was your day, honey? Can I fix you a drink? You sit yourself down in your chair. That goddam ugly chair. Let me fetch you a Scotch. Then you can tell me about your day.

‘I never even sat in that chair.’

Penny goes to it and sits down. She has no idea whether the chair is comfortable or not. It is as close as she can now get to being with Bob again. She sleeps.

Home from Home

Cat sat at the table, in the furnished flat she and Ben were renting, tracing a pattern someone else had gouged into the wood at some point. Some previous tenant with little respect, she assumed with distaste. As she ran her finger over it, she considered perhaps it wasn't wilful carving, it might even be as old as the table – a slip of the original carpenter's chisel? It was a nice piece of old farmhouse pine. Ben watched Cat work her middle finger along the furrow as if she was gouging it anew.

‘Are you OK, babe?’ he asked, looking from one tub of fresh pasta sauce to another. He held them to Cat for final selection.

‘Arabiata,’ she said. ‘I'm fine.’

‘Liar,’ said Ben. ‘What's up?’ He left the sauce to simmer and sat, cowboy style, astride the chair next to Cat. He brought his face to the level of hers. Cat looked at him, stuck out her bottom lip in an over-exaggerated pout that she knew would invite a kiss, and shrugged.

‘How are your sisters?’ he asked. ‘How's Django? Everything was all right up there, wasn't it?’

‘God, fine,’ Cat assured him. ‘I don't know. It's just that
It's all changed a little since we've been gone. I suppose I was expecting to find my life, my family, just as I left them. As if they'd been happily freeze-framed in anticipation of my return.’

‘And?’ Ben said.

‘Now Django's going to be seventy-five,’ Cat said quietly.

‘You staying in the UK the last four years couldn't have prevented that,’ Ben pointed out.

‘And Pip is more sensible than she used to be,’ Cat bemoaned. ‘By that I mean She's all settled and content with her grown-up role as a school-run stepmum.’

‘What's wrong with that?’ Ben asked. ‘And aren't you settled and content?’

‘Of course I am, you know I am,’ said Cat. ‘But Pip's the one who should be doing cartwheels down the hallway, who makes teaspoons disappear and then reappear from behind my ear. She didn't do one handstand against the wall this weekend.’

‘It was the weekend. She was off duty,’ Ben pointed out. ‘It's normal for people to not want to take their work home with them. Imagine if I came home with my stethoscope, or took the blood pressure of any visitors to our house.’

‘But we don't own a house,’ Cat mumbled, ‘just this horrid rented flat.’

‘Cat!’ Ben remonstrated. ‘We've been back in the UK two bloody minutes.’

Cat ignored him by changing the subject. ‘Fen is in the throes of this immense love affair with her baby and she can talk of nothing else.’

‘What's wrong with that?’ Ben asked. Cat shrugged.

She wasn't prepared to say out loud that though her niece was utterly adorable, she had found Fen uptight, boring even.

‘They're not who they were,’ Cat said. ‘Their identities have changed.’ She could hear the plaintive edge to her voice.

‘That's par for the course – growing up, growing old,’ Ben said, though he saw his wife flinch from his cheeriness. ‘Anyway, they probably find you different too. But That's no bad thing.’

‘I don't like this place,’ Cat said, irritated. ‘I don't like other people's furniture. I don't like stupid Clapham. I want to be in our own place, with our stuff. Perhaps we should have rented unfurnished. Perhaps we should have stayed in the US. It's all going to take ages.’

Ben looked at her, suddenly serious. ‘Nothing's going to happen overnight,’ he said. ‘it'll take a while to attain Pip's peace of mind and Fen's healthy baby. Nine months at the very least.’

Cat thought for a moment. Perhaps that was it – perhaps she didn't resent her sisters their changes, perhaps she aspired to what they had. Or there again maybe it was just jet lag.

‘I'll tell you what was peculiar,’ she said. ‘Fen talked about how being a mother had made her really think about our own mother. It had me thinking too.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But say. Just say.’ She looked imploringly at Ben, as if he might know what without her having to just say.

‘Just say what?’ he asked.

Cat paused. ‘Just say It's hereditary?’ ‘But you just said that Fen is a caring mother to the point of being obsessed,’ Ben said carefully.

Cat glanced at him shyly. She shook her head. ‘I don't mean Fen. Say it runs in the family. Say I'll be a crap mother? Maybe I should concentrate on my career for the time being.’

Ben thought for a moment, scratched his neck. ‘Actually, genetics rarely play a part in such extreme behaviour,’ he said. ‘For all you know, your mother sucks in her bottom lip – like you do – and That's the only family trait you've inherited from her. Think of Fen – mother superior, however much she might irritate you. Think of Pip – her maternal
connection with Tom is great and there's no blood there. You McCabe girls are all destined to be extraordinary mothers – by virtue of the fact that your own set such a poor example.’