Freya North - Home Truths

‘But it’s my weekend!’ Cat reiterated.

Fen looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘I don’t want to go to the Rag and Thistle because I don’t want to leave Cosima,’ she explained, looking at the semicircle of her family surrounding her. ‘It’s not something that I’ve done. Why can’t we just stay here – open some dodgy home-made elderberry wine?’

Her sisters and uncle regarded her while she scrutinized a threadbare patch on the Persian rug. Was that newspaper beneath it? Probably. When from, Fen wondered. She’d known the rug all her life.

‘You mean to say you haven’t had any time apart from Cosima in six months?’ Cat asked.

‘No – yes,’ Fen elaborated, ‘not really. Matt has babysat a couple of times.’

‘You mean you and Matt haven’t been out together since she was born?’ Cat asked, thinking it sounded preposterous.

‘That’s right,’ said Fen, with a tightness that told her audience she thought they shouldn’t be questioning.

‘That’s not right,’ said Cat, ‘that’s terrible.’

‘Fuck off, Cat,’ Fen said sharply.

‘Don’t swear,’ Django said.

‘I have offered,’ Pip said to Cat and Django, ‘to babysit.’

‘But Cosima was colicky,’ Fen said.

‘No one’s likely to judge your mothering abilities on whether you occasionally have some me-time,’ said Django.

‘It’s not that,’ Fen sighed.

‘It’s good for you,’ said Pip, ‘it said so in that baby book you keep in the loo.’

‘What’s all this Fen-bashing?’ Fen asked. ‘God, you’re my bloody family. Cosima is a tiny baby and I’m allowed to indulge my maternal instincts.’

‘I simply want the treat, the honour , of looking after my first granddaughter, and your sisters just wanted a couple of hours down the local with you to themselves,’ Django reasoned. ‘As you say – we are a bloody family.’

‘It’s not a challenge,’ Pip said, ‘it’s just a quick drink down the pub, silly.’

‘Christ, why is everyone calling me silly these days?’ Fen muttered to herself. ‘And it is a challenge, actually, to me. Do you not think it doesn’t disturb me that my self-confidence can leak away like breast milk? That I’d reject my sisters’ invitation to go out for a couple of drinks? That a strange and terrible part of me doesn’t even trust the man who raised me to look after my baby for two tiny hours?’ Her eyes darted around her family from under knotted eyebrows.

‘Look – I’m sorry, Fen,’ said Cat, who looked it. ‘Please come. I’m so excited to be back. I’ve missed you.’

For a moment, Fen thought she might cry. Then she wanted to stand her ground and refuse. ‘I don’t know,’ she faltered.

‘Leave me a long list,’ Django said brightly, ‘with illustrations.’

So, still a little reluctantly, Fen took him at his word and did just that. When she was quite sure Cosima really was fast asleep, she left with her sisters for the Rag and Thistle.

As pubs go, the Rag and Thistle was both lively yet homey. Having been in the Merifield family for four generations, it retained the charm and authenticity that many brewery-owned pubs never achieve despite trying so obviously to replicate. Thus there were no mass-produced sepia pictures of Street Scene Anywhere but photos instead of Merifields old and young, dead and alive, their various dogs and horses, adorning most of the wall space. The cast of Peak Practice had signed beer mats which David Merifield had framed in a jaunty pattern around a cast photo. There was a paper serviette, illegibly autographed by an actress whose name no one could remember and sometimes this was hung upside down in case it was meant to be so. There were no laminated menus with novelty meals and photos of the dishes. Just simple home cooking, available whenever required. The bell for last orders was usually rung when someone remembered to ring it. The Rag and Thistle was a mainstay of the community and its community cherished it. Though the McCabe girls left home over a decade ago, they still think of it as their local and the Merifields welcome them back as if they last served them a drink just the day before.

‘G & T,’ Pip ordered.

‘Glass of house red,’ said Cat. ‘Fen?’

‘Oh go on then,’ Fen said guiltily, ‘V.a.T. But loads of tonic and easy on the vodka. I’m still breast-feeding, remember.’

‘We couldn’t possibly forget,’ Pip murmured to Cat though it landed her a harsh glance from Fen.

‘I’ll bring them over,’ said the publican Mr Merifield, who always treated the girls like royalty on their visits home. ‘You’ll be wanting to nab that table that’s just come free.’

‘So Django’s going to throw a birthday party,’ Cat marvelled, making a beeline for the table in the corner bedecked with horse brasses. ‘Is he serious about having it at home? He could have it here.’

‘This place couldn’t fit everyone in – they’ll be coming from the four corners of the earth,’ said Pip.

‘Didn’t you know the earth was round?’ said Mr Merifield, setting down their drinks.

‘We’re talking about Django’s birthday.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Merifield, ‘and the party. No point us opening the pub that night – everyone will be at yours, if memories of his sixtieth party serve me right.’ The girls laughed and everyone buried their heads in their hands.

‘Can you believe he’s going to be seventy-five?’ Fen said, arranging a beer mat in front of each of them and removing the ashtray to the window sill with a look of utter distaste.

‘It sounds so old,’ said Cat. ‘ Seventy-five .’

‘He is a grandpa,’ Fen defined, ‘though actually he likes to be called Gramps.’

‘Tom calls him that,’ Pip explained to Cat. ‘Tom calls him Django Gramps which is weird really, because he’s even less of a real grandfather, in the literal sense, to Tom than he is to Cosima.’

‘I laughed when you told me in that e-mail that Django refers to Tom as his “step-grandsonthing-or-other”,’ Cat told her.

‘I wonder if our children will be confused that they have a grandpa for an uncle, but a non-existent grandmother?’ Fen mused.

‘They have other grandmas,’ Pip said. ‘Matt and Zac’s mums.’

‘It’s odd,’ said Fen and then she stopped. ‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

‘It’s just that, having really thought of her so rarely, just recently I’ve thought of her more.’

‘Who?’

‘Our mother,’ Fen shrugged. ‘Now that I have my baby. I just can’t figure out how a mother can leave.’

‘That’s why we’ll all make grade A mummies,’ Cat said. ‘We’ll be automatically compensating for the fact that our mother was sub-Z grade.’

‘It struck me recently that the only person I’ve ever called “Mummy” is myself,’ Fen said. It quietly struck her sisters that they hadn’t called anyone ‘Mummy’ at all.

‘I can’t wait to be called Mummy,’ Cat said dreamily. ‘Do you realize I was pretty much Cosima’s age when our mother left?’

‘It’s only since having Cosima that maternal instincts, in all their crazy hormonal cladding, have made sense,’ Fen continued, ‘and to be honest, though previously I never much cared about her, it now makes me shudder. A woman ran off with a cowboy from Denver and left behind three girls under the age of four ? How could she do it? How can a mother not have maternal instincts? It’s criminal . They’re chemical .’ Fen looked at her sisters. ‘I gaze at my daughter and I think of us three. Three tiny little girls. How could she have walked out?’

‘I reckon life would still have been better under Django than under her if she hadn’t left,’ Pip reasoned. ‘His maternal instincts more than made up for her lack of them.’