Home Truths

It felt strange to be in a single bed, strange that only two-thirds of her own little family were together that night, nicely strange to miss Matt. She smiled at the pin-ups of her teenage years and suddenly Matt’s face loomed large in her mind’s eye. She hoped she loved him as much as she used to. Again, she felt subsumed by a longing tinged with loneliness and she sent him a text message saying night night love your girls xxxx. She looked at it and worried over the lack of punctuation, that he might think she was nagging him to love his girls. Hopefully he’d be distracted by all the x’s instead.

Her mind drifted back to a time before Cosima. Not so long ago, really, there was a girl called Fen for whom motherhood had then been such a distant notion as to have had no realism. It was like recalling a best friend she hadn’t seen for years, a soulmate who had gone so far away that their paths would never now cross. Just then, it made Fen wistfully sad. She reminisced that there had been fun in all that dangerous gallivanting. It had been liberating and energizing, being responsible for no one but herself.

She thought back to that heady time when she and Matt had just met at work and were embarking on the definitive office fling. She conjured again the feeling of exquisite anticipation, remembered so clearly sitting amongst the papers and pictures and boxes in the archives willing Matt to rudely interrupt her with a furtive snog and a grope. She relived the joy of racing down the corridor to delight Matt with her unbridled enthusiasm about some discovery or other amongst the dust and documents. She felt again the euphoric pride when their romance was exposed amongst their colleagues, when they were the centre of attention, the focus of gossip and approval, soon enough the benchmark for love and romance.

And then she thought back to those short, secret trips to Derbyshire around the same time, to those exhilarating afternoons of sex with another man; the urgency to have her desire sated but to make her home-bound train. It’s really only now that she feels horror while she wonders what on earth all that was about, how bizarre it all was. At the time she’d divided her heart meticulously into two and coolly separated her body from her conscience. It had been intoxicatingly exciting for a while. It hadn’t felt wrong. But then her sisters found out. And, in retrospect, thank God for Cat and Pip badgering her on the finer points of morality. Thank God she chose Matt and he never found out. And thank God she’d grown out of all of that. And grown up. And most of all, thank God for her beautiful beautiful baby.

As Fen lay thinking, her hands subconsciously assessed the changes in her body. Really, she knew she ought to adore her post-birth figure, her fuller breasts and becoming curves. But lying there, squidging more than an inch to the pinch, she did not. Instead, she tormented herself with clear images of how her body had been when it was the object of all that sexual attention. Pert and lithe and powerful in its energy and desirability. Ultimately, though, it did not come down to aesthetics. Her body was no longer her own now. It was as if, in nurturing a baby, she’d renounced sole ownership. Though she was slowly scaling down breast-feeding she knew she’d never have the same freedom with her body, she wouldn’t be reclaiming it as her own.

Does Matt miss it? My body? Does he miss the way we were? I don’t like to think that he might. I haven’t asked him on purpose. I’ve just been hoping that his tolerant nature and all those ante-natal classes plus the magazines I leave lying around and the baby book that’s in the loo will have filtered through, will have put paid to any resentment or disaffection.

Anyway, what was all that spontaneity actually worth? Was it really such a privilege to be able to do as we pleased whenever we liked? I suppose I’m on a crusade of sorts – that what we have now completely outweighs what we were then. Surely Matt feels the same?

Django pottered around downstairs. He couldn’t find the crossword from the day before yesterday. He couldn’t even find today’s paper. Then he remembered he’d used one to wrap up the giblets. And he’d used another to wrap up the broken wine bottle which had tumbled onto the flagstone floor after he’d sloshed its contents into the stew with excessive flamboyance. Instead, with jazz playing softly, he tidied and swept and took lengthy breaks to sip a little whisky.

He had loved babysitting Cosima. She was an angel who hadn’t woken once but still he’d taken his responsibility gravely and hadn’t dared tidy or sweep or search for lost crosswords lest she should wake and he not hear her. Sipping whisky any earlier had been quite out of the question. He’d spent most of the evening intermittently creeping up the stairs to the point where he knew the treads would creak. He could sense the baby in the silence and he’d had a lovely evening, halfway up the stairs. He was pleased Cosima hadn’t woken because he wanted to be able to reassure Fen on her return. He hoped the fact would bolster her, encourage her to breathe a little more deeply in fresh space of her own, or even breathe a little more lightly in other spaces.

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 (#ulink_a9a5eb9c-d458-5a39-9dd6-76e1f2778e3c)

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.’