The McCabe Girls Complete Collection: Cat, Fen, Pip, Home Truths

Cycling is my thing. It is the most beautiful, hypnotic sport to watch. The riders are consummate athletes; so brave, so focused, so committed. My heart is in my mouth as they ride and I watch.

But how and why?

Because I.

That’s a fine sentence, Cat.

Because I was … with … a man who kindled my interest. He left. The interest didn’t.

When did he leave?

Three months ago.

A time trial indeed.

Indeed.

So France will be good.

France is my dream. France can mark a new me. France can help me heal. Can’t it?

I’m sure.

Cat was helping Django prepare supper. Though the McCabe girls visited their uncle monthly, it was rare for them all to be there at the same time. June was turning into July but with his three girls with him, Christmas had come early for Django.

‘I’m going to do a Spread,’ Django announced. For three girls whose mother had run off with a cowboy from Denver and who were brought up by a man called Django in the wilds of Derbyshire, the Spread was nothing to raise eyebrows at. For normal folk of a conventional upbringing and traditional meal times using regular foodstuffs, a Spread by Django McCabe would cause eyebrows to leave the forehead altogether.

Django McCabe is sixty-seven and, in his jeans with big buckled belts, faded Liberty shirts and trademark neckerchiefs, he looks like he should be an artist, or a jazz musician. In fact, during his lifetime, he’s dabbled in both. Twenty-five years ago, in Montmartre, he combined the two rather successfully and sparked a certain trend for neckerchiefs. But then his sister-in-law ran away with a cowboy from Denver and he had to forsake Parisian prestige for the sake of his bereft brother and three small daughters and an old draughty house in Derbyshire. The two men and the three girls lived harmoniously until their father died of a heart attack when Pip was ten years old.

The house is still draughty but Django’s warmth, and his insistence on multilayered clothing and his obsession with hot thick soup at every meal during the winter months, ensured that the McCabe girls’ childhoods were warm and healthy. They have also developed palates that are robust and tolerant. Soup at every meal throughout the winter months is one thing; that the varieties should include Chicken and Apple, Celery and Baked Beans, and Tuna Chunks with Pea and Stilton, is quite another. Luckily, it is June and there is no call for soup today.

Pip is having a rest in the back bedroom following further exertion on the lawn. Fen is sitting quietly on the window seat in the room whose name changes according to time of day and current season. On winter mornings and evenings, it is the Snug. On spring afternoons it is the Library. On weekday evenings, if the television is on, it is the Family Room. On weekday evenings if the television is off, it’s the Drawing-room. On summer afternoons, it is the Quiet Room. In mornings, it is the Morning Room. When the girls were young and naughty, it was Downstairs. Fen is in the Quiet Room which, after supper, will no doubt be the Drawing-room. Cat is in the kitchen, peeling, scrubbing, grating and chopping and being as diplomatic as possible in dissuading Django from adding Tabasco to the trout, or to the mashed potato, or to the mint and cranberry sauce.

‘It’s best in Bloody Mary,’ Cat informs him. So Django finds vodka but no tomato juice and just mixes the Tabasco in anyway.

‘Cheers!’ he says, knocking his drink back.

‘Cheers!’ Cat responds with a hearty sip only to fight back choking and tears.

‘I think I’d better name this drink, Bloody Hell, Mary,’ Django wheezes, but takes another glug regardless.

Cat nods and wonders if chopped apricots will really add much of consequence – good or bad – to the trout.

They’ll counteract the olives, I suppose.

‘So, Cat, you’ll be a good girl? You’ll be careful in France? I know all about Alain Delon and Roger Vadim.’

‘I don’t,’ Cat laughs.

‘You watch yourself,’ Django cautions, absent-mindedly pointing a knife at her and then apologizing profusely.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Cat assures him, ‘I’m in the press corps. There’ll be 900 journalists. The Tour is a movable town, a veritable community. I’m in it for the ride, for the duration.’

I’ll be safe.

‘You look after yourself,’ Django repeats, thinking a dash of stout might be welcomed by the mashed potato.

‘That’s precisely what I’m doing,’ Cat says pensively.

The Spread ready, the four McCabes assemble. They stand by their places and look from one to the other in silence. Django gives the nod and they sit. And eat. He’s all for picking and dipping and having a taste of this, a soupçon of that. So arms stretch amiably and serving spoons chink and dollop. There’s much too much food but whatever’s left will be blended together tomorrow, liquidized the next day and then frozen, to reappear as soup in some not-too-distant colder time.

In the Drawing-room, over coffee and some dusty but undamaged After Eights which Pip discovered in her bedside table, Django looked to his three nieces. Fen looked wistful as ever, her blonde hair scrunched into a wispy pony-tail which made her look young and vulnerable and like she should be living at home. Django noticed that she was visibly thinner than when he saw her at Easter and knew that this could be attributed to one of two things.

‘Love or money, Fen?’ he asked.

She jolted and looked at each of her palms as if assessing the merits of telling him one thing or another.

‘Both,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap.

‘Has he too much or too little?’ Django enquired.

‘It depends,’ said Fen.

Django looked puzzled. Cat couldn’t resist. ‘One is loaded and the other is broke.’

‘Good God, girl!’ Django exclaimed in honest horror, much to Cat and Pip’s delight. ‘Two of them?’

‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked Fen. ‘Have you decided yet? The old or the young?’

‘Who’s the one?’ Pip pushed. ‘The rich or the poor? Did you toss for it or did they have a duel?’

‘Neither,’ Fen wailed. ‘Both.’ She looked out of the window, unable to decipher the night from the moor, or the merits of one love from the other. Django, Cat and Pip gazed at her for a moment.

‘Pip,’ Django said sternly, ‘love or money?’

‘I can live most comfortably without either,’ said Pip, secretly wishing she had just a little of each.

‘Well, a pink afro wig, copious amounts of face paint and an alter ego called Martha the Clown can’t help,’ Django reasoned.

‘I.e., get a proper job,’ Pip groaned to Fen whilst ignoring Django. Django turned to Cat who was staring out of the window and way into the night. Her green-grey eyes glinting with the effort of uninvited memories, her sand-blonde hair suddenly framing her face and dripping down over drooping shoulders, her lips parted as if preparing for words she’d never said and wished she had. She looked distant. And sad.

‘She’s in France already,’ Fen whispered to Django, secretly worried that Cat should not be going on her own.

‘Best place for her,’ Pip colluded, secretly pleased that Cat was guaranteed time alone and away.

‘Cat?’ Django called softly. Cat blinked, yawned and smiled, hoping it would deflect attention from the obvious effort of pulling on a brave face at that time of night.

‘Mario Cipollini’s thighs have a circumference of 80 centimetres,’ she told them.