Home Truths Page 27

  They've thought it all through, the boys, bless them.

  ‘Django McCabe will give cancer an unceremonious boot,’ Pip said. ‘Come on, Cat, ring me won't you? I think I'll make a cup of tea. Want one?’

  ‘I'll make it, Mrs,’ said Zac, kissing his wife's shoulder.

  ‘We'll go up to Farleymoor at the weekend,’ Pip said, ‘and sort everything out.’

  ‘Babe?’ Ben looked at Cat who was standing as motionless and emotionless as a wax statue. She could hear him, but it sounded as though he was in a different room. She couldn't locate his voice or his presence and it felt safest to just keep standing still and staring straight ahead.

  I'm sort of speechless and thoughtless. I can only compute facts at the moment.

  I have been made manager at work.

  Django has cancer.

  ‘Babe – prostate cancer is not uncommon. It may have no great effect on Django's lifestyle or lifespan.’

  Ben says prostate cancer is common.

  ‘And I'm sorry, Cat, that I just couldn't tell you of his phone calls to me, of his trip down to St John's.’

  Django came down to London on a train and went back home again.

  My father is Derek McCabe.

  The man who is my father has cancer.

  I haven't seen Django for a month.

  I thought I never wanted to see him again but just over a week ago I yearned to see him. Only he wasn't there because he was down here, with my husband, who helped him learn he has cancer.

  ‘It broke my heart to know that you were going to Derbyshire, that he wouldn't be there. That there was nothing I could do about it.’ Ben put his hands on Cat's shoulders and kissed the top of her head. She was stiff to his touch. ‘Babe?’

  ‘I have to be at work an hour early tomorrow,’ Cat said.

  ‘You need to phone Pip, when you're ready. Then she's going to phone Fen. We arranged it that way, the guys and I. With Django's approval.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, picking up her mobile phone and pressing the speed dial for Pip, whose number Cat currently had no chance of recalling otherwise.

  Testing Time

  The McCabe girls usually let BBC Radio Four pass the time when they made the journey to Derbyshire by car. That Saturday morning, though the radio was on and Ben was doing the driving, it was no more than a background sound to the lengthy loaded silences. What they wanted to tune into most were Ben's pragmatic facts about what Django was facing.

  ‘So he may have had it for a long time?’ Pip asked from the back of the car.

  ‘Yes. Quite possibly,’ said Ben, nodding at her from the rear-view mirror. ‘Actually, a large percentage of men over eighty have a small area of prostate cancer.’ She nodded back at him.

  ‘But Django is only seventy-five,’ Fen said. Ben looked at her too, but unlike Pip by whom she sat, Fen didn't meet his eyes. She was frowning intently at her hands.

  ‘Many men can live out their normal lifespan without it causing any problems,’ Ben said though he immediately regretted the joint sigh of relief from Pip and Fen. False hope could be a cruel thing. Also, despite being a level-headed scientist, Ben had always feared that Hope without Fact tempted Fate. ‘But we are still unsure of what's what with Django,’ he continued. ‘He needs more tests. The results can take a couple of weeks to compute. There are all sorts of treatment possibilities, sometimes they even opt not to treat – and nothing drastic happens.’ Ben had repeated the facts so often over the last few days he hoped his voice still sounded convincing.

  ‘That's good, that's positive,’ said Pip, leaning forward and nodding at him assertively. ‘When can he have these tests? Can we bring him to your hospital? I suppose I'm asking if you can organize special privileges?’

  ‘There are excellent urology and oncology departments local to Chesterfield,’ he said. ‘He's already been referred and tests have been set up. It's better for the patient to be closer to home.’

  ‘Has he had them? These tests?’ Fen asked quietly, disturbed by the thought of Django, on his own, being probed and scanned.

  ‘I don't know – he was due to have some yesterday,’ Ben said, trying again to encourage her with eye contact but she continued to look down, her hands now tight fists in her lap. ‘I tried to phone a couple of times but he didn't answer.’

  ‘Maybe now he'll buy a mobile phone,’ Pip said, with a woeful laugh.

  Ben was acutely aware that Cat had not reacted, let alone spoken and they were now just north of Junction 24, the eight mammoth cooling stations sighing out steam in slow motion. He glanced at his wife sitting beside him and wondered how much of the conversation she'd listened to. Though she appeared to be gazing out of the window, obviously it was not at the view. Much as Ben was fond of her sisters, and hoped they found comfort in his honest answers, so he also wished he had Cat to himself that journey. Over all others, his duty was to her. This he did not feel was an obligation of marriage, but a reason for it. In Cat he'd found a person other than himself, or anyone he had ever known, whom he wished always to put first. For Fen and Pip, cancer might well cure the situation between them and Django, and Ben understood that by genning up on details and prognosis, they might feel better equipped to make their reacquaintance. What could be more shocking than cancer of a loved one? In the scheme of things, didn't cancer cancel out all other ills?

  For Cat, though, cancer had been thrown into a mix already clouded by complex fears, mistrust, hurt, shock and disbelief. Ben wondered whether, for Fen and Pip, Django's cancer in some way provided an easy way out, an excuse to move away from the disruptive revelations of the previous month; that cancer rewrote all scales of gravity. Django's cancer could also redefine their roles as nurses, and not accusers. In a bizarre twist, cancer might just make everything better. Ben felt that for Cat, however, cancer was confusing the ambivalence she was entitled to feel. If she wasn't yet ready to accept the shock of her parentage, the untruths she'd grown up believing, the hurt and the deception – then she certainly wasn't going to be prepared for the hard facts of cancer.

  Suddenly, Ben resented her sisters for not being aware of this. Then he asked himself if he would still feel it was worse for Cat than for her sisters, was Cat not his wife? The truth was, he didn't want to talk about cancer any more because privately his concerns for Django were more grave than he was prepared to reveal before the tests were done. He was beginning to feel tired and irritated by the drive. Why couldn't Cat take the wheel?

  Because she never did.

  When the two of them were in the car, it was always Ben who drove. A silly little quirk of marriage, of their dynamic, he'd never really thought about until just now. He didn't really mind. He was glad to be able to do something.

  ‘He's going to die, isn't he?’ suddenly Fen sobbed. ‘Oh God, he's going to die.’

  ‘Fen shut up and stop that,’ Ben snapped. ‘You're being hysterical and that kind of thinking is no good to anyone.’

  ‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry,’ Fen gasped, and she turned to Pip. ‘Do you think everything will be OK? Pip?’

  Pip had to gather her thoughts. It struck her that Fen was reacting in much the way she would have expected Cat to. Yet Cat, sitting in the front passenger seat, was currently doing the deeply thoughtful gazing out of the window more usual for Fen. It was as if the events of the past month had transposed her younger sisters' traits. It was Cat guarding her emotions now, and Fen spewing out hers. ‘It'll be fine,’ Pip told Fen in the tone of voice she'd often employed for her youngest sister. ‘It's a nasty shock. Can you imagine Django as a cancer patient?’ She waited for Fen to shake her head. ‘Nor can I. It doesn't happen to people like him.’

  ‘We were just this ordinary bunch, this normal family,’ Fen said croakily, ‘and in a matter of weeks, it's all fallen apart.’ She thought of Matt and Cosima at home, suddenly praying hard that her other little family would never fall apart, shuddering violently at how close she'd come to ripping them asunder herself.

&n
bsp; ‘We have to hold it together,’ Pip said, misreading Fen's shaking. ‘That's the point of family – one is duty-bound to hold it together to prevent it falling apart.’

  I am duty-bound to hold it together to prevent it falling apart, Fen said to herself.

  She gazed at the back of Cat's head, the soft auburn spikes of her hair, the gold butterflies at the back of her ear lobes fixing her earrings. ‘Is it harder for you, Cat?’ Fen asked her gently, leaning forward between the front seats. ‘You know – because of—’ She paused. ‘What we found out.’

  ‘He's just my biological father,’ Cat said quietly, her voice sounding new and emphatic after two hours of silence, ‘and that can't mean much because Christ, we didn't even suspect, let alone know, until a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Pit stop,’ Ben announced, deciding to pull in to the services at the last minute. There was so much stress and emotion and anticipation in the car it was now making driving difficult. Part of him was dreading the weekend, part of him wanted to take Cat back to Boulder for good, far away from her first family so that he and she could settle down and make a new one of their own. He felt slightly burdened though it had been his decision to accompany the sisters, his advice to Zac and Matt that they stay at home with their children, his offer to be the chaperon, the doctor-on-call. He loitered behind the sisters as they made their way in to the services. He observed how Pip had put her arm around Cat's shoulder, that Fen's arm was around his wife's waist. And the sight released a surge of relief.

  She'll be OK. They'll all be OK. Whatever happens, they have each other. They always will.

  ‘Stop!’ Cat suddenly said, anxiety riding high in her voice, as the car pulled along the one-in-ten drag to Farleymoor. Ben pulled over to the verge. The girls staggered from the car, allowing the sight of the dip and roll of the ancient and familiar dales to calm their nerves, the sweet soft air to fill their lungs and steady their minds; while goose grass, licked with flashes of silver as the sun and the wind played on it, whispered comfortingly against their legs.

  ‘Why don't you three walk the last mile,’ Ben suggested. ‘I'll drive on. And pave the way.’

  Django peered at length and with theatrical curiosity into Ben's car. He stroked at his non-existent goatee and frowned. ‘Are they dieting?’

  Ben laughed. ‘They wanted to walk the last bit.’

  ‘Dragging their heels?’ Django asked.

  ‘Steadying their nerves,’ Ben said diplomatically.

  ‘It's nice to see you,’ Django told him, ‘but I'm wondering whether you are here as intermediary or physician?’

  ‘I have many caps to wear this weekend, Django,’ Ben said. ‘Chauffeur – currently.’

  ‘You're very skilled,’ Django told him, ‘and you are of course most welcome, bless you. But your services as intermediary and physician won't be called upon. You see, I'm feeling dandy. Furthermore, I've made curried trout for supper. And Eton Mess. It's their favourite. Guaranteed to break the ice and melt hardened hearts.’

  From the garden, they could see the curve in the road as it started its long, meandering descent to Two Dales. And just then the sisters came into view as they mooched their way closer.

  ‘It's funny how it never changes,’ Django said. ‘Whatever their age, wherever they've been, it's always Pip leading the way, Fen bringing up the rear and Cat, protected, between them.’

  ‘Cat's extremely nervous,’ Ben told Django, his wife's welfare his main consideration.

  ‘I'm sure she is,’ said Django, ‘but there's so much ground to cover and most of it is a wasteland there seems little point in revisiting.’

  ‘But they need to know,’ Ben told him, a little irritated by Django's whimsy.

  ‘If they ask,’ Django said.

  ‘They might not,’ Ben said, polite but firm, ‘but still they need to know. It's part of the point of this weekend – you must realize that.’ He paused. ‘How were the tests?’

  ‘Tests?’ said Django. ‘I'm feeling dandy, my boy – and look, here come the girls.’

  The girls were now walking up the drive. Pip. Fen. Cat lagging behind. The disruption to the familiar order perturbed Django. The pace was less their usual brisk walk, more a reluctant amble, and that vexed him too. And as he watched the girls approach in this awkward, unnatural arrangement and faltering gait, he sensed it was mostly down to him to realign it all. If only life could be like jazz. If only he could gather together these disparate components. If only he could make a sweet chord from discordance, a new melody from dissonance. Perhaps he could.

  The girls stood before him.

  ‘Hullo, chaps,’ Django smiled. ‘Cup of tea?’

  It was incongruous; to drink tea so politely, in such silence, when the tea was so uncouthly strong and served in the great clunking stoneware mugs Django had made during his mercifully brief foray into pottery in the late seventies. But they sipped away and smiled awkward half smiles while waiting for the scald on their tongues to subside.

  ‘Well, I think I'll unpack,’ said Ben but immediately the girls left the table too, which had not been his intention at all. He'd assumed he'd simply be on-call, in any capacity, but he had hoped this meant waiting in the wings, a step removed, while the action played out elsewhere. Django took the teapot and poured out the amber-coloured dregs into the curry sauce, desperately annoyed at the nag of his bladder. He dropped a mug on the floor, yet not even the flagstones could break it. Django wondered if he was allowed to read into this – that something rather old and odd-looking should be so strong and resilient. He'd made the mug himself. He looked at his hands, glanced around the kitchen to check he had no audience, and then he pressed his hands hard against his heart, his brow, his groin.

  Cat watched Ben unpack. ‘I wish I'd never come,’ she whispered.

  Ben nodded, shook the creases from a shirt and hung it on the back of the door. ‘I'm sure, babe,’ he said, ‘but you need to stay open. Don't close yourself off, OK?’

  ‘His birthday and all that – it seems a lifetime ago,’ Cat said.

  There was a gentle knock on the door and then Fen came in. ‘You OK?’ she asked Cat.

  Cat shrugged. ‘You?’

  Fen shrugged back. ‘I thought it would be easier, I thought there'd be tears and hugs and we'd all know what to say. It's all so formal. And awkward.’

  ‘I wish I hadn't come,’ Cat confessed. ‘I thought everything would seem magically clearer, everything would be fine. But it's not.’

  ‘We have to be here,’ Pip, suddenly in the doorway, spoke strongly and a little irritated. ‘Of course it's awkward. Come on. We need to go downstairs and help.’

  ‘In a sec,’ said Fen and she turned to Ben. ‘Does your mobile have a signal? I want to phone home.’ Ben handed his phone to Fen. There was no signal and she looked crestfallen.

  ‘Come on,’ Pip said to Fen, ‘let's go downstairs. You can use the normal phone. But we'll lay the table first.’

  ‘Isn't all of this freaking you out?’ Cat asked her.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Pip, ‘but we have to do something about that. That's why we're here, remember.’

  When Pip and Fen had left the room, Cat went over to Ben, laying her head against his chest. ‘I don't even know where to look, let alone what to say,’ she muttered. ‘I can't seem to look him in the eye. It might make me cry and I don't want to. And I might see that I have his eyes and I don't think I want to see that either.’

  ‘Yet,’ Ben qualified gently.

  Matching cutlery had never really been a priority in the McCabe household, nor had the resultant assortment ever been particularly noticeable. Food was the all-important element of mealtimes at Farleymoor, and though the laying of the table held some ritual, the lively clatter of crockery and cutlery was in anticipation of the repast itself. Cutlery was a means to an end, a way to expedite the passage of food from plate to palate. It was mostly irrelevant whether it was steel from Sheffield or silver from Harrods, ivory stems or
antler handles; as long as the pieces could prong, scoop or cut.

  That Saturday night, between silences as thick as Django's Christmas gravy, the cutlery provided a cacophonous and alien soundtrack. On account of each piece being unique, no two clinks or clatters were the same. No one had noticed this before, but they all tuned in to it now. The racket was irritating, so annoying that everyone tried to scrape and clang their cutlery the loudest to obscure the sound of the others and perhaps signify their own unrest as well.

  ‘And how is little Cosima?’ Django asked Fen who nodded her answer while making much of chewing concertedly. ‘Good! Splendid. And how is young Tom?’ Django asked Pip who, for some reason, smiled her answer to Ben. ‘Super!’ said Django, turning his attention to Cat. ‘And I hear congratulations are in order, Cat.’

  ‘I'm not bloody pregnant,’ Cat retorted with her mouth full, which in the first instance irked Django far more than the facts of her answer or the sentiment by which she expressed it. ‘I meant your promotion,’ he said. She shrugged, as if it were no big deal, as if he should expect her to be capable of such accolades.

  The grating scrape of cutlery; the grate of non-communication anathema to this kitchen, this family. Ben asked for another helping, not because he was still hungry but just to break the awkward silence. In the most stinging indictment Django had yet been savaged by, each girl left part of her meal on her plate.

  Django fetched the Eton Mess and placed it with justified pride in the centre of the table. Pip patted her stomach as if she were full, Fen burped politely into her napkin as if she didn't fancy it anyway and Cat wouldn't even bring her eyes to glance at Django's trademark triumph of a dessert. He sat down heavily and, with a great sigh, placed his head in his hands. And there they all sat, in a suspended moment of extreme unease. The silence was choking but with a cough, Django cleared his throat and let rip a roar the likes of which the girls had never heard and could never have imagined.