look.’ Fen stopped at Al’s flowers. Cosima was fast asleep. Fen tucked the fleece around the baby and stroked her cheek. ‘I feel a bit ambivalent that I should feel just slightly flattered that Al thought I was the nanny, not your mother. He said “Wow” when I corrected him. What did that “Wow” mean exactly? That I look good for my age? That I’m a yummy mummy? That I’m the first person he’s met with an eight-month-old baby? I can’t remember the last time I wowed someone. Daddy just calls me silly.’
‘Mr and Mrs York! Mr and Mrs Holmes and Master Holmes! Mr Holden, Ms McCabe, Miss Holden-McCabe! Welcome one and all.’ Django genuflected flamboyantly throughout his roll-call, much to everyone’s amusement. He was wearing the jeans he’d worn to Woodstock, tessellations of denim patchworked together, teamed with a shirt swirling brightly with paisley motifs. His belt was all buckle, in the bashed bronze form of a mounted Red Indian, bow and arrow poised. Pip had seen similar go for princely sums on ebay. ‘Cuppa tea? Something to dunk?’
‘Can I have squash?’ Tom asked, but directed the question to his father. ‘And something to dunk?’ Although Django was certainly the most exotic adult he knew, Tom still passed all requests via his father first.
‘You can, my boy, you can,’ Django responded to Zac’s nod, ‘but you’ll have to tell me how to squash it – I’m sure to have the ingredients.’
‘You just untwist the bottle top, pour in about a centimetre and then top it up with water. Even water from a tap,’ Tom explained helpfully despite being somewhat incredulous. It occurred to Django only then that they were talking different types of squash. He realized with some relief that he needn’t attempt to juice the pumpkin. And he realized with some disappointment that he did not own the bottled cordial to which his step-grandson-thing-or-other alluded. Good job, really, because he hadn’t a clue what a centimetre was anyway. A dash he knew intrinsically, a dollop too; he could do a smidgeon blindfolded and had always denounced the pinch as miserly. Feet and inches he was fine with, metric however was another matter; one he staunchly felt did not matter. ‘I have some cherry syrup,’ he said quietly to Zac. ‘Do you think that might do?’
‘I’m sure it will,’ Zac said, laying an affectionate hand on Django’s shoulder. ‘But what on earth do you use cherry syrup for?’ he asked as they walked on up the path and into the house.
Django stopped. ‘Do you know, I don’t think I’ve used it for anything. I think it’s unopened. I’ve had it ages.’
In the event, Django couldn’t find the cherry syrup but he did have cherry brandy and decided that a smidgeon watered down excessively with flat R White’s lemonade wouldn’t do the boy any harm at all. He was right. Tom acquired a liking for it and asked for more.
‘I hope you left the beds for the blokes to do,’ Pip said, all stern, ‘like I suggested in my letter and on the phone.’
‘Yes, I have,’ Django sighed, ‘but only because you’re so bossy I didn’t dare do otherwise.’ He didn’t confess to certain relief at Pip’s directive; that he didn’t actually feel like shunting and shifting divans about any more, didn’t feel he could. ‘There’s a zed-bed out in the shed,’ he added, ‘though I’ve used its mattress to lag the water tank.’
‘Can’t I sleep in the shed?’ Tom sighed, looking imploringly to Zac before winking beguilingly at Django.
‘Have you been incorrigible?’ Django asked him.
‘No, actually, I’ve been exemplary,’ Tom said. ‘Miss Balcombe told me that’s what I am in some things – like maths. It’s just that Pip told me all about the shed.’
Django’s contrived haughty expression softened. ‘In the summer,’ he said, ‘if you promise to be as incorrigible as Pip was when she was young, before she was bossy, I promise to banish you to the shed for a night. Now come along, troops, we have a party to plan. There’s only two months to go.’
No one would hear of Django sleeping on the sofa; they were reluctant enough to let him give up his bed but the deal was settled on Django sleeping in Fen’s bed and Tom sleeping in Fen’s room on the zed-bed plumped up with two sun-lounger mattresses, Fen and Matt in Django’s bed with Cosima in her pop-up travel cot, Zac and Pip in her old room with Cat’s bed dragged through, Cat and Ben on various cushions and beanbags in her room. ‘You’re the youngsters,’ Django had told them, ‘you won’t have the spinal issues of those over a certain age.’
‘Shall I point out that I’m older than Matt?’ Ben joshed.
‘No, don’t do that,’ Django replied. ‘You know how I enjoy my theories.’
At the crack of dawn, Django came across Fen boiling a kettle in the kitchen.
‘Did Cosima wake you?’ she asked, alarmed.
‘No darling,’ Django said, ‘just the infernal need to pee. Not that you’d want to know the finer details of my waterworks. It’s an age thing.’
‘And a pregnancy thing – I remember it well,’ Fen groaned. She took the kettle from the hob. ‘Can we buy you an electric kettle for your birthday?’
‘No thank you,’ Django said, ‘far too dull.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d like a microwave then?’
‘Absolutely not. What would a seventy-five-year-old want with one of those?’ Django said.
Fen poured boiling water into a Pyrex jug and immersed a baby bottle to heat through. ‘I’m trying to reclaim my boobs,’ Fen explained, with a tone of regret and a look of guilt, ‘not that you’d want to know the finer details of my lactation.’
‘Quite,’ said Django. He paused. ‘Matt must love it – the bottle feeding – enables him to feel hands-on and useful.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Fen. ‘I like watching him.’
‘Watching or checking?’ Django posed. ‘It’s good for him to feel useful – because, you see, you are so very capable, Fenella.’ Fen was taken aback by the use of her name in full and she detected a subtle note of warning from Django. ‘It must be easy for Matt to feel left out a little – on account of you being so very capable.’
Fen felt a little defensive but it was too early and she was too tired to express it with much vehemence. ‘It’s not that Matt does things wrong,’ Fen attempted to explain, ‘it’s that he doesn’t do things quite right. It’s often easier for me just to do it in the first place. It saves time. And tears.’ With that she took the warmed milk upstairs to feed a now grumbling Cosima.
Fen gazed down at her daughter, sucking contentedly on the bottle, locking eyes with her and sharing silent waves of intense love. She looked over to Matt who was sound asleep. How strange to feel simultaneously grateful but also resentful of the fact. Though nothing, not even a much-needed simple lie-in, was worth trading these silent waves of love, yet still Fen felt a little put upon that Matt never woke instinctively in advance of the baby stirring. However, though she knew that he’d be happy for her to boot him out of bed and be on early-morning bottle duty, she also knew she’d only lie there wondering if the bottle had been mixed correctly, whether it was the right temperature. She’d end up double-checking anyway. So what was the point in not doing it herself in the first place? There was no such thing as a lie-in. Did it slightly offend Matt? She rubbished the notion – he understood, didn’t he? He understood that it’s a mother’s prerogative to be finicky. It’s out of love for the baby anyway. No bad thing.
An hour later, swathed in his voluminous velvet dressing gown, his hair not yet pony-tailed and so fanning around his shoulders in silver skeins, Django sat in state, in the huge old Windsor chair in the kitchen. He looked like a Norse god, or straight from a William Blake painting, receiving his house guests one by one. First Tom, who scampered