Chapter 4 #3
He eats his sandwich – second of the day, chicken salad, this time, before he remembers it’s chicken for dinner too – drinks his cappuccino and takes his empty plate up to the counter before he leaves.
Thanks the owner, says goodbye to the cyclists.
Walks some more until the light is lost – too early, because it’s still winter, despite the bluebird sky – and is coming up the gravel path home with the horizon hazy, now, lavender soft.
Half expecting his mother to be waiting in the window, when instead it is Freya he bumps into as she’s getting out of her car.
Nora’s mother. Looking much as she did before, like a middle-aged hippy who might be found meditating in her greenhouse, which he would take, any day, over the actual madness of his own mother.
Hours, he’d spent, in her company, helping her to shell peas with Nora, sampling her terrible, vegan cooking – grimacing, and teasing, and laughing about it.
He had laughed a lot, in Freya’s house.
Hello, he says, and Freya jerks at the sound of his voice, drops her bag of shopping on the gravel. Some groceries roll out of it, a tube of Pringles, a few loose apples.
Brenavin? she says, as he hurries forward to pick it all up, grinning at his long-lost nickname. You gave me the fright of my life.
Didn’t think I’d aged quite so terribly, Bren says, but sure.
Freya does not laugh; seems perturbed, mesmerised even, by his face. She is staring at him as he straightens up with her shopping; he swallows, clears his throat.
Josie said you were back, she says. But I … well. It’s different, seeing you in person. Like seeing …
Don’t say it, he thinks, and she doesn’t; the silence stretches between them.
A handsome thirty-year-old? Bren suggests, and Freya snorts, but it stops her staring, at least. Gives Bren a chance to nod towards her porch door and say, let’s get your shopping inside, shall we?
Years of intrepid travel, Freya says, and all you can think about is getting my yoghurt in the fridge?
I am my mother’s son, he says, and she snorts again.
Opens the car boot, passes him more bags – these two are for your mum, she says – did you remember the almond milk, he does not ask – then she waves him through her porch door, says he may as well make himself useful, now he’s here.
Those top cupboards won’t reach themselves.
Inside, scent of jasmine, ylang-ylang, just like before.
Seashells hanging on strings, densely patterned wallpaper, a new rug, he thinks, in the hall.
He puts the bags on the table in the kitchen and it rocks forward onto its bad leg.
Satisfying, somehow. And kind of maddening, too, that it still hasn’t been fixed.
Freya, it seems, is already over the shock of seeing him.
She slings her coat onto a chair and starts bustling around, unpacking the groceries so that Bren can, in turn, take a look at her.
Kimono over her dungarees. Hair greying, but only slightly; she’s ten years younger than his own mother.
Just as lean and wild-haired and nimble as ever, the kitchen still crammed with jam jars.
The beckoning cat waves at him from the window sill.
There were hundreds of them in Japan, stacked in shop windows, at the entrances of temples.
This one is swinging its left paw; inviting friendship, he thinks, if he remembers correctly, and not money and fortune, though it could be the other way around.
Tea, Bren? Your mum’s bits are all long-life, so they can wait.
Why not, he says, so she fills the kettle and takes it to the stove, asks him how long he’s been back. He glances at the clock on the wall, hot pink, flamingos for hands. About twenty-six hours, he says.
And where’d you come from?
New Zealand, he says, and she says ah, yes, Nora did say.
Her kimono flows behind her, cape-like, as she moves between the cupboards.
You’ve spoken to her, then, Bren says, as he lowers himself into one of her mismatched wooden chairs.
I speak to her most days. She is my only offspring, after all.
This feels pointed, but Bren doesn’t bite. Mostly because it’s fair.
So you’ve spoken to her today? he asks, trying to sound offhand, and Freya throws him a packet of biscuits.
Either open them or put them in that top cupboard, she says. And no, not yet. I’m working the late shift, tonight, so she’s not coming for dinner, and I expect she’s hideously hungover after …
She twirls to face him, her kimono spinning like a flamenco skirt.
You went to her party?
Bren opens the biscuits.
You came all the way back from New Zealand to go to Nora’s engagement party?
Well yeah, Bren says, pulling out a digestive. What’s wrong with that?
The question, Bren, is what’s right with it?
The weight of this reframing creaks between them, like the broken leg of the table. Still there, after all these years.
It just felt like time, he says.
I’ll say! Freya says. After twelve years!
Bren takes a bite, then swallows. Freya shakes herself like a disgruntled hen puffing out her feathers, then returns to unpacking her shopping; not, however, about to let it go.
I’d understand you flying home for her actual wedding, she goes on. Oh buck and fugger, I already had carrots. But last night was just a little soirée, wasn’t it?
There were loads of people there, actually, Bren says. We barely got a chance to talk.
You flew around the world for her party and didn’t talk to her once you got there?
She didn’t seem to want to, he admits.
At this point, the kettle starts shrieking.
Freya tells him to pass her two cups, behind him – but he remembers, needs no instruction, has already pulled two mugs from their wall hooks.
She fusses around, pours the water, then hands him his mug with the tea bag still in it.
No milk. No offer of any, either, dairy, almond or otherwise.
What’re you playing at, Brenavin, Freya asks, when she sits across from him, pulling her knees into a lotus position atop her chair. Bren says he isn’t playing at anything, and she stares him down.
What, he says.
Why would you come back for this party, of all things?
That’s the second time someone’s asked me that, Bren says. Clearly, I shouldn’t have bothered.
Oh, don’t be a martyr.
Why weren’t you there, anyway? Are we not a fan of Robert?
Freya, who is swallowing a mouthful of tea, spits out aha! My point exactly! so that half of it spatters down her front.
What point is that, Bren says, as she dabs herself dry, and she says you know his name is Robin.
Isn’t that what I said?
And I adore the man, as it goes. Intelligent, bold dresser, more of a feminist than Nora, I think, sometimes. I simply don’t approve of traditions that force women into societally approved boxes, so an engagement party went against my principles, is all.
Bren lifts his chin at her.
I did wonder about that, he says. I’d never pictured it, for her, either. The whole marriage thing.
Hm, is all Freya says, as she reaches for a biscuit.
I always thought she was a free spirit, like you.
Don’t do that, Brenavin. Don’t try to get me on side.
What side would that be?
The side that suddenly roots for you, when you show up twelve years too late, Freya says. After abandoning everyone the second things got tricky.
She gives a crunch of her biscuit, in finale. And unlike Nora the night before, Freya does not seem to regret her words. They glare at each other over the table, steam rising from their mugs, until Bren says that actually, Freya? Things had been tricky for a very long time.
Dismissive sound, then, from her.
So how long are you staying, she asks, after another glug of her tea, letting the awkwardness slide on by. Are you planning on seeing Nora again? Spending any time with your mother? Or just vamoosing, when it suits you?
I don’t know, Bren says. I’ve not thought about it.
Course you haven’t, Freya says. He sighs, blows his fringe out of his face. He is about to say well, thanks for the biscuits, if nothing else, see you around, when Freya says the past doesn’t need digging up, Bren. That’s why it’s the past.
He tries to meet her gaze, at this, but the steam from her cup has clouded her glasses.
I’m not here to dig anything up, he says. It’s just a major moment in her life, isn’t it? I couldn’t ignore it. Because contrary to what you might think of me, Freya, Nora and I have kept in touch. We’re still friends. In spite of … everything.
She is looking at him with both of her beady, honey-gold eyes. He’s always thought she is birdlike, in a very different way to his own mother. Josie is frail and fluttering; Freya, by contrast, is a hawk, sharp and watchful, talons poised.
Digging up the past isn’t my style, anyway, he adds. I prefer to leave it behind.
Three ticks of the flamingo clock, then, before Freya gives her high, cackling laugh. Well, she says, raising her cup to him. At least you’re self-aware.
She takes another mouthful, says ah, milk! and springs up from her chair, before sloshing some into their mugs. So we’re agreed, then, she says. The past stays in the past?
She doesn’t look at him as she says this.
Little niggle, which he can’t quite place, so he lets it go, says sure.
Welcome home, then, she says, before moving things along, as if the milk has lightened more than just the colour of the brew.
She takes another biscuit, asks him about real things, now.
About his travels and qualifications. The outdoor pursuits he’s taught, the people he’s met.
When was his darkest hour, where did he get the sickest, did he fall in love with anyone, man or woman or other.
Good questions.
The sort his own mother never asks.
After half an hour – teas finished, biscuits demolished – Freya says he should probably get home.
And in the hall beneath the wind chimes, he turns to Freya, who is holding out the shopping she must buy for Josie every week, standing there with her mad hair and her dungarees, something about Nora in the shape of her chin.
I’m not, he says, and stops himself.
Freya waits as he takes the shopping from her, the wind chimes stirring above their heads.
I am not in love with your daughter, he says. In case that needed … clarifying.
Freya holds his eyes; her glasses clear now. A hawk, no longer hunting.
I’m over it, he says. What I asked you to tell her, when I left.
Chimes, fading, to silence.
I should hope so, she says, eventually, though she doesn’t look him in the eye. Off with you now.
Off with me, he says, stepping out into the cold, and he hears her laughing as she closes the door behind him, his own mother waiting next door.