Excerpt
The Homemade God
1Old RogueThe first Netta heard about her was in a noodle bar on Greek Street. The Singing Wok was one of those new places in a basement that were opening all over Soho. You brought your own drink, and tables were long communal trestles with benches instead of chairs. The noise banged against the walls and was mind-blowing.
It was lunchtime, mid-March. Netta was perched at the end of a crowded table, not a wineglass in sight, let alone a bottle, just tin cups, as if everyone was on a camping holiday. If she’d known about the whole Bring Your Own, she would have Brought Some. As it was, she had tap water. Not so much as a cube of ice. Susan was rammed in beside her, then Goose, while their youngest sister, Iris, sat on the opposite side with their father.
Vic never went to noodle bars. He liked old-fashioned restaurants with furry wallpaper and starched white cloths, where he ate enough steak and ice-cream sundae to cause any normal person a cardiovascular attack. After that, he drank until he fell over. At which point, Netta or Susan, Goose or Iris—whoever’s number he could pull into focus first—rescued him and got him home. It was a habit Netta was used to, reassuring in its way, if only because she knew where she stood. And as the eldest, she liked nothing more than knowing where she stood. As a child, she was always scrambling to the top of things for this exact reason, while the other three waited, admiring and grateful, below.
But here they were in a noodle bar. No alcohol. Vic using chopsticks—how had he learned to hold a chopstick?—while he drank a bowl of tea. When did he ever drink tea? He’d even brought his own Thermos. Then, just as Susan began a story about her stepsons, he banged the table and interrupted: “So, come on, kids. Who’s guessed my news?”
Netta had turned forty. Susan was chasing her tail at thirty-nine. There wasn’t a full year between them. Gustav, but they all called him Goose because as a boy he could never say his own name, was thirty-six, while Iris was seven years younger than Netta at thirty-three. Already they had lived more years than their mother. Yet Vic still called them kids and they called him Daddy.
He hit the table again. “Guess!” he said. “You’ll never guess!”
He was right. Netta hadn’t a clue. She shot a look at Susan, who shot one straight back: clearly she hadn’t got a clue either. At the end of the bench, Goose began spiraling his noodles, while Iris placed all the bits of spinach and peppers from her vegetarian option to the side because she had a thing about not eating food that was green or red. No one knew why. Least of all Iris.
“Okay,” said Netta. “I’ll take a guess. You’ve finished the new painting.”
“Nice try, Antoinetta. But you’re wrong. For once, you’re wrong. Goose? You guess.”
Goose bowed his head so that he was hidden by dark-yellow hair. “I don’t know. You know I don’t. You’re going to retire?”
“Retire? What would you do if I retired? You’d be on the streets. And when are you going to get a haircut? You look like a hippie. Before we know it, you’ll be wearing a skirt.”
“Please let’s not spoil this,” said Iris to her noodles, which were now immaculately separated from her green and red vegetables. “It’s so nice being together.”
Vic had summoned them by way of one of his infrequent group texts. He’d sent the address of the Singing Wok and told them to get there early, then wait in the queue. He had news, he said.
“So why does he want to tell us in a noodle bar?” Netta had rung Susan to ask. “Do you think he’s ill?”
Susan said she was worrying about the same thing, though why he would tell them bad news in a noodle bar she had no idea. Apparently she hadn’t seen him for a few weeks, despite the fact that she always did his food shopping and cleaned his flat, but she just assumed he was at the studio over in King’s Cross. After that, Netta got on the phone to Goose, then called Susan straight back, though it turned out Susan had done the exact same thing and also rung Goose, so mainly what they did was repeat what they already knew: namely that their father seemed not to have been at home but he’d barely crossed London to set foot in his studio either.
“Do you think he’s having some kind of crisis?” said Susan. “A loss of confidence or something? He did seem low before Christmas. Or maybe his health is bothering him and he’s too frightened to say. You know what he’s like about doctors.”
“I’ll check with Iris,” Netta said.
“Call me as soon as you’ve spoken,” said Susan.
But not even Iris had seen their father and she only lived around the corner from his flat. “No, he’s been too busy to meet up,” she said, when Netta finally got hold of her. Iris still insisted on using her ancient Nokia phone, which was frequently out of charge and had the keypad strapped on with an elastic band. It would be quicker to communicate via a man on a horse, although she’d want to feed the horse and look after it, less so the man. “He said there were things he had to do,” she told Netta. “I assumed it was the big new painting.”
So Netta had arrived at midday, just as he said. Vic wasn’t there, but that was no surprise. He wore a Rolex the size of a yo-yo but that didn’t mean he ever checked the time. Susan was already with Iris in the queue, while Goose searched for a railing to chain up Iris’s bike.
“You look well.”
“No, you look well,” they kept saying, like people who’d barely met, instead of siblings who rang each other all the time. It was only once Netta had got them a table downstairs, shared with a family of at least three generations, that their father finally arrived.
“I am late! I am late!” he roared, as if not only his children but the whole noodle bar had been on tenterhooks.
She couldn’t stop staring. Because, whatever his news, he’d lost weight. Netta couldn’t remember him so thin. Vic had always been good-looking—the shambles of his good looks only seemed to improve them, as if he were handsome by mistake—while years of too much drink and rich food had left him massive in every dimension. Now the skin hung from his neck in thick turkey folds and his face caved in beneath the cheekbones. But he didn’t seem worried. He certainly didn’t mention feeling ill, so she and Susan had been way off the mark about that. His white hair, always uncombed, was pulled into a ponytail, like a little fountain. His eyebrows that grew in every direction except sideways had been trimmed into neat arches. His face was clean and freshly shaved, except for a spiky thing on his chin that she realized, with a flicker of astonishment, was a goatee.
Even his clothes seemed to belong to a different man. On the whole, Vic walked a thin line between hung-over and actively drunk, and wore whatever item he happened to find on the end of his foot when he got up. But today he was in a smart collarless linen shirt she had never seen before, and a matching pair of white trousers. Not a spot of paint anywhere. He didn’t smell of turps, but something altogether sweeter, like pine cones dipped in lemon. All in all, he looked more like a friendly hygienist than an artist. He was even tucking a paper napkin under his chin.
“Iris, my darling. Can you not guess?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I can’t.”
“Susan?”
“No, Daddy. I’d have said the same as Netta. I’d have guessed you’ve finished the new painting, but I know you want to take your time with this one so I don’t even know why I said that. How’s it going, by the way? We’re all so excited.”
When Susan was flustered, red spear shapes flared up and down her neck. Their father blew her a kiss. “Dear Suzie,” he said. “One day you will mount my exhibition.”
“You know how much I’d love that, Daddy.”
“So are you going to tell us?” interrupted Netta, pricked by a distant jealousy, sharp as a pin. “Are you going to tell us your news or must we sit here making guesses all day?”
Vic had a temper, but she liked standing up to him and she knew he expected it. My second in command, he called her: she had been put into her mother’s shoes as a child, without ever becoming maternal. It was Susan who was the natural. “I’m getting married,” he said.
“I’m sorry, what?” said Netta. Somehow she had lost her place in the conversation.
“I’ve met the love of my life. Her name is Bella-Mae. And I’m going to marry her.”
There was a pause. A hiatus that felt like reaching the edge of a cliff and not daring to move a muscle in case you went careering over the top. Netta could sense the other three looking at her, waiting for her to show them what to do, but he had completely stumped her. Then suddenly the people none of them knew further along the table were laughing and holding up their tin tumblers, calling, “Congratulations!”
“My God,” said Netta. “Really?”
Then Susan said the same. “My God. Really?”
