Pops looks at me over the rim of his glasses, concerned.
Is that so, well then consider her disinvited to any future gatherings. Here, I got you salt and vinegar Pringles for the car, you better share them with me.
He kisses me on the top of my head and wraps his arm around my shoulder, guides me to the car.
Katie told me nothing that I didn’t already know. I knew Pops was a lecturer at the university and I knew my mam was a student. We discuss everything openly in our household. He wasn’t her teacher though, but I didn’t bother saying that. I don’t think it would have made a difference. I also know he’s no pervert but the surprising thing that I learned in all of this was about myself.
I had wanted to find out where my mam is.
Pops and I have been sitting in the TV room all afternoon since the mice incident. He hasn’t budged once. I cleaned the mud off the floor and then joined him. He’s watching nature documentaries, a constant stream of one after the other. It’s what I was looking forward to, chilling out with easy company but after the welcoming scene, I’m not chilled. I’m tense. I’m watching him. Maybe he’s spent too much time alone. Maybe this is what happens to a person when they’re isolated for so long. Three months since I’ve visited but still, he has his work, his colleagues.
I think I’ll have a drink, I say finally, keeping an eye on the clock until it turns 5 p.m. An acceptable hour to start drinking.
He perks up. Time for a home brew.
I wasn’t thinking of tea, Pops. I need something stronger.
Oh no, it’s not a tea. It’s much better brew than that. It’s in the hot press, he jumps up, divilment in his eyes.
The hot press, I ask. Oh God what now.
He pulls open the storage space, and there on the slatted shelving built around the hot water system, among his towels and clothes that are drying, are large plastic buckets and the pungent smell of alcohol and gone-off cheese.
There it is, my own barrel of beer, he says, lifting a bucket out. It’s been bubbling away in here for a few weeks.
I look inside. Sugar, soapy beer fermented in a plastic bucket among the bedlinen, towels and underwear, heat, gases and liquid.
We sit in the conservatory in the back of the house, drinking the beer, watching the land, feeling calmed by the glimpse of cows and sheep in the farmland behind.
I can’t believe you’re brewing beer in your hot press, I say, giggling, taking a sip. It tastes rancid. Like dirty socks and melting plastic.
You’ll get used to it, he says, noticing my reaction. First batch exploded all over my clothes and bedsheets.
I feel a wash of relief. So that explains the smell from him. Maybe he’s okay after all. My worries get lost in a beer fog.
Good to have you home, love.
Good to be home, Pops.
We sit together, occasionally a gentle chat, but mostly in peaceful and comfortable silence, watching the sunset, and much later into the night watching the stars, until the two buckets are gone and I haven’t a worry in the world.
I wake during the night to banging. Pops is in the music room, in his baggy boxer shorts and a white vest. He’s leaning over the opened piano, as if studying the engine of a car.
Pops, what are you doing.
They’re in here.
What are.
The mice. He presses down on a key over and over again, the same one.
He’s not joking. I feel like I’m at a tea party with the Mad Hatter, only it’s nothing I wished it would be. It’s real for a start. And it’s Pops. Nonsensical mutterings. I wonder if he’s even awake, or if he’s sleepwalking. He has a dazed, sleepy look about him as though he’s not really here.
Pops, just go back to bed. It’s late. We can look into it in the morning. Call pest control.
I can hear them scrambling, he mutters, then wanders back to his room.
As soon as I wake, which is 10 a.m., I rise and leave the house in search of food. Despite my light shop yesterday the fridge is empty of a suitable breakfast and I’m hungry. My head is pounding, not from the hunger, but from the bad home-brewed lager and lack of sleep. I was awake for hours after Pops’ night-time escapade and somehow succeeded in eventually falling asleep to birdsong. Usually I’d take Pops’ car, but I can’t on account of the ratinfestation story. I’m tempted to try to start the car anyway, to see if it’s true, but I don’t want to risk it. My second mission is to visit Gerry and question him about the car and the rats. Detective Freckles. If Pops has concocted that, I really do have a problem on my hands.
Pops has always been exciting and dramatic. Eccentric is perhaps the word. He doesn’t measure himself against anybody else’s behaviour or expectation, and that’s good, he has always been free to think independently, uniquely, I think interestingly, and share it without embarrassment. But this behaviour is different. Rats in the engine, mice in the piano is not a new interesting theory, it’s muddled nonsense.