Other People's Children

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘I’ll catch you.’

  Rory shrank back.

  ‘I’m not going to lam you,’ Tim said. ‘I just want you down.’ He moved to stand directly below Rory. ‘Lie on your stomach and move yourself over the edge feet first. There’ll be a drop and then I’ll catch you.’

  Rory’s head disappeared from view, and then his trainered feet appeared over the edge above.

  ‘Slowly,’ Tim said.

  Rory manoeuvred himself until he was holding on only with his arms.

  ‘Let go!’

  Rory fell. Tim caught him clumsily around the waist as he dropped and they both tumbled to the floor.

  ‘Bloody hell—’

  ‘Sorry,’ Rory said. He scrambled sideways away from Tim’s bulk and got to his feet. ‘Sorry.’

  Tim got up slowly, brushing down his boilersuit.

  ‘So you should be. Why are you here in any case?’

  Rory said nothing. He didn’t know, except that he’d been driven from the cottage by a sudden desperation to be out of it, and the farm had seemed a simple destination.

  ‘You know what trespass is?’

  Rory shook his head.

  ‘It’s being on someone else’s land or property unlawfully. It’s interfering with what belongs to someone else.’

  ‘I didn’t interfere—’

  ‘Suppose you’d knocked some of that maize down?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You could have.’ Tim looked at him. He was shivering. He hadn’t enough flesh on him to keep a sparrow warm. Tim jingled the keys in his pocket. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  ‘No,’ Rory said.

  ‘Why not?’

  Rory said nothing, just kicked at the soft dust on the floor of the barn.

  ‘You in trouble?’

  ‘No,’ Rory said.

  ‘Then—’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Rory said. ‘I’ll go. You don’t need to take me. Thanks.’

  ‘Where’ll you go?’

  ‘On a bit,’ Rory said.

  ‘You’re not dressed for it.’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  Tim let a pause fall, and then he said, ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘He’s not here—’

  ‘Working?’

  ‘No,’ Rory said. His head was bent as if he were intent on watching the scuffing patterns his feet made. ‘He lives in Sedgebury.’

  ‘So your mum’s on her own there, with you lot?’

  Rory nodded.

  ‘You better ring her,’ Tim said. ‘Tell her where you are.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Why not?’

  Rory couldn’t explain. He couldn’t tell this man he hardly knew that if he rang Nadine there’d be a scene and a drama and she’d insist on coming to get him and on thanking Tim Huntley as if he’d rescued Rory from drowning. He said, instead, hurriedly, ‘I got bored. I’ll – I’ll go now—’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Mind you do,’ Tim said. He remembered Nadine distraught in the dark lane on Christmas Eve and then in her kitchen the next morning, cool as a cucumber in her dressing gown, as if she’d known him all her life. She must be over forty, to have these kids, must be. But she didn’t look it. She looked younger than Tim’s sister, who was only thirty-two but had had three children and let herself go in the process and now looked fifty. Fat, frumpy and fifty. This boy’s mother, chaotic though she was, still took a bit of trouble. Tim had discussed her and the children, at length, with his mother.

  ‘You keep an eye,’ Mrs Huntley had said. ‘Remember those kids in the caravan? We don’t want that happening again, we don’t want to be accused of turning a blind eye. You look out for this lot, see things don’t slip too far.’

  Tim put a hand in his pocket and found a packet of chewing gum. He held it out to Rory.

  ‘Hop it.’

  ‘Thanks—’

  ‘I’m going to ring your place, dinner-time. And if you’re not home, you’ll cop it.’

  ‘Why did you go?’ Nadine said.

  Rory shrugged.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  ‘Didn’t think—’

  There were baked beans on the plate in front of him, and he was pushing them about with the blade of his knife, making a mess, not eating. It occurred to him to say that he was bored here, fed up, stuck in the cottage with his sisters and a television so old that, even when mended, it couldn’t get a proper signal, but he knew it wasn’t worth risking it. He’d only have to start talking like that and everything would blow up again and he was too tired for that. He was tired all the time, it seemed to him, tired of having nothing to do, nowhere to go, tired of tension, tired of having to watch what he said, tired of baked potatoes. He used to feel tired this way in the past, when Matthew and Nadine quarreled or Nadine went off somewhere and left Matthew to cope. Rory swallowed. He mustn’t think of Matthew. If he was tired, he certainly mustn’t because it would make him start wanting him to be there, wanting him to be as he used to be, just Dad, and not as he was now, only partly Dad because of what had happened, because of Josie and Rufus. Rory didn’t hate Josie and Rufus the way Nadine wanted him to, but he hated what their arrival had done to his life. It had been a rough old life before, in a lot of ways, but at least Dad had been in it, at the centre, a necessary presence making tea, yawning in the kitchen in the early mornings, wearing an old plaid dressing gown that Rory knew was as impregnated with his smell as his skin was. Tears pricked behind Rory’s eyelids. He put the knife down and rubbed the back of his hand across his nose.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘Sort of—’

  Nadine looked round the table. Clare had eaten half her beans, but Becky’s and her own were virtually untouched. We’re a sorry lot, she thought, a sad little crew of human rubbish, the bits and pieces chucked out when other people’s lives change and they want to throw out what they don’t need any more. Poor children, poor scruffy, weary children with their disrupted lives and their dependency and their genuine desire not to cause me pain. I shouldn’t have slapped Becky, I shouldn’t have. And I shouldn’t shout at them for things they can’t help, like having expressions or gestures that remind me of their father, of what happened, of what got us here. They’re good children, they are, they’re good, loving children, and they’re all I’ve got, all the future I’ve got anyhow. She smiled at them.

  ‘Eat up.’

  Becky slowly shook her head.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Look,’ Nadine said.

  They waited. She leaned forward, her forearms either side of her plate, and spread her hands flat on the table.

  ‘We’ve got to make a go of this.’ She paused and then she said, ‘Haven’t we?’

  They didn’t look at her.

  ‘We’ve got to make a go of living here and going to school here and of each other’s company. We’re not going to give in. Are we? We’re not going to let our lives be ruined by other people’s choices. Tell you what—’

  Clare and Becky raised their heads.

  ‘Shall we go into Ross this afternoon?’

  Becky said, ‘You said there wasn’t any money—’

  Nadine smiled.

  ‘I might get some out of the bank. Just a little. We could go to the cinema maybe. What about that?’ She stretched one hand out and squeezed Rory’s nearest one. ‘OK?’

  He nodded.

  ‘OK, Clare?’

  Clare nodded, too. Nadine turned full face towards Becky.

  ‘Well, Becky. OK?’

  Becky glanced at her. She smiled wanly.

  ‘OK.’

  Chapter Eight

  The letter had come in the post, along with the three bills, some junk mail and a children’s clothes catalogue. Matthew had taken the bills very quickly, snatching them up as if he didn’t want Josie to see how the very sight of a brown envelope alarmed him, and he had then handed her the letter.

  ‘That’s his w
riting, isn’t it?’

  Josie looked at the letter. It was indeed Tom’s writing, his elegant, architect’s handwriting which she used to tell him was too feminine for so solid a man.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’d better take it then.’

  She put her hands behind her back.

  ‘I don’t want to hear from him, Matthew.’

  He gave her a glance and then a quick, relieved grin.

  ‘You ought to open it. It might be about Rufus.’

  ‘He rings me about Rufus. Letters—’ She stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Letters are significant somehow. Letters always mean that someone is ducking saying something to your face.’

  ‘Shall I open it?’

  ‘No,’ Josie said. ‘I’ll leave it. I’ll leave it till later, after the interview.’

  He leaned over and kissed her, on her mouth. She liked that, the way he always kissed her on her mouth, even the briefest hello and goodbye kisses. It made her feel that he meant them.

  ‘Good luck, sweetheart. Good luck with the interview.’

  ‘I’m nervous. I haven’t interviewed for a job since Rufus was two.’

  ‘You’ll be great. I’d employ you.’

  ‘You’re biased—’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hopelessly.’

  Josie looked at the letter.

  ‘Tom didn’t really want me to work.’

  ‘I want you to. If you want to.’

  ‘I do.’

  He glanced at the bills in his hand, almost shamefacedly.

  ‘It’ll help—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Matthew said suddenly. ‘I’m sorry so much has to go on—’

  ‘Don’t mention her.’

  ‘I don’t want you to think it’s what I want.’

  ‘Surely,’ she said, the unavoidable sharpness entering her voice that seemed inseparable from any mention of Nadine or the children, ‘you want to support your children?’

  His shoulders slumped a little.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  He leaned forward and laid Tom’s letter on the kitchen table, weighting it with a nearby jar of peanut butter.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Good luck. I mean it.’

  She made an effort to smile.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll ring you.’

  The interview had turned out to be very unalarming. The larger of the two primary schools in Sedgebury needed a supply teacher for English and general studies, for two terms while the permanent teacher took maternity leave. It was twins, the head teacher said, so the extended leave was something of a special case. She was a plump woman in a knitted suit whose chief concern, she told Josie, was pastoral care. That was why she had liked Josie’s c.v. with its mention of the conference in Cheltenham.

  ‘We can’t teach these children anything,’ she said, ‘until we’ve taught them a little self-respect.’

  Josie nodded. In the school where she had taught in Bath – and where she had never intended that Rufus should go – the children, though not inadequately clothed or fed, came from an area of the city where communication appeared almost exclusively to be through acts of casual violence. They had all grown up with it, they were all used to quarrels and frustrations being expressed in yelling and blows, they all accepted physical rage as the common currency. Sedgebury would be no different. All that would be different in Sedgebury was that she, Josie, married to Matthew and not to Tom, would be closer in every way to the children she was trying to help, and there was a small unmistakable pride in the thought.

  Escorting her out of the school’s main door, the head teacher said, ‘Of course, your stepdaughter was here. Clare Mitchell.’

  Josie was startled.

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘And her older sister was here earlier. The boy was at Wickhams, as far as I remember. How are they doing?’

  Josie found herself colouring.

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t know each other very well yet. I think they’ve all settled, in their new schools.’

  ‘Nice children,’ the head teacher said. ‘Clever.’ She looked at Josie slightly sideways. ‘You’ll find a lot of people knew the Mitchell family, in Sedgebury.’

  Josie looked straight ahead.

  ‘I’m becoming aware of that.’

  ‘It’s good that you’ll be working—’

  ‘Is it?’

  The head teacher put her hands into the pockets of her knitted jacket.

  ‘It will mean you won’t have to apologize too much, that you’ll have your own status.’

  ‘Apologize?’

  ‘People don’t like change.’

  ‘You mean apologize for being Matthew’s second wife?’

  ‘It’s more being a stepmother, Mrs Mitchell.’

  Josie spun round.

  She said sharply, ‘I didn’t have any choice in taking them on, you know. It was him I chose!’

  The head teacher took one hand out of her pocket and laid it briefly on Josie’s arm.

  ‘I know. I’m just warning you that not everyone will see it that way. I’ll report to my governors, Mrs Mitchell, and we’ll let you know as soon as possible.’

  Josie looked at her.

  ‘I really want the job.’

  Later, cycling home – Matthew had the car – she knew she shouldn’t have made herself appear vulnerable, needy, just as she shouldn’t have reacted in any way to the suggestion, however kindly meant, that she was on some kind of local trial as Matthew’s new wife. At Rufus’s school, it was fine, she was his mother, his real, birth mother, but elsewhere in the town it was beginning to dawn on her that her role was not so comfortably accepted. She had come in, from the outside, to take the place of someone else, who had been dispossessed by her coming. It didn’t seem to matter what people thought of Nadine because, with maddening and arbitrary human adaptability, they had got used to their opinion of her, however disapproving, and her going had made a change that they resented.

  ‘It isn’t you,’ Matthew had said, after Josie had had a mild confrontation with the garage that had always serviced Matthew’s cars. ‘It isn’t you, the person, Josie. It’s that you’re different, so they’ve got to make an effort and they don’t like that.’

  ‘So have I,’ Josie had said. Her voice had been higher than she intended. ‘So have I! The only difference is that I have to make a hundred times more effort because I’m the newcomer!’

  It had never struck her that being a newcomer could be so difficult. She told herself that changing a renowned and lovely city like Bath for a profoundly unremarkable town like Sedgebury would only be hard superficially because the roots of her life with Matthew would be nourished as they had failed to be nourished in her marriage with Tom. She saw herself not just building a new life but being in charge of it in a way she had never been able to be before, because so much of her previous life had been mapped out by Tom’s past. She had visualized the energy she would put into her life with Matthew, the compensations she would make to him for the deprivations of his years with Nadine, the slow, tactful progress she would make with all these new relationships swirling round her – herself and his children, her son and him, her son and his children, herself and his sister, herself and his parents, herself and the people he had known here for years, those years of life — so painful, often, to think about when they had as yet so little shared history between them – before he met her.

  But it didn’t seem to be being like that. She didn’t seem to be being given a chance to affect things for good as she wanted to. There were all kinds of elements she hadn’t taken into account out of sheer ignorance, inexperience, elements that appeared to conspire against her making that headway she had so earnestly planned. Sedgebury was proving not only an unremarkable town, but also rather a sullen one; Rufus missed his father plainly and perpetually, and seemed bewildered into passivity at
any suggestion that he should make friends with either Matthew or Matthew’s children; Matthew’s children declined to give an inch in her direction and Matthew seemed helpless in the face of their obduracy; and there was Nadine. Josie gripped the handlebars of her bicycle and took a sharp, self-controlling breath. What had ever, ever possessed her into thinking that Nadine could be kept out of her life, their lives, in fact any life? Because of her, Karen was apprehensive about seeing Josie, and Matthew’s mother simply refused to. Because of her, Matthew’s children were, for the moment, hardly coming to Sedgebury at all, and Matthew minded about this a good deal and was unable to talk about it to Josie. Because of her, a large proportion of the bills that came to the house seemed to require Matthew’s embarrassed and furtive attention, and it had occurred to Josie more than once that when – if – she got a job, she would be paying for their lives so that Matthew could pay for Nadine’s.

  She turned her bicycle up the right-hand concrete strip of the drive of 17 Barratt Road and rode it into the garage. She would not think about Nadine. It was becoming a refrain, like the line of a song stuck in her head, ‘Don’t think about Nadine.’ She got off her bicycle and padlocked it to Matthew’s workbench. The night before, Matthew had asked Rufus if he would like to learn how to screw two pieces of wood together, properly.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Rufus had said.

  Josie had opened her mouth to remonstrate with him but Matthew had shaken his head, to silence her.

  ‘OK,’ he said to Rufus. ‘Go without.’

  Rufus had coloured. Josie had bitten her lip.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to her, later.

  ‘There was no need.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s a good little boy.’

  ‘I know,’ Matthew said. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I said so. I meant it.’

  Josie put her key into the back door and turned it. The kitchen was quiet and empty, just as she had left it, with breakfast cleared away and the table bare except for a jug of forced early daffodils Matthew had bought her from the market, and the letter under the peanut butter jar. She must get a cat or a budgerigar, or even a goldfish. There had to be some animate thing to welcome her when she got back to this house which was not a home yet, but just the place they all lived, while they tested each other out, tried to get used to things. A dog would be lovely, a dog would be ideal, a focus, something they could all practise their painful new family feelings on, but who would look after a dog if they were all out all day?