Other People's Children

by Joanna Trollope

  He said in a controlled voice, ‘I thought you liked this house.’

  ‘I do. I did.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s like the house you bought. You like houses for a while and then, arbitrarily, you stop liking them.’

  ‘That was different—’

  ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that this changeableness of affection doesn’t apply to people.’

  She felt a little surge of temper.

  ‘You know it doesn’t. What a ridiculous and unkind thing to say.’

  ‘Perhaps I feel that the suggestion to leave this house is also ridiculous and unkind. Why do you want to, all of a sudden?’

  She took a breath.

  ‘Memories of Pauline, Dale’s locked room—’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Those have always been here. We’ll overcome those. You’ll see.’ He came closer. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I spoke to you as I did.’

  ‘That’s all right—’

  ‘Dale was silly today. Very silly. But she likes you. She never liked Josie. She’ll calm down, stop performing. You’ll see. And there’s another thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rufus,’ Tom said.

  Elizabeth put her hands in her coat pockets.

  ‘What about Rufus?’

  ‘This is home to him,’ Tom said. ‘This house is probably the best stability he has just now, the biggest anchor. I couldn’t—’ He stopped. Then he looked at her. ‘Could I?’

  Slowly, she shook her head.

  ‘You saw how he was here,’ Tom said. ‘How he was with you. He relaxed, didn’t he?’

  Elizabeth let out a long sigh. At one point during Rufus’s last visit, Tom had found her teaching Rufus the rudiments of chess, and she had felt herself almost drowning in a sudden wash of approval, warm and thick and loving. She glanced at Tom. He was smiling. He leaned forward and put his arm around her, pulling her towards him, both of them bulky in their coats.

  ‘I do see,’ he said. ‘I do understand how it must sometimes feel to you. But equally, for the moment, for Rufus, it has to be no. I’m sorry, dearest, but no.’

  She had been quite angry on the train after that, angry and ashamed of herself for being angry because Tom’s point about Rufus was not only valid, but one for which she should have felt the utmost sympathy. The trouble was, she discovered, gazing at her face reflected in the dark window glass of the railway carriage, that she couldn’t help feeling that Tom was hiding behind Rufus, that Tom, for all his real love for her, for all his genuine enthusiasm for and commitment to their future, was held down still by the gossamer threads of the past, like a giant in a fairy-tale, disabled by magic.

  She slept badly that night but woke, to her surprise, quite pleased to see a London morning and her briefcase and the black wool business suit she had bought when notions of marriage had seemed to her as unlikely as encountering an angel in her kitchen. There was a working week ahead, a week of meetings and decisions and the peculiarly diplomatic kind of manoeuvring which she had appeared unable, the previous weekend, to translate from her professional life to her private one. And at the end of that week, she would pack her suitcase again, and go down to Bath and to Tom, and discuss with him, with the reasonableness he so loved, the changes they might make to that house that was to be their married home. For Rufus’s sake.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nadine rang every day. Some days, she rang twice. She had elicited from the children a rough timetable of daily life in Barratt Road, so that she could ring just as everyone was assembling frenziedly to leave for school in the morning or ten minutes after Josie had, with varying success, assembled the six of them for supper. If she rang during supper, she would speak to each of her children in turn, for ages, and they would vanish into the sitting-room when their turn came and emerge with expressions that dared anyone even to start asking what had been said. Mostly Rory looked shuttered when he returned, and Clare often seemed close to tears and would sit at her place at the kitchen table afterwards staring down at her plate as if exerting every ounce of will-power not to dissolve. Only Becky flounced out of the sitting-room glowing with secrets and defiance, and often refused to come back to the table at all, but slammed past them all out of the room and upstairs, or out of the house altogether. Josie would look at Becky’s plate, stirred about but largely uneaten, and want Matthew to go after her and bring her back.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you’re letting her get away with it!’

  ‘Do you think,’ Matthew said, ‘that a stand-up row, twice a day at least, is a preferable alternative?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Matthew, I spend hours shopping and cooking for these kids and then the phone rings and they stop eating. Or they won’t eat in case the phone rings. Or they won’t come to the table anyway or, if they do, they say they don’t like what I’ve cooked and later I find there isn’t a biscuit or a crisp left in the house—’

  ‘I know,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Well, do something!’

  He looked at her.

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Talk to them! Stand up for me! Say you won’t have me being treated like this!’

  ‘In effect,’ Matthew said, ‘that’s what I am doing. I don’t rush after them. I don’t react, I stay eating with you and Rufus. I make it plain I’m bored by their behaviour.’

  ‘Bored?’

  ‘Yes. Bored.’

  ‘Matthew,’ Josie said, and her fists were clenched, ‘there’s open hostility in this house, all directed at me, and you tell me you’re bored?’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When Josie heard she had got her job, it was better than she had expected. The teacher on maternity leave whom she had applied to replace had decided to stay at home with her baby, and her post had been offered to Josie. In celebration, Josie bought a bottle of Australian Chardonnay and put it on the supper table.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Rufus said.

  ‘To celebrate.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My job. I’ve got a job.’

  Matthew smiled round the table.

  ‘It’s good, isn’t it? First try, too. You’re a clever girl.’

  Becky stood up. She gave her plate a nudge.

  ‘I don’t want this.’

  Josie, her hand still on the neck of the wine bottle said levelly, ‘It’s chicken casserole.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You like chicken casserole.’

  ‘I do not.’

  Clare put her fork down. She said in a whisper, ‘Nor me.’

  She looked at Matthew.

  ‘Sit down,’ Matthew said to Becky.

  ‘You can’t make me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t try,’ Matthew said, ‘but I would offer you a glass of wine, to toast Josie with.’

  Becky said scornfully, ‘Alcohol’s a drug.’

  Matthew looked at Rory. Rory still eating, head down, shovelling food in even though hardly anyone but Rufus had even started.

  ‘Would you like some?’

  Rory shook his head.

  ‘Rufus?’

  Rufus went pink. Tom and Elizabeth had given him half a glass of white wine when they took him out for supper and he had liked it. He would have liked some now. He would have liked to say well done to Josie. He shot Matthew a glance and shook his head, too.

  ‘All the more for you and me, then,’ Matthew said to Josie. He took the corkscrew from her and stood up, to take the cork out of the bottle.

  ‘I’m not eating,’ Becky said. ‘And I’m not staying.’

  ‘Please stay,’ Josie said. There was no appeal in her voice.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that we can have supper together.’

  ‘I don’t want supper,’ Becky said. ‘And I don’t want to be together.’

  ‘Then get out,’ Josie said.

  Matthew stopped pulling the cork.

  ‘Josie—’

&nb
sp; ‘Get out,’ Josie said to Becky again. ‘Just go.’

  Becky kicked her chair backwards, hard, so that it screeched across the floor and crashed into the nearest set of cupboards. Then she spun round and headed for the door to the outside. It was locked. She banged it once or twice with her fist, and then, feeling all their eyes upon her like pairs of headlamps, lurched round, hurtled through the door to the hall and fled upstairs. Behind her she heard her father say angrily, ‘What in hell’s name did you have to say that for?’ and then someone banged the door shut, and she could only hear babble and confusion.

  She opened her and Clare’s bedroom door and fell across Clare’s bed, which was nearest. She put her face into the duvet and bit a mouthful of fabric, so hard she could almost feel her teeth meet. Then she pummeled Clare’s pillow and kicked clumsily against the nearest wall with her booted feet. Bloody cow, she said to herself, bloody cow with her fucking job. How dare she? How dare she wave her bloody job at us like she wanted us to pat her on the back for it? How dare she? And why should I care, anyway, why should I care what happens to her, ever, anyway? Why should I care about her and all her bloody cooking and cleaning and poncing about being Mrs Fucking Perfect? Becky picked Clare’s pillow up and flung it at the wall opposite where it caught the edge of a picture and sent it spinning off its hook and crashing to the floor.

  Becky sat up. She hadn’t turned the light on when she came in, but by the remains of daylight left, she could see the shards and slices of glass from the picture lying winking on the carpet. It was a picture she had always wanted, a reproduction of a painting by Klimt of an exotic, dangerous, snakelike woman, but Josie had hung it there for her and, in so doing, had at a stroke deprived it of all its allure. It was an intrusion for Josie to give Becky something she desired, an invasion of privacy, a patronizing insult. Just as all those meals were, all those washed clothes, all the things Josie did to keep the house going, all the things she didn’t – carefully – say.

  Becky put her heel on the nearest piece of broken glass, and crushed it. Then she pulled her knees up and put her face down on them, and encircled them with her arms.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Nadine said, every day, whether Becky asked her, or not. Her voice was often bright and theatrical. ‘Really I am. Fine.’

  She was going on with her pots; Tim was finding her a second-hand kiln; she had the radio for company.

  ‘What about you?’ she’d say. ‘That’s what I really want to know. What about you? Are you getting enough to eat? Is school OK? Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me everything.’

  Slowly, Becky raised her head. From downstairs, she could hear the sound of the television. Perhaps Rory had turned it on. Most nights, he turned it on the moment he could and increased the volume so much that, when Josie wanted him to take his turn in cleaning up, she had to shout at him, to make herself heard. Then the phone began to ring. At the sound, Becky felt her stomach tighten and then be filled, slowly and steadily, with renewed anger, an anger so strong she could feel it creeping up her throat, choking her. She stood up, unsteadily. The glass lay at her feet, gleaming and evil. She lifted her feet in turn, clumsily, and began to stamp on the broken pieces. Someone had to pay for this, someone had to suffer for all this unfairness, this pressure, this tension, this agonizing disappointment and hurt. Someone, Becky thought, stamping and stamping, has to be punished.

  Matthew allowed Clare to do her homework in his attic study. She stayed up there for hours. Sometimes, when he came back from his school – always much later than anyone else – she had been up there since she got home. She came straight in from school, walked past Josie, usually without saying anything, and went directly up to the attic, where she sat in Matthew’s chair and sometimes put on one of his jumpers. When he came in, she would run to him and try and get on his knee and if Josie said anything, Clare would say, ‘You’re not my real mother,’ and put her arms round Matthew.

  Becky had told her to say it.

  ‘She’s not your real mother. She can’t make you do anything. Tell her so.’

  If they were alone together, just Clare and Josie, Clare didn’t have the courage to say it, but from Matthew’s knee, she could say anything.

  ‘She knows she’s not,’ Matthew would say, trying to make light of it. ‘Poor Josie, having a baggage like you. What a horrible thought.’

  ‘I don’t want to be,’ Josie said. ‘I’m not trying to be.’

  ‘She does mother things though,’ Clare said. ‘Doesn’t she?’

  ‘Who else do you suggest does them?’

  ‘Our real mother,’ Clare said. She held Matthew hard. If she held him hard enough, she didn’t have to think of Nadine and the cottage and the lavatory in the shed. If she thought of them, she felt desperate and the easiest place not to think about them, except on Matthew’s knee, was in Matthew’s attic which held so many things from Clare’s childhood that she could sometimes pretend up there that nothing had changed, nothing had broken. She counted the photographs. There were exactly the same number of all three of them, of her and Rory and Becky. But there weren’t any of Nadine. In fact, when Clare looked closely, she thought that one or two of the photographs had funny edges, as if a piece had been cut out. When she looked at those cut photographs, she remembered some of the things Nadine had said about Matthew, about what he’d done, how he’d behaved, and those memories made Clare unable to leave the attic, even when Josie called her, unable to move until the physical presence of her father came back up the ladder and found her there, in his chair, in his jumper, and proved his recognizable ordinariness once more.

  ‘I wish she wouldn’t cling,’ Clare heard Josie say. ‘I wish you wouldn’t let her.’

  ‘She’s only ten—’

  ‘It isn’t age, Matt. It’s attitude.’

  Clare didn’t know what attitude meant, but it plainly wasn’t a compliment. She was obviously doing something that Josie didn’t want her to do, something to do with her father. Becky urged Clare to behave as defiantly towards Josie as she could, on principle, but although Clare listened, she didn’t, as with homework, quite see the point of what Becky was saying. She didn’t sit on Matthew’s knee to defy Josie, she did it because she wanted to, she needed to. She didn’t refuse to eat Josie’s suppers to get at Josie; she refused because those meals, so competently prepared, so wholesome, made her feel acutely guilty about Nadine, even disloyal. If Josie couldn’t see that, Clare couldn’t do anything about it, just as she couldn’t do anything about her greedy relief when Matthew came home.

  She looked, from the safety of Matthew’s knee, towards Josie, who was sorting laundry on the kitchen floor.

  ‘I don’t want my tracksuit washed,’ Clare said.

  Josie lay on her and Matthew’s bed. She was fully dressed. She lay quite still, her hands folded across her stomach, and stared out of the window where the fading light and the raw orange glow from the street lamps were producing an effect that was neither lovely nor natural. It was quiet in the bedroom, quiet enough to hear the sounds from downstairs, the murmur of the television, the noises from the kitchen where Matthew was without much real trouble apparently, making the children wash up. Except Becky. Becky was in her bedroom with the door shut. She had been there since six o’clock, after her mother rang.

  Nadine had rung, this time, about money. She had spoken first to Becky, and had then insisted on speaking to Matthew. Josie, grating cheese in the kitchen, had heard him say, ‘But I’m paying for the children now, you must have enough, you must.’ The conversation had gone on for a long time and when Matthew had put the telephone down at last, Josie heard Becky say, with a mixture of fear and rage, ‘You can’t let her starve!’

  ‘She’s not starving,’ Matthew said. ‘She’s just spent everything she has this month and wants more.’

  ‘Then you should give it to her.’

  ‘I give her all I can,’ Matthew said. Josie could picture how tired he was looking, from his voice. ‘She’s only got
herself to look after now.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Becky shouted. ‘Exactly! And whose fault’s that?’

  Josie heard Matthew’s footsteps coming towards the kitchen door. She bent over the grater.

  ‘I’m not talking to you about it,’ Matthew said. He opened the kitchen door. ‘It’s none of your business.’

  Becky shoved past him. She stood briefly in the kitchen, glaring at Josie. Josie’s hand slipped on the grater and a bright bead of blood swelled out of her forefinger. She put it in her mouth.

  ‘We’re not exactly short round here,’ Becky said, still glaring, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘Are we?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Matthew said. He looked at Josie. ‘Are you all right?’

  She nodded, her finger still in her mouth. Becky snorted and marched towards the door.

  ‘I don’t want any supper.’

  ‘Fine,’ Matthew said.

  The door banged shut behind Becky. Matthew went across to Josie and put his arm round her.

  ‘Sorry.’

  She turned her face into his neck.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Josie—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m going to have to put her money back up again. I know I shouldn’t, I know we’ve got the children here—’

  ‘What?’ Josie said, stiffening.

  ‘I’ve just said. I’ll have to put Nadine’s money up again. I gave her less, because the kids were here, but I’ll have to increase it again.’

  ‘Because your daughter tells you to?’

  Matthew sighed.

  ‘Partly, I suppose. If I’m honest. And with you working now—’

  Josie shrank away from his embrace.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What—’

  She gripped the edge of the sink and stared down at the blood seeping slowly out of her finger.

  ‘You are telling me that my money will help pay for your children so that you can give more to your exwife, who refuses to work?’

  ‘I’d pay for Rufus,’ Matthew said. ‘If it was necessary.’