Other People's Children

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Tom,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s another thing.’

  He dropped his arms.

  ‘Yes?’

  She came slowly around the pew she had been leaning on until she was only a foot from him. He didn’t try and touch her. Then she put out both hands and held his face and lent forward and kissed him quietly on the mouth.

  ‘It’s too late,’ she said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Just talk to me,’ Elizabeth said.

  She was lying on the broken-springed sofa with her eyes closed. Duncan got up to move the widow curtain a little, in order to shade her face from the afternoon sun.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Anything,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Anything. I just need to hear you, to hear you saying things.’

  Duncan looked down at her.

  ‘I don’t think you slept much last night. I’m afraid that bed is hardly comfortable.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t sleep anywhere. At the moment I couldn’t sleep on twenty goose feather mattresses.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Oh Dad—’

  ‘My dear one.’

  She put a hand up to him.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  He took her hand and wedged himself on to the edge of the sofa beside her.

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘I must have—’

  He folded her hand in both his.

  ‘No. Nothing wrong. You may have done things out of innocence or lack of experience, but not things you should blame yourself for.’

  Elizabeth looked away from him, out of the large paned window – shining clean after Shane’s ministrations – at the high bright early summer sky.

  ‘I certainly didn’t know about Dale.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s afraid of her,’ Elizabeth said. She turned her face towards Duncan. ‘Can you imagine that? He’s her father and he’s afraid of her. Or, at least, he’s afraid of what will happen if he stands up to her. He thinks that if he confronts her with her own destructiveness he will, in turn, destroy her. He said to me, “I can’t risk breaking her mind. She’s my daughter.” So, he’s trapped. Or, maybe, he believes he’s trapped. Whichever,’ Elizabeth said with a flash of bitterness, ‘she’s won.’

  Very gently, Duncan unfolded Elizabeth’s hand from his own and gave it back to her.

  ‘Do you know, I don’t think it’s just Dale. Or just Dale’s temperament. I don’t think that’s the sole reason.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He sighed. He took his reading spectacles out of the breast pocket of his elderly checked shirt and began to rub his thumbs thoughtfully around the curve of the lenses.

  ‘I think it’s maybe the myth of the stepmother, too. Unseen forces, driving her, affecting you, affecting Tom, everyone.’

  Elizabeth turned on her side, putting her hand under her cheek.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘There must be something behind the wicked stepmother story,’ Duncan said. ‘There must be some basic fear or need that makes the portrayal of stepmothers down the ages so universally unkind. I suppose there are the obvious factors that make whole swathes of society unwilling even to countenance them, because of the connotations of failure associated with divorce, because, maybe, second wives are seen as second best and somehow also a challenge to the myth of the happy family. But I think there’s still something deeper.’

  Elizabeth waited. Duncan put his spectacles on, took them off again, and replaced them in his shirt pocket. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

  ‘I grew up,’ he said, ‘believing my childhood to be happy. I believed, and was encouraged to believe, that your grandmother was an excellent mother, an admirable woman, that the comforting rituals of my life which I so loved were somehow because of her, of her influence. It was only when I was much older that I saw it wasn’t so, that my mother, who loved society and was bored by both children and domesticity, had left my upbringing almost entirely to Nanny Moffat. You remember Nanny Moffat? Now, Nanny Moffat was indeed excellent and admirable.’

  ‘She had a furry chin,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Which in no way detracted from her excellence. But when I realized this, when I saw that the happy stability of my childhood was actually due to Nanny Moffat and not to your grandmother, my mother, I was terribly thrown. I remember it clearly. We were on holiday, on the Norfolk Broads. I suppose I was about fourteen, fifteen perhaps. Not a child any more. I had accompanied my father to Stiffkey church – he was passionate about churches – and I was sitting on the grass in the churchyard while he looked at inscriptions on the tombstones, and I suddenly found myself thinking that my mother had allowed me, even encouraged me, all these years to believe in and rely upon maternal qualities in her that simply didn’t exist. I can feel the moment now, sitting there in the damp grass among the tombstones, simply shattered by a sense of the deepest betrayal.’

  ‘Oh Dad—’

  ‘I just wonder,’ Duncan said, ‘if stepmothers have something to do with a feeling like that?’

  Slowly, Elizabeth pulled herself up on to one elbow.

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘It’s as if,’ Duncan said, turning to look directly at her. ‘It’s as if stepmothers have come to represent all the things we fear, most terribly, about motherhood going wrong. We need mothers so badly, so deeply, that the idea of an unnatural mother is, literally, monstrous. So we make the stepmother the target for all these fears – she can carry the can for bad motherhood. You see, if you regard your stepmother as wicked, then you need never feel guilty or angry about your real mother, whom you so desperately need to see as good.’

  Elizabeth drew a long breath.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And we exaggerate the wickedness of the stepmother to justify, in some human, distorted way, our being so unfair.’

  Elizabeth turned herself round and sat up, putting her arms around her bent knees and leaning her shoulder against Duncan’s.

  ‘I find all that very convincing.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Except that I can immediately think of an exception.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Rufus,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Oh, my dear—’

  ‘You know when something like this happens, something unbearably painful and sad, the way you keep saying to yourself, “Is this the worst? Is this the darkest hour? Is this the bottom of the pit?”’

  ‘Yes.’

  She moved a little.

  ‘I did that all last night. I expect I’ll do it for nights to come. And I kept having to admit to myself that, however awful it’s all been already, the worst, almost the worst, is yet to come.’ She put her face down into the circle of her arms, and said in a whisper, ‘I still have to tell Rufus.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The pub was full. Half the customers had spilled out on to the pavement and were lounging about in the sunshine, leaning against parked cars, sitting on each other’s laps on the few chairs there were. Tom saw Lucas almost immediately, taller than most people and with a preoccupied air, standing by the bar and holding out a twenty-pound note above the heads of the people in front of him.

  ‘Gin and tonic?’ he said to Tom, almost without turning.

  ‘A double,’ Tom said. Lucas glanced at him.

  ‘A pub double is nothing,’ Tom said.

  ‘Two double g and t’s,’ Lucas said loudly to the barman.

  ‘I thought you drank vodka—’

  ‘Like you,’ Lucas said, ‘I’ll drink anything just now. In any quantity.’

  ‘It’s kind of you,’ Tom said, ‘to sympathize so—’

  Lucas glanced at him again.

  ‘I’m afraid it isn’t all sympathy.’

  The barman handed up two glasses of gin and two tonic-water bottles, held by their necks.

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘No thanks.’

&nbs
p; ‘Lemon?’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘I’ll take them somewhere,’ Tom said. ‘While you collect your change.’

  He took the glasses and bottles from the barman and, holding them high above his head, threaded his way towards the darkness at the back of the pub. There was a low bench, in a corner, under a mirror advertising absinthe in elaborate art deco lettering.

  ‘Why couldn’t we meet at home?’ Lucas said, joining him and stuffing his change haphazardly into his jeans pocket.

  Tom handed him a glass and a tonic-water bottle.

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Isn’t she out at work?’

  ‘She’s taken this week off.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lucas said. He poured the whole of the tonic into his glass and put the bottle under the bench. ‘Staking her claim.’ He took a swallow of his drink. ‘It just means I’ll have to tell her separately.’

  ‘Tell her what?’

  ‘Amy’s left me,’ Lucas said.

  Tom stared at him.

  ‘You don’t mean it—’

  He pulled a face.

  ‘Real soap-opera stuff. The ring and a Dear John waiting on the table.’

  Tom put his drink down on the floor by his feet. He leaned forward and put his arms around Lucas.

  ‘Oh dear boy, dear Lucas, poor fellow—’

  Lucas let his head lie briefly against his father’s.

  ‘It wasn’t a surprise.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was a shock – I don’t mean I don’t feel it, I feel awful, I feel utterly bloody, but I can’t pretend I didn’t see it coming.’ He pulled himself gently out of Tom’s embrace. He said, ‘I wasn’t putting her first. Or second, really, if I’m honest.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, so sorry—’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucas said. ‘Thanks.’ He gave Tom a quick, sidelong glance. ‘Same boat, then.’

  An expression of extreme pain crossed Tom’s face. He bent to retrieve his drink.

  ‘Maybe.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘Did Amy blame Dale?’

  ‘She blamed my attitude to Dale.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It wasn’t the only thing, but it was a big thing.’

  Tom said, hesitantly, ‘Elizabeth said—’ and then stopped. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That we weren’t doing Dale any favours, you and I.’ Lucas gave a little mirthless bark of laughter. ‘We don’t have much choice.’

  Tom leaned forward.

  He said earnestly, ‘But is it Dale? Is it just Dale?’

  Lucas took another mouthful of his drink.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘that it is, but only because Dale’s been honest enough to know that it’s no good her looking anywhere else for love. We’ve both tried it, haven’t we, and I’ve come to see that I don’t think I’ll ever find it here; I can’t somehow, round Dale. That’s why I’m going to Canada.’

  Tom’s glass shook suddenly in his hand.

  ‘Canada!’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucas said. He looked down. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why Canada?’

  ‘The new company that’s bought the radio station owns stations in Canada. They said would I go because they couldn’t keep me on in England and I said no, at first, and now I’m going to say yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Edmonton,’ Lucas said.

  Tom put his free hand across his eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lucas said again.

  ‘No, no—’

  ‘It was Amy going that finally did it. And, well, thinking that we were all going backwards somehow, back to somewhere we should have moved on from.’

  Tom took his hand away and gave himself a little shake. He said, a little unsteadily, ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I mean it. I just wish—’ He stopped.

  ‘You can’t, Dad,’ Lucas said. ‘There’s Rufus.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t mean it, really. There was just a moment, a wild, fleeting moment—’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tom looked at Lucas.

  ‘Where has Amy gone?’

  ‘To Manchester. She has some idea of a new life there.’

  ‘She might be right.’

  ‘I think,’ Lucas said sadly, ‘she was right about quite a lot of things.’

  Tom dropped his eyes to his drink.

  ‘And Elizabeth,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What is she going to do?’

  ‘Go back to London. Buy a house instead of a flat. Get promoted to the very top of the Civil Service.’

  ‘Has she moved out?’

  Tom gave a small smile.

  ‘There was almost nothing to move. You never met anyone less imposing of themselves on anyone else. She left her car parked outside, tank full of petrol, keys on the hook where she’d always hung them. I find—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I find I’m desperately hunting for traces of her. Anything, anything, tissues in the wastepaper basket, magazines she bought, the mug she liked drinking out of—’

  ‘Don’t, Dad.’

  Tom gave himself a little shake.

  ‘Quite right. Most unfair, to say such things to you.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ Lucas said gently, ‘we were quite in the same league of love.’

  ‘No. Perhaps not.’

  ‘Will you see her again?’

  Tom lifted his glass and drained it, as if he were drinking water.

  ‘Next week. When Rufus is back.’

  ‘Rufus—’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom said. He put his glass under the bench and stood up. ‘Yes. She’s coming down next week, to see Rufus. She wants to tell Rufus herself.’

  Dale had made osso bucco. She had Elizabeth David’s Italian Food propped up ostentatiously against the coffee percolator, and she was chopping garlic and parsley and lemon rind with a long-bladed knife as she had seen television chefs do. The smell was wonderful. She hoped, when Tom came back from this mysterious drink with Lucas, he would say how wonderful the smell was, and not, as he had done the last few days, appear not to notice the effort she was making, the way she was trying to show him that she knew he was in pain, and was sorry. She was sorry, she told herself, chopping and chopping, of course she was sorry. It was awful to see him hurt again, heartbreaking in fact. It was as if the air had gone out of him, the energy, the vitality. But it would come back, of course it would, when he remembered, when he was reminded. She heard his key in the lock, and began to chop faster.

  The kitchen door opened.

  ‘Hi!’ she said, not looking up.

  Tom came slowly over to the table and dropped his keys on it with a clatter.

  ‘How’s Luke?’

  ‘You know perfectly well,’ Tom said.

  Dale paused in her chopping for a second.

  She said quietly, ‘You mean about Amy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Dale said, ‘maybe in the long run, it was the right thing to do?’

  Tom pulled a chair out from the table and sat down heavily in it.

  ‘Put that knife down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  Carefully, Dale laid the knife beside her green-speckled mound on the chopping board. She looked at Tom. After a moment he raised his head and looked back at her with an expression she did not recognize.

  ‘Satisfied?’ Tom said.

  She was truly startled.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said are you satisfied?’ Tom said.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  He leaned forward.

  He said, in a voice so raised it was almost a shout, ‘You’ve seen off Elizabeth, you’ve seen off Amy. Are you satisfied now?’

  She gasped.

  ‘It wasn’t me!’

  ‘Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Making it perfectly plain to a nice girl and a wonderful woman that your brother and father would never belong to anyone but you?’

  Dale was horr
ified. She leaned on her hands over the chopping board, breathing hard.

  ‘I didn’t, I never—’

  ‘The keys?’ Tom demanded. ‘The invasion of this house? The little deceits and subterfuges? Your bloody possessions staking your claim louder than words could ever do? Making Elizabeth feel always and ever the outsider, the intruder, and Amy, too?’

  ‘Don’t,’ Dale whispered.

  Tom rose to his feet, leaning on his side of the table, his face towards her.

  ‘You’re not a child,’ Tom said, ‘though God knows your behaviour would disgrace most children. You’re a grown woman. You’re a grown bloody woman who won’t accept it, who won’t accept the loss of childhood, the need to make your own home, your own life—’

  ‘Please,’ Dale said. ‘Please.’

  Tears were beginning to slide down her face and drip on to the chopping board.

  ‘And because you won’t accept those things, you want to make Lucas and me live out the past with you, over and over, never mind at what cost to us, never mind the suffering, never mind losing probably the best person – do you hear me, the best person – I have ever known, never mind, never mind, as long as you, Dale, have what you think you want.’

  Dale began to sink down behind the kitchen table, crumpling softly on to the floor, her arms held up around her head, wrapping it as if to hold it on.

  ‘Please Daddy, don’t, don’t, I never meant—’

  ‘What did you mean then?’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything,’ Dale said unsteadily. ‘I only meant not to drown. I didn’t mean to hurt, I didn’t, I didn’t—’

  ‘But you did hurt!’ Tom shouted. ‘You caused terrible, deliberate destruction. Look at what you did!’

  Dale unwound her arms and leaned against the nearest table leg. Her hair had escaped its velvet tieback and swung over her face, sticking here and there to the damp skin.

  ‘I wasn’t doing it for that,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t doing it to hurt someone else. I did it because I couldn’t help it, because I couldn’t breathe otherwise.’ She heard Tom sigh. She said in a steadier voice, ‘You don’t know what it’s like, what it’s always been like. For me. I don’t want it, I’ve never wanted it. I’ve fought and fought, I’ve tried not to be—’ She stopped, and then she said, ‘Sorry.’

  There was a silence. She glanced sideways under the table and saw her father’s legs, planted slightly apart, cut off across the thigh by the tabletop.