Out of Step

by Maggie Makepeace

  At the next stile she heard raucous cries and came upon two pairs of magpies grappling with each other; all beaks and wings and claws in a mêlée of black and white feathers. They saw her at once and flew off raggedly in two directions.

  ‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy,’ she quoted. ‘Oh dear, and fighting too. I do hope that isn’t a bad omen.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were so superstitious,’ Rob teased her when she got back.

  ‘I’m not usually,’ Nell said. ‘But then, I’m not usually pregnant.’ She looked at the clock. ‘Isn’t it time you went to Boxcombe?’

  ‘In a minute.’

  Rob still hadn’t asked her how she had got on at her meeting with Cassie. Nell found his lack of curiosity peculiar. ‘The Mad Cow told me she’s really hard up,’ she now volunteered.

  ‘When isn’t she?’

  ‘But apparently she’s swanning off for two weeks’ holiday abroad.’

  ‘Poverty is always relative for Cassie,’ Rob said sourly. ‘And by that I mean that her relatives are anything but poor. Her parents are always bailing her out. You have to take all her sob stuff with a hefty pinch of salt.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Right then, I’ll be off to collect my two monsters.’

  When he had gone, Nell busied herself putting away all the things she didn’t want the children to appropriate or fiddle with, and everything that might be dangerous or cause disagreement. Anything for peace, she thought, closing her bedroom door on her own life and preparing to survive in enemy territory for the next two weeks.

  When they arrived, Josh was back to his pre-tonsillitis bumptious self, but Rosie looked like poor little Orphan Annie. Her hair was a disaster with long strands falling the wrong way, and her dress had a large Ribena stain all down the front.

  ‘Nell!’ she exclaimed at once. ‘Look what mith did!’ She showed her half a bar of chocolate with tiny tooth marks all round the edge.

  ‘It’s been in the ‘Rover for a week or so,’ Rob said, smiling and putting it back. ‘We’ve obviously got travelling mice.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t leave it there,’ Nell said. ‘It’ll just encourage them, and it’s not exactly hygienic.’ She went to retrieve the chocolate, intending to throw it away.

  ‘It’s fine. OK?’ Rob stood in her way. ‘We’ll cut the tooth marks off later.’

  ‘Well, I still don’t think that’s a good –’ Nell hesitated.

  ‘I want it to stay there,’ Josh said grandly, delivering the last word on the subject.

  ‘I like mith,’ Rosie said, capping it. Nell retired as gracefully as she could, feeling irritated.

  When she thought about it later, dispassionately, there definitely were rewarding times to be had with both children: the morning when she recut Rosie’s hair and washed it for her, and Rosie said, ‘It looks much more nithe now than when my other mummy did it.’ Or the time when Josh fell and cut his knees and came running to her for Elastoplast and comfort. Or when he bet her ten pence he could catch a grasshopper, and actually managed it. But these were more than counterbalanced by the occasions when Josh woke them at five in the morning to have his bottom wiped, and the night when he cried for his mother – to such an extent that Rob felt obliged to try to ring her – and Josh was inconsolable when she wasn’t there. Or the day when he deliberately made holes in a new bag of potting compost, snapped the spout off the watering can, broke a pane of glass in the kitchen window with a stick, trying to attract their attention, and then fell flat in the mud at the edge of the river again, and needed a complete change of clothes. All these things are only trivial, Nell reminded herself, but she still felt depressed. She had hoped by now to have become accustomed to the children, and to be able to be as comfortably capable with them as Elly was with hers.

  Then there was the afternoon when Rob accidentally knocked Rosie over and, as he picked her up again, Nell heard her say indignantly, ‘I didn’t hear a “thorry”.’ She smiled at the recollection, but even that amusement was tempered with unease. Rosie was so clearly repeating something her mother had said to her. Shades of Cassie had been there all the time in the background, trying to catch Nell out, but now she had actually met the woman, she could see her in her children too; her expressions, her mannerisms, her attitudes. And because Cassie had known Rob for many more years than she had, and had had two children by him, her relationship with him appeared to Nell to be far more significant than her own. She was jealous.

  Ten days into the so-called holiday, Cassie phoned unexpectedly in the evening and demanded the children back. Nell heard Rob’s half of the conversation and deduced the rest.

  ‘They’re fine,’ Rob said, ‘absolutely fine … Well, how should I know if they’re missing you? … No, of course I haven’t asked them… Look, we agreed fourteen days, so a fortnight it is… No, actually they’re not at all bored… Well, I can’t help that… Oh, Cassie, there’s no need for hysteria. Just calm down!… Oh, for heaven’s sake. I…’ He put the receiver down with a crash. ‘She hung up on me.’

  ‘Bloody woman,’ Nell said. ‘Ignore her. Tell you what, why don’t we go out tomorrow to the proper seaside where there are ice creams and donkey rides and other children yours can play with?’

  It was a good idea. Both children welcomed it with uncustomary enthusiasm, and were still in good spirits the next day when they all four walked along the crowded beach to find an open patch of sand to bag for themselves. They dumped their bundles of towels and swimming costumes, their buckets and spades and frisbee, the cool-bag full of food and cold drinks, Rob’s camera and a couple of optimistically included books. Nell rubbed suncream on everyone and then on herself and finally settled down to watch Rob and Josh in a sandcastle-building competition.

  ‘I want an ith cream,’ Rosie announced.

  ‘Good idea,’ Rob said.

  ‘I’ll get them,’ Nell offered. ‘You stay with Daddy and Josh.’

  She walked back along the beach alone, glad of the brief freedom. It was thronged with people all enjoying themselves. I’m a freak, Nell thought. Why do I have to be different from everybody else? She imagined idly how good it would be just to keep on walking, and not to have to feel responsible for anybody but herself. Then she came to the ice-cream van and bought four large cornets with chocolate flakes stuck in them, and was obliged to turn back again.

  She walked for some time before she realised she’d lost Rob and the children. She hadn’t taken note of how far she’d come and the beach was featureless and more crowded by the minute. She scanned the tideline in case they were paddling, and then the sea of faces. All were unfamiliar. She couldn’t have overshot, could she? She walked on uncertainly. The sky above was a brash hot blue. A heat haze shimmered over the dunes. Something cold hit one hand. The ice creams were melting, running down their cones and dripping wastefully on to the sand. There was a splash of sticky white on her new polo shirt, and she didn’t have a spare hand to wipe it off. She looked all round helplessly. Still no Rob.

  Then her chest constricted suddenly, and her eyes filled with tears which poured down her face. She felt as desolate as a lost child, and stupid at the same time. She stumbled on blindly for what seemed an age and unexpectedly there they were – two familiar dark heads and one fair, with two sandcastles now twice as big as before. Nell sniffed determinedly and went to join them.

  ‘My ith’s all melted,’ Rosie complained, taking one from her.

  ‘So’s mine,’ Josh said, making sure he got the biggest.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nell said, ‘they all are. I got a bit lost and it’s hot.’

  ‘What d’you think of our castles?’ Rob asked, taking his without really looking at her.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  Later that night when the children were asleep, and Rob was breathing deeply beside her, Nell found that her eyes were leaking again. She cried as silently as possible, making the pillow all wet, but finally had to sit
up in bed to blow her nose.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Rob asked, turning over blearily and switching on the bedside light.

  ‘I was just remembering getting lost on the beach today.’ Nell managed a tremulous smile. She badly needed a hug.

  ‘Were you? When?’

  ‘When I got the ice creams.’

  ‘Oh then,’ Rob said not unkindly, patting her through the duvet. ‘That’s nothing to cry about, you silly sausage!’

  The inevitable day arrived when the children had to be taken back to their mother. Rob woke with feelings of gloom even before he was fully conscious, and then lay there staring at the ceiling, worrying about whether he and Cassie would ever be able to sort out the problems of residency and contact for their children amicably, or whether it would have to go to court to be at the mercy of a welfare report and a judge’s decision. He worried too whether the financial settlement would be achieved with any degree of dignity and without any more trauma to Rosie and Josh.

  Josh was awake early too, and in a state of high excitement, twitching his shoulders and bolting his breakfast, asking all the time, ‘When are we going home? Can we go now?’ At eleven o’clock just as they were preparing to leave for Boxcombe, the phone rang. It was Cassie.

  ‘We’re just setting off,’ Rob said.

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes. Why not? Today’s the day we agreed.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not at all convenient at the moment. You’ll have to give them lunch and bring them home later this afternoon.’

  ‘And there’s me thinking you were desperate to see them.’

  ‘Oh go to hell!’ She slammed the receiver down.

  When he told the children, Rosie danced on one leg and chortled, but Josh burst into tears. ‘I want to go home now!’ he wailed, hunching his shoulders convulsively.

  Nell didn’t seem overly pleased either, but she waited until the children were out of earshot before saying. ‘But I haven’t got anything for them for a proper lunch. I didn’t think they’d still be here.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Have you noticed how the Mad Cow invariably arranges things so she does the minimum amount of cooking and Muggins here always has to step in?’

  Rob made an impatient gesture. ‘Bread and something will be fine,’ he said.

  Later that afternoon he drove them home in a sudden isolated thunderstorm, feeling it had been a pretty good holiday, all things considered. Josh was still clutching the painting that he and Nell had spent most of the morning doing, and Rosie was still very taken with the pretend menu that she and Nell had thought up for supper.

  ‘Thtewed gnu and cuthtard, wathed down with python cruth,’ she intoned. ‘Thtewed gnu and cuth…’

  ‘You can’t even say it properly,’ Josh jeered. ‘It’s stewed gnu and custard, washed down with python crush.’

  ‘… tard, wathed down with python cruth. St…’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’

  ‘Hush, Josh.’

  ‘Thtewed gnu a –’

  ‘And that’s quite enough, Rosie. Repetition ruins the joke. Here we are.’ He slowed the Land Rover down and brought it to a stop outside Cassie’s house. The front door opened and she stood there. Her face looked pinched and disagreeable in spite of the fine features.

  ‘You’re late!’ she accused him. Josh suddenly burst into floods of tears and rushed at her. ‘What is it, Joshy?’ she crooned, bending down to encircle him in her arms. ‘What’s up with my best boy?’ She glanced at Rob venomously.

  ‘He’s been fine all fortnight,’ Rob protested. ‘We’ve had a good –’

  ‘Inside, Rosie!’ Cassie interrupted sharply, pulling at her daughter’s sleeve.

  ‘But I want to kith Daddy goodbye.’

  ‘Not today.’ Cassie yanked her indoors. ‘You might get struck by lightning.’ Then she slammed the door to within an inch of Rob’s face, and all he was left with was the sound of both his children crying.

  He stood there for a moment in the rain in furious indecision, but then feeling that if he made a fuss it would only upset the children more, he turned on his heel and squelched back to the Land Rover. Once there, he turned back to look at the house, hoping to see at least one of them at the window so he could blow a kiss, but there was no one there. Cassie would have made sure of that. He climbed in, dripping, and discovered that his feet were resting on Josh’s precious painting.

  All the way home he worried about him. What on earth had upset him? Wasn’t seven a bit old for this cry-baby stuff? How could Cassie undermine him so? What did she think she was doing?

  I’ve done my absolute best not to argue with her in front of the children, he thought bitterly. I’ve behaved ‘properly’ and look where it’s got me! It feels as though I’m trying to fight an unending war armed only with a popgun. Cassie always has the advantage – Cassie has the children. I’ve tried to be accommodating and civilised and she just takes advantage of me. I try to be polite and she mocks me and alienates Josh. I try to discuss things sensibly and she gets hysterical. What more can I do?

  He drove badly, causing a lorry to brake suddenly and blast him with its horn. When he finally turned in at the entrance to his lane, he felt totally done in. ‘They should be here,’ he said aloud, bumping over the ruts with practised negligence. ‘This is their home.’

  Nell met him at the door, smiling a welcome. She was invariably cheerful; a quality that had endeared her to him right from the outset. How could he ever have fancied Cassie?

  ‘Hello, love,’ she said, hugging him. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Not really.’ He kissed her cheek absently and went through into the kitchen, where he got himself a bottle of beer and a glass. ‘Drink?’

  ‘No thanks.’ She sat down opposite him at the kitchen table. ‘What’s wrong?’ She ran her fingers through her fringe, making it stick up rakishly. Her hair was not her best point. Rob didn’t answer. ‘Well?’

  ‘Oh, just the usual.’ He felt almost too tired to explain. ‘Josh sobbed his heart out the moment he saw his mother. I can’t think why. He was fine here, wasn’t he? I thought we’d had a good holiday.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just a conflict of loyalties, plus some emotional blackmail from Cassie?’ Nell suggested, reaching across for his hand. ‘Poor you. You can’t win, can you?’

  ‘Certainly seems like that.’

  Nell stroked his hand, and then squeezed it as though she’d come to some conclusion. She often did this when attempting to distract him from gloom. Rob recognised it as an unspoken signal which said, ‘Right, now let’s change the subject.’

  ‘I heard a lovely new adjective on the radio just now,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes – retortful. Good isn’t it?’.

  ‘It isn’t a real word, is it?’

  ‘So what? I think it’s got a definite future. It would describe Josh beautifully, don’t you think? As in – Josh was in trouble at school today for being retortful!’ She grinned at him.

  Rob didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He was unable to bear any criticism of his children at all. If they behaved badly, it was because they were being brought up incompetently; because Cassie was useless as a mother; because he had abandoned them and was thus a cruel and unfeeling father; because she had them, and he didn’t. The least disapproval, even from Nell, pointed up his own inadequacy and his own loss. It was all too much.

  ‘Come on, Rob,’ Nell encouraged him. ‘Don’t let the Mad Cow get to you.’

  ‘Too late,’ Rob said bitterly. ‘Whatever happens, it seems I can do nothing about it. Nothing!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Nell said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ She squeezed his hand again. Rob made a noncommittal noise, and slipped his hand from hers to pour more beer for himself.

  ‘Little sip?’ Nell suggested.

  ‘You said you didn’t want any.’

  ‘Just a smidgen of yours.’ She wrinkled her small elegant nose at him and pursed her lips hopefully. She had nice lips.

/>   Rob smiled at last. ‘Oh, go on then.’

  Nell looked encouraged. ‘I went up and got the post whilst you were out,’ she said, taking a good gulp of beer, ‘and there’s something that should interest you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A booklet about the problems of step-parenting. I sent away for it. I haven’t had a chance to read it properly, but it looks as though it might be useful.’ She handed it to him.

  ‘Oh, right.’ He took it from her, glanced at it and then put it down again. He had no intention of actually reading it. What was the point? He wasn’t a step-parent.

  By the time she went to bed that night, Nell was tired too. It was exhausting trying to cheer Rob up and jolly him along all the time. There were times when she almost despised him for being so wimpish where Cassie was concerned, and yet of course she did understand. It was difficult for him. What more could he do? He was a nice man, and nice men don’t break down their ex-wives’ doors, beat them up, and liberate their children – well, only in their wildest dreams.

  It’s all very well, Nell thought resentfully, but where do I come in? I get the brunt of everything. When Cassie is horrible to Rob, he disappears inside himself and leaves me out. I do my best, but it’s hopeless if it’s all one-sided. I need Rob to make big efforts for me too. Then she thought, I’m being selfish. I’m an adult; I ought to be able to manage. And anyway, I know a sure-fire way to make him forget his troubles …

  She lay in bed smiling in anticipation as Rob undressed, watching him reach up to the back of his collar, yank off his shirt in one easy movement, and drop it on the floor. He eased his feet out of his shoes one against the other, lowered his trousers and his underpants and kicked them aside too. Nell was about to protest, but thought better of it. One thing at a time. She pulled back the duvet invitingly as Rob climbed in. He lay down on his back.