Other People's Children

by Joanna Trollope

  She’d agreed to meet Matthew halfway, and retrieve the children. She hadn’t wanted to, she’d wanted Matthew to come all the way to the cottage so that he could see how she lived, what she was reduced to. But he had refused. He’d said if he had to go more than halfway, he wouldn’t bring them at all, and in the background Nadine could hear Becky pleading with him and Clare crying. She couldn’t believe that Matthew could hold out like this, against his own children. She imagined Josie and her son smirking with satisfaction in the background, with the central heating on and a bulging refrigerator. Then Matthew put the phone down on her, and when she tried to ring again, the answering machine was on and she was so afraid she might miss meeting the children that she had leaped straight into the car and driven off into the night, crouched over the steering wheel as if that would somehow help it to go faster.

  The children looked exhausted. She had determined she would neither look at Matthew nor speak to him, but she saw enough to reassure herself that he looked exhausted, too. And he was thinner. He’d always been inclined to thinness but now he looked scrawny, and much older. He’d hardly said goodbye, even to the children, but just let them get silently from one car to the other, only helping Clare with her bags. Clare’s skirt had got caught in the door of his car as she scrambled out and it had torn and Clare had begun to cry again. She looked as if she had been crying for weeks.

  And then, a mile from home, Nadine’s car had stopped. Just stopped, dead, in the middle of the road and would give nothing but a faint groan when Nadine turned the key. It was very dark and they had no torches. Nadine said, as cheerfully as she could, that they’d have to walk.

  ‘No,’ Becky said.

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m not carrying all my stuff, and I’m not leaving it in the car either. It doesn’t lock.’

  Nadine said, with an edge of sarcasm, ‘So what are you going to do instead, may I ask?’

  ‘Go to the farm.’

  ‘What farm?’

  ‘The one up there. The one the cows belong to.’

  ‘But we don’t know them—’

  ‘Not yet,’ Becky said.

  She had made Rory go with her, and they had gone off in the dark together and returned, in a surprisingly short time, in a Land Rover with a farmer called Tim Huntley. He was youngish and grinning, with heavy shoulders and hands. He winked at Nadine and told her she’d run out of petrol.

  ‘I haven’t—’

  ‘You have—’

  ‘You have!’ Becky shouted.

  Tim Huntley had filled the tank from a can in the back of his Land Rover.

  ‘You all right in that cottage?’ he said to Nadine.

  ‘No. How could anyone be?’

  He grinned.

  ‘We never thought they’d let it again.’

  ‘It was all we could afford,’ Nadine said. She saw the children shrink back as she spoke. In the light of the Land Rover headlights, Tim Huntley looked at them all, consideringly.

  ‘Start her up now,’ he said.

  Nadine tried.

  ‘Plenty of choke.’

  Nadine tried again.

  He put his hand on the driver’s door.

  ‘Hop out,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  He got into the driver’s seat and pumped the accelerator. Then he turned the key. The engine coughed once or twice, and turned.

  ‘There.’

  He got out of the car and held the door open for Nadine.

  ‘I’ll be down in the morning,’ he said, ‘to see if she’ll still fire.’

  ‘Thank you—’

  ‘No problem. Up at five for the cows anyhow.’

  He’d come at nine in the morning, on Christmas Day, dumping the meat and vegetables on the kitchen table. He patted the pork.

  ‘One of ours. Should crackle well.’

  Nadine had been in her dressing gown, with her hair down her back, making tea and apprehensively counting bread slices, to see if there were enough. She smiled at him.

  ‘You are really, really kind.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘I mean it. Thank you.’

  He had blushed very slightly and slapped the pork again.

  ‘Thirty-five minutes to the pound. Hot oven. Don’t salt the crackle.’

  She had suddenly felt extremely happy, standing there in her kitchen with such a reassuring bulk of food on the table. She gave him a deliberate, quick glance.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it—’

  Later, she heard her car being started up in the lean-to, and later still, she found a pile of logs outside the door. She’d said to the children, ‘See? See? You were meant to be home for Christmas, weren’t you?’

  Clare had muttered something.

  ‘What?’ Nadine said. ‘What? What did you say?’

  But Clare, who had said, with some desperation, ‘I don’t know where we’re meant to be,’ wouldn’t repeat herself.

  They’d eaten the pork on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and on the day after, and then the children wouldn’t eat it any more. Nadine put the rest of the meat – it was a huge, real farmer’s joint – in the damp larder where blue and green moulds lived under the shelves, and baked potatoes instead for every meal. In between baked potatoes, the children did things she asked them to – washed up or brought wood in or emptied the kitchen bin – but listlessly, and at every opportunity escaped upstairs to do things with Christmas presents they tried to pretend they hadn’t got. Nadine told herself she was too proud to ask what these furtive presents were, but she could hear the whine and tattoo-like beat of battery-operated games and Becky, under her mitten, was wearing a silver ring shaped like a fish curled round on itself. It came from the Indian craft shop in Sedgebury, Nadine was sure. It was probably the one Becky had wanted for her birthday but which Matthew, in one of his suburban frenzies about money, had said she couldn’t have. But plainly she could have it now, couldn’t she? Now that Becky had to be bribed to love him, to stay with him and the Randy Redhead in their dinky little house.

  ‘Mum,’ Becky said, from behind her.

  ‘Do you think we could curry that?’ Nadine said. She pointed to the pork. A pinkish liquid had seeped from it and congealed into a thin layer of jelly.

  ‘No,’ Becky said. ‘Can we go into Ross?’

  Nadine looked at her.

  ‘No. Why?’

  Becky twisted her hidden ring under her mitten.

  ‘Just – wanted to – wanted to go somewhere. We’ve been stuck here for days—’

  ‘What will you do if we go to Ross?’

  Becky shrugged.

  ‘Go round the shops—’

  ‘With what?’

  Becky muttered something. She ducked her head so that her hair fell forward. Josie had given her a black nylon wallet for Christmas with a ten-pound note in it. The wallet was gross, of course, but the ten pounds were OK.

  ‘Did she give you money?’ Nadine asked.

  ‘A bit—’

  ‘Don’t you know,’ Nadine demanded, ‘when you’re being bought, when someone is trying to bribe you?’

  Becky thought of all those meals she had refused to eat, the beds she had declined to make, the washing-up she had just left, defying her father to push her towards the sink, to dare to touch her. Nadine’s unfairness, in the face of this steady opposition to her father’s new marriage, made her eyes water.

  ‘How can you be so disloyal,’ Nadine shouted suddenly, ‘as to take anything from her?’

  Becky moved away from the larder door and slumped in a chair by the kitchen table.

  She said, into her hair, ‘It’s all the money I’ve got.’

  ‘Hah!’ Nadine said. She marched past Becky with a handful of potatoes and dropped them thudding into the sink. ‘Welcome to the club.’

  Becky leaned her elbows on the table and put the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. If she pressed, coloured flashes and stars and rings exploded against the blackness, and briefly, ble
ssedly, cleared her mind of thoughts. Such as the thoughts that had pursued her all morning, which she had sought to escape by suggesting an expedition to Ross, thoughts of her father, and how she wanted him to be there and how she kept remembering times when he was there, bringing with him a sense that not only were some things in life to be relied upon but that there were other things to be aimed for, striven for, which would bring mysterious and potent reward. Without her father there, Becky had lost a sense of the future, a sense that round the next corner might be something other than just more of the same. She raised her head and looked at Nadine’s narrow back, bent over the sink.

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you and Dad sold our house—’ She paused.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Where did the money go?’

  ‘Into the bank,’ Nadine said shortly.

  ‘Couldn’t – couldn’t we use just some of it?’

  Nadine turned round. She was holding a potato and an old nailbrush.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ Nadine said, ‘it’s all the money I’ve got. All I’ll ever have.’

  Becky didn’t look at her. She spread her hands out flat on the table and said in a rush, before her courage fled, ‘Why don’t you get a job?’

  There was an ominous silence. Becky heard the potato and nailbrush fall into the sink.

  ‘Sorry?’ Nadine said. Her voice was cold.

  Becky mumbled, ‘You heard me—’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Nadine said. She came away from the sink and leaned on the opposite side of the table, staring at Becky. ‘I heard you. I heard you the other night, too, when you said the same thing. Do you remember what I said to you?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Well. The same reason is true now. I can’t work because of you children and where we are forced to live. And you have no right to ask me to, no right at all.’ She leaned forward. ‘Why are you asking me?’

  Becky said, to the tabletop, ‘Other mothers work—’

  ‘Hah!’ Nadine shouted again. She slammed her fist down on the table. ‘So that’s it, is it? That’s what you’re getting at! She’s got a job, has she? She’s got everything that should be mine and a bloody job, too?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t. Not yet. But she’s going to—’

  ‘Becky—’

  Becky closed her eyes.

  ‘Becky, how dare you speak to me about her? How dare you even begin to make comparisons when you think what I’ve done for you and she’s destroyed? How dare you?’

  ‘I wasn’t comparing—’

  ‘Weren’t you? Weren’t you?’

  ‘I was just telling you. You asked if she’d got a job and I was just telling you—’

  ‘You should be ashamed of even mentioning her in my presence.’

  ‘I didn’t. I never do mention—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Nadine yelled.

  Becky pushed her chair back from the table, tilting it to get away from Nadine’s furious face.

  She said, persisting, ‘I’m thinking of you—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You ought to get away from here. You ought to see other people than us. You ought—’ She stopped.

  ‘What ought I?’

  Becky cried wildly, ‘You ought to use your energies for something else than just hating Dad!’

  ‘Right,’ Nadine said. ‘Right. That does it.’

  She marched round the table and gave Becky’s tilting chair a swift kick. It lurched and toppled, sending Becky on to her knees on the kitchen floor. She put her hands down to steady herself and waited, on all fours, for the next thing to happen.

  ‘You have no idea about pain,’ Nadine said. Her voice was odd, as if she was restraining a scream. ‘No idea about suffering, about being rejected, about the end of love. You have all your life before you and what have I got? Nothing. Seventeen years’ investment in a relationship and what do I have at the end? Nothing. Nothing.’

  Very slowly, Becky sat up on her heels. She looked up at Nadine. She had no idea why she wasn’t giving in, why she wasn’t retreating into the silence that had always been, in the end, her only defence. But she wasn’t. She was sick with fright, but she was going to say it, she was going to.

  ‘You could have something,’ she said. Her voice shook. ‘You could have something, even now, if you wanted to. You could have had something, all along. But you wouldn’t.’

  There was a small, stunned silence, and then Nadine leaned down and slapped her hard, across her cheek. Becky gave a little cry. Nadine had never struck her before. She’d screamed and shouted and ranted and slammed her own hands or herself against walls and furniture, but she’d never hit Becky before. Or the others. Hugs, yes, violent cuddles and kisses, and when she was in a good mood, tickles and squeezes, but not blows. Never blows. Becky put a hand to her cheek. It was stinging.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Nadine said. She yanked the chair upright and collapsed on to it, putting her face in her hands. ‘Oh my God. Sorry. Oh, sorry—’

  Very slowly, Becky stood up. She leaned on the table. She felt slightly sick.

  ‘That’s OK—’

  ‘No,’ Nadine said. She stretched out one hand to Becky. ‘No, it isn’t. Come here. Let me hold you—’

  ‘Can’t,’ Becky said. Her voice was hoarse.

  ‘Please—’

  Becky shook her head. Nadine raised hers from her remaining hand and looked full at Becky.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Can’t you see? I should never have done it, I should never have hit you. It’s just that I get so wound up, so angry—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Can’t you understand?’ Nadine said. ‘Can’t you see what it’s like to have made such a mess of everything and then to find that you’re stuck?’

  Becky sighed. Her face was beginning to glow now, and to throb faintly as if a bruise was gathering itself up ready to form.

  ‘Whatever—’ She stopped.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Whatever it’s like,’ Becky said, looking down the leaning length of her body to her boot toes, ‘you shouldn’t take it out on us.’

  The kitchen door opened. Clare, wearing her Disney tracksuit and an old Aran jersey of Matthew’s, came in holding the headphones of her new personal tape player.

  ‘Rory’s gone.’

  Nadine swivelled on her chair.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He’s not upstairs and he’s not downstairs.’

  ‘He’ll be outside—’

  ‘It’s raining,’ Clare said.

  ‘Perhaps he’s in the car, seeing if it’ll start—’

  ‘I’ve looked,’ Clare said. She had been impelled to go and find him because of the sudden silence from his burrow under the eaves. He was in one of his refusing-to-speak moods, but Clare had seen him, a couple of hours ago, tunnelling into his bedding with his new Swiss Army knife and a small log from the pile Tim Huntley had brought. For some time, Clare could hear chippings and whittlings and then she put her headphones on and could hear nothing but the soundtrack from The Sound of Music which she only played when alone for fear of being mocked for listening to anything so creepy, so sentimental, so pathetic. But she loved it, she loved its sentimentality and its portrayal of a family as a safe haven, a happy unit, loving, unthreatened in their togetherness. When she had heard to the end, she took the headphones off and noticed that the woodcarving noises had stopped. She put her head out on to the landing and saw that Rory’s leather jacket – it was only a cheap one from Sedgebury Market, and the seams were beginning to split – had gone from where he’d dumped it on the floor. She went across to his burrow.

  ‘Rory?’ she said.

  There was no answer. She crawled in. The bedclothes were scattered with little chips of wood, and they were cold. On his pillow lay the log. He hadn’t been carving it, he’d just hacked at it. It was full of gashes and slashes, as if he’d just tried t
o kill it with his knife. She reversed out on to the landing and did a tour of the upstairs and then the downstairs. Then she went out into the drizzle and looked in the lean-to and the awful shed where a stained old lavatory crouched in the corner like a toad. Then she went back into the cottage and sought her mother in the kitchen.

  Nadine looked as if she was about to cry.

  ‘I can’t face it—’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum,’ Becky said. ‘Don’t panic. He can’t be far.’

  ‘I must go and look for him—’

  ‘If he isn’t back for lunch—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll go and look for him if he isn’t back for lunch.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘He’s twelve,’ Becky said. ‘He’s nearly a teenager. Anyway, what could happen to him round here with nothing for miles except cows?’

  Nadine glanced at her. Then she looked at Clare. Then she took a deep breath and pushed her hair off her face.

  ‘I hope you know,’ she said, and her voice shook a little. ‘I hope you both know how much I love you? All of you?’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘Hey,’ Tim Huntley said. He’d come round the corner of the Dutch barn with the tractor to cut more maize for feeding, and a movement had caught his eye. It was a quick movement, someone on top of the great maize stack, someone not very big. And then the someone had moved again, and revealed itself to be the kid from what Tim and his mother called No-Hope Cottage. The boy kid. He was crouched up there looking down at Tim as if he expected to be shouted at.

  ‘Hey,’ Tim said. ‘What you doing up there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Rory said. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket that had seen better days and a T-shirt, and he looked blue with cold. Tim opened the tractor-cab door and swung himself down. He looked up at Rory, twenty feet above him.

  ‘How long have you been up there?’

  ‘Dunno—’

  ‘You better come down.’

  Rory hesitated. He’d climbed up on impulse, rather to see if he could, making toe- and fingerholds in the maize wall as he went. But getting down was another matter. Tim went close to the maize.