Other People's Children (23 page)

‘Please don't touch me.'

He took his arms away.

‘I've got to behave decently,' Matthew said. ‘I've got to juggle all these demands and do the best I can.'

‘Except for me,' Josie said. She turned the tap off and wrapped her finger in a piece of absorbent kitchen paper. ‘I don't make any demands. So I don't get anything. I do everything for everyone and nobody ever thinks that I have needs, I have hurts.'

‘I do.'

‘Well, you don't do anything about them. You just expect me to be sorry for you, you expect me to imagine what it's like for you while never even trying for one second to imagine what it's like for me.'

The kitchen door opened. Rufus stood there, holding his maths book. He looked at them.

‘Oh,' he said.

Josie said, ‘Come in, darling.'

‘It's my maths,' Rufus said. ‘I can't do—' He stopped.

Matthew moved away from Josie.

‘Shall I help you?'

Rufus looked at him doubtfully. Matthew sat down at the kitchen table.

‘Bring it here.'

Slowly, Rufus approached the table. He put the book down in front of Matthew and stepped back.

‘I won't bite you,' Matthew said. ‘I'm useful for maths. If for nothing else.'

Rufus moved a little closer. Josie watched them.

‘Show me.'

‘There,' Rufus said. He leaned forward, pointing, his shoulder almost touching Matthew's. It was a scene she had longed for, a scene which represented, perhaps, the first quiet, unremarkable step on the road to some kind of relationship between the two people who mattered most in the world to her – and it left her cold. She watched them, and felt nothing. Nothing. She was empty of all good things at that moment, empty of any capacity to feel joy, even to feel love. There was no possibility of loving feelings in the face of the rage and despair that filled her now with such intensity.

‘I've got a headache,' Josie said.

Neither Rufus nor Matthew reacted. Their heads were close.

‘I think you've got these in the wrong order,' Matthew said. ‘That's what's stumped you.'

‘I'm going up to bed,' Josie said. ‘If you put the grated cheese on top of what's in that dish, and grill it for ten minutes, that's supper.'

Rufus looked up briefly, his face abstracted.

‘Right,' he said.

‘See you later,' Josie said. She went out of the kitchen and up the stairs and past Becky's closed door, to her bedroom. Then she lay down, still with her shoes on, and let herself cry.

That must be almost two hours ago. She must have gone to sleep, briefly, because she was stiff and her mouth tasted sour, and the tears had dried on the sides of her face in faint salty crusts. Tears of self-pity, perhaps, tears of anger and impotence certainly. She
licked her undamaged forefinger and rubbed away the tear traces. Then she turned her head. On the little table by Matthew's side of the bed lay the telephone. She could roll over the bed and pick up the receiver. She could telephone her mother, or her friend Beth, and she could then expect – and probably get – their time and patience while she talked, while she poured out all the thoughts and feelings that had come to obsess her since the arrival in her life – their lives – of Matthew's children.

‘I didn't have any choice,' she'd say. She could imagine Elaine listening. ‘Did I? I didn't have any choice in taking them on. It was
him
I chose. And we can't really talk about them, or about the fact that there wasn't time to prepare for them. Time for me, anyway. I'm so afraid of being unfair, but I'm unfair all the time. I love Rufus, and I don't love them. I can't. How can you love children whose every effort is directed at ignoring you or hating you? How can you love children who persist in loving a natural mother who's such a rotten mother? Why do they persist? Why do they fling their loyalty for her at me, all day, every day? And now' – inside her head, Josie could feel her voice rising to a crescendo – ‘I'm supposed to help support them! I'm supposed to look after them like a mother, but not, oh God,
not
like a real mother, for no return, and pay for them as well? Because Matthew can't, Matthew won't, because they're his children and he won't see what I feel.'

The tears were starting again. Josie rolled over and pressed her face into the pillows. Mustn't. Mustn't cry
again. Mustn't telephone either. Mustn't expose this raw cauldron of feelings even to Elaine's compassionate gaze, let alone to Beth's much less kindly one.

‘Oh,' Beth would say, ‘I
am
sorry. How disappointing for you.'

There'd be a note in her voice, an edge, that Josie wouldn't like, that Josie probably couldn't take, a little hint of triumph, of superiority. Of, ‘Well, you knew he had children when you married him.' Elaine would just worry.

‘Shall I come down, dear? Do you want to come here for a few days? Is Rufus all right? How is Rufus?'

Josie reached out for a tissue from the box on her side of the bed and blew her nose hard. Then she sat up. She didn't just feel stiff and a little cold, but grubby, too, dishevelled, as if she'd been in contact with something polluting, impure. She swung her feet to the floor and kicked off her shoes. She would go into the bathroom, before the children all came upstairs, and shower and wash her hair and go downstairs in her dressing gown and make tea and try to be pleasant, ordinary. She stood up and stretched. Becky had turned some music on in her bedroom, so at least she was alive. Josie went out on to the landing. Becky's bedroom door was open, and the light was still on. Beside it, however, the bathroom door was firmly shut and the sound of music coming from behind it was intermingled with the sound of running water. Becky was in the shower.

∗ ∗ ∗

Under the bedclothes, Rory pressed a lit torch into the palm of his hand, into his bunched fingers. His flesh glowed weirdly, red and fiery. He took the torch away from his hand and shone it out from under the duvet on to a patch of wall, and then up, above his football posters, to the ceiling where a crack ran jaggedly across the plaster.

‘Rufe?' he said.

There was silence. He swung the torch beam off the ceiling in a swooping arc until it came to rest on Rufus's bed, Rufus's body under his duvet, Rufus's head with its thick, straight hair which fell the same way whether Rufus brushed it, or didn't. Rufus was lying, as he always did, with his back to Rory; the torchlight caught his neck and an ear and the navy-blue collar of his pyjamas.

‘You asleep?'

Silence. Rory didn't know why, but he quite wanted Rufus to be awake. He thought he might say something. He didn't know what, he just thought he'd like it if Rufus was awake, too, and lying the other way, facing him. He'd always thought of Rufus as a little kid, a little wet kid, but tonight, in the kitchen, eating supper with just him and Dad and Clare, he'd been OK, he'd been normal. They all had. They'd all just eaten the stuff Josie had left and joshed about a bit and Matthew, despite looking tired, hadn't watched anybody, hadn't ticked anyone off. It had felt different, this evening, without Becky and Josie, it felt as if you could just say things, as if whether you ate or you didn't eat wasn't a big deal. So they all ate. They ate everything Josie had left, everything. Rory and
Clare had even argued about the last baked potato, and when Matthew gave it to Rufus and he said he couldn't eat it, Matthew had just grinned and cut it in halves for the others. Then they'd had a water fight, washing up. Matthew made them mop the floor and Rory hadn't minded. He couldn't believe it, but he hadn't minded, he'd just pushed that frigging mop round and tried to get Rufus's feet wet, and Rufus had yelled and jumped about and you could see he didn't mind either, that he was liking it. It only stopped when Josie came down. She'd come down in her dressing gown with her hair on her shoulders making her face look like paper and she'd been nervous. You could see it, as if she was expecting something to happen, something she couldn't handle. Matthew showed her all the empty dishes and she'd nodded. She put the kettle on and stood, with her hand on the handle, with her back to them, waiting for it to boil. The kitchen had gone quiet, all of a sudden, really quiet. And awkward.

Rory ran the torchbeam all down Rufus's length, and back again. He looked relaxed, as if he really was asleep, not just faking. His wet shoes were jammed behind the radiator, and next to them was Rory's Newcastle United sweatshirt, which had got soaking. Rory switched the torch off. It had been odd, this evening, because it had been, well, normal. Not brilliant, just normal. He rolled over and punched his pillow. It had been fun.

In the supermarket, Elizabeth bought things she thought Rufus would like – a selection of individual cereal boxes, finger biscuits covered in chocolate, raisins in a cardboard drum, doll-sized Dutch cheeses in a plastic net bag. She was tempted by all kinds of babyish things, too, strawberry-flavoured toothpaste and pasta shaped like dinosaurs, not because she didn't realize that Rufus was too old for them, but because it was such pure pleasure to shop for food from such an entirely different perspective than her usual lone adult one. She spent a long time in front of jars of baby food, too, and neat piles of cotton-wool balls and baby wipes and disposable nappies, all packaged in pristine white plastic printed with nursery symbols in primary colours. It was like being in another dimension, standing there imagining needing such things on an ordinary daily basis, like being in another world. She picked up a pale-blue tin of baby-milk formula. ‘For babies up to four months,' it said, and on the side, in darker blue letters, ‘Calcium and vitamins added.'

Her trolley looked satisfyingly full as she wheeled it towards the exit. She had never, in her whole life, bought so much in a single expedition, had never had need to buy bulk packs of lavatory paper or more than six apples, or two items at once from the delicatessen. Certainly the fact that Rufus was coming for almost ten days made a difference, but somehow even shopping for herself and Tom had a richness to it because of all the things a household seemed to need to clean it and service it and to keep it living and welcoming. There were items in that trolley now – a box of ivory-coloured candles, a packet of Italian espresso coffee, a patent cold remedy – that had nothing to do with her, in herself, but were bought because someone else needed them, wanted them, because shopping was now an imaginative experience on behalf of several people, not just a practical one on behalf of a mere one whose tastes were so familiar to her, she was sick of them.

She stopped her trolley by an empty checkout, and began to unload the contents.

‘Busy weekend?' the woman on the till said, watching.

Elizabeth nodded, head down, to conceal her smile.

The woman picked up the cold remedy.

‘Got a cold then?'

‘No,' Elizabeth said, and then, to her own amazed surprise and delight, added, ‘It's for my fiancé.'

The woman swiped the remedy across the scanner panel of her till.

‘If there's one thing I can't abide,' she said cosily, ‘it's a sick man.'

I'm new to it, Elizabeth wanted to say, so new to it that I don't mind, I don't mind Tom thinking he's getting a cold, I don't mind buying him the capsules he imagines will prevent it happening; in fact I'm so far from minding, that I like it, I'm grateful to be asked to do it, to choose sausages for Rufus, to replenish the supplies of soap and furniture polish and bottled water.

‘Fiancé, did you say?' the woman asked.

‘Yes—'

She gave Elizabeth a kindly glance and picked up a bag of potatoes.

‘You'll learn,' she said.

There was a parking space right outside Tom's house, and it was, in addition, a big enough space for Elizabeth – who was not an experienced driver and had never needed to be a car owner – to manoeuvre into without difficulty. Tom had bought her this car, just like that, easily, amazing her.

‘You'll need it.'

‘But I've never—'

‘You do now. Anyway, I want you to have a car. I want you to have the freedom.'

‘I can't believe it.'

He had kissed her.

‘You're joining another world. Families have cars.'

Already Elizabeth liked it. She liked the unexpected status she felt it gave her, the independence, the choice. Even now, lifting the back to heave out the bulging supermarket bags, she felt a small pride she couldn't
help relishing even though she was glad no-one more experienced was there to see. She carried the bags up the steps to the front door in pairs and then locked the car, carefully checking to see that the central-locking system had actually done what it was supposed to do. Then she climbed the steps again and put her key in the front door. It wasn't locked. She turned the handle and pushed the door open.

‘Tom?'

‘Me,' Dale called from the kitchen.

Elizabeth took a breath.

‘Oh—'

Dale came to the kitchen doorway. She wore a scarlet apron tied over a black T-shirt and jeans.

‘Been shopping?'

‘Yes.'

Dale moved forward.

‘I'll help you carry.'

‘Dale,' Elizabeth said. ‘Have you been here long?'

‘About an hour.'

‘Why didn't you ring?'

‘What?'

‘To say you were coming. Why didn't you ring me?'

Dale stooped to pick up the nearest bags.

‘Please leave those,' Elizabeth said. ‘Please leave those and answer my question.'

Dale straightened slowly.

‘I don't have to ring.'

‘You do now,' Elizabeth said.

‘This is my home—'

Elizabeth put her hands in her jacket pockets.

‘Mine, too, now. You are welcome any time,
any
time, for any reason, but not unannounced. I need to know.'