Other People's Children

Chapter Seventeen

The Huntleys’ farmhouse rose redly out of the red Herefordshire earth as if it had, over the centuries, just slowly emerged from it. It was built on a slope, with carelessly arranged barns here and there beside it, and a stream between it and the lane over which Tim had laid a crude bridge made of old railway sleepers. As Becky crossed the bridge, two sheepdogs tethered with long, clattering lengths of chain just inside the entrance to the nearest barn raced forward, barking and leaping. They couldn’t reach her by yards, but all the same, Becky kept to the far side of the bridge and made at speed for the gate into the little farm garden. She didn’t like dogs.

The door to the house opened before she reached it. Mrs Huntley, whom she had never met, stood in the doorway and regarded her without smiling.

‘We wondered when you’d be coming.’

Becky swallowed. She put a hand, with its chipped blue-painted nails, up to her hair and pushed it off her face.

‘I’ve been looking after Mum.’

Mrs Huntley surveyed her. She looked at her un-brushed hair and her jeans jacket and her long, grubby skirt and her unpolished boots. She said, as if making a concession, ‘You’d better come in.’ Becky followed her. The kitchen was low and small and shabby and clean. On a plastic-covered table by the window were several egg boxes holding weirdly sprouting seed potatoes, and, to one side of them, sat Tim Huntley, in his stockinged feet, eating something from a steaming plate. He gave Becky the merest glance and indicated the chair opposite him.

‘Sit down.’

Becky sat. She folded her blue nails out of sight and put her fists in her lap. Mrs Huntley poured a cup of tea from a pot on the range and put it on the table within Becky’s reach. Becky didn’t drink tea, hadn’t ever, really, had recently made a point of not drinking it, out of defiance.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘Well,’ Tim said. ‘What have you got to tell us?’

Becky looked at her tea. She would have liked something to hold, but she wasn’t sure her hand was steady enough to expose to the Huntleys’ gaze, lifting a cup. She said, ‘I – I don’t know what happened.’

Mrs Huntley said, ‘What did your mother say?’

Becky hesitated. Nadine had been unable to tell her exactly but had done a good deal of hinting. She’d been wildly upset, she said, at hearing of Becky’s running away and then outraged at Matthew’s refusal to let her come …

‘He didn’t,’ Becky said wearily.

‘He did, he did, he forbade me!’

… and then Tim had brought her a lamb and she thought she could cope and then she heard about Becky and panicked and rang Tim and he came and she was hysterical and then he slapped her and lugged her upstairs to bed and then …

‘What?’ Becky said.

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Did he try anything? Did he start mucking you about?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nadine said, ‘I can’t remember, I just know he scared me, he was rough, I didn’t know what was going to happen.’

Becky looked away now from both Tim’s and Mrs Huntley’s gaze.

‘She – she’s not very clear.’

Tim snorted.

‘We don’t want any nonsense,’ Mrs Huntley said. ‘We don’t mind looking after her, a bit of food and that, but we don’t want any trouble.’

‘I came,’ Becky said, loudly before her courage went, ‘to thank you for that, to thank you for getting the doctor.’

Tim shrugged.

‘She was hysterical.’

Becky said nothing.

He put a mouthful in, chewed a while and then said, ‘She was on the floor when I got there and when I tried to get her up, she went for me. So I slapped her. Slapped her to shut her up.’ He took a swallow of tea. ‘Then I took her upstairs. She was screaming all the way.’ He gave Becky a level look. ‘I put her on the bed. Then I went down and rang the doctor.’

Becky looked at her cup of tea. It was thick, milky brown. She said, ‘She’s better now.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

Mrs Huntley said, ‘Did she ring you?’

‘Yes—’

‘Who brought you? We saw a car, a red car—’

Becky hesitated.

‘My – stepmother.’

‘That was good of her,’ Mrs Huntley said.

Becky nodded. It had been good of her. It had also been deeply disconcerting, not so much the journey itself with the disquieting forced intimacy of being alone in a car together, but more when they got there and Josie had offered to come into the cottage with her.

‘No,’ she’d said. ‘No, it’s OK.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll come out,’ Becky said. ‘I’ll come out if there’s anything—’

Josie had looked up at her, out of the car window.

‘I’ll wait here.’

Becky had nodded. She’d put her hand on the cottage’s lopsided, rickety garden gate, and for a moment, had felt she could go no further. She stood there, head bent, looking at her hand on the gate and fighting, with every ounce of strength she possessed, the urge to turn round and say to Josie, ‘Come with me, please come.’ She’d won. It had taken her some time, but she’d won. She’d gone up the path to the cottage’s back door and in through the kitchen and up the stairs, step after step, to find Nadine lying in bed with her eyes closed. It was only then that she’d screamed, it was only then that she’d allowed herself to admit that she’d found what she dreaded to find, Nadine dead in bed because Becky hadn’t got to her quickly enough, because Becky was living somewhere else instead of here in the cottage, because Nadine now knew that somewhere deep in Becky a weary disbelief was beginning to stir about all the things Nadine said had happened, all the things Nadine accused other people of doing and saying, in order to hurt and undermine her.

After that, it was awful. Nadine opened her eyes and said something but Becky couldn’t stop screaming and her screaming brought Josie running in from the car and at the sight of Josie, Nadine just went ballistic and there was a horrible brawling scuffle that made Becky so sickened, so ashamed that she’d gone from screaming to utter silence in a second. Josie had managed, at last, to free herself, and Becky had followed her, despite Nadine’s demands and pleadings to her not to. They’d stood, shaking, by the car.

‘You’d better come back with me,’ Josie said.

Becky shook her head. She mumbled something.

‘What?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Look,’ Josie said. She was leaning against the car as if she couldn’t quite stand up without its help. ‘I know any remark I make will sound to you like a criticism of your mother, but will you be safe?’

‘Oh yes,’ Becky said. She turned her face away. ‘She’s – she’s never done anything like that before.’ She put a hand up and tugged at a strand of hair.

‘I can’t leave you here like this, alone with her. I must get a doctor or something.’

‘OK,’ Becky said. Her shoulders slumped a little.

‘It’s Saturday tomorrow. Maybe Dad could come—’ She stopped.

‘I’ll ring,’ Becky said. ‘I’ll ring and tell you.’

‘I’ll go and get you some food—’

‘No.’

‘Why not.’

‘She wouldn’t eat it,’ Becky said. ‘Not if—’ She paused and then she said, ‘We’ve got good neighbours.’

Josie stood upright, slowly.

‘But you’ll let me get a doctor?’

‘Yes,’ Becky said.

She’d stood in the road, watching Josie drive away. She drove very slowly as if shock and anxiety made it almost impossible for her to let the car go forward. When she was at last out of sight, round a bend in the lane, Becky turned and went back into the cottage. Nadine was standing by the kitchen table, her hands folded in front of her.

She said, very clearly, as if she’d been planning it, ‘I’m very sorry.’

Becky said nothing. She went past Nadine to the sink and leaned over it to open the window.

‘About everything,’ Nadine said.

Becky breathed in the air coming in from outside.

‘There’s a doctor coming.’

‘I don’t need one,’ Nadine said. ‘I’ve seen the doctor. Tim got her for me. I’ve got anti-depressants and some sleeping pills. I’d taken some of them before you came.’

‘Typical—’

‘What is?’

Becky turned round. ‘To ring me and then take sleeping pills which are meant for the night anyway.’

Nadine stared at her.

‘I said I was sorry. I am. I’m very sorry.’

‘I don’t care,’ Becky said.

She moved over to the refrigerator and opened the door. Inside were a few things in brown paper bags, a cracked egg on a saucer and a carton of long-life apple juice.

‘What are you going to do?’ Nadine said.

Becky slammed the refrigerator door shut again.

‘I haven’t decided.’

‘Will you stay?’ Nadine said. Her voice had an edge of real anxiety. ‘Will you stay and keep me company?’

Becky glanced at her. She touched the breast pocket of her denim jacket and let her hand linger there for a moment. On the journey, Josie had stopped for petrol, and when she got back into the car, after paying, she’d handed Becky a packet of Marlboro Lights. She hadn’t said anything. Nor had Becky.

‘I’m going out,’ Becky said.

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. A walk maybe.’

‘Will you be long?’

‘No,’ Becky said.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Nadine said. ‘We need to talk all this through.’

‘Sorry,’ Becky said. She went across the kitchen to the door to the outside. ‘I’ll stay till you’re better. I said I would. But I didn’t say I’d talk.’

‘You’ve been here a week,’ Mrs Huntley said now.

‘I know.’

‘What about your schooling?’

‘It was the end of term today. Anyway, I’d been off school—’

Tim Huntley dropped a wedge of bread on to his cleared plate and began to push it round with the fork.

‘What about your dad lending a hand with all this?’

‘He can’t.’

‘Why not?’

Becky looked straight at him. ‘She wouldn’t let him.’

He put the wedge of bread in his mouth. ‘So it’s down to you?’

Becky shrugged. She stood up, holding the edge of the table.

‘That’s not right,’ Mrs Huntley said. She looked at Becky. ‘You’ve got your schooling to think of.’

‘I’d better be getting back,’ Becky said.

Tim Huntley stood, too.

‘Give us a call. Any time.’

‘Thanks,’ Becky said.

She went out of the farmhouse, while they watched her, and then, at a safe distance, past the barking dogs and over the sleeper bridge to the road. The stream was full – late-winter rains coming off the mountains, the postman had said – and was really running, and the hawthorn hedge was frosted with bright-green leaves, each one neatly cut out, as if with embroidery scissors. Becky took her cigarettes out of her pocket and put one in her mouth. It was the last but one in the pack that Josie had given her a week ago. She paused, in her tramp down the lane, to light up, and then walked on, heavily in her boots, blowing blue smoke into the clear air above the stream and the hawthorn hedge.

Nadine was sitting on the grass in the cottage garden, under a three-quarters-dead apple tree. She had her glasses on, and, in her lap, a pile of ‘Teach Yourself Greek’ books she’d found in the local junk shop. She looked up as Becky came in through the gate.

‘How was that?’

‘OK,’ Becky said.

‘Are you going to tell me about it?’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Becky said. She leaned against the apple tree. ‘Tim was eating and they asked how you were.’

Nadine took her glasses off.

‘I’m fine.’

‘For now,’ Becky said. She put her hand on her jacket pocket. One left. Save it for later. She slid down the tree and sat with her back against it, holding her knees.

‘No, I really will be fine now. I will. I promise. Summer’s coming—’

‘You shouldn’t live alone,’ Becky said.

‘What?’

‘You heard me. You shouldn’t live alone. You can’t cope.’

Nadine turned on her a gaze full of distress. ‘Oh Becky—’

‘You can’t,’ Becky said. She looked up at the sky, through the apple tree’s black, gnarled branches. ‘And—’ She stopped.

‘And what?’ Nadine said, her voice sharp with apprehension.

‘And,’ Becky said, her gaze still on the sky, ‘I can’t live with you any more. Not permanently. I can’t cope with you either.’

‘I haven’t got it,’ Matthew said.

Josie turned. He leaned in the kitchen doorway, still in his jacket and tie from work, but the tie was crooked and loosened.

‘They made me a long speech,’ Matthew said. ‘One of those speeches where you know they hope you won’t spot that the truth is the last thing they’re going to tell you.’

He came slowly forward into the room, pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Josie pushed another chair next to him and slipped into it. She took his nearest hand.

‘Oh Matt.’

‘They said that, although I had all the required experience and qualifications, they felt that because of my family circumstances this wasn’t a good moment in my life for me to take on extra responsibility. They said that kind of thing several times over in various ways until I felt so dysfunctional by implication I could hardly sit up. The injustice of it—’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t mean the injustice of not giving me the job, I mean the other injustice, the weaselly insinuation that my family circumstances are too much for me now when they used to be far, far worse. And the cowardice of not being able to tell me I’m just not good enough.’

Josie lifted the hand she held and put it against her face.

‘Nobody can do that unless they’re sadistic. Nobody likes that.’

He looked at her.

‘I can’t bear it that the first thing I try and do after marrying you is a failure.’

He leaned forward and kissed her.

‘We needed this promotion,’ he said. ‘We needed something positive to happen, something to show us we’d turned a corner.’ Gently he took his hand out of hers. ‘Where are the children?’

‘Out,’ Josie said. ‘Clare and Rory are next door and Becky’s gone to see a friend.’

‘Is – is it any better since Becky came back?’

‘It’s quieter,’ Josie said.

‘Only that?’

She looked down at her hands. Something had arisen in her mind during that drive back from Herefordshire, something that was preoccupying her, she found, a great deal and which she was not yet ready to tell Matthew about. Something had changed, something in her perception of Matthew’s children had altered; there’d been a small but powerful shift of emphasis and while she considered it, and what to do about it, she found she wanted to keep it private. She’d thought, often and often, of Becky’s face as she got out of the car, outside Nadine’s cottage, of Becky’s figure dwindling in the driving mirror as she drove away after that hideous scene. She had not expected Nadine to be so violent. Nor had she expected her to be beautiful. Nor – and this was the most astonishing nor of all – had she expected there to be a real, a palpable reluctance between herself and Becky to part. You could give a dozen reasons for the reluctance, explain it away in terms that in no way diminished the established antagonism between them, but still there remained, after all the explaining, a persistent sense that, in the momentary dropping of guards and attitudes, a glimmer of hope had flickered, faint but unquestionably there.

‘Josie?’ Matthew said.

She looked up at him.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said.

‘I know. So am I.’ He stood up. ‘I just feel—’

‘Please,’ Josie said, interrupting. ‘Please don’t say any more. Please don’t. This is a disappointment, but it’s not something worse than that, it’s not as bad as things have been.’

He gave her a small smile.

‘Maybe.’

He went out of the room. She heard his tread going up the stairs and into their bedroom and then the sound of a drawer being opened while he looked for a sweater to wear instead of his jacket. Then his feet went out on to the landing again and she could hear the clatter of the extending ladder being pulled down, to give him access to the attic.

She looked down at the kitchen table. There were crumbs on it, and a pile of assessment sheets in a plastic folder left over from the previous term at her school, which she had got behindhand with, because of looking after Becky. There was also a cereal box, left by one of the children, and a postcard from Rufus to Rory showing a picture of the Roman baths in Bath. He’d got rollerblades, he said, and it was raining a lot. His handwriting was small and cramped. Love from Rufus, he’d written at the bottom. When Clare had picked it up to read it, Rory had snatched it back from her. ‘Hey!’ he’d said, holding the card against his chest. ‘Who said you could read it?’ Josie looked at it now. Rufus had rollerblades. Perhaps the nice Elizabeth had bought them for him, was teaching him to skate along those broad pale pavements at weekends, when she came down from her job in London and took over the house and Tom and Basil and Rufus, smoothly wheeling them about her, unruffled, undismayed.

The door opened. Becky, holding a small carrier bag from a music shop, came in. Josie looked up.

‘Hello.’

Becky nodded. She went over to the sink and ran water into a mug.

‘I saw Dad come back.’

‘He’s upstairs,’ Josie said.

Becky gulped the water noisily and put the mug, unrinsed, back on the draining board.

‘I’ll go up—’

‘Becky,’ Josie said. ‘Becky, would you do something for me first?’

Becky eyed her. ‘What?’

‘Would you get the others from next door?’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got a reason,’ Josie said. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I hadn’t.’

Becky hovered uncertainly for a moment, and then she went out of the kitchen and Josie could hear her boots clumping down the drive. She got up and looked at herself in the little mirror Matthew had put up for her beside the door – ‘So you can see if you’ve got lipstick on your teeth before you open it.’ She looked better, she thought, not wonderful, but better, less haunted, less bombed out, less like a moth skewered on a board. She put a hand up and took the hooped band out of her hair and shook it. When she was about Becky’s age, she remembered, she’d dyed her hair black, dead, dense, coal black. Elaine had been horrified, really frightened by Josie’s appearance, but Josie for a week or so at least had loved it, had loved the instant ordinariness it gave her, the sudden sweet freedom from the significant visibility of being a redhead.

The outer door opened again, with a bang. Josie stepped away from the mirror, towards the table.

‘Thank you for coming back.’

They all three looked at her.

‘It won’t take long,’ Josie said. ‘I won’t keep you long.’

Rory bent to tie up the trailing laces of his trainers.

‘It’s two things, really,’ Josie said. She moved the chair which Matthew usually occupied, at the head of the table, and sat down in it. ‘Do you want to sit down, too?’

Becky closed the door and leaned against it, her hands behind her back. Rory stayed where he was, squatting over his laces. Clare came forward and sat at the opposite end of the table to Josie, holding her tape player.

‘I don’t know if this is the right moment to say what I’m going to say,’ Josie said. ‘I don’t know, actually, what a right moment is. But it seems quite a good moment. Rufus isn’t here and although what I’ve got to say affects him, it doesn’t seem to affect him like it affects the rest of us.’ She leaned on the table, putting her hands down flat in front of her. Then she said, ‘I’m afraid your father hasn’t got his promotion.’

They stared at her. She waited for Clare to cry, for Becky to say it wasn’t any of her, Josie’s, business anyway, for Rory to shove past her and go upstairs to find Matthew. But they didn’t; they didn’t move.

‘I don’t need to tell you how he feels,’ Josie said. ‘And what he says to you and you say to him about it is your affair anyway. But it’s given me a chance, it’s given me a chance to say some things I maybe couldn’t say if nothing had happened.’

Rory got up very slowly and slid into a chair beside Clare.

‘The thing is,’ Josie said, and stopped. She pushed her hair behind her ears and said abruptly, ‘We don’t have to be a disaster. Really we don’t.’

Rory began to push some crumbs on the tabletop about with one forefinger. His expression was set.

Josie said, rushing on, ‘Some homes have always got broken, haven’t they? I mean somebody dies, or somebody leaves and there it is, broken. It’s awful, it’s always awful. Nobody’s pretending it isn’t awful, nobody’s saying it isn’t sad and hard and difficult. And – it makes you want the past back, doesn’t it, however bad it was, because it was better. Or you think it was.’ She stopped. Becky was still staring at her. Josie looked back.

‘I don’t know exactly what you’ve been through. Of course I don’t. Except – well, except that my dad pushed off when I was seven and I’ve never seen him since.’

Becky’s blue gaze dropped. Rory’s finger paused in making a tiny crumb mountain. Josie put her hands flat on the table again and looked at them, at the few freckles on the backs she had always hated, at Matthew’s wedding band.

‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘we’ve got a sort of chance now. Maybe we could start, well, mending things after all that breaking. If – if we stopped being afraid of being a stepfamily, that is.’ She folded her right hand over her wedding ring. ‘I know I’m not your mother. I never will be. You’ve got a mother. But I could be your friend, I could be your supporter, your sponsor. Couldn’t I? Sometimes hard things turn out better because you’ve had to make an effort to overcome them.’ She stopped. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to lecture you.’ She took her hands off the table and put them in her lap. ‘I really just want to say that we may be a different kind of family, but we don’t have to be worse. Do we?’

Becky came away from the door. She moved only a few steps, until she was standing behind Clare.

She said, blurting the words out, ‘What about Mum?’

Josie took a breath.

‘She’ll have to find a way. Like we all have to. With each other.’

She stood up slowly. They didn’t watch her. Rory banged his hand down flat on the table and his crumb pile flew in all directions.

‘You ought to go and see Matthew,’ Josie said. ‘He’s the one in need right now.’

‘OK,’ Rory said. ‘OK, OK.’

He sprang up and darted past her and wrenched open the door to the hall. Clare followed him and their feet stampeded up the stairs. Becky watched them. She stayed where she was, behind the chair Clare had been in, watching the empty hall where her brother and sister had been. Then she glanced at Josie. She opened her mouth to say something and closed it again.

Then she said, gesturing awkwardly towards the kettle, ‘Would you like a coffee?’