Other People's Children (13 page)

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, blessedly, 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 to 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.