Other People's Children (26 page)

Now, standing at the school gates, with her hands in her pockets and her bag slung over her shoulder, Karen wondered what she was going to say. She'd recognize Josie all right – you couldn't mistake that hair – but she'd only exchanged about ten words with her at the wedding, and there didn't seem to be an etiquette for talking to someone who you hardly knew at all but who was now part of your family. It had crossed her mind to go and see Matthew who was, after all, her brother, but Matthew on the defensive was a Matthew Karen had been well able to do without since small childhood. In any case, she didn't have anything much personally against Josie, whatever she'd felt about Nadine. Even if Nadine had possessed an eccentric vitality that Karen had never encountered anywhere else, you could see from the children, from poor old Matt, that living with her was like living in the domestic equivalent of a permanent air raid. The grapevine that had brought news of Josie's job and the return of
Matthew's children also reported a marked improvement in domestic regularity.

Josie came out of the school almost last. She was wheeling a bicycle and talking to a pair of girls with their hair pulled up in identical drooping tails above their ears. Karen moved forward until she was almost in the centre of the school gateway.

‘I don't expect you remember me.'

Josie stopped walking. The two girls, sensing at once that adult preoccupations would immediately obliterate them from Josie's attention, ducked sideways round Karen and made for the street outside.

‘I'm Karen,' Karen said. ‘Matthew's sister.'

Josie looked at her. She wore black trousers and a jeans jacket. At the wedding, she'd been in green, with a hat she'd seemed unhappy with and had discarded almost at once.

‘Of course,' Josie said.

‘I didn't mean to jump on you—'

‘You didn't. It's just that I wasn't expecting—'

‘No, I know,' Karen said. ‘Sorry.'

‘Look,' Josie said, ‘I'm afraid I can't stop. I have to meet Rufus outside his school in ten minutes.'

‘Can I walk with you?'

‘I might have to bike, if the time gets short—'

‘Of course. Can we start together, anyway?'

Josie turned her bicycle and began to walk rapidly along the pavement outside the school.

‘I thought you were all ostracizing me.'

‘We are. Or, at least, Mum is. But you don't know
Mum. When you do, you'll see it doesn't mean much. I was just waiting, really. And then – well, we heard rumours.'

‘What about?'

‘That the kids are back.'

Josie paused on a kerb edge and punched the pedestrian button on a traffic light.

She said shortly, ‘They are.'

‘For good?'

Josie didn't look at her.

‘It seems so. Until—'

‘Nadine changes her mind again?'

Josie gave Karen a small, fleeting smile.

‘You've got it.'

The lights changed and Josie pushed the bicycle across the road with energy.

Karen said, hurrying beside her, ‘How are they?'

‘I don't know,' Josie said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean that I can't tell. I feed them and wash their clothes, but they don't really talk to me. Certainly not about how they're feeling.'

Karen put a hand on the nearest handlebar to slow Josie down a little.

‘You OK?'

‘Not particularly,' Josie said.

‘Are they difficult?'

‘In a word,' Josie said, ‘yes. They are. I'm not trying to play happy families but they seem to need to insist that I am. They are actually—' She paused.

‘What?'

‘Quite cruel.'

‘Cruel!' Karen cried.

‘Oh yes,' Josie said. ‘Kids can be cruel. You know that. One of society's many myths is that stepmothers are cruel, but has it ever struck you that stepchildren can be quite as cruel as stepmothers are supposed to be?'

Karen said uncertainly, ‘They're great kids—'

‘If I was teaching them,' Josie said, ‘I might agree with you. But living with them is rather different.'

‘What about Matt, what does Matt do?'

‘He's waiting for us to get to like each other.'

‘Is he standing up for you?'

Josie bit her lip. Karen glanced quickly at her. She might be walking like the wind, but it was will-power, not the energy of well-being, that was driving her. She looked tired to death, fagged out, like Karen knew she looked when she came off duty. It suddenly struck her that, if Josie was in a way rejecting Matthew's children in response to their rejection of her, she might also be haunted by a fear that, in time, if things didn't improve, Matthew might reject her, too, out of ultimate solidarity with his children. She moved her hand, for a second only, from the handlebar to Josie's nearest arm.

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry—'

‘You aren't. You didn't. I'm really pleased to see you but I don't know what to tell you except the facts. Look, I'm sorry, but I'll have to bike now.'

Karen said, ‘Can I come round—'

‘To Barratt Road?'

‘Yes.'

‘Of course. We'd like it. I – I'd like it—'

‘I saw that marriage,' Karen said. ‘I saw it all its life. Even if Nadine had her moments, I saw what Matt went through. And I can – well, I can sort of see how it must be for you.'

Josie faced her across the bicycle. Then she dropped her gaze and her hair swung forward, half-hiding her face.

‘I just found I'd taken on more than I'd ever envisaged. I'd been a stepmother before, for heaven's sake, and that had been bad, but this is quite different. And – well, worse.'

‘Why?'

Josie said slowly, ‘Because I want Matthew like I never really wanted Tom.'

She pushed the bicycle past Karen and into the road. Then she turned, one foot on the pedal.

‘Thanks.'

‘I'll ring you,' Karen said, ‘I'll come round.'

She watched Josie ride away, bent over the handlebars as if to help the bicycle gather speed. There was something about the look of that bent back that made Karen suddenly feel sorry for her, really sorry, as she'd felt about her nice little kid at the wedding. You could see she was fighting, really fighting to keep going, to make things work, but no-one was truly on her side. Foster mothers, Karen thought, adoptive mothers, now they get pats on the back, don't they, everyone thinks they're wonderful, but they've had time to make a
choice, make a plan, and what's more, they aren't trying to get a new relationship going at the same time, are they? And then there was Matt. He'd always been a good father, taking his share when the kids were babies, but there'd grown up in him, inevitably, a sort of lack of objectivity about his children, as if he wanted to defend them from any criticism because he knew what they had to go through, having Nadine as a mother. And that element in Matt might make him not see how hard it was for Josie, especially as, if he was being as decent to Josie's kid as was typical of him, everyone'd be telling him what a good stepfather he was. Karen sighed. Everyone seemed to expect so much of women it nearly drove you mad and, by the same token, to expect so little of men that it drove you even madder. She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder. There were times, Karen reflected, when it didn't seem just blessed to be single, but also the only way to stay sane.

Josie sat on a low wall outside Rufus's school and leaned against the wire mesh of the playground fence behind it. Rufus's head teacher had asked her to wait inside, but she'd said no, she'd wait in the open air.

‘It's serious,' the head teacher said. ‘Or at least, I want it to be very serious for Rufus. It's the first time he has ever been rude to a teacher and I want him to realize, by doing this little task for her after school, that his behaviour is in no way acceptable.'

Rufus, Josie had discovered, had called his form teacher a stupid cow. It had happened after he had
been reprimanded three times in class for not paying attention and for distracting the attention of everyone else at his table in a science lesson where they were learning about electrical currents. He had taken no notice of the reprimands, and had then, when informed he would have to stay in after school as a punishment and an example to others, shouted, ‘You can't make me, you stupid cow!' He was being detained for thirty minutes doing something, the head teacher explained, repetitive, menial but constructive for the teacher to whom he had been rude.

‘Please come inside, Mrs Mitchell. Please make yourself comfortable in the visitors' room.'

Josie had shaken her head.

‘Thank you. I'll be fine outside.'

‘Can I get someone to bring you a cup of tea?'

‘No. No thank you. I'll be quite all right. I'll just – wait for him.'

She put her head back, against the wire fence, and closed her eyes. She felt so sad for Rufus that it would have been a relief to cry, but she couldn't seem to, as if the sadness went too deep and was too dark and heavy to be assuaged so easily. Poor Rufus. Poor little Rufus, living in a household where rows, or simmering about-to-be-rows, were now almost a daily occurrence, where everybody seemed to be in the exhausted, angry habit of calling each other names, where every detail of daily life, every attempt to live as some kind of unit, had to be fought over as if the participants' very survival depended upon it. That Rufus should explode today
didn't really surprise Josie. She would, she knew, have to explain to these kindly women who taught him what the atmosphere was like at Barratt Road just now and why it should affect Rufus – being used to the relatively calm and civilized world of the only child – so badly. But she couldn't say it now, she couldn't say it today, she couldn't say, until she herself felt a little better, that nothing even her biddable, amenable child could do would surprise her. She turned her head a little, to get the warmth of the sun on her face. How could she be surprised at anything having, herself, only the night before, hit Becky?

She hadn't meant to. She hadn't even, until the split-second she did it, been aware she was going to. She didn't think she had ever, in her adult life, hit anyone before, but there had been a moment, a ghastly, out-of-control, incandescently enraged moment in Becky's bedroom when she had known that she was literally beside herself, that she was going to do something violent. And she had. She had stepped forward into the chaos and racket of Becky's bedroom and hit her, hard, on the side of her head.

The evening had, on reflection, never boded well. Matthew, perceiving tensions mounting, had announced that he was taking Josie down to the pub on Sedgebury's unremarkable little canal, for an hour at least, away from the house, ‘from you lot'. There'd been a chorus of objection then and a flat refusal from Becky to stay with the younger children. Matthew had argued, Becky had shouted, and Matthew, to Josie's intense
disapproval and the other children's outrage, had agreed to pay her. They had then bickered about this all the way to the pub and found, when they got there, that the good weather had brought out hordes of people, spilling out from the pub on to the towpath. Josie said she would wait outside.

‘No,' Matthew said. ‘No. I want you with me.'

He'd seized her hand and dragged her into the pub and through the crowd to the bar. He was grinning determinedly, as if to show Josie that he, at least, meant to put the babysitting episode behind him and enjoy himself. While they stood crushed at the bar, waiting for service, Matthew got into desultory conversation with a heavy middle-aged man, perched on a bar stool, and trying to chat up a couple of girls in tiny, midriff-revealing clothes, who looked about fourteen and who were smoking with the hurried awkwardness of inexperience. The man had looked round at one point and seen Josie. He indicated her to Matthew with his beer glass.

‘How old's yours then?'

‘Thirty-eight,' Matthew said.

‘Blimey,' the man said. ‘Blimey. Thirty-eight! You want to watch it. Forty – they've had it. You'll see. They just fall apart, bums, tits, the lot. You don't want to keep them over forty.'

Josie had wrenched her hand out of Matthew's and worked her way furiously out to the towpath again. Matthew followed her at once.

‘Hey, it was only a joke—'

‘It was disgusting.'

‘Yes, but it wasn't serious, he wasn't serious—'

‘You were laughing!'

‘Not because I agreed with him, only to be pleasant—'

‘I don't want a drink, Matthew, I don't want to stay here, I want to go home.'

At home, despite the warmth of the evening, the curtains of the sitting-room were drawn and Rory, Clare and Rufus were watching a programme about genital plastic surgery in Hollywood. Becky was in her room, with deafening music on. She had not, as she had been asked, either put supper in the oven nor laid the table.

‘I'll go,' Matthew said wearily. ‘I'll go and find her.'

‘No,' Josie said. She felt suddenly, dangerously energetic. ‘No, I will.'

‘Please—'

‘It's no good your going,' Josie said. ‘Is it? It's no good because you're so
passive.'

He had shrugged and turned away from her, opening the drawer in which the knives and forks were kept. Josie raced up the stairs.

‘Becky!'

She banged on Becky's bedroom door.

‘Shove off!' Becky shouted.

Josie opened the door. The room was strewn with clothes and shoes and bags and stank like a school cloakroom. It was also shuddering with noise.

‘Turn that off!'

Becky, who was standing in the middle of the room with a forbidden cigarette in her hand, merely stared. Josie pushed past her and seized her tape player, fumbling for the volume control.