Other People's Children (36 page)

It seemed ages until Elizabeth came. He heard the front door open and close, and then murmuring voices. He imagined Tom taking Elizabeth's luggage from her, and perhaps her jacket, and offering her a glass of wine or something. They'd probably go into the kitchen and talk for a bit, while Tom got started on their supper – he hadn't done anything about it while Rufus was downstairs – and then Elizabeth's feet would come running up the stairs, and she'd sit on his bed and he might be able to hint, at last, at some of the things that troubled him, about finding Dale there, about the feeling in the house, the oddness in his father. He picked up a Goosebumps book that he'd left lying on his duvet earlier. Tom didn't like him reading Goosebumps, he'd said they didn't stretch his mind enough, but sometimes, Rufus thought, his mind didn't in the least want to be stretched; it wanted to be treated like a little baby mind that didn't have to worry about anything.

‘Hello,' Elizabeth said.

She was standing in his open bedroom door, wearing a navy-blue suit.

‘I didn't hear you,' Rufus said.

‘Perhaps these are quiet shoes—'

He looked at them. They were so dull, they certainly ought to have been quiet. Elizabeth came over and sat on the edge of his bed. She didn't kiss him, they never did kiss, although Rufus thought sometimes that they might, one day.

‘I'm sorry I'm so late.'

‘I kept yawning,' Rufus said, ‘so I thought I was sleepy. But I'm not.'

She was wearing something white under her suit and some pearls she nearly always wore which she said her father had given her. The microscope her father had given Rufus sat on his desk in a black cloth bag. Rufus had promised to take it back to Matthew's house, to show Rory.

‘How are you?' Elizabeth said.

Rufus thought. Usually he said, ‘Fine,' to ward off any more questions, but tonight he felt that questions might almost be welcome. He jerked his head towards the wall behind him.

‘Dale's living there.'

‘I know.'

He sighed.

‘Does she have to be my sister?'

‘I'm afraid so. She's Daddy's daughter, just as you are his son.'

‘But it feels funny—'

‘I know,' Elizabeth said again.

Rufus began to riffle through the pages of his Goosebumps book.

‘Will it be long?'

‘Dale being there? I think it might be. I don't think she likes living alone.'

‘And I,' said Rufus with some energy, ‘don't like living with
her.'
He glanced at Elizabeth. Her face was very still, as if she was thinking more than she was saying. ‘What are you going to have for supper?'

‘I don't know—'

‘Isn't Daddy cooking it?'

‘No,' Elizabeth said. ‘He offered, but I'm going round to Duncan's.'

‘Why?'

‘Because — because I'm not staying here.'

Rufus stopped riffling.

‘Why?'

Elizabeth put her hands together in her lap and Rufus noticed that she was clenching them so hard that the skin on her knuckles was greenish white, as if the bones underneath were going to push through the surface.

‘Rufus—'

He waited. He stared at Batman's hooded face, spread across his knees.

‘Rufus, I don't want to say this to you, I don't want to hurt you and I don't want to hurt myself or Daddy or anybody, but I'm afraid I can't marry Daddy after all.'

Rufus swallowed. He remembered, briefly, the registry office last year and the registrar with gold earrings and the picture of the Queen.

‘Oh,' he said.

‘I would like to explain everything to you,' Elizabeth said. ‘I'd like you to know all the reasons, but for one thing it wouldn't be fair, and for another, I expect you can guess most of them.'

Rufus nodded.

He said kindly, ‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Doesn't—'

‘There's people at school whose parents aren't married. It doesn't matter.'

Elizabeth gave a small convulsion. For a second, Rufus wondered if she might be going to cry, but she found a tissue in her pocket and blew her nose instead.

‘I'm so sorry—'

He waited.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said, and her voice was unsteady. ‘I'm so sorry, Rufus, but I'm not even staying, I'm not going to live here any more. I'm going away. I'm not marrying Daddy and I have to go away.'

He stared at her. She seemed to him suddenly very far away, very tiny, like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

He heard himself say loudly, ‘You can't.'

‘Can't—'

‘You can't go away' Rufus said, just as loudly. ‘You can't. I
know
you.'

She blew her nose again.

‘Yes. And I know you.'

‘Where are you going?' Rufus demanded. His throat felt tight and swollen and his eyes were smarting.

‘Oh, just London,' she said. Her hands were shaking. ‘I expect I'll buy a house with a garden and then my father can come and stay with me at weekends.'

‘Can I come?'

Tears were now running down Elizabeth's face, just running, in wet lines.

‘I don't think so—'

‘Why not?'

‘Because it wouldn't be fair – to Daddy, to you even—'

‘It would!' Rufus shouted. He hurled the Goosebumps book at the black shape of his microscope. ‘It would! It would!'

‘No,' Elizabeth said. She was scrabbling about in her pockets for more tissues. ‘No, it wouldn't. It might make you think things were going to happen, when they weren't. It's awful now, I know it is, but at least you
know
, and it's better to know.'

‘It isn't,' he said stubbornly. He put his fists in his eyes, like little kids did. ‘It isn't!'

He felt her get off the bed. He thought she was looking down at him, and he couldn't bear that, not if she was going to London and wouldn't let him come, too.

‘Go away!' he shouted, his fists in his eyes. ‘Go away!'

He waited to hear her say, ‘All right, then,' or, ‘Goodbye, Rufus,' but she didn't. She didn't say anything. One moment she was there by his bed and the next she had
gone and he could hear her quiet shoes going quickly down the stairs and, only a few seconds later, the front door slamming, like it did when Dale went out.

Slowly and stiffly, Rufus took his fists away from his eyes and eased himself down in bed, on to his side, staring at the wall. He felt cold, even though it was summer, and rigid, as if he couldn't bend any more. The wall was cream-coloured, as it had been for ages, for ever, and on it Rufus could still faintly discern where he had scribbled on it, in black wax crayon, and Josie had scrubbed at the scribble with scouring powder and been cross with him, not just for scribbling in the first place but also for not doing a proper picture, or proper writing, but just silly, meaningless scribble. The thought of Josie made the tears that had been bunching in his throat start to leak out, dripping across his nose and cheeks and into his pillow; and with them came a longing, a fierce, unbidden longing, to be back in his bedroom with Rory, in Matthew's house.

Josie came all the way down to Bath, to collect Rufus. She'd offered to, almost as if Tom were an invalid, when she heard about Elizabeth's leaving.

‘I'll come,' she'd said. ‘It's no bother. The last thing you want is that awful lay-by, just now.'

He'd let her. He'd been grateful. She'd arrived with her stepson, an unfinished-looking boy of perhaps thirteen whom Rufus had been suddenly very boisterous in front of, as if he were extravagantly pleased to
see him, and couldn't say so. They'd gone up to Rufus's room together, Rory holding Basil.

‘He's great,' Rory said to Josie. ‘Isn't he? Why can't we have a cat?'

‘I expect we can—'

‘Soon, now—'

‘Maybe—'

‘When we get back,' Rory said. ‘Can't we? A kitten?'

‘Two kittens,' Rufus said.

‘Go away,' Josie said, shaking her head, but she was laughing. Tom made her coffee. She was very nice to him, sympathetic, but her sympathy had a quality of detachment to it.

‘I don't want you to be sorry for me—'

‘I'm not,' she said, ‘but I'm sorry it's happened, I'm sorry for Rufus.'

Tom flinched slightly. He couldn't say how awful it had been, couldn't admit to Josie how Rufus had longed for her arrival, his bag packed for twenty-four hours previously, his microscope wrapped up in layers and layers of bubble wrap. And Josie didn't ask him anything much. He didn't know if she was being tactful, or whether she guessed so much she hardly needed to ask. She looked around the kitchen, but only cursorily, and not at all in the examining manner of someone eager to observe every change, every shred of evidence of someone else's occupation. She was pleasant, but a little guarded, and only at the end, when she was getting into the car and the boys and Rufus's possessions were already packed inside, did she say, as if in
fellow feeling, ‘Don't be deluded. Nothing's as easy as it looks,' and kissed his cheek.

He went back into the kitchen after the car had driven off and looked at their coffee mugs, and the empty Coca-Cola cans the boys had left. Rufus had said goodbye hurriedly – lovingly but hurriedly, as if the moment needed to be dispensed with as quickly as possible because of all the unhappy, uncomfortable things that had preceded it. He hadn't talked about Elizabeth's fleeting visit much; indeed, had rebuffed Tom's tentative attempts to explore his feelings about it, leaving Tom with the distinct and miserable impression that Rufus held him at least partly responsible, but was avoiding overt blame by simply not mentioning the subject.

Tom sat down at the table. Dale had put a jug of cornflowers in the middle of it, cornflowers and some yellow daisy things with shiny petals. She had put lilies in the drawing-room, too, and poppies on the chest of drawers in Tom's bedroom. He wasn't sure he had ever had flowers in his bedroom before, and they made him uncomfortable – or perhaps it was Dale's intention, in putting them there, that caused the discomfort. They were also very brilliant, pink and scarlet with staring black stamens. It was a relief to see that they were shedding their papery petals already. Perhaps Dale, after this first flush of happy reassurance, would feel no need to replace them, no impulse to point out to him, yet again, what he and all he represented meant to her. Perhaps she would, unthreatened, calm
down again, calm down to a point where she might again venture on a love affair and this time, oh so devoutly to be wished, with someone who could handle her, could skillfully convert her fierce retrospective needs into, at last, an appetite for the future.

‘Until then,' Tom had said to Elizabeth, ‘I'm responsible. I have to be.'

She'd said nothing. She'd given him one of her quick glances, but she hadn't uttered. She had, she made it plain, no more sympathy left for his abiding sense of guilt about Dale, his conviction that, not only was the burden of Dale naturally his, as her father, but that he couldn't, in all fairness, offload it on to anyone else, who didn't actively, lovingly, seek to relieve him of it.

He stood up, sighing. Basil, stretched where Rory had left him, on the window seat, reared his head slightly to see if Tom was going to do anything interesting, and let it fall again. Slowly, Tom walked down the room, past the sofa and chairs where, at one time or another, all his children had sat or sprawled, where Josie had kicked off her shoes, where Elizabeth had curled up, a mug in her hand, her spectacles on her nose, to read the newspaper. The door to the garden was open and on the top step of the iron staircase was a terracotta pot, planted with trailing pelargoniums by Elizabeth, pink and white. Tom looked past them, and down into the garden.

Dale was down there. She was crouched against the statue of the stone girl with the dove on her hand,
crouched down, with her arms around her knees. She was waiting, just as Pauline used to wait, for him to come and find her.

Karen walked slowly up Barratt Road. It was hot, for one thing, and for another, she had offered to collect some dry cleaning for Josie, and although it wasn't heavy, it was uncooperative to carry, slithering through her arms in its plastic bags, or sticking to her skin in unpleasant, sweaty little patches. Anyway, she hadn't bargained on her car breaking down again and needing to spend three expensive days in the garage, forcing her to take the bus to work and her feet everywhere else. It reminded her of what it was like when she and Matthew were small, and the only car her parents had was her father's work car which he wouldn't use for family outings after she was sick on the back seat once, from a surfeit of heat, ice-cream and temper.

She hardly ever lost her temper now. Josie had remarked on it, had said how equable she was. Maybe that was true. Maybe she'd realized, living with her mother, that temper never achieved anything much for the person who lost it, beyond that first, brief swoop of excitement when you opened your mouth to begin.
She'd told Josie quite a lot recently, about her and Matthew's mother, as well as about her job and the love-hate relationship she had with it, and about Rob, the Australian dentist, newly arrived in Sedgebury, who was displaying the kind of interest in her nobody had shown for ages. She found that Josie was very easy to talk to, much easier than she used to be.

She'd cut her hair off, too. Karen had been amazed. One day there'd been that heavy, coppery mane that seemed almost to be Josie's trademark, and the next day it was gone.

‘How
could
you?'

‘I had to,' Josie said. ‘I just had to. I feel extremely shy about it, now I've done it, but I had to.'

‘What about Matt?'

‘I think he likes it.'