Other People's Children (24 page)

Dale stared at her.

‘Why?'

‘Privacy,' Elizabeth said. ‘Not secrecy, but privacy.'

Dale said fiercely, ‘This was my home for twenty-five years before my father even met you!'

Elizabeth bent to take the two bags closest to her feet.

‘We can't have this conversation on the doorstep—'

‘You started it.'

‘No. You caused it by letting yourself into the house in our absence and without warning us.'

‘It's my house!' Dale yelled.

She turned her back on Elizabeth and marched into the kitchen. Elizabeth lifted the shopping bags from the front doorstep into the hall and then shut the door. She followed Dale into the kitchen. Half the cupboard doors were open and the table was piled with packets and jars.

‘What are you doing?'

‘What does it look like?' Dale said rudely. She had pulled on a pair of yellow rubber gauntlets. ‘Spring cleaning. I always do it for Dad.'

‘Always?'

‘Well, the last year or two—'

Elizabeth took her jacket off and hung it over the nearest chair.

‘It's my job now, Dale. If it's anyone's. And these are my cupboards and my kitchen. I am, in an old fashioned expression, to be mistress of this house.'

Dale banged a yellow-rubber fist down on the table. She said furiously, ‘Oh that's obvious, you've made that perfectly plain, you don't have to tell
me.'

‘What do you mean?'

Dale shouted, ‘My mother's photographs! My mother's pictures! What have you done with all the pictures of my mother?'

Elizabeth said steadily, ‘You've been in the drawing-room—'

‘Yes!'

‘And where else? Where else have you been? In our bedroom?'

Dale glared.

‘In our bedroom?'

‘Only quickly—'

‘Only quickly! Not too quickly, I imagine, to notice that the photograph of your mother is where it's always been?'

Dale was breathing fast. She tore the rubber gauntlets off and slapped them down on the nearest counter.

‘The drawing-room was her room!'

‘The pictures are perfectly safe. They are wrapped up and packed in a wine carton for you and Lucas. You'll find them in his old bedroom. The portrait of your mother is still in the drawing-room and it will stay there. I'm not obliterating anything, I'm just making my mark, alongside.'

Dale said vehemently, ‘It was her room, she made it, she chose everything, she was Dad's wife, she was Dad's first choice, she was our mother—'

‘I know all that. I know.'

Dale slumped into the nearest chair and put her face in her hands. Elizabeth went round the table and stood next to her. She looked down at the gleaming dark hair so smoothly tied back into its velvet loop.

‘Dale—'

Dale said nothing.

‘Look,' Elizabeth said, trying to speak gently. ‘Look, you're a grown-up, a grown woman, you must use your imagination and maturity a little. I can't negotiate with a ghost like this, Dale, I really can't. I can't compete with something idealized and you shouldn't demand that I do, either. Anyway—' She paused.

Dale took her hands from her face.

‘What?'

‘Aren't you maybe too old to go on believing your mother was a saint?'

Dale stared ahead of her.

‘You never knew her. You don't know what you're talking about.'

‘You didn't know her very well, either,' Elizabeth said. ‘You were only a child.'

Dale sprang up and shouted, ‘There were hundreds of people at her funeral! Hundreds and hundreds! They came from all over England, all over the world.'

Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment.

‘I don't doubt it.'

‘You do!'

‘I don't doubt that your mother was a wonderful person and much loved. That's not the point. The point
is that she, tragically, is dead, and therefore, however fondly remembered, cannot influence how we, who are still living, choose to live our lives. When she lived here, this house was hers and she arranged it as she wished to. Now, it's going to be mine and your father's, and we will want to live in it rather differently.'

Dale bent her head and put the back of one hand against her eyes. She was crying.

‘Oh Dale,' Elizabeth said in some despair. ‘Oh Dale dear, do try and grow up a little. I'm not some intruder you have to make bargains with.'

Dale whirled round and snatched several sheets of kitchen paper off a roll on a nearby worktop. She blew her nose fiercely.

‘You want to turn us out!'

‘I don't,' Elizabeth said. ‘It's the last thing I want. All I want is for you to respect my privacy and independence as I respect yours.'

Dale blew again.

‘You don't respect my past!'

‘I do,' Elizabeth said. She gripped a chairback and leaned on it. ‘All I have difficulty with is when you try and insist that the past has more importance and significance than the present or the future.'

‘You'll learn,' Dale said bitterly. She untied the strings of the scarlet apron, ducked her head out of the neckband and threw the apron on the table among the boxes and bottles.

‘What is that supposed to mean?'

Dale was pulling on a jacket.

‘You can't touch what we've got, what we've got because of what we've had—'

‘I know that—'

‘You don't!' Dale cried. ‘You don't and you never will. You think you can come in here with your tidy Civil Service mind and file us all away neatly so there's nothing messy left, nothing real and human and powerful. Well, you can't. What we had, we'll always have and you can't touch it. You'll never understand us because you can't, because you can't feel what we've felt, you can't know what we know, you'll never belong. You can try changing Dad outwardly, nobody can stop you doing that, but you'll never change him inwardly because you don't have it in you. He's been where you'll never go.'

Elizabeth took her hands off the chairback and put them over her ears.

‘Stop it—'

‘I'm going,' Dale said. She sounded out of breath. She was rummaging in her bag for her car keys. ‘I'm going, and I'll be back. I'll be back whenever I want to because this is my home, this is where I belong, this is where I come from and always will.'

Elizabeth said nothing. She slid her hands round her head from covering her ears to covering her eyes. She heard Dale's bag zip close.

‘It would be nice,' Dale said, ‘if you didn't tell Dad about this. But I expect you will. And if you do, then I will. I'll have to.' She paused and then said with emphasis, ‘Won't I?'

And then she went out of the kitchen and the front doors, slamming both behind her.

‘What's all this?' Tom said.

He stood in the doorway of his bedroom, and peered into the half-dark. Elizabeth lay on the bed, as she had lain for several hours, with the curtains drawn. ‘Are you ill?'

‘No.'

He moved closer.

‘What is it, sweetheart?'

Elizabeth said, without moving, ‘You saw.'

‘I saw a fair old muddle in the kitchen, certainly. And shopping all over the hall floor. Basil, needless to say, has found the butter. I thought perhaps you weren't feeling too good—'

‘I'm not.'

Tom lowered himself on to the side of the bed and put his hand on her forehead.

‘Headache?'

‘No.'

‘What—'

Elizabeth was lying on her side, still dressed, under a blanket. She said, looking straight ahead and not at Tom, ‘Dale came.'

‘Did she?'

‘She was here when I got back from shopping. She was in the process of turning out the kitchen cupboards.'

Tom took his hand away from Elizabeth's face.

‘Oh dear.'

‘We had a row,' Elizabeth said. She rolled over on to her back and looked at Tom. ‘I told her she mustn't just let herself into the house whenever she pleased any more, and the row began.'

Tom wasn't quite meeting Elizabeth's eyes.

‘And how did it end?'

‘With Dale saying she would go on letting herself in whenever she wanted to because this was her home and always would be.'

Tom got slowly off the bed and walked towards the window, pushing the curtains back to reveal quiet cloudy afternoon light.

‘Did Pauline come into it?'

‘Oh yes,' Elizabeth said. She stared up at the ceiling. ‘She always does.'

‘What did you say?'

‘About Pauline? That I couldn't negotiate with a ghost. That Dale was too old to go on believing her mother was a saint.'

‘She wasn't,' Tom said. He had his back to Elizabeth. She turned her head to look at him, outlined against the window.

‘I'm relieved to hear you say it—'

‘She was very like Dale, in some ways, but with better self-control.' He turned towards Elizabeth. ‘Sweetheart. I'm so sorry.'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you been up here ever since she left?'

‘Yes.'

‘Poor love. Poor Elizabeth.'

Elizabeth struggled up into a half-sitting position, propping her shoulders against the bed's padded headboard.

‘Tom.'

‘Yes?'

‘What are you going to do?'

He came back to the bed and sat down beside Elizabeth.

‘What do you want me to do?'

She closed her eyes.

‘That's not the right way round.'

‘I don't follow you—'

‘It isn't,' Elizabeth said, ‘a question of what I want you to do, it's a question of what you want to do yourself, not just for my sake, but even more for our future sakes, jointly, for the sake of this marriage we're embarking on.'

‘You don't sound very enthusiastic about it—'

‘It's not lack of enthusiasm I feel,' Elizabeth said. ‘It's fear.'

‘Fear?'

She picked up the edge of the blanket that covered her and began to pleat it between her fingers.

‘Fear of what?' Tom said.

‘Dale.'

Tom leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

‘Oh my God.'

‘Can't you imagine?' Elizabeth said, fighting with sudden tears. ‘Can't you imagine trying to be married
here with both of us straining to catch the sound of her key in the lock?'

‘It wouldn't be like that—'

‘It might!' Elizabeth cried, sitting up and dropping the blanket. ‘If she got in a state about something, or jealous, or lonely, she might come in all the time, any time, demanding your attention, insisting on her right to come home, informing me, as she did today, that I'll never belong here however hard I try, however much I love you, because I haven't got what you've all got, what you've had, I just haven't got what it takes to make you happy!'

Tom took his hands away from his face and put his arms around Elizabeth. He said, in a fierce whisper against her hair, ‘I'm so sorry, so
sorry—'

Elizabeth said nothing. She turned her face so that their cheeks were touching, and then, after a few moments, she gently but firmly disengaged herself.

‘Help me,' Tom said. ‘Help me to decide what to do.'

Elizabeth began to extricate herself from the blanket, and to inch across the bed away from him.

‘I'm afraid,' she said politely, ‘that it isn't my decision.'

‘Elizabeth—'

‘Yes.'

‘I can't change the locks of this house against my own daughter!'

Elizabeth reached the far side of the bed and stood up.

‘We don't have keys to Dale's flat. We never go there. We're never asked there.'

‘But Dale was almost born in this house—'

‘I know. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to sell it and move to another house, with no associations.'

‘But Rufus—'

‘I know about Rufus. I accept the Rufus argument.'

Tom stood up, too. He said, ‘I'll go downstairs and clear up. Why don't you have a bath?'

‘I'd love a bath, but it won't make me feel any differently.'

‘You want me to tell Dale—'

‘No!' Elizabeth shouted. She raised her fists and beat herself lightly on the sides of her head. ‘No! Not what I want! What
you
want for
us
, for you and me, because you can see what will happen if things go on like this!'

‘But they won't. These are teething troubles, the shock of the new. We have so much going for us, so much, we love each other, Rufus loves you, Lucas will love you, too, any minute. We mustn't get things out of proportion. Dale's just in a state while she gets used to the idea of you. I'm so sorry she's upset you—'

‘Shut up,' Elizabeth said.

‘What?'

‘Stop talking. Stop mouthing all this stuff at me.'

Tom said angrily, ‘I'm trying to explain—'

‘No, you're not, you're trying to talk yourself out of having to face what's really the matter.'

‘Which is?'

Elizabeth took a few steps towards the door. Then she took a breath.

‘That Dale is neurotically insecure and possessive, and that if you don't do something about it now you'll have her for life.'

Tom said sharply, ‘You have your children for life anyway.'

Elizabeth looked at him. Against the light, it was difficult to see his expression, but his stance looked determined, even defiant, as if he was challenging her to know better than he did about an area of life she had never experienced, and he had. She opened her mouth to ask if Tom's pronouncement on children held good for third wives, too, and then felt, almost simultaneously, that pride would prevent her ever asking such a thing. So, instead, she closed her mouth again and walked, with as much dignity as she could muster, into the bathroom next door, closing the door behind her.