Joanna Trollope - Other People's Children

Behind him, someone said, They shouldnt be called weddings.

Rufus felt his ears glow. He leaned forward and stared at the tips of the new shoes his mother had persuaded him to wear instead of trainers. The person who had spoken behind him had been a woman. She sounded vaguely familiar.

Not second time round, she said. Her voice was calm, as if she had no personal axe to grind, but was simply stating a fact. There should be another word for second time round.

Rufus raised his head very slowly and transferred his stare from his shoes to the wall twenty feet ahead of him. The wall was covered with white satiny paper, flowered and ribboned in more white, and on it hung a picture of the Queen in a white dress and a tiara and a broad blue ribbon running across her bosom with a brooch thing on it. Just below the Queen was the neat brown head of the lady in the grey suit and gold stud earrings who was, Rufuss mother said, the registrar. Being a registrar meant you could marry people to each other. This registrar who had smiled at Rufus and said, Hello, dear was going to marry Rufuss mother in a minute. To Matthew. Rufus did not let his stare slide sideways from the registrar to include his mother and Matthew. Matthew had a grey suit on, too, and a yellow flower in his buttonhole and he was half a head taller than Rufuss mother. He was, also and above all things, not Rufuss father.

He was, however and this fact lent added alarm to an already disconcerting day several other peoples father. He had been married before, to someone else whose name Rufus couldnt remember, and he had three children. Three. All older than Rufus. And all Rufus swallowed hard people he didnt know. Actually standing beside him was Matthews younger daughter Clare. She was repeatedly doing up and un doing the bottom button of her black cardigan. Below the cardigan she wore a crumpled orange skirt almost to the floor, and black boots. She was ten. Rufus was eight. Rufuss mother had said that he and Clare would get on because they could play computer games together, but to Rufus, Clare was as foreign as if she came from another planet. She was like someone you see on a bus and know you wont ever see again. So was her brother, Rory, standing on her far side, in a black leather jacket and black jeans. Rufuss mother had made him wear a tie, but Rory was wearing a T-shirt. He was twelve, and his hair had been shaved up the sides and back of his head, leaving him vulnerable and gawky soft-looking, like a baby bird. He had played football with Rufus earlier that day with a Coca-Cola can, kicking it around the patio of the house that Rufus was now going to share with his mother and Matthew. And, some weekends and during school holidays, with Clare and Rory and Becky who was fifteen and who had well, she didnt go straight down in front, under her sweater. Becky was chewing gum, Rufus thought. She wore the denim bomber jacket she wore all the time except in bed, and every so often, she gave the left breast pocket of the jacket a little tap. Rufus knew why. She kept a pack of Marlboro Lights in there and she wasnt supposed to. When she tapped her pocket, she looked pleased and defiant.

Rufuss grandmother, on his left side, stooped towards him a little. She was going to say, All right, darling? He waited.

All right, darling?

He nodded. She tried to take his hand. Rufus liked his grandmother but he did not wish to hold her hand, especially not in public, with Clare and Rory and Becky in their enviable solidarity of being three, not one, on his right-hand side. He put his hand in his trouser pocket. There was an acorn in there, and a screw of foil from a Kit Kat and the rubber stopper from a water pistol. He held the acorn. It was warm, from being in his pocket, as if it had a little kind of life of its own. He had picked it up on a walk months ago, a school walk to the playing fields, in Bath, where he used to live, where his father lived now and would be, at this minute, at this very minute, instead of being here in this white room with the glass lights and Rufuss mother. Where Matthew was, instead.

Matthew took Josies hand under the restaurant tablecloth.

Mine.

She smiled, entranced, but not daring to look at him because of all the other people sitting round that table, and mostly looking at her.

Oh Matt

Mine, he said again, squeezing her hand. Cant believe it.

Now, now, Matthews father shouted jovially from the far side of the table. Now, now, you two.

Its perfectly legal, Matthew said, as of an hour ago. He sounded quite at ease. He raised Josies hand from under the cloth and, in view of everyone, kissed her wedding finger. Legally Mrs Mitchell.

Good luck to you! his father shouted. He seized a nearby champagne bottle and sploshed wine approximately into all the glasses he could reach. Drink up! Drink to them!

Good luck, dears, Josies mother said. She lifted her glass. Long life together, health and happiness. She nudged Clare, who was next to her. Raise your glass, dear.

I dont like it, Clare said. I dont like champagne.

You can pick up your glass, Josies mother said, cant you? You dont have to drink out of it. She looked across at Rufus. He was sandwiched between Rory and Matthews younger sister, Karen, who was a nurse. Rory had drunk two glasses of champagne already, very quickly, and was looking dazed. Rufus looked, his grandmother thought, as he used to look just before he sang a solo in his school nativity play and was certain something would go wrong. She indicated to him to raise his glass.

Toast to Mummy and Matthew, darling. Come on.

She glanced towards her daughter. Josie looked so happy, so pretty, in a cream silk suit with her red hair done up somehow behind her head, that it seemed downright unkind to have misgivings. But how could she not? As a divorced woman herself of thirty years standing, with Josie her only child, how could she not have terrible apprehensions about Josies leaving Tom Carver and all the settled, acceptable, comfortableness of that life in Bath for a secondary-school deputy headmaster with three uncouth children and an eccentric-sounding ex-wife apparently spitting tacks with rage from the hovel in Herefordshire shed taken herself off to? It wasnt that Matthew wasnt a nice man, because he was nice, and quite attractive if you liked men who needed to shave twice a day, but he well, his position, to be fair, seemed so perilous besides Toms. And he knew it. Hed said, when theyd had their first awkward prospective mother-in-law, son-in-law meeting, shifting glasses of indifferent white wine about on beer mats in a local pub, I suppose, Elaine, I should apologize.

Shed looked at him, startled.

What for? For taking Josie? Nobodys ever taken Josie in her life. Josies never done anything Josie didnt want to do. You neednt apologize for that.

I dont. But Im not the catch Tom Carver was.

Elaine had looked at her wineglass. She thought of the house in Bath, of the long windows on the first floor, of the immaculate basement from which Tom ran his architectural practice, of the little walled garden behind with its statues and stone urns. Josie had told her that Matthew Mitchell earned thirty-three thousand a year. She had also now seen the house they would live in, always two of them, mostly three and sometimes six. It had three bedrooms. She took a swallow of wine.

No good pretending, shed said to Matthew. But no. Youre not.

She looked round the restaurant now. It was Italian, with rough white walls and rush-seated chairs and a menu that featured, among other things, fifteen kinds of speciality pizza. Thats why it had been chosen. For the children. Pizza for the children.