The Simple Rules of Love Page 4

  ‘Fine thank you, Mr Harrison.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘I was meeting this friend, only he didn't turn up.’ Lying, Jessica had discovered, was easy, if done with enough conviction. ‘Spending my waitress wages,’ she added, patting her denim backpack and producing her toothpaste smile, designed to stop all living creatures in their tracks, especially men.

  ‘Ah, yes, well done. Serena and all of us were most grateful. And to your grandfather, too, of course, for all his sterling work with the car-parking and so on. Is he here?’

  Jessica shook her head, her glossy black ponytail swinging. ‘He's having an early night. Gets a bit tired these days, does Granddad.’

  ‘Of course he does. Well, thanks again. We'll be over there if you need us,’ Charlie added gallantly, indicating an empty table.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Harrison and Mr Harrison.’ Jessica grinned with studied innocence, offering them another little wave.

  ‘There's something about that girl….’ murmured Peter, once they were seated out of earshot with their pints.

  ‘You mean she's bloody cheeky?’

  ‘Yes. And something else… I don't know…’ Peter frowned. ‘She's so young, but something about her seems very old.’

  ‘Really? Can't say I'd noticed. Ed's keen on her – but, then, he's at the age where he'd be keen on a chair if it was decked in a short enough skirt. Remember those days? Christ…’ Charlie threw back his head and laughed. ‘Testosterone raging… Oh dear, I wouldn't go back to all that for anything, would you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Peter smiled, feeling a little superior but trying not to show it. Until Serena, his brother's love-life had been messy and exuberant. He, in contrast, had had only one long relationship before Helen, whom he had recognized at once as someone attractive and intelligent enough to be his ideal partner for the long haul. From the first he had been proud of how independent and career-oriented she was – quite the opposite of Serena, who'd made it no secret that her ambitions did not stretch beyond motherhood. Helen was hard-working too, which Peter liked, and had a passion that matched his for the detail and idiosyncrasies of English law.

  ‘Talking of which, how's Theo getting on?’ Charlie chuckled. ‘Finding time to enjoy himself, I hope?’

  Peter, swelling visibly with fatherly pride, was about to deliver an account of the sporting and academic prowess of his eldest when they both noticed Jessica sauntering over to their table, swinging her denim bag. ‘Excuse me, sorry to be a bother and all that, but… I mean, like, you said if I needed anything?’

  ‘We did,’ Charlie assured her, avoiding the stern look in Peter's eye.

  ‘It's just that I've got to catch the train back to London and I've just phoned and the last one leaves in fifteen minutes and I won't get there if I walk, and I've really got to catch it as I have this job in a hairdresser's at the Arndale on a Saturday.’

  ‘Do you indeed? Right. In that case –’

  ‘Would you like us to call you a taxi?’ suggested Peter, reluctant to abandon his pint and the conversation, which hadn't even begun to steer in any of the directions he had planned.

  ‘I've tried that.’ Jessica fiddled with the thick sleek hair, momentarily uncertain. ‘But there's only two that work in Barham and they're both booked up.’

  ‘I see.’ Charlie glanced at his empty glass, then at Peter's, which was still half full. ‘I say, Peter, perhaps…’

  ‘Of course.’ Peter stood up. ‘I'll run you over there.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Mr Harrison.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And I'll keep your beer warm,’ Charlie promised, as the pair left the pub.

  Outside Ed, hovering behind a large wooden tub of tight-budded rhododendrons, leapt back as his uncle, the cause of his wait in the cold car park, strode out through the door. He heard enough of the conversation to gather that Jessica had wangled a lift to the station, and pressed himself against the stone wall, murmuring curses. He had been well in there. Well in. Peering through the foliage and glimpsing Jessica's pale bare legs, splendid beneath the frayed hem of her mini-skirt as she clambered into the car, he groaned.

  Ed smoked a cigarette as consolation, dropped the stub into the flower tub, then popped a stick of gum into his mouth and retrieved his bicycle from under the hedge where he had hidden it half an hour before. He pedalled slowly down the lane towards Ashley House, distracted by keen disappointment and a dim disquiet that on a day when he should have been contemplating the demise of his great-aunt he had allowed himself to be so preoccupied by less edifying matters. He always wanted sex, of course – what seventeen-year-old virgin male didn't? – but today it had been particularly bad. All through the service, the hymns, the prayers for the departed, he had been able to think of little else – which made him feel sort of guilty but also annoyed. It wasn't like he was religious or anything and watching someone being buried was bound to make one think of a pleasant alternative. Wasn't it?

  Ed was half-way down the lane now, far from the lights of the pub but not yet within sight of home. On the outward journey he hadn't noticed how dark it was, or how cold. He had been too excited, his groin aching at the recollection of Jessica's tongue in his ear and her promises during their few snatched moments among the coats upstairs. Now, however, with the trees crowding overhead, blocking out the meagre light coming from the fingernail of moon, the darkness seemed as thick as treacle. A creature scuttling in the undergrowth to his left made him start.

  Thinking that only an idiot would be scared of a familiar country lane, and of how the man from the Royal Marines would laugh, Ed began none the less to pedal faster, no longer bothering to steer round the numerous pot-holes and puddles pitting the way. Soon he was blinking sweat from his eyes, trying to fix his gaze on the spot where he imagined the bend in the lane to be, fearing that when he reached it he would find not the illuminated squares of Ashley House's numerous latticed windows but yet more darkness.

  ‘Did you have a nice time?’ called Serena, when she heard the front door.

  ‘Yep.’ Ed, the panic still upon him, hovered in the doorway of the television room where his mother was lying on the sofa with one eye on a book and the other on the screen. She had her new glasses on, half-moon ones that made her look like an old lady, but not old because her hair was still silky soft and mostly brown, and her skin like smooth soap.

  ‘Give us a hug, then,’ she said, patting the sofa.

  Ed hung on by the door, the fear gone now and the desire for sex too – with Jessica or anybody else. He longed to nestle up to his mother, but hesitated, aware of the unused Durex in his back pocket. ‘Just going to the loo,’ he called, racing up the stairs two at a time and sprinting along the top landing to his bedroom, which was nicely away from everyone at the far end of the corridor, with its own bathroom alongside. It took a few seconds to clamber on to a chair and return the Durex to the secret bag he kept on the dusty top of his wardrobe. Then he smeared toothpaste round his teeth, washed his hands and raced back to the television room. ‘What are you watching?’ he asked, a little breathless as he flopped on to the sofa.

  ‘It's something telling us what to do in a terrorist crisis – buy tins of baked beans, hide in a cellar if you've got one, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ed scratched his head. ‘Well, we've got a cellar anyway.’

  Serena laughed. ‘Yes, that's smelly and damp and so full of your uncle's wine that we could hardly fit ourselves down there, let alone food supplies and blankets.’

  ‘There's that new reality show on the other side,’ ventured Ed. ‘Can we watch that instead?’

  Serena yawned. ‘I suppose so… I'm too tired to care. Ugh – imagine cameras watching us all the time,’ she added cheerfully, once Ed had switched channels and that season's contestants appeared, slouching on bean-bags and drinking beer. ‘Imagine everybody knowing what you were up to twenty-four hours a day, all the little things you keep hidden… Would you like
that?’

  Ed paused, console in hand, alerted by something in her voice, a certain knowingness that made his stomach twist. Was it possible that she knew all about the pub and not working and Jessica and the dusty box on top of the wardrobe and the locked suitcase of magazines? On screen, one of the contestants had pulled out a dildo and was dipping it into her mug of beer. ‘Actually,’ he muttered, ‘that terrorist thing did look quite interesting.’ He switched channels again and dropped his head on to her shoulder.

  ‘That's better.’ Serena tucked an arm round him and kissed the crown of his head, smelling smoke but not saying anything because, these days, such moments of maternal physical closeness were rare and she missed them.

  Side by side on their own much smaller sofa some ten miles away, Roland and Elizabeth watched the same programme, the remains of their supper on plates at their feet. Through the gap in the curtains, which had been designed for their old sitting room in Guildford and didn't close properly, a stream of car headlights flashed past, as regular almost as the ticking of the second hand on the clock above the fireplace.

  ‘All right, sweetheart?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘I always think the only good thing about a funeral is the hymns.’

  Roland nodded. She was trying to be jolly, he knew, talking for the sake of it so he wouldn't guess how miserable she was. After the funeral she had gone straight upstairs to the phone in her bedroom and closed the door. There had been quiet talking, then a bit of louder stuff and some crying. Roland, making a pot of tea, had tried not to listen, but it was hard with the bedroom being right above the kitchen and the walls of the cottage so thin. A little later she had come downstairs with a red nose and puffy eyes, full of questions about what homework he had for the weekend and whether he thought it too early for her to start preparing supper.

  Roland had played along for a bit, then said, ‘Was that Richard?’ Whereupon his mother had burst into tears and hugged him hard and said yes, but it didn't matter because he had been a shit and she was well rid of him, and what she needed was a strong drink. When Roland said he'd made tea, she patted the pot and squatted down to pull out a bottle from the wine rack set between the two cupboards underneath. Eight slots for eight bottles, filled and emptied each week with exactly the regularity as the slots for the eggs in the fridge door and the jars of pasta ranged above them. Roland had handed her the corkscrew, then carefully stirred two heaped sugars into his mug and retreated into the sitting room.

  He wouldn't miss Richard, he decided, casting a look at his mother, who had kicked of her heavy shoes and was resting her stockinged feet on the chair next to the sofa. There was a small ladder in one, showing the yellow ridges of her big toe nail. Richard, in his view, had been noisy and unreadable from the start, the sort of man who repeated jokes and still expected you to laugh, ignoring Roland one minute, then asking him impossible questions the next. He had an ex-wife whom he called ‘the old cow' and an open-topped sports car that was always breaking down. His job was something boring to do with the Arts Council, though he talked about it as if he was running the country. His breath smelt too, sometimes so badly that Roland had wondered how his mother could bear to be anywhere near him, let alone press her lips to the scratchy thicket of his beard.

  ‘What about a biscuit or two? There are some of those nice chocolate ones, I think. Would you like one?’

  ‘Not really, but I'll get them if you want.’

  ‘I shouldn't.’ She patted the swell of her stomach dolefully. ‘I'm far too fat already.’

  ‘No, you're not,’ Roland replied, partly out of duty but mostly because he never thought of his mother as fat or thin. She just was and he couldn't imagine her otherwise. He fetched the biscuits and she ate two, very quickly.

  ‘Did you see this?’ she said, when she had finished, waving Cassie and Stephen's invitation. ‘As it's a Saturday I thought we could make a day of it – go to an exhibition or something beforehand.’

  Roland was loath, after the tedium of the afternoon, to commit himself to another adult party, but did not want to ruin all the effort she was making to be cheerful.

  ‘She is your godmother…’

  ‘Yeah… I know.’

  They were silent for a few minutes until Elizabeth, still studying the invitation, let out a long sigh. ‘Funerals and weddings… Sometimes I wonder why we bother.’

  ‘Look, I'll come to Aunt Cassie's party, okay?’ said Roland, fiercely, detecting the glum turn the conversation was taking and wanting to put a stop to it.

  ‘Oh, thank you, darling.’ Elizabeth's expression had switched in an instant from slack despondency to watery-eyed joy. ‘Do you realize it will be you lot next, my darling – Maisie, Clem, Theo, you, the next generation – getting married, starting families. Oh, my goodness, I shall enjoy that – becoming a grandmother. Oh, my goodness.’ Elizabeth laughed, a rich, natural laugh, full of amazement at the pleasure this image afforded, like a little window on to a better world.

  Roland stood up, in a hurry suddenly to be alone in his room with the cotton-wool solace of some music and one of his art books. It happened like that sometimes like suddenly he couldn't bear to be near her a moment longer, not because he didn't love her but because he understood her so well that the pressure was simply too much. ‘Going upstairs…’ He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets and sauntered out of the room, forcing himself not to break into a run when he reached the steep little stairs connecting the ground floor to the two bedrooms and bathroom above. There was an attic too, a lovely huge space, which he peered at longingly sometimes from the top of the pull-out ladder that led up to it. One day it would be his, his mother had promised, when she had enough money for a conversion. Which, with his dad in America and not sending cheques any more, would probably be never, Roland reflected, casting a wistful glance up at the trap-door in the ceiling before he slipped into his bedroom.

  Downstairs Elizabeth tipped the last inch of wine into her glass and reached for the biscuit packet. She ate several more in quick succession, doing her best to concentrate on their sugary sweetness instead of on the sourness of her own self-loathing.

  By the time Charlie and Peter got back from the Rising Sun, Serena and Ed had retired upstairs to bed. The two brothers were greeted in Ashley House's wide oak-panelled hall by Poppy, who leapt gleefully from her bed in the kitchen at the sound of the car and trotted along the passage, dragging her blanket with her by way of welcome. She bleated with particular pleasure at the sight of Charlie, burrowing her nose and blanket into the back of his knees for attention.

  ‘Shush, you daft dog,’ he scolded, tugging her silky ears. ‘You'll wake the household.’

  ‘That's what Dad always called Boots – and Little Boots, come to that. Do you remember?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Daft. You daft animal, he'd say.’

  ‘Did he?’ Charlie frowned. ‘I don't remember. I remember many things, but not that.’ He cast a look at Peter as they eased off their coats. The pub had been good, but not quite right, somehow. Picking up his beer after dropping Jessica at the station, his brother had launched into an unwelcome and unexpected diatribe on the upkeep of Ashley House, as if he had been secretly scrutinizing the place with a magnifying-glass. Charlie did his best not to take offence but had been offended none the less. It had taken all his natural affability to ride the discussion without losing his temper. It had been a far cry from the easy exchange of news and views he had hoped for and he was determined now to set things right. ‘A nightcap?’

  ‘Excellent. A malt, please… and a few left-overs if there are any – those pub sandwiches were disgusting.’

  ‘Coming right up.’ Charlie headed for the kitchen, closely followed by the dog. When he went into the television room a few minutes later with a tray of drinks and food, he found Peter sitting squarely in the large leather armchair, so often frequented by their father that the smell of his pipe was still faintly detectable in its beaten
leather folds.

  ‘Aah… good man,’ growled Peter, ‘that's exactly what I need.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Charlie stretched out on the sofa, balancing his own drink and a heaped plate of left-over canapés on his stomach. It was weird, he mused, seeing his brother in the old man's chair, looking so like him yet not because Peter was so much leaner, his nose was longer and instead of John's big-lobed ears, his were markedly small and delicate. Weird but nice, Charlie decided, raising his glass, feeling pleasantly – mildly – drunk. ‘To Aunt Alicia, and all who sailed in her… to Cassandra and Stephen… to the Future… Talking of which, Serena and I were thinking of changing the layout of this room a bit – knocking down that wall there, left of the door, easing access to the kitchen, useful for TV dinners and so on… and upstairs, we thought we might convert the green dressing room into an en suite one day, take the pressure off the top-floor bathroom so that when Elizabeth's staying she can relieve herself without having to stomp down the hall and wake up the rest of the house in the process. And then there's the old toolshed, which I'd love to turn into a proper studio for Serena…’ Charlie faltered, discouraged by the expression on Peter's face. ‘Improvements, as you were suggesting in the pub…’

  ‘What I was suggesting in the pub…’ Peter felt for the signet ring on the little finger of his left hand and twisted it so that the face was next to his knuckle. ‘What I was suggesting,’ he pressed on, soothed as always by this small correction to the ring, which had belonged to his father and was seal-engraved with the family crest, ‘was merely the replacing of a few missing roof tiles, regrouting the front wall, getting those weeds out before they crack the patio to smithereens and maybe setting that weathervane on an even keel before it topples off in the next high wind and kills somebody.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Not – as I said earlier – that I want to interfere or criticize.’

  ‘No.’ Charlie eased himself to a more upright position and stared hard at the patterns criss-crossing the sides of his crystal whisky tumbler. ‘But that's what you're doing, isn't it?’ His usually jovial face was slack with dismay.