The Simple Rules of Love Page 5

  ‘No, it isn't,’ insisted Peter, quietly. ‘I love this place – I can't help wanting it to be looked after.’

  ‘And so it is… and always shall be.’ Charlie drained his glass. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Peter swirled the remaining swig of his whisky, telling himself not to be surprised at Charlie's resistance, but feeling suddenly as if they were perched on a tightrope, unbalancing each other in their efforts not to fall off. ‘And as for the other… er… more extensive alterations you mentioned, go easy, won't you? Too much change might upset Mum.’

  ‘Upset Mum or upset you?’

  ‘Don't be ridiculous. Each custodian of this house has made his mark. I fully support your right to do as you wish… within reason.’ Peter looked up to meet the gaze of his brother's blue eyes, which seemed both bold and terrified. ‘It's your house now. And I'm delighted it is. I gave it freely and stand by that gift.’

  Slowly Charlie let out his breath. ‘Good… that's good to hear. The plans are still just vague ideas,’ he added carefully, ‘and would probably cost far too much to carry out anyway. I'm a civil servant, remember.’ He pulled a comic face, wanting to puncture the bubble of tension that was now in danger of ruining the evening. ‘A civil servant who – very happily, I might add – settled for bricks and mortar instead of cash. When Mum goes, whatever remains in the bank will be for you three – you, Lizzy and Cassie – and I'm happy about that too. Peter? Don't go all stony-faced on me. I'll deal with all the things you mentioned, I promise. You were right to point them out. The truth is, Sid doesn't keep on top of repairs any more and Serena and I are already thinking about a replacement. Now, let's drink some more Scotch and stop behaving like grumpy old men.’

  Peter grunted agreement and reached for the whisky. He filled Charlie's glass before his own, tipping the bottle slowly and carefully, then adding water from the jug Charlie had brought from the kitchen. ‘I'm the grumpy old man,’ he muttered, placing one hand briefly on his younger brother's shoulder. ‘Ask Helen. I'm always biting her head off. Don't know how she puts up with it.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ joked Charlie. The hand on his shoulder had meant everything. Peter was good like that – a dragon at one minute, then so conciliatory and understanding that you had to forgive him.

  ‘By the way,’ said Peter, after a few moments of a now thoroughly companionable silence, ‘how does Umbria in August sound?’

  ‘Umbria in August?’ Charlie echoed, laughing.

  ‘It was Helen's idea. She's found this spectacular farmhouse-villa in the hills outside Todi –’

  ‘Where's that?’

  ‘Near Orvieto – well, not far. Anyway it's got seven bedrooms, a massive swimming-pool, hot and cold running maids, that sort of thing. We thought it might be fun to get the whole family out there – move Ashley House to Italy, so to speak. In fact, we've already shelled out a deposit. Places like that, you have to move quickly.’

  ‘Who's moving Ashley House?’ said Serena, appearing in the doorway in a pair of Charlie's pyjamas, hair tousled, face pale with sleepiness.

  Charlie swivelled into a sitting position and reached out a hand to draw her to the sofa. ‘Sweetheart, did we wake you?’

  ‘No,’ Serena assured him, yawning as she clambered on to the sofa and tucked her legs under her chin. ‘It was your mother

  – I heard her walking round her room, then a sort of bump, and I was just about to go in when it all went quiet again. Then I heard an owl hooting, and Poppy barked. Then I heard you.’ She yawned again.

  ‘Poor baby,’ Charlie whispered, reaching out and stroking her hair. Serena smiled and closed her eyes, tipping her head towards his hand.

  Watching them, Peter felt a shiver of something between admiration and envy, not of Serena, whose beauty, while obvious, had never stirred anything but the purest appreciation, but for the way they were together: the effortless intimacy of their partnership. In many ways they were an old-fashioned couple, Charlie earning the money, calling the shots, but it worked – by God, it worked. Helen's hair, thicker and shorter – more bristly – than Serena's, didn't lend itself to stroking, but even if it had flowed like silk to her waistline, Peter would never have touched it in that way, in all the twenty-five-odd years he had known her, at such a moment, with such protective tenderness. He and Helen were tender when they made love, of course, more so if anything as the years trickled by, but outside the bedroom they had always been businesslike, running their hectic lives like a well-oiled machine.

  ‘Peter and Helen have booked an Italian villa for us all to go to in the summer,’ Charlie explained.

  ‘Have they? What heaven.’

  ‘Umbria… Big enough for the whole family.’

  ‘Including your mother?’

  ‘Certainly,’ replied Peter, firmly. ‘I know she's not keen on flying but it would do her so much good, don't you think? Her first proper break without Dad – I'll tie her to the plane if necessary.’

  ‘Now, that I would like to see,’ said Charlie, as he heaved himself off the sofa, pulling Serena gently with him. ‘Come on, my petal, it's way past our bedtime.’

  ‘I'll follow shortly,’ Peter told them, pointing at his glass, in which half an inch of whisky remained, but really just wanting to stay a little longer in the deep armchair with the quiet tick of the old house around him and the wind rattling the windows like an excluded guest.

  It was almost eleven o'clock by the time Jessica tottered along the platform towards the exit at Wandsworth station, high heels clacking on the concrete. She had fallen asleep on the train and woken just before her stop to find a bloke with bushy hair staring at her with the look men had when they were interested. She'd given him her best fuck-off stare and crossed her legs so that he couldn't ogle up her skirt. He'd got off in front of her and was striding up the platform now, the only other person in sight, shoulders hunched under a dirty green anorak. Jessica slowed a little so there was no chance of catching up and checked her phone for messages. Ed would have turned his off by now, she knew, but she punched in ‘c u soon J‘, then tried her mum and got no answer.

  At the flats the lifts weren't working, though few people were dumb enough to risk them at night anyway, what with all the nutters who used them to piss in or trade gear. Jessica took off her shoes to climb the stairs, partly so that none of the estate's retards could hear her coming and partly because her toes, squashed into the tight pointy plastic all day, were killing her. At the door of the flat she rummaged in her bag for her keys, keeping a wary eye on the dank hallway that stretched on either side. From inside she could hear the sound of the television and guessed her mum would be asleep on the settee in front of it, her ciggies and an empty can on the floor next to her.

  ‘Where've you been, then?’ said Maureen, the moment the door opened, not asleep but leaning against the kitchen door, like she'd spent all night waiting up.

  ‘Nice to see you too.’ Jessica tossed her shoes and bag on to the floor and pushed past her into the kitchen. Anything to eat?’

  ‘Haven't you had any dinner?’

  ‘I wouldn't want anything to eat if I had, would I?’

  ‘Where've you been, then, love?’ asked Maureen, in a softer voice, putting a fresh cigarette into her mouth and watching as her daughter moved round their coop of a kitchen, fixing her-self a sandwich.

  ‘I stayed on a bit with Granddad.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and how was he?’ inquired Maureen, green eyes narrowing with suspicion.

  ‘We had a cup of tea. He's fine. Then I went to the Rising Sun and had a couple of drinks.’

  ‘Very nice. And that Harrison boy was there, I expect, was he?’

  ‘Might have been.’

  ‘You're wasting your time, girl. Having a grandfather who's their gardener and playing waitress at their fancy funerals doesn't get you into their world, you know. He's pissing around with you, that's all.’

  ‘Like you would know, wouldn't you?’

  ‘I know a
bloody sight more than you, young lady,’ snapped Maureen, tapping ash into a saucer.

  ‘Fat lot of good it's done you.’ Jessica pressed the two halves of her sandwich together and bit into it, keeping her eyes, which were as green as Maureen's but brighter and more hostile, fixed on her mother. Such skirmishes were part of their daily routine, how they talked to each other. Once, they had upset her, but now, at sixteen, with the end of her schooldays and a bit of independence in sight, Jessica had got better at not caring. Her mum's life, by her own, moaning admission, had been a mess: men who'd run off, including Jessica's father, jobs in pubs and cleaning people's houses, offloading Jessica to long-suffering neighbours or, when she really couldn't cope, at Granddad's in Barham – it had always been a case of holding things together, making do, railing at disappointment. Jessica had seen enough of it, felt too much part of it, to want anything like that for herself. ‘I would have stayed over – Granddad said I could – but I've got to be at the hairdresser's by nine thirty.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, this job of yours…’ Maureen inhaled deeply on her cigarette and folded her arms. ‘How much did you say you're getting?’

  ‘I didn't.’ Jessica took a bite of sandwich, letting half of it splurge out on purpose so that she looked gross. ‘None of your bleeding business.’

  ‘Come on, Jess, don't be like that.’ Maureen dropped her cigarette into the saucer and advanced upon her daughter with open arms. ‘Be nice to your old mum, darling, I do love you, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ Holding her sandwich out of the way, Jessica allowed herself to be embraced. She even let herself relax a little, taking in the familiar smoky scent and thinking that a hug was nice, even if it was the whiff of extra cash that had prompted it. ‘Thirty quid plus tips, Jerry said.’

  ‘Jerry. You want to watch him an' all.’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ replied her daughter, archly, pushing Maureen away and going into their little lounge to finish her sandwich in front of the television. She ate slowly, leaving the crusts, which were brittle, on the arm of her chair, positioning them in a little line across all the ring-stains left by years and years of too full, too hot mugs of Cup-a-soup, coffee and tea. Her mum telling her to watch out for Jerry was a laugh. How did she think she'd got the fucking job in the first place? Saturday jobs were hard to find, especially with girls like Shona and Aileen trawling the same possibilities, with their pushy mums to back them up. Jessica had used her own wiles, not letting him go all the way, but undoing his jeans and giving him what he wanted with her hand – it never took long with men like him, full of flirt but worried all the time that someone might come in or the wife might get on the phone.

  ‘You can work here for as long as you want, darling,’ he had grunted afterwards, when she was wiping her hands. ‘So long as we can have a cuddle now and then.’ He'd kissed her and patted her arse, then strolled back into the salon. And when Jessica had bumped into Shona and Aileen in the precinct later that day she'd held her head high and asked how was their job-hunting going?

  March

  Stephen hovered in the doorway, avoiding eye-contact with his guests as he scanned the packed sitting room for Cassie. It was a few moments before he spotted her, in the corner by the bookcase, deep in conversation with Charlie, always the most convivial of her three siblings. She was laughing at something, throwing back her cloud of blonde hair and opening her mouth wide, every sinew of her face and body alert with pleasure and interest. At forty-two she was still beautiful, alive with energy, so open and giving, so impossible not to love. Watching her, Stephen experienced a fierce urge to elbow his way through the throng and lay claim to her, to kiss her laughing mouth, taste the joy of whatever she was sharing with her brother. He stared hard, willing her to turn her head, fighting a momentary unedifying prickle of envy. Sibling, friend or stranger, the world engaged her so. She was lost in conversation with Charlie, just as she lost herself in anything she did advising clients on colour schemes for their homes, reading a book, watching telly. She managed to fall asleep the instant she put her mind to it. In contrast, Stephen had spent many of his thirty-seven years struggling with the sense that he was standing, arms akimbo, watching an irreversible video of his life. Even at his desk, on the rare occasions that his fingers flew over the keys, steering his Irish detective through another intricate case of murder and skeletons-in-cupboards, half his mind remained not just obstinately unabsorbed, but separate and critical of his endeavours.

  The weeks since Cassie's aunt's funeral had been dominated by preparations for the party. Rushing to finish the decorating, haggling with the local deli over revised estimates for the food and drink, Stephen had wondered many times whether it would prove worth the effort. Only Cassie's infectious enthusiasm had kept him going. ‘We've so much to celebrate,’ she had reminded him, just the night before, as they lay side by side on the sitting-room floor, nursing headaches from the petrol smell of fresh gloss and surrounded by yards of the sticky masking tape that had protected their new bottle-green carpet from stray paint dribbles on the skirting-boards. ‘Let's see now…’ She held up her fingers and began, literally, to count their blessings. ‘Your contract, owning this beautiful house and… I'm sure there was something else.’

  Stephen rolled across the carpet and pulled her into his arms, so eagerly that a nest of tape caught in her hair.

  ‘Ow – bugger!’

  ‘Hang on – stop pulling, you're making it worse. Don't move.’ He sat up and held her head still to inspect the damage, trying to appear serious but thinking how dear she looked with the tape in her hair and such a furious expression. ‘Now, don't move.’ He went to fetch some scissors and then set about teasing free each strand, doing his best not to hurt her. He worked slowly, sucking his lower lip in concentration, aware of her mounting irritation and that he enjoyed having her at his mercy. ‘There, all done.’

  Cassie rubbed her scalp. Are you sure there isn't a bald patch?’

  ‘Well… only a small one.’

  ‘Where?’ she squealed, then caught sight of his face. ‘Oh, Stephen! How mean! It's too late for teasing – I'm tired.’ She lunged for a newspaper and flung it at him, catching his shoulder. He threw it back far more vigorously, scattering pages, which flew briefly – like drunken birds – before subsiding across the furniture. Then, because she was starting to smile, he threw a sofa cushion as well, one of the old ones, which landed square on her chest, releasing a cloudburst of feathers. Moments later they were wrestling, then tugging frantically at the zips and buttons of each other's clothes. They toppled into the biggest armchair where they made ungainly love, as feverishly enthusiastic as they had been the first time, three years before, when the passion Stephen had nursed for so long had been rewarded by an explosion of reciprocity.

  Now Stephen glanced at that armchair and saw that Cassie's square-jawed barrister of an elder brother, Peter, occupied it, looking grave and a little too self-important. Stephen couldn't help laughing. They had left a wet patch, he remembered gleefully, right in the middle of the cushion. Cassie had scrubbed at it with Fairy Liquid and a J-cloth while he finished peeling the masking tape off the carpet.

  ‘What's the joke, then?’

  Stephen spun round, caught off-guard by the familiar voice of his old friend, Keith Holmes, whom he hadn't seen arrive. ‘I… There's no joke, no, at least not one I'm prepared to share.’ He blushed, feeling as wrong-footed as he had when Keith had erupted with delighted expletives out of a small book-signing queue a couple of months before. ‘Glad you could make it, mate,’ he added, so awkwardly that a trace of something like pain flashed across Keith's rugged face; a beaten-up face, these days, Stephen thought, as if the man had spent two decades in a boxing-ring or fronting a rugby scrum.

  ‘Still can't believe it, eh? After all these years.’

  ‘No, I guess not.’ Stephen blew out his cheeks, shaking his head. ‘Our days at Kelsey Grammar seem a long way away.’

  ‘Thank God.
What a dive that was.’ Keith grinned, producing a more familiar version of his features – the lips a little lop-sided, the dark eyes flashing with charm. ‘Stephen Smith a thriller writer – I tell you, I'm still pinching myself.’ Keith chuckled and reached for his cigarettes, only to recall that he was in a no-smoking zone. He ran the palm of his hand across the top of his head instead, reassured, for no reason he could have defined, by the feel of the short, thick bristles of his crew-cut. Looking round at the elegant furnishings and polite wine-sipping guests, he let out a low whistle. ‘You've done all right, Steve, I'll say that for you. Talk about landing on your feet.’

  ‘Well, Cassie is an interior designer…’ Stephen faltered, aware that he was sounding pompous and remembering, with sudden distressing vividness, the ugly, cramped box-rooms and the scrubby back gardens in which he and Keith had played out their mutually unsatisfactory childhoods in the suburbs of Hull. Seeing him in the Camden bookshop, he had felt a confused surge of pleasure and anxiety. They had been good friends – the best – but had lost touch when Stephen had done a TEFL course and gone to South America, returning twelve years later to forge a new life in London. Keith, from what Stephen had gathered during the course of their drink after the signing, had stayed in Hull, married a local girl and followed his father into the building trade. He hadn't made the move to London until his early thirties, and within a year of doing so was eking out a living on building sites. His wife had headed back north with their two sons.

  ‘Cassie's great,’ Keith remarked, nodding appreciatively as he recalled her firm handshake at the door. On learning who he was, she had promptly kissed him on both cheeks, doing the any-friend-of-Stephen's-is-a-friend-of-mine routine, which was corny but bloody nice all the same. ‘Classy,’ he added, casting a sidelong look at Stephen, reappraising the leather-tasselled loafers, the crisp blue chinos and white linen shirt, the manicured nails and floppy Hugh Grant haircut. The Stephen he remembered was a sallow-faced seventeen-year-old, with dark, angry eyes and a gallery of bruises round his torso and thighs, varying in colour according to their age and the degree of severity with which his old man had chosen to swing the belt. His hair had been long and greasy then, often held back in a ponytail or shoved up under a cap, particularly when they were skiving off school at the bus station or in shopping malls, trying not to look like truants. Spotting Stephen's picture in the bookshop window, the groomed appearance, the enigmatic smile, had been like having two realities running side by side. Then, when they got talking afterwards, the two pictures had merged and Keith had felt this shout of joy inside – not just for Stephen but for himself – like the revival of hope. ‘How did you two get together, then, you and such a classy bird?’