The Simple Rules of Love Page 8

  And then again, two days later:

  About Cassie and Stephen's party, couldn't you take one night off from your job at that wine bar? Lots of love, as always, darling. Look after yourself, won't you? Mum

  Aware that time was ticking towards her lunch shift, Clem made two decisive swipes at the delete button and switched off her laptop. It was annoying to be fussed over, especially in the clumsily disguised way her mother did it, with all her exclamation marks and quips about looking after herself, which really meant ‘Don't forget to eat' – because for a time in her teens she had got so thin that they'd whisked her off to a specialist and had watched her like hawks ever since. Getting away from all that vigilance had been part of the appeal of moving to London where she could skip meals or binge at leisure, secure in the knowledge that however she chose to burn the calories afterwards – by frenetic exercise or, if she was in one of her desperate moods, sleeping with the windows open and the covers off – there was no chance of anyone remarking on it. Her two flatmates, a pair of music students called Flora and Daisy, were openly envious of her slim figure. Always on diets themselves, in furious competition usually, it never occurred to them that Clem was locked into an intricate battle of her own, with checks and balances at every turn.

  In contrast, Clem had found herself watching the friendship between her two companions closely. Oscillating on an almost daily basis between suffocating intimacy and icy hostility, it reminded her in many ways of the complicated business of having a twin sister. It made her feel left out sometimes, yet glad not to be in the thick of things getting hurt. With their plump figures, blonde hair and blue eyes, the pair could easily have passed for twins, unlike her and Maisie, who were about as different as it was possible to be: Maisie had Serena's shining chestnut mane and honey skin, while Clem was pale and dark-haired like their father, with angular features and eyes that seemed too big for her face.

  Closing her laptop, Clem reached for the modest pile of recent letters she kept in the central compartment of the desk. Before she read any she pressed them to her nose, smelling the familiar scent of wood and polish and something floral – lavender, maybe – that made her think of her grandmother and Ashley House. The desk had belonged to her great-grandmother, Nancy Harrison, and had lived for as long as Clem could remember in the top-floor bedroom, which had been Aunt Cassie's before it became hers. It was made of walnut, a soft toffee colour, pitted with defunct woodworm holes and polished scratches, so deep they looked like veins. Its legs were coiled and spindly, with little brass wheels at the bottom, causing it to wobble badly at times because each had worn differently over the years.

  Clem knew that the desk didn't look right in her poky room. Squashed between the bed and the window, with the lino tiles curling round its pretty feet and the ugly backdrop of anaglypta, it reminded her a bit of a delicate wild animal – a gazelle or a fawn – trapped in a cage. Clem felt sort of guilty to be responsible for its entrapment, but glad to have it there. She sat at it at least once a day, even if all she did was stare at the bobbles in the wallpaper or study the sky, sailing past the window next to her in seascapes of blue, white and grey.

  Among the letters there was a postcard from Maisie. ‘Having fantastic time! My Spanish developing worrying Mexican drawl! Teaching a bit of a drag, but going on scuba-diving course this weekend. Trust you're having a wild time in London…!’

  Clem stared at it glumly, despising the false cheery tone. Given how badly they had parted she would have preferred the honesty of silence. On the card there was a picture of two smiling, coffee-skinned girls in bright striped ponchos with bowler hats on their heads and babies strapped to their backs. Two sisters, maybe, mused Clem, liking the image in spite of everything. Two sisters… or maybe just young mums taking time out between herding goats and fetching water, or whatever the hell young mums did in rural Mexico. She gave the card a last long look before dropping it into the wastepaper-basket and turning her attention to the rest of the pile.

  Two bank statements and a phone bill later, she came across what she was looking for – an invitation from her cousin Theo to accompany him to his college ball in May. ‘If you're free?! Thought it might be fun!’

  Clem gritted her teeth, wishing suddenly that exclamation marks could be banned, or at the very least their users heavily fined. In spite of the exuberant punctuation, she remained in no doubt that her shy, stiff-faced cousin had no one to take to his party and had turned to her as a face-saving last resort. The wastepaper-basket yawned invitingly, but Clem resisted it. She liked Theo. He was clever and kind. When they were children he had always taken her side, even – on the rare occasions that they fell out – against Maisie, who was an intimidating and fearless adversary, felling all comers with her sharp tongue and fiery glare. Picturing his boffin solitariness, his pale, pimply face and earnest brown eyes, imagining the courage – the pride-swallowing – it must have taken to invite her, Clem reached for her pen and a pad: ‘Most honoured – will reorganize work shifts accordingly. Hope I don't have to wear LONG!!!’

  And where was her own courage? Clem asked herself, sealing the envelope and experiencing a fresh stab of regret at not having gone to her aunt's party. Much as her parents irritated her, she felt now a swoop of longing for their familiar faces – her mother's solemn blue eyes, the low rumble of her father's voice – for the easy, comforting business of being a child and feeling cared for, even if she resisted that caring. She thought of Roland too, with whom she'd always got on well, and then of Stephen, her soon-to-be uncle. It would have been the perfect opportunity to take him to one side and confess that she, too, hoped to be a novelist one day, that after eight years of religious diary-keeping she was planning to embark on something more creative and potentially commercial.

  Irritated now rather than sad, Clem rammed the letters back into their cubby-hole and slammed the lid, hating the desk suddenly for being beautiful and reminding her of things from which she was working hard to break free. A ringing emptiness followed. Clem listened to it for a few seconds, then pushed her way out of her bedroom, managing in the process to knock over a music-stand that lived behind the sitting-room door. It toppled, then daintily righted itself, like a skeletal ballerina regaining her balance. Clem kicked it, and watched with some satisfaction as it clattered to the floor, landing neatly between Flora's cello and the battered black leather box that contained Daisy's flute. Their endless practising got on her nerves. In fact, anything to do with music got on her nerves. It reminded her too much of the band – of Jonny, whom she hadn't seen since January. ‘You're overreacting,’ he had said, racing after her when she stormed out of his flat. ‘A bit of snogging behind the science block – ancient history. It meant nothing.’ All of which was so close – so uncannily close – to what Maisie had said that Clem's misery had flared to new heights, fuelled by the ugly suspicion that with their secret out, blown by the casual remark of an old schoolfriend, the pair had got together for a private consultation, agreeing statements like guilty accomplices. Ancient history or not, and Clem still wasn't sure, she felt strongly that it was her history too, and she had had every right to know about it.

  Singing, Clem had since discovered, was connected to joy. Once, she had longed for the times when Daisy and Flora were away so that she could belt out her favourite numbers without fear of a critical audience. Occasionally Jonny, skipping a lecture, would be there too, in an armchair, his long legs folded under him, humming and strumming encouraging accompaniments on his guitar. Probing for a tune now, however, as she moved round the flat, determined to raise her mood before she left for work, Clem felt her throat muscles close in protest. Even taking up a determined stance in front of the bathroom mirror didn't help. ‘Baby, feel my heart, as a part of you…’ All great soul singers were heartbroken in one way or another, Clem told herself, trying harder to relax, to ease out the notes, but managing only a thin, edgy sound, as if some tone-deaf stranger had hijacked her voice-box.

  Gi
ving up, she closed her mouth, then reached for a hairbrush and her makeup bag. A few minutes later, with the support of a little mascara, her gaze had resumed its habitual striking blue glare, and her lips, rubbed with pink, looked more sure of themselves. This is coping, she told herself fiercely, scraping her thick mop of dark hair into a taut ponytail and pulling on her usual work outfit of black trousers and a white shirt. This is being grown-up. It was why she had come to London, why she didn't need anyone, why she was going to be okay.

  By the time the heavy front door of the flat closed behind her, Clem felt ready for anything, even the grizzled American with the thick grey hair who took his usual table by the window and made two coffees last for two hours, watching her as always from behind a haze of cigarette smoke, his eyes like shadows under the arch of his heavy brows.

  Sitting with The Times folded open next to his lunchtime plate of bacon, eggs, sausage and baked beans, Theo read as ravenously as he ate. After an early morning excursion on the river and three hours finishing an essay entitled ‘Jurisprudence – science or philosophy?’, his appetite for relaxation and food was keen. He had an hour before his tutorial with Dr Beresford, a beak-nosed Keble don, who wore livid bow-ties and munched sweets as he taught, sometimes hurling one into his students' laps, whether for reward or his own amusement Theo remained uncertain. After the general dullness of the sixth form at his Surrey boarding-school, he enjoyed such eccentricities as much as he relished fixing his bicycle clips to the bottom of his trousers and pedalling round Oxford's cobbled centre with the proverbial dreaming spires towering around him and his gown flapping behind him like a sail. Many of his peers claimed less contentment with their surroundings; some who hadn't boarded missed home, others worried about intellectual inadequacy or adopted irritating socialist postures of rebellion, too eager, in Theo's opinion, to criticize the institution from which they were benefiting.

  ‘You'll have a heart-attack if you eat that lot.’

  Recognizing the voice of Charlotte Brown, an earnest theology student from Jesus with whom he had managed an undignified, alcohol-inspired fumble at a beer-cellar party a couple of weeks before, Theo took several seconds to respond. Even a less awkward encounter would have been unwelcome. He had been enjoying both the anonymity of the café and an article on terrorist infiltration of London's Islamic community. Having recently started to use some of his precious spare time to work on a film script with a terrorist theme, he had been on the point of making a few notes. ‘Charlotte, how are you?’ He moved his laptop off the spare chair and folded his newspaper. Charlotte dropped her bag to the ground and herself into the chair with a weighty sigh. Clearly she had a cold, Theo observed gloomily, hearing the wheeze in her breath and noting a flaky rawness round her nostrils. He recalled in the same instant, with some astonishment, the fervour with which he had pressed his mouth to hers in the steamy heat of the party. Her lips, he couldn't help thinking, were decidedly unkissable now, dry, and parted slightly to aid in the business of breathing. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

  Charlotte produced a bottle of water from her bag and shook her head glumly. ‘I'm doing a detox thing, trying to drink two litres of water a day. It's bloody hard.’ She began picking at the label on the bottle. ‘I know I look a sight.’

  ‘Don't be silly.’ Theo moved his last piece of bacon round his plate, cutting a neat swathe through the remaining egg yolk. It had been a good egg, spilling a lake of orange the moment he'd touched it with the point of his knife.

  ‘I just…’ She sniffed, then burrowed again in her bag, this time for tissues. ‘You said you'd call and you haven't. I just need to know where I stand, Theo. Is that so much to ask?’ She blew her nose.

  ‘Not at all.’ Theo wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, aware that a prickle of embarrassment illuminated his cheeks. Clem was wrong in assuming he received no attention from girls: he knew he wasn't good-looking in any conventional sense – his hair was too thick and wiry, his eyes too small, his nose too long – but since arriving at university he had had more encounters than he could have dared hope for. It was the follow-up that Theo wasn't so good at: the discovery that he was fussy – though many might have considered him in no position to entertain it. Charlotte Brown, like a couple of her predecessors, with whom he had been more sexually adventurous, did not strike him as meriting the effort of further exploration. Even Isabel Markham, with whose aid he had disburdened himself of his virginity a few months before, had inspired little zest in him for the more pedestrian business of developing a relationship. They had given it a go for a while, with Isabel reading Spanish poetry to him by candlelight and Theo spending more than he could afford on taking her out to pubs and restaurants, but when she had transferred her attentions to a member of a more prestigious rowing squad, Theo had listened to her tearful apologies with something like guilty relief. He liked sex well enough – it had proved empowering for his self-esteem and his body – yet he had discovered that, for the time being at least, he could manage perfectly well without it too.

  ‘Theo? I'm asking where I stand.’ Charlotte drank deeply from her bottle of water, studying him with pleading eyes.

  Theo cleared his throat. ‘I like you a lot, obviously, but…’

  ‘Is there someone else? Is that it?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘That's a bloody shame, Theo, is all I can say, because I thought we really, like, hit it off – all that talking we did about what we like and so on. We had so much, Theo, so much…’ She reached again for her Kleenex, though whether the need was generated by her cold or heartbreak, Theo found it hard to be sure. ‘And you said I could be in that film you were going to make. The lead role, you said.’

  ‘Did I?’ Theo had no recollection of any such invitation and could not conceal his dismay. If his film project ever got off the ground he would want someone willowy and striking for the main part. To have considered Charlotte, with her wide, flat face and cushiony body, meant he must have been very drunk indeed.

  Perhaps detecting some of these uncharitable thoughts in his expression, Charlotte rammed her bottle back into her bag and stood up, so abruptly that her chair tipped over, knocking into a neighbouring table and causing a ripple of chaos in their cramped section of the café. ‘I take it you don't recall inviting me to the Keble ball either?’ she said, once apologies had been issued and her chair righted.

  Theo's dismay deepened. ‘I couldn't have… I've already –’

  ‘So there is someone else. Fine.’ Charlotte tugged fiercely at the zip of her anorak, sealing herself up to her chin. The anorak was padded and silver-coloured, bearing a close resemblance, Theo couldn't help thinking, to body armour. ‘Who is she? Might I at least be allowed to know that?’

  ‘Look, there isn't anybody –’ Theo seized on the notion that the existence, no matter how fantastical, of an alternative girlfriend would provide the cleanest, shortest exit from the conversation and any possibility of further entanglement. ‘She's called Clem and she lives in London.’

  ‘As in Clementine?’ Charlotte laughed nastily, rolling her eyes. ‘My darling Clementine, eh? Well, good luck to the pair of you.’

  Women were a bloody pain, Theo reflected, pedalling past the Parks a few minutes later, hunched over his handlebars so that the top of his head bore the brunt of the icy wind as it cut partings into his hair. And that included Clem, he decided, blocking out any guilty qualms for having used his cousin as a smokescreen. Inviting her to the ball was something he remembered only too well, since it had been done under protest, after pressure from his mother. The poor thing needed to be taken out of herself, Helen had insisted, using the steely tones that served her well with recalcitrant clients. Charlie and Serena, she claimed, clearly relishing the chance to pass on news from the thick of the family grapevine, were beside themselves with concern. Charlie had secretly told Peter all about it. Clem was barely keeping in touch, refusing offers of help on all fronts. Perhaps because she doesn't need any, Theo
had suggested, only to be curtly informed that instead of snide remarks the family should make an effort to rally round.

  Taken out of herself, indeed, mused Theo, pausing at the entrance to the Parks to scan the nearest pitch, where a women's lacrosse match was in full swing. It struck him as an absurd phrase to use, given that being ‘out of herself' was precisely what Clem – albeit in a rather unimaginative way – was clearly trying to achieve.

  An attempt to put this view to his father during the Michaelmas vac, however, had proved as fruitless as trying to argue with his mother. To get grades like hers, then use them for nothing more than waiting at tables was a bloody crime, Peter had thundered, banging the table with outrage on his brother and sister-in-law's behalf. Watching the crockery shake, Theo had wondered what his parents would have said if he had confessed to some of the more rebellious impulses crouched in his own heart: like the simmering resentment he felt at the way his father had handed over Ashley House to his uncle handed over his birthright, without consultation or apology, as if it might have no more significance to Theo than a packet of sweets. Or the urge, vividly experienced for a time, to tear up his UCAS form and apply for a place at the London Film School. The crockery would have rattled then, he was sure, even though his parents had encouraged his passion for film, giving him a video camera at thirteen and applauding all the clumsy creative efforts that had followed.

  The allure of Oxford, however, had proved overpowering. Alighting from the bus in the middle of the high street on the day of his interviews, Theo had stared about him in awe, not just at the obvious glories of the colleges, their towers and walls a glossy gold that day in the autumn sunshine, but at the town-and-gown bustle of city life in which he had wanted, instantly, to play a part.

  Disappointed by the lacrosse players who – apart from a little blonde thing, who never looked his way – were mostly hefty creatures with blotchy thighs, Theo pushed off from the gates and cycled on towards Keble. He parked his bike among a bunch of others along the front wall and went into the porter's lodge to check his pigeon-hole, then hurried across the main quad towards Dr Beresford's staircase. As he walked the wind dropped and the sun slid into view between two clouds, illuminating the quad with the effect of a picture light on a painting. Theo slowed his pace and looked about him with a fresh, joyful sense of belonging. The red-stoned Victorian Gothic grandeur of the place had been a shock at first, so much more imposing than the other more ancient colleges, but now Theo couldn't imagine being – or wanting to be – anywhere else. The sheer scale of Keble's architecture was stimulating: each time he glanced up at its towering dark-red walls he could almost feel the eyes of the college's venerable founders and members watching for how he, this tiny integral link in the chain of history, would make his mark. As a couple of second-year students strolled past, chatting intently, Theo called out a greeting to them, seeking expression for the new exuberance bubbling inside him. The pair, a girl and a boy, smiled acknowledgement, faintly surprised. Theo hurried on, not caring what they thought, not caring what anyone thought, lost, for those moments at least, in an almost visionary contentment with his place in the world. Charlotte Brown, however messily, had been despatched. His essay was good. His body tingled pleasantly from training. He was fit, alert, young, and with more hopes and plans than he could number.