The Codes of Love

by Hannah Persaud

  ‘Do you have time to take this on?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s a little late to ask that, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s a bigger project than I’d thought,’ he says.

  ‘We’re architects,’ she says, letting go of his hand and clapping her hands together. ‘We love challenges, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘Too late to change our minds now. Everything will be fine, you’ll see.’ She loops her arm through his and smiles. ‘I left something in the car, back in a minute.’ He watches her through the window as she walks away across the field, then turns the corner up the pitted road that leads to where the car is parked, out of sight. He lies back and stares at the dark patches of mould on the ceiling. Five minutes pass, then ten. He sits up and now he can’t see more than a couple of metres beyond the window, it’s grown so dark. What’s taking her so long? He pulls on his wellies and his coat and shuffles across the bed to the door, bracing himself against the wind. It’s picked up and the door protests as he opens it. He closes it behind him carefully, wary of the rusting hinges. He fishes the torch out from his pocket and shines it, picking his way carefully over the field that is laced with hidden holes waiting to trip unsuspecting feet. The road is not much better and as he turns the corner he is pleased to see the car still there. He turns his torch off. The lights are on inside the car and he sees the top of Ada’s head, bent down. He’s at the window before she sees him.

  ‘Are you trying to give me a heart attack?’ she says as she opens the door. ‘I thought you were a ghost.’ She slips something out of the glove box.

  ‘I was worried when you didn’t come back,’ he says. ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘I forgot something I needed,’ she says. ‘I’ve only been gone five minutes. Christ, you scared me. Well, it’s good you came, I don’t have a torch.’

  He’s on the edge of sleep when she turns to him.

  ‘I wish we didn’t have to leave,’ she says. He draws her in towards him, his body against her back.

  ‘We’ll be back soon enough,’ he replies. Sleep steals her while he lies awake listening to the owls call across the forest and the creaking of the caravan. He wonders what she was doing back there in the car, and not for the first time he considers how little he knows of this woman who lies beside him.

  Rules of an open marriage #5:

  Be realistic: individual people have different needs

  Years before

  ‘The thing is, humans aren’t biologically programmed to commit,’ Emily said, lying sideways across the bed with her feet up on the wall. Below her legs Ryan shifted position and turned to face her. His shock of dark hair fell across his eyes. She swept his hair from his face and pressed her finger to his lips. ‘Hear me out.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to,’ he mumbled. ‘Can’t we just go for dinner instead? I’m starving. We’re supposed to be celebrating.’ She examined the engagement ring that he’d put on her finger just moments before.

  ‘I just think we need to be clear about what we’re both expecting.’

  ‘Is it too late to back out?’ He groaned and she thumped him over the head with a pillow.

  ‘Idiot.’

  ‘I only want you,’ he said, sitting up and leaning back on his elbows. ‘That’s why I asked you to marry me.’

  She shook her head. ‘You think that you only want me, but once the novelty has worn off your impulses will take over and you’ll be faced with a choice: to endure your life in a perpetually repressed condition or to betray me. I’m saying you don’t have to make that choice. You can have both.’

  ‘Unlike you, Miss Libido, I don’t need multiple partners.’ It’s a long-standing joke between them, her past versus his.

  ‘Thirty-six and counting,’ she’d replied when he asked her how many men she’d been with.

  ‘To my one,’ he’d said, shocked.

  ‘I love you,’ she told him, ‘but this is important: we need to walk into marriage with our eyes wide open.’

  ‘Okay,’ he sighed, swinging his legs out from under hers and climbing out of bed. He bent down and kissed her on the lips. ‘Anything to keep you happy.’

  They married in a register office with two strangers as witnesses, pulled from the street. He wanted a wedding party and guests, but she insisted that it be private. In light of his mother’s disapproval it was probably best. It was more intimate this way. As they went through their wedding vows, their witnesses exchanged glances. The list of rules relating to their open marriage was long.

  ‘There are so many of them,’ Ryan had said in horror when she showed him, ‘isn’t this a bit over the top?’ When they emerged as husband and wife into bright sunshine, the witnesses scuttled off onto the crowded pavement without congratulating them.

  ‘Some people,’ Emily giggled, standing on her tiptoes and kissing him. ‘It’s our life.’

  Rules of an open marriage #6:

  We will help each other to better understand ourselves

  London, January 2016

  ‘Thank fuck that’s over.’ Ryan swings the bags into the boot and slams it shut. He sits beside her on the passenger side. Emily’s turn to drive.

  ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ she says. The same conversation, year after year.

  ‘I don’t see how it could be worse.’ He winds his window down as she pulls away from the kerb. ‘Your psychotic sister and her brooding boyfriend, two family arguments in fifteen hours. Your father couldn’t even be bothered to come out and say goodbye.’ He reclines his chair, flicks on the radio. She sees her sister waving from outside her ex-council flat, Matthew standing behind her.

  ‘I think it’s better sober,’ Emily says. ‘Gives you more perspective.’

  ‘The idea of tolerating New Year with your family sober is a bleak prospect indeed. It’s so miserable here,’ he says as they drive through the estate.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘Anyway it’s not like it would be any better spending New Year with your mother,’ she says.

  ‘That’s low.’ He flicks through the radio stations. She hates it when he does that. ‘Southfields is ruined by tower blocks,’ he says.

  ‘Not everyone is an award-winning architect, darling. When did you become such a snob, anyway?’

  ‘Next year I’d like to spend it with Sam and Tom,’ he announces, settling on Classic FM. Emily laughs.

  ‘I’m sure they’d love that, New Year with their ageing dad, shimmying around on the dance floor.’

  ‘Less of the old, please,’ he says. The tension cracks between them. ‘Anyway, clubbing is so last century. Now it’s moody lounge bars and vaping, dissecting the parodies of celebrity culture and berating our politicians.’ She joins the South Circular. Sober on New Year’s Day: it’s a revelation.

  ‘Maybe I’ll give up booze,’ she says.

  Ryan groans. ‘Please don’t. It’ll be so boring.’

  ‘Are you saying I need alcohol to blind you with my dazzling wit?’

  ‘You need it so I can blind you with mine.’

  ‘True,’ she says. He slaps her thigh.

  ‘I’ll start tomorrow. I’m out tonight,’ she says.

  ‘And here start the excuses … Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m out with Adeline, remember?’ She’s been looking forward to tonight; they’ve been trying to arrange an evening since they met at the awards ceremony, but Christmas scuppered their plans.

  ‘Adeline?’ he says, sitting up straighter. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why are you having dinner with her?’

  ‘Can you shut your window please?’ She can’t hear a thing above the traffic. This early on New Year’s Day and it’s already heaving. He winds it up.

  ‘Why are you having dinner with her?’ he repeats.

  ‘I like her, why else? She seems fun, which is more than I can say for most of the company we keep.’ Ryan sighs loudly.

  ‘I need the window open,’ h
e says, ‘I need fresh air.’ It’s pathetic; at forty-something he should know his limits.

  ‘Christ, Ryan, why didn’t you stop at the first shot?’

  ‘It was the only way I could bond with Matthew. You should be grateful I make the effort to connect with your brother-in-law.’

  ‘He’s not – they’re not married, remember?’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot about Sarah’s phobia of commitment. Completely illogical, if you ask me,’ Ryan says. ‘What is it with you and your family?’

  Emily thinks of her father and his affairs. Her mother completely defined by his indiscretions and his secrets. His lies. She spent her life hoping that he would change and he did not. Each time her mother found out about another lover, her faith in the world collapsed. Only late in life did her mother seem happy, her father resigned, as if old age had done for him what restraint could not. Arthritis and aggregated years reducing his opportunities in concentric circles until the circumference of his world became his home and his wife, at last, the centre. Her mother died not long after. All that waiting – for what? Emily and Sarah hated their father as children for what he did. But later Emily began to understand the fault was not his alone. Her mother wanted something he couldn’t give.

  ‘Why did you stay with him?’ Emily asked her once.

  ‘It was the seventies – it was what people did,’ her mother replied. ‘Anyway, I loved him.’ Emily decided then that if she ever committed to marriage it would be with her eyes wide open. No secrets, no false promises. The idea that sex and emotion were intertwined and dependent was ridiculous and dated.

  ‘She’s entitled to her views on marriage, dear husband. Not everyone wants to be the other half.’

  ‘But she is though, that’s my point, whether she likes it or not.’

  ‘More cohabiting couples stay together than married couples, and more than a third of married couples cheat, did you know that?’ She can feel his eyes on her and the space between them solidifies into a physical thing, demarcated by the gear stick and the coffee cups.

  ‘You do realise that means that almost two thirds manage not to?’ Ryan says. Emily scoffs.

  ‘See? This is the language that surrounds monogamy. Manage. Endure. Like it’s a test of resistance. And people who survive it think they deserve a medal. For what?’ She glances sideways at Ryan, whose jaw is twitching.

  ‘Well, I know all about cheating,’ he says.

  Emily accelerates around a truck and pulls aggressively back in front of it.

  ‘Let’s not do this again, really? It’s a new year – can we just forget the old arguments?’

  ‘Far too much is made of the New Year, in my opinion,’ Ryan says.

  ‘Why do you have to do this now?’ she says.

  ‘Do what? You started it,’ he says.

  ‘I think you’ll find you did,’ she says, ‘when you … anyway, you know what, you do it all the time. Just because you’re hung-over and feeling crap, you don’t have to bring me down with you.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Goad me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I’m just sick of you referring to yourself as the damaged party. “I know all about cheating.” What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what it means.’

  ‘Do I?’ Emily says. ‘You should never have agreed to it if you weren’t comfortable with it. It was in our vows.’ A white Audi shoots out from a side road right in front of her and she removes her foot from the accelerator. That was close, just inches. Ryan hasn’t noticed and his mood seems to be getting worse.

  ‘I didn’t agree with it,’ he says. ‘I told you when we got engaged that I didn’t want the rules or the bloody arrangement.’

  ‘I think I’d remember something like that, don’t you?’ she asks.

  ‘Do you have go out tonight?’ he asks, changing the subject. ‘We could watch a movie and get takeaway, start the New Year cuddled up …’

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to tonight,’ Emily says. ‘We can do that any other night when I don’t have plans.’ Irritation pulses at her temple and she brakes hard as a bus pulls out in front of her. ‘And for the record, for the millionth time, the very definition of cheating is to act dishonestly and there’s nothing dishonest about what I do because I’m open about it, and we agreed upon it from the beginning. Did you know that only forty-three out of two hundred and thirty-eight societies across the world are monogamous?’ Emily says. ‘There’s a reason for that.’

  ‘It’ll come to a bitter end,’ Ryan says, staring out of the window morbidly.

  ‘God, you’re a pillar of light.’

  ‘Go on,’ Ryan says, ‘I’m waiting … England is outdated in its views on monogamous relationships compared to Italy and France.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Emily says, shifting gear, ‘though I don’t endorse the execution of affairs as secrets. True liberation is where we don’t have to apologise for being human.’

  ‘Some humans don’t need external validation,’ Ryan says.

  ‘It’s not about validation,’ Emily says. She looks sideways at him. He looks so glum that she has an urge to shake him. Sometimes she wonders if he might leave and sometimes she thinks she wants him to. She can’t imagine life without him, but …

  ‘But what?’

  ‘What?’ She must have said it aloud. ‘Nothing.’

  He won’t leave her; he will honour his wedding vows no matter what he might say in between. She reaches across the divide between them and puts her hand in his lap.

  ‘I do love you,’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ he replies.

  He opens the window again.

  ‘Where are you off to tonight?’ he asks.

  ‘Dulwich Village.’ Petrol fumes catch in her throat and wind blows her hair in her face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tonight. Dinner at the Italian followed by drinks at the Fox.’

  ‘I can’t hear you …’

  ‘Followed by rampant sordid sex with strangers in the park.’ She can’t help herself sometimes.

  Maybe next year they can do something different for New Year. She’s always overtired in January, swamped with essays to mark, drained by the chaos of social engagements, gift buying and family politics. It was a low jab of hers earlier, not his fault that his father disappeared years ago and that his mother is slipping slowly but surely into old age. Cocooned in her care home, she knows that Ryan feels guilty that his mother is there. But the thought of her mother-in-law living with them had been untenable to them both. She’d be unbearable to live with. Plus she hates Emily, so the decision was a non-starter. When they first got engaged they drove six hours to tell his mother and on Emily’s way back from the bathroom his mother had grabbed her arm and said, ‘He always picks girls like you – girls who can’t be tamed.’ There were blue bruises on Emily’s wrist for days. Over two decades of marriage later, his mother still hasn’t changed her mind about her. Emily simply isn’t good enough for her son.

  Back home Sam and Tom are hung-over, though they won’t admit it. Slow movements and glassy eyes betray them. They’ve done a good job tidying up behind them and the house shows no sign of the party that rocked it until the early hours. In the bathroom bin Emily finds a used condom. Though both the boys are legally entitled to have sex, the thought of it makes her nauseous. Ryan mocks her selective Victorian values. He’s right: she should be pleased to see a condom – proof of sensibility, at least. The boys have ensconced themselves in front of the TV in the lounge and are watching back-to-back Star Wars.

  In the shower she shaves her legs and armpits, washes her hair. She thinks of the way that Ada laid a hand on her leg at the awards ceremony. It could have been accidental, but it didn’t feel like that at the time. After some deliberation, she waxes her bikini line. It’s been too long since she had a girls’ night out. Her younger self would have been horrified to be presented with the idea that she’d only go out once every couple
of months. Age has brought cynicism and caution. She’s been burned attempting to navigate the social labyrinth of parenthood, with egos and judgement around every corner. The playground in particular was a terrifying place. ‘A breeding ground for alpha females,’ Ryan had remarked years ago, ‘and subservient men.’ There is some truth in this; formerly independent men cowed by their wives, brought out as Rottweilers where needed. Turning instead to the contacts that her job as a writer and later lecturer provided, she’d been more sociable, though more recently acquired friendships feel shallow. More comfortable in the company of men than women, she divides them into two categories: those that she sleeps with and those that she doesn’t. More than once she has been accused of being insensitive.

  In the mirror she checks her teeth, her tongue, runs grey charcoal above her eyes. Her phone beeps and she checks; it’s another text from Leo, the fifth of the day. Can I see you this evening? In a fit of frustration she replies. I’m out with people my own age and you should be too. She hits Send.

  It’s a short walk from West Dulwich to the restaurant and she’s nervous, an unfamiliar restlessness in her limbs. She’s aware of cold damp patches beneath her armpits. She hasn’t seen Adeline since the ceremony and has no idea what to expect. She wonders if she mistook Adeline’s friendliness for something else and cringes at her surge of excitement when she got her text.

  The grandeur of the college looms on her right, quiet now for a few days more before the children return from their holidays and parties, Tom and Sam among their number. Her boots click against the pavement. Turning the collar of her jacket up against the biting chill, she crosses beside the park. Relics of Christmas are strung through the air, stars and tinsel decorating the sky. She crosses the road to the restaurant, drawing lungfuls of cold air as she composes herself. Assume it is nothing other than a friendly drink, she tells herself, it’s safer.