The Codes of Love

by Hannah Persaud

  Rules of an open marriage #8:

  Agree how much time we’ll spend apart

  London, June 2016

  Ryan throws himself heavily into the driver’s seat and slams the door. He doesn’t look up at the front door, where he knows Emily to still be standing. They’ve argued again, her anger clinging to his skin. He’s running late and will hit rush-hour traffic. He wanted to arrive in Wales before it got dark. If he’d left just ten minutes earlier he could have avoided opening the nine gates in the dark.

  ‘When are you back?’ she’d asked as he headed for the door.

  ‘Monday,’ he replied.

  ‘Right.’ She’s so stressed these days, not helped by her job, which makes her miserable.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said. As he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, she’d recoiled.

  ‘Like what?’ she said, knowing full well what he meant.

  ‘That. That face.’

  ‘How would you like my features arranged as you go off to see your mistress?’ Her words are barbed wire these days, designed to slice.

  ‘Emily …’ He’d leaned forward again, but she ducked and he stumbled.

  ‘It’s too much,’ she said. Every sentence delaying him further.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘All of it. You’re not even trying to hide it.’ He stared at his feet. ‘I thought we had rules,’ she said. ‘You know we do. What happened to no repeat performance?’

  ‘How do you know I’m not seeing different people?’ he asked, aware as soon as the words were out what a ridiculous concept this was for someone like him.

  ‘I know you wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s not you.’

  ‘How convenient! You committed me to a set of rules that you knew would only benefit you. How selfless.’

  ‘You’re off every two weeks – it’s too much. I’d like you to stop seeing her.’

  ‘What, just like that?’ he said. She nodded.

  ‘It’s not what we agreed on.’

  ‘Not what we agreed? Sod what we agreed,’ he said. She looked at him like he’d shot her. ‘For twenty-two years I’ve tolerated you off doing whatever you wanted whenever it suited you. Listened to you telling me things I didn’t want to know, until finally you stopped telling me.’

  ‘The rules are there for a reason,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought it would be over by now, would fizzle out,’ she said.

  ‘Did you ever feel guilty for the pain you caused me as I watched you gallivant around?’ he asked.

  ‘If you didn’t like our arrangement you shouldn’t have agreed to it in the first place,’ she replied.

  ‘That’s unfair,’ he replied. ‘It was agree or lose you. A no-brainer.’

  ‘It’s more than a quick fuck, isn’t it?’ she said, refusing to meet his eye. He nodded. ‘Trust you to fall for her.’ She’d flung open the fridge then and poured a glass of wine, downing it in one gulp. ‘Go then, be happy.’

  ‘All of this was your doing in the first place,’ he’d shouted. ‘Your great idea. Fuck the fact that marriage has survived as an institution for centuries, sod the fact that you love me, or did.’

  ‘Have you not listened to anything I’ve said about marriage?’ she said

  ‘Emily and her great ideas, rewriting the rules of love. What happened to loyalty and sacrifice?’

  ‘It was to protect us from failure.’

  ‘Did it never cross your mind that we could have made it work, that we could have been one of the couples who have a happy marriage?’

  ‘Everyone thinks they’re different at first, Ryan, it’s the whole trap of the thing. People get married to prove that they’re different, better. Then when it doesn’t work out, they’re broken and expecting everyone else to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘Well, congratulations on proving that we’re better than everyone else – you got what you wanted, didn’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t want this,’ she said, gesturing to his bag. ‘Why would anyone want this? We haven’t made love since Venice, for God’s sake, it’s been months.’

  ‘So it’s about sex, then? Really? I’m sure you’ll find a willing candidate to satisfy you – you always do. I’m pretty sure you’ve been with others since Venice, anyway.’ He remembered the night she crept in a couple of weeks ago, straight into the shower. The way she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. He’s learned these things about her; her deep sleep after sex, when usually she struggles.

  ‘There’s a difference,’ Emily hissed, ‘between what I do – and what you’re doing.’

  ‘The only difference is love,’ he said, and as soon as he said it he knew that it was true. He couldn’t look at her, wouldn’t.

  Three months ago he’d have thrown his bag down and embraced her, delighted that she cared. Three months ago he’d have ended it with Ada for this. Now the thought is inconceivable. He’d turned away and picked up his bag from beside the door. He’d thought of the cottage and its crumbling stones and the task ahead. The mountain air that fills him with light. The joy etched in the forest. But Emily wasn’t done.

  ‘I was a fool to think you’d be capable of being a good husband, a good father. How could you be, given what happened to you?’ She spat the words out and they hung in the air between them, ugly and mean. He slammed his fist down on the kitchen counter hard and felt the skin split on his knuckles.

  ‘I’ve been nothing but a good husband to you and a good father. Everything I’ve done. There’s nothing of me left. The bloody daily grind of it!’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry it’s such an obligation. At least you’re being honest,’ she said. ‘At last.’

  His chest shuddered under the pressure of restraint, and when he had looked up she was in control again, her eyes dry, her jaw a determined line.

  ‘I’m simply asking you to go away less often. The boys miss you. They need us too, you know. They’re in the middle of exams, for God’s sake. Did it ever occur to you to put them first?’

  ‘Are you really going to do this?’ Ryan said. ‘Use the boys as a guilt trip? ‘

  ‘We’re not exactly the best example of love,’ Emily said. ‘You get to go away once a month tops, from now on. Otherwise I’ll tell the boys, and I’m sure you don’t want that.’ And there she was, his ice queen. She didn’t want him around more for herself, couldn’t even pretend to care. It was a power play. And he had thought for a moment that she wanted him, that she cared. He should have learned by now. He knows that once a month at the cottage is not enough to do all that needs to be done. They will never get it ready for winter. He yearns only to be there. But of alternatives, what? An ugly divorce, the disintegration of all that he has worked for? He had looked at her pale thin face then, seeing the anger coiled in her shoulders.

  ‘Hey.’ Sam had wandered into the room. How much did he hear? ‘You off somewhere?’ he had asked, taking in Ryan’s bag, his coat.

  ‘Just for the weekend, kiddo,’ Ryan said, cuffing Sam on the shoulder.

  ‘You work too hard,’ Sam had replied, taking a biscuit from the tin and heading back towards the lounge.

  ‘Deal,’ Ryan whispered as Emily opened the door and ushered him out, refusing to meet his eye.

  Driving calms him. There’s reassurance in the rhythmic hum of the engine and the mechanical shifting of the gears. He gets stuck on the motorway behind an accident and the journey takes him eight hours. He passes the wreckage, contorted metal strewn across the road and a barricade around what used to be the driver’s side. He wonders if the driver made it, whether someone somewhere is losing a father, a mother. Traffic is diverted when they close the lane and he drives for hours down country roads, hurtling into the darkness. The gates on the final stretch seem endless and he loses count, surprised when he reaches the end of the track to the cottage. It’s due to be surfaced tomorrow, so for now he swings the car under the trees at the top and hauls his
rucksack from the car. It’s raining again and he’s soaked through within minutes. The trees on either side are indistinguishable from the cloudy night, the starless sky. Shining his torch bought from a service station on the way, he navigates his way to the caravan.

  The cottage is on his right now, the window reflecting his light. He catches a glimpse of himself, a middle-aged man with a backpack. A second light behind him in his reflection has him checking his back, but when he turns again there is nothing but the bristling branches of the forest. He remembers the person Ada saw a while ago and dismisses the thought.

  The caravan door jams and he wrenches it open, the smell of damp hitting the back of his throat. When he puts his hand on the bed he can feel it too, seeping through the cotton. The sooner they can get out of here the better. Ada arrives tomorrow, but for now he needs to sleep. He strips off and locates the thermal pyjamas he left under the pillow. He finishes the tumbler of whisky he has poured and climbs between the covers. He longs to bring Sam and Tom here; it’s been years since they spent time outdoors like this together. It’s been so long since he held them. He had thought he’d be useless at being a father, but from the moment Sam was born he knew he could do it, make it work. Emily had found it harder. They’d pull through somehow, stronger because of it, he told himself at the time. Now he’s not so sure. Perhaps they’ve been in gradual decline and he hasn’t noticed.

  He wakes up coughing before first light, his throat dry. Inhaling, he sits. He can’t shake the sense of something stuck behind his windpipe. A spider, perhaps. Who knows what creatures have made this their home in his absence. Moss grows in the crevice of the door beside his head. The forest is awash with birdsong. A cuckoo calls. He is lethargic and disoriented, his movements slow.

  He makes a coffee on the gas burner outside and sits at the camping table. Beside him sheep laze in the grass, unbothered by his presence. Above the brush of the trees a rumbling approaches. Standing, he shields his eyes from the sun to see a lorry trundling slowly down the broken road. Today it’s getting fixed. He feels a twinge of sadness for the isolation of the cottage that will soon be lost. Pulling on his trainers, he walks to meet the man who heads towards him.

  ‘Morning,’ Ryan says.

  ‘Morning. Is Ada here?’

  ‘Not yet, but I’m Ryan, her better half.’ She should be here by now – where is she? What if something happened, an accident or worse?

  ‘Adam – pleased to meet you. Gorgeous spot you’ve got here. Been doing these roads for years now and never knew there was a house down here.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Nice to see you putting it back on the map. We’ll get started, then.’

  ‘What’s the process for today?’ Twenty years of designing houses and he doesn’t know how a road gets tarmacked.

  ‘Base layer of large-grade aggregate first, that’s what this beast is for.’ Adam gestures to the lorry. ‘Heated wheels to mould it into place. Got men coming shortly with the roller, pack it in. Then top layer of smaller aggregate, smoothed out. Easy.’

  ‘Do we stay off it for a few days until it sets?’

  ‘Nah, hour or so’s enough to let it settle. Long as you don’t accelerate too hard on it, or spin your wheels.’ Adam laughs. ‘You don’t look like the spinning-wheels type, though.’

  ‘I’ll let you get on with it then,’ Ryan says, mildly offended. ‘Shout if you need anything.’

  Back at the caravan Ryan empties his rucksack onto the bed, searching for the list he’s printed out that Ada sent. Days are broken into hours, even coffee breaks accounted for. The only gaps are at the beginning and the end of the day, where the wild things are, he’d teased her. He walks over and stands in the front of the cottage. Each time they return he holds his breath, as if it might have disappeared in his absence. It looks injured, its doors and windows boarded with ply and the roof sealed with bright blue tarpaulin. The act of repairing it has rendered it sad. Work’s started on the underpinning to stabilise the foundations and steel ties arrive tomorrow to stop the lateral spread in the walls. A beam to reinforce the crog loft will mean that soon a new staircase can go in. Getting mains and electricity connected will happen last.

  He walks and places his hand against the stone wall beside the window, then his cheek. He imagines that he can hear it breathing and creaking inside. It’s impossible to hear anything through these walls. The lorry has started layering the gravel and the forest buzzes at the sound, birds erupting in flocks from the treetops. Down the valley he hears cattle calling. It’s a day for the beach, for the sea. He inhales the salt-tipped air.

  Ada should have been here hours ago. I’ll be there at first light, she’d told him yesterday. It’s unlike her to be late. He texts her. There’s not much for him to do. He was right to hand the project management to her despite initial reservations. He’d never have found the time to plan this, or have made the time, as Ada is fond of saying. What could be keeping her? Last time he’d noticed a grazed bruise, just below her collarbone, mustard yellow and fading but still distinct. ‘I’m clumsy,’ she’d said when she noticed him looking.

  ‘We’re all about the present,’ Ada insists, ‘everything gets altered otherwise.’ It would be nice to know her better though, to understand what makes her tick. It wouldn’t be so bad if things changed a little, now that they’re committed to the cottage, would it?

  ‘Ryan?’ Adam calls him over. He walks to the edge of the road, which is now black and steaming. The whole landscape looks more solid, as if it’s been filled in.

  ‘We found these,’ Adam says, holding his hand out. Ryan looks at the faded silver bullets and takes them in his hands, feeling the warm weight of them against his skin.

  ‘This area was used for target practice in the Second World War,’ Adam says, ‘Perhaps they’re from then. I found them when we were prepping the ground and thought you might like them as a memento. After all, they belong to you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ryan says putting them in the pocket of his shorts. He feels them banging against his thigh as he walks up to his car. He wants to check the news on the radio, just in case.

  Switching on the engine, he opens the windows and the doors. The dry, hot air escapes and up here above the valley a welcome breeze blows in from the sea. He reclines his chair and flicks the radio on. He closes his eyes. More reports on the impending Brexit referendum. He flicks to the travel station: jams on the M5, an accident on the M32. He thinks of the accident last night, haunted by a shoe he saw lying a few metres from the car.

  He flicks the radio off, then on again, then off. One, two, three times. He sits on his hands, frustrated. What is wrong with him? The number doesn’t make a difference to anything. He hasn’t done this for years, not since he was a child. His mother had brought it up at their lunch last week, her belated birthday treat.

  ‘You were such a funny child,’ she’d said, studying him across the table. ‘Always so superstitious – counting things, repeating them.’ Her face, once beautiful, is now a rouge-dotted clown’s; eyeliner a centimetre out, her lipstick slipping down her chin.

  ‘Her eyesight’s going,’ the nurse told him, ‘but she’s proud and won’t be helped.’

  Her slackened skin stretches across her bones like dried glue.

  ‘I was worried for a while, you know,’ she’d said, reaching out a vein-tattooed hand and placing it on his, ‘thought we’d messed you up good and proper.’

  ‘No Ma,’ he’d replied, lying, ‘you did fine.’ Nothing can be changed or undone. Not her fault that she married an arsehole who beat her. Who beat him.

  ‘Best thing I did, getting rid of your father.’ She patted his hand twice.

  ‘No Ma, he left us, remember?’ She shook her head slowly, adjusted her brooch.

  ‘Always did like to contort the truth didn’t you …’

  ‘It’s Ryan, Ma.’ He likes to tell himself that her confusion is down to age, but he knows that it’s not. She’s been reinventing things s
ince he was a boy, recalibrating a palatable truth.

  ‘Of course, Ryan who has Emily. How is she, anyway?’ He wouldn’t enter into this on her birthday. He shrugged.

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Don’t worry, dear, I can tell she’s left you, always knew she would. You’re better off without her anyway. Always did go for the wild ones that you couldn’t catch.’

  ‘She hasn’t left me Ma, she’s fine; at home with the boys.’

  She’d leaned closer over the table. ‘I can tell these things, you know,’ she’d whispered, and tapped her nose.

  He’d forced himself to smile.

  It’s too hot despite the breeze. If Ada were here they could go to the lake together, dive into the clear blue ice water that steals breath from the body. Back down the broken road the engines are silent. Closing the windows, he locks up the car and walks down the hillside, taking care to keep to the edge of the drying tarmac. Along the sides of the road shorn branches and brambles lie in piles, casualties of the day. Hearing a rustle, he pauses, peering through the leaves and branches; there is a deer, frozen mid-step. Its eyes meet his before it bounds away out of sight. What else is living just beyond them, watching? They’ll come back tomorrow, the men tell him, to finish up. It’s safe to drive on. Its neat edges and smooth surface sit incongruously against the rugged surroundings. He wishes they had left it well alone, this hidden spot that is now tempting to people from the road.