The Codes of Love

by Hannah Persaud

  ‘Isn’t it tragic?’ Ada says, catching up with him, ‘that once survival depended on this stuff?’ She holds out an iron hinge. ‘The railways would have been the arteries of the country and now they’re forgotten and rusted.’ She pulls a weed out from the rim of a wheel. ‘All those people thinking they were building longevity and prosperity and their efforts ended up like everything else, damaged and redundant.’ Ryan glances at her sideways.

  At Barmouth they find a pub and sit outside it on a wooden picnic bench overlooking the water. The sun is warm, though there is a ripple of ice beneath the breeze. He holds Ada’s hand across the table and she lets him.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m wondering what you’re running from?’ she replies.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he says.

  ‘This. You.’ She throws her arm towards the water and the sunlight catches her golden hairs, her arm strong and tanned from the summer. Ryan shakes his head.

  ‘I could ask the same of you,’ he says.

  She continues. ‘First me, then the cottage. What next?’

  ‘I’ll remind you that the cottage was your idea. The seduction too.’ All those months ago at the awards ceremony, after Emily left. The sheer force of her energy as she touched him. He wonders if flesh loses sensitivity over time. Whether a body becomes weary with the same repeated touch.

  ‘You didn’t object at the time,’ she says.

  ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he says. Feeble but true. He removes his hand from hers.

  ‘You have everything you need. You’re rich and successful. Two sons, a beautiful wife,’ she says, exhaling her breath slowly through her front teeth, emitting a soft low whistle. Her sadness sweeps across the table.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Emily?’ he asks.

  ‘Months ago,’ she says, carelessly. He’s frustrated by her alternately verbose and ambiguous statements.

  ‘Did you two fall out?’ he asks, biting his tongue to stop himself asking more.

  ‘Not really.’ She sighs. ‘Sometimes you meet someone and you think they’re really special, you know, that it could be the start of something, and then you realise that you were just seeing what you wanted to, and you start to wonder if you just imagined it all in the first place. Seeing things because I want them there – it’s the story of my life.’

  Her lengthy answer unnerves him and he fiddles with the zip of his coat and shifts position on the bench. He feels his pulse beating in his neck. She tilts her head back and squints at the sky, running her fingers through her hair. She twists it into a bun and snaps an elastic from her wrist onto it, securing it.

  ‘What happened to you, Ada?’ he asks. She inspects her fingernails. He’s glad that they are out in the open and in full sight. That he is forced to measure his words carefully.

  ‘I’ve given you everything I am capable of giving,’ she replies finally. ‘What more do you want?’ she says finally, laying her palms open upon the table, facing the sky. ‘Blood?’ The honesty of the moment is usurped quickly by this, and he’s angry.

  ‘That’s not fair and you know it,’ he says, aware of a twitch flicking in his left eye. ‘You’re impossible. Every time I think we’re getting somewhere …’

  ‘Getting what, Ryan?’

  ‘Every time I think I might be capable of understanding you—’

  ‘It’s all about you, isn’t it? Why’s it so important to you that you understand me? I’m not a fucking puzzle. You want to dismantle me piece by piece until there’s nothing left of me. If you had your way I’d be reduced to fragments and then you’d what? Compartmentalise all your favourite parts? Get rid of the bad bits, fix them?’ She looks straight into his eyes and he feels the filaments of her anger in the air. ‘Guess what, Ryan, I am an accumulation of the smaller parts, that’s what makes me whole. You don’t get to play the martyr and come along and fix me. I don’t need fixing. I won’t fit in your fucking box. Sometimes I can’t breathe around you.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to fix you.’ He’s had this conversation before with Emily. This is what he does. ‘All I want is some honesty,’ he says. ‘Have you been coming here without me?’ He thinks of Huw referring to the Crown.

  ‘If you wanted honesty you shouldn’t have started an affair in the first place,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sick of the riddles. I don’t know what to believe,’ he says. He thinks of the Jammie Dodgers and the neighbour’s comment. ‘I have sacrificed my family for this. Tell me something that makes sense.’

  ‘There is no big reveal, Ryan, no great dark secret. Sorry to disappoint you.’ She is crying and it’s the first time he’s seen her do so. She brushes tears away with the palm of her hand.

  ‘Ada, I …’ He reaches for her but she turns away.

  ‘I think we should have some time apart,’ she says.

  Across the estuary sailing boats cut through the water towards shore, signalling the end of the day. Sunlight skitters across the broken surface and vanishes behind a cloud. Bells clang in the distance. He wishes he were out there with the wide sea beckoning, the narrow mouth of the estuary soon behind. The distance between them is too great to cross. He sees it clearly.

  Rules of an open marriage #18:

  Be willing to reassess the open arrangement

  London, June 2016

  The rituals families create to reassure themselves. An annual holiday; a Christmas-tree routine; a Halloween party. Traditions that hold them together like determined glue. Since the boys were born they’ve had an annual family holiday and this year is no exception.

  Emily chose Annecy in France because there is cycling and hiking and a huge array of water sports.

  ‘We could go sailing in Dorset,’ Ryan suggested. She always hated sailing. It made her feel sick. She had no aptitude for it either.

  ‘There’s something for everyone here,’ she told Ryan, though now they’re here it’s apparent that the one thing that Ryan needs is not.

  The journey was interminable, the four of them trapped in the car for eleven hours. The Channel crossing was delayed and they’d been held up inside the tunnel due to signal problems. She’d stood leaning on the car looking out of the windows of the tunnel into the black space that was intermittently laced with lights and fire exits. She tried hard to forget that they were boring through the ground with the mass of the English Channel above them. When she was younger she’d imagined the tunnel to be see-through, a supersized aquarium with fish peering in. A mass of boats above her. Now she’s glad that she can’t see a thing, finding solace in the invisible.

  The apartment they’ve rented is up in the mountains and Cézanne’s landscape sprawls out below. Lake Annecy stretches as far as the eye can see and beyond the small clustering of hotels and restaurants around the edge of the water the mountains rise majestically. She anticipates elongated days spent paddleboarding and swimming, cycling and hiking. Some, however, have a different view. ‘Punishment,’ Tom said yesterday, moping in Ella’s absence. ‘Solitary confinement,’ said Sam. It’s a forty-minute walk to the lake and they’ve done it once, giving up before they reached it. ‘Too hot,’ they said. ‘Spoilt,’ she commented to Ryan, who ignored her. Ryan is distracted. So much for the hours of board games that she’d envisaged, idling days spent reading in companionable silence. She’s missing a past that they’ve never really had. It’s a fabrication in her head. When did they ever play board games? Not even when the boys were small. Two days down and five to go and she’s angry again because it’s clear that though she has brought Ryan hundreds of miles away, his other woman is right beside him.

  She proposed a no-screen rule for their time here, but the response from the others was as if she’d suggested abstaining from food. It’s quiet when they’re all occupied. She checks her email once a day in the morning with a sense of dread. The WiFi is slow and the sender’s name appears before the messages. Leo Sawyer. Three messages sinc
e yesterday. She hasn’t seen him since their night in the hotel, nor responded to his messages. Hundreds of his words she has deleted and committed to cyberspace. Their arrangement is concluded and Schopenhauer’s theory proven, as far as Emily’s concerned. It’s over. Leo has withdrawn his allegations and her name is cleared at work. Officially. Her boss was surprised, though knew better than to ask questions. She thought that would be it, but then the emails started. They’re all the same. Declarations of love and accusations of penance. An insistence that they had something true. Callous, he called her. Heartless. She feels weary. This holiday is her celebration of the withdrawal of his complaint and he is tainting it. Not that Ryan knows about it. She’s doing a good job of pretending that she’s having fun, at least. A far better job than Ryan is.

  Emily thinks of Adeline. She couldn’t have predicted the way that things have unfolded. Adeline was insistent that they meet again after that night in Peckham but Emily refused. She ignored her calls. Adeline is everything that Emily longs for: freedom and instinct, cold-blooded desire. She is the ice-sprung fist of lake water and the screaming of muscles up a trail. A few days later Adeline turned up on their doorstep when Ryan was at work. This time Emily was ready, and willing to fall. She knew what she wanted and she owned it. She explored every inch of Adeline’s body and it felt like coming home. Afterwards she held Adeline close. No more guesswork. One foot in front of the other; Emily was writing this path. She felt free. Emily hadn’t realised that she’d been waiting for this release. Adeline is the persistence of the sunshine reflected in the water.

  ‘Come on, we’re going to be late,’ Emily calls as she throws the sun lotion and water bottles into her bag. She’s persuaded them to join her for a family experience of paragliding.

  ‘Hardly a family experience if we’re each strapped to a separate instructor,’ Tom complains as they set off in the car.

  Driving is a thrill as they wind up steeply to the Col de la Forclaz, which they will take off from. On the right the hillside drops steeply away towards the azure-blue lake while the road grows steeper. In Montmin they park the car and weave between the tourists and cyclists. It’s a fifteen-minute hike uphill to the Col and although it’s not yet midday, the sun is warm on their backs.

  ‘Where do we land again?’ Sam asks.

  ‘Doussard,’ Emily replies, ‘over there.’ She points towards a barely visible area of flat land in the distance, on the west side of the lake. Tom shields his eyes and squints.

  ‘What if they miss the landing spot?’ he says.

  ‘They’re experienced, Tom, they know what they’re doing,’ Emily replies.

  ‘An instructor died last year on a solo flight,’ Ryan contributes. ‘Forgot to do up one simple strap and whoosh, free fell to the ground.’ Emily bites her lip.

  ‘Accidents can happen at any time,’ she says. ‘Think like that and no one would ever do anything.’

  ‘Or maybe they just wouldn’t go paragliding,’ Sam adds. The narrow path broadens to a wide, flat area cluttered with instructors and nervous-looking punters. Children and partners sit along the bank on the right. Intermittently the tension picks up as the next paraglider prepares to take flight. Emily watches carefully, memorising the technique. There’s a lot of time spent on straps. Ryan is silent beside her.

  ‘Could you at least pretend you’re having fun?’ she whispers.

  ‘How are we going to get back from Doussard?’ he says. ‘Our car is here.’ Shit. She hasn’t thought that far ahead. Doussard is miles away.

  ‘How about I skip the gliding and meet you down there?’ Ryan grins, and she wants to smack him.

  ‘We could get a bus,’ she replies.

  ‘Or I could drive to Doussard?’ Sam offers.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Ryan and Emily chorus together.

  ‘Look, it’s no big deal, I can go another time,’ Ryan says. ‘You lot have fun and I’ll see you on the other side. Keys?’ He holds his hand out. Emily slams them into his hand with more force than necessary. He leans forward to give her a kiss. She turns a cheek and receives it coolly, furious. She prides herself on her meticulous planning and now the whole experience is ruined.

  ‘Anyone else want to abscond while they’ve got the chance?’ she says. Tom opens his mouth to reply but closes it quickly. Sam shakes his head.

  ‘I’ll wait and see you off,’ Ryan says, setting off for the grassy bank where spectators sit.

  They are introduced to their instructors: all men, Emily notices. Why do men still dominate adrenaline-fuelled sports?

  ‘Are you nervous?’ her instructor, François, asks.

  ‘Not at all,’ she replies, irritated by his tone. She can tell that Tom and Sam are though, Sam by his paleness and Tom by his lull in complaining.

  ‘It’s okay, you’ll be fine. You wouldn’t be doing it if it were unsafe,’ she says. Sam snorts in reply. ‘It’s an adventure – try to be excited,’ she adds.

  ‘There’s got to be better ways of having an adventure than throwing yourself off the edge of a cliff,’ Tom says. In the distance Ryan waves his hand and smiles, giving them a thumbs-up.

  ‘I bet if Ella were here you’d do it gladly,’ Emily says. She knows it’s cruel.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Sam says, pulling at the straps that have just been adjusted around his chest.

  ‘Sam, don’t mess with those,’ Emily says.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he insists. ‘Get them off,’ he snaps at his instructor, who looks to Emily for guidance. She shakes her head.

  ‘Life is full of things that scare us. We’re doing this. It’s all paid for and you are committed.’

  ‘Well I un-commit,’ Sam says, stamping his foot. People are starting to stare and Ryan is heading towards them now.

  ‘What’s up?’ he says to Sam.

  ‘We don’t want to do it and Mum won’t listen,’ Sam says. Ryan turns to her.

  ‘Look, Em, this is supposed to be fun, if he doesn’t want to do it then …’ She takes a deep breath.

  ‘We all do things that we are scared of. Don’t pander to fear.’

  ‘Fear is a safety mechanism in humans,’ Tom chimes in. ‘It’s when we ignore it that we are at risk.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she says quietly, just loud enough for them to hear. ‘What’s wrong with you all?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Ryan says loudly, and the conversations around them fade.

  Emily flushes. ‘Get them out of this kit,’ Ryan says to the closest instructor, gesturing to Sam and Tom. ‘We’ll see you in Doussard,’ he says to Emily.

  So now she’s here alone on the edge of the mountain, 1,250 metres up above the lake that spreads below them with an instructor pressed against her back. He’s telling her to run. Fear fists in her throat. Her claustrophobia is kicking in and the urge to shake him off is strong. She’s strapped to him so tightly that the ropes dig in to her thighs and shoulders. There’s nothing to do but follow his instructions. ‘You okay?’ he shouts in her ear.

  ‘Never better,’ she says, forcing a smile and running until the ground falls away beneath them.

  They’re waiting on the field in Doussard and as soon as her feet touch the ground Tom comes running over. ‘How was it?’ She is unable to speak, so nods her head and smiles.

  ‘If it was that good then why are you crying?’ Sam asks. Ryan approaches nervously, fiddling with his hat in his hands.

  ‘Em?’ he says. She clears her throat.

  ‘All good,’ she replies. There was a moment there when she was floating between land and air. She was weightless and free.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Sam says after she’s been released from the instructor. ‘That wasn’t fair, leaving you like that.’

  ‘It’s fine, Sam, really,’ she says, and she means it.

  Holiday over and back in England and the only good thing about returning is Adeline. First Ryan announces that he is going to visit his mother for a few days next month. Emily wouldn’t
begrudge this if it were true, but she knows that it is a lie, not least because the night before he tells her she accidentally picks up the phone to her mother-in-law and is subjected to a fully fledged rant about sons and the rapid demise of the mind with old age. Though it was not remotely coherent, Emily did sympathise with the essence of the complaint, which was neglect.

  Next Emily spots Leo loitering at the end of their road one evening when she is walking back from the shops. She recognises the shape of his body and the slope of his shoulders. He is on the phone, head down. She’s wearing Sam’s sweater and pulls its hood up, walking faster, her heart pounding. She hasn’t had an email from Leo for days, which is unusual. No text messages either. But the next day she spots him, and the next. Each time she leaves the house her stomach clenches.

  Rules of an open marriage #19:

  Look after each other in sickness and in health

  London, Friday 14 October 2016

  It’s been three months since Ryan last saw Ada; not a phone call, not a word since they agreed to have some time apart. This doesn’t feel like space, it feels like amputation. The days have dragged themselves forwards. There have been positives, though. He’s been around for the boys through the summer and taken Sam to university in Durham.

  Emily’s moved into her sister’s temporarily with Tom. No words of fire have been flung between him and Emily. He hasn’t felt comfortable pushing for anything greater than small acts of civility: the occasional family dinner, a pub lunch in the sun. If she’d been around, Emily would have noticed that it’s over between him and Ada, but he’s barely seen her. He wonders if there is someone she’s seeing, but he doesn’t ask, unsure what he’d say if there was.