Jessica watched, chewing her lower lip and feeling awkward, as Serena tipped the pastries on to a large serving plate decorated with blue and gold flowers. ‘Pretty, isn't it?’ her employer murmured, pausing to stroke the edge of the plate. ‘Hand-painted. An ancient wedding present from some distant relative to my husband's grandparents.’
Jessica smiled politely, though inwardly she felt cross about the glare she had received for swigging the wine. One drink was hardly a big deal. In the same instant she recalled how bloody amazing she had once thought all the Harrisons were, with their big house and polite talk. It wasn't until she hit her teens that she realized the only difference between her and them was money and all the good fortune it brought with it. She didn't think any of them were amazing now, except perhaps Ed, whom she'd always liked best, ever since he had devoted an entire July afternoon to teaching her how to do kick-ups with a football. She was sure he'd have forgotten it now and, in a way, she hoped he had because she had been so useless – anything to do with sport, and bits of her body tried to go in different directions. That day Ed had persisted for hours in spite of these handicaps, being funny and patient and kind, and telling Roland and Chloe to piss of when he spotted them spying and giggling behind a bush. Even now, five years on, the memory of that hot afternoon, the pleasure and pride of being defended by Ed, with his skinny legs and Arsenal shirt, made Jessica feel funny inside.
The change in him since those days was remarkable. The skinny legs had thickened and lengthened so that now he was several inches taller than his dad. The football strip had been replaced either with the smart suit trousers he was wearing that day or baggy designer jeans, slung so low on his hips that he looked like he had no bum at all, and exposing a good four inches of his underpants. He had one of the latest phones too, one that could go on the Net and take pictures, and a mini iPod with neat little white head-phones that would cost Jessica half a year's worth of Saturday wages, if she could be bothered to save for that long. All of which made the old feelings of liking him more complicated: part of her wanted to tell him to go to hell while another part didn't because he was right to think he was cool. In spite of his designer clothes and expensive gadgets he was never remotely stuck-up like his cousin Theo could be, or his twin sisters, for that matter – she remembered them going round the place holding hands, sniggering behind their long hair like members of a secret club.
‘Wow,’ remarked Ed, when she returned with his drink. ‘My lucky day, is it?’
‘Might be.’ Jessica grinned, enjoying the way he was looking at her.
‘I was thinking of slipping off to the pub later. Do you want to come?’
‘Dunno.’ She frowned, looking suddenly anxious and much closer to six than sixteen. ‘Granddad's cooking tea and then I've got to get the train back to Wandsworth. I work Saturdays, in a hairdresser's.’
‘Do you? Mine will need a cut soon – would you be up to that?’ Ed ran his fingers through the vertical wall of his fringe, keeping an eye on her expression. The ratio of girls to boys at the Chichester sixth-form college where he had persuaded his parents to let him do his A levels had proved disappointingly uneven. The decent ones had boyfriends already. The rest were ugly, or stuffy, or tediously conscientious, particularly now with their exams just a few months away. Jessica with her lippy comebacks and Saturday job was a breath of fresh air.
‘Cut that lot?’ Jessica giggled, playing for time, reluctant to tell him that all she ever did was run the broom over the lino and wash the thinning scalps of the purple-rinse brigade. She was still deciding how to answer when Charlie, concerned for the canapés, tapped her shoulder and suggested she circulate a little more widely. ‘And you should be helping look after our guests,’ he scolded Ed, giving his son a fond rap on the head, ‘instead of flirting with the waitress. Have a word with your uncle Peter, while you're about it. He's kindly offered to look into a work placement for you in the holidays. I know law might not be your thing but it would look good on your CV and might help you make up your mind about university courses.’
‘Great,’ said Ed, doing his best to look earnest but wanting only to avoid a parental diatribe on his lack of plans for the next four years. He couldn't think beyond his A levels, which loomed in view like a range of mountains, blocking out any-thing on the other side, good or bad. A recent careers talk on the armed forces had stirred dim thoughts of joining the Royal Marines, or even the SAS, but not convincingly enough for him to share them with anyone else.
‘Ed?’ His father was still standing, arms akimbo, like some sort of bodyguard, waiting for him to move.
‘I'm going, okay? Unless you want me to leave these like this?’ Ed gestured at the fallen pile of CDs, as if their state of disarray was a matter of profound concern, when all he really felt like doing was giving them a good hard kick: a gesture of his annoyance at being treated like a five-year-old.
Pamela, still on the sofa, was experiencing the horrible blankness that came over her when she was tired. A stream of kindly people had taken it in turn to talk to her: first Cassie's nice young man, Stephen Smith, who she knew wrote crime novels, though she couldn't remember any of the titles; then Cassie, radiant as a bride-to-be should be, brimming with impossibly detailed questions about her and Stephen's wedding plans. Should the marquee be attached to the cloisters or stand free on the main lawn? Would the banns have to be read at St Margaret's as well as at her and Stephen's local church in Camden? How many heaters would they need to shield two hundred people from the inclemency of January? Was velvet appropriate for bridesmaids' dresses? Pamela had done her best, regretting that she was too weary to manage the proper mother–daughter repartee owed to such a momentous subject. She regretted, too, that her youngest had taken so long to decide on her Mr Right that John would not walk her down the aisle.
‘Mum? Did you hear what I said?’
‘Oh, Cassie, darling… yes… yes, of course. I was just thinking about all those clever detective stories Stephen writes and how that would have thrilled your father. He loved a good book.’
‘Yes, he did.’ Cassie had sighed both at the memory of her father and the waywardness of her mother's thoughts, which drifted hopelessly, given half a chance. ‘Here, I've got something for you,’ she continued, pressing a starched white envelope into Pamela's hand. ‘We debated long and hard as to whether to hand them out today, then thought it would give everyone something to look forward to. It's a housewarming, too, though we haven't put that on the invitation.’
Pamela, unsheathing the gold-embossed card announcing the engagement party, had struggled to look pleased. ‘How lovely,’ she had murmured, kissing Cassie's cheek, but not managing to think beyond the two long car journeys that a party in London would entail, how her spine and bladder would ache, and all so that she could endure the strain of feeling left out or in the way.
Two of Alicia's bridge companions had approached to offer thank-yous and goodbyes. Mabel and Iris. Or had it been Mavis and Irma? Pamela closed her eyes, experiencing a sharp stab of fear at the way the edges of her life were losing their certainty. Contrary to all the platitudes about time and healing, life without John seemed, if anything, to get harder as the weeks and months ticked by. She longed more and more for the world they had shared for six decades, a world of distinct shapes and sequences, in which she had felt both commanding and at ease. Charlie and Serena were kind but it wasn't the same. Nothing was the same.
Her forgetfulness didn't help, of course, descending always when she was tired and could most have done without it. At such times the simplest words or thoughts could sit, tantalizingly unreachable, in some dark corner of her brain, remembered but not remembered, like a confused dream.
When Pamela opened her eyes Roland was sitting next to her.
‘Hi, Gran.’
‘Roland, darling, you sweet soul.’ Pamela grasped his hand and squeezed it, fighting the urge to cry at the sight of him, so grown-up and beautiful. ‘I miss you, darling,’ she
said tremulously. ‘I loved it when you and Mummy lived at Ashley House.’
Roland smiled patiently. This was a familiar theme. The period to which his grandmother referred had been when he was ten and hadn't lasted long. And they had not lived in Ashley House but had lodged in the barn conversion until the settlement of his parents' divorce, when he and Elizabeth had moved to a cottage near Midhurst where he now went to school. ‘We liked it too, Gran, but we're not far away, are we?’
‘No, and you visit us whenever you can, I know.’ Pamela let go of his hand and stared at the sea of faces in the room, all of them looking suddenly disconnected and unfamiliar. ‘Are they all here?’
‘All who, Gran?’
‘The other children… the… your… cousins.’ Having struggled to find the word, Pamela released it with a little gasp. She kept her gaze pinned on Roland's kind brown eyes, aware that she was having one of her bad patches and willing him to help her out of it.
‘Ed's here,’ said Roland, gently. ‘He's over there, talking to Uncle Peter.’ He pointed across the room.
‘Ah, yes, of course.’ Pamela hesitated, listing Charlie and Serena's four children in her mind. But no longer four, she reminded herself, because darling baby Tina had been killed by that hateful motorbike. Which left the twins, Maisie and Clem, nineteen now, or twenty? ‘And Maisie and Clem, are they here?’
Sometimes the fact that his grandmother was losing her marbles made Roland feel too sad to try to talk to her. At others it simply tried his patience. But since Ed was being anti-social and the grown-ups boring, he did his best, telling Pamela things she knew already, content to be talking to someone instead of staring into space with his orange juice. ‘Maisie's gone to Mexico to teach English, but she's coming back in the autumn to go to university. Clem is…’ Roland tailed off. Clem, as he had discovered from several overheard snippets of conversation between the adults, was a cause for concern. Unlike her twin sister – and in spite of equally excellent A-level grades – Clem had shunned the notion of further education and traded the comforts of Ashley House for a poky flat in Camberwell where she divided her time between working in a wine bar and singing in her boyfriend's band. Which sounded fine to Roland. Hopeless at exams himself, he had already set his heart on heading to London and art college. When the dullness of country life got him down he sometimes fantasized about what making such a move would entail – sharing digs with Clem, perhaps, or wearing outrageous clothes and shaving interesting lines into his hair. He was fond of all his cousins. To him, as an only child, they were almost like siblings. He had spent many happy hours sharing rooms and bath-water with them all during family sojourns at Ashley House when his grandparents, instead of his aunt and uncle, had been in charge. Clem, in spite of her moods, had always been a favourite. She didn't talk much but she didn't make demands either – not like Maisie, with her know-it-all defiance, or Theo, with his seriousness and scary brain-power, more like a middle-aged man than a nineteen-year-old.
‘Clem couldn't make it,’ he said eventually, ‘and Theo's in Oxford.’ Seeing bewilderment cloud Pamela's face, he rounded off this summary with the observation that Theo's two little sisters, Chloë and Genevieve, were probably at home in Barnes with Rita, their nanny.
But you're here,’ said Pamela, clinging with some desperation to this simple fact, fearful of the darkness awaiting her on the other side.
‘I'm here,’ echoed Roland. He let his eyes drift from the imposing portrait of his grandfather to a much smaller still-life on the wall behind the sofa. A vase of pink roses, two oranges and a pear. The colours were electric but the objects looked as if they were floating in mid-air, revolving round each other like planets in search of a moon. A bad picture, Roland had always thought, relishing each time the certainty of his opinion. Many things in life left him giddy with doubt – subjunctive verbs, his mother's mood-swings, the recent alien feel of his childhood friend Polly's tongue in his mouth but when it came to art the ground felt solid. With art he just knew things, like where to move his pencil or brush on the paper, which colour to mix with which, where and how firmly to press his thumb into a lump of clay to tease out the life crouching within…
His grandmother had fallen asleep. Her chin lolled on to her chest and loose wisps of thin white hair from her bun were falling over her face. Roland reached out a hand to nudge her awake, then withdrew it. She looked a little silly, but also rather peaceful, he decided. He slipped a small cushion behind her head.
By the time Helen set off for London it was already quite dark. Peter, waving in his shirt, shivered with cold. He watched until the rear lights of the car disappeared round the bend in the lane, then stood in the drive for a little longer, his jaw and fists clenched against the icy February night, while his heart swelled with the curious blend of pleasure and dissatisfaction that seemed to characterize so much of the business of being a father to young children. Each morning, escaping the mêlée of breakfast and school run, he sat in the leather seat of his BMW, tuned into John Humphrys and felt a similar confusion – at once regretful that he wasn't indispensable and grateful that, with the formidable organizational skills of Helen and Rita, he didn't have to be.
Now, turning back to the house, Peter found himself fondly picturing the scene as it would unfold in their handsome Barnes home that evening – Genevieve catapulting her tea across the table and Chloe flouncing, as only Chloe could flounce, about television or sweets or how late she could stay up – bewildered by how he could long for something yet at the same time grateful to be absent from it.
The steps down to the front door were slippery with evening frost. Peter felt his way gingerly, holding on to the slim tree trunk Sid had erected as a handrail and pondering what wonderful, incomprehensible things families were, millstones one minute and life-saving anchors the next. He would call Helen later, he decided, apologize again for being short-tempered. He would try to explain how wanting a night away didn't mean he wouldn't miss them, how nothing, not even Ashley House, was quite the same without them at his side.
Peter grinned when Cassie emerged from the drawing room with her arm looped through Stephen's. He'd always had a soft spot for his little sister, the baby of the family, no matter how their respective ages advanced. The relief and pleasure that at last she should have found the man with whom she wanted to share her life was beyond words. When she had asked him, that afternoon, pulling at his sleeve and whispering shyly, if he would walk her up the aisle, he'd been almost too choked to speak.
‘Off so soon?’ he exclaimed, in dismay, noting that they were already in their coats.
‘Afraid so. Lots to do and all that.’ Cassie released Stephen's arm and gave her brother a hug, having to reach up because even though she was in her high-heeled suede boots he was so much taller. ‘But you're coming to our party, aren't you, you and Helen?’
‘Of course,’ Peter assured them warmly, shaking Stephen's hand. ‘Wouldn't miss it for the world.’
‘It's not just to celebrate us and our new house,’ explained Cassie, happily, ‘Stephen's just signed a new contract for three more books.’
‘Cassie, really!’
‘Have you? That's fantastic. Congratulations.’ Peter turned to his soon-to-be brother-in-law with genuine admiration, liking the man all the more for having made no mention of it during their various exchanges that afternoon. Coping with the Harrisons en masse couldn't be easy for anyone, he reflected, let alone a quiet sort like Stephen who, from what Cassie had told them, had nothing comparably rowdy or solid in his own background. ‘More detectives?’
‘Still the same one, I'm afraid. Good old Jack Connolly.’ Stephen made a face. ‘Nothing to threaten the Booker shortlist. Pays the bills, though,’ he added, offering the sort of man-to-man look that he knew would be appreciated, while anxiety about his capacity to steer his character through yet more implausible adventures churned in his mind.
‘Okay, who's ready for a pint?’ called Charlie, striding along the hall
to join them, battling with the inside-out arms of a tatty brown anorak. ‘Lizzy and Roland have already scuttled back to Midhurst, Ed's cycled off to a friend's house and Serena says she's too whacked to go anywhere.’
‘We're away too, I'm afraid,’ said Cassie, blowing him a kiss as Stephen steered her out of the front door.
‘So that leaves you and me.’ Charlie beamed at his brother. ‘I thought we'd walk, unless…’ he glanced at Peter's smart leather shoes ‘… you'd prefer to drive. Trouble is, I reckon I'm already over the limit. Christ, funerals give me a thirst – black hats, doom, gloom, ghastly things.’
‘I'll drive,’ said Peter at once. ‘It's freezing out there and I've only had one drink.’
Crossing the landing to fetch his coat, Peter noticed that the door to his mother's bedroom was open and the light on. She was lying on her back, fast asleep, a cup of untouched murky tea on the table next to her. Peter studied her for a few minutes, tenderness flooding his heart. As he was reaching to turn off the light her eyes fluttered open. ‘John?’
‘No, Mum. It's Peter.’
‘Oh, darling, of course… Just for a moment, I thought… So silly.’ She closed her eyes again, so quickly and heavily that Peter, switching out the light and closing the door quietly behind him, wasn't sure she had been awake.
Ed, cigarette in one hand and pint in the other, had a fraction of a second in which to register the appearance of his father and uncle before he ducked into the corridor by the phone-box and lavatories. Jessica, similarly equipped, but with a Bacardi and Coke instead of beer, didn't react so quickly. She looked at Ed's disappearing back and then at the bar, uncertain what to do. Catching Peter's eye, she waved, and Charlie waved back. ‘All right over there?’
The Simple Rules of Love Page 3
