The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  There was a path in the trees, hard to follow in places because of the bracken and brambles sprouting on all sides. Keith picked up a broken branch and used it to beat back the worst of the green tentacles, more for the pleasure of wielding a stick than because he needed to. The lake appeared as he rounded a bend, glistening under the open sky like some huge looking-glass. It was such a lovely sight that it took Keith a few seconds to register that he was not the only one enjoying it. The old bird, Mrs Harrison, was there too, standing in her wellies on the edge with her back to him, both arms looped through what looked to be a heavy basket, her silk headscarf fluttering in the breeze.

  Keith was debating whether to retreat or call a greeting when, stiff-necked, her gaze fixed on the far bank, she began to wade into the water. He watched in astonishment, waiting for her to stop, wondering dimly if he was witnessing some weird rural ritual that was normal to grand families with grand houses. But she kept walking until her mac was floating round her hips and the weight of whatever was in the basket tipped her forwards, like a feeble boat losing its balance. Keith dropped his stick and leapt clumsily through the tangle of long grass, bracken and nettles that still separated him from the water's edge.

  ‘Hey! Mrs Harrison! Hang on! What are you doing?’

  She stopped, half turned her head, then sank lower still, with a soundless grace, as if she were merely bending her knees rather than out of her depth. By the time Keith had wrenched off his fleece and trainers the water had lapped over the trailing tip of her headscarf so that it pointed like a dark arrow down between her shoulder-blades.

  ‘Mrs Har– Christ!’ The water was achingly cold. Keith pushed at it with his knees, gasping as it splashed up his stomach and chest. Only when his feet sank into the thick muddy bottom, which squelched between his toes, sucking him down, did he remember that he could not swim. The word ‘impossible' slid into his brain. He turned back for the bank. There would be a long stick, surely, a coil of rope – something. But as he turned the old lady – or, at least, the last visible bit of her – sank below the surface of the water. The lake closed over her in an instant, like the magical healing of a wound. ‘Mrs Harrison!’ Keith croaked, weeping now. He took another big stride, at which point the sludgy ground sucking at his toes, keeping his own head above water, disappeared. It was like stepping off an invisible cliff, with no time to brace himself, no instant in which to gulp some preparatory air before the water swallowed him. For a few long moments Keith flailed wildly, forgetting the old woman, forgetting everything but his bursting lungs. I'm going to die and it's right, he thought. But then, out of nowhere, came the recollection of what Serena and Charlie had lost already and he fought the water more steadily, groping downwards to where he imagined Pamela might be. A moment later his fingers made contact with something soft, a straggle of weeds, then something much harder – the fucking basket! It weighed a ton and the old biddy was still clinging to the handle – clinging as if her life rather than her death depended on it. Had his kicking legs not found a foothold at that point, a miraculous solid something on which to perch among the reeds, Keith might have had to return all his efforts to saving himself. But he was able to stand – to take a breath – and then, because he was strong, to duck down and pull the basket, which was full of stones, from her grasp. After that it was easier. He plunged again finding first a fistful of sodden cardigan, then an arm and finally her waist. A couple of minutes later he was hauling Pamela on to the bank, a wet, spluttering bundle now, all the silent stiffness gone. But when she looked at him, through bloodshot eyes, it was with an expression so much more akin to horror than gratitude that Keith wondered, even in the extraordinary trauma of the moment, how monstrous it was that some treasured lives were fought for and lost, while others were so wilfully thrown away.

  ‘Could you take two deep breaths for me, please? That's it. In and out. Slowly. And again. That's it. Back pain – all pain – is a funny thing, you see. It starts with an injury, sometimes something very small, then increases as the muscles tighten to protect it. Then, because everything is out of kilter, the rest of the body moves differently to accommodate it, which can start a chain of other problems. Before you know it you've damaged something else. I've seen it time and time again, a sore ankle or hip, say, which stems from an unsolved problem in the back for which the sufferer has subconsciously been compensating. Looking at your stance now…’ Peter heard the physiotherapist take a step backwards ‘… your entire body is leaning slightly to the left. Did you know that?’

  ‘Nope.’ Peter felt meek and foolish standing there in just his trousers, being studied like a beast in a zoo. On arriving at Delia Goddard's Richmond house – far more splendid than he had pictured in spite of Cassie's exuberant description – he had been half hoping to be sent packing with a couple of stretching exercises and a prescription for some decent painkillers. Whatever was going on between his shoulders certainly hadn't got any worse. In recent days he'd only noticed it if he turned sharply without thinking or sat for too long in one position.

  ‘You're compensating for the pain.’

  ‘Am I? Right.’ Peter began to fold his arms, then hastily let them drop to his sides as she had instructed. He stared out of the window, trying to lower his right shoulder. Two fat pigeons were on the lawn, one pecking at the ground as the other strutted round in circles, puffing out its chest and ruffling its feathers.

  ‘So, there was no specific moment when you felt the injury occur?’

  ‘No… That is… Peter tried to remember the evening session in the gym before Cassie and Stephen's party. ‘I did my usual – the bike, the rowing machine, a few weights – and it just sort of stiffened up afterwards. It's nothing like as bad as it was – though I had a tough game of squash the other week, against my nineteen-year-old son, which probably didn' help.’

  ‘Who won?’ she inquired, with a chuckle, straightening the paper sheet covering the consulting bed and indicating that he should lie on it face down.

  ‘Me,’ Peter shot back, absurdly glad that the question had been asked.

  She washed her hands at a basin in the corner of the room, then returned to the bed. ‘Tell me when you feel pain. It's hard, I know, but if you could relax…’ She pressed her fingers down either side of his spine, starting at the base of his neck, then working outwards across his shoulders. ‘I think it's here, isn't it?’ She pressed a little harder at a spot just below his left shoulder-blade and Peter, struggling to relax, flinched involuntarily as an agonizing spasm pierced his upper back. ‘Sorry. Yes, I thought so. Very tender, isn't it? But easily fixable, with a little ultrasound, a little common sense…’

  ‘Common sense?’ Peter grunted, his mouth full of the papery sheet.

  ‘The correct exercises, a little rest, some anti-inflammatories, no more squash matches against teenagers.’ Her hands continued to work, painfully, but also soothingly. ‘Now this will be a little cold,’ she warned, a few minutes later, spreading gel across the afflicted area and pressing some buttons on her ultrasound machine. ‘You should feel a little prickling – nothing too bad.’ She rolled an implement over the gel. ‘So, you're Cassie's brother,’ she remarked, after a couple of moments, her tone light and conversational now.

  ‘That's right. She recommended you.’

  Delia laughed. ‘Well, that's good because I've recommended her to several people – such a good eye… It's one thing knowing how you want a place to look and quite another having the innate wherewithal to achieve it. A real talent.’

  ‘She's getting married,’ Peter said, relaxing as he got used to the pinpricks rolling across his back. ‘To a chap who writes detective stories.’

  ‘Is she? That's nice. And do you have just the one child?’

  ‘No, we'e got three. A recently turned five-year-old, a thirteen-year-old and the squash player. What about you?’

  ‘Married, one child, currently on his gap year. Once upon a time I was in marketing but took time out after maternity
leave, then retrained as a physiotherapist when Julian started school. I never did understand women who can make a career of motherhood. I'd have gone mad if I hadn't found something else to do – baking cakes, coffee mornings, not my thing at all.’

  Peter chuckled. ‘My wife's exactly the same, although…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well… she works hard and there's our little one, Genevieve… It sometimes feels like we never get a moment to ourselves.’

  ‘And then, if you're not careful, you get a moment to yourselves and don't know what to do with it.’

  Peter was still wondering how to respond to this when the machine beeped and she began, with swift, firm strokes, to wipe the gel off his back with a tissue. ‘There. Now I'm going to stretch you a bit – nothing too drastic, I promise. If you could begin by putting this arm up here… like that… and the other down here…’

  These manoeuvres were interrupted by the jaunty ring-tone – hosen for him, with some insistence, by Chloë – of Peter's mobile.

  ‘Sorry.’ Peter tried to sit up. ‘I thought I'd turned the damn thing off.’

  ‘No worries. Take the call, if you want. I'll get it for you. Is it in here?’ She trotted to the chair over which he had draped his clothes and fished round in his jacket pockets. ‘Believe me, I'm used to it. My husband only turns his off when he goes to sleep. But that's corporate lawyers for you.’ She hurried back to the bed and handed him the phone.

  Peter turned on his side to take the call, frowning as he recognized the Ashley House number and wondering what on earth Serena could want from him on a Friday afternoon.

  ‘Bit of a drama here,’ said Charlie, who had jumped on a train to Sussex the moment he'd received the news about Pamela. ‘Sorry, Peter, tried the office first, expect you're busy, but it's Mum.’

  ‘What's happened?’ Peter heaved himself up on to one elbow.

  Charlie, his usually jovial voice flat and grey, pressed on: ‘She appears… Christ, Peter… the fact is she appears to have tried to take her life.’

  ‘She what?’ Forgetting Delia, who had made a tactical withdrawal to her desk, and his back, Peter sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed and pressed the phone to his ear. Charlie proceeded to deliver an account of the morning's events, pieced together from Serena, Keith and Ed, all of whom were now clustered in the kitchen keeping an eye open for Dr Lazard's black Vauxhall. Pamela had been given brandy and put to bed where, amid mumbling apologies, she had lapsed into fitful sleep.

  ‘Christ! The lake? Stones? What the hell…? Thank God she's all right… and thank God for Keith. Jesus, this is unreal! Look, I'll come down at once, okay? I'll sort things out this end – talk to Helen and so on. I was taking the afternoon off anyway. I'll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Delia, quietly, raising her face from her papers and watching as Peter lowered the phone.

  Peter looked at her, trying to focus. The columns of flowers on the walls of the consulting room were spiralling madly in and out of his line of vision. He had to go, obviously, put his clothes on, excuse himself, but somehow he couldn't move. He opened his mouth with the intention of explaining this – apologizing for it – and found himself saying instead, ‘My mother has tried to kill – to drown herself. We've got this lake, you see – or, rather, we have this big family house where my brother lives, with our mother. Our father died a couple of years ago, and I suppose she… Christ!’ Peter looked at his watch, then at the phone. ‘I ought to go. I must go.’

  ‘No.’ She had materialized at his side and placed a steadying hand on his arm. ‘At least, of course you must go, but not before you've had something – a cup of tea, a whisky. We've time left, and I haven't got another patient till four. Call your wife. I'll put the kettle on.’

  A few minutes later she returned with a mug of tea and a small glass of whisky, by which time Peter had left a message for Helen, who was in a meeting, and put on his shirt and shoes. He had tried to put on his tie but had been prevented from completing the task by a curious trembling that began at his elbows and travelled down to his fingertips. He stuffed the tie into his pocket and examined his hands in some amazement, as unnerved by this evidence of shock as the appalling news that had prompted it. Normally he was up to any crisis – knew just what to do and say, whom to call. It was why he was so effective in the courtroom, why, when there was any family drama, his siblings turned to him for advice, relying on him to lead the march, show them all the way through. ‘That's very kind,’ he murmured, taking the drinks from Delia and swigging the whisky first, swallowing a good half in one gulp.

  ‘Come to the sitting room,’ she suggested gently. ‘It's much more comfy.’ She led the way along the hall and into a chic conservatory-style room with leather furniture, a marble floor scattered with rugs and a glass wall that overlooked a platform of handsome decking, covered with terracotta pots of trim bay trees and rosebushes.

  ‘I really should be going,’ muttered Peter, sitting down and sipping his drinks.

  ‘You stay right where you are until you're ready.’ Delia crossed the room and stood looking out at the garden, arms folded. ‘My brother killed himself,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘Out of the blue. Secret money worries, which turned out to be nothing when we looked into them. Stupid bastard. It still makes me cross.’

  ‘Cross?’ Peter glanced up in surprise. He felt upset, guilty even, but anger hadn't yet occurred to him.

  Delia turned to him, the colour rising in her cheeks. ‘It is the most selfish of acts. He left a wife, two children and a family all banging themselves over the head, wondering what they could have done to prevent it. Whatever we go through in our lives – however unhappy we are – we have a duty of care to those around us… There are ways of finding fulfilment without damaging those closest to us. Don't you think?’ She was staring fixedly – passionately – at him, her eyes shining.

  Preoccupied as he was, Peter sensed at once that this display of feeling, while emanating perhaps from the recollection of losing her brother, was connected to other, more immediate, more personal things. Confused, he dropped his gaze to his shoelaces. ‘Your own brother… How awful. I'm so –’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ she murmured, unfolding her arms. ‘I only told you because I thought it might help.’ She left the window and came to sit next to him. ‘Your mother's okay, then?’ Her crossed legs, he noticed, were a couple of inches from his knees. Shapely legs, he couldn't help observing, hitherto concealed by the panels of a plain black skirt. Peter looked away. It felt criminal to make such an observation at such a time and in such circumstances, yet… something about her manner, the way she was presenting herself – opening herself – seemed to invite it.

  ‘Apparently she's, er, she's in bed resting, my brother said… not offered any explanations as yet… in shock, of course.’ I, too, am in shock, Peter reminded himself, wanting to account for his renewed stammering, when in fact the whisky had settled his nerves. His hands, resting on his thighs, felt normal now – more than up to the trickiest of ties. His heart, on the other hand, appeared to have embarked on a private gallop towards an invisible finish line. Because of what? A set of decent legs? Surely not. Like any man he had an eye for a good female body: Samantha Harding, one of their junior barristers, had a stunning figure – he had joked with Helen several times about how it helped to disarm judges and get juries on her side. No, something else was going on, something intense and intangible, almost as if an invisible veil of intimacy had floated down from nowhere and was ensnaring him in its folds.

  The timing of Charlie's phone call was in part to blame, Peter decided, hunting frantically for explanations. It had introduced a personal note into what should have been a thoroughly impersonal encounter; and then, of course, he had dealt with it badly – talking when he should simply have taken his leave, then accepting the invitation to move from the clinical safety of the consulting room to the contrasting sensuality of the wide brown leathe
r sofa. Sitting at Delia Goddard's desk half an hour before, answering questions, he had noticed only a woman in her late forties, with a sensible coiffure of dyed blonde hair and a figure that was neither remarkably thin nor fat. Now, however, he could see that the physiotherapist's hair was prettily coloured with streaks of ash and honey – several strands had fallen into her eyes, which she made no attempt to brush away – and her eyes, without the enhancement of makeup, were a soft, sultry green and ever so slightly slanted. Like a cat's, he thought, slamming his palms decisively against his thighs – slamming away the thought – as he stood up.

  ‘I've taken up more than enough of your time.’ He gripped his empty glass and half-drunk tea. ‘My family need me,’ he added grandly, looking over her shoulder out of the window, ransacking the patio for some solution to his discomfort. ‘We're a close family, very close indeed.’

  ‘How lovely,’ Delia replied, so normally, so enthusiastically, that for a few glorious moments Peter wondered if all the weirdness had been conjured by his own wild imaginings. He was in quite a state, after all. His dear mother, a paragon of contented endurance, an exemplary light in all their lives, had tried to commit suicide. The shock of such news might warrant all sorts of forgivable insanity.

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Seventy-eight – no, nine… Almost eighty.’ Peter studied the remains of his tea, which was strong and very tasty. Earl Grey, maybe, or some related blend. A single tealeaf floated on the surface, bobbing against the rim.

  ‘Are you sure you don't want to finish it?’ All the strangeness was there again, not imagined at all. She was standing so near to him that Peter felt the need to rock back slightly on to his heels.