The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  ‘That's wonderful, darling, thank you. And how have you been?’

  ‘Like I said… fine.’ Clem fought annoyance with her mother and herself, for not being more communicative, more glad. ‘And you lot, Dad, Gran… everybody there… are you all okay?’

  ‘We… we… That is to say, yes, we are all fine too.’

  “Bye, then.’

  ‘'Bye, darling. Hope to see you soon. Just let us know.’ A moment later Clem's phone beeped with a fresh text message: ‘Gran tried to DROWN herself in the lake. She's ok. Thght u shd no. Pis cum soon. Luv Ed.’

  Since when, Cassie asked herself, had the world become so populated with pushchairs and pregnant women? When she had been walking to the tube station with Roland that morning, the streets had been full of young parents, jogging behind buggies, and expectant mothers in low-slung trousers and short T-shirts, showing off their taut white bulges to the April sun; showing off to her, Cassie had felt, as if the entire female world was bent upon some conspiracy to make her feel empty and unbabied.

  Then, for most of the stops to Oxford Street, they had sat opposite a glum-faced dark-skinned girl so hugely with child that Cassie had wondered quite seriously how she had managed to wedge herself into the seat. A buggy parked by her feet had contained a squirming, unhappy toddler, with watery eyes and a gooey nose, who had whimpered and received nothing but withering looks for its pains. Studying the pair, Cassie had felt a mounting anger at the mother's insouciance – to be in possession of such treasures and look bored with them seemed almost criminal. Catching the toddler's eye, she tried out a smile, thinking that no one in such dire need of a handkerchief could be expected to take pleasure in anything. The child squirmed harder under her scrutiny, inducing in Cassie a fierce, absurd sense of failure. Perhaps she would be a bad mother anyway. Perhaps she wasn't designed for it. Perhaps loving Stephen should be enough. Since Keith's departure he had been attentive, caring, consoling. At times she felt almost unreasonable for wanting anything more.

  As they pulled out of Baker Street the toddler had chuckled. Cassie glanced to her right, and noted with delight that her godson was pulling monstrous faces – crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue. When the mother looked at him Roland exacted a smile from her too, a huge, glittering crescent grin that transformed her instantly from a picture of sullen exhaustion into a velvet-skinned beauty. Still smiling, she patted her toddler's curly head, then sat back and tucked both arms protectively round her balloon-belly.

  ‘So… jeans, we decided?’

  ‘Uh… I don't really need any.’

  ‘But you would like some?’

  ‘I would… at least… I mean, they don't have to be expensive ones.’

  Cassie laughed and looped her arm through Roland's. You aren't a typical teenager, do you know that?’

  Roland shrugged. He felt uncertain walking down Oxford Street with his aunt hanging on to his arm. It felt weird having a grown-up so much shorter than him when he could recall, as if it were yesterday, being no higher than her waist. She was trying to treat him as an equal, he could tell, which was sort of flattering but also difficult because it didn't feel natural. Sitting in the coffee shop after the tube ride, she had pulled out a pack of cigarettes and even offered him one, which he turned down, saying she wouldn't tell on him if he didn't on her. While she smoked, she had asked him all sorts of intense questions about school and who his favourite artist was, and when he said Edward Hopper, she made him describe in real detail why that was and tell her all about his favourite picture with the couple and the dog looking in different directions outside the white clapboard house. He was still talking when she had leant across the ashtray, stroked his cheek and said her sister was lucky beyond words to have such a boy and that she wouldn't have missed being his godmother for the world. To which Roland couldn't think how to respond other than to say that he wouldn't have had another godmother in the world either, which sounded too corny and unbelievable so he hadn't said anything until, forced by her silence and worryingly weepy-looking eyes, he had blurted, dishonestly, that he was looking forward to being her usher.

  ‘Oh, I've been thinking about that too,’ Cassie had exclaimed, stubbing out her cigarette with a flourish and batting at her eyes as if the smoke had made them water. ‘We'll hire you a morning suit for the day, of course, but what about shoes? Could I buy you some smart black ones? Could you bear it? Would you mind? If we do the jeans first and then have lunch, McDonald's, if you like – do you still like McDonald's?’

  ‘Yeah… whatever. Great,’ Roland replied, though he didn't particularly.

  ‘And the Tate – you never got there with Elizabeth when you came up for the party, did you? I thought we could do that tomorrow – with Stephen, too, I hope.’

  It was at this point that Roland, daunted by the prospect of such unadulterated intensity for the entire weekend, had fumbled for his phone and shyly introduced the idea of meeting up with his cousin.

  ‘Clever you – of course! Ask her now. We'll have brunch somewhere – there's this lovely place near the Barbican that does full English, or eggs Benedict or Spanish omelette… heaps of things. Stephen and I have been there several times and poor Clem won't want to come all the way to Camden, so it would be perfect.’

  In the jeans shop she went round all the rails pulling off different styles, not looking at the price tags as his mother would have done and not minding when he pointed at a pair that was ripped at the knees and full of darned holes.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I like those – I really like those.’ And they had been the ones he had chosen eventually, after much bashful to-ing and fro-ing from behind the change curtain, with Cassie standing outside, nodding or shaking her head, like she was his best friend with absolutely nothing better to do than spend an afternoon watching him parade around in different outfits.

  The shoes took even longer. There was only one place to go, Cassie insisted, hailing a cab and bundling him inside. It turned out to be in Bond Street, more like a sitting room than a shop, full of leather sofas and men in pinstripe suits flapping tape measures and shoehorns. Torn between pleasing himself (tricky, since he disliked all of the styles on offer) and a sense of obligation to his aunt, who seemed to be enjoying the agony of indecision, Roland began to feel that his life might end in that shop.

  ‘Those – definitely those,’ said Cassie at last, slapping her knees. ‘That is, if they're as comfy as those other ones.’

  ‘They are… very comfy, but… the thing is… my feet might grow,’ Roland stammered. His mother never bought shoes until the last minute before they were required, and often made him opt for a pair that was half a size too big so they would last longer.

  ‘Might they?’ For a moment Cassie looked at him as if he had confessed to something indecent. ‘Haven't they finished?’ She stared at his feet as if expecting his toes to sprout out of the shoes at that very minute.

  ‘He's a tall chap,’ said a smooth voice behind her. They turned to see a man with tanned skin, in a grey charcoal suit, standing behind the sofa. A perfect white triangle of a handkerchief protruded from the breast pocket, highlighting the whiteness of his shirt and the crisp trim of his cuffs.

  ‘Frank!’ exclaimed Cassie, leaping up and kissing him on both cheeks.

  ‘Cassie, how are you?’

  ‘I'm in heaven. This is my godson Roland. We're buying him smart shoes because he's going to be an usher at my wedding – aren't you, darling?’

  Roland nodded. The man was staring at him in a way he didn't like, an appraising, sizing-up kind of way, as if he was a cow at an agricultural show.

  ‘How's the house? No peeling wallpaper, I hope? No regrets about the pink bathroom?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  Frank tipped back his head and laughed loudly, revealing huge white teeth pitted with several gold fillings.

  ‘A regular client,’ confided Cassie, once they were safely outside, the shoes bought. ‘A sweetie – live
s with that actor who's just done Lear at the National, though never seems to do any-thing himself. Spends money like water. He'll be phoning in a few months saying he wants the whole place done again. Gay, of course, but I expect you could tell that, couldn't you?’

  ‘No,’ muttered Roland. ‘At least, I didn't think about it.’

  ‘Not that that bothers me in the slightest. In fact, I love gay men – in many ways they're so much easier to talk to, so much more in touch with their feminine side…’ Cassie chattered on, charmed by her godson's embarrassment, thinking it would go away if she talked for long enough. She thought, too, of how openly she would discuss such things with her own children, so they'd never suffer the embarrassment of ignorance or be afraid to turn to her for help, or want the ground to swallow them whole, as Roland clearly did, given the concentration with which he was staring out of the taxi window.

  ‘I still think we should have told everybody straight away. It doesn't seem right somehow, not telling. It feels like pretending.’

  ‘We could put an advert in The Times, I suppose, announce it to the whole world…’

  ‘Charlie!’ Serena cast a despairing look at him. They were standing in the garden, huddled at the mouth of the pergola and talking in whispers like conspirators, even though the only creature within earshot was Poppy, busily ripping bark off a stick with her teeth. ‘A few more minutes and Elizabeth would have been here when it happened. Don't you think she, at least, has a right to know?’

  ‘And my mother has a right to some privacy, some respect.’

  Instinctively they cast a furtive glance at the house, at the little lamp shining on the windowsill in Pamela's bedroom. Although the garden was still bathed in late-afternoon sunshine, its power to penetrate the house – for that day at least – had died. ‘Of course she does. But telling people – telling the family – doesn't diminish that does it? Ed knows, for goodness' sake.’

  ‘Yes, and he knows not to tell anyone too. Our son may not be the most reliable creature, but in this I trust him absolutely.’

  ‘And then there's Keith, of course.’

  ‘I trust him too,’ said Charlie stoutly. ‘A good man… a very good man. We should give him something, don't you think? A bottle of champagne, whisky… something.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Serena murmured, seeing again Keith's arrival in the kitchen, soaked and wretched, Pamela a seeming corpse in his arms, her hair plastered like netting across her face. And Ed in the doorway behind, gawping and incredulous, until Serena started barking instructions about running a bath, calling the doctor, finding the brandy. Ed had skidded off down the hall in his socks, knocking against furniture, then raced back and asked which of all these things he should do first. ‘And Peter…’

  ‘Of course we had to tell Peter. He's so good with Mum. He'll know just what to do, how to play it.’ Charlie glanced in some desperation at his watch. Peter was on a train from London, a delayed train, as it had turned out, thanks to a faulty signal outside Gatwick. ‘Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't tell the rest of the family, I just want a chance to talk to my brother about it first. I should be going – twenty minutes late, he said, didn't he?

  ‘Thirty. There's still plenty of time.’

  ‘What was she playing at? What, in God's name, was she thinking?’ Charlie slapped his hand against the frame of the pergola so hard that several rose petals burst out of the foliage and floated to their feet. ‘I thought she was okay. You did too, didn't you?’

  Serena nodded, suddenly too close to tears to speak. The guilt, which had been hovering at the edges of her consciousness all day, pressed in on her. In the rush of crisis management there had been no need – no opportunity – to acknowledge it. Now she remembered her mother-in-law's silence at breakfast, the sad Christmas-card list of dead friends, the scurrying with the empty basket. ‘She wasn't herself, but… but I didn't see it. I didn't see it.’

  ‘Don't start,’ Charlie growled, checking his watch yet again and pulling out his car keys. ‘None of us saw it. Not even her, by all accounts,’ he added, in a reference to Pamela's faltering attempts at explanation, the heartrending, childlike apologies before she had fallen asleep. ‘We'd better go in. You look cold.’

  ‘Not really.’ Serena sniffed. ‘Just my feet.’ She glanced down at her flip-flops, recalling, like some ancient image of a past life, her conversation with Elizabeth that morning. In retrospect it felt somehow treacherous that they should have been enjoying such a cosy mundane exchange while Pamela, not many yards away, had been spiralling towards calamity. She knew Charlie was right – that for any of them to feel guilty was both groundless and unhelpful – but the response was there none the less, uncurling inside, like a dark flower, taking her back to the other, deeper guilt, which she'd thought she had erased for good. She had been with Elizabeth that day too. Lunch in Oxford Street. Tina toddling between tables. A busy restaurant. The hubbub of cutlery, crockery, conversation. The opening door, the brush of cold air on the back of her neck, the screech of rubber on Tarmac, the roar of the motorbike as it sped away.

  ‘Darling? You're crying.’

  ‘I know. Sorry. I can't help it… A part of me does feel responsible… just like I did when… when…’ Serena didn't need to complete the sentence.

  ‘Stop this, do you hear me? This is utterly different.’ There was fear as well as reprimand in Charlie's voice, and the hand that stroked her bowed head was more firm than tender. ‘You weren't to blame then and you're not to blame now. In addition to which my mother, in case you had forgotten, is lying safely in her bed, sipping soup and reading a magazine. Her guardian angel has had a busy day but, thanks to Keith, she's okay. You heard her, she's sorry, she doesn't know what came over her, she's not going to try anything like it again. Now, give me a hug and tell me you're not going to torture yourself. If you're responsible, so am I, so are all of us. What we are responsible for however,’ he continued, sounding suddenly like Peter, ‘is helping her through it.’

  Serena shuffled into her husband's arms, cursing herself for having added a new layer of concern to an already difficult day. ‘I guess I'm a bit shocked, that's all. Now, you go and get your brother and I'd better see to supper. I was thinking of inviting Keith – do you think that's a good idea?

  ‘Excellent. It's the very least we can do.’

  Pamela lay perfectly still, listening to the sounds of the house: the faint gurgle of the radiator next to her bed, the thump of Ed's CD-player, footsteps along the hall and back again. The smell of supper was in the air too – onions, meat – a stew of some kind: something with wine, beef or maybe coq au vin. Serena was a good cook. Pamela could imagine her moving round the kitchen, chopping, stirring, lifting lids, humming to herself, enjoying the solace she herself had once known so well. Feeding, providing for the family. She didn't understand women who failed to enjoy domesticity. Women like Helen, with their microwaves and home-helps, happier with a briefcase than a wooden spoon. It was one of the reasons she had readily agreed to the plan of Serena and Charlie taking over Ashley House, recognizing in her daughter-in-law the potential of a true inheritor to the way of life that she had so cherished. What she hadn't anticipated was the trauma of abdication; becoming a spectator rather than an orchestrator; grateful, of course, but sidelined, like a retired animal put out to grass.

  Pamela made herself dwell on this feeling now, wondering how much it had contributed to the course she had taken that day. An astonishing course, as it already appeared. Her apologies to Serena and Charlie – to the poor man who had fished her out – had been heartfelt. As she rose out of the water there had been a moment of pure anger, followed – as the cold air tore back into her lungs – by the purest unutterable shame. What had led her to that moment? Pamela wondered now, trembling in spite of the warm soup and the hot-water bottle at her back under the duvet. Feeling sidelined was just a tiny part of it. No. Something else had happened that morning, something connected to the empty ticking of the old carriage cl
ock in John's study as she had pored over their shrinking list of friends. And then, later, in the garden… Pamela drew in her breath, recalling the bare stumps in the vegetable patch, her sad, empty basket. There is nothing here, she had thought, nothing anywhere. She had picked a stone out of a mound of earth, then another and another, scrabbling for them as if they were buried potatoes. I am dying anyway, she had thought, striding across the field towards the copse, her arms aching from the weight of the basket. We are all dying. Why wait, when the waiting is so hard, so empty?

  Downstairs the front door slammed. Footsteps on the stairs were followed by a tentative knock on her door and the appearance of Peter at her bedside.

  ‘Mum?’ He was still in his overcoat, his newspaper in one hand, briefcase in the other. ‘You've given us all quite a scare.’

  ‘Darling… I'm so sorry… So silly… to cause such a fuss.’

  ‘But you're all right now,’ he announced firmly, pulling up a chair and easing himself out of his coat. ‘That's all that matters. Are Dr Lazard's pills helping? Charlie said he'd given you some.’

  ‘Yes… at least… Yes, I do feel a little better.’ Pamela tried to sit up but Peter pressed his hand to her shoulder.

  ‘Rest now. Lots of rest, eh?’

  Pamela let her head sink back into her pillows. ‘So kind… Everybody has been so kind.’

  Peter leant forward, resting his arms on his knees and clasping his hands. ‘We're all here to look after you. We all want the best for you… If… if ever you feel low you must tell us, Mum, okay? Tell us and then we can help.’

  ‘Yes, of course… I don't know what happened. I feel so bad… for Serena and Charlie… Tell them, darling, how sorry I am… Tell them I won't… that it won't happen again.’

  Peter picked up one of her hands and pressed it between his palms. He felt solid on the chair, his feet planted firmly on the floor, but weak inside. He wished he had something to offer her other than platitudes. Some form of concrete comfort. ‘We miss Dad too,’ he ventured quietly, ‘but he would want us to carry on… to be happy…’ He lost heart at the sight of her face, which was trembling visibly.