The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  Stephen returned his attention to his computer where the three-dimensional electric green cube he had chosen as a screensaver was performing somersaults. He stabbed at the return key and started to write, not caring that it was Clem's manuscript that remained in the forefront of his mind.

  Jack ducked under the orange ticker tape and walked round the side of the house to the garden. He stood for a few moments feeling the silence thicken, aware only of the sound of his own breathing. In the corner of the garden a small tree sported a ballgown of lemony green dotted with pink flowers…

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  Been meaning to email you for a while, just to say that I really enjoyed the vac

  Theo scowled at his laptop, wondering how much padding to put in before he broached the question of money. His parents weren't stupid. No matter how many pleasantries he stuck in first, the request for an injection of cash would stand out with all the subtlety of a scarecrow in a field.

  particularly our game of squash, Dad. Don't worry I'll get you next time!

  Theo stopped again, rubbing his fingers along his jawbone where, thanks to his new abstinence from the razor, the bristles were thickest. He had tried to start the process in the holidays but had given up after a few days, defeated by the itching and the relentless remarks of his family. His little sister Chloe had taken particular pleasure in commenting disparagingly on the beard's progress, calling it gross and ugly and dumb, and saying he looked exactly like her physics teacher. Nor was the squash game a particularly happy memory.

  ‘You need your head looking at,’ Helen had scolded, returning from shopping with the girls to find her husband and son in shorts and trainers in the hall.

  ‘No, his back,’ Chloë had quipped. ‘It's your back that needs looking at, isn't it, Daddy?’

  And although his father had laughed it off in the car, saying he was going to see a physio just in case and that the pair of them were surrounded by fussing women, Theo had walked on to the squash court with a heavy heart. When he saw how hard his father tried for every single shot, careering between the walls, drenched in sweat, grimacing against pain and fatigue alike (it was impossible to tell which), Theo's heart grew even heavier. I could beat him, he had thought. He is getting old and I could beat him.

  He lost both games, triggering a riot of back-slapping and affectionate taunts from his father, which he had weathered with difficulty, nursing not hurt feelings, as Peter had supposed, but the new knowledge of his own physical superiority and the complicated cowardice of not having dared to act upon it.

  Sorry to say, I am also writing to confess to a certain cash-flow problem

  Pausing to look round the clutter of his room for inspiration, Theo's eyes alighted on the gold embossed invitation to the Keble ball.

  largely caused by having to shell out £160 for the Keble ball, to which, as you know, I am – under orders! – taking Clem. To be quite honest I would probably have given it a miss otherwise – there's such a demand I could easily sell it back, but obviously I wouldn't want to let Clem down at this late stage. All of which is to say, could you possibly give me an advance on next month's allowance? Am planning to stay up here and work in college for a couple of weeks at the start of the summer vac playing scout and waiter for conference delegates – so should have no trouble making the money up in the long term.

  Hope all well otherwise. Sorry to have to pass on Aunt Elizabeth's birthday dinner – there's just too much going on here to get away. Love, Theo

  Peter glanced up from his papers and peered at the digital clock he kept on his desk, inwardly cursing the slowness with which the dial came into focus. He could almost feel his eye muscles labouring – long vision, short vision. Nothing came without a struggle these days. It was four o'clock already. In a couple more hours he'd have to leave to catch the train for his sister's birthday surprise in Sussex. A quiet Friday afternoon was a luxury and he had somehow let most of it slip through his fingers. His in-tray was a pagoda of papers, the brief before him – a complicated case involving the death of a student on a school sailing trip – barely touched. Usually he relished the challenge of a new case – that clean-slate feeling, with everything to play for, all the subtleties of the arguments to be teased out, like buried fragments of something whole. Yet that afternoon the stamina, the patience, whatever it was, simply hadn't been there. Instead he felt both sleepy and restless, utterly without the wherewithal to prevent his mind wandering down pointless little cul-de-sacs and back again. Almost, he reflected, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on his handkerchief, as if his brain was searching for something, flexing its muscles – much as his eyes did – in a bid to bring a hitherto blurred but important fact into focus.

  He was worried about his mother, of course, Peter reminded himself. What she had done, or attempted to do, was not easily forgotten. He had heard the shock lingering in Charlie and Serena's telephone reports all week. She was doing well, they assured him, arranging flowers, walking Poppy, even testing Ed on some French vocab – correcting her grandson's accent like a fierce schoolmistress. Apparently she was also thoroughly entering into the spirit of the approaching secret dinner party, advising Roland over the phone on how to cajole Elizabeth out of the house, saying that no female victim of a surprise party would ever want to be caught without makeup or clean hair.

  Peter couldn't wait to get to Ashley House to see evidence of such improvements for himself. He was keen, too, to see the fruits of the indispensable Keith's labours, which Charlie had described at length. Helen, on the other hand, had phoned that afternoon sounding martyred and fraught. Genevieve was running a temperature, she said, and with Chloe's netball practice to fit in, they wouldn't be able to set off until six at the earliest. She was exhausted already and the traffic would be dreadful and… Peter had gone into a mild daze as she talked, interjecting reassurances, resisting the urge to surrender his own, infinitely less stressful plan of catching a train by offering to help out. Helen never wanted to spend time with his family, these days. Although she had been supportive about the recent trauma with his mother, he had detected an underlying impatience too. If Pamela was seriously depressed – if Charlie and Serena couldn't cope with her – she should be put into a home, she had said, apologizing for her brutality. Her own mother was happily ensconced in an old people's residence in Portsmouth, she had reminded him, playing canasta and bingo, free of domestic and emotional stress, surrounded by on-tap care. It was best for everyone.

  Remembering the conversation, Peter sighed. Helen's parents were as pragmatic as their daughter. They had been on the waiting list for the Portsmouth home for years and moved there together when their health began to fail. It had good views, a duckpond and comfortable furniture. They had slipped into it as easily as they had transferred themselves to the practical geography of an ugly bungalow ten years before. They had never been ones for attaching themselves to their surroundings in anything but the most clinical terms. They had been attached to each other, all right, in the crotchety way that many old couples managed, sparring over ancient domestic rituals – hot toast or cold, soft eggs or hard, windows open or closed – but when her husband died Helen's mother seemed to have left them behind happily enough too. She had a new friend now called Mr Boulder, who wore bow-ties and sucked his false teeth when he was dealing cards. Peter shuddered to think of Pamela in such surroundings. She was too sensitive, too integral to her family and her home. Moving her to any sort of institution would be like uprooting a flower and expecting it to thrive in the North Pole.

  Peter was interrupted from these reveries by the muffled trill of his mobile phone. He patted his pockets, then realized it was buried in his briefcase. Scrabbling underneath his umbrella and a brochure detailing the splendours of their Umbrian villa, which he had packed to show the family, he experienced a faint, familiar twinge between his shoulder-blades. By the time he got to the phone it had stopped ringing. Angry with himself, life, the fresh twist of pain in his upper
back, he swore loudly as he punched in the buttons to return the call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  There was a laugh. ‘You called me.’

  ‘Yes, but only because you…’ Peter dried up. It had taken him just a couple of seconds to place the rather low female voice, the soft consonants, but now the image of the physiotherapist was in focus, as sharp as a knife. ‘How did you get my number?’

  Delia laughed again, more freely. ‘You filled in a form, remember?’

  ‘So I did.’

  ‘How's the shoulder?’

  ‘Funnily enough, it's taken a turn for the worse in the last couple of minutes.’

  ‘Really?’ She sounded amused.

  ‘My phone was buried in my briefcase. I had to twist under my desk to get it.’

  ‘I see. Perhaps you should make another appointment.’

  ‘Oh, there's no need for that – no need at all. I'm doing the exercises on that sheet you gave me and, overall, it's much better – great, in fact.’ Peter cleared his throat, then swapped the phone from his right to his left hand.

  ‘And your mother, how is she?’

  ‘She's good too. Thank you for asking… most kind.’

  ‘And you? How are you?’

  ‘Me?’ Peter changed hands again, glad that she could not see the heat in his face, feel the ridiculous clamminess in his palms. ‘I'm fine, obviously.’

  ‘I don't think it's obvious,’ she replied quietly. ‘It must have been a momentous shock for you all, being such a close family, especially as, from what I gathered, the suicide attempt came quite out of the blue.’

  ‘Yes, it…’ Peter faltered, quailing at her choice of words. Suicide attempt. None of them was calling it that. ‘Out of the blue… indeed. Now she seems better but…’

  ‘You must all feel on edge about it, scared she'll try again.’

  ‘Exactly.’ End the call, Peter told himself, end it now. ‘Do you show such concern for all your patients?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I was wondering if you'd like to have lunch.’

  ‘Absolutely not. Thank you for asking, but it's out of the question.’

  ‘Why?’

  A long silence followed while Peter battled with what to say, what not to say. He cleared his throat again. ‘Because, Delia, it would, I fear, be… inappropriate.’

  She made a small noise, something between a laugh and an intake of breath. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Afraid? I'm not afraid of anything.’

  She paused again. ‘How fortunate… not to be afraid of anything. I envy you.’

  ‘Well, there we are.’ Peter felt exuberant. He had outwitted her. He had seen her off. Kicked her into touch. He would tell Helen, make her laugh at the woman's audacity. Being propositioned, at his age, by a lonely physiotherapist… It was nothing short of hilarious.

  ‘I felt we connected,’ said Delia, not sounding kicked into touch at all. ‘I would like to get to know you better. Besides, the business with your mother, it may help you to talk to someone who has been through something similar, someone outside your family. I could be that someone. I could be your friend. Where's the harm in that?’ She proceeded to tell him the number of her mobile phone, speaking slowly and clearly, as if dictating a letter.

  ‘I won't call,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘And don't call me… please,’ he added, wishing instantly that he hadn't because his voice had shrunk to a pleading whisper, reverberating with all the terror he had sought to deny.

  After the call Peter sat very still, his elbows on his pile of papers, hands clasped as if in prayer. That's that, he told himself. He breathed deeply. In and out. That was it, that was better. Forget the whole thing… Forget the telephone number certainly. He closed his eyes in an attempt to perform this small feat, but his mind, having found its focus at last, refused to let go: the numbers filed into his memory, as determined as marching soldiers.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time Ed set off for his rendezvous with Jessica. He had spent the morning working in his room, head and heart ablaze with a sense of self-virtue and a desire not to engage with the rest of the household. Ever since the drama with his grandmother, there had been an atmosphere of impenetrable, determined cheerfulness, which he found hard to stomach. His mother in particular was so full of caring and smiles that Ed wondered if her face might crack from the strain of it. It reminded him of how she had been during the months after his sister had died – pretending so hard to be normal that there wasn't a trace of normality in her. To make matters worse, Clem had phoned while he was packing his books to warn him that she wouldn't be coming for the weekend after all. She couldn't face it, she said. Ed had found himself shouting at her, saying he couldn't face it either but he had to, and how would she feel being the only one stuck at home in such circumstances? He had even tried the blackmail route, saying how much their grandmother was looking forward to seeing her when, as far as he knew, Pamela had said nothing of the kind.

  All of which lent a certain fierceness to the manner in which Ed swung his leg over his bike saddle and set off down the lane. Sid was going to an agricultural show, Jessica had explained gleefully, so they would have the place to themselves. He had tried to respond with enthusiasm, rationalizing that there was no point in alerting her to his recent decision until the moment of its delivery. Sailing past the hedges through the village, birds tweeting overhead and the wind in his face, Ed had half wondered whether he might change his mind. Was sexual gratification such a crime, after all, if carried out between consenting couples? Then he remembered how the phone call – every phone call now – had ended with a breathy ‘I love you, Ed Harrison' and his resolve hardened. Much better to get out now before things got any more complicated. Anyway, he had received an interesting text that week from a girl called Melanie, whom he'd always fancied from afar. ‘Having party do you want to cum?’ Of course he bloody well did – preferably without feeling that he had to explain himself to Jessica Blake. Given the choice, he'd go for Melanie, with her long, fair-skinned limbs and pierced belly-button, any day. Jessica's puppy curves and black ponytail were nothing in comparison – nothing.

  ‘Hey, Ed.’ She was waiting for him at the gate outside the cottage, her hair loose for once, with a line of mousy brown along the parting where the dye was growing out.

  ‘Hey.’ She tried to kiss him, surprised and hurt when he pulled back after only a couple of seconds.

  ‘Let's go in, shall we?’ he muttered, looking anxiously over his shoulder, as if his reticence stemmed purely from fear of observation. Be a grown-up, he told himself, when they were inside. Be a fucking grown-up. ‘Jessica, there's something…’

  But she had sprung on ahead, down the little hallway and into Sid's box of a sitting room, with its brown sofa and electric heater wedged into what had once been a fireplace. ‘Look, Ed, I've been reading it.’ She was holding out a book, her face pink with pride and uncertainty. ‘I'm not sure I get it – mean, it's all about a party, isn't it? That Mrs Dalloway buying flowers and stuff – which is weird, not like a story at all – but I sort of like it…’

  ‘Jessica…’

  ‘I thought maybe you could, like, explain it to me a bit tell me all the clever stuff you learn at that posh school of yours.’

  ‘Jessica… I… don't think we should see each other any more.’

  She laughed. ‘You what?’

  ‘It's just…’

  ‘Has this got something to do with your nan trying to top herself?’

  No, of course not,’ snapped Ed, fury flaring both at the suggestion and the icy casualness of her tone. ‘It's just… going out with you – it's not working. At least, not for me. I'm sorry, I…’

  ‘Sorry, are you? Well, that's fucking nice, that is.’ She flung the Virginia Woolf book on to the sofa and folded her arms, looking not so much heartbroken as belligerent. ‘Well, let me tell you
, Ed Harrison, I don't get fucking treated like this. I just don't, okay?’

  ‘Look, I know you're upset –’

  She stepped towards him and poked a finger into his chest. ‘You know fuck-all.’

  Ed took a step backwards, looking over his shoulder for the door. He'd made a botch of it, he knew, but at least it was done. It would be funny, in retrospect, he reassured himself, and suddenly remembered a story his father had told him about a rejected girlfriend who had camped outside his door for four entire days, howling whenever she got a glimpse of him at a window. He was allowed to break up with this girl, Ed reminded himself. He was only seventeen, after all, allowed to make and break as many relationships as he wanted. ‘It's not like we're married,’ he said, alarmed at the expression on her face, thinking it might be best for both of them if he made a run for it.

  ‘Have sex with her and drop her, is that it?’

  ‘No… I never meant…’ He turned for the door but she had somehow got there first and was leaning against it, arms folded again, so ugly and robust he wondered how he had ever found her attractive.

  ‘Well, that's a shame,’ she snarled, ‘seeing as how I'm expecting your kid.’

  Ed tried to smile, to sneer in the way that she was, but his mouth wouldn't move. ‘You can't be. We only…’

  ‘Did it once? Is that it? Well, it only takes one go, mate, in case you didn't know.’

  ‘But…’ Ed felt as if his lips had solidified. ‘But the pill –you said –’

  ‘Did I now?’ She held out her hand and studied her fingernails.

  ‘You lied,’ whispered Ed, feeling as if the walls of the poky room were closing in on him.

  ‘Yeah… and before you ask, no, I don't want to get rid of it. So you just go home and have a think about that, eh? It's not like your lot couldn't afford to provide, with that fucking great house of yours. And I'd marry you an' all,' she added slyly, peering at him from under her hair. ‘Jessica Harrison… Yeah, I wouldn't say no. And it's not like I don't love you…’