‘Everything,’ echoed Peter, warmly. ‘Excellent.’
‘Peter,’ Charlie blurted, ‘we want to stay here. Serena and I, the children, we want to stay. It will still be difficult, of course, but I think now we can make a go of it. And I'm sorry, obviously, for mucking you around. But Helen has never been keen to live here, has she? And if you two are going to work things out, then I can only assume that this change of plan will help –’
‘Charles…’ It was more an exhalation of breath than a word. ‘Charlie…’ Peter tried to smile. ‘You cannot mean this. I refuse to believe that you mean this.’ He gripped his glass, pressing it into the mantelpiece.
‘Look, I'm sorry if –’
‘Sorry?’ Peter let out a wild laugh. ‘Sorry, isn't good enough, old chap. Sorry really doesn't cut the mustard. I urge you – he was aware of his arm throbbing against the hard edge of the marble ‘– I urge you to rethink.’
‘I have rethought. I have done nothing but rethink for weeks. Serena and the children have begged to stay here. And Mum… Well, she hasn't done any begging, but she has made it clear that she has no desire to see us move out. Looking back, I can see that I only asked you to take over because I allowed all that had happened, with Mum and Ed and so on, to get on top of me. I wasn't coping and neither was Serena because she's still – we're still…’ Charlie paused, unwilling to confess to his darkest fears and not wanting to confuse a situation that was already so delicate and complicated. ‘The point is, I convinced myself that we were a pair of failures, while you, in contrast… but now…’
‘Now, I'm a failure too, is that it?’
‘Don't be absurd.’ Charlie shook his head unhappily. Gross as the oversimplification was, it contained a dim echo of truth. One of the weirdly heartening things to emerge from the rubble of the last few weeks was the knowledge that his brother was not the solid, perfect, superior being he had always assumed. Serena had been trying to tell him as much for years but he hadn't listened. Accepting it even now felt hard. For almost half a century he had been content to live in Peter's shadow, deferring to him, trusting his judgement and instincts. It had been comfortable to do so, Charlie could see that now, because at some deep level it had allowed him to shirk responsibility. Letting it go felt sad and hard, as if he was releasing some integral part of his own innocence. ‘So, you see,’ he continued, ‘paying for the baby is not going to be the issue I had imagined. Serena and I, we're a bit stronger too – not right yet but –’
‘Oh, so the pair of you are all tickety-boo now, are you?’ snapped Peter, in such a catty, unPeter-like way that Charlie's jaw dropped. ‘You won't be needing me to bail you out. Well, bully for you. Thanks for keeping me posted.’
‘Look, I can understand why you're upset,’ Charlie had crept back to the sofa and dropped his head into his hands, ‘but surely, right now, you have more important things to worry about. All I'm saying is that Serena and I want to have another shot at making this place – everything – work. Just as you and Helen want to have another go…’
Charlie was labouring to finish the sentence when the glass Peter had been clutching so tightly somehow broke free of his fingers and skidded towards the edge of the mantelpiece. They both watched as it teetered, then fell, the whisky making a yellow arc across the carpet while the crystal smashed like exploding diamonds on the stone hearth below.
Serena, sitting at her dressing-table, pen poised over a couple of notelets to the girls, looked up sharply at the distant sound of breaking glass. She tiptoed to the bedroom door, wondering what was going on, certain suddenly that Charlie, when the moment came, would not be up to the task. She hung on to the door, quelling the urge to run downstairs and help him fight his corner – their corner. She had known better than Charlie how difficult it would be. She had seen only too clearly how ready Peter had been to settle into the house, how eagerly – arrogantly – he had occupied the space, letting the habitual assertiveness show through. As she had pushed Peter's shirts into the washing-machine, served him meals like a housekeeper, seen his smart car parked in the middle of the drive, she had wondered often why she and Charlie were bothering to hang around.
After the smash there was silence, then the murmur of voices and then something else, a noise, like crying. There was crying. Not Charlie, she knew the sounds Charlie made. Peter. Peter was crying – not the shoulder-jerking puppetry of the time he arrived in the drive either, but properly, volubly, wildly. Dear God. Serena closed the door and leant against it, closing her eyes. Charlie would cave in. That heart of his, softening slowly, tentatively in the weeks since the bombings, like a creature coming out of long hibernation, wouldn't be able to stand it. She could hardly stand it and she had the door, the stairs and several walls to protect her. They would move to Brighton, dragging the shadow of the year's failures with them. Their marriage at least was better, safer, functioning again. Serena had seen to that and would continue to do so, masking her fears for the future as she knew Charlie was masking his. All the horrible things he had said – about the gap, about putting her needs before Ed's – were still there, still to be dealt with, but not now…
Serena briskly sealed each card into its envelope. She could feel her thoughts slipping, as they tended to during any unguarded moment, towards the coop of a flat in Wandsworth. It was unwise, she knew, to think of Jessica or the baby. Not thinking about such things had helped her and Charlie to recover some of their equilibrium. With all the dramas since the Charing Cross bombing, it had been almost easy. When Charlie and Ed had bounced back from their visit to the lawyer that afternoon, she had rejoiced with them, suppressing her own qualms over such an apparently easy reduction of their responsibilities. Getting on so well and after a driving lesson, she had teased, was close to miraculous. And when Charlie gripped her hand and said that maybe they didn't have to leave Ashley House after all, she had felt as if her heart might burst with happiness. The co-operation, the cohesion, the sense of a shared future, after so many uncertain months, was like oxygen. They had hugged and wept, talking like conspirators, about how to break the news to Peter.
It was only later on when Pamela, preparing for her departure in an endless sorting of spare-room cupboards and tea-chests, had thrust – with a beady look – a bag of baby clothes into Serena's hands that the doubts, old and new, had come crashing back. The bag was with her now, next to one of the spindly legs of the dressing-table. Sticking out of it was a sailor suit, impractical and expensive, which Cassie had bought for Ed, and a pair of pink booties with silk ribbons that Pamela had knitted for one of the twins. Or had it been Tina? Serena sat very still while, inside her, the hollowness swelled like a dark sea. Charlie was right: this baby, which was half Ed – right from the start, she had wanted it to be made real. All the other considerations – morality, the confusion of two teenagers, money – had been nothing but pretence, a flimsy camouflage for that desire.
Breathing slowly, Serena reached for a fresh card.
Dear Jessica,
I hope these clothes come in useful. I hope, too, that you are all right and looking after yourself. Charlie and Ed have seen a lawyer who will be in touch with you shortly. Good luck with the birth and if you ever need anything – anything at all – please just call me on this number…
Hearing footsteps on the landing Serena pushed the card under the two envelopes she had addressed to the girls. A moment later Charlie came into the bedroom, his thick hair lank and dishevelled, his eyes glassy. He crossed at once to the dressing-table, pressing his hands on to her shoulders as their eyes met in the mirror.
Serena tipped her head to one side until her cheek was brushing his fingers. ‘It's okay. I know what happened. It was obvious that Peter always regretted giving us the place anyway. He was never going to give up a chance to get it back. It's okay.’
Charlie dropped his head. ‘When I told him he just sort of… collapsed. He said that Helen isn't interested in reconciliation, that Ashley House is all he has left. H
e also said…’ Charlie paused ‘… that he had always envied us.’
‘Us?’
‘Our – our passion. That was the word he used. He said he thought he'd found something similar with this woman. He said…’ Charlie swallowed hard, grimacing at the recollection of Peter kneeling among the broken crystal, moaning like a wounded child. ‘He said that when I told him, in Umbria, that we were having difficulties part of him was glad.’
‘But that's horrible.’ Serena swivelled to look at him, not glancing down as her leg brushed the bag of baby clothes.
‘I told him love was what you arrived at, not what you started with.’
Serena caught her breath. ‘Did you? Oh, Charlie…’ She leant back against him, half closing her eyes, too moved to say more. On the dressing-table she could see the small white point of her letter to Jessica sticking out from under the other cards. She would not send it, or the stained little outfits. It was Ed's child, after all, she reminded herself, to ignore or accept as he chose. Her sense of connection to it was undeniably dubious – certainly too dubious to expect any more such breathtaking declarations from her husband if he ever found evidence of it.
‘Peter believes that to live at Ashley House is his destiny,’ continued Charlie, doggedly. ‘He kept saying so – I've never seen him so desperate.’
Serena waited, steeling herself for what was coming next. ‘And I suppose you had said he could have it,’ she ventured at last, inwardly preparing to cope with the disappointment, thinking that a house was only a house, a mere ornament compared to all the other issues of life, loss and love waging war on their hearts.
Charlie straightened himself and took a step back from her. ‘I told him no.’
‘No?’
‘I said Ashley House was ours, that Dad had sanctioned the arrangement and I had been wrong to consider giving up on it. I said I was sorry too, of course,’ he muttered, ‘fucking sorry.’
‘Charlie! That's amazing.’ Serena tried to put her arms round him, but he staggered back to sit on the bed. ‘He wept, Serena… He wept. He said he had lost everything – everything. It was the most terrible thing.’
‘Maybe because he's only just beginning to see what he has lost. I don't mean the house, I mean Helen, wrecking twenty-five years of trust, shattering the children. Maybe it's only just sinking in. It can take time, after all, can't it,’ she whispered, ‘to recognize loss?’
They remained side by side for a long time, not touching but close enough to be aware of the warmth of each other's bodies, the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed.
Early the following Saturday, Ed slipped out of the house to look for Samson who, for the first time anyone could remember, had failed to present his whiskery tiger-face for breakfast. His grandmother, shaking her head over a cup of tea like an ancient sage, sounded almost satisfied, rather than sad, when she announced that the animal knew she was leaving and had probably taken himself off to die. Cats were wise and had impeccable timing, she said, better than humans, half the time. Annoyed by these observations, half suspicious that they contained some veiled reprimand, Ed had grabbed a walking-stick and an anorak and left the house by the utility room.
Outside the air was raw and the clouds like bunches of steel wool. He walked briskly round the main lawn and down through the pergola, scanning every flowerbed and clump of dark foliage for a streak of orangy gold. Once he was out of sight of the house, behind the wintry dark towers of the rhododendrons, which separated the furthest of the garden fences from the fields, he lit a cigarette and ran the back of his hand across the drip on his nose. Looking at the colour-less perimeter of the garden, and the field rolling down towards the copse, Ed felt, for the first time, a grateful, integral sense of belonging; of wanting to belong. As children, he and the others had taken Ashley House for granted. Even when his own family had moved in, Ed had been too young to appreciate the magnitude of the arrangement. That had only come in the last few months, with the understanding that it might all be lost.
But now that wouldn't happen. Ashley House was theirs – his mum and dad's, his, Maisie's and Clem's for ever. There had been a sort of showdown. His father had insisted, and his uncle had backed down. Ed still felt a swell of pride when he thought about it. His uncle, normally so in-your-face, had been like a ghost ever since, tiptoeing about the place with his head down, backing against walls to let people by, missing meals and burying himself in his room. And now he was leaving, that morning, moving, apparently, to a flat near Barons Court. Avoiding the awkwardness of the goodbye had lent added appeal to Ed's hunt for Samson.
He tossed away his cigarette and began to call the cat, doing his best to reproduce the soft, high tones his grandmother adopted. He hoped the creature hadn't died. Ed was eighteen, too, and didn't feel remotely ready to meet his Maker. Scanning the field, beating at any patches of long grass with his stick, Ed set off towards the copse. He moved with a real sense of urgency now, propelled by thoughts of how moth-eaten Samson's glossy coat had looked lately, how long it was since the old cat had performed one of his acrobatic feats between windowsills.
He was almost at the stile, bare feet sliding uncomfortably on the grit in his wellingtons, when he heard a voice calling him. Ed turned to see his uncle, his face a white dot against the dark of his overcoat, signalling to him from the bottom of the garden. Cursing, Ed trudged back up the field.
They shook hands, with some difficulty, over the fence. ‘I wanted to say a proper farewell.’
‘Yup… Sorry, I was looking for Samson.’
‘Good man. You'll need another cat soon, though – and a dog, of course. This place needs animals.’ Peter turned to the garden and then the view towards the downs, as if imprinting them on his mind.
‘Yeah, I guess it does.’ Ed kicked at a stone, wondering afresh at this new, subdued version of his uncle and thinking that, in many ways, the old bully had been a lot easier to deal with. Noting the sparse tufts of hair, being blown by the wind round his bald patch, the pouches under his eyes and the sag of his broad shoulders, Ed even felt a bit sorry for him. He was just an old man, after all, a proud old man, who regretted a decision about a house and who had made an ass of himself by screwing a woman who wasn't his wife. In a way Ed didn't blame him, not for the affair anyway: he wouldn't have wanted sex with his aunt Helen in a million years.
He frowned, thinking that he would choose his own mess over his uncle's any day. For one thing he wasn't bald and craggy-faced, and for another, he knew now that the baby didn't have to fuck his life up. As the lawyer had pointed out, it was Jessica who had chosen to have it and Jessica who would be responsible for dealing with the consequences. Apart from handing over a portion of his trust fund, Ed wouldn't have to do anything for years.
‘Dad says you've decided to apply to university, after all. That's great. You've got a good brain.’
Ed went pink and dropped his gaze. Their handshake over the fence had left a livid smear of green lichen on the smooth dark arm of his uncle's overcoat. ‘See you at Christmas, I expect,’ he said, pitching the remark in a way that he hoped would close the proceedings.
Peter sighed heavily. ‘I'm not sure, Ed, to be honest… It all depends on arrangements.’
‘Oh, right, of course.’ Ed's blush deepened. ‘See you soon, anyway.’
Instead of taking this second hint, his uncle, speaking quickly, gruffly to the muddy tips of his leather shoes, said, ‘I'm sorry, Ed, if I was ever too hard on you. What you did with Jessica – the business of the child – it's not your fault.’
Ed gawped, took a step backwards, stumbled on a clod and almost lost his footing.
‘I mean it was your fault,’ Peter continued, ‘but it was also bloody bad luck.’
‘Yes,’ Ed muttered, ‘I suppose it was.’
At last his uncle turned towards the house, then swung round again, so quickly that the panels of his coat flared. ‘I was just wondering… being close in age, knowing him as you do… Any tips
on Theo, how I might handle him?’
‘Theo?’ Out of the corner of his eye Ed saw a blur of orange, moving behind a tree.
‘He won't talk to me, you see, ever since… Oh, never mind. Forget it – foolish to ask. Forgive me, Ed, I'm not myself.’ He raised an arm in farewell, then slipped both hands into his pockets and set off back towards the house.
‘I –’
‘Yes?’ Peter stopped.
‘I should think – I mean, I don't have a clue, really,’ Ed gabbled, ‘but you can only sort of say sorry, can't you? I mean, that's all anyone can do, isn't it?’ He shrugged and pulled a face. ‘What do I know?’ The blur of orange was there again, closer now, among the lower black trunks of the rhododendrons. His uncle was trudging away, taking each step slowly and heavily, as if some huge invisible weight had been strapped to his back. Ed wasn't even sure whether his pathetic pearl of wisdom had been heard. He wished now he hadn't said anything. For all he knew, his uncle had been on bended knee saying sorry to his aunt and cousins since day one.
Ed threw himself on to the grass and rolled under the fence into the inner tangle of the flowerbed. Samson was crouching next to a heap of wet leaves, ruffled but healthy enough. At the sight of Ed, cursing and brushing dirt and twigs out of his hair, the cat tensed and widened his yellow eyes, clearly resenting the intrusion into his private world.
‘Silly cat, it's only me. You're a bad puss, you are.’ Ed held out his hand, which Samson sniffed before nuzzling his fingertips and starting to purr. ‘Not dead yet then, you great sissy,’ Ed murmured, glad that only Samson, two woodlice and a slimy pink worm were there to see his tears.
December
Theo wondered that a journey could take so long: Oxford to Paddington, then thirteen stops on the District Line – it felt as if he was crawling across the world. At Paddington carol-singers had been clustered round a flashing tree, jangling money-boxes at anyone who looked like stopping, and a grizzled man with a sandwich board had paraded the words, Sinners Repent Judgement Is Nigh. As Theo hurried past, giving it all a wide berth, he had heard the man shouting above the strains of ‘Silent Night’, ‘Who is without sin? Who is pure? Who will be saved?’
The Simple Rules of Love Page 50
