Love Rules

by Freya North

  Christmas dinner – dos

  Christmas carols – don'ts

  Christmas present – free CD: the year's hottest sounds

  Christmas past – how to do a great New Year's Eve

  ‘Do you know, I've been married for exactly two years and this is the first time I've used this particular Le Creuset casserole,’ Alice declared to Thea, peeling a label from the lid.

  ‘Is that because you're a ready-meal kind of girl,’ Thea teased her, ‘or because you eat out an inordinate amount?’

  Alice laughed. ‘Actually, it's because I put one of absolutely every Le Creuset product on the wedding list so I simply have had no need of this dish thus far.’

  ‘I assume this corkscrew was a wedding present too,’ Thea grumbled, ‘it's so state-of-the-art I haven't a clue how to use it. In fact, I'm assuming it is a corkscrew, right?’

  Alice gave Thea the onions to peel while she wrestled with the corkscrew. ‘Bloody thing,’ she said at length, ‘I'm sure the regular old one is at the back of a drawer.’

  ‘And which drawer would that be?’ Thea remarked, eyeing the impressive run of them.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Alice sighed. ‘You rum-mage through those over there and these here, and I'll wade my way through those and these.’

  ‘Bingo,’ Thea said after a good five minutes' clattering, fulminating and rediscovering items Alice had thought she'd lost. She uncorked the Rioja and poured two glasses, adding a slosh to the sauce bubbling gently in a small Le Creuset saucepan. ‘When's Mark back?’

  ‘Friday,’ Alice said.

  ‘Christ, that's cutting it fine for Christmas shopping, isn't it?’ Thea declared.

  ‘That's why he'd better find time to shop in Singapore,’ Alice reasoned, ‘or else I'll make him suffer for it during the January sales.’

  ‘Did I tell you I'm going to Saul's folks for Boxing Day?’ Thea said, sitting herself up on one of the many work surfaces while Alice arranged orange slices and cinnamon sticks on top of the chicken. ‘It's weird, in London, and as I know him, Saul seems so self-contained, so independent, at harmony with his environment – as if he's always been this age, living in his pad, doing his job.’ She raised her legs so Alice could retrieve a zester from a drawer beneath her. ‘Yet back in Nottingham there are graduation photos and junior-school woodwork examples and tennis trophies belonging to someone called Saul Mundy who I don't know. And parents. I find them peculiar too – though actually they're completely normal and really pretty nice. I simply can't connect Saul to them.’ Thea shifted slightly so that Alice could check the recipe propped up behind her. ‘It's as if seeing him in his family home rids him of some of the identity I associate with him.’

  ‘Mark hasn't changed a jot,’ Alice said fondly, shutting the oven door and wiping her hands on her jeans. ‘It'll be an hour and a half, shall we have some nibbles while we wait?’ Alice and Thea sat and chatted, sipped wine and munched tortilla chips. ‘The bloke in my wedding photograph is identical to the photo on his parents' mantelpiece of the twelve-year-old collecting his Junior Chess Champion medal from Peter Purves,’ Alice said, stretching out on her sofa and placing her feet on Thea's lap. ‘Mind you, I suppose I've known Mark for almost as many years so there are unlikely to be surprises or skeletons.’ They chinked wineglasses and suddenly she missed him very much. ‘I feel bad,’ she confided. ‘He goes away and I denounce him – yet then I think of his Junior Chess Champion medal or the way he folds everything away every night and I long for him.’

  ‘Friday is only the day after the day after tomorrow,’ Thea soothed.

  ‘I'll probably be a stroppy cow when he's back,’ Alice said, resigned, ‘poor old Mark.’

  ‘Mark thinks he's the luckiest bloke in the world,’ Thea told Alice.

  ‘I think we should do our New Year's resolutions tonight, you and me,’ Alice declared, ‘because we won't see each other till next year, after all. I kind of wish Mark hadn't booked Paris for New Year's Eve – but there's no way I can complain, let alone cancel.’

  Over a fabulous Moroccan chicken casserole with saffron rice and roasted butternut squash, and Christmas crackers from Heals, Alice laid out her hopes for the next year.

  ‘I want to win Publisher of the Year,’ she listed, straightening her paper crown, ‘I want Adam to outsell GQ.’

  ‘Those aren't resolutions,’ Thea told her, testing the plastic whistle that came in her cracker, ‘they're goals.’

  ‘Top of my wish-list,’ Alice shrugged, reading the cracker joke and deciding swiftly it wasn't worth repeating out loud.

  ‘What about you and Mark?’ Thea asked.

  ‘I suppose,’ Alice said cautiously, ‘it would be to spend more time together. But then that was my aim last year. I suppose, it's for me to be less narky with him. And to develop a taste for opera.’

  ‘And thoughts of babies, perhaps?’ Thea suggested.

  ‘I'm going to see Sally tomorrow,’ said Alice, changing track but not the subject. ‘I bought the dearest present for baby Juliette.’

  ‘Well, if you do have any thoughts about babies,’ Thea said, ‘for goodness' sake tell Sally not to tell you her birth story.’

  ‘Shitting a watermelon?’ Alice asked.

  ‘With spikes on,’ Thea whispered.

  ‘Anyway, I'm not thinking of having babies,’ Alice whispered back.

  ‘But Mark is,’ Thea said quietly.

  Over Marks & Spencer's Christmas pudding and fresh lychees, Thea divulged her thoughts for the coming year. ‘I'm going to redecorate my flat – a room a month,’ she said, ‘and I'm going to go running every other lunch hour. I'm going to do my tax on time and pay my credit cards off each month.’ She chinked Alice's wineglass.

  ‘And Saul?’ Alice asked. ‘Where do you see the both of you this time next year? Will you have wed and bred?’

  Thea fell silent. She pressed the back of her fork down hard onto the pudding, squashing it flat. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I'm hoping for some sense of planning. A strategy.’ She took a second helping of Christmas pudding and ate a couple of spoonfuls thoughtfully before peeling another lychee. ‘You know lychees are known as “babies' bottoms” too?’ she remarked.

  ‘It still doesn't make me broody,’ said Alice, analysing the fruit.

  ‘I don't doubt Saul's love for me,’ Thea explained, ‘but we never really assess it. Neither of us has a problem with commitment – but we haven't ever sat down and analysed where we're at. We just stroll from day to day, ambling along, hand in hand.’

  ‘It sounds idyllic to me,’ said Alice, ‘and anyway, you know how it's sometimes counterproductive to analyse a relationship – the whole “let's talk about Us” syndrome.’

  ‘I know. Believe me, from experience, I do know that. But I wouldn't mind hearing Saul proclaim that I'm the girl for him.’ Thea shrugged at Alice.

  ‘I know what it is,’ Alice said, pouring them both some Cointreau. ‘You have no shadow of doubt that Saul is indeed your knight in shining armour. But what you want is for him to behave like one,’ she declared.

  ‘Rose between his teeth, bended knee – the lot,’ Thea laughed, her fist to the table. ‘God, you know me well – if you weren't already married, I'd suggest you and I wed.’

  ‘Would you say yes, then, if Saul asked?’ Alice probed.

  ‘I don't need him to ask me to marry him,’ Thea said, ‘that's not the point at all.’

  ‘You are funny – funny peculiar,’ Alice said, ‘you're such a sucker for extreme romance and yet marriage just isn't on your agenda, is it?’

  ‘But you're just as funny peculiar,’ Thea sparred, ‘because you can explain the sensation of love in chemical terms yet you marched down the aisle in a traditional frock with a great big grin on your face.’

  ‘Perhaps it's because my parents set me an excellent example of marriage, but yours didn't,’ Alice said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Thea, ‘but fundamentally, I regard being in love as
so intrinsically, mystically sublime that the man-made institution of marriage seems irrelevant. I think the awesome aspect of true love is trivialized by signing a piece of paper.’

  ‘Well, I think marriage is an excellent idea,’ Alice declared. She thought for a moment. ‘I suppose where you don't see marriage as being the point of love, I don't see love as being the point of marriage,’ said Alice.

  ‘But you do love Mark,’ Thea cautioned, ‘don't you?’

  ‘Of course I do!’ said Alice. ‘Will you please stop going on at me about that.’

  The Isley Brothers

  ‘You should practise what you preach,’ Alice tells Saul nonchalantly while they pore over contact sheets of a recent shoot with Kate Winslet for a forthcoming cover. She bends over the light box, giving a skilled twist to her hair and fixing it against her head with a Biro to keep it out of the way. She lowers her right eye to the loupe and deftly scans the shots. With a yellow chinagraph pencil, she marks off four or five frames, sits back satisfied and hands the loupe to Saul.

  ‘Can you just remind me what I've preached?’ Saul humours her while he inspects the contact sheets even faster than Alice, ultimately agreeing with her preliminary selection.

  ‘Well, the figures coming in for the last issue suggest it was our biggest seller yet,’ Alice informs him, while marking the chosen images of Miss Winslet to be cropped, ‘and I do believe it was your idea to call it the Romance Issue; that you coined the spine quote: “Warmth can be cool – rock on, Valentine”. In a nutshell, the slant on love and all its panoply was your call.’

  ‘Which you tried to overrule!’ Saul quips, with a raised eyebrow. ‘You thought the February issue should have a completely sarcastic and ironic take. Which it then transpired GQ and Arena and FHM all took. Boring.’

  ‘Anyway,’ says Alice, rather primly, ‘you should put your name to it.’

  ‘You're not still on at me to join your sodding staff, are you?’ Saul sighs, surreptitiously trying to read one of Alice's memos, albeit upside down.

  ‘Christ no, you'd cost me far too much in annual salary and perks now, Mr Mundy,’ Alice exclaims. She regards him contemplatively, her head tipped to one side, her hair starting to escape anarchically from her improvised Biro clasp. ‘I'm talking about taking your work home.’

  ‘If you are telling me to work from home, you're hardly practising what you preach,’ Saul says. ‘You give Mark a hard time if he even skims through the Economist after seven p.m.’

  ‘Not in that respect, you noodle,’ Alice says affectionately, ‘I'm simply suggesting that you redirect a little of the focus you laid on romance for February's Adam, to your home life.’

  ‘Alice,’ Saul says with exaggerated exasperation, ‘what the fuck are you going on about? You're talking so cryptically I can't work out if you're telling me off, telling me to work less from your office or telling me to become a torch-bearer for Romance.’

  ‘Yes!’ Alice exclaims, triumphant, her hair in a sudden swoosh around her shoulders, the Biro on the floor. ‘Romantic hero! That's precisely what I'm suggesting. With a capital R.’

  Saul frowns and then regards Alice suspiciously. ‘Are you talking about Thea?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Alice confesses, ‘but if you tell her, I'll bloody kill you and then I'll sack you.’

  ‘If. I. Tell. Thea. What?’

  ‘It's just I know that recently, privately, she's been hoping for some declaration of intent,’ Alice shrugs, ‘and Saul, you're bright enough to figure out what I'm on about.’

  It was a freakishly balmy late February and Saul eschewed ordering a cab in favour of the bus but soon enough jumped from that at the lights to indulge in a long and cathartic walk home from his meeting with Alice. Figuring out what she was on about was alternately unnerving yet stirring. When the thinking became too onerous, he'd pop into a newsagent to check stock and positioning of the titles he worked for, on occasion phoning the publishers to report his findings. One shop still had their Valentine's Day display up, but all the cards and trinkets were half price. Saul found himself browsing, tempted to buy a card – not because it was cheap but simply because it had a cheery photo of two amorous tortoises which he thought Thea would like. Actually, Saul had given her a large envelope filled with Loveheart sweets for Valentine's Day, though he'd painstakingly removed any with inappropriate inscriptions like ‘Big Boy’ or ‘Hunky’. Saul put the rutting tortoises card back. He checked the magazine stock, repositioned Adam to the front of the rack, and walked on. He was a little troubled. Was Thea unhappy? But she hadn't given him any cause to think so. He was gently perplexed. Had he ever given her reason not to trust him or believe in his commitment and affection for her? He was sure that he hadn't. What he did acknowledge was that two years and three months into their relationship, he felt so completely comfortable with Thea being an integral part of his life that he really didn't give the matter much thought any more.

  Perhaps that was the crux of it; the rub for Thea that Alice alluded to. Though he always looked forward to being with her – and a night apart was rare now – just then he accepted that he never actually told her so. It didn't occur to him to. Wouldn't it seem contrived? And anyway, wasn't the proof in the sweet pudding of their combined lives? He had as many clothes at her place as she had at his, their social circle was so fully integrated that he would need to concertedly recall whose friends were whose originally. Thea's new Hoover was bought by Saul and he'd retiled her bath-room with as much pernickety pride as if it was his own. Often, she changed his linen as a matter of course, stocked his food cupboards and thought nothing of answering his phone, land line or mobile, if he was out of earshot. So many other signs illustrated a love so legible that surely it didn't need to be spelt out too? Everyone knew Saul and Thea were a team. It was such an oft-pronounced phrase that it sounded as though they were no longer two distinct people; the ‘d’ was dropped and the words fused: Saulan-Thea. The balance between them was such that little rocked their proverbial boat. They got along too well for that, liked each other so much that they never found reason to disagree, or much point in arguing.

  Do I take Thea for granted? Is that what Alice implied?

  When Saul finally walked up Great Portland Street it was gone six o'clock. He'd been walking for three hours and his feet were sore, his mind still fugged. Was he doing something wrong or just not doing right enough? He meandered circuitously to his street. From the corner, he looked up and saw that his lights were on. He stood still for a while and regarded the run of his windows, stopping to thoroughly analyse what he normally gave no second thought to. Thea Jessica Luckmore, aged thirty-three, was up there. That was a fact. Five feet four inches high, around nine stones in weight, natural mousy hair, hazel eyes, slightly skew bottom teeth, impressive scars from a vicious dog, favourite colour turquoise, favourite book Black Beauty, all-time favourite song ‘Cygnet Committee’ by David Bowie, favourite film Jules et Jim, favourite animal tortoise. Supports Chelsea FC but prefers watching rugby. Electric toothbrushes make her gag. Drinks hot Marmite when she has a cold. Once performed a tap dance on Blue Peter. All facts he knew off by heart. At that very moment, she was in his flat. Probably watching the early-evening news or taking a shower. Or perhaps she was just sitting quietly letting the physical tensions she'd massaged from her clients all day ebb away from her. Saul walked a few paces closer but stopped again, looking up at his flat.

  I don't know what she's doing up there, actually, but the fact is that I much prefer returning home to a flat full of Thea than one devoid of her. She is part of my world. She is synonymous with Home. She lights my life. She makes my space personal. She defines it.

  He continued to loiter on the corner, engrossed in thoughts about light bulbs. They were on in his flat and, as if in a cartoon strip, Saul envisaged one suddenly sparking into light atop his head. As if he'd just had the best idea in the world. Like the answer to life itself had clicked on. How many feminists does it take to change a light
bulb? Just one, actually – and I don't think that's very funny. How many Theas does it take to change a light bulb? None, actually. Saul had systematically gone through her flat just that weekend and replaced the lot.

  February may have been unseasonably mild but Saul acknowledged it was downright deluded to have the Isley Brothers' ‘Summer Breeze’ soaring through his mind. Over the years, when discussing his Desert Island Discs with friends or compiling his Top 8 by himself in the bath, it had been the only mainstay on his list. It was one of those songs that in his head he sang perfectly but out loud, when he so wanted to put the power into his voice that the song instilled in him, the result was discordant and cringeworthy. Just then, though, it wasn't the summer breeze per se, nor the bizarre notion of having jasmine in one's mind; it wasn't the sweet and melodious tune nor the joyous vocals. For Saul, the immediate connection was with a man returning home; knowing from the mere hang of the curtains, from the little light shining in the window, that his love was there, with her arms reaching out to hold him, to make his world all right. More than all right. The blissful domesticity of it all. What more could a man want?

  And I come home from a hard day's work

  And you're waitin' there

  Not a care in the world

  See the smile a-waitin' in the kitchen

  Food cookin' and the plates for two

  Feel the arms that reach out to hold me

  In the evening when the day is through

  Saul takes the stairs, two at a time, music filling his soul, mirroring his feelings, reverberating around his head, providing the answer. He bursts through the door and Thea looks up. There she is. There she is. Sitting on the sofa with her feet on the coffee table. Painting her toenails. Wearing a T-shirt of his, inside out. A mug and a screwed-up KitKat wrapper by the bottle of nail polish. The Simpsons on the television with the volume turned down. David Bloody Bloody Bowie on the stereo.