‘Let's not stay too long, darling,’ pleaded Helen, once Jessica, staggering a little under the coats, had turned for the stairs.
Peter shot a glance of disappointment at his wife and noted that she looked tired. The shadows under her still striking brown eyes were as dark as fingerprints and her usually kempt hair had been blown haywire by the wind that had gusted across the churchyard, tugging at their clothes like an attention-seeking child. Although she visited the hairdresser regularly the grey showed through quickly, these days. Thanks to the assault of the February breeze it was clearly visible now, crusty patches of white along her hairline and parting, as if dabbed there by an inexpert painter. She looked old, Peter realized, recalling the wholly uncharacteristic fervour with which she had appeared to pray in church, fingers locked, eyes cast down, lids trembling, as if she was seeking something. Usually she stared straight ahead, as he had, in a pose of respectful but defiant agnosticism. ‘But we haven't been here since Christmas,’ he said at length, his expression softening. ‘In fact, I was thinking of staying the night. It would do us both good, don't you think, a night out of town?’
‘Staying the night?’ echoed Helen, shrilly.
Jessica, half-way up the stairs, paused to peep through the carved oak spindles of the banisters.
‘Of course you can stay,’ Serena assured them smoothly, catching a thread of the conversation as she emerged from the kitchen into the hall. ‘You know you're always welcome,’ she added, while her mind leapt, with rather less enthusiasm, to the dusty, unready state of Peter and Helen's room. And she would have to change her scribbled order to the milkman too, from three pints to four – or maybe five, if Roland and Elizabeth ended up staying too, which was likely, given the gusto with which her elder sister-in-law appeared to be tucking into the wine.
‘No, thank you, Serena. It was just a lovely but perfectly ridiculous idea of Peter's…’
‘Ridiculous?’ Peter snorted with irritation, all tenderness forgotten, his blue eyes blazing in a way that regularly made juries sit to attention, no matter how hopeless the position he was defending.
Even Jessica, who was used to being in the thick of uglier confrontations, took a step back on the landing, using her bundle of coats to shield all but her green eyes and high forehead, ivory-white against her freshly dyed black hair. There was an undeniable thrill in watching people you didn't like fighting with each other, especially when they were unaware of it and you didn't give a toss about the outcome.
Serena, who did care about the outcome, decided it would be best effected by her absence. ‘Just let me know what you decide,’ she murmured, hurrying through to the drawing room, grateful that she had fallen in love with the infinitely less fierce second son, Charlie, and thinking how baffling the behaviour of other couples could be, even those one had known and loved for two decades.
‘I just meant,’ persisted Helen, too used to her husband's quick temper to be cowed by it, ‘that we ought to get back for the girls.’
‘It's Friday and we have a nanny, don't we?’
‘A nanny who has the evening off to go the cinema.’
‘Who always has the evening off when we need her.’ Peter tugged at his starched cuffs, one eye on the doorway into the drawing room where everyone else had already gathered. He could hear the spit and crackle of the freshly lit fire, laid by Sid, no doubt, that morning, and Charlie's booming laugh from the far end of the room. ‘Well, perhaps I could stay, then – catch the train up tomorrow. Would that be all right?’ There was an edge of sarcasm in his voice.
‘Of course! And don't be such a crosspatch,’ Helen scolded, sealing her peace-offering by brushing a fleck of dust off his suit, then adjusting his tie.
Peter grunted to acknowledge the truce, feeling, with his chin lifted and his wife's deft fingers at his collar, both cornered and mollified.
‘I would stay if I could,’ Helen added, stepping back to admire her handiwork, too relieved at the resolution of the dispute to question whether this was true. It was certain, though, that without Peter her evening would be infinitely more productive: she could snack instead of preparing a proper meal, then sit up in bed with her papers for as long as she liked, glass of wine in hand, with the prospect of sleep uninterrupted by thunderous snores.
With the chairs and side-tables pushed against the walls, the drawing room offered almost too large a space for the thirty or so assembled guests to lose themselves comfortably. A smaller room would have pressed them all together, forcing jollity and cohesion. As it was, they stood in small, awkward groups – islands amid the sea of blue Axminster – making small-talk and picking food off passing trays like timid strangers. In the broad stone jaws of the hearth, with its handsome, fluted black-marble surround, Sid's expertly laid fire lashed and burned vigorously, looking spectacular but belting out so much heat that Serena, with a surreptitious glance at her mother-in-law, who liked greenhouse temperatures all year, hurried from radiator to radiator, turning them down. Even so, the line of windows overlooking the veranda, known to the family as the cloisters, and garden, each like a miniature stage, with its frame of heavy blue velvet curtain, was soon misted. Almost, mused Serena, pausing to rub a porthole in one with a tissue, as if the spring mist, now seeping towards the house from the South Downs, had found cracks in the walls and crept inside. The thought made her shiver, in spite of the heat. She was getting a headache, she realized, pressing the wet tissue to the bridge of her nose, which still felt blocked from crying. The tears had started with the opening hymn – ‘Abide With Me' – then continued to pour out of her throughout the service. Like a sluice gate opening, letting all the old sadnesses flood out – missing John, Charlie's lovely dad, and her own mother, felled by cancer years before. And Tina, of course. Always Tina, loved and lost, but not lost because nothing so truly loved could ever disappear. In the church she had found Charlie's hand and squeezed it, aware that he knew how she felt, reminding herself that he would help her bear it.
Now she felt better, in spite of the headache. Crying always helped. Purging or something. Serena smiled to herself and then at Charlie, who was springing round guests with a bottle, his unruly hair even wilder than usual and his funeral tie slung over one shoulder. Every so often he reached with his free hand for an absent tug at his waistband, clearly forgetting that he was in a new fat phase so his trousers had no alternative but to slip down to his hips, defeated by the substantial bulge of his belly. After Tina he had taken up running and got rather slim. Serena had been equivocal about it, even at the time, feeling dimly that a part of him was literally running away from her – from their grief. When the weight had begun to creep on again she had relished reacquainting herself with his teddy-bear bulk, the lovely sensation of being small in his arms. Aware that a few people were staring at her, alone by the window, Serena crossed the room to see to things in the kitchen, tossing her wet tissue into the fire as she passed.
Roland, seeing it land, went to watch the tissue burn, a livid yellow bundle, before it subsided among the blackened logs and coal. Ed joined him, lobbing in paper napkins until their uncle Peter tersely suggested they find less childish and more useful occupations than setting the chimney on fire.
As Charlie worked hard to link the still stranded groups with cheery remarks and offers to top up glasses, he could feel perspiration spreading across his forehead and back. He glanced at the gilt-framed portrait of his father, which hung above the fireplace, dominating the room, and couldn't help thinking that the old man would have managed the occasion better: seeing to every detail with his usual, often irksome, fastidiousness, asserting himself, exuding the quiet, infectious confidence of the truly self-assured. Maybe he himself was an impostor, Charlie reflected, with uncharacteristic bleakness, as he paused, bottle in hand, to meet John Harrison's penetrating gaze. He felt for a moment as if they were locked in one of those blinking games he had once played with his siblings, staring each other out till their lids ached and their eyes streame
d.
‘All right, old thing?’
Charlie blinked, and turned to see that his elder brother's broad, earnest face was softened with affectionate concern.
‘You were lost there for a minute.’
‘I was.’ Charlie grinned. ‘Do you think the old man's watching over us all, thinking we're making a botch of things?’
‘Of course not… Here, let me take charge of this.’ Peter seized the wine bottle. ‘Go and find yourself a glass. I was thinking of staying the night, by the way, if that's okay – thought we might treat ourselves to a pint in the village later.’
‘Fine. Did you, er, mention it to Serena for catering purposes and so on?’
‘I did indeed,’ replied Peter, with a formal click of his heels as he set off to distribute the wine. Charlie remained where he was, torn between gratitude at his elder brother's unfailing pragmatism, his ability to take command, and a dim sense of having been outmanoeuvred. He watched Peter launch into the role of genial host with which he himself had been struggling, breaking into a little throng of Alicia's bridge-playing friends, then approaching their sister, Elizabeth, who was standing alone by the table of family photographs, staring at them, as if they were a gallery of strangers. Peter said something to her and Elizabeth's face lit up. Observing the exchange, Charlie's spirits lifted. He might have his wobbly patches, but Peter would hold it all together. He always did, Charlie reflected, recalling the inspirational dry-eyed determination with which his elder brother had helped to shoulder Alicia's coffin that afternoon, just as he had helped to bear the body of their father two years before. He had stood tall and stoical while the rest of them bowed their heads and dabbed at their faces with handkerchiefs. And giving him Ashley House – Christ! Charlie experienced a fresh, dizzying rush of gratitude at the extraordinary magnitude of the gift. Announced a couple of years before the death of their father, while he and Serena were in the thick of grief after losing Tina, the family home had dropped into their laps like a lifeline, a way forward without which they might have drowned.
Pamela stood for as long as she could, listening but not hearing as Alicia's son Paul told her about life in Canberra. She nodded, as if his words meant something, but inside she fought vainly to merge the tanned, paunchy-faced man in front of her with the pale, shy twenty-five-year-old who had left England forty years before, breaking his mother's heart. Alicia had never said as much, of course – one didn't talk about such things, in those days – but that was when the acerbity had started, the closing of the door on friendship. She had been jealous, probably, Pamela mused now, losing her one child while Pamela and John had four to fill their hearts and their beautiful home with clatter and energy.
‘I think I'll sit down,’ she said, even though Paul was in mid-sentence. ‘I have a bad back,’ she explained, looking for the sofa, which had been moved from its usual place in front of the fire to a stretch of wall between a Georgian bookcase and a cabinet of ornaments. ‘Never used to. John was the one – terrible time with his back for years, not that he liked to admit it… Ever since he's been gone, virtually from the day he died in fact, I get this pain, almost as if –’ She broke off, aware that Paul's round face was sinking in bafflement. ‘I'll just take myself off for a sit-down, then – she murmured, moving towards the sofa. And it was baffling, she mused, sinking back against the cushions with a sigh of relief – utterly insane – to imagine that a pain could be passed on, bequeathed like a piece of jewellery or a house, when it was just the crumbling of her ancient spine. Seeing Jessica approach with a tray of asparagus rolls, Pamela waved her away and closed her eyes. The funeral had drained her. She might not miss Alicia per se but with her gone she felt fragile and exposed, like a last flower standing up to a gale.
Annoyed, feeling like a troublesome insect, Jessica took her offerings to Cassie and her fiancé, Stephen Smith, instead. The pair had positioned themselves by the largest of the windows overlooking the arched stone veranda fronting the garden and were using the windowsill to sort through a stack of white envelopes.
‘Oh, Jessica, thank you.’ Cassie took a roll, waited for Stephen to take one too then started to eat. Jessica was about to move on when Cassie seized her arm and announced to Stephen, through her mouthful, ‘Darling, you remember Jessica, don't you? Sid's granddaughter – she used to play with my nephews and nieces.’
‘Of course. Nice to see you again. Good of you to help out.’
‘Yeah… right.’ Jessica blushed, unsure how to respond given that she was being paid for her services rather than performing them as an act of charity.
‘We're getting married,’ gushed Cassie next. ‘Did you know?’
‘Yeah, Mrs Harrison told me… That's great. Are them the invites?’
‘These?’ Cassie glanced at the envelopes. ‘Oh, no, they're for our engagement party. The wedding isn't going to be until next year. January, we've decided, as the deadline for Stephen's new book is Christmas and we think a winter wedding, if done properly, could be lovely, don't we, darling? The thing is,’ she continued, before Stephen had had a chance to reply, ‘what with the funeral and so on, we were wondering whether it really was the moment to give out these invitations – whether it might look a bit unfeeling. What do you think?’
Jessica gripped her tray, alarmed at having her opinion sought. ‘I think people always want a party, don't they? A reason to let their hair down, have some fun…’ The pair nodded happily and exchanged a look that made Jessica feel it was more than time to move on. She scanned the room and, with only one asparagus roll left on the tray, her eyes alighted on Ed. He was crouched in a corner rifling through a stack of CDs in front of the mahogany unit that housed his parents' music centre.
He stood up as she approached, grinning and shaking his head at the tray. ‘Not for me, thanks, I'm stuffed.’ He slapped his hand to his stomach, drawing attention to his untucked shirt and revealing a couple of inches of white skin. ‘What are Mum and Dad paying you, if you don't mind me asking?’
‘I bloody do mind – it's none of your bloody business.’
‘Use language like that and they might not pay you at all.’
‘Bollocks.’ Jessica took a bite of the last remaining canapé and dropped it back on to the tray with a grimace. ‘Gross.’
Ed laughed. ‘Asparagus – I hate it too. It makes your pee smell, did you know that?’
Jessica giggled. ‘No way.’
‘Hey, you couldn't get us another glass of wine, could you?’
‘I might,’ she replied archly, not enjoying the reminder that she was at everyone's beck and call. She snatched Ed's empty glass and took the nearest route back to the kitchen, through the adjoining door to the music room, with its soft green carpet and black monster of a piano, and out again into the bit of hall that ran past the downstairs cloakroom. The house, as she had tried occasionally to tell some of her Wandsworth schoolmates, was as giant and grand as a museum, but also sort of homely, with furniture that was posh but somehow used-looking and comfy, like the deep armchairs in the TV room and the big yellow sofa in the kitchen, which was easily as big as her mum's bed. She couldn't look at it without wanting to kick off her shoes and wallow around in its huge, faded cushions.
Entering the kitchen now Jessica gave an involuntary sigh of pleasure. As a small girl she had spent many happy hours in here, sitting on her grandfather's lap usually, nibbling biscuits while he swigged his mid-morning mug of tea and chewed at the end of an unlit roll-up. She remembered hiding once under the big oak table, peeping out from between the chair legs, pretending she couldn't hear him calling, pretending the table was her own grand house, not wanting ever to be found. Even now, with the grown-up perspective that made everything seem smaller, she noted that the table remained big enough to provide a roof for several people. The rest of the place – the huge quarried floor tiles, the gleaming blue Aga in the old fireplace, the two stainless-steel sinks, the oak cabinets and the marbled surfaces connecting it all together – wa
s like something out of one of those glossy magazines at the hairdresser's, with pictures of houses and swimming-pools that made you wish you could dive into them and leave all the crap behind.
Completing the picture of perfection, Samson, the elderly ginger tom, was curled up on the back of the sofa in a pool of sunshine, his head on his paws, tail tucked round him like a draught-excluder. Jessica, who didn't much like cats, kept a wary eye on him as she poured wine into Ed's glass and took a good long swig. Dogs were better, she thought, remembering the lovely chocolate Labrador called Little Boots who had been run over a few years before and feeling a stab of pity for Poppy, whom she could hear yelping in indignation at her enforced confinement in one of the garden sheds.
‘You're a lucky puss,’ she muttered darkly, taking another gulp of wine, tempted suddenly to throw a cloth or cork at the cat to disturb things a little, make them more real.
‘Ah, there you are,’ exclaimed Serena, sternly enough to indicate that she had seen the hasty lowering of the wine glass. Allowances had to be made, she told herself, tugging the oven gloves off the Aga rail and bending down to check the trays of sausage rolls and vol-au-vents she had put in to heat earlier. They were employing Jessica as a goodwill gesture to Sid, she reminded herself, and because they had heard enough over the years to recognize that it was something of a miracle the child was still in one piece, let alone capable of waitressing for the afternoon. ‘Could you take some of these into the drawing room?’ she asked sweetly. ‘And thank you so much, you're doing such a good job.’
The Simple Rules of Love Page 2