It was insane, of course. The poor child was only going away for two days to his godmother, dear Cassie, her own little sister, who would meet him at Victoria, spoil him rotten, then post him back on Sunday, his stomach bulging with junk food and his rucksack full of frivolous expensive gifts. There had been similar excursions in the past, but Elizabeth had always gone too. Not to be included on this occasion – because, as Cassie rightly pointed out, Roland was old enough to manage the journey on his own – had contributed to her irrational flood of abandonment. Deep down she wondered if Cassie didn't want to see her, whether, in her new feverish happiness as prospective bride, she wanted to keep some distance between herself and the sibling who had managed to cock up not once but twice on the marriage front. As if Elizabeth was bad luck or simply too jaded with her own disappointments to be truly happy on Cassie's behalf. All of which was rubbish. No one in the world deserved happiness more than her little sister, bravely ploughing her own furrow for years and years when she was so pretty and capable. Seeing her and Stephen together at the party, all that touching and eye-contact, so clearly in love, had made Elizabeth nothing short of joyful on their behalf. Only the tiniest bit of her had felt sad, and that wasn't out of jealousy so much as recognition that marriage closed certain doors, that having sworn loyalty to her husband some of her and Cassie's patchy sibling intimacy would be lost for good.
That morning, however, it was the greater, more subtly looming milestone of losing her son that Elizabeth had found so oppressive. Standing on the platform, watching the train lumber away, she had had a sudden sharp presentiment of the pain she would feel when Roland flew the nest. All rational consolations – the futility of feeling miserable in anticipation of a prospect, Roland having almost three years of school still to go – failed to have any effect. She was losing him already. She could feel it – in his new silences, his closed bedroom door and the thump of his music pulsing through the floorboards. Her sweet son, her lifeline, her darling, was pulling away, as he had every right to, as she had known he would. What she had not known was the extent of the isolation she would suffer. The foretaste of it that morning had induced a deep, physical fear the like of which Elizabeth had never before experienced – a million times worse than discovering Colin had been screwing around, or the hollowness in the pit of her stomach when Lucien had picked up his car keys and said hanging on to memories was better than sticking around to destroy them.
After she'd got back to the cottage she'd staggered upstairs to Roland's empty bedroom and hugged his pillow, feeling quite mad but not caring because there was no one to see, and hugging the pillow was better than hugging nothing. Among the laundry smell of fresh linen she could detect traces of his recently acquired aftershave and beneath that, if she inhaled deeply enough, the little-boy scent of his skin. She had pressed the pillow to her face, drinking every last drop, until the linen was wet and there was nothing to smell but the musty dampness caused by her tears.
Then she had moved about the room, picking things up and putting them down again, fondly noting the teenage mess of his belongings and pondering the curious fact of loving something annoying. He hated her coming into his room – hated her tidying. In spite of this she could not resist scooping up his abandoned pyjamas, still faintly warm, and laying them neatly on the end of the bed.
Crossing to the window, she had tried to shake a little sense into herself by staring out at the sharp, clear-skied brilliance of the day. The sun was shining, summer was coming, her sister was getting married and her son had gone away for two days. It was laughable to feel so sad. Laughable and pathetic. Elizabeth had turned, resolution burgeoning, to leave the room, only to be stopped in her tracks by the picture propped on the easel, an explosion of colours, messy, but somehow not messy, just… beautiful. Elizabeth sighed, incomprehensibly moved not just by the picture but by the brushes and paint tubes laid out so neatly on the table next to it, an oasis of extraordinary order, as clean and precise as operating instruments. She had run her fingers over each one, then run from the room, all the love and fear spilling inside like a pain.
Downstairs in the kitchen, she had made herself some coffee and topped it up with a generous shot of brandy. After she had drunk it she felt both a little better and a little worse. The alcohol soothed her, as she had known it would, but to require soothing so early in the day made her ashamed. Fearful that she might be tempted to repeat the exercise, she had set out to visit Ashley House, chewing gum all the way to neutralize her breath.
‘It's only me,’ she trilled, feeling soothed in an entirely different way by the sight of Serena, still leaning on the gate, her long chestnut hair loose and blowing across her cheeks, her pretty face kind and concerned. ‘My day off – thought I'd drop in, see how Mum is, how you are. I hope I haven't picked a bad moment.’
‘Of course not.’ Serena opened the gate and beckoned her through. ‘Your mum's on one of her little walks round the garden, Ed's pedalled off to the library and I've been pretending to our new handyman that I know what I'm talking about.’
‘Oh, yes, that friend of Stephen's… We were introduced at the party and I couldn't think of a word to say. Is he any good?’
‘He appears to be excellent,’ Serena replied, fighting annoyance at the way Elizabeth had pushed open the kitchen door and flung herself with easy familiarity on to the big yellow sofa. ‘Coffee?’ She ran the tap a little more violently than necessary, wondering whether her and Charlie's open-house-to-family policy was sustainable. Their gratitude to Peter for giving them Ashley House was huge, of course, beyond articulation, but with Elizabeth sprawling on the sofa and Peter's latest interference fresh in her mind, Serena found herself thinking how awful it would be for her and Charlie to have to spend the rest of their lives demonstrating their gratitude, as burdened and beholden as freed slaves. She'd married Charlie, after all, not his trio of siblings.
‘How do you do it?’ wailed Elizabeth, sweeping her unruly thatch of greying hair off her face and letting it fall back again. ‘How do you look so fabulous?’
‘Do I?’ Serena laughed, thinking that, for all her faults, how guileless her sister-in-law was compared to most women, how impossible not to like. ‘I can't say I feel it.’ She glanced doubtfully at her off-white T-shirt and long denim skirt, so old it was fraying along the hem, and the black plastic flip-flops she had slipped on because she couldn't find any clean socks.
‘Soon I'll be fifty-four,’ continued Elizabeth, morosely, ‘but today I feel more like a hundred and four. My hair – Christ! It's like an old brush.'
‘Don't be silly,’ said Serena, observing that Elizabeth was indeed rather more dishevelled than usual, like a badly wrapped parcel. ‘Here you are – milk, one sugar.’ She made a cluck of concern as she handed over the mug, calmed as always by the easy business of being nice to someone and thinking that the now imminent surprise party was exactly what her sister-in-law needed to bolster her spirits.
‘And you've been through so much,’ gushed Elizabeth, thoroughly into her stride now, thanks to the brandy and no breakfast. ‘I mean, all I've had to contend with is two failed marriages while you…’ She blew on her coffee. ‘Do you still miss her… Tina?’
‘Of course.’ Serena eyed her sister-in-law steadily over her mug. She was well past the stage of experiencing any obligation to explain her feelings to anyone. The loss of her child was simply part of her, walled inside, as integral to each breath as her pumping heart. ‘Do you still miss Lucien? Or Colin?’ she countered deftly.
Elizabeth groaned. ‘Well, it's hardly the same… but Colin, no, I'm still too angry. If it wasn't for Roland I wouldn't care if I never heard from him again. As for Lucien… that's harder. To have tried a second time and failed…’ She sighed, remembering again how she had watched him drive away, taking with him, she sometimes felt, every ounce of her fragile self-belief. ‘We should never have got back together. Never. It's always a mistake to go back, don't you think?’
‘P
robably,’ replied Serena, thinking suddenly that maybe the entire Harrison family spent too much energy trying to go back to things, to cling to some idyllic past, instead of adapting to the realities of change. Sometimes she even thought she and Charlie might have got over losing Tina more quickly if they had resisted Peter's offer and moved somewhere else. Their youngest had spent so many happy hours of her short life at Ashley House that at first it had been almost as hard as being in their old house in Wimbledon, with memories waiting round corners like thugs with cudgels. But, then, memories were a comfort too, she reflected, her thoughts switching to the lifebelt of the past that clearly sustained her mother-in-law, all the little rituals and recollections that propelled her through each day. ‘Pamela's well,’ she said brightly, the tail end of the thought slipping out of her.
‘Oh, good… I ought to go and see her, I suppose.’ Elizabeth glanced at the kitchen window, as if expecting Pamela to appear on the other side of it. In truth she didn't really feel like skipping out into the garden, playing the role of attentive daughter. She was still too preoccupied with her own woes, too unsteady. Besides, she and her mother had never enjoyed the most relaxed of relationships: clashing temperaments and personalities, middle-child syndrome – variously confronted over the years, these demons had taught them tacitly to accept that each was a lot easier to love at a distance. ‘Just finish my coffee…’
Serena, her own mug empty, glanced in some despair at the kitchen clock.
Elizabeth, mired in her own closed world, asked after her nephew.
‘Oh, Ed's fine.’
‘Roland is too, I think, except… he spends a lot of time in his room, painting and listening to music. Sometimes I think he's a bit too solitary – he doesn't even see that friend of his, Polly, much any more. I think they've had some sort of falling out…’
‘We have to let our children be,’ interjected Serena, with some frustration, both at Elizabeth's dogged occupation of her kitchen and the difficulty of putting such wisdom into practice herself. Roland might be more publicly stifled by his mother but in some ways she and Charlie were just as bad. Every text, every email from their twin daughters was read and reread, treasured and worried over, just as they worried ceaselessly over Ed – his often lacklustre approach to work, his recent, astonishing announcement that he had consulted the school careers teacher about going into the army. The army! Serena's mouth had dried with terror as her mind flooded with images of mutilated limbs, body-bags and tours of duty in barbaric far-flung places. Charlie, on the other hand, had been delighted. It was the first sign of initiative on any front, he said, and they should welcome it. ‘Our children are gifts and owe us nothing,’ she declared firmly, speaking as much to herself as to Elizabeth and beginning, pointedly, to rinse out the coffee pot.
Ed had been hoping to make a discreet entry into the house via the back door, but saw his mother and aunt in the kitchen and hurriedly ducked under the window. If they spotted him they would ask awkward questions, like how was his A-level revision going and why had he made a trip to the library with a rucksack containing nothing but his phone and a bottle of water.
Head down, he trotted round the side of the house and walked along the cloisters, trying first the door to the music room and then the one into the drawing room. He rattled the handles impatiently, inwardly bewailing that, in recent weeks, his home life had degenerated into a non-stop game of cat-and-mouse with his parents. He didn't like it and wasn't sure how it had happened, except that suddenly all the things he felt most like doing – going to the pub, having a smoke, hanging out with Jessica – were things of which he knew they'd disapprove. His twin sisters were partly to blame, of course, for taking off at the same time, casting him in the unforeseeably horrible role of Only Child. With no one else to quiz, chivvy or encourage, the full beam of parental attention had swung his way just when he could most have done without it. It made him wonder how Roland had borne it all those years, and with Aunt Elizabeth too, whose intense concern and clinginess made his own mother seem positively neglectful.
Ed took off his rucksack and slumped down on to the cloister bench to consider his options. His legs were trembling slightly, from the vigour with which he had worked his bike pedals and the rather more enjoyable form of physical exercise that had preceded the journey home. He closed his eyes for a moment, reliving the sex, smelling it, tasting it, hearing Jessica's short breaths in his ear, urging him on, saying things that had helped excitement overcome his terror. Once, a few years before, a particularly bold biology teacher had informed his class of sniggering thirteen-year-olds that sex was enjoyable, that the Lord had made it so to ensure the survival of the human race. Though admiring of the teacher's courage, Ed had sniggered along with the rest, not then having the wherewithal to imagine enjoyment beyond an ice-cream or the delicious, explosive drive of sexual desire. Now he knew. Boy! He knew, all right. Ed clapped his hand to his mouth and laughed, elated again at having disburdened himself of his virginity, not clumsily either but – though he said it himself – pretty well. Jessica had seemed pleased enough, clinging to him afterwards, her body sticky with sweat, whispering that she'd never been so happy in all her sixteen years on the planet. Ed had returned the compliment, but when she'd hinted at heavier feelings he hadn't responded so easily. The encounter, though satisfying, had had nothing to do with anything deep on his side. Jessica was a laugh, someone to cut his teeth on, way off any hazy notions he might have of the Real Thing.
Ed wondered if he should simply stroll in through the front door. He felt exhausted suddenly – too tired, too contented to move. Since their thwarted clumsy assignment in the pub after his great-aunt's funeral, the prospect of a second, better chance with Jessica had built inside him like a gathering storm. Wherever he had been – trying to sleep, trying to work, listening to the careers teacher's nasal drone on the challenge of getting into Sandhurst or the Royal Marines – he had thought of little else. It had been like trying to live two lives – the normal, boring, necessary one and the other shimmering, imagined one, kept alive by the beep of his phone and Jessica's stream of texts, suggesting possibilities that kept falling through. She seemed to understand that what they were doing had to be kept secret. Her mum didn't even know she was on the pill, she had confessed that morning with a giggle, pressing herself against him as they lay hip to hip on Sid's narrow box of a spare bed, sharing a cigarette. ‘And my mum and dad want me to concentrate on my exams,’ Ed had replied, looking from Jessica's flushed face to the crumpled sheets, then laughing so hard he had choked till his eyes streamed.
‘Hi, there.’
‘Oh… hi, Keith.’ Ed struggled to his feet, almost choking now at the sudden appearance of his parents' new employee, who was standing by the rosebushes that skirted the lawn.
‘Enjoying the holidays?’
‘Yup.’ Ed picked up his rucksack as casually as he could. ‘Got to work, though, which is a pain.’ He sauntered on to the lawn and kicked idly at a molehill, wishing Keith would go away instead of staring at him like he knew everything. ‘See you, then,’ he muttered, strolling towards the front of the house.
Keith watched the boy till he had disappeared, thinking he looked up to no good, then chuckling because most seventeen-year-olds were up to no good – it went with the territory. He pulled his notepad out of his back pocket and checked the list he had made of materials for the studio job, wondering whether to set off to the shops Charlie had recommended or wait until after lunch. A nice crusty loaf and a packet of ham were waiting for him back at the barn, and his tummy was rumbling.
The shopping could wait, he decided, and turned to admire the view beyond the garden, where the South Downs guarded the horizon like a fairytale border to another land. A moment later he had set off briskly past the rosy cage of the pergola towards the gate at the bottom of the garden. Beyond it there were a couple of fields and then a small wood – the copse, they called it – which sat like a plump green mushroom in the distance, a
s soft as the cushions of moss sprouting along the garden walls. There was a lake right in the middle, Charlie had told him, pointing out various landmarks on the day of his arrival, a wayward thing that ebbed and flowed to its own rhythms, bog one minute, deep enough to swim in the next.
Keith had never lived in the country and felt a distinct surge of pleasure as he clicked the garden gate shut behind him and strode across the field. Worth missing his sandwich for a walk like this, he told himself, imagining the lake and thinking how great it would be if he could make the job stretch to the summer and maybe have a picnic or two sprawled next to it.
He began to whistle, thinking how right it felt that he had come to work for the Harrisons, how maybe life had a way of shaping itself even when you thought you weren't in control. He wondered, too, what it felt like to be in possession of so much land you couldn't even see all of it without taking a walk, and whether such luxury precluded the possibilities – so wretchedly familiar to him – of, feeling hopeless and unhappy. The Harrisons certainly didn't look hopeless or unhappy but, then, if life had taught him anything it was that you could never be sure what anyone was feeling about anything. Charlie seemed the jolly kind, bouncing off in his Volvo to catch the train every morning, not getting back till seven or eight, always with a cheerful word on his lips, while Serena… Keith took in a deep breath and let it out again. What did she really feel about life? She smiled a lot, but in a dreamy, fragile way, as if she was a chisel-tap away from collapse. Like something that had been mended. Perhaps because of her little girl… Keith tried to stop his musings there, loath to erase the sparkle from the day with difficult thoughts. His own two kids hadn't died, but sometimes he thought they might as well have, with their mum poisoning their minds against him and their lives so full he hardly got a look-in. Even when he had parked himself in Hull for three full weeks the previous month – staying on his sister Irene's couch, borrowing money off her for treats – it had been like getting blood out of a stone, with his wife June on his case all the time and the boys lippy and cold, ruder to him than they'd have dreamt of being to anyone else's dad.
The Simple Rules of Love Page 11