The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  Ed lunged past her, groping for the door handle, heavy-limbed, as if he was moving in slow motion. Jessica stepped aside to let him pass.

  ‘Look, think about it, okay?’ she called after him. Her voice had changed again. It was sweet and breezy now, as if she was asking him to consider nothing more compelling than which bus to catch or whether to have a second pint. ‘Call me, yeah? I'm not going anywhere.’

  Ed blundered down the path towards his bicycle. He couldn't look back – at her, at Sid's loathsome little cottage. His life had ended – a life, he saw now, with terrible clarity, that he hadn't appreciated. The tedium of revision, the lack of a girlfriend, the shifting moods of his parents seemed like Paradise now. A lost Paradise. He thought, too, of his grandmother, no longer childishly baffled by her despair but understanding it. No way out, that was how she had felt, and that was how Ed felt now, pedalling like a madman under the inky blue sky, along the hedgerows, past the faded pub sign of the Rising Sun, seeing none of it, hating all of it for remaining so unchanged, so oblivious to his misfortune.

  It was hot in the kitchen. Serena, standing elbow deep at the sink, felt the dampness of her forehead as she wiped a stray hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. Next to her the steam from several pans was spiralling upwards and outwards, curling like mist round the strings of garlic and dried flowers that dangled from the beams. The aromas travelled with it: simmering apple for a crumble, minted boiling potatoes for mash, sizzling liver and bacon for that night's casserole. Ed would complain, of course – animal guts, he called it – but it was a particular favourite of Pamela's. Peter's too, Charlie had assured her, slipping his arms round her waist and planting a kiss on her neck when he got in from work. Helen and the children were running late, he told her, stuck in traffic on the A3. Peter was arriving by train at eight. Cassie and Stephen might be later still, coming from north London. He had rubbed his palms together gleefully, saying how much he was looking forward to the weekend, how supper smelt great, how he was going to rush upstairs to shower and change.

  A moment later Pamela had appeared, already changed for the evening, her face freshly powdered and her hair pinned tightly off her face. ‘What can I do, dear?’ she had asked, smoothing her skirt, lacing and unlacing her fingers, patting her hair. ‘Although you don't look as if you need me at all.’

  ‘Of course I need you,’ Serena had replied briskly, handing her mother-in-law an apron and a bag of broad beans. ‘If you could pod those, then get Ed to help you with the table. Where is Ed? Have you seen him?’

  ‘He went off on his bike.’

  ‘Did he now? And how long ago was that?’

  Pamela frowned, tensing at her daughter-in-law's tone, wanting to get it right, to be helpful. She had felt all week like a child who had done wrong – dreadful wrong. To break the rules like that – admit to despair when only a few years before she had counselled Charlie and Serena about the importance of carrying on, being brave, accommodating bereavement – felt tantamount to betrayal. In the immediate aftermath, she had made several faltering attempts to explain the weight that had crushed her into behaving so unforgivably. Yet each time, seeing the concern in their faces, sensing that their own still wounded hearts had no desire to be dragged through more emotional turmoil than was necessary, she had switched to the easier route of apologies and assurances that it wouldn't happen again.

  Inwardly Pamela remained less certain. If such desolation could descend once, seemingly from nowhere, like a red mist, what was to stop it returning? It was this fear that had made her swallow Dr Lazard's tablets, like an obedient child, even though the calm they induced felt almost second-hand, like a feeling passed on rather than one that sprang from inside. Without it she was sure she might have been able to recollect now exactly when she had seen Ed disappearing down the lane, sitting up on his bike seat, whistling some incomprehensible tune, steering – terrifyingly – with one hand, the other wielding his mobile phone. ‘We could call him,’ she suggested brightly, ‘on his telephone.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Serena tugged off her rubber gloves and offered her mother-in-law an encouraging smile. ‘But I'll give him a bit longer. Chasing teenagers, I find, makes them slow down. Could you keep an eye on the potatoes? I'm going to get some air… Won't be long.’ She stepped outside into the lemony evening sunshine, closing the back door carefully behind her before she set off down the garden path. She hummed as she walked, the tension floating out of her at the sight of the burgeoning green of the garden, poised for summer like one huge, exotic, budding flower. The lawns, cut by Keith that afternoon, shimmered under the long rays of the sun, like Hoovered carpets. Along the wall of the vegetable garden the honeysuckle was already running riot, playing host to lazy bees and a couple of butterflies, their wings a flash of velvet orange against the creamy yellow flowers.

  ‘Lovely, isn't it?’

  Serena turned to see Keith in paint-spattered jeans and T-shirt, emerging from the direction of the toolshed where he had been labouring on her behalf all week. ‘Yes, it is. Thanks for mowing the lawns.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘God, don't you just love the smell of freshly cut grass?’ She smiled at him, noting the myriad flecks of paint across his forearms, face and hair – even his eyelashes – as if he had been dunked in icing sugar.

  ‘Got all the family coming for the weekend, then? That's nice.’

  ‘Yes,’ Serena murmured, ‘very nice. Though not quite all. One of our daughters is abroad and the other, her twin…’ She hesitated, biting her lip. Clem wasn't coming. She had sent an email that morning. An email, not even a phone call. ‘Sorry but just impossible to get away… have a great time.’ Serena had had the strongest sense of the family fragmenting, flying away from each other like shards of smashed glass. Unsettled, she had phoned Charlie, only to receive a scolding for getting things out of perspective again, all delivered in the new don't-you-dare-crack-up-on-me tone he had been using since the crisis with his mother; a tone with which Serena had some sympathy. She didn't want to crack up again either, though from what she could recall of the blur that had become her life after Tina's death, it wasn't a state of mind over which one exerted any control. Pamela's attempt to drown herself had unlocked something, certainly, but so had Aunt Alicia's funeral and her father-in-law's death two years before. All grief was connected, Serena mused now, like a fault line running through each life, lying dormant at one minute then surging with energy when one was least prepared for it.

  Serena blinked at Keith, aware, in a moment of almost visionary lucidity, that there was a big picture, and that the paint-spattered man in front of her, who had ridden into their lives from nowhere, restoring order – saving a life – was part of it.

  ‘Daughters, eh?’ Keith was saying. ‘I can imagine they are a worry. Now, boys, they're a much simpler breed.’

  ‘You might be right there,’ Serena murmured. ‘Though Ed's thinking of going into the army – now that worries me, I can tell you.’

  ‘Good career, though. Solid. And he's strong, too, isn't he? I should think it'll suit him very well.’

  Serena sighed, letting her gaze drift to the view beyond the garden, where the fields were a bulging counterpane of yellows and browns and greens. ‘I just want all my children to be… safe.’

  ‘Of course you do, what with… of course you do. Same for me,’ Keith added, wanting to erase the sadness from her face. ‘June's got this new man now and I just hope he's treating my two right.’

  ‘What you did,’ interjected Serena, ‘it meant so much to all…’

  ‘You've said your thank-yous,’ Keith assured her quickly. ‘I did what anyone would have done. How is Mrs Harrison, anyway? I saw her picking roses this afternoon – that's got to be a good sign.’

  ‘Oh, yes, a very good sign. She's doing fine, I think. Talking of which, I'd better get back – I've left her in charge of supper. Enjoy your weekend, won't you?’ She turned away, but stopped, moved by the expression of gentleness on Keith's dusty f
ace. ‘I'm sorry if this embarrasses you, Keith, but what I was trying to say just then was that your coming here feels like – like a gift.’ With that she skipped back on to the path and hurried towards the house.

  Watching her, Keith let out a groan. Arriving at Ashley House, he had wanted to make them all pleased, indebted, even. Yet now, having been given the most extraordinary opportunity to earn such gratitude, he felt utterly weighed down by it. Unworthy. He would finish the studio conversion, see to the damp in the bedroom, then leave. He was getting too sucked in, beginning to care too much – about the old lady, about Charlie and Serena, even about the wastrel of a son who was forever lurking behind bushes with his phone and his fags, looking lost in a way that reminded Keith, in spite of all the obvious differences, of his own troubled teens. That man-child stage, he remembered it only too well. It seemed incredible that he had once idly pondered the possibility of dragging out the work through the summer. There was a lifetime's work here, if he wanted it. And he didn't, Keith realized miserably. All that dependence, all that needy gratitude, he couldn't handle it.

  Rounding the last bend in the lane, Ed glanced over his shoulder in time to see a black BMW edging towards him, his aunt Helen sitting erect and tense behind the wheel, her driving glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Not wanting them to catch him up, not wanting, in fact, ever to have to talk to anyone again, Ed stood up on the pedals and pumped his tired legs in a last frenzied dash for the garage. A few moments later he leant his bike against the wall behind Keith's motorbike and crouched in the chilly dark, like a thief, holding his breath, until the sound of the car arriving, doors slamming and voices had died away.

  With trembling fingers Ed lit a cigarette, only to find that he was too choked to smoke it. He dropped it on to the concrete floor of the garage and swiped at his tears, digging his knuckles into his eyes until his head was popping with pain and his vision was a blur of fuzzy orange and yellow. Never in all his seventeen years had he felt so wretched. Nothing, not even his sister dying, came close. Appalled by the thought and his predicament, Ed wept harder. His only hope, he knew, was to get Jessica to agree to an abortion. He had thought of nothing else all the way home. And yet it seemed a desperate, futile hope, given what she had said about money – about marriage. He would rather die than marry Jessica Blake. It was unthinkable. Monstrous. Almost as monstrous as the thought of spending the rest of his life paying for a baby, a child – his child – like some loser in a tabloid or a crap soap opera on television. It wasn't possible. There had to be another way. There just had to be. Ed hoicked up his T-shirt and dropped his face into it, aware through his tears of the smell of laundry, the smell of home, of a life now lost for good. If it was money she wanted, he would have – somehow – to give it to her. For an abortion, if nothing else. He blew his nose on his T-shirt, remembering, with a small gust of hope, that he was only a couple of months off his eighteenth. He had been promised driving lessons and… Ed swallowed, trying to keep his focus. Driving lessons and access to the five-thousand-pound trust fund left to him by his grandfather. So far Clem had refused to touch hers, but Maisie had used some of hers to pay for her travels. He had been planning to buy a car with his. But now… Ed sniffed deeply, feeling fractionally more composed at the materialization of this feeble glimmer of salvation. Hung in the balance against his happiness – against the entire stability of his life – a car seemed piffling and stupid. Five thousand pounds. He'd use the fucking lot, if necessary, to buy her an abortion followed by a one-way ticket to Timbuktu. In the meantime he had somehow to get through the rest of the day, the weekend, his life…

  Ed dropped his forehead on to his knees, seriously contemplating, for the first time, telling his parents. He tried to imagine himself explaining what had happened, but all he could see was his own burning shame and their stricken faces. He couldn't do it, he simply couldn't. They were annoying – they nagged and worried – but they had been through a lot too. For a time after the death of his sister they'd got on so badly he had even thought they might break up. Now they were beside themselves with anxiety about his grandmother. How could he add to such woes? It was unthinkable. They were concerned enough as it was about his poxy A levels, Ed reminded himself, with a bitter half-sob of a laugh, and whether he'd get into Sandhurst. How they would react to the news that he had fathered a child with Jessica Blake did not bear thinking about. He thought instead, with huge and vivid longing, of his sisters: Maisie, he was sure, would be cool and practical, but Maisie wasn't due back for months, and Clem, he reminded himself fiercely, was looking out for no one but herself. Which meant he was alone, Ed reflected bleakly, as alone as it was possible to be.

  ‘You all right there?’

  ‘Oh, Keith… hi… yes, fine, thanks.’ Ed pretended to study something on his bike wheel before standing up. He tried out a smile, glad of the garage's dim lighting.

  ‘Found someone here looking for you,' Keith continued, eyeing Ed intently and beckoning Chloe, who was hovering by the bumper of Serena's Mondeo. ‘Here he is, love, turned up like the proverbial bad penny.’

  ‘Hi, Chloë.’ Ed tugged at his jeans and scuffed his still smoul-dering cigarette out of view.

  ‘Hi, Ed.’ Chloe grinned, noting that her cousin looked even bigger and more grown-up than she remembered from Christmas and wondering if he would ignore her to the extent that her brother had during his Easter holidays. She took a step closer to peer at him, squinting in the half-dark to make out whether he, too, was growing a beard. ‘Everybody was wondering where you were so I said I'd have a look and Keith said he'd help.’

  ‘Well, I'm here,’ snapped Ed, leading the way out of the garage, trying to look purposeful but feeling as if his legs might buckle under him. If seeing Jessica had felt like a double life, he reflected, then trying to keep the lid on this new secret calamity would be like straddling the Grand Canyon.

  Chloë trotted after him, with Keith following more slowly behind, then ran ahead to swing on the front gate in the way her parents always warned would damage the hinge.

  ‘I'll be getting back, then,’ said Keith, and added, when Ed didn't reply, ‘If ever you want a break from your nearest and dearest, you come and find me, okay? We could have a beer, if you like, and…’ he lowered his voice ‘… a smoke maybe?’ He winked, trying to engage Ed's still averted gaze, feeling, in spite of his earlier resolutions, an irresistible desire to find out what had driven the boy to weep like a toddler in the garage.

  ‘And me,’ called Chloë indignantly, peering upside-down through the slats in the gate, her face puce. ‘Can I find you too?’

  ‘Sure, pet, any time.’

  Once Keith had gone, she hurdled off the gate and caught hold of Ed's arm as he tried to escape down the steps. ‘Do you get hay-fever too?’ she asked, staring with unabashed curiosity at his puffy face.

  ‘Yeah… a bit.’ Ed shook her off.

  ‘Horrid, isn't it? I have to take pills every day in the summer for mine. Do you take pills for yours?’

  ‘Nope.’ Ed yanked open the front door and made a run for the staircase. He had got to the bathroom on the top landing and was splashing cold water on to his face when Charlie found him.

  ‘Are you hot or something?’

  ‘Yup – bike ride. Bloody hot.’

  ‘I see – and by the way, no swearing in front of your little cousins, okay? We may have brought you up a lout but I know my brother still entertains loftier hopes for his brood. Now, look…’ Charlie glanced down the corridor to check there was no possibility of being overheard ‘… just wanted to remind you, not a word about what happened with Granny, okay? Peter and Helen have agreed that it's best for all, that it will help her get over it. So, with your aunts this weekend, and Stephen, mum's the word. Got it?’

  ‘Got it,’ Ed echoed, reaching for a towel. He dabbed vigorously at his face, fighting a renewed urge not only to weep but to throw himself against the rotund bulk of his father and spill the whole sordid stor
y. But Charlie was already looking at his watch and turning away. Peter was waiting for him downstairs, he said. He was going to show his brother all the sterling work that Keith had been doing around the house and grounds. ‘Help your mother lay the table, won't you?’ he commanded, bounding off down the corridor, the change rattling in his pockets as he swung himself round the banister post on to the stairs.

  ‘We're thinking of offering him a job for life,’ said Charlie, as Peter ducked his tall frame under the doorway of the half-completed studio.

  ‘I can see why. Quite the jack-of-all-trades, isn't he?’ Peter pulled the door shut behind him, and dusted a patch of white powder off his suit jacket. ‘It all looks great – much more shipshape. Well done, old chap.’

  ‘I haven't done anything,’ replied Charlie, mildly irritated by the note of condescension in Peter's tone. He reached round his brother and locked the shed door. ‘Keith landed in our laps when we needed him.’

  ‘He certainly did,’ murmured Peter, falling into step beside Charlie to continue their tour of the garden. ‘Where is the man anyway?’ He squinted in the direction of the barn, whose gingery-tiled rooftop was just visible through the trees behind the toolshed. ‘I'd like to thank him again.’

  Charlie chuckled. ‘Serena says he's getting fed up of people thanking him. She's also starting to say,’ he added, with a snort, ‘that Keith was somehow meant to come here, that fixing the place up, saving Mum, is all part of some grand design.’ He shook his head, glad for once to be able to laugh at his wife's volatile state of mind instead of worry about it.

  ‘Is she now?’ Peter turned towards the garden, putting his hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the still powerful red disc of the sun perched on the skyline of trees behind the copse. Coming to the country, re-engaging with his family, seeing his mother so well had soothed him, as he had known it would. The phone conversation with Delia Goddard felt wonderfully distant in consequence, a pinprick of an incident, beyond anxiety or relevance. ‘A grand design, eh? I'm not sure I find that very comforting,’ he murmured, planting himself on the old wooden bench that overlooked the largest of the lawns, offering views across the fields towards the village. ‘I mean, if there was such a thing, the choices we make wouldn't matter, would they? It would all be meaningless. And,’ he continued fervently, as the pinprick began to swell to a less manageable size, ‘choices do matter – they always matter.’