The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  ‘And I – she is definitely going to die?’

  ‘Yes, she is… Clem, I don't have time for this, we've got a lot to get through.’

  ‘Couldn't she leave the case and race off in time to avoid getting killed and catch up with lover-boy instead?’ They all turned to see Jonny strolling towards them, a packet of biscuits tucked under his arm and four paper cups of coffee pressed between his hands.

  ‘Oh, Jonny, good man.’ Theo glanced at his watch, wondering at how the time was racing and whether he had been wise to let Jonny Cottrall in on things, particularly given that he and Clem were clearly back together. When he had arrived at his cousin's flat that morning, it had been Jonny who answered the door, still pulling on a T-shirt, an impish grin on his face. ‘He's just going, aren't you?’ Clem had declared, emerging, noticeably pink-cheeked, from her room. At which point Jonny had asked Theo, in his direct, inoffensive way, if he could offer his services to the film project as an odd-job man and, more significantly as far as Theo was concerned, by having a go at composing a soundtrack. Tone deaf himself, unable to remember the sound or names of tunes, Theo had been wondering what to do about this very thing, so essential to a good, finished film. ‘And we could use my van,’ Jonny had added slyly, as if he knew about the little car Theo had borrowed, in which Clem would have to sit on Ben's lap to travel between locations.

  ‘Seriously, mate,’ Jonny continued now, handing out the coffees and tearing open the biscuit packet with his teeth, ‘I love a bit of drama as much as the next man, but if you want to make it on the big screen, these days, you have to have a happy ending, don't you? Clem could uphold her cause and get her man, couldn't you, babe?’ he said, giving her a nudge as she took a biscuit.

  Clem nodded but then, fearful of pissing off her cousin, said she was only there to follow instructions and would do whatever Theo thought best.

  ‘I'll shoot it both ways,’ said Theo, at length, ‘make my final decision when I edit. Are you happy with that, Ben?’

  ‘Your call, man.’ Ben lit a cigarette and moved away from them.

  ‘Boy, have I missed you,’ murmured Jonny, pressing himself closer to Clem and giving her a dreamy look. ‘Nothing was the same – the band, life, nothing.’

  ‘I missed you too,’ admitted Clem, dunking her biscuit in her coffee, then quickly getting her lips round it before it fell apart.

  ‘You didn't enjoy that snog, did you?’ muttered Jonny next, scowling at Ben, now deep in conversation with Theo.

  ‘Yuk! No way – just acting.’ Clem giggled, enjoying the new sense of power she had in the relationship, so unlike her hangdog approach before the split. She had enjoyed, too, sharing with Jonny the million things that had happened since they had seen each other, all the ups and downs, astounded that she could ever have imagined a life lived alone was better than one with its doors open to other people. When she had heard the result of Ed's paternity test, via Maisie, it was Jonny she had phoned. He had come round at once and they had sat up half the night talking it through, not making love until the sky was grey with the promise of morning, when touching each other felt like an expression of how close they were already instead of a way of getting close. They had put the Durex on carefully, though, together, rolling it right down, each aware in a new way of the magnitude of what they were doing, of the life-force behind the pleasure.

  ‘By the way,’ said Jonny, linking arms with her while they finished the dregs of their coffee, ‘I saw your uncle just now.’

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘That's the one.’

  ‘But you don't know him, do you?’

  Jonny looked hurt. ‘Last summer, remember, when I came for that day and half your family were there and –’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Clem interjected, a little sharply, remembering the day only too well. It had marked the start of her suspicion that Jonny and her sister had shared rather more than the same biology teacher.

  ‘The thing is…’ Jonny glanced at Theo, who was getting ready to get going again ‘… he was with a woman.’

  Clem laughed. ‘Oooh! A woman – you don't say.’

  ‘Not your aunt Helen.’

  ‘Yeah, like a client or a colleague or… We're not far from all the law courts and stuff where he works.’

  ‘They were holding hands.’

  Clem turned to look at him, still more disbelieving than astonished. ‘That's impossible. My uncle Peter? He just… well, he just wouldn't.’ She laughed. ‘He's about the most old-fashioned, upright, boring adult I know.’

  ‘That may be true, but he has a bird,’ declared Jonny, taking her empty cup and dropping it into the bin next to the bench. ‘Being boring doesn't mean you don't want a screw on the side. He's probably been at it for years.’

  Seeing Theo approach, Clem tugged at Jonny's arm.

  Observing something conspiratorial in their manner and sensing it was connected to him, Theo said, ‘Look, I can't have any plotting, you two. If you're not on board, Jonny, if both of you aren't totally up front with me about any issues…’

  ‘No, we're not – I mean, we are, totally on board,’ Clem assured him.

  ‘I don't want any funny business, okay? Music or no music, Jonny, we've all got to behave like professionals, okay?’

  Jonny saluted, then winked at Clem and trotted off to ask a couple of new entrants to the little park if they would mind skirting round the area that was being used for shooting. Returning to the scene, he sat carefully out of everybody's way in a patch of dappled shade and watched all that Clem did with a singing heart, wanting, every time Theo asked for another take, to yell that she was perfect. As the heat intensified he slipped closer to the tree under which he had sought protection and began to think about tunes, trying to feel the right pulse for the scene, how and with what instruments he might communicate the parallel tensions of a broken heart and a ticking bomb.

  Later that day, mulling over lists of possible hymns for the wedding, to the background accompaniment of the last night of the Proms, Stephen and Cassie, too, were immersed in contemplation of the stirring power of music. Having said he knew very few hymns and would go along with anything she suggested, Stephen turned out to be full of controversial opinions. ‘Love Divine' was too dirge-like, he said, and, no, he had never been keen on ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind' and what about ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’?

  “‘’Gainst all disaster”… I've never really liked it much.’

  ‘But it's such a jolly tune.’

  ‘Okay, but only if I can have “Love Divine” and “O Jesus I Have Promised”…

  ‘I don't even know that one. How does it go?’

  ‘Well, it's got several versions but the one I like best is…’ Cassie started to hum, just as the strains of ‘Jerusalem' began to flow from the television. She reached for the remote but Stephen put out a hand to stop her.

  ‘Look at that,’ he murmured, evidently transfixed by the television cameras pulling back out of the Albert Hall to reveal the sea of people in the park, old and young, babes in arms, Union flags fluttering, swaying as one before the big screens relaying the concert to the open air. ‘Quite a sight,’ he breathed.

  Cassie looked first at the screen and then at her husband-to-be. He was close to tears, she saw suddenly, and with some amazement. His Adam's apple was bobbing furiously and he was clenching his jaw to control the tremors in his cheeks. ‘Can we have this one too… “Jerusalem“?’

  ‘Sure, why not? Cassie said lightly, aware all the while of a coldness creeping round her heart. She wasn't keen on the Proms, all that grand, sentimental emotion, cheap, somehow, too easily tapped, too unearned. I should love him for this, she thought, for being so easily distracted from my little effort at singing, for being sentimental enough to weep at the Proms. It should be endearing. But, glancing again at his twitching face, she felt only pity and a faint repugnance. Love is hard work, Cassie reminded herself, clenching her own jaw in recognition of the fact; all veterans of the
science agreed it needed working at, compassion, understanding, forgiveness… and, my goodness, hadn't she tried all of that? Especially lately, fighting her knowledge of how he had tailed her, like a stalker, fighting her disappointment at the red streak in her pants and the rising suffocating sensation that no haphazard natural methods would get her what she wanted, and that if she decided to pull out all the stops on the long, arduous quest to have a child, the man she was to marry was not the strong, willing companion she needed to see it through.

  I don't love him, she thought, the screen blurring as the horrible enormity of this admission sank in. And we're not yet married so I don't have to carry on trying to love him. Her own throat was working now as the implications of this – held in check for so long – stormed her consciousness: caterers, present lists, flowers, the photographer, the wedding cars – all would have to be cancelled in gruelling letters and phone calls. And then there would be the ordeal of telling her family, letting them all down too, although in the few weeks since Italy, when she had been removed once more from their immediate orbit, this aspect of her situation seemed, for those instants at least, marginally more manageable. It was her life, after all, Cassie reflected bleakly, looking at the still fresh decoration of her and Stephen's sitting room and longing suddenly for the chance to occupy it – to occupy any room – without the pressure of his swinging moods dominating the atmosphere. She couldn't handle him any more, carefully or otherwise: it was destroying her.

  ‘It is moving, isn't it?’ said Stephen, seeing her glassy-eyed expression and misinterpreting its origin. ‘It was the one event that used to make my dad cry, stupid bastard. He'd sit watching it each year over his can of Guinness, snivelling like a three-year-old. Funny, isn't it? I can actually think of that now and feel sort of fond of him – glad it gets me by throat, too, like it's some small daft thing we have in common. He switched off the television. ‘They wouldn't bother to reply to an invitation, by the way, I can tell you that now. They'll turn up or not, depending on their mood and whether they feel up to the journey… Hey, cheer up, love, you look quite cut-up.’

  ‘Do I? Sorry, I'm fine.’ Cassie stood up quickly and went into the kitchen, where the remains of their supper needed clearing away. With trembling hands she set about scraping soggy lettuce leaves and abandoned Bolognese into the bin. She crossed to the sink, ran her hands and as much of her arms as she could under the cold tap, then flicked water at her face. Now was not the moment to say anything. She was too unsteady, still too caught off-guard by the rush of her own emotions, the awful certainty as to what had to be done.

  ‘Hey,’ Stephen called from the sitting room, his voice low and lazy, sickeningly confident, ‘had any thoughts about next Monday?’

  Next Monday… next Monday… Cassie's mind raced, her sole concern being to remove the need for him to enter the kitchen, to stop him seeing her before she had composed her-self. ‘Your birthday?’

  ‘Ten out of ten. That new Thai restaurant I was telling you about the other day, do you mind if I book it?’ His voice was closer.

  ‘Lovely,’ Cassie almost shrieked. ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘Not your favourite food, I know, but, then, it is my birthday.’

  She heard him laugh, then the thump of his feet on the stairs. Cassie remained motionless, staring at her reflection in the kettle, a warped, Disney version of her face. She had made him happy and now she was going to destroy him. She clenched her face, making her reflection still more distorted, more akin to the ugliness swelling inside. All her love for him had turned to pity; all her kindness had become calculated, cautious. There was no true reciprocity, no balance, no trust. The knowledge that a lot of his problems stemmed from his difficult childhood made no difference. She had wanted to be his wife, not his healer.

  She would, however, be kind, Cassie decided, dabbing her wet face on a tea-towel, at least more so than he had been with her. She would make no mention of the pathetic spying, simply explain the central, more important truth that the form of love he sought from her was too cloying, too oppressive. She would explain that she could no longer play down her desperation to have a child, that she would prefer to take the medical route alone, than with him as a reluctant partner.

  Cassie filled a saucepan with milk and scoured the back of a cupboard until she found a jar of hot chocolate, a sticky, dusty old thing that dated back to her days of living alone. She hugged herself while she watched the milk bubble and heave, shivery suddenly with cold, while inside a new loneliness took shape, worse than anything she had known during her singleton spells, worse, even, than all her longing for Dan Lambert, borne as it was on a sense of immeasurable separation from the man now creaking round the bedroom floorboards overhead.

  A moment later the milk had boiled over, producing an acrid smell and thick brown stains round the ring. Cassie sat at the table to drink it, gripping the hot mug in both palms.

  Ed stayed up most of that night composing his letter, first on his laptop and then, wanting to make it as personal and immediate as he could, copying it out by hand. He laboured slowly, trying to make his famously scruffy writing look neat, only noticing when he got to the bottom of the page that all the lines sloped at a childish angle, as if the words were trying to run off the page. He struggled, too, over how much to say, to what extent he should reveal his eavesdropping that morning. In the end he decided it didn't matter, that the prospect of being responsible for the implosion of his family's entire and lovely way of life was too important to worry about such niceties.

  The point is, I am the one who has made a mess of everything, so please don't let it muck up the whole family as well. If you decided to leave Ashley House all because of me and the money worries I have caused then I would never forgive myself. So, please, let me use my trust money to pay whatever Jessica will need to start off with. In the meantime I am going to begin some serious job hunting so that I can continue to make whatever monthly payments are decided. I'm not saying I think it's going to be easy but please let me try. I'm afraid it will mean me living at home for a while yet to save on rent etc.! But in time hopefully I'll be able to set up somewhere on my own. One thing I am also sure of is that I don't want to be involved with Jessica or the child beyond giving them money. I'll pay – literally – for my mistake, but I don't feel up to doing any more. Jessica knows this already.

  Lastly, I want to say that I am SORRY for all the worry I have caused you when you have both been so decent and didn't deserve it.

  Love Ed

  It was by no means a perfect letter, but as the night wore on Ed lost the clear-headedness required to improve on it. The next morning he woke early and stole downstairs to leave it on the doormat for his parents to find under the morning post.

  He was hurrying through a bowl of cereal, wanting to be gone before anyone else came down, when his grandmother, silent in her slippers, came shuffling into the kitchen. ‘Darling, this is early for you, isn't it?’

  ‘I couldn't sleep,’ Ed muttered, his mouth full of cornflakes.

  Pamela sighed, folding her arms and looking at him fondly. ‘Well, you do have a lot on your plate, after all.’

  Ed nodded warily, loath to be drawn into analysis of his situation. The letter had got a lot of stuff out of his system, cleared his head, and he didn't want to go over it again, least of all with his grandmother. But Pamela seemed in no mood to press the matter and merely asked if he wanted a cup of tea.

  In fact, the old stick was good at not saying anything, Ed mused, watching her fill the kettle and make a fuss of Poppy and Samson, who were twining themselves round her legs in the hope of breakfast. She had had her own low spots during the year, he reminded himself, wondering suddenly, with his new awareness of perspectives other than his own, how on earth she had pulled herself together, wondering where, literally, her delicate birdcage of a frame had accommodated the unhappiness that, just a few months ago, had driven her to the point of suicide.

  ‘You're not really g
oing to leave Ashley House, are you, Gran?’ he blurted, forgetting he wasn't supposed to know, forgetting anything, indeed, but his new, overwhelming desire to keep the world he knew and loved from pulling apart.

  Instead of asking how he had found out or telling him off for being nosy she laughed softly, pushing a thin straggle of her loose, silvery hair off her face. ‘That's the last thing you should be worrying about right now, young man.’ She took Ed's empty bowl and put it in the dishwasher. ‘The fact is, dear, I rather want to leave. I've been a lodger here for a while now. Poppy and I want our own little nest, don't we, darling?’ she murmured, putting out her hand, which the dog nuzzled dutifully and then, smelling a trace of Ed's cereal milk, licked. ‘Do Mum and Dad know my plans, then?’

  Ed nodded meekly.

  ‘Well, thank you for telling me, dear,’ she replied, stirring as she poured water into the teapot. ‘I shall talk to them about it. You see, I'm still only on the waiting list,’ she added brightly, undeterred by Ed's blank expression, ‘so nothing is likely to happen for a while yet, not till after the wedding anyway.’

  Hearing someone coming downstairs Ed, muttering about having things to do, let himself out of the back door and ran round the side of the house towards the garden.

  ‘It changes nothing,’ said Charlie, slapping the letter with the back of his hand, some ten minutes later. ‘Good of him to write it, a good effort, but out of the question, of course.’

  Serena, who had read the letter first, amid murmurings of surprise and admiration, stared at her husband in disappointment. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course. He needs more education, not a job. It's up to us to support him – any decent parent would do the same.’

  ‘But we let Clem –’

  ‘Yes, and we shouldn't have done. Clem is wasting herself. She's not even working in that wine bar any more, is she? Which rather begs the question, what the hell is she doing? Christ…’ Charlie shook his head.