The Simple Rules of Love

by Amanda Brookfield

  No one, probably, Theo reflected, leaping through the closing doors of a tube and fighting his way to a seat. Morality was a minefield – rules and trip-wires – with God, as far as he could see, offering little guidance to either the sinners or those they had wronged. On the phone, these days, his mother sounded lost, like some dazed little girl, going through the motions of saying everything was all right because she believed it was expected of her. Lending what support he could, Theo felt not only fiercely protective but ancient, as if the events of the last few weeks had aged him a thousand years.

  But, above all, he was angry. Not just with his father for behaving like a selfish, destructive, blind dickhead of a teenager, but with the way everything had subsequently folded like a pack of cards. His parents had separated. Barnes and Barons Court: two homes, two half-families, two loyalties, leaving him, Genevieve and Chloë with the new, horrible job of having to slice themselves down the middle to accommodate it all. He felt especially bad for Chloë: he, at least, had the undiminished pleasures of university life to offer solace, but his sister was fourteen, stubborn, argumentative and caught in the thick of it. Every protective urge in that direction, however, had so far met with a sharp rebuff. She was fine, Chloë insisted, on the rare occasions Theo had managed to corner her on the phone, always adding – if pressed – that loads of her friends' parents had split up and she didn't care.

  It was detestable, all of it, and ruthless, Theo had discovered, in its power to contaminate the simplest things. Even this trip to see Roland's paintings – the family were meeting for a grand viewing at a place called the Shaw Gallery near London Bridge that evening – had been absurdly torturous to arrange. Having declared that he would spend the night in London, Theo had found himself so torn between where to stay (so pressurized by both parents' insistence that there was no pressure) that he had asked Clem if he could sleep on her sofa. And then there had been the endless debates as to how the exhibition would be attended – whether Helen and Peter should arrive simultaneously or at different times and with which children. It was like some badly written farce. In dealing with the muddles, it had seemed increasingly to Theo as if no one on either side had put up a fight, or been called to account, or attempted, however remotely, to make sense of any of what was going on.

  Hence this private early pilgrimage from Oxford to west London, not to Barnes – the house would be empty until the afternoon anyway – but to Richmond. To Delia Goddard, the physiotherapist. His mother, in surrendering the identity of his father's lover, had released the name like a curse, and Theo didn't blame her. It was ironic to think how concerned they had all been for the wrenched shoulder, how his mother had begged his father to get it treated, how Theo himself had eased off on the squash court all those months ago out of some kind of perverse pity… Christ. And what a cliché, too, to take one's physio as a lover – or ex-lover, Theo reminded himself, as the tube rumbled to a halt at Barons Court. Some of Peter's pleading explanations and apologies pushed their way back into his mind. Theo had cringed under each assault, so many sorrys, not just for the affair but for giving away Ashley House – as if any of that mattered now. And what good were apologies? They were just words that had arrived too late. It was what you did that counted, not what spilled out of your mouth.

  The train seemed to stay at Barons Court for ever, as if some meddling cog in its engine was trying to tempt Theo to get off and seek out his father's address, instead of Delia's. He clung to his small holdall, trying not to look at his watch as the seconds dragged by. A couple of sparse, unhomely rooms, an unmade bed, some dirty saucepans, no, thank you. No bloody way. Betrayal might deserve punishment, but Theo had no desire to witness any more of it than he had to at first hand. Instead, he tried to focus on his film, which, thanks to an expensive but fantastic piece of software called LastCutPro, was now edited and copied on to several DVDs. He had brought one with him in the hope of finding a moment to show Clem the quiet, electrifying wonder of her performance beside which even the great Ben paled almost to ordinariness. He also wanted to test her reaction to the ending, which, with his own anxious state of mind and the two options he had left himself, had caused many hours of heartache.

  The train edged forward at last, although with Richmond approaching, Theo's sense of relief was short-lived. What was he pursuing after all, he wondered, other than a dim, instinctive urge to confront the enemy? You should know what you have done. Yes, he would say that, he decided, latching on to the words to stop his courage back-sliding any further. He would look her in the eye and announce his identity; he would tell her that the Charing Cross bombings were nothing compared to the devastation wrought by the impact of her interference in his family, that…

  Theo moved through the ticket barrier and along the street in a kind of trance, following the route he had memorized from the A-Z that morning: third left, second right, first left, fourth right. At the entrance to the neat, semi-circular drive he stopped, taking in the presence of the silver soft-topped Saab and the wide handsome house. Money, then, lots of it; smart cars, lovers – a cushy life… cushy enough for him to feel more than justified in throwing a few stones. Redress, accountability. His mission was coming back into focus. Theo took the steps up to the front door three at a time and fired his index finger at the bell before he had time to catch his breath.

  A minute later a woman opened the door, an ordinary-looking middle-aged woman with artificially streaked hair and the kind of slim face you could tell had once been quite pretty. She was wearing a green mohair jumper, a black skirt and flat shoes. She appeared, more than anything, impatient.

  ‘Yes?’

  Theo said, ‘I am…’ then closed his mouth.

  ‘You are?’ she prompted.

  But Theo was gazing over her shoulder at a figure standing with his back to them, a tall, fair-haired figure riffling through some letters. Theo blinked, repeating, hoarsely this time, ‘I am…’

  ‘A friend of my son's?’ she finished, smiling encouragingly now, as if to say that such gormless behaviour was both familiar and forgivable. ‘Jules, darling, there's someone here for you.’ She stepped to one side. Julian glanced round and dropped the letters, his face breaking into a grin of astonished recognition. ‘Theo – bloody hell!’ He strode towards the door, laughing, his hand outstretched.

  Even then it would have been possible to continue. For, as the scene unfolded, in the inexorable slow motion that is the hallmark of pure crisis, Theo felt curiously in command, almost as if he was behind one of his lenses with a finger poised over a button. He could stop it, if he wanted. Or speed it up. Or reshape it into the unsightly thing he had envisaged. Within the constraints of those smooth, sliding seconds, Theo's able brain raced, weighing up the decision. It was a question of right and wrong, and of loyalties, he saw, and between generations too, just as it had been when he had made that promise to Ed, then gone back on it. Julian, surely, deserved to know the truth about his mother. Just as Delia had no right to be cushioned from the knowledge that her behaviour had blown a gaping hole through a family – blasted it to pieces. Theo braced himself, aware that this moment was about meeting his own needs too, seeking the solace of action against all the depressing, tail-chasing pointlessness of the last few weeks.

  Julian was still talking. He said ‘unbelievable’, and ‘how cool’, and then, ‘Mum, this is Theo Harrison, Maisie's cousin – remember I told you about him?’ And Theo saw at once, in the sharp swivel of her head, the tightening of her thin face, the way her fingers gripped her elbows, that his name had triggered recognition. He saw, too, with almost visionary intensity, that she was suffering already – for whatever reason, fear, regret, it hardly mattered – and understood in the same instant that, with or without a religious framework, there was always a price to be paid for the awareness of wrongdoing.

  ‘Mrs Goddard. A pleasure to meet you.’ He managed a smile, safe in the knowledge that she did not – and would never – know for certain what had broug
ht him to her doorstep on a cold December afternoon. Maybe she would wonder; maybe that wondering would be part of her suffering. In the meantime, no more harm had been done, at least not to Julian, whom Theo liked even though he had not got as far as knowing his surname. And the harm had to stop, Theo recognized suddenly, even if it meant that some truths remained buried. It could not be allowed to go on spreading, like a cancer, souring the good and the bad. ‘I was paying a visit to my mother,’ he lied. ‘She lives in Barnes, and I had some time, remembered you lived in these parts and thought I'd look you up – check out what your family was like at surprise visits. How've you been?’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Julian was ushering him in. ‘Coffee, beer? You're in London for that art thing of your cousin's, aren't you? Maisie told me about it. She also told me about your parents – I'm so sorry. Tough all round.’ He touched Theo's arm, coughed. ‘Look, about this evening, I was hoping to persuade Maisie to come here afterwards. How do you rate my chances?’ He steered Theo down the corridor as he talked. Theo kept pace, nodding, aware of Delia watching him, statue-still and white, as if she had allowed a spectre into her home.

  Serena knocked on the barn door and waited, stamping her feet, which were cold, and watching her breath puff out like smoke, misting the wintry grey seascape of the sky and the remote dull ridge of the downs. She was on the point of knocking again when Cassie tapped on a window and shouted down that the door was open and she was to come on up. ‘We're almost ready to go,’ Serena called, scowling at the smell of stale smoke as she made her way up the little wooden staircase. It was remarkable that this sole unwelcome imprint of the otherwise wonderful Keith's brief occupation of the property should have lingered so long. ‘That is to say, your mother is pacing the hall in her best hat, gloves, scarf and overcoat, Elizabeth has made herself a coffee, Roland is having an intense conversation with someone on his mobile and Ed has only just got back from his lunch shift and has rushed upstairs to change. We should go – driving in convoy always takes longer and we've no idea where we're going to park when we get there. I say, you haven't taken up smoking again, have you?’

  ‘No,’ Cassie called, emerging a moment later from the bathroom, fully dressed but patting at her wet hair with a towel. ‘Though I've been tempted, I can tell you.’

  ‘I'm sure,’ Serena murmured, inwardly reabsorbing, as she still did each time she saw her sister-in-law, the shock of the brutally cropped hair. It had grown considerably in the two weeks since her arrival, but still looked too short rather than chic, like regrowth after trauma. Which was exactly what it was, Serena reminded herself, pressing her cold hands against one of the barn's little radiators and inwardly lamenting her failure to understand that ending a relationship could be as hard as wading through a bad patch. She would never forget watching Frank help Cassie out of the car, the old-lady headscarf designed to hide the assault on her head, flapping in the wind, her face grey, her petite frame not just thinner but shorter, as if she had shrunk to a version of herself that lay three decades ahead.

  ‘I was thinking a hat,’ said Cassie now, slinging the towel round her neck so that there was no camouflage for the spiky tufts that still barely concealed her scalp.

  ‘Yes, definitely,’ Serena agreed, ‘because it's bloody cold.’

  ‘Because I look a sight,’ Cassie corrected her, ‘and I don't want to scare those members of the family who haven't yet seen me.’ She smiled, drawing Serena's attention to the fact that her dimples had returned, along with a faint but discernible glow of good health. ‘When Frank was down the other day he gave me this rather fetching red beret – I might wear that.’

  ‘He's been amazing, hasn't he?’

  ‘Totally,’ Cassie murmured, shaking her head in wonderment at how things were slowly working out. She felt sad, bereft, robbed, ugly, but no longer alone. Frank had seen to that, leading her gently to the idea of calling more permanently on the hospitality of her dear brother and his kind wife, helping her put the Camden house on the market, even giving her the name of a friend who needed help in doing up a cottage on the south coast so that she had some focus for the long days of convalescence. ‘I called a couple of estate agents this morning – apparently something's come up in Barham itself – that lovely stone cottage between the almshouses and the old rectory. I thought I might take a look – so long as you're okay with the idea.’

  ‘Whyever wouldn't I be?’ cried Serena, pushing herself off the radiator, alarmed that such a consideration should have crossed Cassie's mind. ‘But there's no rush to move anywhere. The doors of Ashley House are always open to you – you know that. It was the deal from the start. I'm only sorry I haven't been better at demonstrating it.’

  ‘Better?’ Trying to stab some shape into her hair with her fingertips, in front of the mirror Keith had hung on the wall by the door, Cassie let out an incredulous laugh. ‘But you've been amazing. We barge in all the time, all of us, like bloody homing pigeons. And I can tell you now that if Charlie had handed the reins back to Peter that would have changed overnight, even if Helen had still been around,’ she added, waving her towel in protest as Serena tried to interrupt. ‘I admit I'm cross with Peter at the moment, not just because he's behaved abominably but because he had everything anyone could want – everything…’ Cassie bit her lip, then continued more steadily, ‘The point is, Peter and Helen would never have been so welcoming – they're just not like that. They would have run Ashley House like some kind of modern battleship, all guns polished and at the ready, but this place needs more than that. It needs… oh, I don't know. Warmth and love and all those things that you and Charlie have always had in spades.’

  ‘Stop, Cassie, please.’ Serena gently relieved her of the towel and folded it across the back of a chair. It was impossible to enjoy such praises. The precipice – the knowledge that all the things to which Cassie was so generously and ignorantly referring had nearly been lost for good – was still too close. She also felt bad for having once resented the constant intrusion of the Harrisons and their dramas. Recent events had helped her see that not only she and Charlie but the big old house itself thrived at the centre of things. In being called upon to support the family they had somehow begun to find a way back to each other. It was because of that, she knew, that her husband had been able, properly, for the first time in five decades, to stand up to his brother. Being more certain of her had made him more certain of himself. The interconnection was endless and complicated; symbiosis on the grandest, most fundamental scale.

  ‘You'll be needing this place soon anyway,’ continued Cassie, now trying on the beret, which was the colour of redcurrants and sat prettily on the crown of her head, ‘for whoever you get to replace Keith. Charlie told me you'd put an advert in the local paper.’

  Serena made a face. ‘But no one suitable has answered it and everything's so dead at this time of year it hardly matters. And there's Sid to consider – he still comes most days, you know, even when he's not being paid. Sometimes, seeing him sitting on that old tree-stump by the copse, puffing at one of his rollups, he reminds of me your father. John loved pottering around, didn't he, his head in a cloud of pipesmoke, just being in a way that the rest of us never seem to manage?’

  Cassie pulled off the beret with a heavy sigh. ‘That's so true and I miss him, but I can't help being glad he was spared the mess of the last few months. The disappointment he would have felt in Peter doesn't bear thinking about. Although,’ she frowned, ‘I can't help thinking that if Dad had been alive Peter wouldn't have done what he did. Losing a parent, at whatever age, changes things,’ she continued thoughtfully. ‘It removes a level of authority, a cornerstone. I've even wondered if Peter wasn't having some kind of delayed teenage rebellion. He was always so good. Maybe the pressure of it got too much.’

  ‘And was your withdrawal from the wedding a rebellion too?’ asked Serena, carefully, flexing her fingers, which were now pulsing and pink from the sharp heat of the radiator.

  ‘God, no.
’ Cassie sank down on the oatmeal sofa that separated the kitchen area from the barn's spacious living room. ‘It was waking up. Reality versus fantasy.’ She sliced the air with her hands. ‘Stephen wasn't what I thought… what I wanted. We both had dreams, but they didn't coincide.’

  Serena hesitated, not wanting to press her too hard. ‘Have you heard from him?’

  Cassie shook her head glumly. ‘I'm not sure I ever will. That time he came to the house, I'm pretty sure he took his passport, so I think – I rather hope – he's gone abroad.’ She scowled, muttering, half to herself, ‘Sometimes I think maybe it was kind of him to remove himself so completely, and that instead of being upset by having my existence denied I should be grateful. I mean, not many relationships manage quite such a clean break, do they?’

  A silence followed, while both women thought but chose not to speak of the sad, ragged ending they were witnessing between Peter and Helen: under separate roofs, instructing lawyers, twenty-five years of communication reduced to discussions about logistics – parents' evenings, birthdays, viewing a nephew's artwork. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Serena was moving quietly round the room, examining the meagre selection of ornaments and pictures that Cassie had selected from the packing cases now stacked at one end of the garage.

  ‘Did I tell you I've had a good offer on the house?’ Cassie ventured at length. ‘Frank has suggested I put aside some of the money in case Stephen returns one day for his share and the clean break turns out not to be so clean, after all.’

  ‘Good. That sounds sensible.’ Serena had come to a halt in front of a photograph taken at Roland's christening. He had been placed on his godmother's lap for the shot, a fat, placid, eight-month-old, his big eyes and pale round face like the heart of a flower amid the lacy froth of the ancient, yellowing Harrison christening gown. Cassie had him perched at a lop-sided angle on one knee and was smiling a little anxiously at whoever was taking the picture. Serena reached out to touch the frame, thinking not of Cassie but of Ed, testing herself with the now imminent reality of the grandchild who would never be seen, or held at a christening, or patted for burps, sore gums or love.