Relative Love (34 page)

‘Yes, she really did,’ Ed murmured, his eyes already closing.

Upstairs Clem, too, was virtually asleep. Charlie kissed her forehead as well, thinking as he did so of Tina and experiencing a rush of pain that made his throat swell and his eyes glaze. If Tina had looked like anyone it was Clem: she had had the same little turn-up to her nose, the same huge eyes and circular face. ‘Now you look after yourself. Promise?’

‘Promise,’ Clem echoed, telling herself that this was what she was doing. Only she was doing it her way and not the way everyone else wanted. ‘I love you, Daddy.’

‘And I love you, little one.’ Charlie used the bathroom on the landing and undressed in the corridor so as not to wake Serena. She was lying oddly, on her front with both arms up and half of one leg hanging over the edge of the bed, like a climber clinging to a rockface. Charlie looked at the leg for several moments, resisting the urge to reposition it. Or caress it. She had beautiful legs, long with neat bony knees and slim ankles. They were one of the first things he had noticed about her – her legs and her smile. Never in his life had he seen a more lovely smile: open, uncalculating, a smile that said, here I am and this is what I feel. There was no stealth in her, no hidden agenda. She had liked him from the start and made no secret of it. ‘I want to make love with you,’ she had said, on only their third meeting, ‘I want to feel you inside me.’ And when they had got their clothes off, hastily, messily, on the lumpy bed of his cramped bachelor flat, Charlie had found that watching her face gave him as much pleasure as touching her body: delight, tenderness, passion moved across her features like light, telling him better than words ever could the effect of his attentions. Previous girlfriends had been good lovers, good performers, but never before had he come across such genuine – such
innocent
– abandonment. But not any more, he reminded himself bitterly. Not any more. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, the dread seeping back into him. Serena was three inches away, yet he couldn’t touch her. Losing Tina was bad enough, but to lose his wife as well was almost more than he could bear.

Objects, Colin mused, firing the hose at a clod of mud on the number-plate of their new red Ford Mondeo, were a lot simpler to love than people. The car, which had been bought with the aid of Elizabeth’s hefty financial gift from her father, had already given him a huge amount of uncomplicated pleasure. Compared to their old fourth-hand green Volvo estate, it was a purring gem of a motor, reacting instantly – uncomplainingly – to the slightest touch of an instruction. Colin put the hose down and began to dry the bonnet, wiping away the smears until a dim, widened image of his own face shone back at him: deep-set grey eyes, a strong jaw, a good head of hair, peppered liberally, these days, but still impressively thick and healthy. Not bad at all for a fifty-six-year-old. Being a deputy head wasn’t bad going either, he reminded himself, even if it was a shared post. All the prestigious schools had a posse of deputies, these days, even if Phyllis … Colin forced his thoughts to stop there and reverted to some more serious polishing of the bonnet. Objects were blissfully uncomplicated, he reminded himself fiercely. If treated well they gave and took nothing back. When they wore out or grew dull they could be replaced, unlike unruly children, or troubling staff, or problematic emotions …

‘Colin, supper’s ready.’

He looked up to see Elizabeth at one of the dining-room windows, positioned awkwardly to project her voice through the half-inch crack. Like all the windows at the front of the house it had special burglar-defence locks, fitted after a canny thief had broken in to help himself to the most prized items in the sideboard, including a set of ten silver napkin rings, emblazoned with the Harrison crest (left to Elizabeth by her grandmother), and several silver christening treasures (a Victorian cruet set with spindly legs and doll-sized spoons, a sugar bowl, a small jug and an intricately inlaid oval drinks tray with pretty curved handles), which, as luck would have it, Pamela had only recently entrusted to her daughter’s care. The sense of having been violated was unpleasant, as was the fact that, although insured, such valuables were irreplaceable. Elizabeth, however, had seemed to place her mother’s wrath above such considerations. So much so that she had begged Colin to break the news of the burglary to Pamela on her behalf.

The pair of them had a baffling relationship, which annoyed Colin more and more as the years went by. While claiming not to care what her mother thought about anything, Elizabeth seemed, even at forty-six, constantly to be seeking Pamela’s approbation and bristling if it wasn’t immediately forthcoming. Even the small revelation of Pamela’s miscarriage was something she had managed to commandeer – in classic Elizabeth style – as a matter of personal affront. They had all had a
right
to know about such a thing, she had stormed, even after talking to Pamela herself about it over Easter. Colin, meanwhile, had struggled to see what the fuss was about. The past, as far as he was concerned, was the past, particularly when it related to the lives of other people.

What he also failed to understand was why, given the strains in the relationship, which he knew went way back to Elizabeth feeling miserable and misunderstood as a child, she should constantly be finding excuses to beetle across country to the family home. Colin’s own enthusiasm for visiting Ashley House had waned considerably over the years. It was still exciting to be linked to the affluence of the place, to relish (if he was honest) the prospect of some portion of such wealth dropping into his lap one day, but he had discovered that such feelings were easier to savour at a distance. He had been looking forward to Easter, for instance, but the moment he got there all the old sensations of being excluded had exerted their stranglehold. Even during his father-in-law’s generous announcements at dinner he couldn’t help being acutely aware that John Harrison was making a gift to his children, that he, like Helen and Serena, only benefited as family hangers-on. At the time he had also been smarting from Peter’s ridiculous pomposity about the party. He was damned if he was going to hire white tie and tails when he had a perfectly good black dinner jacket gathering dust in the cupboard. Elizabeth had agreed it was silly, but then devoted several conversations in subsequent weeks to get him to change his mind. To please Peter. To please her parents. Like her old family mattered more than her new one, which, in his heart, Colin suspected it still did.

‘Colin? Did you hear me? Supper’s ready.’

‘Sorry. I’m coming right this second.’ Colin turned off the outside tap and rolled the green coils of the hose into a neat circle. He shook the drips off the end, delaying for a few more moments the necessity of going inside, aware that he wasn’t in quite the mood to assume the mantle of malleable pleasantness he had recently adopted to deal with the travails of domestic life.

Inside, Roland was sitting cross-legged and saucer-eyed about two feet from the television, while Elizabeth, her face pink from her exertions at the stove, was only just putting knives and forks on to the table. ‘I thought you said it was ready,’ Colin muttered, backing out of the kitchen. ‘You’ll ruin your eyes, sitting like that, you know, Roland.’ He tapped his son’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t you have some homework you were going to do this afternoon anyway? We agreed I was going to check it through with you, didn’t we? Find all those silly mistakes? All those
theirs
and
theres
… and so forth.’ He bit the sentence short, prompted to do so by a steely look from Elizabeth, who had appeared in the doorway to say the food was on the table. That Roland, at the advanced age of nine, was still far more interested in drawing pictures than composing sentences didn’t seem to bother her, but Colin was so worried he was seriously considering paying for some additional tuition outside school. But not tonight, he warned himself, rubbing his palms together and following her into the kitchen, not tonight. ‘Mmm … curry. Smells lovely.’ He rubbed his hands together even more vigorously, wishing irritation could be so easily soothed away. Since the traumas of February they had been getting on much better, which was good. What was not quite so good was the constant effort this seemed to require on his part and that a huge portion of the effort was inspired by guilt.

The day his niece had been hit by a motorbike had proved a turning point in more ways than one. Elizabeth thought it had made them closer. What she didn’t know was that, wandering round Guildford’s main shopping precinct that Saturday, Colin had bumped into his arch rival, Phyllis McGill. At her suggestion they had had a coffee. At his, they had prolonged the encounter to cover a sandwich lunch, followed by more coffee. During the course of this entirely unplanned, previously unimaginable social encounter, Colin had discovered several intriguing things: first, Phyllis’s aggression at school stemmed from the fact that she was frightened (frightened!) of him; second, that he found this notion hugely stimulating; and third, that when examined close to, Phyllis McGill’s green eyes had a sparkle that belied her spinster reputation within the staff room.

The curry was a lurid yellow, but tasted pleasant enough. Roland, as usual, had mince instead.

‘It’s from that new book,’ said Elizabeth, eagerly scouring her husband’s face for approval, ‘the one Cassie gave me for Christmas – a bit hot for me, though. Phew.’ She blew her cheeks out and reached for her water glass, experiencing a quick stab of envy for their son’s simple little pile of brown meat. She’d never been a fan of curry, going along with it in the early days because it was such a favourite with Colin. At some indefinable point in their marriage, it had become generally regarded as a passion they had in common. And such myths, she had discovered, once woven, were almost impossible to unravel. Hence Cassie’s cookbook (one of a small library of similar, well-intentioned gifts accumulated over the years, several of them from Colin himself), not to mention innumerable celebratory meals in Indian restaurants and an array of kitchen spices of which any curry-devotee would have been proud. Wading through her plate of food now, scalp prickling with heat, cheeks burning, Elizabeth found herself pondering these facts and wondering suddenly if she had spent her entire life doing things to please other people. And, if she had, whether this was a good or bad thing. Unsettled but interested in the idea, Elizabeth would have explored it further, had not Colin declared suddenly that the meal was delicious and she was marvellous for cooking it. He got up to pour them both some wine, then kissed her lips. And instead of getting cross when Roland, finishing way ahead of them, asked to get down, Colin said of course, but only after they’d had an arm wrestle. Elizabeth watched, her heart full, as husband and son rolled up their sleeves and locked palms, Roland puce with trying and Colin pretending to be. It was a lovely sight and instantly made up for everything – her own silly insecurities and all Colin’s strictness and impatience as a father. She could see that Roland felt the same: his flushed cheeks and flashing dark eyes radiated happiness, even when, after several minutes tussling, Colin pressed his little stick of an arm flat down on the table, exposing the eczema that no amount of prescription cream ever seemed to soothe away.

‘You could have let him win.’ She delivered the remark laughing, once Roland was out of earshot, too pleased at their son’s evident delight in the game to care about its outcome.

But Colin’s retort was sharp: ‘He’s old enough to know I’d be faking so it wouldn’t count, would it?’

‘I suppose not,’ she murmured, thinking that a little faking did no harm at all.

‘But I will wear white tie and tails to this bloody party, if you like,’ Colin blurted, his voice suddenly so warm that Elizabeth started. She was pleased, of course, to see him smiling again, but wondered at these new swings in his moods, where they came from and how she was supposed to anticipate them. ‘I’ll hire the damn things,’ he continued, ‘and I want you to buy a new dress – okay? Anything you want, never mind the cost. After all, we’ve got to spend that money of your father’s on something, haven’t we?’

‘Oh, Colin …’ Elizabeth left her place and went to put her arms round him. ‘That’s very sweet, but my old black thing will do fine. Besides, we have splashed out on the car and we did agree that every penny of the rest is for the school-fees fund, didn’t we?’

‘Yes, I guess we did.’ Colin, returned his attention to his food, thinking as he had many times in the past how ridiculous it was to be scrimping and saving with his wife’s inheritance so visibly on the horizon. He thought, too, but only fleetingly, how much simpler life would have been if February had seen the mowing down of his parents-in-law instead of his niece. Of course, in financial terms, it was grossly unfair (not to say, archaic) that Peter, being the eldest, would emerge from such an eventuality as the new owner of Ashley House. (Over the years Colin had privately protested this fact many times, infuriated by what he regarded as the brain-washed acquiescence of his wife.) Yet three hundred thousand was still three hundred thousand. Not to be sniffed at under any circumstances.

Consoled, as always, by the prospect, Colin set down his knife and fork and reached across the table to kiss Elizabeth again, so tenderly that he had forgiven himself by the end of it, not just for wanting (increasingly with the years) to be richer but for the small matter of Phyllis McGill as well. Nothing had happened and nothing would. Too much was at stake. In the intervening months there had been a certain, rather different tension between them, but otherwise it had been business as usual at school and he intended to make damned certain things stayed that way.

Two days after Stephen’s visit to her flat Cassie did something she rarely did and phoned her eldest brother at work.

‘Peter?’

‘Cassie?’

‘Sorry, are you busy?’

‘Not at this precise moment. What a pleasant and unexpected surprise.’

‘About your fiftieth … I’m sorry I haven’t replied properly – Mum said you and Helen were cross.’