Love Rules (43 page)

‘Shall we go for a walk, then?’ Thea said. ‘We can go along the Ridgeway.’

‘Sure,’ said Saul, ‘whatever.’

Thea wanted Saul to take the initiative and hold her hand. But today he seemed more distant, somewhat guarded, so she contrived to bump into him once or twice, to have her arm brush his accidentally-on-purpose, to position her hand enticingly close. Though Saul of course wanted to hold Thea's hand, he'd rather it wasn't snatched away so it seemed safer not to in the first place. It was down to Thea but she couldn't quite do it either.

‘Hear that?’ Saul asked, suddenly animated.

‘What?’

‘Listen – there. That
mew! mew!
Plaintive calling. Where is it? There, Thea – look! Buzzard.’ With Saul's arm out-stretched over her shoulder and alongside her cheek to provide a direct angle of view, Thea saw the buzzard circling, now so close that the calligraphy of dark markings and fawny dapples on the underside of its wings were clearly visible. Are there any buzzards on Hampstead Heath, Saul, any in Richmond Park – is this our only chance to see one? Unable
to resist, Thea gently cocked her head so she could rest her cheek against Saul's arm as she observed the bird. She could sense him gazing at her. If she didn't know what she knew, if she hadn't seen what she'd seen, this would all feel so perfect. Just then, she found she could pretend that it was; she found she could forget what had been. Lightly, Saul kissed her temple and she turned towards him, sinking fast into his enveloping embrace. She clung to him, her eyes closed, her face pressed into his chest. If she didn't pull away now, she knew she would never be able to. She needed to try to pull away without actually pushing him away. When she did, she saw the buzzard perched on a fence stake amazingly close. Look, Saul, look.

‘
My heart in hiding/ Stirred for a bird
,’ he said to her, ‘
the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
’

‘Don't tell me – you dug it off the Internet?’ Thea found she could tease him.

‘Gerard Manley Hopkins,’ Saul objected. ‘Funny what you remember from A-level English.’

They walked on, in awkward silence. Thea quietly engrossed in trying to recall quotes from her English A level. Saul wondering whether he was correctly reading her signals to hold her hand. He tried it. Initially, she didn't resist.

‘Let's go to the Polly Tea Rooms in Marlborough,’ Thea announced, now finding an itch on her shoulder which required both her hands, ‘though it may be full of tourists.’

‘We'll put on our best American accents then,’ Saul said, taking her hand again as they walked back to the car.

When they arrived in Marlborough, they did just that. They passed the infernal wait for a table by saying things like ‘Gee, honey, I sure am hungry’ and ‘How damn cute is this li'l ol' town?’ Thea only just managed to keep giggles at bay. Saul was bolstered. It simultaneously heartened but alarmed Thea how easily, how quickly, she could
merge back into the familiar and effortless dynamic with this man.

How Saul wanted to rush back to the house and take Thea to bed. He wasn't particularly horny – the oversized scones and gluts of clotted cream hampered that – rather he was flooded by a desire to display the veracity of his love through quiet intimacy. He just wanted to lie with her, allow his touch and his gaze to say it all. However, Thea's hands were beyond reach, fixed as they were at ten-to-two on her mother's steering wheel. Thea in the driving seat. Thea stalling. Thea putting the brakes on. It was only when they arrived back at Wootton Bourne that Saul realized that actually, he held the key.

‘I think I'll just tidy up, do some hoovering.’

‘The house is immaculate, Thea.’

‘I must water Mum's hanging baskets.’

‘Not in direct sunlight – you'll scorch the plants.’

‘Well, in that case, I think I'll just have a quiet hour or so with the papers until the sun goes in.’

‘No, Thea, talk to me. Talk.’

Thea frowned and flinched and shook her head. She felt trapped. Tidy. Hoover. Water the garden. Read the papers. Quiet hour. Be quiet. She glanced at Saul, who was holding his hand out to her. She spun from him.

‘Thea – we can't let this go. It's too good – we must be able to find a way.’ Saul was standing close behind her. ‘Our lives were sorted – our future was all mapped out. It was brilliant.’

‘It was the best thing that ever happened to me,’ Thea said hoarsely.

‘Well, don't let it go!’ Saul exclaimed gently, as if to a simpleton.

‘Easy for you to say!’ Thea balked, rushing through the French windows into her mother's garden. Saul followed her. ‘Fuck off and leave me alone, can't you!’ she hissed.

‘Excuse me, but it was you who invited me here,’ Saul corrected. ‘Why was that, Thea? Why summons me?’ She couldn't answer and she didn't want to say I don't know. ‘We can work through this,’ Saul said, ‘we must be able to. We were the strongest couple I know – we were the envy of so many. We had everything.’

‘I loved you enough to spend the rest of my life with you,’ Thea said sadly, ‘and now I face a precarious time on my own. At the age of thirty-bloody-three. When I should be feeling settled and calm.’ She took a petulant kick at her mother's Impatiens.

‘For Christ's sake, Thea,’ Saul said, ‘you're answering all your questions and doubts. That's precisely what we are, that's precisely why we should try and sort it – we're now at an age where we don't have the luxury of our twenties, of all that over-wrought drama and game playing and emotional self-indulgence. Perhaps there isn't time to split up. Long, drawn-out conflicts are a waste of time. It's all semantics. Let's get on with life. Let's get through this. Let's sort it out. Let's get on with growing up and growing old.’

‘I don't want to get old with you,’ Thea stamped.

‘Why not?’ Saul asked. ‘Why not, Thea? What have I done?’

His words hung in the air like laundry on a line. He'd asked her outright, he'd put himself on the line. He was hanging his dirty washing out in the open – possibly for her to tear down and hurl back at him. He was laying himself bare. It's your chance, Thea. Insult him, blame him, shame him, curse him, listen to him, forgive him.

‘I never doubted it. I never doubted you,’ she said flatly, ‘but now I do and that's the end of the story. That's the close of our fairy tale. We didn't live happily ever after. The End.
Deal with it.’

‘You sound horrible,’ Saul frowned.

‘
You're
the horrible one,’ Thea shouted and she bolted through the house and out.

Traversing the ribs of Wootton Bourne, Thea initially stomped fast, muttering insults under her breath. Soon, her pace slowed and she reflected on what had been said. Saul was completely right. They were a brilliant couple, they were at an age where such a sound union should be valued, snapped up and for ever treasured. But she knew too that she wasn't hastily throwing it out like the tantrum she'd just had. Over the last few weeks, through Kiki, through Richard Stonehill, through Alice, through the rawness of her own desolation, through a naked need to face fact, Thea had gradually accepted that Saul's particular take on what was morally acceptable grossly conflicted with her own deeply revered ethics. She was satisfied that she'd come to terms with her own limitations as well as those she perceived to be Saul's. Ultimately, it was not so much the fact that she knew what Saul was capable of; it was that she finally knew what she was incapable of. Unconditional love.

I can't do it. I'm not that generous, that liberated, that laid back. I used to feel that being in love was enough, but now I know that it isn't. There actually needs to be more to love than love itself.

She knew unequivocally what she believed in and what she needed and she was adamant that, for her, moral compatibility was a fundamental requirement.

She looked behind her. There was no one there. She realized she'd been expecting him to follow. Had he packed up and left? Without them getting to the heart of the matter? She returned at a brisk pace.

‘Everything changed,’ Thea explains, coming in to find Saul sitting exhausted on the stairs. ‘It wasn't right. I couldn't do it.’

‘Then why the fuck drag me up from London?’ Saul sighs. ‘It wasn't to go bird-watching on the Ridgeway.’

Thea fidgets and shrugs and tries to look at him and can't.

‘Do you realize this is the first time
ever
that you and I have actually had a full-blown fight?’ Saul says. ‘That's why all of this is so stupid.’

‘I'm sorry, Saul,’ Thea whispers, ‘it's not you, it's me.’

‘I know, Thea,’ Saul announces in a hollow voice. He lets it hang. He could be simply acknowledging that yes he knows it's her, not him. But then he turns it into a noose by which he may well hang himself. ‘I mean, I
know
, Thea, I know that you know.’ He nods to himself. Thea's eyes flick over to his and are caught, like a startled doe in car headlights. ‘I know that you know,’ Saul says quietly, hating it that Thea looks so appalled, so terrified. ‘I know that you saw me. All right?’

It is Saul's final bid. He is standing tall, his honesty a sword which, depending on Thea's reaction, he will either fall upon or brandish like Excalibur. Saul watches as she slowly hauls her gaze away from the middle distance, where it's been fixed for loaded minutes, back to him. He must meet it, he tells himself; he mustn't flinch from it.

When Thea finally looks at him, he is winded by the hurt and trauma which striate her face. When Thea finally looks at him, all she sees is Saul. Good old Saul. The same Saul. Her old Saul. And then she alights on the greatest, most tragic irony – that looking into the heart of undeniable truth really does mean that all hope is lost.

It is simply Saul himself standing before her. The unmistakable reality is out. She'd have to love him for who he is. But the reality is, she knows she can't. It's asking too much. It's demanding too substantial a compromise.

‘I'm sorry, babe, I'm sorry. It must have half killed you,’ Saul says, visibly racked by his awareness of her pain. ‘It meant nothing – please, please believe me. It's just the stupid boy-bit in me.’

‘I don't want a stupid boy,’ Thea says quietly, ‘I want a nice man.’

‘I am a nice man,’ Saul says with conviction.

‘Nice men do not do that.’

Saul sighs. ‘Look, we could discuss the psychology behind this – and the facts and statistics that clearly define just what nice men do,’ he says evenly, ‘but I don't think that's the point. The only point is if you feel there's an inkling of hope we can make our relationship work in the face of this. If I swear it won't happen again – and with or without you, I doubt it will – would you believe me? Can you trust me? Could you remember how you used to love me? Should we try going to Relate or some other counselling?’

‘I don't want to
workshop
the fact that you pay for sex!’ Thea protests in a whisper. ‘I'm not prepared to hear your gory details just so you can assuage your guilt!’

‘Thea, I know you're hurting,’ Saul tells her, ‘I know I caused it but I know I can be the antidote.’

‘No, Saul – you can't,’ Thea's voice fragments, ‘as much as you'd like to be – and I'm sure your self-belief is honest and good in intent – but you can't make me feel better because you made me feel this wretched in the first place.’

‘I didn't mean to,’ Saul says firmly.

‘Well, directly or indirectly you have,’ Thea says levelly.

‘But I love you, Thea,’ Saul says. ‘Surely such roots form a basis for survival, for growth?’

‘Saul,’ Thea says, ‘that's what
you
want. You love me. You want us to work through this. You want to make me feel better, feel safe with you. You want us to live happily ever after. But I'm not that strong a person to forgive and
forget. And I'm not like you – my morals are different.’

‘That's where therapy might come in,’ Saul suggests.

‘Oh, shut up about sodding therapy,’ Thea says. ‘You read too many magazines. My heart is broken, my dreams are smashed, my trust is decimated and my hope is shattered. It's going to take more than an agony aunt or psycho-babble Superglue to fix it.’

‘I devote my life to building you up again,’ Saul declares.

‘But Saul,’ says Thea, though she knows it may well be the last word on the matter, the last thing she says to him, ‘I don't love you enough to let you.’ They stare at each other in horror. ‘I'm sorry – the weakness is mine,’ Thea admits, ‘my love is not unconditional. I don't love you as much as you love me. We are not compatible. I'm a girl who's always believed in knights in shining armour, in fairy tales, in good old-fashioned fidelity, in swans mating for life, in lovey-dovey monogamy.
Amor Vincit Omnia
.’ Thea paused. ‘But I've come to see that actually love doesn't conquer all,’ she says, ‘not for me. Not now.’

They slump over each other in the hallway of Gloria Luckmore's pristine house, Saul and Thea. Like two boxers in the fifteenth round, bruised and bloodied, exhausted brains addled with the battering of their first, last, fight. Nobody won, both lost. They look a mess, they really do. You flinch from the sight of them. But given time, the scars will heal and gradually fade. Ask Thea about that.

Friends

‘It's weird,’ Alice remarked, handing Thea her olive stone because she couldn't see where else to put it, ‘I know you don't own this place – but actually, it's much more
you
than your old flat.’

‘It's funny,’ Thea agreed, delicately spitting an olive stone into her hand, alongside Alice's, ‘but I'd have to agree. I thought I'd miss the Gothick quirkiness; I thought I needed my little slice of Lewis Carroll Living; I thought I'd find the ordered layout here boring; but over the last couple of months I've actually grown to love it – it's bright but quiet. I like having the long hallway and the feeling of flow, a sense of space. There might be a flat two floors above coming up for sale – the same size as this but positioned on the other side – with an even better view.’

‘Would you buy it?’ Alice asked, popping another olive into her mouth and racing ahead with a thought that she and Mark could assist Thea financially.