Relative Love

Brookfield Amanda

Description

‘This book, about deep and complex family love from this accomplished author, is told with true passion’ Family Circle

The Harrison family, gathering for Christmas at their big country house, inhabit a tight safe world of privilege and tradition. But this year, time is catching up with the elderly Pamela and John, while troubles are brewing in the lives of their four children: Cassie, the cosseted youngest, is in the throes of a secret affair with a married man, while awkward Elizabeth struggles with a faltering second marriage. Peter, who will inherit Ashley House, is beginning to meet resistance to the idea from his career-orientated wife, Helen.

Only carefree Charlie and his wife, Serena, seem truly content, with nothing to vex them but their adolescent twin girls and the simpler teething troubles of their toddler. But tragedy, of the most unforeseeable and devastating kind, is lying in wait. The family, so apparently secure, is rocked to its core. Hidden turmoil, secrets past and present, are forced to the surface, laying bare the fragility of human happiness and the myriad faces of love in an imperfect world.

Praise for Amanda Brookfield:

‘There should have been a trumpet fanfare when this book was launched, for Amanda Brookfield is, surely, the queen of the relationship novel. I have read (and enjoyed) all her previous books but this one is - in my opinion - the best. It is the story of how apparently even secure relationships can fall apart. Is there a happy ending? I'm not going to spoil your enjoyment by saying another thing. Just buy and read and enjoy this splendid book.’

‘I savoured every second of this deeply satisfying book. Amanda Brookfield goes from strength to strength’Patricia Scanlon

‘Few contemporary British novelists writing today explore the messy tangles of close human relationships with quite such warm perceptiveness as Brookfield’ Daily Mirror

‘What is refreshing here is the author’s conspicuous sanity and her sharp line in defence of reason… It could be sentimental, but it isn’t.’ Guardian

‘Penetrating insights into the ordinary female condition’ Woman's Own

Sujets

• Romance contemporaine
• Fiction
• Romance
• Family Life
• Contemporary
• Holiday
• General
• The Women
• Woman
• General officer
• Sibling
• Contemporary history
• Coming of Age
• Women
• Siblings

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 01 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838896188
• Langue: English

Extrait

Relative Love


Amanda Brookfield
For the Hesworth Cousins:
Ceel, Jonny, Kiki, Emma, Kate, Josh, Izzi, Ben and Ali
Contents



Foreword


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12


A Letter to the Reader

More from Amanda Brookfield

About the Author

About Boldwood Books
Thanks for permission to quote from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald/06.11.03
Also, thanks for permission to quote from The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats kindly given by A. P. Watt on behalf of Michael B. Yeats
I would like to thank the following people for their help in a variety of invaluable ways:
Angela Brookfield, Andrew Charles, Liz Clifford, Sara Menguc, Hazel Orme, Nick Sellick, Sara Westcott
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’
W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming
1
December

John Harrison, returning from the lower field with a barrowful of holly, the leaves a polished leathery green, the berries blood-red baubles in the dusky light, paused at the familiar sight of his home. A sudden drop in temperature, coming after the freakish unseasonal warmth of the day, had created a thin band of waist-high mist, as thick as wool from a distance but dissolving to invisibility as he waded through it. The slate tiles and grey stone chimney-stacks of Ashley House rose out of this trick of nature like some magical and majestic ship on a ghostly sea, its numerous lead-latticed windows – extravagantly illuminated, thanks to the arrival that afternoon of four children, several spouses and seven grandchildren – shining like portholes against the darkening sky. John, inclined normally to keep a beady eye on thermostat dials and light switches when Pamela and he were alone, felt a glow of pride at so much evidence of occupation.
Apart from the absence of horses and hay in the outhouses and barns, and the thick twists of ivy and wisteria trunks across the walls, there had been few physical changes to the property since a windfall on the corn- market had allowed John’s Victorian grandfather, Edmund Harrison, to commission the building of the family home. It had been called Ashley House after his wife, Violet Ashley, who had died in childbirth. The only significant architectural addition since that time had been undertaken by their son Albert, John’s father, who had installed a long, arched porch, running the full length of the back of the house, connected to each of the affected rooms by a series of French windows. Known in family parlance as ‘the cloisters’, and built in the same soft grey brick as the walls to which it was attached, it was a construction that stole a lot of natural light from the interior, but which was generally forgiven this defect for looking so fine, particularly from the outside, and for providing excellent sitting-out space in the summer. John’s own architectural dabblings had been restricted to a conversion of the largest barn into what was, somewhat disparagingly, referred to as the ‘granny flat’, but which was in fact a spacious two- bedroomed little house, complete with its own kitchen and bathroom and front door, ideal for overflow at busy times of year. On this occasion, Alicia, his widowed and increasingly irascible sister, was housed there; so she could be completely comfortable, Pam had soothed, easing over the crinkle of suspicion in her sister-in-law’s eyes that her company was not as eagerly sought after as she would have liked.
John released his grip on the barrow handles and flexed his fingers, which were stiff with cold (and sore, too, from foolishly tackling the holly without the protection of gloves), and continued to stare at the house, squinting as, from time to time, figures moved across the windows, busy in various, easily imagined ways, unpacking suitcases, wrapping gifts, preparing infants for bed or food for the evening meal. There would be salmon, as usual on Christmas Eve, steamed with Pamela’s customary light touch to a succulent white-pink so that the flesh fell off the bones and melted on the tongue; and a generous selection of vegetables that always included beetroot – a particular favourite of John’s – freshly pulled from Ashley House’s own well-stocked vegetable garden. The sprouts served at lunch the following day would also be home-grown, their leaves pale green and tasting faintly of earth and mint. For the younger members of the clan, with palates not yet sufficiently discerning to enjoy such flavours, there would be simpler alternatives: toad-in-the-hole instead of fish, peas instead of beetroot. The sprouts, however, were unavoidable. At least one on each plate at Christmas lunch was one of those small traditions that had somehow become unquestionable over the years, as such things did in established families, where the minutest ways of speaking and doing took on the comforting resonance of ritual.
‘Here we are again, old fella,’ John murmured, prodding the mud- clogged tip of one wellington boot against the grizzled belly of the black labrador slumped on the ground next to him. ‘Christmas at Ashley House. Won’t be too many more of those for you, eh?’ The dog, who was twelve years old and painfully arthritic unless in pursuit of rabbits, half raised its head, offered a desultory wag of acknowledgement, then dropped its jaw with an audible thwack back on to its outstretched paws.
John bent to pick up the barrow handles and began to weave a somewhat unsteady route up towards the garden, aware of the heaviness of his boots and the mounting knot of stiffness in his lower back. He chose the nearest of the various gates posted round the garden, and paused to check on a lopsided hinge, making a mental note to return that way soon with a hammer and nails. Boots lumbered after him, ignoring the open gate and burrowing under a loose section in the mesh wiring which John had painstakingly rigged round the garden’s substantial boundaries in a bid to deter the rabbit population from socialising on the lawn. A few seconds later the dog trotted back to his side, looking at once triumphant and sheepish, his nose smeared with fresh mud, and an assortment of dead leaves and twigs scattered across his back.
‘Daft beast,’ growled John fondly, adding the loose meshing to his list of things to see to, a list that never seemed to shorten or end and which, while he liked to groan about it, was, he knew, connected to some vital sense of purpose and well-being. The tending of the garden itself never touched his conscience. He had learnt over the years to leave all such nurturing and forethought to his wife, Pamela, who was as dexterous and skilled with seedlings as she was with the jars of ingredients ranged around the oak shelves in the kitchen. She had a library of books on English country gardens and a visionary talent for applying their lore to the fenced two acres surrounding the house. A local man called Sid helped her, emitting monosyllabic grunts of acquiescence to her every command, whether it involved weeding, mowing or lopping branches off trees. No physical challenge ever seemed too great for his wiry frame, although he puffed at pungent roll-ups all day and had the weathered face of a man well past his seventieth birthday. Occasionally John teased Pamela about the physical prowess of their employee, professing jealousy not because he felt any (after fifty years together sex and all its exhausting complications – lust, envy, frustration, longing – had slid so far down the agenda they were practically out of sight) but because he liked to see how the echo of a reference to such fierce emotions made her smile. In truth, John was happy to be left to dabble in the fields and woods comprising the remaining twenty acres of the estate, attending to clogged ditches, sagging fences and rebellious outcrops of brambles and nettles. Armed often with just a walking stick (he had several to choose from lined up along the wall of the garden shed, their knobbled handles smooth from use), his beloved multipurpose penknife and a few bits of wire and string, he would spend up to several hours at a time lost in the Ashley House grounds, humming contentedly at his small, invariably doomed, attempts to keep nature at bay. Sometimes, on chilly or particularly dank mornings, Pamela would slip into his anorak pocket a little Thermos of tea, which he would drink sitting on a tree stump, sucking on his pipe, marvelling at familiar things, like the cosy undulating beauty of the Sussex countryside, or that he had somehow arrived at the outrageously advanced age of seventy-nine without serious mishap to himself or any member of his family. All four of his children were in good health, as were their various offspring; his sister Alicia had lost her husband some years before, but was otherwise well, as was her son, Paul, who had married an Australian girl and settled in Sydney.
The only real shadow to fall across the picture had been cast by Eric, his elder brother, who, thanks to a severe stroke in his fifties, had for many years been resident in a nursing-home. But, then, as Pamela was so good at pointing out, Eric had had a marvellous innings, playing soldiers in foreign countries and pursuing all manner of hare-brained adventures before Fate had played its cruel hand. The home he was now in was just a few miles away, allowing them to make regular visits and keep an eye on the quality of nursing care, which had not always been topnotch. These days – since Eric’s own savings had dried up – John paid the nursing-home fees, which were substantial. There was nothing more they could do, Pamela had assured him that morning, when the combination of a bill from the nursing- home and the prospect of yet another Christmas without the once- stimulating presence of his beloved big brother had made John sigh. They would visit him on Boxing Day as usual, with a string of gran