The Country Life

by Rachel Cusk

  ‘That’s a good idea!’ said Pamela ingratiatingly, overhearing. She came back across the room and put her arm around me, placing her other hand on Martin’s head. We now formed a sort of chain, starting with Roy and ending with me. ‘Why don’t you two slope off upstairs and have your party, and I’ll give you a shout when supper’s ready!’

  Tiring somewhat, I can admit, of Pamela’s jollity, I was relieved when Martin and I had gained the cool sanctuary of the hall.

  ‘Did you have a good afternoon?’ I enquired, as he slid from his chair at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘No,’ he panted, inching backwards up towards the first step and lodging his backside on it.

  ‘I thought you liked it there.’

  ‘What do you know?’ he said, levering himself on to the second. ‘It’s crap. How would you like to spend three afternoons a week with a bunch of spastics?’

  ‘That’s not very nice,’ I said, picking up his chair and plodding after him. ‘You don’t have to go.’

  ‘Yes I do,’ he puffed.

  ‘Why, if you hate it so much?’

  ‘Apparently’ – he heaved again – ‘I learn things there.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘I dunno. How to get used to being there, I suppose.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well.’ He stopped for a moment, his face red. ‘If something happens to them. Mater and Pater, that is. You know.’

  He resumed his ascent, his black hair flopping up and down.

  ‘But!’ I cried, dumbfounded. ‘But you wouldn’t – I mean, if something did happen – you wouldn’t go there!’

  ‘I bloody would. Or somewhere like it.’

  ‘But what about – what about Caroline?’

  He stopped again and opened his mouth wide. ‘Ha! Ha!’

  ‘I mean,’ I extemporized, ‘I mean, you might not get on all that well, but she’s your sister. She’d be glad to—’ I tried to think of a tactful way of putting it: ‘she’d be glad to have you Uve with her, I’m sure!’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because,’ he said firmly, ‘she’s said so. They all did. Mummy and Daddy sat them all down and asked them. I mean’ – he dragged himself onto the landing – ‘they didn’t say no just like that. But they all made excuses. Even Millie.’

  ‘Who’s Millie?’

  ‘My other sister. You haven’t met her yet. She’s nice.’

  I trailed up the stairs, the chair cumbersome in my arms, and deposited it beside him on the landing.

  ‘But why?’ I said, or rather wailed.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why won’t they have you?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno.’ He grasped the handles of the chair and levered himself up. ‘Millie was upset about it, I suppose. She just said that she couldn’t promise. She didn’t know what was going to happen and stuff. I dunno.’

  He wheeled past me with a blazing face down the corridor to his room. I lagged behind, my mind alive with curiosity and shame. I had often felt as a child a sense of surprise at how far the machinations of the adult world had progressed beyond my own, while I had been busy cultivating the solipsistic cabbage patch of my own thoughts. My parents had often surprised me with what they knew, the things they had considered and discussed. The reason for my unpreparedness was perhaps because I never saw them do it. To return to the subject of Martin, it had never occurred to me to wonder what might happen to him if Pamela and Piers met with some misfortune. Of course, I could see now that such a discussion, given his age and disability, had been inevitable; but the fact that it hadn’t occurred to me gave me the perhaps unwonted feeling that Pamela and Piers were more responsible, more complex somehow, than I had believed them to be. I have always felt that moments such as this have a peculiarly ageing effect on the mind; and I was to age still further when I arrived at the dreadful subject of Caroline and the others’ refusal to accept the guardianship of their poor defenceless brother. My first thought, fired off in disgust, was that I myself would offer to take care of him; but as soon as I had thought it a tempting though unlikely vision of my future life, beckoning me towards footloose adventures in foreign parts and romantic elopements at midnight, came to haunt me.

  ‘Come on!’ called Martin from up ahead.

  I hurried along after him to his room, which had undergone a transformation since the morning – the fruits, no doubt, of Mrs Barker’s campaign – but had already embarked on its return to chaos. One or two items lay abandoned on the pristine carpet, like the first fallen leaves at the end of summer presaging the long but irreversible process by which everything which was lodged orderly on branches would eventually be flung to the ground. Martin was in the corner of the room, leaning far out of his chair to inspect a rank of records which stood in a long rack like hundreds of silvery slivers of toast.

  ‘What sort of music do you like, Stel-la?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anything, I suppose. Whatever you like.’

  Martin turned around in his chair, as if astonished.

  ‘Don’t you like music?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I do. I just don’t have a favourite sort.’

  ‘Strange girl,’ muttered Martin, turning away.

  ‘Edward always used to buy the records,’ I added, feeling that I ought to explain myself. ‘He had a huge collection. I suppose that’s why I don’t have any myself. Not that that’s any excuse, of course, but if somebody’s very passionate about something it tends to mean that you can’t be.’

  During this colloquy, Martin had been slowly turning around again in his chair.

  ‘Who,’ he said, with a gravity which was entirely out of proportion, ‘is Edward?’

  ‘He’s my – he was just somebody I knew for a long time.’

  I turned and looked awkwardly out of the long window. Outside the afternoon was fading, and a strange, floury light hung over the front lawn. Far in the distance a violent red stain, the aftermath of the sun, clung to the rinsing sky; and watching that remote drama I felt suddenly that it held everything from which I had run away; that although for now I was harboured safe in the private splendour of other people’s lives, the immanence of that other world, the bloody recrudescence which hung patiently at the horizon, would one day claim me again.

  ‘Where is he now?’ said Martin behind me. ‘Do you still see him?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where he is. Well, I do, he’s in London, but I’m not in touch with him.’

  Benighted, shameful thoughts stirred like smoking craters in the darkness of the back of my mind.

  ‘Why not?’ said Martin, with childish naivety. ‘Did you have an argument?’

  ‘Not really. I just had to get away from him.’

  ‘Why? Was he nasty to you?’ Martin drew a record from the rack. ‘I think we’ll have this.’

  ‘Of course he wasn’t nasty,’ I snapped. ‘He was just – wrong for me, I suppose. I don’t know. I don’t really want to think about it, if you don’t mind.’

  Just then, the room froze with the sound of the most exquisite music. It was piano music, of such lovely pathos that I experienced it almost as a physical pain. I had been expecting Martin to put on some teenage cacophany; and being taken by surprise, I found myself close to tears again, as I had been in the kitchen, with a kind of alloyed joy.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Do you like it? It’s the best piece of music ever written. Why don’t you sit down, Stel-la? You’re making me nervous standing there.’

  I sat down in the leather armchair and closed my eyes. I felt very weary suddenly; not physically tired exactly, but shut down as if by some internal device, like an overheated machine. The music was the perfect balm for this condition and I drank it in, wondering why I had spent my life disdaining this free and accessible pleasure when all along it could have been mine.

  ‘Tell me more about yourself, Stel-la,’ said Martin
. His voice was closer now, and although I had my eyes closed I guessed that he was nearby.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘What makes you tick.’ He made a clicking sound with his tongue, high-low, high-low, like a clock.

  ‘If I knew that,’ I said sleepily, ‘I wouldn’t be here.’

  I felt straight away that this last comment had been inappropriate, straying as it did beyond the boundaries of my role at Franchise Farm. I opened my eyes and sat up. Martin was sitting directly in front of me, so close in fact that I could feel his breath on my neck.

  ‘How old are you?’ he said.

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘You’re too old for me,’ he sighed. ‘I’m only seventeen.’

  ‘You’ll get over it,’ I said lightly, although I was surprised by what he had said, and curiously, both repelled and flattered at the same time. I was surprised, too, by his age, having thought him at least two years younger.

  ‘Did Edward love you?’ he enquired, emphasizing the word ‘Edward’; for all the world as if his own feelings were now established in the public domain.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘Not really.’ It was hard to get the treachery out of my mouth, like expectorating a large and jagged chunk of metal. ‘No.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He put his hands on the wheels of his chair and began to rock back and forth. There was something slightly lewd in the movement, given our proximity. Seeming to realize this, he stopped. ‘How long were you – you know.’

  ‘A long time. Eight years.’

  He whistled admiringly.

  ‘Did he ask you to marry him?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said yes.’

  Martin opened his eyes wide. His jaw was ajar, like a door.

  ‘Are you married, Stel-la?’ he said. His voice was confidential. His lips twitched, half gleeful and half dismayed.

  ‘Yes.’

  Martin gave a tentative little giggle. As if some small bird were nesting undetected in an internal crevice, I heard an answering trill rise up from my throat. In all the course of my brief but tumultuous acquaintance with the fact of my marriage, among the countless shades of feeling, the range of shame and guilt and regret – and even, once or twice, exultation – with which I had cosseted, fed and bludgeoned it, the spectrum of lights in which I had considered it, of backgrounds against which I had viewed it; in this noisy, crowded jamboree of emotions, it had never even once occurred to me to laugh about it. But that was precisely what Martin and I did now; and the more we tried to stop, the harder we laughed. Our chests heaved, our mouths opened wider to let the torrent out. Occasionally one or other of us would hold out a hand or try to say something; but then a new ascent of mirth unfolded above us, and we would be paralysed by an inarticulate glee which seemed to encompass not merely my revelation, but everything once thought unbearable. With every volley I felt another tract of anguish relieved, and yet sensed that there were reams of it still to come. I knew my laughter, curiously, to be a form of expiation, although I could not comprehend why this might be, or how levity could begin to atone for what I had done.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said finally, wiping my eyes.

  ‘You are funny,’ said Martin, sounding rather like his mother. The phrase set off a tremor of retrospective uncertainty in me, suggesting as it did that I had been the object rather than the author of our laughter. ‘Imagine not telling us that!’

  ‘You won’t tell anybody, will you?’ I said. The plea sounded ineffectual. ‘I would prefer it,’ I rephrased, ‘if you kept this strictly between the two of us.’

  ‘OK,’ said Martin lightly; too lightly, although I felt it would make things worse to press him further for an assurance. ‘Although I don’t see what’s so bad about it.’

  ‘Just promise me,’ I said. I was beginning to regret my honesty; indeed, with every passing minute my revelation seemed more foolhardy.

  ‘I promise,’ said Martin.

  The record had finished and was spinning silently on the turntable. Martin lingered, as if hoping that I would volunteer more information. When I didn’t, he wheeled around and propelled himself to the other side of the room. I wiped my eyes again and sniffed surreptitiously.

  ‘Ahhhh!’ he groaned suddenly, bringing himself up short. ‘I completely forgot.’

  ‘What?’ I said, rather irritable now.

  ‘The dogfucker,’ he said, his head tilted back so that he was looking at the ceiling. ‘He’s supposed to be coming tonight.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Toby. The dogfucker. My brother,’

  ‘What a dreadful word!’ I exclaimed. ‘You can’t call him that!’

  ‘What do you know?’ said Martin, leaning forward and taking the record off the turntable. ‘It suits him, anyway. And he deserves it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Martin turned around in his chair with exaggerated portentousness, the record held aloft.

  ‘Why do you think?’ he said, grinning horribly.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ I retorted primly.

  ‘Oh, come on, Stel-la,’ he leered. ‘Don’t be such a goody-goody.’

  ‘I’m being nothing of the sort. I just don’t believe you. It’s not possible.’

  ‘Tell that to Roy!’

  ‘If you are insinuating what I think you are, then I have to say that I think you have a depraved mind.’

  ‘But it’s true!’ He put down the record and wheeled his chair back to mine, his eyes glinting. ‘He’d kill me if he knew I’d told anyone. You’ll have to promise.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said, as though wearily; although in reality I was glad to have exchanged oaths with him.

  ‘It happened years ago – we hadn’t had Roy for very long and he was only a puppy. Anyway, one day I couldn’t find him, and I was downstairs looking for him and I heard this noise.’ He paused suspensefully, and then started to make a whimpering noise. ‘Like that, coming from somewhere underneath the stairs. So I called him, Roy!, very quietly like that, Roy! Here, boy! And the noise just carried on. So I came up really quietly, because I’d worked out that it was coming from the cupboard and I thought he’d been shut in and that I’d give him a surprise. And so I threw open the door, bam! And there he was.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Toby. With Roy.’ Martin chewed at his fingernail matter-of-factly.

  ‘What were they doing?’ I said finally.

  ‘Well, Toby had his thing out,’ resumed Martin conversationally. ‘And Roy was kind of squirming and trying to get away.’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he was desperate,’ said Martin. ‘He used to go on about it the whole time. Muff this and snatch that and fucking the other. When I caught him that time he told me that a boy at school had said you could, you know, with a dog. I don’t think he did anything, actually, to Roy I mean. But he tried to.’

  ‘Did you tell your parents?’

  ‘Course not!’ said Martin scornfully. ‘He’d be a complete swine to me if I didn’t have something on him.’

  There was a faint tap on the door.

  ‘Come in!’ called Martin.

  The door opened and Pamela stood on the threshold. I could see immediately from her face that the ecstasy of an hour or two ago had begun to fade.

  ‘Darlings, I think we’re just going to have to go ahead and eat,’ she said, as if in mid-conversation. She looked around, bewildered. ‘Where are you both? It’s pitch black in here!’ She switched on the light, and I realized that the room had indeed been deep in shadow. In the glare Pamela looked small and rather sad. ‘Yes, we haven’t heard from Toby so I think we might as well just go ahead. Have you been having fun?’ She twinkled from one to the other of us with forced brightness. ‘I heard you up here in stitches a while ago, and I thought I’d leave you be.’

  ‘What time was he
supposed to come?’ said Martin.

  ‘Oh, well, he was very vague,’ Pamela replied, studying her shoe. ‘You know what he’s like. He probably left it too late and then got stuck in traffic.’

  ‘What about that pathetic telephone of his? No, he probably hasn’t worked out how to use it.’

  ‘Don’t start, Martin,’ said Pamela, the ‘dangerous’ edge to her voice. ‘It could be broken, for all I know. He could have forgotten to bring it with him. He’ll be here soon, anyway, I’m sure.’

  A telephone rang faintly from behind her.

  ‘Oh look, that’s probably him now. Don’t be long.’

  She disappeared back down the corridor. I was glad that I was to be included at dinner, for lunch now seemed very far away, and my walk had made me hungry.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The garden was flooded in moonlight as I made my way back to the cottage later that evening. The moon was vast, pendulous and iridescent as a lamp above the cottage roof, so that it cast a silvery path for me all the way up the lawn. In spite of this, my footing was uncertain. The reason for this was that I was somewhat drunk, Mr Madden having been over-attentive to my glass during the course of a long and not altogether joyous evening. I have a weak head for alcohol, and had probably drunk more of it in the days since my arrival at Franchise Farm than during the entire month which preceded it. In addition, the increasing atmosphere of tension around the table as the prospect of Toby’s arrival decamped from the imminent to the distinctly remote, gave the sanctuary of alcohol a temporary but inviting gleam. Pamela grew maudlin, Piers taciturn, and Martin unsettlingly knowing, casting lingering glances at me across the table, silent bulletins which were evidently designed to inform me that should I care to request them, new insights were available from their source into what I had told him earlier.

  ‘I shouldn’t think he’ll come now,’ said Pamela in the end, rising to her feet expectantly as if hoping that the very act of stating a certainty would immediately bring about its refutation.

  ‘Probably not,’ concurred Mr Madden, stubbornly lodged at the table amidst the wreckage of dinner.