by Rachel Cusk
‘In fact,’ said Adam, to me, ‘you’ll find Caris hasn’t changed at all.’
‘Good,’ I said.
‘She’s still wondering what she wants to be when she grows up. Actually, I haven’t seen her since last year,’ he added bitterly. ‘I haven’t even spoken to her.’
‘Doesn’t she keep in touch?’
He laughed. ‘By horoscope. By looking into her crystal ball.’
‘What’s she doing these days?’
‘She lives in a commune. They call it an “artists’ co-operative”. Women only, of course. They’ve freed themselves from the male oppressor. Though to look at some of them I’d say the feeling was mutual.’
‘In London?’
‘She went off in a fit of pique,’ he said, with his mouth full, ‘about four years ago.’
‘There was the most terrible argument,’ added Vivian. ‘She got very angry with everybody, I can’t remember what about. There’s always something, isn’t there? The problem is that people don’t say anything at the time. They get angry with you later, after you’ve forgotten whatever it is you’re supposed to have done.’
‘She said we were a disease,’ said Adam.
‘A what?’
‘A disease.’
‘The thing is, everybody does the best they can do at the time, don’t they?’ said Vivian. ‘It’s no good saying it wasn’t good enough because it was the best you could do at the time.’
I noticed that Vivian was wearing a pair of sunglasses. She had taken them out of her pocket and put them on, in spite of the fact that it was almost dark in the kitchen. The large brown plastic lenses gave her big, bug-like eyes.
‘Did she say when she was coming back?’ said Adam.
‘She talked about the myth. She said she was coming to inspect the myth.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said that of course she could come and inspect it if that was what she wanted,’ said Vivian gamely, from behind her glasses. ‘Only she mustn’t expect to find it. It’s the expectations that are the problem, do you see?’
Just then the dogs stopped scratching at the door and ran away down the passage. A car door slammed in the distance. Presently their muffled barks could be heard from outside. I laid my knife and fork side by side on my plate. I had managed to eat nearly everything and a feeling of extreme satiation oppressed me. The burnished wood of the table seemed to rise up before my eyes and slowly undulate. I saw little roads and rivers in the grain, and stripes, as though on the pelt of an animal.
‘Who’s that?’ said Adam.
‘I should think it’s Jilly,’ said Vivian darkly, ‘wanting something.’
‘Mum?’ a woman’s voice called from out in the passage. The kitchen door opened. ‘Mum? What’s wrong with the dogs?’
I wasn’t sure that I would recognise Jilly but I did; though my first impression of her was that she was nothing like the poor rash-covered creature I remembered on the lawn at Caris’s party. The impression she gave now was one of striking beauty which, curiously, solidified almost immediately into the certainty that she was not beautiful; at which point the awkward girl became visible once more. She was very tall and narrow, with a long neck and a small, lofty head, like a giraffe. She wore her hair, whose blonde streaks were being overridden by vigorous patches of brown, in an untidy ponytail and her clothes were unkempt too. The hem of her coat hung down and there were white stains on the jersey beneath it.
‘It’s dark in here,’ she said, looking at us. She switched on the lights, which made it seem darker. ‘There. Hello,’ she said straight away, to me. ‘I remember you. You were Adam’s friend from university.’ She spoke in a candid, child-like way that I found faintly disturbing. ‘You didn’t have a beard then, though.’
‘I remember you too. You said you were going to have horses when you grew up.’
‘Doesn’t everybody think that?’ said Jilly, with a costive expression. ‘What’s wrong with the dogs?’ she continued. ‘They went mad at me out on the drive.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with them,’ said Vivian, looking innocently at her. ‘They probably didn’t recognise your car.’
‘Well, they see it often enough. They must know that Paul’s away. Animals are clever like that.’
‘There’s nothing for lunch, you know,’ said Vivian.
Jilly looked beaky and offended.
‘I didn’t come to get anything,’ she said. ‘I just came to borrow Paul’s big ladder. I need to put a tarpaulin over the barn.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Anyway, it’s only ten o’clock. I couldn’t possibly eat anything yet.’
‘Where’s Nigel?’ said Vivian.
‘He’s gone over to Clatworthy. To see his mother.’
‘Well, he won’t get much out of her!’
‘It’s worth a try,’ said Jilly.
‘Listen to you!’
Jilly sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands.
‘The roof on the barn’s about to fall in,’ she said in a pinched little voice. ‘What are we supposed to do, just let it go? We haven’t a penny to spend on it. It’s just been one thing after another.’
‘It’s hard to sympathise,’ said Vivian morbidly, ‘when you have to have your kitchen cupboards made by hand and brought from London.’
‘Oh, when will you stop talking about that?’ cried Jilly. ‘I’ve told you, it was Nigel’s cousin who made them! We got them for a fraction of the price!’
‘And the tiles from Italy, and the leather chairs, and that crockery you’re not even allowed to wash –’
‘And why shouldn’t we have them, when she’s never done a day’s work in her life! That great big house,’ sighed Jilly. ‘She’s hardly ever there, you know. She stays in London – she’s got another six empty bedrooms there!’
‘I’m not surprised she stays away,’ said Vivian. ‘I always thought that house was unhappy. And it faces due north, you know. It can’t get any light at all. I never understood why she went to such lengths to get it.’
‘It’s the family seat,’ said Jilly indignantly. ‘Her father built that house.’
‘Wasn’t her father mad?’ said Adam.
‘I remember he bred llamas,’ said Vivian. ‘They always looked very odd, standing there in the rain. He and his wife used to go about in the most extraordinary clothes.’
‘What sort of clothes?’ said Adam.
‘I remember he used to wear a sort of chain mail outfit. And she wore a crown and these great medieval dresses with long sleeves. Everyone in the house did the same. The house was like a castle, a funny little castle there in the valley. They had a lot of servants and people just sort of hanging about and all of them had to wear these costumes too. I think they got a lot of people from London,’ said Vivian, as though that explained everything.
‘Why do you want to talk about all that?’ said Jilly crossly. ‘Nigel doesn’t like people knowing. Anyway, he says it’s all exaggerated. They probably had one fancy dress party.’
‘She drowned in the river at the bottom of the garden,’ said Vivian in a distant voice. ‘He sold the house and no one heard anything from him again. They were using it as a nursing home. It had lifts on all the stairs.’
‘You make it sound awful!’ said Jilly. ‘It’s not awful,’ she added, to me.
‘Then one day Nigel’s mother came and bought it. It turned out that her father had finally died and when she got his money the first thing she did was come back and buy that dreadful house. It’s rather sad, don’t you think?’ said Vivian forlornly. ‘Don’t you think it’s sad?’
‘She probably paid five times what her father sold it for,’ said Adam.
‘She’s got thousands in the bank,’ said Jilly, ‘and she won’t use a first-class stamp. Can you believe it? She won’t pay the money for a first-class stamp.’
‘When you think of the people who must have died there!’ said Vivian, distressed.
‘It would be a d
rop in the ocean to her,’ said Jilly. ‘What we need for the roof. It’s Nigel’s money, anyway. It’s his inheritance.’
Adam said: ‘She might live till she’s a hundred.’
‘That’d be just like her,’ said Jilly. ‘Can’t you do something about those dogs?’ she added, turning around in her chair to address her mother. The dogs had started scratching at the door again. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Adam. ‘They’ve been like this since dad went.’
‘I can’t imagine Paul in hospital. I can’t even imagine him being ill,’ Jilly said wonderingly.
‘You should go in. He’s desperate for visitors.’
‘I don’t think I could,’ said she, shaking her head. ‘I don’t actually think I could. I’d find it too upsetting, seeing him like that.’
‘He’s bored stiff lying there on his own. He isn’t actually that ill, you know – he’s just waiting for the operation. He looks completely normal. I think they said they were doing it this afternoon.’
‘I can’t imagine what they make of him, the nurses and doctors!’ cried Jilly. ‘Do they all think he’s disgustingly rude? You know,’ she said, to me, ‘all my friends were absolutely terrified of Paul. You’d be sitting there dreading the moment when he singled you out and yet wanting him to, because you felt so invisible if he didn’t. Do you remember the time he threatened to kill Nell because Alice Beasley said she was allergic to dogs?’ She laughed. ‘He even got the gun out. Alice went completely white. I don’t think she ever came back here again!’
‘It isn’t as though he’s actually going to die,’ said Vivian in a strange voice.
‘It’s a routine operation,’ Adam agreed. ‘There’s nothing unusual about it at all.’
‘But sometimes,’ Vivian persisted, ‘people are in the operating theatre having the silliest things done, like plastic surgery, and they just – die.’
There was a pause. Vivian was looking slightly wildly at us through her long black fringe.
‘Why don’t you come in with me later?’ Adam said to her. ‘Then you can see for yourself. There’s no point sitting at home worrying about it.’
‘I don’t like hospitals,’ said Vivian, to me. ‘I always think I’m not going to get out of them.’
‘What’s wrong with you, mummy?’ said Jilly crossly. ‘You’re being silly.’
‘Look, why don’t we go together?’ said Adam again. ‘We can go together in my car.’
‘Have you ever noticed,’ said Vivian, to me, ‘that when you don’t do what people want you to do they start treating you like an imbecile?’
‘I’m only trying to help,’ said Adam imperturbably. He stood up from the table. ‘Let me know if you change your mind. We should be getting back.’
‘I’m going too,’ Jilly said. ‘I’m expected at the Wattses. I’m helping Sarah move house.’
‘Do they pay you?’ said Vivian sharply.
Jilly laughed. ‘Of course not!’
‘It’s just that I wanted to know if she paid you.’
‘Why would she pay me?’ Jilly put her coat on. As well as the loose hem, it had several buttons missing and a tear in the arm. ‘She’s a friend!’
‘Why can’t she move house herself – why does she need you to do it for her?’
‘Friends help each other,’ said Jilly, shrugging, as though she regretted this maxim but couldn’t alter its truthfulness.
‘I don’t suppose she’s anywhere to be seen when you need help. I don’t suppose she’s moving house for you – you probably can’t see her for dust!’
Vivian opened a drawer and removed a chequebook, with which she sat down at the table. She proceeded to write with a shaking hand.
‘At least if she paid you the relationship would be clear.’
‘All you think about is money!’ cried Jilly, even as her mother carefully tore out a cheque and handed it to her. She looked at it and put it in her pocket. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Nigel and I are so grateful for this.’
She bent down and kissed her on the cheek with pursed lips. Vivian stayed sitting at the kitchen table. The rest of us left the house together. When we went out into the passage the dogs threw themselves against our legs. Startled, I half-stumbled over their writhing bodies. The air was full of grey, rank-smelling fur. Outside in the light Jilly gave us a fast smile.
‘It works every time,’ she said, indicating her ragged coat. She gave a little laugh and strode off across the courtyard. ‘See you!’ she called over her shoulder.
The dogs came part of the way with us across the yard. Then they turned together and ran back towards the house.
*
We crossed the sloping courtyard, where clumps of grass came through hillocks in the old cobblestones and numerous grey stone buildings were subsiding, showing their black, vacant interiors through the jagged gaps of missing planks and panes. Sheets of sunlight fell brilliantly on the uneven roofs and shattered. At the front the house was imposing but behind, where no one could see, it lapsed into a succession of flaws and pragmatisms. The side and back were harled and painted white and stained with mud and water. An assortment of doors and windows cluttered the rear wall. Puddles collected in the concavities of the courtyard floor.
We passed through a narrow stone archway out of the courtyard and down the steps to the track. The twin ruts meandered away across the hill. The cold blue vista of the sea stood in the distance. Earlier, at dawn, it had been the colour of mud. Now the light was very clear. The sea was like a staring pair of blue eyes. The hill stood out as though electrified, each tiny spear of grass differentiated from the next, the branches of the trees fretful and naked. I could see the crenellated mud around distant gates and the boundary of the Hanburys’ land as though it had been cut from a pattern, with the two pyramidal hills lying mysteriously at its centre. All around it the brown fences cast little heavy blocks of shadow. It looked miniature, like a scale model. The grey road looped up and over the hill and down the other side. Far below, shiny cars moved noiselessly around the streets of Doniford. Beyond that, towards the harbour, the old town met the sea with a certain ramshackle grandeur. Some of the houses there had been painted bright colours. Earlier, in the rain, the effect was slightly demented, but in the sun it had a cheering radiance. Beyond the town, along the coast, I could see the pale brown frill of sand that edged the great folds of land as they knelt down into the sea.
‘You can see our house,’ said Adam.
He pointed to the right, where the tiny grid of streets fanned out into a big red delta of new housing that had spread east from the compact centre of the town like something slowly being disgorged. I followed the direction of his finger through the ranks of little boxes, each neatly summed up on a square of green. From a distance it looked like a circuit board. I couldn’t distinguish Adam’s house from the others, though I wanted to: I had left Hamish there with Adam’s wife Lisa and their baby. I hadn’t intended to do this. My plans for Hamish had been vaguely incorporeal: I had imagined him following me around, unbodied, free of want, but as soon as we arrived Lisa had placed him implacably under her own jurisdiction, like an empire appropriating a small, suitable colony. It interested me to see how eagerly Hamish surrendered himself to her highly regulated household, giving the unmistakable impression that his was a life criminally devoid of norms.
‘I didn’t know you could see it from up here when I bought it,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t really like the idea. I imagine dad standing here, looking down.’ He paused. ‘It’s very convenient, though. I’m at work in less than five minutes. Actually, sometimes I wish it took a bit longer. Sometimes I’d like a bit more – scale. But it isn’t for ever. That’s what Lisa always says. We’ve given ourselves five years.’
‘For what?’ I said.
‘For this. This phase. Then we’re going to look at it all again. See where we are.’
The wind lifted our coats and tugged them from side to side. It was
cold and exposed on the hill. Adam’s nose was red and his eyes were watering. He breathed heavily next to me, as though with exertions that exceeded those of the present moment. The new red flank of the town maintained its unwavering hold on his attention. He looked at it with ambivalent fascination, as though he had built it himself. The fierce, staring blue of the sea reminded me of Rebecca’s eyes.
‘You make it sound like a military campaign,’ I said.
‘It is, in a way,’ Adam replied, plunging his hands in his pockets.
He didn’t seem offended by my remark but he didn’t treat it as a joke either. His humourlessness caused me to feel a mild sensation of alarm, as though I had mislaid something, as though I had reached out for it, certain it was there, and found it wasn’t. Adam looked at his watch.
‘We’d better get back,’ he said. ‘Beverly times our breaks, you know.’
We set off again along the muddy track that led to the barns. Even from a distance you could hear the sound the sheep made in their enclosure, where they were penned up in a moving, baying mass behind metal railings. The disharmonious sound of their plaintive voices, lifted constantly in ululation, was interspersed with the percussive noise of the loose metal bars, which rattled frantically as the body of animals pushed them to and fro. The barns were freezing cold, and full of a sort of steam or vapour that rose off the sheep without warming the air. It was a harsh atmosphere, though not an unpleasant one: the promise of the lambs gave it a rich kind of urgency, a temporary beauty of illumination, as though a single ray of light were trained on this multitudinous place alone on the desolate hillside. Beverly was overseeing the lambing for the whole week. She lived on a nearby farm, but spent the nights in an old camper van she’d driven over and parked in the yard outside the barns. All night she woke every two hours to feed the ill or orphaned lambs. She performed this maternal service with better grace than Rebecca, who when Hamish was a baby used to tut and sigh and emit dramatic groans into the darkness when he cried next door. I did not like to think of those nights: I remembered them as the place in which Rebecca’s unhappiness was conceived and made manifest, where it grew and gathered strength and was inadvertently nourished into autonomy. Sometimes, in those days, I felt angry with Hamish for his cries, though I never believed he was the real cause of Rebecca’s distress; it was, rather, that he had exposed it, and as a consequence exposed me too, finding out my nascent reliability where it lay buried there in the dark.