by Rachel Cusk
“Do you want to get out?” Liz Connelly was enquiring of her son, who was writhing and making noises of protest in the pushchair. “Do you want to get out or don’t you?”
“What an enormous kitchen!” cried Sally Gibson, following Christine and Dinky in.
In that moment Amanda knew that her kitchen was too large. She would not have thought such a thing was possible, but entering it now she knew that it was true. They had knocked through until they had created not space but emptiness. They had gone too far: nobody had told them to stop.
The three women stood looking around them, apparently bewildered. All of them looked upwards, as people in churches look upwards, to ascertain the height of human folly.
“There must have been four or five rooms here!” exclaimed Sally. She appeared to find something concerning in the disappearance of these rooms.
“Jesus!” said Liz heavily, coming in behind Amanda. “You could fit a jumbo jet in here. Not that I can see why you’d want to do that,” she added, apparently for the sake of politeness.
“Are you two fantastic cooks?” Dinky asked, smiling at this delightful explanation to the conundrum.
Amanda realised Dinky was referring to herself and James. She tried to imagine the life this suggestion invoked. It appeared that they could have devoted themselves to the production of extravagant meals, instead of allowing their urge for knocking through to run away with them.
“It’s a nice colour,” Sally conceded.
“You can’t go wrong with neutrals, really, can you?” said Christine.
Amanda expected the women to laugh again, but it seemed Christine was speaking in earnest. Of the four of them Christine was the only one she could correctly call a friend. She had felt before the surprising milk-white disclosure of her benevolence, all the more unexpected and believable for the fact that Christine was often what Susannah would have called ironic.
The others were wandering around the room as if it were a shop. They had the unself-conscious look of people engaged in private, practical ruminations. Sally was examining the grain of the kitchen table—“Is this veneer?” she asked—and Dinky stood at the windows looking out at the garden with a dreamy smile on her face. Liz Connelly stood beside the mantelpiece and one by one took down the framed photographs of the children. She held each one in her hand and looked at it, back and front, as though comparing these children to the children she had at home. “Is this your husband?” she asked, holding up a photograph of James.
Amanda went into the sitting room to check on Eddie. Liz Connelly’s son Owen had joined him on the sofa in front of the television.
“Are you two all right?” she asked.
Their somnolescence confirmed by silence, she returned to the kitchen and was strangely surprised to see the four women there, sitting in the vastness around the table. There they were in their jackets and scarves and jewellery, their fragrant silks (Dinky) and their severe blacks (Liz). They had come or she had captured them, she wasn’t sure which. They inhabited her kitchen like exotic creatures habituating themselves to a new zoo.
“I just can’t get over it,” Sally was saying, her head in her hands. “I can’t believe it. I really can’t.”
“We’re talking about Betsy Miller,” Christine informed her in a discreet voice.
“All last night I lay there listening to the rain, thinking, Where is she? What’s happening to her now? When I think of Rosie at four—she was helpless! She was just completely helpless.”
She looked around at them in appeal. Christine was nodding her head sympathetically.
“And now they’re saying she isn’t lost at all. They’re saying someone actually took her—abducted her, whatever you call it.”
Sally shook her head, as though the person responsible for these reports was vindictively bent on destroying her optimistic view of things.
“She’s probably dead,” Liz Connelly interposed grimly.
“Don’t!” Sally shrieked.
Liz Connelly shrugged.
“It’s not like you know her,” she said.
Sally looked at her with her pert face.
“You know, Liz,” she said, “I think that’s a really heartless thing to say.”
“None of us know her, Liz,” Christine added. “That doesn’t stop us feeling for her. That doesn’t stop us thinking, Christ, what if it was Rosie, or Danny, or, or”—she glanced at Amanda, and added, as though not wishing her to feel left out—“or Eddie.”
“That little girl,” Sally said in a distant voice. “That poor little girl.”
Amanda removed the tray of pastries from the oven with a pair of padded gloves and placed it in the middle of the table.
“What about the two million people who die each year from malnutrition?” Liz said.
Christine nodded thoughtfully. Sally looked stricken: not even two million people could distract her from the plight of Betsy Miller—they may even have made it worse.
“I take your point, Liz,” Christine said. “What you’re saying is that people are suffering all over the world. We’re all fixated on this one girl when something worse might be happening somewhere else. It’s just that we don’t know about it.”
Liz looked doubtful.
Christine continued, “But the thing is, you can’t live your life feeling guilty. Look at us! We’re all so lucky—wouldn’t it be a waste if we spoiled it by worrying all the time about people who are less lucky than us? The fact is, it isn’t our fault that people are dying of starvation.”
“Talking of starvation—” Dinky gave an impish smile and reached out her hand for a pastry.
“I mean, what’s your explanation for it?” said Christine. “I’m asking Liz why she thinks some people lead such rich and fulfilling lives while there are all these other people who’ve apparently got nothing. Don’t you think there’s something to the idea that they might just have brought it on themselves? I’m not being funny here.” Christine folded her arms and looked challengingly around the table. “We’ve all worked hard for what we’ve got, right? None of us got given it on a plate, did we? I mean, look at Liz—she doesn’t get an easy ride, she’s a single parent with two growing, energetic boys.”
“We all know what boys are like,” Dinky said, with her small mouth full.
“She manages all by herself, with no help from anyone. And what’s she doing? She’s worrying about people on the other side of the world dying of starvation!”
Christine brought her hand conclusively down on the table and shook her head in despair.
“I’m sick of being made to feel guilty all the time,” Sally agreed. “As if we don’t all feel guilty enough already. I mean, I know that if I eat one of those I’ll feel guilty all day.”
The women laughed. Sally rolled her eyes ruefully.
“I will,” she insisted. “I don’t know how you do it, Dinky. You’re like a stick.”
Dinky shrugged with twinkling eyes, as though she didn’t know how she did it either.
“I want to hear what Liz has to say,” said Christine, calling order. “Liz, why are you worrying about people in African villages? Why can’t they sort out their own bloody problems?”
There was a silence. Everyone looked at Liz, who was studying the table-top with a stubby white finger. Amanda went around behind them refilling their coffee cups, each of which bore the pink imprint of a lip around its rim, so that they seemed to Amanda to be grinning at her. The closing minutes of her conversation with Susannah were pressing against her consciousness. They leaned against her concentration as though it were a door they were trying to force. Susannah had said a terrible thing to her in those minutes. It was something Gran had said last night, apparently. She’d woken up and asked where Amanda was, and when Susannah had said she was at home, Gran said, Amanda’s cold. She’s always been cold. She’s got no love in her heart.
I shouldn’t have told you that, should I? Susannah had said.
“What I think,” Liz sa
id, “is that God has a plan for all of us.” She looked at them with her small brown eyes.
“And you’re saying,” interposed Christine, “that this is His plan for you—to be an anxious person, is that what you’re saying?”
Liz wore an expression of hesitant defiance.
“He’s told me to accept myself the way I am, yes.”
“He’s told you?”
Christine took an urgent draught from her coffee cup.
“When did all this happen?” said Sally, looking around enquiringly.
“What about the two million dying of starvation?” Christine said. “Where have they got to? I’m wondering where they fit in with the concept of self-acceptance. I’m starting to get a bit worried about them.”
“God has a plan for them too.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m not part of that plan. That plan sounds distinctly”—she drank deep again of her coffee cup—“crap.”
“I didn’t know you believed,” said Dinky, thrilled.
Liz reddened. “It’s quite a new relationship,” she said.
“When did it—ah—start?” Sally asked.
Liz reddened further. “Six weeks ago.”
“And it just—what—started?”
Liz examined her jacket buttons. Then she leaned into the table, as though precipitating herself forwards from a height.
“I’d been asking,” she said. “But it was the wrong question. I was asking why I had so many problems. All the time I was like why, why, why? Why me? Why did Ian leave me and the boys? Why is Alfie being kept back a year at school? Why has Mum got Parkinson’s?”
“I don’t think anyone could blame you for that,” Christine observed. “We’d all ask ourselves those sorts of questions.”
“Why Betsy Miller?” Sally proposed.
“Then I had my turning away. That’s sort of the beginning of the relationship, apparently. I gave up on all of it. I thought, I don’t care any more. I turned my back on God. And that’s when He finally got in touch with me.”
“That’s exactly what they say you should do with men,” said Dinky professorially. “Apparently it works every time.”
“How do you mean, He got in touch with you?” Christine said sceptically. “What exactly do you mean?”
“I woke up in the middle of the night,” Liz said, “and He was there.”
“In your room?” said Sally.
“In my heart.” Liz clasped her hands over her capacious chest. “And He said, I’ve got a plan for you. It’s a wonderful plan, and it’s yours. Not anyone else’s—yours.”
Liz relayed God’s remarks in a gruff voice. Her cheeks were blazing.
“And He said this in your heart?” Christine turned it over. “That must have been exciting,” she stated flatly. “I’m really pleased for you, Liz,” she added presently. “I wish I could believe in God, but I can’t. I just don’t believe it.”
Liz sat back in her chair. “That’s His plan for you,” she said, nodding. “For the time being.”
“I’m not trying to be controversial here,” Christine said, “but what’s it all about? You do a fantastic job and everything, Liz, but let’s face it, your life’s not easy, is it? You’ve got two kids, no husband, no money, a parent who’s a fulltime invalid—why don’t you tell God to stuff His plan? Why don’t you put on some make-up, buy yourself some new clothes, and go out and have some fun for a change?”
Liz looked at her abjectly.
“Tell me if I’m going over the top here,” Christine said.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” said Sally sympathetically.
“I’ll take the boys,” Christine persisted. “You don’t need to get a babysitter, I’ll have them. It’s no trouble to me at all. Just go out and have some fun.”
“There are some advantages to being single,” said Dinky.
“Don’t we all know it,” Sally said.
Liz shook her head and said, “That’s just not the way I am.”
“God!” expostulated Christine. “Why do we all worry so much? Here we are, drinking coffee, free to talk about fashion, or where we want to go on holiday, or whatever we like, and what do we do?” She put a hand to her forehead. “We spend our time debating the existence of God! It’s not what you’d think, is it? I say to Joe, Look, it can get really heavy on a coffee morning, you don’t believe me, but it can.”
“Sam thinks we all sit around complaining about our husbands,” said Sally, as though wishing to suggest the topic for consideration.
“What’s your husband like, Amanda?” Dinky enquired.
“James is—” Christine started, then stopped herself, smiling. “No. Sorry, Amanda—you tell.”
Amanda wondered what Christine had been about to say. James is the world’s most boring man? Susannah had said this once, on the telephone, when she thought Amanda couldn’t hear her.
“Well—he’s very nice,” she said.
“James,” Christine resumed, now that his wife’s contribution was out of the way, “is like one of those characters you always get in films: the very, very last person you’d suspect of having committed the crime. No matter how much you try and think of who you least suspect of doing it, he’s the one you never think of.”
This seemed to be more or less what Susannah had said.
“He sounds really fascinating!” said Dinky.
Amanda collected the stained coffee cups on a tray and took them to the sink. She turned on the taps and put on her yellow rubber gloves, and the sight of them reminded her of how death had entered her kitchen, how it had come in from the rainy day through the large windows.
Suddenly Eddie was standing beside her.
“Mummy!”
He yanked twice at her skirt.
“Mummy!”
“What is it, Eddie?”
“Mummy, that boy is drawing on the sofa. He got out my felt-tips and he’s drawing on the sofa with them. I told him not to,” he called after her, as she strode rapidly out of the room.
A big red patch like a stain of blood lay indelibly on the cream-coloured flank of the sofa. Amanda lifted the child bodily from amidst the cushions and tore the pens from his hand.
“How dare you?” she said in a savage whisper in his ear.
Pens were scattered all over the carpet. There were other, different-coloured stains there, where their inky, suppurating tips touched the beige fibres and bled into them.
“I could kill you!” she whispered. “I could kill you!”
She threw him back down on the cushions. His body felt unfamiliar—his whole being recoiled from her in its half-formed confidence. He was like a seedling she could have torn up, his established needs trailing from him like roots, and dashed to the ground. He did not cry, as Eddie would have done: he watched her from amidst the cushions with his round blue eyes. She picked up the pens and replaced their lids one by one with shaking fingers.
“Amanda!” someone called from the hall. “Amanda, we’re—oh God, did Eddie do that?”
Christine Lanham stood over Amanda where she was crouched on the carpet. Amanda could see her shoes, which she had not removed at the door. A rind of mud ran along one of the soles. What did it matter now?
“Was it Owen?” Christine said in a low voice, when Amanda did not reply.
Amanda nodded.
“Blimey,” said Liz loudly, appearing in the doorway. “It’ll take more than a bit of Vanish to get that out.”
“You’d better start praying,” Christine said to her.
Liz seemed confused by this remark.
“I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go,” said Christine. “I’ve got to pick up Ella from nursery. Thanks for this morning. It was great! So nice to catch up. Bloody Owen,” she added under her breath, once they were out in the hall. “It’s just not on, is it?”
Sally and Dinky stood there smiling in their coats.
“Bye!” they cried.
The door opened and shut, and the three of them we
re gone into the rain. Amanda turned around and saw Liz Connelly, the black-clad hulk of her, still in the sitting room.
“Do you mind if I stay here for a bit?” she said ashamedly.
In an instant she saw Liz Connelly’s life, saw it entire: her small flat, the unrelieved expanses of her days, the prospect of time going on and on, the burden of it to be carried on and on and on, with no hope of it ever being even for a moment lifted from her. She wanted it to be lifted from her: she was asking, like a beggar.
For the next hour Liz Connelly did not have a better place to be than Amanda Clapp’s sitting room.
“Not really,” Amanda said. “As long as you don’t mind me getting on with things.”
“I’ll just sit here with Owen and watch the telly,” Liz said. She parked herself on the sofa, as far from the stain as she could comfortably get. “It’s a shame about your sofa,” she said, fingering the material. “Children and white sofas—they don’t really get on, do they?”
Amanda watched her.
“Will he get into trouble for that?” Liz said.
She meant Eddie.
“No,” Amanda said levelly.
Liz lifted her eyebrows. “I suppose it was you who put the sofa there in the first place,” she said meditatively. “And the pens. They’re not to know, are they?”
This would not have been Amanda’s interpretation of things, had Eddie actually been responsible for the disaster. She didn’t know what she’d have done to him. The possibilities seemed fathomless. Yet she felt, beneath Liz Connelly’s assumption of her benevolence, strangely transfigured: a sort of ghost passed through her that was both herself and not herself. It was like a momentary projection into the void of her heart, of a detailed image whose precious information she sought to store even as it faded again into nothingness.
Amanda realised that she did not have to tell Liz that it was Owen who had ruined her white sofa.
“That doesn’t always stop you, though,” Liz said. She turned to look at the screen so that Amanda was facing the indeterminate brown back of her head. “It doesn’t always stop you.”
