The Country Life

by Rachel Cusk

  Chapter Twelve

  Outside the garden stood still, as if held in a sultry jelly of heat and thick air. I made my way along the path between the twittering hedges to the cottage, feeling within seconds the urgency of getting into the shade. The whining of a lawnmower threaded its way along the path towards me, growing louder and more guttural with my approach. By the time I reached the gate the noise was quite deafening. Entering the garden I saw a man astride what looked like a miniature tractor, driving it bucking and lurching into the dense beard of grass in front of the cottage. Over one half of the garden, stems lay felled on their sides in long executioner’s rows. The strong, familiar smell of cut grass, a seasonal memory annually forgotten, flooded up from the lawn. I stood watching the man’s progress. He was wearing a large hat which covered most of his face, but as the tensile limpet of his body clung to the thrashing machine I caught glimpses of his neck, brown and knotty as old wood. This, I concluded, was dear old Thomas, mowing the lawn true to his word.

  ‘Good afternoon!’ I cried, wading through the grass with my hand shielding my eyes from the light.

  Thomas drove roaring on through the stubborn crop, impervious, his skinny shoulders hooked over the handlebars. He was mowing in lengths, and when the machine abutted the cottage wall he turned it in a lumbering circle and began driving back towards me. I waved cheerfully, but when it became evident that he had no intention of stopping was compelled to step aside.

  ‘Good afternoon!’ I called again hopefully, as he ploughed furiously past me. I caught a glimpse of the rugged escarpment of his nose, and the blind socket of his mouth.

  His truculent back receded to the bottom of the garden, and having been twice slighted I decided to take cover in the cottage before he completed his turn. I have never had much of a touch in such situations. My parents had no gardener or cleaner, nor many visitors either, which may explain my lack of social graces; although I do not want to give the impression that I am using my parents to excuse away everything. They would be furious if they knew even a part of what I ascribe to their influence. Indeed, they have always suspected me of this tendency. ‘I suppose that’s our fault too!’ my mother would remark, if some entirely unrelated misfortune befell me. She would even, no doubt, if she were here, accuse me of blaming them for my habit of blaming them.

  I stole away from Thomas, then, looking guiltily over my shoulder lest he should glance up and acknowledge me, and went into the cottage; intending to leave the door open as a further testament to my accessibility, should the need for conversation suddenly overtake him. I had the damp ball of dishcloths in one hand and was about to attend to it when I noticed something lying on the floor in front of me. It was a single slip of paper, and from its position I judged that it had been slid beneath the door while I was out. I picked it up and saw that it was a leaflet of some sort, crudely printed, and bearing the heading, in astonished capitals: ‘IT’S MADDENING!’

  I dropped the dishcloths into the lap of the armchair and read it where I stood. Beneath the heading was printed the following message:

  Fancy a walk in the country? Tempted to stroll across the hills and dales of the ‘magnificent’ Sussex landscape? FORGET IT!! Whether you’re down from the big smoke for the day, or just an ordinary local exercising your human rights, you’ll have trouble enjoying the simple pleasures of fresh air and scenery. Why? Because a fat cat farmer is out to stop you, that’s why! Our public rights of way are being sabotaged by this fascist feline, who has seen fit to make a menace out of an area of natural beauty. Innocent ramblers in the Hilltop area, beware! This farmer has declared war on YOU!! His name? Piers Madden. His game? Protecting his property by whatever means necessary from the honest public. YOUR LIVES ARE IN DANGER!! For more information, enquire at the post office.

  At the bottom of the leaflet was inscribed the legend Property is Theft, with a kind of scroll beneath it. Thomas was now noisily advancing on his mower up the garden behind me, for all the world as if he intended to forge his way through the cottage, and I quickly shut the door, the leaflet still clutched in my hand. It took me several readings to make any sense of it at all. Of what precisely did Mr Madden stand so bitterly accused? What danger could he, mildness incarnate, possibly represent to the lives of the ‘honest public’? My unfamiliarity with the countryside and its attendant vocabulary meant that it was some time before I understood ‘public rights of way’ to mean footpaths; those being, in so far as I could deduce, ordained paths crossing private property along which anybody was permitted to walk. I liked, as I now knew, a walk; but I could not credit the practice, pleasant though it was, with the politics set out before me here, nor imagine their author to be anything other than a lunatic.

  My first thought was to take the leaflet and show it to Mr Madden at once. That he was being denounced so liberally, possibly unbeknownst to him, was bad enough; but the thought that his detractor had trespassed deeply on his property, straying far from footpaths to deliver his vitriol, was worse still. It unsettled me to think that an intruder had made it to my door without being apprehended. I wondered if Thomas had seen anything untoward, but decided not to risk another social foray in that direction.

  Just as I was about to leave the cottage with the intention of tracking down Mr Madden and reporting the incident to him, another thought struck me. What if, contrary to appearances, Mr Madden was in fact guilty of discouraging ramblers from his property? I did not suspect him of any degree of turpitude, and clearly saw the leaflet for what it was – a cheap patchwork of resentment and agitation designed to rouse the most brutal emotions in those who read it. It was, however, quite possible that Mr Madden had reasons for his hostility, if hostile he was. Perhaps he had had bad experiences with ramblers in the past, or found that they did damage to his land. If the pamphleteer was a fair example of the species, Mr Madden probably had everything to fear from it.

  The thought, in any case, that he might be fully aware of the leaflet, and perhaps had suffered from similar attacks before, discouraged me from bringing it to his attention. Were the substance, if not the tone, of the allegations true, he might quite rightly regard it as none of my business. Were it false, he could feel humiliated. Added to this possibility was the delicate subject of my supposed ‘feelings’ for Mr Madden, and the hint of irritation I caught even when I petitioned him on more trivial matters persuaded me still further against disclosure. The ideal solution, I soon realized, was for him to find out about the leaflet without knowing that the information came from me. The easiest way for this to be done, obviously, was for me to put the leaflet through the front door of the big house unseen. In case anyone did see me, I could carry out this task under the pretence of going for a walk. More convincing yet, I could in fact go for a walk; and if in the course of it I found myself at the post office in Hilltop, I could perhaps carry my investigations further.

  Having settled on my plan, I hurried to follow it through so as to be back well before six o’clock, the hour of Martin’s return. My single remaining problem was the vexing matter of my sunburn. Over the course of the day my skin had become less painful, but where my wrists and neck protruded from my shirt the tide of a violent blush remained high. I dared not look at my face in the mirror. Having no hat, and apparently intent on reconstructing the previous day’s activities to the letter, it seemed unlikely that I would avoid a repetition of its misfortunes. The thought of Thomas’s hat, capacious and floppy, was tempting; but having failed in the work of charming him, there was little hope of persuading him to lend it to me short of assaulting him in some way.

  Being practical by nature, there was only so long that I would permit myself to be paralysed by a question of vanity. The leaflet in my hand was issuing an urgent summons to action; and I challenged myself to deny that the acquisition of aptitude for the country life required some degree of physical toughness. My skin would have to adapt, as my spirit was striving to do. I became aware of a particularly sweet and expansive silence bloom
ing about me and realized that the roar of the mower had ceased. Opening the door I saw the barbered garden lying anaesthetized in the heat, with no sign either of Thomas or his machine. Seizing my moment, I bolted from the cottage, locking the door behind me and putting the key in my pocket.

  Mr Madden’s mention of a gate leading to the drive lent me more purpose than direction in beginning my journey. I had no idea where this gate might be found, having never glimpsed a diversion from the route I customarily took to the big house. Indeed, it was hard to believe, knowing this route as I now did, that it could surprise me in any way at all. I was confounded, then, by the appearance immediately to my left as I emerged from the cottage garden of what was clearly a path. Given that I would happily have sworn on my life that no such path existed, there was something not a little sinister about its manifestation. I had had this feeling once or twice before since being in the country; a feeling that, as in a dream, the world had become a flaccid structure inflated – like a balloon, or the long, flat tunnel of a sleeve down which a motive human hand snakes – by convenience and will. The thought that perhaps everything was folded in this way, unwrapping itself at the command of my footsteps, was a disturbing one.

  Nevertheless I took the path, and found it to lead easily to a small iron gate, on the other side of which lay the pebbled shore of the Maddens’ front drive. I cut stealthily across the gravelled expanse, my frame rigid with casual cunning, and made as if I was intending to stroll past the front door and on down the avenue. Just as I drew level with the door, however, I darted to the right, ascending the steps crabwise with all possible haste. Panting, I poked my finger through the heavy silver slot and peered through it, scanning the long, tenebrous tunnel for signs of life and the minatory glare of Roy. Seeing nothing, I fed the leaflet quickly through the gap and heard it fall with a whisper on the other side. Unfortunately, the lid appeared to be sprung in some manner, and despite the careful easing of my finger free, it slammed down with a loud rap as soon as I had released it. I waited, frozen, for the sound of footsteps; for I had decided in that moment that it was too dangerous to run away, given that I might not have time to find a hiding place. I was glad to feel, even in my terror, that my mental processes seemed to be accelerating somewhat. Many people would have fled panicked from the scene as if under fire, and then been run to ground in the open spaces of the front drive.

  Fortunately, nobody appeared to have heard the rap, and after a few minutes of waiting I judged that I was free to go. I set off again across the scorched drive and soon gained the shade of the avenue. Feeling that I could now relax, and knowing that I was in for a long walk, I permitted my mind to wander to other things; and was surprised when I reached the road far sooner than I had anticipated. The empty tarmac shone and glinted before me in the sun. I stood on the brink of it, only then remembering what had happened to my shoes when last I had walked on this road. My only other pair was currently on my feet. I cursed myself, hovering at the silent tarmac as if it were a gushing river. If only I had thought to change my shoes! The prospect of trudging back up the avenue to fetch the ruined pair and then down again was uninviting; indeed, I wouldn’t have time for it. The only alternative was to go back to the cottage and have my walk another day. I had already, after all, achieved my primary aim, which was the delivery of the leaflet. My desire to enquire at the post office was, however, too strong. Before long I had persuaded myself that the vandalism of my only remaining pair of shoes could be overlooked, and indeed might not happen at all, even though past experience insisted to the contrary. The aggravation of my sunburn, which weighted things still more heavily in favour of abandoning the walk, I regarded with similar insouciance. It might happen, I admitted; but then again it might not.

  In committing myself wholeheartedly to a course which was neither savoury, profitable, nor necessary – and could turn out to be downright perilous – I was aware that a certain irrationality seemed temporarily to have taken me in its grip. My experience with the gate, however, had given me a sort of curiosity, a thirst for experimentation which I could see no real reason to deny. What I desired to discover was whether the process which, a few minutes earlier, had manufactured the gate according to my need to use it could in fact be mastered and then employed in reverse. I wanted in other words to see how much my intention of avoiding misfortune in the form of tar and sun – a resolution formed, as I have said, in the very midst of a determination to tempt these misfortunes to their limit – would influence the outcome of my walk.

  The heat hammered on my shoulders as I walked along the deserted road, and within minutes I had begun to repent my heedlessness. (My little mental game had, I soon saw, merely led me by a circuitous route to the misfortunes reason had long since visited.) I stopped to look at my shoes, and saw to my disappointment several dark and shiny bruises of tar on the soles. I set off again at a faster pace, yearning for the signal houses which would denote the fringe of the village. Just as I was about to break into a run in order to seek shelter, I heard the rapid approach of a car behind me and I bridled my agony, waiting for it to pass. So quickly was the car travelling that I barely had time to stiffen my aching frame into a simulation of leisure and force my unwilling cheeks into a rictus of enjoyment when it shot by. It was a new car, cast in coruscating silver which gave off lecherous winks in the sun, and its beefy rear was raised to me in a rude salute as it passed. A jet of liquid squirted obscenely onto its back windscreen, which its lazy synthetic tail spread foaming over the glass. I was tempted to make some offensive gesture in its wake, but stopped myself with the thought that even if the car didn’t contain one of the Maddens it might be harbouring some acquaintance of theirs who would report the incident back.

  The speed with which the brute had passed me, and the knowledge that while I had inched laboriously towards my destination he had doubtlessly attained and surpassed it, redoubled my weariness. My sunburn, however, demanded to be carried with all possible haste to a shady spot, and in the end I was forced to jog feebly along, one hand cupped about my neck and the other reached crosswise over my chest to shield my cheek, until finally I glimpsed the village crouched defensively on the hillside in the glare.

  The High Street lay prostrate and almost empty and I flitted unseen from shady doorway to lamp-post towards the post office. There was something disquieting in the silence of the place coupled with the emergency of the heat, as if minutes earlier a siren had sounded ordering evacuation. An old man sat alone at a table outside the pub, one bony knee extended and his hand expansively propped on his walking stick as if he were relating a story to an invisible audience, a cap flat as a coin on his head.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said to him as I passed.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he said, to my surprise, touching his cap. His riddled, crepuscular eyes looked straight ahead, blind with age, abandoned, like the discarded skins of snakes.

  The post office was housed behind a squat terraced front, one of a long row of dwarfish red-brick dwellings, each with a single bay window to the street which bulged out like a pot belly or an insect’s glassy eye. This window was hung with petitions and advertisements, some typed and some merely scrawled on various cards and slips of paper. I scanned them briefly out there on the searing, narrow pavement, and was able to determine that almost without exception the announcements took one of two forms: that of services required, and that of services rendered. It surprised me to be able to place myself so firmly in the second category, having for so long occupied the first; but I adapted to the change quickly enough. Habits are subtle scales, trained to measure whatever one might choose to put on them; and before long I was cheerfully engrossed in what the ladies of Hilltop were offering for a competent girl such as myself, and even wondering whether a covert few hours a week spent in the employ of Mrs Lascelles or Mrs Gower-Ward was entirely out of the question. My eye was soon, however, caught by a more familiar typescript; and looking up I saw that the same leaflet which had been put beneath my d
oor was boldly occupying a central position towards the top of the display. I propelled myself from the window and through the door, which triggered the shrilling of a little bell when I opened it.

  I found the post office – or ‘post office’ – to be an even more perplexing place than the ‘shop’ up the road. My first impression was that the pale room whose sepulchral coolness lapped at my burning arms like water contained nothing at all. Its atmosphere was pregnant with lack, and as I stood there I found myself overwhelmed by feelings of need; for food, although there was no reason at all for me to be hungry, having lunched amply with the Maddens; and more pressingly for something to drink. So furious was my thirst that I could look at nothing around me – the empty shelves lining one wall, the yellow Formica countertop leaning against the other, the glass window at the end behind which I could see an old-fashioned till with keys raised high like begging paws – with anything but an eye for its capacity to quench it. Perceiving that I was stranded in a desert of opportunity, my only thought was either to seek out human agency or leave immediately, my greater purpose utterly forgotten. My tongue was as dry as a sock stuffed into my mouth. I scanned the scene once more; and was surprised this time to notice the contours of a human belly tightly encased in a plaid shirt profiled behind the glass screen.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I cried, my voice a dramatic croak.