The Country Life

by Rachel Cusk

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Booze,’ said Martin, to my surprise.

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Where would I get that from?’

  ‘How should I know? Wherever other people get it from. A shop. I was only asking.’

  ‘I don’t have the money for that sort of thing,’ said I. By and large I had felt a sense of relief at my own poverty since being in the country, but just then, for the first time, the notion of tiring of it insinuated itself among my thoughts. Like someone on whom the grip of religious fervour momentarily loosens, I caught a glimpse of a route by which one day I might wander out of my conviction; a route which could lead me eventually to regret everything I now felt so keenly.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Martin. ‘Why don’t you go back into the house and get a bottle, and then we can go and sit in the garden.’

  ‘What do you mean, get?’ He had made his suggestion as if he were striking a bargain with me; and I wondered if he had guessed at the tawdry aim on which our cottage expedition was founded. ‘Are you suggesting that I steal a bottle from your parents?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be stealing.’ said Martin obstinately. ‘It’s just getting, like I said.’ He put his head back and looked up at me craftily. ‘No booze, no cottage garden.’

  At that I was sure that he knew of my deceit. In the heat of blackmail I completely forgot that my gracious reception of Toby could have easily been forgone. I was conscious in that moment only of my own guilt, a feeling which invariably looms large in the mind, and which thus appeared to have cornered me in a position from which the only escape was an extreme, if criminal, act of penitence.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But only if you’re sure your parents won’t mind.’

  ‘Oh, they won’t,’ said Martin lightly. ‘Just make sure they don’t catch you.’

  ‘Where should I go?’

  ‘There’s a cupboard in the kitchen. There’s usually some stuff in there. It’s right by the door.’

  I turned on my heel and walked quickly back down the path with a feeling of obstruction in my throat. My mind was a blank of panic and as I opened the back door and entered the quiet house everything seemed to list before my eyes. I trod noiselessly up the corridor and opened the kitchen door. The room was empty; and knowing that I had to act quickly, I went directly to the first cupboard. It was the same cupboard in which I had found the pills, and opening it for the second time I realized that if anyone had apprehended me at that moment, I could have given the excuse for my intrusion that I had come to take another. Sure enough, on one of the lower shelves I saw a rank of bottles; and grabbing the nearest, I shut the cupboard door and fled back down the corridor. Once outside on the dusky path I bent over and gasped several times. My heart was thrashing in my chest. I realized that I had not taken a single breath during the entire operation. My immediate feeling of relief was soon superseded by an overwhelming sense of triumph. I could scarcely believe my own daring; and as I skipped back up the path to where Martin sat waiting in his chair, I found myself starting to laugh.

  ‘Da-da!’ I said, waving the bottle gleefully before him.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he said. ‘I was only joking.’

  ‘No, you weren’t!’ I said, horrified at his cruelty.

  ‘Yes, I was. Why don’t you go and put it back?’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Never mind.’ He stretched out a hand for the bottle. ‘It’s done now. What did you get?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I miserably replied, giving it to him. ‘I didn’t look.’

  ‘Gin,’ he said, examining it. ‘Didn’t you get any tonic?’

  ‘That was really mean of you.’ I turned his chair around on the gravel and began pushing him up the path towards the cottage. ‘I would never have done something like that if you hadn’t asked me.’

  ‘Yes, you would,’ said Martin. ‘If it hadn’t been in your nature, nothing would have made you do it. As it was you were off as soon as I’d mentioned it. Was it exciting, Stel-la?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I admitted, my exhilaration punctured. ‘It seemed so at the time. I can’t believe I did it now.’

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ Martin replied.

  We reached the garden and Martin leaned forward to open the gate, clutching the bottle against his lap. I propelled him up the path and then onto the grass, depositing him beside the apple tree.

  ‘I’ll go and get some glasses,’ I said sullenly, walking off.

  ‘Don’t be angry with me, Stel-la!’ called out Martin over his shoulder.

  Inside, the cottage was cool with desertion. A smell of damp and neglect hung in the air. I went to the kitchen and found two smudged glasses in one of the cupboards. As I was about to carry them outside, it struck me that I had not looked in a mirror for some time, and that my appearance might require some attention in view of the impression of unstudied charm I hoped to give were Toby to ‘wander over’, as he had put it. Once I had thought of this aspect of things, it was hard to limit the exertions I was prepared to apply to it; my only constraint being that it was essential that no effort should appear to have been made. I put down the glasses and ran up the stairs to my room, aware that Martin was waiting for me outside; and it was probably the precipitateness his presence forced on my cosmetic interlude that caused me to seize from my suitcase – without the calm consideration that was their due – the cut-off trousers. Frantically I tore off my skirt and put them on, rushing to the mirror with my comb. My reflection was more or less what it had been the last time I had worn them; but what I forgot, as I hurriedly took this pleasing image away with me down the stairs and out into the garden, was that my delight on that previous occasion had been private. I had little idea of what others might think of this display of flesh. Its effect on Toby was uncertain; and on anyone else, unwanted.

  ‘Sorry I took so long,’ I said to Martin as I came out of the cottage door and approached him across the grass. ‘I was a bit hot, so I got changed.’

  I was talking, I knew, to conceal my embarrassment; for Martin’s eyes had attached themselves to me, and were travelling unsparingly up my legs as I walked. He looked, frankly, astonished by my appearance; and it was hard to sustain the carelessness with which I was attempting to set about the business of preparing the drinks while so blatantly under examination.

  ‘What,’ he said finally, ‘are you wearing?’

  ‘Hmm?’ I looked up from where I had sat down beside him on the lawn. ‘Shorts. What does it look like?’

  I had meant the remark to be a reproach.

  ‘It looks sexy,’ said Martin.

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied.

  It occurred to me then that Martin might think I had put the shorts on for his benefit; and all in all, before long I was fervently wishing that I had remained dressed as I was, or could find an excuse to go back into the house and change again without looking idiotic.

  ‘Why did you get changed?’

  ‘I told you, I was hot.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Stel-la.’

  ‘I just felt like it.’ I handed him a glass in which there was a small measure of gin. ‘Can we change the subject, please?’

  ‘Are you expecting someone?’ he said, taking the bottle from me and placing it furtively behind his chair.

  I was about to reply adamantly that I was not, when I saw from the direction of his gaze that the question had been more innocent than it sounded. He was looking towards the bottom of the garden, from where there came the sound of footsteps approaching along the gravel path beyond. I realized that he had put the gin behind his chair to hide it, thinking that one of his parents might be corning; a gesture which suggested that I had been slightly misled concerning the seriousness of its theft. I was glad, in any case, that he had concealed it. Combined with the cut-off trousers, it might have given Toby – for they were his footsteps, I was certain, that we heard – an impression of dissolution. The figure of a man
came into view, and for a brief moment everything in me seemed to rise to its feet in anticipation; until I saw that my visitor was not Toby, but the man I had met earlier on in the field, the unfortunate Mr Trimmer.

  At the sight of us sitting there his expression did not change; indeed, it was hard to know whether he had seen us or not, and if so whether our presence there was a necessary, expected or unwelcome feature of his intrusion. He opened the gate and began toiling towards us up the garden. In the wake of a disappointment, even the most well-intentioned approaches can seem a pest; and at the sight of Mr Trimmer’s curiously compacted face, and the diffident set of his clumsy body as he drew near, an unrestrainable irritation took hold of me.

  ‘Hello?’ I called out imperiously, as if to a stranger caught sneaking about my property.

  ‘Afternoon,’ said Mr Trimmer, drawing to an immediate halt at the sound of my voice and apparently waiting for permission to complete the final two or three yards to where we sat. He raised a hand as if to touch an invisible hat. As he lowered it, his eyes fell upon my exposed legs.

  ‘Hello, Jack,’ said Martin affably, grinning at him in an evil manner. He waved an arm in encouragement. ‘Come on over. Have you come to see Stella?’

  There was a considerable pause.

  ‘I met her,’ said Mr Trimmer, planting himself in front of us where we sat, with his eyes averted and his hands clasped before him, like a man about to sing the national anthem, ‘in the top field.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Martin.

  I felt that Mr Trimmer had been intending to enlarge on his description of our meeting, but that Martin’s peremptory assent had cut the thread of his discourse. He fell silent, his face working in a peculiar sideways motion, apparently recovering from the interruption. His eyes strayed to my legs and then darted away. Presently he seemed to have gathered his momentum once more, and opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘She was taken ill,’ he said. ‘I came to see if she was better.’

  ‘I’m much better, thank you,’ I said. I found that I too was speaking slowly. My face was burning. I caught Martin looking at me out of the corner of my eye. ‘It was very kind of you to come.’

  Despite my lugubrious diction, that fact that I was speaking directly to him seemed to hit Mr Trimmer like a strong jet of water. His face wore a crumpled expression of heroic resistance, as if at any moment he might fall over.

  ‘I was going to mend that step,’ he said. ‘I was on my way to do it when I saw you.’

  My complaint had evidently been festering in his thoughts all afternoon; and touched by his avowal, I refrained from enquiring as to how he had thought he would mend the step with a gun rather than a hammer and nails.

  ‘I realized that you probably were,’ I said, anxious that my reply sounded more complex than it actually was. ‘Afterwards. I would have hurt myself if you hadn’t stopped me.’

  Martin was watching this tortured exchange with unconcealed fascination, an unpleasant smile on his face.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically in the hope of drawing our interview to a close.

  Mr Trimmer stood on, plinthed on the grass by his large, leather-booted feet.

  ‘Would you consider,’ he finally pronounced, while Martin’s head wagged up and down below him at every word, ‘coming out with me one evening?’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, horrified. I laughed shrilly. ‘That’s very kind of you. I don’t know if I can, though. I’m usually quite busy over at the house in the evenings.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ declared Martin. ‘She’d love to come out with you, Jack. She can come tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ said Mr Trimmer to Martin, as if he were responsible for the transaction. Seeming to realize that this was incorrect, he turned back to me. ‘Would that be all right?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, defeated.

  ‘I’ll call here at eight, then.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I rallied. ‘I’ll see you then. Goodbye.’

  Mr Trimmer seemed surprised at being so abruptly dismissed, but he took it well enough, and bidding goodbye to both of us turned and made his way back down the garden, his elbows flying out to either side as if he were in a hurry.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to Martin.

  ‘It serves you right.’ He raised his glass to his lips. ‘Besides, you said you liked him.’

  I lay on my back on the grass. ‘What on earth are we going to talk about for an entire evening? And where will we go?’

  Martin did not reply, and when I looked at him I saw that he was watching me with a peculiar expression on his face.

  ‘You’ve got nice legs,’ he said in a strangled voice.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Some time later, Martin and I moved uncertainly through the penumbral gloom of the garden back to the house. We had drunk the better part of the bottle of gin, the remainder of which I had hidden at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards. My theft of the bottle had seemed more and more extraordinary to me as the evening progressed, particularly under the increasing influence of its contents. Martin’s behaviour with Mr Trimmer, and the underhand manner in which he had contrived my assignation with him, as well as the assignation itself, took on similarly absurd proportions. In fact, only my inebriation remained real, along with thoughts of what the Maddens would do if they discovered it.

  The effect of the gin on Martin was even more worrying. He had grown boisterous and red-faced, and by the time I had wheeled him to the back door and up the corridor was singing a raucous medley of unidentifiable songs, accompanying himself with writhing motions on an invisible guitar in his lap.

  ‘Calm down!’ I whispered fiercely in his ear as we manoeuvred our way through the annexe and into the hall. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble.’

  ‘Oh, Stel-la!’ he whined, lolling back in his chair. ‘Don’t be so cross all the time. You’re always … cross.’

  His head fell forward, as if he were asleep. At this I was genuinely alarmed and I stopped the chair and knelt beside him.

  ‘Martin? Are you all right?’

  His head shot up so suddenly that I leaped back in fright.

  ‘I’m fine. You’re the one that should be worried.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You look weird.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I dunno. It’s your eyes or something. They look weird. And you’re still wearing your shorts. My mummy won’t like those. Not at dinner.’

  Withered by this unexpected blast of acuity, I stood paralysed in the hall. In the evening’s confusion, I had entirely forgotten the inappropriateness of my outfit.

  ‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘I’m going to go and change.’

  At that moment, Pamela’s voice issued faintly from the drawing room.

  ‘Stella? Martin? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes!’ bellowed Martin.

  ‘Where’ve you beet? We’ve been waiting for you for hours!’

  ‘Too late,’ he said. ‘Come on, it doesn’t matter. They won’t even notice.’

  Why I accepted this pabulum of reassurance I can’t imagine. In the dreaminess of drink I had forgotten the sharp prick of the social misdemeanour; but I felt it in all its steely agony as we entered the drawing room and the assembled company’s eyes lighted as one on my cut-off trousers.

  ‘Good God!’ said Pamela, a menacing smile on her face. ‘Those are very saucy!’

  ‘Wheeew,’ whistled Toby, lounging contentedly on a sofà at the far side of the room.

  ‘Drinks?’ said Mr Madden, rising dutifully from his chair.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Martin. ‘Leave her alone,’ he added, directing his remark at Toby, who was still whistling away on the sofa.

  ‘It was intended as a compliment,’ drawled Toby. I realized that only in that moment had the idea of me entered his head; and that he was entertaining it, moreover, idly, for want of anything better to do. The tangled ske
in of my wasted, thought-racked afternoon rose up before me in all its monstrous fantasy.

  ‘She doesn’t need your compliments,’ said Martin haughtily. ‘She’s embarrassed, and I don’t blame her. Those were the only clean things she had to change into. I assured her that none of you would be rude, and you have been. I’m ashamed of you all.’

  This final touch, trespassing as it did into excess, threatened to topple the heroic structure of Martin’s speech; but to my surprise it held.

  ‘Sor-ry,’ said Toby ironically.

  ‘I think she looks charming,’ added Pamela. ‘Why not, if you’ve got the figure for it? That’s what I say.’

  I forgave Martin instantly for the transgressions of the afternoon. Pamela I regarded as having levelled her score. Toby was now reassuringly lodged deep in my contempt; and thus set to rights, I felt rather more in the mood for another drink.

  ‘Actually, I will have something,’ I said confidentially to Mr Madden, as he passed with his tray. He bent his head towards me and I caught a gust of his breath.

  ‘G-and-T?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘We were just talking about Friday,’ said Pamela, in her ‘hostess’ voice. ‘I think it’s going to be a real hoot. Mark and Millie are coming down for the night, and Derek and Caroline, and then there’ll be all of us—’

  ‘What’s Friday?’ said Martin, wheeling himself towards the fireplace.

  ‘Honestly, Martin, you are the end,’ said Pamela crossly. She looked over her shoulder. Mr Madden was safely from the room. ‘It’s your father’s birthday, in case you have forgotten. Sometimes I wonder if you ever think about anybody but yourself.’

  With my advocate thus cast into disfavour, my cut-off trousers seemed to regain something of their controversy. I sidled to the sofa on which Pamela was sitting and stood behind it.

  ‘Dad’s birthday’s on Saturday,’ said Martin.

  ‘I know, but we’re celebrating it on Friday. Mark and Millie can’t make Saturday. They’ve got to be back in London for something.’