The Country Life

by Rachel Cusk

  ‘Darling!’ Mr Madden’s voice floated in from the hall. ‘Have we run out of gin?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Pamela shouted back. ‘There’s a new bottle in the cupboard in the kitchen.’

  ‘No there isn’t,’ said Mr Madden, appearing in the doorway and scratching his head.

  ‘There must be!’ Pamela turned around on the sofà to look at him. ‘I only bought it a couple of days ago. In fact, I saw it there earlier today!’

  I tried to catch Martin’s eye, but he was watching his parents as they debated the matter with so comically innocent an expression on his face that I prayed they wouldn’t look at him. I myself, surprisingly, did not panic. After Mr Madden’s first mention of the gin, I had checked internally my capacity to lie, as someone going down a steep hill in a car would check their brakes, and found it to be intact. I had no doubt that if questioned, I would deny all knowledge of the theft. Of my accomplice I was not so sure.

  ‘Well, it isn’t there now,’ said Mr Madden.

  ‘Are you sure you really looked?’ persisted Pamela, putting her hand on the arm of the sofa as though she were about to get up.

  ‘Of course I did!’ said Mr Madden crossly. ‘I’m not an idiot.’

  ‘Well, you do miss things sometimes, darling,’ said Pamela condescendingly. ‘You know what you’re like. It was definitely there this morning.’

  ‘I promise you that it isn’t there now.’

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘Well! How peculiar!’ said Pamela finally. ‘I wonder what could have happened to it?’

  ‘Are you sure you bought a new one?’ said Martin, to my horror. ‘Perhaps you left it in the shop or something.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Pamela. ‘Anyway, as I said, I saw it this morning.’

  ‘Perhaps you only thought you did.’

  ‘Why on earth would I think a thing like that if it wasn’t true?’

  ‘Well,’ said Martin. ‘Let’s say you did buy a bottle but left it in the shop; your memory of having bought it might have created the illusion of it being in the cupboard. You might have created that illusion to reassure yourself that it was there, because subconsciously you remembered leaving it in the shop. Things like that happen all the time,’ he added, chewing his finger.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t leave it in the shop, darling?’ echoed Mr Madden, evidently converted to this new theory.

  ‘Of course I am!’ said Pamela. She put a hand to her head. ‘God, I must be going mad.’

  ‘It’s Alzheimer’s,’ said Toby, sniggering. ‘What’s your name, dear?’

  ‘Could I have left it behind?’ whispered Pamela, a look of fierce concentration on her face. ‘Let me think. I went to the supermarket—’

  ‘What’s the date?’ continued Toby in a loud voice. ‘1967? No, you’re a bit out, dear. Try again.’

  ‘Shush!’ cried Pamela, raising a hand to silence him. He sniggered again. She sat, evidently deep in thought, and finally raised an astonished face to the room. ‘Do you know, I must have. How silly of me. I must have left it there. God, do you think I really am going bonkers?’

  ‘Absent-mindedness is a sign of intelligence,’ said Martin. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Mr Madden. ‘We’ll have to have something else.’

  ‘No, no, let’s just get on with dinner,’ said Pamela distractedly. ‘It’s all ready.’

  I caught Martin’s eye several times as we sat around the dinner table, in the hope of telegraphing to him my approval, but each time he merely looked at me blankly as if he had no idea why I was glancing so significantly at him. I soon, however, forgot about the incident; for with Toby sitting beside me, I found myself once more drawn in to the covert conflict his presence seemed inevitably to set in motion, by which with every proof of stupidity or boorishness issued by his brain the form which enclosed it advanced in loveliness.

  It is difficult to explain how it could be that I found myself increasingly attracted to someone of whom my opinion correspondingly descended. I had never experienced such a thing before. It was, I suspected, the very weakness of his personality that gave fatal embellishment to the thought of being physically overpowered by him; for without a rival intelligence to negotiate, without the whole vast and varied territory of taste, intellect and conversation to be explored and cultivated, the sexual domain lay invitingly close by, ripe for momentary plunder. I had no doubt that Toby’s charms appeared accessible to everyone he met; but the cheapness of my desire did not make it any less urgent. I wondered that I did not feel more guilty at the thought of Edward, for whom, though I clearly knew him to be the better person, I had not felt this greed; and who, so short a time ago, I had injured so deeply and so wantonly that an entire lifetime of virtue would not have paid for it. I imagined him looking into my thoughts there at the dinner table, but although I felt ashamed, I could not support the opposition for long. I had freed myself from Edward as one would release the hand of someone dangling over a precipice: because my own survival had depended on it. At least, that was how I had seen it at the time. Increasingly, I was coming to regard my action as less catastrophic for all concerned; in other words, that I had been the dangling figure, and had let go merely because it had hurt too much, and seemed too hopeless, to hang on; and that when I had had the good fortune to land on something soft and yielding, I had merely neglected to inform Edward of the fact. He, I didn’t doubt, was grieving at my disappearance; but at least he would have the chance to recover. Had I stayed with him longer, his portion of blame would have grown larger and larger, his innocence less. My unhappiness would have infected him; an infection he might have passed on to the next person he loved.

  As for me, I had rejected an acknowledged life, stamped and certified. I had refused the keys to permanence, left the full cupboard of certainty unopened. I wanted to live by my wits, sleep beneath the stars of solitude, scavenge for scraps: and if in my restless hunger I came across a laden apple tree, no one could blame me for stopping and eating to sustain myself, for who knew when I might next have the chance? Toby was just such a tree; except, of course, that apples rarely disdain to be eaten, as was likely to be the case here.

  ‘Steady on,’ he murmured, leaning towards me and nodding at my plate. ‘You’ll give yourself indigestion.’

  For a moment I could not think what he was talking about; but then I saw that I had almost cleared the mound of food in front of me, while the others had scarcely dented theirs. This state of affairs represented a marked change in my eating habits. I am normally a slow and careful eater, having been schooled by my mother in the many social atrocities it is possible unwittingly to commit during the ingestion of food. Since my arrival in the country, I had certainly been hungry; but also, having no independent means, I had quickly developed the opportunistic attitude to food which I have just applied analogously to my feelings for Toby. I realized that over the past few days I had been eating every meal as if it were my last; and I sat for some time in a ferment of retrospective embarrassment, as I wondered whether the Maddens had noticed my gobbling but been too polite to mention it.

  ‘It’s the country air,’ I said to Toby. I seemed incapable of saying anything to him that was not profoundly dull. ‘It makes me hungry.’

  ‘Does it now?’ he said, sitting back in his chair. ‘I like girls with appetites. It suggests a lust’ – he stretched hugely, his arms aloft, and yawned – ‘for life.’

  Martin, who was sitting opposite us, had been watching this exchange, and now evidently decided to bring it to a halt.

  ‘Stella had a visitor this afternoon,’ he said, addressing the whole table.

  ‘Did she?’ said Pamela.

  ‘She did. Mr Trimmer came to pay court.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Toby, whether in sympathy or disgust I could not ascertain.

  ‘Really?’ Pamela grinned at me. ‘I told you he’d take a fancy to you.’

  ‘His gallant behaviour on
the footpath earlier,’ continued Martin, ‘secured him a date with her tomorrow evening.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said Mr Madden brightly, looking about.

  ‘Better not let Dora find out,’ said Pamela.

  ‘No,’ chimed Martin, nodding his head solemnly. ‘Because if Dora finds out about Stella she’ll be very cross.’ He gave me a menacing look. ‘She wouldn’t approve at all.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Pamela ingratiatingly. ‘She’d come with our guarantee, after all. Jack could do a lot worse than marry Stella.’

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Martin interrupted.

  ‘Oh, Dora needn’t worry about that,’ he said loudly. ‘Stella can’t get married.’

  There was silence around the table. I stared at my plate, braced for what seemed certain to come.

  ‘Who would look after me otherwise?’ concluded Martin feebly.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Toby.

  ‘On that note,’ said Pamela, at the same time.

  ‘Bedtime for you,’ said Mr Madden.

  ‘I’ll take him up,’ I furiously declared, pushing back my chair and standing up. I was gratified to see a shadow of fear flit across Martin’s face.

  ‘Oh, would you?’ said Mr Madden. ‘Jolly kind.’

  I got Martin out of the room as quickly as I could and stormed up the stairs ahead of him with his chair.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ I said, from the top, while he scrabbled his way up backwards. ‘You’re evil.’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I told you that in confidence. I did not expect to be tormented and blackmailed for it. I regret that I ever trusted you.’

  ‘What?’ he said, hauling himself into his chair.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know! I’ve had just about enough of you!’

  ‘I didn’t do anything!’ he wailed, following me down the corridor and into his room. ‘It was only a joke.’

  ‘It’s not a joke if it’s not funny. Why do you have to be so manipulative?’

  ‘What else is there to do?’ He shrugged and wheeled himself to his closet. ‘I get bored, that’s all. I wasn’t going to tell them anything.’

  ‘That’s not the point. If you carry on like this, they’ll start thinking that I’m hiding something, or that I’m untrustworthy.’

  ‘You did steal their gin,’ remarked Martin, pulling his T-shirt over his head. I was surprised by the sight of his chest, which, though very pale and hairless, was extremely muscled. He quickly drew a pyjama top from a drawer in the closet and struggled into it arms first.

  ‘That was not my idea. You said it would be all right.’

  Martin wheeled himself to the side of the bed, the pyjama bottoms clutched between his teeth. He levered himself out of his chair and half-threw himself on top of it.

  ‘Do you want some help?’ I enquired.

  ‘I can do it. Don’t look.’

  As I looked away, I glimpsed him beginning to wriggle out of his trousers. I wondered what his legs looked like.

  ‘Ready!’ he called.

  I turned around and was surprised to see him neatly slotted between the covers. He patted the space next to him and I went and sat down.

  ‘I’m sorry, Stel-la,’ he said sweetly. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that,’ I replied.

  He gazed sombrely at me.

  ‘You like Toby, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t like him.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it pains me.’

  ‘I just said I didn’t.’ I met his eyes and saw that they were indeed inky with some unguessable emotion. ‘I find him attractive. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s bad enough. It’s not fair.’

  ‘You’ve got other things,’ I said. ‘Anyone can see that.’

  He fiddled with the corner of the sheet, his eyes downcast.

  ‘No one will ever love me.’

  ‘Yes, they will. You just have to wait.’

  ‘I have to wait for everything.’

  I saw that he was only just beginning to comprehend the range and scale of his exclusion from normal life, I did genuinely believe, however, that what I had said to him was true. Indeed, I felt more confident of his future than my own. His very circumstances dictated a long and difficult journey to loving him; and anyone who made it would by necessity possess more than the average degree of mettle. Out in the milling world, there was no knowing who one might brush up against, nor why they had stopped, nor when they might move on again. Martin, at least, had been saved the endless accounting of mediocrity: the ceaseless, fearful estimating of one’s own value, in which those with no claim to the exceptional were forced to engage.

  ‘At least you’re different,’ I said. ‘There’s no reason for anybody to choose someone like me.’

  ‘Edward did.’

  ‘He was the same. Sometimes I think that’s what brought us together. There was no reason not to, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘That’s crap,’ said Martin, yawning. ‘He probably just made you think that about yourself so that he wouldn’t have to worry about you.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I said, letting Edward go undefended.

  ‘It’s obvious. You’re a dangerous woman, Stel-la. The dogfucker was right for once. You’ve got a lust for life.’

  Later that night, I lay awake for some time trying to think about what Martin had said. His remarks had felt true to me – I had heard the clean, clear sound of them as they chimed in my heart – and yet I could not find my way to this truth by any logical process of thought. Confounded, I fell asleep; but some time later sleep spat me out again into the soft palm of the dark. For a moment, when I opened my eyes, I thought that I was to be delivered to this truth for which I had been searching. Within seconds, however, I became conscious of the sound that had woken me, a sort of scrabbling noise coming from outside. I stiffened instantly with fear; and just then heard a light tapping coming from downstairs, like someone knocking at the door. I waited for some time, and when I heard nothing more I got out of bed and felt my way in the dark down the stain. The sitting room was undisturbed in the shadows. I walked to the window and looked out. A figure I immediately recognized as Toby was making his way down the garden path to the gate. I could see the casual set of his shoulders in the moonlight, and the outline of his hands in his pockets. He opened the gate, looked this way and that, and disappeared.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I opened my eyes on a day whose prospect was so alarming that it was some time before I could bring myself to get out of bed and begin it. Outside my window the tyrannical sky slyly proffered again its unnatural heat, as if from a never-diminishing wad of banknotes; but I knew that storms were being smuggled in for me beneath its innocent blue. Today was not a day like any other. Today, I felt sure, my luck with regard to the matter of driving would run out; and the whole edifice of my life in the country, which I had begun to believe to be secure, seemed to strain and groan beneath it. In the shadow of this great dread, other smaller concerns lurked: my forthcoming evening with Mr Trimmer; my muddled and inappropriate feelings for Toby, to which his moonlit visit had added an altogether dangerous dimension of fulfilment; and the vague but certain sense I had, which seemed to have been implanted in me while I slept, that despite Martin’s efforts I had been judged to have transgressed in wearing the cut-off trousers and would be made to pay for it, whether directly or later as part of a wider tally.

  It surprised me that the last and least of these concerns should be the first to flower; but no sooner had I quietly entered the big house by the back door and begun to creep, soberly dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and trousers, up the passage, than the very thing I was hoping to avoid – an encounter with Pamela – rose up in my path.

  ‘Stella!’ she said, emerging furtively from the kitche
n and closing the door behind her. ‘A word.’

  She drew to my side in the gloomy corridor. From her air of emergency, I guessed that she had been waiting for me; and from her confidential tone and stem, decided expression that I was to be reprimanded. There are some women on whom authority sits violently, who can use it only as a tool of reward or censure. I had little sense of Pamela’s expectations of me between these two extremes, which was probably why I failed so frequently to meet them.

  ‘Forgive me for being bold,’ she said in a low, rapid voice. ‘But I didn’t like to say anything last night in front of the others and I feel I must get this clear.’

  I saw that she was becoming agitated, in the way that she often did: like a bottle being shaken hard to stir up what was in itself disposed to settle.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ I began, in the hope of deflecting her.

  ‘Now I don’t mind if we’re out by the pool or whatever,’ she continued, apparently not having heard me. ‘But to dress provocatively in the evening when the men are about really isn’t on.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I interposed.

  ‘If you don’t have enough clean things then for God’s sake come and see me first and I’ll sort you out with something.’

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ I said.

  ‘It’s easy to forget,’ she persisted, ‘in this day and age that some things are still unacceptable. I know that you don’t know us very well, and perhaps that sort of thing is fine where you come from, but with young men in the house I really must ask that it doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘It won’t,’ I said.

  ‘All right?’ she finished, meeting my eye. ‘I’m sorry to have started the day off on such an unpleasant note, but I felt something had to be said. Let’s forget all about it, shall we?’

  ‘Fine,’ I weakly agreed.

  ‘Good. Now I think Martin is waiting for you upstairs, so off you go.’

  She disappeared back through the kitchen door and shut it after her. Exhausted, I leaned for a moment against the wall, and then made my way heavily through the hall and up the stairs to Martin’s room.