The Country Life

by Rachel Cusk

There was a silence, and more clattering sounds.

  ‘I should call Edward, I suppose,’ said Mark. ‘He’s been going mad, wondering where she is. So’ve her parents, apparently. And her boss must be furious. I’d say she’ll be lucky to get her job back.’

  ‘Frankly, I’ll be sorry to lose her,’ said Pamela. ‘Martin adores her, and it’s such a trial for him chopping and changing every other day. Quite honestly’ – a tearful strain entered her voice – I don’t see how we’re going to begin to cope.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be fine,’ consoled Millie.

  From my shadowy enclosure I began to hear sounds from elsewhere, a sort of scratching noise coming from further along the passage. I stood rigid as a board, not daring to move. The scratching became a scuttling, and then all at once I felt a rush of air and something jostling me about the legs. A shriek of surprise escaped my lips.

  ‘What on earth was that?’ said Pamela from the kitchen.

  A pair of Satanic eyes glared up at me through the gloom. I heard the familiar sound of panting, the unmistakable bustle of canine chops. Roy, or his ghost, had returned to haunt me.

  ‘The wind beneath the door!’ Mark was saying in a spectral voice, while Millie trilled with appreciation.

  ‘Don’t you start as well,’ said Pamela. ‘My children think I’m batty enough as it is. Be a dear and go and have a look, would you? Everyone says we’re mad still leaving our doors open, but I’d hate to be barricaded in.’

  I heard footsteps approaching across the kitchen floor. In a flash I had bolted silently from the ante-room and into the hall, leaving Roy – the miracle of whose resurrection I had not even had time to appreciate – behind as prime suspect for the unexplained noise. Quietly I ascended the stairs to Martin’s room and stood outside his door.

  I was not relishing the thought of an encounter with Martin, even with the weighty matter of Roy off my conscience. After the incident beside the pool, I had fled back to the cottage, where I had sat in my bedroom crouched out of sight beside the wardrobe for a considerable time. Nobody had come to look for me, even after I had heard Pamela’s car pull up in the drive. The absence of a search party had lent weight to my suspicion – confirmed just now by what I had overheard from the kitchen – that Mark and Millie had given an immediate and unsparing account to Pamela of my disgrace, and that I had been outlawed from the society of the family, to be dealt with when the opportunity arose and presumably without mercy. I felt guilty nonetheless that I had been unable to fulfil my promise to Pamela of helping her with the dinner, I had considered the option of presenting myself in the kitchen with this offer as if nothing had happened, and indeed had come over to the house with that aim.

  With that expiatory course of action now ruled out, however, I was forced to fall back on the harder truth; namely that my life in the country was to be brought to an abrupt conclusion, and that I was to return to London as soon as possible with few good wishes on the part of those I left behind. I will not go into my feelings concerning this prospect. You may recall the letters I wrote before my departure. I had the sensation, characteristic of the landscape of unrelieved misfortune, that I was rushing very fast downhill, as if through the blackest of tunnels; and that I could neither resist my slide nor indeed feel very much about it at all. There is something almost purifying about this type of loss of control, if one can forget that it will inevitably lead at some point to the most brutal contact with the solid ground of reality.

  ‘Hello,’ said Martin, when I entered the room. He was sitting in his chair reading a book.

  ‘Hello,’ I replied, seating myself in the leather armchair. It was almost dark now, and in the twilight Martin’s face wore an indistinct beauty of suggestion. ‘You shouldn’t read in the dark.’

  ‘I wasn’t reading.’

  ‘How was Aunt Lilian?’

  ‘Old. Aunt-like.’

  ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Hour ago. Bit more.’

  ‘Sorry. There didn’t seem much point in coming over.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What happened, Stel-la?’ said Martin gravely, turning his face towards me.

  I had admittedly made my apology on the assumption that news of my afternoon’s activities had reached him, but nonetheless I experienced a form of grief at hearing this assumption confirmed. I have always, ever since I was a child, disliked being in trouble, and would find the machinations of whatever authority it was I had crossed – the deadly conveyance of information, the steely privacy of consultation, the resultant efficiency of the reprimand – strangely sinister. It aroused in me a primitive fear, and even though I was not strictly afraid of the Maddens, and could indeed if pressed make a good case for not caring what they thought of me in the slightest, I felt it now.

  ‘I could explain it,’ I said, ‘but you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Try.’

  I remembered my investigation of the Maddens’ fridge that morning, the early and innocent misdemeanour which had subsequently cost me so much. What else had I been supposed to do, abandoned without food and with no means of procuring any?

  ‘I was hungry!’ I cried. My still unrelieved inanition flooded forth at the words and I sank weakly back into my chair. ‘I haven’t eaten anything all day,’ I continued, my mouth dry.

  ‘Why ever not?’ said Martin. ‘You don’t need to diet. You’re thin.’

  ‘I don’t want to be thin!’ I wailed. ‘I just don’t have any money!’

  ‘Well, I know it’s not much,’ said Martin doubtfully. ‘But it certainly should be enough to—’

  ‘No,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘I mean I really don’t have any. They – your parents haven’t paid me yet.’ Summoning my last reserves of energy, I explained the chain of consequence which had led from this simple omission to my discovery, drunk and unconscious, in the swimming pool.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it was just that,’ said Martin, with that hint of ‘authority’ which instilled in me such terror. ‘I think they thought you weren’t – happy.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I demanded, rallying slightly.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Martin. ‘Look, I’ll talk to them. See if I can sort this business out. There’s obviously been a misunderstanding. ’

  ‘You won’t be able to. They’ve made up their minds.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘If that’s the case,’ concluded Martin with a sigh, ‘it’s probably because they think it’s for your own good, Stel-la. And they’ve got a point. They’re used to having a different sort of girl here – you know, someone from abroad who wants to learn English for a year, waifs and strays. You’ve got a life, for Heaven’s sake.’

  ‘But I don’t want it!’

  A voice could be heard issuing faintly from downstairs.

  ‘Mum’s on the warpath,’ said Martin. ‘We’d better go down. It’s supposed to be Dad’s birthday dinner, after all. Come on.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t face them all! Mark, and your sister, and your parents—’

  ‘Everyone has to face things. It’s the only way. Come on.’

  We went out into the corridor, whose unilluminated gloom ushered us along, a reprimand for our lingering upstairs. I paused at the top of the stairs, while waves of conversation drifted up through the empty hall from the open door of the room below. Martin began hurriedly to shuffle down at the sound, evidently recognizing in it the call of his tribe; and for a moment I too longed to be part of this human noise, to feel the ache of singularity eased by other bodies, the strange spikes and curlicues of solitude which protruded from me like invisible horns sanded down by the gladsome, warming rub of society.

  ‘Hurry up,’ called Martin over his shoulder. ‘They’ve already gone in to dinner.’

  I followed Martin down the stairs, as sombrely as if to the beat of an
executioner’s drum. I could not believe that I was to be made to face those whose only thought when they saw me could be that I had failed to justify my presence here and was to be sent away. He mounted his chair and span swiftly off to the right, from where the voices were coming. I stood in a void of dread and disbelief outside the door; and then reeled after Martin into the room.

  What a lovely sight would have greeted me, if only I had been looking at it through different eyes! We had entered the dining room, a room I had never been in before, its novelty ornamented with the magic of a special occasion. It was lit entirely by candles, whose pale, guttering columns rose from a vast table in the centre, and whose glow in the velvety dark gave every surface the appearance of being heaped with treasure. The light glittered off glasses and cutlery, sparkled on the china rims of plates, flashed over rings and necklaces, and pooled warmly over the circle of faces gathered around the table; faces which to me were but half-familiar and at this point probably hostile, but which to Martin formed the landscape of everything that he loved.

  ‘Finally!’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘We’ve been calling you for hours, darling!’

  The volley of exclamation caused me to shrink momentarily back into the shadows; but Martin looked over his shoulder as if to bring me to heel, and I reluctantly followed him towards the table. Now that the fog of our arrival had lifted slightly, I could begin to distinguish one face from another. There was Caroline, resplendent in some floral garment with elaborately puffed sleeves, from which the slabs of her arms protruded and rested powerfully on the table. Next to her was a man I did not recognize, with a babyish face and a very pale, oval head, the fringe of whose fair, fuzzy hair clung in a sort of tide mark around the level of his ears. Beside him sat Mark, and beside him Millie. Even in that rushed first assessment of the table, I could not prevent myself from being struck anew by her loveliness. She was wearing the same red dress in which I had seen her earlier, but her mouth glistened darkly with lipstick. Next to her sat Toby, groomed and buffed to perfection in a crisp white shirt and dark jacket; and next to him Pamela, whose impossibly girlish form was encased in a tight black dress. Around her neck was a rope of pearls. Mr Madden beamed combustibly beside her. A double gap remained between him and Caroline, which it took me some time to appreciate constituted my own invitation to dinner. Dimly I was struck by the operation of manners in this foreign, fortunate, sparkling world. It was, I understood then, their law, their discipline, their religion. I may have been scorned, reviled, found wanting; but it had been deemed correct, for reasons which were unclear to me and which I sensed had not even been exhumed for reexamination on this occasion, that I should attend dinner.

  ‘Stella, why don’t you sit next to Piers?’ said Pamela. ‘And Martin can slot in there beside Caroline.’

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I said to Mr Madden, seating myself in the high-backed chair beside him. An exquisitely arranged plate, which I understood to be the first course, sat in front of me, bearing a small dish of paté and several delicate slivers of toast.

  ‘Not yet!’ he barked jovially, looking about the table with abrupt, jerking movements, a bewildered, slightly desperate smile on his face, as if he were unsure whether a mistake had been made.

  ‘We know it’s not yet, darling,’ said Pamela soothingly, placing a hand on his arm. ‘We’re just sort of seeing it in.’

  ‘A toast!’ cried Toby suddenly, raising his glass.

  ‘Oh yes, let’s have a toast,’ said Pamela.

  ‘To—’ Toby looked around the table, making it clear that his toast was not dedicated to any particular cause. His eyes lighted on Caroline. ‘To Caroline’s baby!’

  There was a chorus of approval. Caroline blushed.

  ‘And Derek’s,’ she asserted over the noise. ‘It’s Derek’s baby too!’

  ‘Cawo,’ said Derek reprovingly.

  ‘We know it’s Derek’s baby, darling,’ said Pamela.

  ‘Unless there’s something you haven’t told us!’ snorted Toby, casting around the table for more appreciation in the wake of his toast triumph.

  ‘It’s just that you’re our daughter,’ continued Pamela. ‘Margaret probably feels the same about you, doesn’t she, Derek?’

  ‘She’s vewy pleased,’ nodded Derek.

  ‘I should hope she is!’ said Pamela. ‘Caroline told us you were going to name the baby after her.’

  ‘Only if it’s a girl,’ said Derek dubiously.

  ‘Obviously only if it’s a girl, darling,’ said Caroline between her teeth.

  ‘Well, I should be very flattered if I were her,’ said Pamela. ‘I’ve obviously abused my children horribly. They’d die rather than pay me that sort of a compliment.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ said Toby, putting his arm around her. ‘Poor Mummy.’

  ‘It’s true!’ protested Pamela. ‘When I think of what I went through to bring you four lumps into the world! And never a word of thanks from any of you!’

  ‘I’m not a lump,’ said Millie to Mark.

  ‘Mummy!’ shrilled Caroline nervously. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Thank you for giving birth to us,’ intoned Martin solemnly.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Mr Madden.

  ‘Thank you for fathering us,’ continued Martin, turning to him.

  At this a mouthful of paté, which I had been surreptitiously consuming while the others conversed, lodged in my throat, causing me to choke.

  ‘Goodness!’ cried Millie.

  ‘Heave-ho!’ said Toby.

  ‘Not again,’ said Pamela, while Martin slapped me on the back.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I spluttered, my eyes watering.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Mark, whom I could feel watching me from the other side of the table.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, glancingly catching his eye.

  There was a pause around the table while my interruption was absorbed. As if by agreement, the assembled company bent their heads to their plates or took up their glasses.

  ‘Mark and I have got an announcement to make,’ said Millie presently. She took Mark’s hand firmly in her own. Their slender fingers lay entwined on the table.

  ‘What?’ said Caroline with her mouth full, looking around as if she had missed something.

  ‘Oh, darlings!’ cried Pamela, catching her breath and clasping her hands to her chest in anticipation.

  ‘We’ve decided that we’re going to move in together,’ beamed Millie.

  ‘You’re going to what?’ said Caroline.

  ‘Oh darlings,’ said Pamela, more severely. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘What are they saying?’ said Mr Madden, casting about confusedly for some translation and eventually turning to me.

  ‘They—’ It seemed inappropriate for me to repeat the announcement, and so I sat far back in my chair, passing the responsibility to Martin.

  ‘They’re going to move in together,’ explained Martin. ‘In London.’

  ‘Move in?’ said Mr Madden, ‘Not get married?’

  ‘We don’t want to get married, Dad,’ said Millie.

  ‘Why ever not? Caroline did.’

  At this Caroline’s face immediately took on a rigid expression. The compliment had evidently taken her by surprise, but not so much that she was unable to prevent herself from being seen to be glorying in it. She put her hand beneath her chin and looked interestedly at her father.

  ‘Mark’s against it,’ said Millie.

  ‘Against it? How can you be against marriage?’ Mr Madden guffawed, as if in appreciation of some joke, which he evidently expected to be informed his daughter’s remark was.

  ‘His parents are divorced,’ said Millie, while Mark looked silently down at his plate. ‘He’s seen how much damage it can cause.’

  This remark, although I couldn’t discern why, was evidently judged to have exceeded the boundaries of good taste. There was an immediate chill in the atmosphere of the room. Millie
sat with a stricken expression. Caroline touched Derek’s arm and quietly asked him to pass her the butter. Pamela stood up.

  ‘Right,’ she said brightly. ‘I think I’ll get the second course in. Would someone mind giving me a hand?’

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, Stella,’ said Pamela. She gave me quite a friendly look. Millie’s unpopularity had evidently freed up a quantity of approval which I, by my offer, had been able to claim. ‘If you could just stack up some of these plates and bring them out with you, I’ll go and get on.’

  Obediently I toured the table, collecting the debris of the first course. As I reached over each shoulder to retrieve a plate, I seemed to be dipping briefly into the charged aura of another human being, tasting their incredible autonomy. Millie seemed to shrink from my proximity as I leaned past her, as if she were too delicate and fragile to withstand it. The sturdy, tanned back of Mark’s neck visibly prickled when I came to him. Derek was as mild as milk, yielding immediately to the temporary authority of my business.

  ‘Families!’ exclaimed Pamela when I reached the kitchen. She was tapping about in her high heels, incongruously glamorous. ‘Is your family as noisy as ours, Stella?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know, I’ve never even asked you about your family!’ she shrieked, above the rattling of plates and dishes. ‘How many are you?’

  ‘Five. Four,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t sound very sure,’ she remarked.

  ‘I had a brother who died.’

  ‘Oh.’ She bent down, hands muffled in oven-gloves, and opened the oven. ‘How terribly sad.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘You must miss him dreadfully.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. But yes.’

  She didn’t say anything more. When she straightened up, her face looked pinched and rather annoyed.

  ‘Shall I start taking things through?’ I said anxiously.

  ‘You’re a darling.’ She laid a hand briefly on my arm and I flushed with pleasure. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. I hope that’s not too hot.’

  She handed me a serving dish full of bright, steaming vegetables. I bore the dish out of the kitchen and into the ante-room. It was in fact very hot, and by the time I reached the hall I was forced to stop and put it down on the floor for a moment to relieve my hands.