by Rachel Cusk
‘You shouldn’t point that thing at anybody,’ said Adam. ‘Where did you get it from?’
Rufus shrugged.
‘Mum gave it to me,’ he said.
‘I’m sure she didn’t.’
‘She did!’ squeaked the little girl.
‘Good God,’ said Adam. ‘What will she think of next?’
I guessed that these were Laura’s children. Common sense was clearly no longer something she went in for.
‘Take it out to the field, will you?’ continued Adam. ‘I don’t want it anywhere near the house.’
‘You really shouldn’t be playing with things like that, Rufus,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s actually not very nice.’
‘It’s none of your business!’ shouted Rufus.
‘Well, it is my business if one of my children gets hurt,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it, Rufus?’
‘No one’s got hurt! I haven’t done anything wrong!’ yelled Rufus furiously. ‘We were just playing!’
He stormed out of the courtyard and a minute later, with a look of uncertainty, his sister followed him.
‘Honestly,’ said Lisa, rolling her eyes, ‘I only have to come up here and I start to think I’ve gone mad.’
Inside the house Laura was nowhere to be seen. Vivian and Brendon were sitting hunched at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. After the sunlight outside it looked as though they were sitting in a great cavern, or in the belly of a gigantic animal with the ceiling beams as its black, huge ribs. I noticed that Brendon had a large piece of gauze taped to his forehead.
‘Oh, hello,’ said Vivian presently, lifting her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know you were still here.’
‘We’ve just knocked off,’ said Adam.
‘Well, I don’t see how I can possibly be expected to feed you all! Laura’s turned up with her four and Caris will be back in a moment wanting feeding and I haven’t been able to get down to Doniford all week, you know, and I really think someone might have thought to bring just a loaf of bread or a bit of cheese with them,’ she said. ‘It’s incredible, really, how little people think. There’s Laura with a fridge at home the size of a room, all full of whatever it is her children will eat, and she takes it upon herself to have lunch here, where she says everything’s past its sell-by date. She’s been round all the cupboards, taking things out and throwing them away! Then she complains because there’s nothing left!’
‘Don’t worry, Vivian,’ said Lisa sourly. ‘We won’t be troubling you for anything to eat.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Vivian, ‘I’m sure I can find something, it’s just that you mustn’t mind what it is. I was going to boil up these potatoes, that’s all. I was sure there was a bit of ham in the larder but it seems to have gone. Perhaps the dogs took it.’
‘Mine don’t really eat ham,’ said Lisa. ‘Just a bit of pasta will be fine.’
‘I don’t know that we have pasta,’ said Vivian. She said it to rhyme with ‘faster’. ‘That’s all anybody eats now, isn’t it? When I was little we used to call it worms.’
‘That’s disgusting,’ said Janie.
‘We dropped in on dad yesterday,’ said Adam, in a significant voice. ‘He’s feeling a bit lonely.’
‘Is he?’ said Vivian. She looked around, as though expecting someone to step forward and explain why.
‘He’d like to see you,’ said Adam. ‘I think he was expecting you a couple of days ago.’
There was a silence.
‘Well,’ said Vivian finally, ‘to be completely honest, I’ve been having a few problems with the car.’
She shook her hair down over her face and then looked up at us innocently through her fringe.
‘The car?’
‘Yes. I don’t really like to drive it.’
‘Why not?’
‘There’s something wrong with the windscreen. Something’s happened to the glass.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Adam. ‘Has it broken?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that. I think it’s just got a bit old.’
‘Old?’
‘What are you talking about, Vivian?’ said Lisa.
‘It’s you who aren’t listening! I’ve told you, the glass has got too old to see through!’
With shaking hands Vivian flayed the skin from a potato and dropped it, scalped, back into the muddy pile from which she had taken it. Brendon picked it out fastidiously with his fingers and put it with the others in a saucepan of water.
‘Vivian,’ said Adam, ‘have you been to an optician lately?’
‘I don’t see what an optician’s going to do about my car!’ said Vivian, laughing rather wildly.
‘It might not be the car. It might be your eyes.’
‘There’s never been anything wrong with my eyes. It’s sitting up here in the dark all winter – they get unused to the sun. It isn’t my fault, you know! When I go to Spain,’ she said, to me, ‘the problem simply disappears, even though one’s in the brightest sun day in and day out. I barely have to wear my sunglasses!’
‘It’s p-probably stress,’ said Brendon. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with multicoloured flying saucers on it. His face looked slightly lopsided, as though he had slept heavily on it. ‘Have you ever tried St John’s wort, Vivian? I can give you some if you like – I’ve got l-loads.’
‘Look,’ said Adam, ‘I’ll drive you down to the hospital this afternoon. It’s really not such a big deal.’
‘We get no light here from November to March, you know,’ said Vivian, to me. ‘We’re north-facing, that’s the problem. The sun goes all the way around the other side of the hill, where nobody actually lives! I can’t think why they built Egypt here, can you? Perhaps they did it in the summer not knowing how it would get. Sometimes I wish I could just pick it up and turn it around the other way. There’s a day in April when it comes back – one day a little triangle of sunlight appears on the floor, and the next day it’s a little bigger, and the day after a little bigger and so on, and then before you know it it’s starting to get smaller again,’ she concluded morbidly.
‘If we could go straight after lunch that would suit me,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve got some things I have to do this afternoon.’
‘Sometimes I’ll open a door or a cupboard and without expecting it I’ll feel as though I’m falling into a void, a well of blackness,’ said Vivian. ‘I almost feel a sort of presence. Do you know,’ she said suddenly, ‘when that happens I can often hear someone speaking my name, quite clearly speaking it!’
‘Vivian? Is it all right if we go straight after lunch?’
Vivian looked at him roguishly. I wondered if she was drunk again.
‘I think I’d rather go tomorrow,’ she said.
‘But he’s coming home on Monday!’
‘Well, in that case,’ said Vivian, ‘I don’t see what everyone’s making such a fuss about.’
‘Vivian,’ said Lisa, smiling, ‘surely you’d want to see Paul while he’s in the hospital?’
‘When I had my operation,’ said Vivian, staring beadily at her, ‘I was in hospital for five days. He wouldn’t come and see me because he was worried about carrying foot and mouth on to Egypt.’
‘Well,’ said Adam, ‘at the time that was understandable, when you think about it.’
‘I was losing my womanhood!’ cried Vivian. ‘I was being mutilated, and all he cared about were his sheep!’
‘Don’t you think you should let bygones be bygones?’ said Lisa.
‘A lot of people did things then that they regret,’ said Adam. ‘Don Brice threatened the inspectors with a shotgun, for heaven’s sake.’
‘He never apologised!’
‘You know what he’s like,’ said Adam. ‘He doesn’t like it when people are ill.’
‘When I came back,’ said Vivian unsteadily, her cheeks ablaze, ‘he sent me to Coventry for forgetting to write the cheques before I left. I think that rather takes the cake, don’t you? Don’t you think that it does? He wouldn’t let me go
upstairs until I’d sat at the desk and signed them all! And he wouldn’t speak to me – not a word!’
None of us said anything. Vivian looked around with a mixture of triumph and concern, as though she had unintentionally extinguished us into silence too.
‘Well,’ said Adam finally, ‘I don’t really know about that. All I know is that he repeatedly said that he wanted to see you. Doesn’t that make a difference?’
‘I know why he does,’ snapped Vivian. ‘He wants to know what I’m up to. Well, if he asks you can tell him – I’ve had enough! Tell him that and see what he says!’
‘I’d rather you told him yourself,’ said Adam.
‘You’ve got to tell him yourself,’ nodded Lisa. ‘He’s your husband, Vivian.’
‘He isn’t my husband, you know,’ said Vivian darkly. ‘Not in the eyes of the church he isn’t. I was already married, you see. In the eyes of the church we’re living in sin!’
‘Janie,’ said Lisa, alarmed, ‘can you take Hamish and play outside?’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Janie.
‘I’m asking you to,’ said Lisa.
‘I’m frightened of that boy.’
‘That’s between you and dad,’ said Adam.
There was the sound of footsteps out in the hall. A woman came into the room carrying a baby. Both of them were very large and fair-haired and wore light-coloured, clean but very crumpled clothing, so that in the gloom of the kitchen, in their detailed amplitude and luminosity they had the appearance of figures from a religious painting. The woman’s face had a sort of wistful purity to it, in the trenchant setting of her thick-bodied, abundant middle age, that deepened this impression. The yellow light from the window, which some peculiarity of the Hanburys’ kitchen dictated should remain in compact beams like those of a searchlight rather than diffuse itself around, fell squarely on her face and on the maze of creases in her clothes. Another fair-haired child, of about Hamish’s age, came behind her and stood clutching her skirt with his fists. Rosettes of colour were appended to his fat cheeks.
‘You’re all here,’ observed Laura, for it was she, recognisable to me only by the stubborn, little-girlish convexity of her forehead. ‘Have you all come up for lunch?’
There was something in the way she asked this question which made the matter of how to reply to it more complicated than it ought to have been.
‘Not really,’ said Adam. ‘We just dropped in.’
‘Because mummy’s running pretty low,’ Laura continued, heaving the baby around on her hip. ‘If you’re all going to stay someone should really go down to Doniford and pick up some things. We’ve been over at the stream,’ she added, with red in her face. ‘Toby’s been trying to spear a fish. Didn’t there used to be trout in there?’
‘They’ve netted it lower down,’ said Adam. ‘The people who bought the place at the bottom of the hill are starting a trout farm. Don’t you remember,’ he said to Brendon, ‘that was what dad went so crazy about last year.’
‘Spear it with what?’ asked Lisa. She wore an expression of distaste.
‘You just tie a penknife to the end of a stick,’ said Laura, as though Lisa was likely to try it.
‘He said he was going to put sh-sheep dip in the water,’ said Brendon. ‘But I don’t think he ever did.’
‘Do you want to run down or shall I?’ said Laura.
‘I was going to boil up these potatoes,’ said Vivian.
‘Laura,’ said Lisa, drawing confidentially to Laura’s side and speaking into her ear, ‘you might want to check on Rufus. He’s walking around with a crossbow. He says you gave it him.’
Laura looked straight ahead while Lisa addressed her ear, an expression of amusement on her face, as though she were hearing something entertaining on the telephone.
‘Is he being really awful?’ she said delightedly.
‘It’s just that he says you gave it him.’
‘He got it for his birthday,’ said Laura. ‘He’s quite a good shot, actually.’
‘The thing is,’ said Lisa discreetly, ‘the other children won’t go outside.’
‘They’ve just got to stand up to him!’ cried Laura. ‘Tell them to shout at him if he bothers them. Is he being really awful?’ she asked again. ‘Nobody at school invites him home any more, you know. They’ve been told not to invite him home. He’s quite upset about it.’
‘I think they’re a bit frightened to go out,’ said Lisa.
‘What are they frightened of? Polly’s out there, isn’t she?’
‘Polly’s got an axe,’ said Janie.
‘Look, shall I just leave the children here and run down to the shops?’ said Laura, looking around at us with purpose flaming in her pale blue eyes.
‘What do you mean?’ said Lisa.
‘She’s got an axe. I saw her.’
‘Shall I?’ said Laura. She inched towards the door. ‘Look, I’ll take the baby,’ she added, as though brokering her own escape.
‘There’s no need to go if you don’t want to,’ said Adam. ‘We don’t want much. Vivian’s going to boil the potatoes.’
‘If you let her go she won’t come back until tomorrow,’ Vivian interjected from beneath her brows. ‘I tell you, she won’t – she’ll phone from Doniford and say that something’s come up and could we keep the children overnight.’
‘That’s charming!’ shrieked Laura, laughing robustly and nevertheless keeping her hand on the door handle.
‘It’s true,’ said Vivian quaveringly. ‘You don’t realise you’ll have to do it all again,’ she said, to me. ‘It’s all right for the men – they just claim a sort of immunity, don’t they? They say they don’t know how to do it because they didn’t do it the first time and now it’s too late for them to learn, and that sort of thing, don’t they?’
‘Laura, Janie says Polly’s got hold of an axe,’ said Lisa.
‘I saw her,’ said Janie.
‘Well, you tell her it’s naughty,’ said Laura.
‘I don’t want to tell her,’ said Janie.
‘You’re not frightened of Polly too, are you?’ said Laura. ‘You’re frightened of everyone! Is she shy?’ she said to Lisa.
I heard footsteps in the hall and the kitchen door slowly opened with Laura’s hand still holding the handle. Caris put her bushy head into the room. Her manner was ostentatiously cautious. I was arrested by the distinctive expression on her face: she looked excited and slightly devious and somewhat ashamed. It was an expression I had seen before only on the face of my wife. Slowly she digested the fact of the crowded kitchen and as I watched I saw subjectivity break as though in rays or waves over her physiognomy. Her obscure knowledge of who she was rose into her face and shone glaringly through the strange derangement of her features. With her same great deliberateness of manner she stayed like that for several seconds, her body out of the room and her head in it, regarding us all with an expression of wonderment.
‘Not particularly,’ said Lisa, who had looked at Caris and looked away again.
I wondered if Caris had gone in some way mad, for she did remain in utter self-consciousness at the door, moving her eyes from one to another of us with a little smile. Her head, unbodied, began to look slightly eerie. I noticed that no one spoke to her. It struck me that this might be reinforcing her madness – that her expression could be that of someone whom numerous people are feigning an inability to see. I thought I understood, though, why no one did speak to her: it was her air of great import, which seemed to presage an announcement that never came.
‘Polly’s completely harmless,’ said Laura, who appeared not to have noticed that Caris’s face, with its mystical expression, was suspended a mere ten or twelve inches from her own. ‘You can’t be frightened of Polly!’
‘She’s got an axe,’ said Janie. ‘I saw her running after that boy with it.’
‘Oh, she’s only playing. She wouldn’t actually hurt him, you know. Oh look!’ Laura laughed, pointing at Janie. ‘She’s te
rrified, the poor little thing!’
Caris finally made her announcement.
‘Mum’s here,’ she said.
Vivian looked up.
‘Here?’ she said.
‘She brought me up in the car. She’s outside talking to Rufus. I thought I’d come and warn you.’
‘What’s she doing here?’ said Vivian.
From outside I could hear the sound of the dogs barking.
‘She’s just come up to say hello,’ said Caris. Her look was inscrutable.
‘Well, no one invited her,’ said Vivian. ‘It’s a bit much, just to turn up uninvited!’
‘Vivian,’ said Adam pacifically, ‘come on. Mum’s always up here with you and dad.’
‘If she wants to see him she knows where to find him,’ said Vivian. ‘She can’t just come turning up here uninvited!’
There was a commotion out in the hall and suddenly the door was thrown ajar against Laura and the dogs tumbled through, tearing around Caris’s legs and into the kitchen. They skidded over the flagstone floor and hurled themselves with a deafening volley of barks at Vivian’s chair. Vivian shrieked and got to her feet, knocking the chair to the floor. The dogs snapped their livid, fleshy muzzles at her over the upended legs and made contorted shapes around her with their scruffy bodies.
‘Get down!’ shouted Adam, lunging for their collars. He kicked one of the dogs and its skinny, unresisting legs skated over the floor.
A woman’s voice drifted in from the hall.
‘What on earth were Nell and Daisy doing locked up?’ she said. ‘I found them out in the stable – I couldn’t believe my eyes!’
Adam held both dogs by their collars and they strained madly at his arms, barking, their clawed feet skating and scratching over the flagstones.
‘What are you doing?’ said Audrey, appearing in the doorway. ‘Let them go, Adam! You look like that man at the gates of hell.’
‘I can’t,’ puffed Adam. ‘They keep going for Vivian.’
‘They just went mad,’ said Lisa.
‘I don’t like them!’ wailed Janie.
‘What do you mean, they keep going for her? They’re just a pair of silly old girls. Aren’t you? You’re just a pair of silly old girls. You don’t go for people. No, not like the hounds of hell. Not like the horrid hounds from hell.’
