by Rachel Cusk
Audrey had advanced into the room and was caressing the dogs’ slobbering muzzles as she spoke. They made high-pitched mewling sounds. She was wearing a close-fitting brown coat made of some kind of skin or pelt. Her slim, shapely legs were bare. On her feet she wore narrow, high-heeled boots of the same brown, hairy material as the coat. I became aware of her scent, which was moving in a body over the room. It was a heady smell composed of numerous elements – perfume, face powder, soap, leather, a smell of varnish – and their notes sounded on me randomly and repeatedly.
‘Do you like my new coat?’ she said girlishly, whirling round to face us all. ‘I got it in London last week. It’s pony. Don’t you think it’s divine? The boots were made to match. They cost the earth! But I had to have them, didn’t I? The pony has to have her little hooves shod.’
‘Was it really a pony?’ said Janie to her mother. Her expression was perturbed.
‘God, it’s fantastic,’ said Laura enthusiastically, stroking Audrey’s arm.
‘Was it really?’ said Janie.
‘It’s absolutely lovely,’ said Lisa. Her tone was uncharacteristically professorial. She looked slightly stiff beneath Janie’s scrutiny.
‘I’m going to put the dogs back out in the yard,’ said Adam.
‘I love clothes,’ said Laura, ‘but I never buy them any more. Look.’ She lifted her shirt cheerfully to reveal the zip of her skirt peeled open to accommodate her white, fleshy middle. ‘I can’t do anything up.’
‘There isn’t another baby in there, is there?’ pouted Audrey.
‘Don’t!’ shrieked Laura.
‘No more babies,’ said Audrey, shaking her manicured finger.
‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’ said Laura delightedly.
‘I met one of yours outside – he wanted to show me how to use his crossbow. It’s rather fun, isn’t it? I shot my bolt straight into a tree and imagined all sorts of people it might be. He was very gentlemanly when I showed him my new boots, and he climbed up and got it himself, gorgeous boy.’
‘Roger would divorce me if I had any more,’ said Laura.
‘I made Paul get his tubes tied after Brendon,’ said Audrey. ‘He protested mightily. Oh, how the lord and master protested. He said it was the death of possibility. I said to him, darling, we’ve got three lumping great possibilities already. How much more possibility do you want? I said, if I have any more possibilities I’ll have to start wearing support tights and girdles. That galvanised him, I’m telling you.’
It was difficult to get a sense of Audrey’s face, submerged as it was beneath a meticulous mask of make-up. Two pencil lines described the surprised arc of her brows. Her eyelashes stood out in great curving black fronds which fanned up and down when she blinked. It was in her mouth, a red, wrinkled, oily delta of lipstick, that her age declared itself. Her eyes glittered erratically beneath the black fronds. She had retained, I saw, the tousled hairstyle of her earlier era, although today it looked slightly askew, as though it had been thrown at her head and nearly missed. I wondered whether she had had a facelift. The skin of her face had a boiled appearance, and there was about her generally an air of frantic uplift, of a bodily effort to ascend as though from some sinking substance in which her feet were mired. Caris was looking at her mother with her arms folded and the same strange, lilting smile on her face that she had worn earlier. Brendon remained at the kitchen table, but he had pushed back his chair and was holding his arms and legs slightly out to the sides, as though someone had just placed their hands on his chest and shoved him forcefully backwards. Adam still gripped the straining dogs by their collars.
‘I’m just going to put them out,’ he said again.
‘You’ll have to shut them back in the stable,’ said Vivian, who remained as though for defence behind the upended chair. ‘Right in, do you see, otherwise they get out through the gate.’
‘What are they saying?’ said Audrey, looking about her with gracious incredulity.
‘I’m putting the dogs back in the stable.’
‘Why on earth are you doing that?’
‘They’ve got a bit wild with dad away.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Audrey. ‘Come and see mummy, darlings. Don’t listen to what those horrid people say about you.’
‘They bark at Vivian.’
‘They bark at me,’ said Caris, still smiling.
Audrey looked around the room in distress. Her garlanded eyes met mine.
‘Perhaps you can tell me what they’re talking about,’ she said sweetly. ‘They’re talking about locking up animals, aren’t they?’
‘If you’re going out I’ll go out with you,’ said Laura to Adam, edging towards the door with the baby in her arms. ‘I’m just going to run down to Doniford.’
‘Do you know Paul?’ said Audrey, to me. ‘He’s very fond of these old girls. I don’t think he’d like them being locked up, do you?’
‘They’re only dogs,’ said Vivian quaveringly. ‘They’re not children. It’s not as though we’re talking about locking up children.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to say!’ gasped Audrey comically. ‘Are you suggesting something, Vivian darling, about my reputation as a mother? Because from what Caris tells me you’ve got some history of your own in that department!’
‘I was just saying that they’re only dogs,’ Vivian said.
‘I always think you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat a dog,’ said Audrey, to all of us. ‘Particularly men. I like a man who gives a dog a good tousling. I can’t stand it when you see a man sort of cross his legs. And the ones who claim to be allergic are the worst.’
‘I’m the one that feeds them, you know,’ said Vivian. ‘I’m the one that looks after them.’
‘Is this dogs or children, darling? I suppose you’d say it was both. The feeding hangs heavy in both cases. Still, locking them up is a little extreme. I don’t think I went down that road, even in my worst moments.’
‘They should have gone to kennels,’ said Adam. He had an uncomfortable expression on his face, as though he were slowly being suffocated by his own body.
‘I always thought that about all of you,’ Audrey said. ‘I remember there used to be a sign on the way down to Doniford that said “Cat Hotel”. Every time I passed it I used to wonder whether they’d make an exception.’
‘That isn’t actually all that funny,’ said Caris.
‘It might not seem funny to you,’ said Audrey. ‘I think people don’t really develop a sense of humour until they have children,’ she added, to me. ‘It’s hard to take things quite so seriously once you’ve wiped a few bottoms. Mine seem to think that I don’t know about their bottoms. Perhaps it’d be better if I didn’t. There’s a point at which one’s information becomes obsolete – it’s terribly bad for the brain. I often look at women my age and think that they’re just slated for extinction, like the dinosaurs.’
‘In a way, you did put them in kennels,’ Vivian said, as though the idea were not unpleasing to her. ‘The children. You did board them in a way.’
Audrey laughed. ‘What a horrible thing to say, darling! And I suppose you were the kennel master. Of course,’ she said, to me, ‘everyone forgets the fact that they were with their father. He’d never have let them go in a million years. But don’t try telling that to anyone. If you’re a woman people think you owe them an explanation. And if you ever find one that feels sorry for you it’s even worse! They start telling you what you should be doing to get them back, and sending you the names of lawyers and asking whether you’ve rung them.’
‘Janie,’ said Lisa, in her ‘discreet’ voice, ‘I asked you to take Hamish and play together outside.’
‘All right,’ said Janie. ‘I’m not going out that way, though.’
‘Go out the front,’ said Lisa, ‘where we can see you from the window.’
She came to where I stood and held out her hand for Hamish. He took it quite willingly. Together they went to the other do
or and a moment later I saw them through the window out on the lawn. Hamish was walking over the grass in a straight line, like a toy that had been wound up. Janie walked beside him in a crouched position that suggested vigilance.
‘And had you?’ said Caris.
‘Had I what, darling?’ said Audrey.
‘Rung them.’
‘What, rung a lawyer? Of course not! We never needed lawyers, did we, Vivian? We were all eminently reasonable. The only one who got lawyered was Vivian’s poor old husband. We lawyered him all the way to the Isle of Wight, if I remember.’
‘He threw a rock through the window,’ said Vivian, looking around her abjectly, as though expecting to find it still lying at her feet.
‘I’m not surprised he threw rocks, darling. He was terribly upset. Paul always said what a rotter he was, but then it suited him to say that. Men tend to take the path of least resistance, I find. He was actually rather sweet, wasn’t he, Vivian? And he did love you desperately. They had these pet names for one another. He was Hippo and she was – what were you, Vivian?’
‘Elephant,’ said Vivian miserably.
‘That’s right!’ said Audrey, delighted. ‘Paul told me that Ivybridge was full of them, you know, little figurines of hippos and elephants. They collected them, the two of them! They were absolutely everywhere, apparently, all over the house. Whatever happened to them?’
‘I threw them away,’ said Vivian.
‘You might have let him have them,’ said Audrey reproachfully.
‘He didn’t want them.’
‘Poor Hippo,’ said Audrey. ‘Poor submersible creature.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Caris, who was wearing her expression of wonderment again.
‘We’re talking about hippos and elephants,’ said Audrey, with an adversarial glint in her fronded eye. ‘You know what hippos and elephants are, don’t you? They’re big, sweet creatures that tolerate captivity. Some animals don’t, you know. They get sad and lethargic and their fur goes all mangy.’
Caris shook her head from side to side as though she were trying to dislodge something. Again I saw in her face the strange effort of self-realisation.
‘You make it sound so simple,’ she said.
‘Well, it was. Or is there something you don’t understand? Perhaps I’m being insensitive. The thing is, I never had the luxury of sensitivity. I had to take things as I found them. That’s the problem with children,’ she said, to me. ‘You go to the trouble of having them and then you find that all you’ve done is guarantee you’ll come in second place for ever more. I gave you life, sweetie,’ she said to Caris. ‘Wasn’t that enough?’
‘It wasn’t simple for me,’ said Caris.
‘That’s so typical,’ said Adam. ‘Little Miss Self-Obsessed. If anyone found it hard it was Brendon. He was only six.’
‘The same age as Janie,’ nodded Lisa.
‘It wasn’t as bad for him as it was for me,’ said Caris, with her lilting smile.
‘Brendon used to bang his head,’ said Vivian strangely.
‘What do you mean, bang his head?’ said Adam.
‘He used to bang his head against the wall. It made the most horrible sound.’
Brendon looked around at everybody with an expression of astonishment.
‘See?’ said Adam triumphantly. ‘It was worse for him.’
‘I couldn’t stop him,’ said Vivian. ‘He did it in his sleep, you see. I used to make him go to bed wearing a hat.’
Brendon laughed loudly.
‘The things that went on!’ marvelled Audrey, drawing her coat tighter around herself. ‘It’s a good thing I wasn’t here to see it all. I don’t think I could have borne it! You see, they used to be like puppies,’ she added, to me. ‘They tumbled around together like lion cubs. Then they started to develop human characteristics – that was where the problems began, with the human characteristics. Now they’re like those countries that are always at war. They’re dug in, if you see what I mean.’
‘I’m not at war,’ Caris said.
‘When you were puppies I could resolve your disputes, darling. It was all about who had whose thing. I was rather good at that. Whoever could hang on to it could keep it as far as I was concerned. It was when the human characteristics came along that I got out of my depth. I remember I started to think about shoes. I used to lie there at night and think about the silliest, most impractical shoes I could imagine. It was the only way I kept my sanity while all of you were at each other’s throats. The problem with shoes was that I could never wear them up here. I had to move to Doniford. I exchanged human characteristics for shoes,’ she said, to me. ‘It was the most enormous relief.’
‘You make it sound as though you planned it,’ said Caris, with a smile.
‘There’s no harm in a little planning,’ said Audrey. ‘A little planning goes a long way in human affairs. The people with characteristics don’t see it like that, though. They don’t like it when you’ve got characteristics of your own. Your father used to say that you were predators. They’ll take it all, he said, if you let them. They’ll rip your heart out and eat it if they have to.’
Adam, Caris and Brendon did not, it had to be admitted, look particularly capable of this gruesome feat. Adam still held the dogs awkwardly by their collars. Lisa stood next to him with the baby on her hip. I looked at the baby’s rubescent, startled face, which shone blankly like a little sun in the gloomy room, and at her plump, soft body, possessed by incomprehension. Beside Lisa, Caris looked black and monumental and unkempt. Her arms were folded and her face looked stormy and disordered, as though it had been taken apart and wrongly reassembled. Brendon sat blanched and prostrate in his chair. The air was charged with their mother’s force of will: next to her they seemed anomalous. Behind them Vivian haunted the cooker: she hovered, dark and frayed and threadlike. Audrey, compact, scented, her face blazing in its make-up, presented herself as an advertisement for the virtues of self-preservation.
‘Audrey,’ said Lisa, ‘I’m sure Paul didn’t actually mean that.’
‘That’s sweet of you,’ said Audrey vaguely. ‘But I think he probably did. Look at you all!’ she burst out with a gay laugh. ‘You look like a queue of dissatisfied customers! I think I’d better slip away, before I have to start apologising. You don’t ever want to apologise,’ she said, to me. ‘That’s how you give people the idea that you’ve done something wrong. Vivian darling, I just came up for that cheque. I think the postman must have pocketed it. It was due last week. It doesn’t matter, if you can just write me another now.’
Vivian stood over the saucepan of potatoes, which had begun to boil. Clouds of steam enveloped her head. The lid rattled on top of the pan and the water spilled out in little hissing spurts.
‘I don’t think I can,’ she said.
‘Usually I don’t like to bother you,’ said Audrey. ‘It’s so tiresome when people bother you, isn’t it? I think it must have got lost in the post. I’ve been lying in wait like a panther for the postman all week. When he comes I leap on him.’
‘But I didn’t post it,’ said Vivian.
‘And now I’ve had to come all the way up, and I had a thousand and one things I meant to do today – it was the last thing I wanted to do, to start coming up to Egypt! I always get embroiled when I come up here. Embroilment was not in the plan today. Today I was going to be all efficiency so that I could be carefree tomorrow.’
There was a silence in the kitchen. Audrey stood in an expectant pose, one hand slightly raised, as though to catch something she believed was about to be thrown to her, or as though she were holding a vessel from which she had just poured the last dregs of an important substance.
‘Vivian,’ she said meaningfully, ‘you do see how annoying it is for me to have to come up?’
Vivian said nothing. The baby made a plaintive sound.
‘In the middle of everything I had to start getting in the car and running around! Paul always said I wasn’t
to do that, you know,’ Audrey said, to me. ‘Don’t wear yourself out, he said. Women always wear themselves out. By the time they get to fifty they’re like a set of old tyres. They’ve lost their tread.’
The telephone rang in the hall and before Audrey had finished speaking Vivian had darted out of the room to answer it.
‘Has she gone?’ said Audrey smartly, looking around. ‘I didn’t know she could move so fast. It’s because she’s being evasive – she’s moving fast to evade the issue.’
‘She won’t see dad,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve been trying to get her to go in but she won’t. I don’t understand what’s going on. Dad said that none of you have been in. Only Uncle David.’
‘I sent David as a sop,’ said Audrey darkly. ‘I suspected your father of shenanigans, but now I’m not so sure. I think Vivian may be acting alone.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, mum.’
‘That was Laura,’ said Vivian abstractedly, coming in again. ‘I thought she was here but then the telephone rang and it was her. She’s in Doniford. I don’t know how she did it. She says she’s got the baby but the three older ones are still here. I haven’t seen them, have you? I don’t know how she did it,’ she said again. She looked around, as though thinking she might find her. ‘I was sure she was here.’
‘I was always good at that,’ said Audrey. ‘I used to leave you everywhere! Once I left Brendon in a shop. I completely forgot about him – he was there all afternoon. He hid like a little marsupial in a rack of clothes.’
‘You’ve had enough, don’t you think?’ said Vivian, looking at Audrey through her fringe. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’
‘Had enough of what, darling? I’ve certainly had enough of babies. That one’s lovely but the very sight of her makes me want to run a mile.’
‘She’s really no trouble to you, Audrey,’ said Lisa, who had gone slightly white. She clutched the baby to her chest and jiggled her up and down. ‘I don’t think you can accuse her of having been any trouble.’
