by Rachel Cusk
As she walked home, Agnes passed a tree which had been struck by lightning. Its demise was not recent. In fact, Agnes had never known it to be any other way. She and Tom had used to play there, climbing up into its truncated top where there had formed a high, hollowed dish lined with soft moss. It had stumpy arms which the climber could easily grasp, scorched smooth with few scratchy twigs. They had delighted in its useful deformity and would spend hours there while the wheat-fields planed flatly around them to the horizon, muddybrown and stark in winter, waving golden in summer.
Agnes jumped over the small ditch beside the road and began to climb the tree. It was much easier than she remembered. In less than a minute she was at the top of the crippled trunk. She heaved herself over the side and sat down in the bowl of its distended open neck. Almost immediately she was suffused with warmth. It had always been mysteriously warm in that tree, she remembered. This was probably owing to the shelter it provided against the biting East Anglian winds, but Agnes and Tom had entertained the theory that the fire which smote it still coursed, ghost-like, around its blackened remains.
She drew up her knees and hugged them against her chest, rocking back and forth. In such historic locations, one could allow the years to roll back unabated. She thought of all the time she had seen pass and felt sad; not for its irretrievability, for she was haunted by its taste and tincture still; but for herself, helpless as she had so often been before the things which befell her, bewildered and credulous and afraid. And for the fact that all along she had been there, always there, trailing along in the wake of her aspirations, driving through her days with eyes fixed in a rear-view mirror on the road behind; always there, popping up in every memory like coincidence, the reluctant and culpable star of her own recollections.
The dark furrows striating the iron-hard winter fields fanned out around her to the horizon. She had been here many times before. She knew them by heart. Their familiarity struck her just then as rather menacing, as if she had come to the end of something. Only yesterday, had she not demanded of her mother to know when it would be, this defining moment, this ‘in the end’ that everybody spoke of? Well, perhaps it was here. She knew this place. The connection crackled round her like an electric circuit, bleakly synchronising things. Perhaps she had no more time to start again. Perhaps she would not be saved. Indeed, there was an apocalypse at hand and it was perhaps no more than this: that she had been here before!
Her history welled up in her: things burned, frozen, buried alive, a whole disordered catalogue of stories told or hidden. She alone could make sense of them. She alone could tell it as it was, for who else would remember? She must begin! She would begin, with the seeds of a starting place planted here in her revisiting, to tell of the mysterious normality of things, of their unexceptional symmetry, of the uninterrupted rise and fall of days; of how one could wait, could waste as much time as there was between birth and burial waiting for things that never came!
The low plain of the darkening sky cupped over her like a giant hand, creased with clouds. She felt herself growing smaller before it, until finally she was tiny and the years had gone back and it was summer, and she was tasting once again the loveliness of unknowing, the certainty of belief, the delicious prospect of a future as yet untold. She had been in no hurry – she had had all the time in the world; and yet still she had thought then that it would be better than this. She raised herself on her knees and peered over the top of the tree. A sudden blast of icy wind slapped her cheeks. In dreams, she had perched in its withered breast as if at the prow of a ship: the wind coming off the fields into her hair, the sun nipplewarm and magnetic, the wheat a dragonfly ocean of swaying stalks over which they appeared to be sailing.
Chapter Twenty-three
AGNES came back from her parents’ house to a London cloaked with the promise of a storm. Although it was still early evening King’s Cross was deserted, as if a nuclear alert had sounded moments before her arrival. The air smelled oddly grassy and fresh. A strong wind whipped down the Gray’s Inn Road, causing litter to scuttle and fly along the pavements. Agnes got on the underground, scenting change.
When she got home, Nina was lounging around the house as if she lived there. By now the wind was bellowing through the empty streets and as Agnes entered the hall a sudden gust slammed the door ferociously shut behind her. Nina jumped up nervously from the sofa at the sound and Agnes saw her make a dash for the staircase. She herself, however, had had precisely that exigent means of escape in mind, and the two of them encountered one another at the foot of the stairs like embarrassed acquaintances caught in a chemist’s buying condoms.
‘I thought you were away,’ accused Nina.
‘I was,’ replied Agnes.
She surrendered the stairs by stepping back to allow her through. Nina nodded curtly and began to proceed up them. Agnes watched her legs disappearing from view, and for what seemed like the first time, felt a physical ache of regret for the sad demise of their friendship.
‘Nina!’ she called up the stairs. ‘Nina, can we talk? Please?’
There was silence on the upper floor. Agnes took comfort from the sound, deducing that if Nina had not exactly retracted her escape, she had at least suspended it in order to consider her offer. Presently, a long sigh was emitted from the top of the stairwell.
‘Okay.’ She began a suspicious descent. ‘If you want.’
Agnes remained frozen at the foot of the stairs while Nina proceeded sullenly past her. She had not expected, after making her initial overture, to be afforded the lion’s share of the work involved in drawing up some sort of armistice. She had assumed that her concession would immediately precipitate a warm and tearful reunion. Nina sat leadenly on the sofa and looked resentful. Agnes realised she had always been rather frightened of Nina, and this thought, combined with a sudden sensation of recklessness induced by the oddly comforting realisation that what was already lost could not be lost again, conspired to make her all at once quite brave.
‘Don’t do that!’ she cried, marching into the sitting-room.
‘What? Do what?’
‘Slouch around like a – like a teenager!’
She stood in front of her and glared down. Nina, who had been caught unawares by her attack, now attempted to marshal her forces.
‘Since when were you my mother?’ she said, folding her arms and pinching up her face in a manner which somehow managed to give more truth to Agnes’s accusation than she herself had been able to do.
‘There you go again! You sound about fourteen! It’s pathetic, it’s—’ Agnes felt weak with daring. She thought of sitting down, but decided her present stance afforded her a certain authority. ‘It’s beneath you,’ she continued masterfully. ‘We don’t have to talk, okay? We don’t have to do anything! We’re grown up, in case you hadn’t noticed, so don’t give me all that grudging aquiescence.’
Nina observed a brief, dumbfounded silence.
‘My mother would never say grudging acquiescence,’ she pointed out finally.
‘Your mother is a – a suburban android with furry seat covers on the loo!’
Nina considered this.
‘How do you know that?’ she said.
‘I don’t,’ Agnes confessed.
‘Well, actually, she doesn’t have furry seat covers,’ Nina said, quite amiably. ‘That kind of thing is class war in East Sheen. Frilly valances, now that’s another story.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Agnes replied, attempting to prolong this unexpected vein of good humour. ‘I underestimated her. What is a valance, anyway?’
‘Valance,’ said Nina, getting up, ‘is where old housewives go to die. Shall I make some coffee?’
Agnes wondered if she was asking for permission, and if so, whether this suggested a new and entirely unbargained-for respect.
‘I’ll help,’ she said, leaving nothing to chance.
The strain of politeness lent things a certain awkwardness. In the kitchen, Nina filled the kettle whi
le Agnes got mugs out of the cupboard. In the course of their duties they almost collided with one another, and found themselves engaging in a quickstep of embarrassed avoidance like strangers on a pavement.
‘Sorry,’ they said in unison.
Agnes wondered if this understated apology were sufficient to encompass the full range of their transgressions.
‘How’s Jack?’ she nobly inquired, extending the hand of friendship still further. Nina visibly stiffened.
‘Jack and I aren’t seeing each other any more.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘What for? It wasn’t working. It was wrong. I was wrong,’ she added, plugging in the kettle.
She turned around to face Agnes, as if expecting her to speak. Agnes, taken by surprise, could only emit a stunned silence.
‘I got confused, I suppose,’ Nina continued presently. She turned away again and busied herself with the coffee cups. Her shaking hands rattled them against the counter-top. ‘I thought I didn’t need people, not really. But I started needing him. I don’t know why.’
‘You loved him,’ Agnes interjected, feeling herself once more to be on known territory.
‘Maybe,’ shrugged Nina. ‘But I didn’t like him. Is that possible? I always thought that sort of talk was for people who didn’t know their own minds, but there you go.’
Agnes found herself on the verge of agreeing wholeheartedly with the former part of this statement, but realised in time that to do so might merely provide evidence as to the truth of the latter.
‘Why didn’t you like him?’ she inquired.
‘Well, to begin with it was little things, I suppose. I found myself having to convince myself that he had reasons for doing this or that. It was as if I was making excuses for him. I just – pretended not to notice things.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Haven’t you ever done that? Wanted something so much that you’ll do anything, tell yourself any kind of lie, just to keep believing in it? It’s like – it’s like some kind of addiction.’
‘But you can’t know everything!’ Agnes cried. ‘People are more – mysterious than that, aren’t they? Perhaps he would have surprised you. How could you know?’
‘That’s the difference between you and me,’ Nina replied. She smiled. ‘You say mysterious, I say shifty. What’s your idea of mystery, anyway? Your heart’s desire ingesting hard drugs on the quiet while you wring your hands in the bedroom and wonder what you’re doing wrong?’
Agnes gasped at the cruelty of this blow.
‘But you knew,’ she said. ‘I may have been stupid, but you knew!’
‘I know,’ said Nina unhappily. ‘All I’m saying is that none of us are innocent. I was looking for a way of holding on to Jack, and that was it. Like we had a secret and we were banding together.’ She laughed strangely. ‘I was in the boys’ club for a while there. The truth is that I didn’t want to admit I was disappointed in him. I convinced myself it was in your best interests not to know – see, there’s your mystery! I thought I was saving you.’ She drew herself up. ‘But I acted disloyally and I apologise.’
‘That’s okay,’ Agnes replied, able to be generous now that her name had been cleared on at least one count. ‘But I shouldn’t be saved from things!’ she added.
‘What do you mean?’ Nina looked rather startled.
‘I don’t really know,’ Agnes confessed. ‘I suppose I meant that I shouldn’t need to be saved from things. It makes me sound so – naïve. But how else am I supposed to learn if I’m never told? How am I supposed to know?’
‘Well—’ Nina looked perplexed. ‘Like I said, it isn’t always a question of being told, is it? I mean, sometimes you just have to find things out for yourself.’
‘But how?’ Agnes cried. ‘By telepathy? I mean, where did everyone else learn how the world works? Sometimes I feel as if I’ve missed something, some vital clue that would make everything clear.’ She gazed out of the kitchen window, where the dark trees waved their long branches in the wind like frantic, keening arms. ‘And then sometimes I think that I do know things, things that no one else knows.’
‘Like what?’ said Nina suspiciously.
‘Oh, nothing useful! Things that aren’t really there, at any rate. Metaphors, I suppose you’d call them. As if everything is actually something else.’
‘Oh.’
‘So really it’s no surprise that I miss the obvious,’ Agnes continued, ‘when nothing is as it seems.’
Nina leaned against a cupboard and looked thoughtful.
‘I’ve always thought it was more a question of your distorting the truth rather than not seeing it,’ she said.
‘Why would I do that?’ said Agnes nervously. She stared at the floor. She was not accustomed to hearing herself so frankly discussed, although it did occur to her that this might simply be because she wasn’t normally present when such discussions were held.
‘How should I know? Maybe you don’t like the way things are. Maybe you want to protect yourself. Everyone selects certain things from what’s around them to conform with their idea of how they want life to be. Like I’ve always gone for outlandish, subversive things because I’m afraid of being normal.’
‘Really?’ Agnes was surprised.
‘So would you,’ said Nina, ‘if you’d grown up in East Sheen.’
‘I’ve always wanted to be normal,’ Agnes confessed.
Nina raised her eyebrows. Agnes felt they were like two old women comparing varicose veins, each secretly marvelling at the other’s worse defect beside their own known one.
‘Like I said,’ Nina continued. ‘Everyone has their own way of dealing with things. Sometimes it’s hard to admit the truth. Like with Jack. I was well on the way to hating myself, because it seemed easier than hating him. Do you see what I’m saying? Sometimes we’ll ruin everything, sacrifice everything, just so that one thing can be perfect.’
‘But nothing is perfect!’ said Agnes. The truth of her words dawned on her only after she had said them. It seemed to her then the saddest thing she had ever known. ‘Nothing is,’ she repeated.
‘No,’ said Nina, putting a friendly arm around her. ‘But some things are pretty good.’
Agnes was in Jean’s office. Beyond the window a low sky darkened, threatening rain. A gust of wind rattled the glass against the stainless steel casing like something trying to get in. Agnes glanced at the clock on the wall and synchronised her watch with it to pass the time. Opposite her, Jean appeared to be recounting the story of her life.
‘In those days I was doing your job, although the company was much smaller then, of course. There was something rather – cosy about it. Things were quite different then. Everyone knew everybody else.’
‘Of course,’ echoed Agnes belatedly. Even in this alien era in the history of Diplomat’s Week, she knew everyone trapped within its portals and had effectively tired of the vast majority. Figures bent against the wind scurried past on the pavement outside.
‘We were almost like a family,’ Jean continued sighingly. ‘That was our philosophy, sort of “keep it in the family”. So when the editor, my boss, finally went – well, it seemed very natural.’
‘Had he been ill for long?’
‘Excuse me? Oh, no! Oh no, you misunderstand me! Goodness no, he didn’t die. He retired.’
‘Oh.’
‘So it seemed natural that I would – you know—’
‘Take over?’
‘Exactly. But I hadn’t expected it, not at all! You could have knocked me over with a feather when they told me. Once the first thrill had passed, of course, I became terribly nervous. What did I know about running a department? I was like you – a young girl with no real ambitions of my own. I didn’t think I’d be able to keep up. All the cut and thrust, you know. But then the MD said to me, “Jean,” he said, “what this place needs is the feminine touch.” I felt much better after that.’
Agnes twitched nervously. She longed for Gr
eta, who was taking a few days off. It was hard to laugh at things on one’s own. One got sucked in.
‘So what do you think, dear?’ said Jean.
‘About what?’
‘Well – well, about everything.’ She waved her hands distractedly in the air, a gesture apparently intended to encompass global concerns.
‘What do you mean?’ Agnes persisted.
‘Agnes, dear, haven’t you listened to a word I’ve been saying?’
‘Yes, you told me about the old days and your boss leaving,’ she obediently repeated. ‘And then—’
‘Oh dear,’ Jean interjected. ‘We don’t seem to be understanding one another very well, do we?’
‘It’s not my fault!’ Agnes cried impatiently. ‘You won’t tell me what you’re trying to say! Just say it in a way I can understand.’
‘I’m leaving,’ Jean blurted out. ‘And there’s really no need—’
‘You see, it wasn’t so hard!’ said Agnes. ‘It’s really very easy. You should try it more often.’
‘I admit I might not have made things clear,’ Jean conceded nobly. ‘It’s all been rather sudden, you see. These upheavals can be quite stressful, I’ve found.’
‘I’m sure,’ Agnes politely returned. ‘But you’ll be surprised how quickly one adapts.’
A spatter of rain hit the window with a gravelly sound. Old autumn leaves were hurled acrobatically into the air by a fierce gust of wind. The disturbance outside made the atmosphere within the office suddenly rather pleasant. They sat in companionable silence. Agnes thought of Jean leaving, and decided she might even miss her.
‘So why are you leaving?’ she inquired presently, as the still-mysterious fact of it occurred to her.
‘I’m getting married.’
‘To Dave?’
