Saving Agnes

by Rachel Cusk

  ‘To David, yes. We decided last week.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Agnes. An atmosphere of candour having now been established, she felt confident to continue: ‘But – if you don’t mind my saying so – that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to leave, does it?’

  Jean took some time to consider the question. Agnes was struck by the thought that her soon-to-be ex-boss might be harbouring some old-fashioned ideas about wifely duty from which she herself might be able to dissuade her. Further delay, however, forced upon her the idea that such concealments could only hint at the importunate presence of scandal and subterfuge. Perhaps Jean had become pregnant and was being driven by shame towards a hasty union. The thought of it filled her with horror: not so much for the fallen Jean, but for the thought that her inquiry might provoke tearful confessions. She wished she could recall her words. Under such circumstances, they were both prurient and inflammatory. Despite the currently civilised tone of their discussions, she felt sure her relationship with Jean would not bear up beneath the strain.

  ‘I’m not just doing it for David,’ Jean finally declared. She pronounced her words carefully. ‘Although David certainly showed me the way and I am profoundly grateful to him for it. Our forthcoming marriage should make that gratitude adequately clear. But there are other, greater reasons for my resignation. I am dedicating my life to Jesus and all his works.’ She fixed Agnes with a steely eye. ‘And might I tell you, for me there could be no greater privilege.’

  Agnes’s horror doubled. Jean gave her a sinister smile. All at once, the thought of her leaving did not seem so very unfortunate. Agnes glanced at the door, calculating the time it would take to hurl herself through it should Jean decide to commence her ministry peremptorily with the doubter before her. Immediately, however, she repented her aversion. What business was it of hers if Jean found happiness in the employ of the Almighty? Was it, perhaps, her own recent sense of redundancy from that very realm that had brought from her such a response? Could she resent the certainty currently illuminating Jean’s features, knowing that she herself no longer possessed it? Might she even be jealous?

  ‘So,’ she said hurriedly, before she could work upon herself the conversion which, so far, Jean had not attempted to perform. ‘So, who’s replacing you? That is, if you don’t mind my asking. I mean, I don’t want it to seem as if I want you to go or anything, but it would be helpful to know what we can expect.’ She laughed shrilly. ‘I suppose they’ll be getting a real slavedriver. After a couple of months, we’ll probably be begging you to come back.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Jean, who did not seem to find this idea particularly amusing, ‘we were thinking of offering you the job.’

  Her tone suggested that, based on the evidence of their conversation, this offer could at any moment be withdrawn. Agnes stared at her in amazement.

  ‘Me?’ she said.

  A fierce wind tore round the corner of Elwood Street, hurdling the low garden walls like a greyhound. The trees groaned in the dark while empty tin cans rattled percussively on the pavements. Agnes sat in the house listening to the storm brewing. A draught was whistling through the crack in the wall and she felt its cold breath on the back of her neck. She moved from the sofa to the armchair. Now it was licking her leg like a fawning cat. It was hard to think amidst all this disturbance. She got up crossly and slammed out into the desolate garden.

  A deckchair left over from the summer was leaning against the wall, its striped innards fluttering darkly in the wind. She unfolded it and sat down. All around her were the blazing square of windows from other houses, astonished eyes in the darkness. She leaned back and looked at the moonless sky.

  ‘Agnes?’

  Merlin clattered out of the back door and stumbled into the garden. He wrapped his coat around him and crumpled his face against the wind.

  ‘Getting some air?’ he said blithely, trying to get into the spirit of things.

  ‘I’m trying to think.’

  ‘Do you want some help?’ He sat down cross-legged beside her. ‘I’m very good on cosmic issues and I can throw in man trouble at a discount.’

  ‘You sound very cheerful.’ Agnes peered at him through the shadows of trees. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘Very perceptive of you. Well, let’s just say that I’m no longer in bondage to the power-crazed lusts of the dominatrix.’ He sighed contentedly. ‘I seem once again to be my own man. Whatever that means.’

  ‘So what happened? Did she catch you reading Cosmopolitan?’

  ‘Nothing so tawdry.’ Merlin laughed. ‘I keep it well hidden beneath my desk. No, she has found a replacement, impossible though it may seem.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My male secretary, as it happens. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s sleeping my way to the top.’

  ‘Or his own.’

  ‘Or his own. Anyway, now that I’m an expert in the fickleness of womankind,’ he continued casually, ‘I may as well put it to good use.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, you know.’ Merlin rubbed his face with embarrassment. ‘Like, a girlfriend.’

  ‘You mean you’ve got one? Who is she?’

  ‘No, no, I don’t mean I’ve got one. I’m just – well, open to offers.’

  Agnes stared at him. She almost began to laugh, but the aspect of vulnerability in his face moved her instead to tenderness.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We’ve monopolised you for too long.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that! I’ve never really thought about it before, I suppose. I always assumed I was something of a late bloomer. Besides, I preferred having women as friends. Maybe it’s to do with my upbringing. I’ve been well schooled in the effects of male iniquity.’

  ‘So now you’ve had a close encounter with the effects of female iniquity, you reckon it’s time to get your own back.’

  ‘Not at all. It sounds quite strange, I know, but I think that what happened made me see myself in a different way. Not as a friend of women—’ he cackled melodramatically – ‘but as a seducer of them.’

  Agnes thought about this. At first it made her sad, as she thought it must do watching a favourite child grow up and hence away from those who had loved him first. And yet Merlin was no child! She had never thought before about how unusual he was. It seemed to her then that she never knew she had things until she lost them.

  ‘It won’t change anything,’ he said, watching her.

  She wondered if he would become suspicious, defensive, embittered; if he would watch her and Nina with new eyes, understanding things about them, blaming them for a hurt inflicted by someone else. For a moment she felt she would have done anything to protect him from the course which now opened out so temptingly before him. She could tell him, as no one had told her, the perils that awaited him there, the hidden traps and future pains to which innocence was blind. She could save him from it, as she herself had wanted to be saved!

  ‘It will,’ she said resignedly. ‘But perhaps that’s no bad thing, after all.’ She met his gaze. ‘I suppose you have to find out for yourself.’

  He nodded and leaned against her chair. They sat for a moment in silence. The storm appeared suddenly to abate and in the stillness Agnes felt they could have stayed like that for ever. Before long, however, a fresh gust of wind whipped around them and Merlin sat up.

  ‘So what’s up?’ He smiled cheerfully and added: ‘Doc?’

  ‘Well—’ Agnes folded her arms across her chest and sighed. ‘Jean’s leaving. They’ve offered me her job.’

  ‘But that’s great! It’s great, isn’t it?’

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Of course it isn’t! Why do you think I’m sitting out here, for heaven’s sake? Because I’m pleased about it?’

  The door slammed and Nina stumbled out into the garden.

  ‘What is this?’ she yelled against the wind. ‘A bloody earth summit?’

  ‘It’s an open-air careers forum,’ replied
Merlin, patting the space beside him. ‘Come and sit down. You might learn something.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Nina. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Not me,’ Merlin innocently replied. He pointed at Agnes. ‘Her.’

  ‘Why? What’s up?’

  Agnes threw Merlin a murderous glance.

  ‘I didn’t say anything!’ he protested.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Nina demanded.

  ‘Jean’s leaving,’ Agnes wearily repeated. ‘And they’ve offered me her job.’

  ‘Oh.’ Nina wrapped her coat around her chest. ‘Oh. What are you going to do?’

  ‘What is this?’ exclaimed Merlin. ‘I don’t understand. Somebody explain to me why I alone don’t feel depressed by this news. I thought I was supposed to be the sensitive one around here.’

  ‘Well,’ explained Nina. ‘It’s a big commitment. And Agnes isn’t even sure that she likes the company or the product. Am I right, Ag?’

  Agnes nodded.

  ‘I take it you two have patched things up,’ commented Merlin despondently. ‘My double-agent days are over.’

  ‘Would you want to spend the rest of your life at Diplomat’s Week?’ burst out Agnes. ‘I mean, I always thought it was something temporary – something to do while I was waiting for … for real life to begin, I suppose.’ She looked at them both imploringly. ‘If I accept, well, it will become real life.’

  ‘Is that so bad?’ said Merlin.

  ‘I think that rather depends,’ observed Nina, ‘on what she was expecting.’ She drew her knees up beneath her chin. ‘Unfortunately, things have an annoying way of not becoming real until they’re unpleasant.’ She laughed. ‘Do you remember how we were at college? We spent all our time drinking white wine and mock-identifying with the proletariat. Now I seem to spend all my time drinking bloody instant coffee and mock-identifying with students lounging around in sixteenth-century buildings.’

  ‘It’s a cross the middle classes have to bear,’ opined Merlin. ‘We come somewhere between hubris and entropy. Anyway, what was Agnes expecting?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Nina shrugged. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘Agnes,’ said Merlin sonorously. ‘Reveal to us your great expectations.’

  ‘Well—’ Agnes thought about it. ‘Aren’t everyone’s the same? Something glamorous, interesting, exciting—’

  ‘—utterly unobtainable,’ continued Merlin.

  A blast of wind roared around them.

  ‘But won’t you be in charge?’ said Nina into the sudden quiet of its subsidence.

  ‘I suppose so. Of the magazine, anyway.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t you make it exciting?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Change it, you know. Make it what you want.’

  ‘It’s called Diplomat’s Week, Nina,’ said Merlin, ‘I don’t think the scope is exactly endless.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ demanded Nina.

  ‘I’m not sure, but I seem to be being left behind,’ said Merlin mildly.

  ‘Why not?’ said Nina, addressing Agnes. ‘Diplomacy is quite interesting, actually. It’s politics. Also, it’s a weekly, so you could have a news section as well as features. You could give the magazine an opinion. That sort of thing makes you indispensable.’

  ‘I’m not sure how that would go down,’ said Agnes. ‘All we offer at the moment are restaurant reviews and lists of executive nightclubs. Our readership would probably simultaneously keel over if we mentioned politics.’

  ‘Get new readers!’ Nina cried. ‘Increase your circulation!’

  Agnes’s own circulation had already visibly increased. She felt her heart pounding against her ribcage.

  ‘Do you think I could?’ she said, ‘I mean, do you honestly think so?’

  ‘Try,’ Nina replied. ‘And find out.’

  ‘How much would they pay you?’ Merlin inquired.

  Agnes mentioned the sum Jean had proposed.

  ‘Well, for God’s sake,’ sighed Merlin exasperatedly. He slapped his forehead. ‘Why don’t you just do it for the money?’

  ‘The weirdest thing happened to me on my way here,’ said Greta, bounding into the office. ‘This guy came up to me and told me he thought I was beautiful. Can you believe it?’

  ‘What did you do?’ said Agnes fearfully.

  ‘Nothing. He just said it and then he walked away. I was kind of miffed, actually.’

  She seated herself on Agnes’s desk, giving Agnes the opportunity to view at close quarters the physiognomy so admired by her benign assailant.

  ‘You do look well,’ she commented. ‘You obviously needed a rest.’

  ‘I feel different,’ Greta agreed. ‘I feel – happy, I guess. I know it may sound stupid, but I’m beginning to think those bad feelings, the ones I told you about, well, that they might have gone away.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Agnes delightedly. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yeah. Neat, huh? I wonder if I’m going to meet just nice people from now on. I’ll feel like such a sleaze.’

  ‘But what do you think caused it?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe I faced my fear, like in those encounter groups. Maybe that son of a bitch did me a favour after all. I feel exorcised.’ She grinned. ‘Born again, even. Talking of which, are you taking this goddamned job or not? Have you made up your dumb mind?’

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘Yes you’ve made up your dumb mind, or yes you—’

  ‘I’m taking the job.’ Agnes interjected, while Greta leapt and cheered around the office. ‘Although what I’m going to do with all this power I can’t imagine. Make everyone wear orange uniforms to work or something.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Greta. ‘I look great in orange.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Agnes stared at her in horror. ‘Aren’t you going to be here?’

  ‘Well, no, I guess.’

  ‘But – but, Greta, you can’t! We’ll do everything equally, I promise. Oh, please stay! I won’t tell you what to do, I promise! Please!’

  ‘It wouldn’t be right,’ said Greta firmly. ‘Someone has to be boss. Besides, I’ve got other plans. I want to be a gardener.’

  ‘A gardener?’

  ‘Sure. I found this place in Highgate where I can learn. I start next month.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Well, it would be kind of peaceful, don’t you think? All those pretty flowers, and you get to wear overalls, and being outside all day is really good for your complexion as well.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Agnes looked at her miserably.

  ‘Don’t look so glum, honey! You can find some robot to do all the work, and you and me can have a great time going out and getting smashed. It’ll be neat.’

  ‘Actually,’ Agnes confessed, cheering up, ‘I can see you as a gardener.’

  ‘I knew you would. And you’ll do a better job here than that Bible-bashing hussy, and things will turn out just fine. Just you wait and see.’

  ‘Oh, Greta.’ Agnes found herself becoming quite tearful. ‘What will I do without you? I’ll be so lonely here.’

  ‘You need to have some fun,’ said Greta. ‘You need to find yourself a honey and that way you’ll feel fine.’

  ‘Oh.’ Agnes put a hand to her own face. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t suppose anyone would be interested in me now.’

  She felt a solitary tear roll down her cheek.

  ‘Stop that sniffling,’ said Greta. ‘Let’s go out and celebrate. Actually, I think I could stand a little action too, while we’re on the subject. Something sensitive for a change. Someone with a little innocence.’

  ‘Greta,’ said Agnes, ‘I have to introduce you to my friend Merlin.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  AGNES Day packed some clothes in a bag and left the house like someone leading a double life. It was cold and already dark, though she had left the office early so as to complete the commission in hand before the hours of witch and rat approache
d. The darkness made time uncertain. It floundered about the craven streets of north London like an amateur detective, looking for clues.

  She headed towards the Blackstock Road with a furtive air. Only that morning, she and Nina and Merlin had had their modest bid for the house in Elwood Street accepted, and as a newly inaugurated member of the property-owning classes she wondered if her currently charitable behaviour would be deemed appropriate by that mysterious breed. Their purchase of the house was in itself a moderately charitable act. They were, they were agreed, to save it from the jaws of death. They would seal the crack, support the outer wall, and thus prevent their warmth, friendship and security from leaking inadvertently out. Agnes’s parents had been delighted by this news. It was, they assured her, the right time in her life to be making such a move.

  She took the bus to Camden. On the high street, the yellow light overlaying the darkness gave it the look of an alien city. Beside the shuttered shop-fronts sacks of rubbish lurked lumpily in the shadows. A man rooted in a bin, tossing unwanted articles over his shoulder and putting others in his pockets. He dug out a half-eaten piece of pizza and raised it to his lips.

  Agnes got off the bus and walked back to the doorway where she had loitered that evening several weeks ago, dragging the sack of clothes behind her. A group of smartly dressed people walked past her, laughing noisily. Their perfumes collided behind them like skidding cars, with disastrous results. One of the women’s jewellery clanked as she walked, as if she were made of tin. Agnes saw something on the pavement and she bent down to pick it up. It was a black leather wallet. She opened it and saw it was full of money.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she cried to the retreating group.

  They walked on obliviously. She realised she had reached the doorstep, and she went to inspect it. It was empty. Moments later she guiltily remembered the wallet in her hand.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she called again, running to catch them up.

  One or two of the group heard her cries, and stopped.

  ‘I think you dropped this,’ she panted, thrusting the wallet into the hands of the bejewelled woman.

  ‘Oh.’ The woman examined it. ‘No, it’s not mine. Ted!’ she called to one of the men standing ahead. ‘Ted, is this yours?’