Rachel Cusk - In the Fold

‘I’ve only just got in,’ he said.

‘You’ve got your coat on,’ Lisa observed.

‘Do I have to?’

‘She’ll be really pleased,’ said Lisa flatly.

‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.

‘It’s only down the road,’ they both replied, whether by way of encouragement or the reverse it was unclear.

I picked up Hamish from where he sat in front of the television. He was like someone in a trance. His legs remained neatly crossed in front of him as he rose through the air.

‘How was your mum?’ Lisa said.

‘A little frayed,’ said Adam. ‘She’d drawn her eyebrows all wrong. One of them went up and the other one went down. The effect was —’

‘Oh, leave the poor woman alone!’ cried Lisa unexpectedly. ‘The thing is, Adam,’ she enlarged, after a pause, ‘she’s probably worried sick about your dad. She probably hasn’t got the time to think about herself.’

She put her finger on her chin and looked at him interestedly, as though by this Socratic pose hoping to draw him into a counter-debate.

‘She kept talking about money,’ said Adam. ‘On and on. Something about her allowance.’

‘You make her sound like a senile old lady!’ shrieked Lisa. ‘Go on, what did she actually say?’

‘I’ll tell you when I get back.’

‘What did she say?’

Adam lowered his voice.

‘She said dad and Vivian had stopped her allowance.’

Lisa’s blue eyes went very wide at this admission.

‘Christ on a stick,’ she said. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘It’s the first I’ve heard of any allowance. Dad never told me he still gave her money. I didn’t know what she was talking about.’

‘What d’you mean you didn’t know what she was talking about? How do you think she lives if your dad doesn’t pay her alimony?’ She pronounced it to rhyme with ‘pony’. ‘It’s her entitlement. After all,’ said Lisa significantly, ‘she’s the original wife.’

‘I never noticed you getting any alimony.’

‘Don’t start on all that,’ said Lisa.

‘They’ve been divorced for twenty-three years.’

Out in the hall I bent down and fastened the buttons of Hamish’s coat. We opened the door and went and stood outside on the gravel drive.

‘— bloody life sentence,’ said Adam.

‘How can you say that about your own mother?’ I heard Lisa say.

Presently Adam came out to join us. We set off down the cul-de-sac. I felt again the strange candour of the saturating grey light. I was aware of the grain of the beige mortar in the new brick walls, the spongy black surface of the road, the toothpick legs of the little brown birds that landed weightlessly on car bonnets and fences and then lit off again. A bit of twig detached itself from a bare branch somewhere near by and whirled slowly to the ground in front of us, and the world seemed paused for the moments of its spinning descent. I watched it make contact with the grey slab of the pavement.

All around us women were emerging from the front doors of houses. One of them greeted Adam and fell into step beside us.

‘How are you?’ said Adam, in a way that suggested he had forgotten her name.

‘Not too bad,’ she said. She had a large mouth that turned down at the corners when she smiled, so that she looked as though she were about to make irreverent commentary on her own pleasantries. ‘Yourself? We don’t usually see you around at this time of day. Doing the school run .’

‘Oh, fine. We’re fine. We’re lambing up at my father’s farm this week.’

‘Really?’ She gave the ironic smile again. Her plump lips were slathered in a grainy, bubble gum-pink lipstick. ‘That must be fun.’

I wasn’t sure whether she meant it was fun or not fun at all. I wondered if she knew. Several women were now moving with us along the pavement, singly or in groups of two or three. They appeared peculiarly burdened: with their bags and coats and pushchairs they had the processive bulk of a column of refugees. Their hair was whipped to and fro by the wind. I saw the short hair of one woman, dyed red, riven into furrows of colour like the pelt of an animal. Most of them had children with them and they were padded too — they staggered behind like small astronauts or stared out of their pushchairs paralysed by zip-up suits that made their arms and legs stick out stiffly. The woman beside us wore a tight, padded coat. It made a creaking sound when her arms swayed back and forth.

‘Chris is off work too,’ she said. ‘Sick leave.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Adam.

She laughed out of her pink, downturned mouth.

‘He’s feeling very sorry for himself,’ she said. ‘He had the snip on Monday.’

She made a scissors motion with her fingers. A cold feeling suffused the back of my neck.

‘Oh, right,’ said Adam uneasily.

We were approaching the school. The mothers were congregating in the grey playground, each arrival being integrated into the mass so that it had the appearance of an avid, fast-growing organism seething with noise and movement.

‘He’s taken the whole week off,’ she continued, ‘to convalesce. Typical male behaviour. I told him he should try having a ba—’

Her attention left us like a scrap of paper whipped up in a sudden wind. She was waving frantically. The coat creaked faster.

‘Hi! Hi!’ she called, her head periscoping on her neck.

‘How’s Chris?’ someone shouted.

‘Furious!’ yelled the woman, to whoops of female laughter.

In the classrooms that bordered the playground the children were pressing their small, indistinct faces to the window.

‘There she is,’ said Adam. ‘I’ll go in. You wait here.’

Hamish and I ambled around the playground in the mêlée, amidst the calling mothers and the screaming, running children, who appeared to be either fleeing an event or ecstatically approaching one, it was unclear which.

‘You’re going to school soon,’ I said to Hamish, who did not reply.

Adam came out holding the hand of a small girl who was crying hysterically. I saw him say something to her and point towards Hamish and me, at which sight her desolate mouth opened wider and tears ran in sheets down her face.

‘Sorry about this,’ he called. ‘I think she was expecting Lisa.’

‘I want my mummy!’ the girl shrieked. ‘I want my mummy!’

‘All right, Janie,’ said Adam.

‘Where is she? I want my mummy!’

‘You can have her in just a minute.’

‘I want her now!’

‘Janie,’ said Adam, ‘you’re embarrassing me. Please. What’s Hamish going to think?’

Janie’s crying rose a key.

‘Let’s just get your coat on,’ Adam persisted. ‘It’s cold. You need to wear your coat.’

Janie was permitted to work herself into a sort of fit over the coat, lying down on the playground and kicking her legs and turning her head from side to side so that long, wet strands of her fair hair were webbed across her face.

‘You’re going to get hurt,’ puffed Adam, bent over her with his hands gripping the tops of her arms. ‘I’m going to hurt you if you don’t let me put your coat on.’

This statement of intent had the effect both of incensing Janie and of bringing about, at the heart of her tantrum, a form of submission. Somehow Adam got her coat on and then we were walking back up the road. Several of the women looked at us as we passed. They appeared to disapprove of us.

‘You’d think it would be easy, but it’s not,’ Adam said, when Janie was walking ahead. ‘It’s not like it is with your own child. You get all the responsibility and none of the pleasure. Lisa says I try to control her too much.’

‘I want my mummy!’ bellowed Janie, activated by the mention of her mother’s name.