Rachel Cusk - In the Fold

‘To get back to Caris,’ she said, ‘I think she’s very distrustful of other women. Sometimes I think she doesn’t actually want to be a woman. I think that’s why she doesn’t have children. Also,’ she said, ‘I think she’s got a real father complex. Paul’s quite a manly man. He likes men to be men and women to be women — he’s quite vulgar in a way, actually. But then you realise that in fact he’s very principled. He’s not like most people; he’s not at all interested in money. Adam says he could get hundreds of thousands for his barns and for some of his land around Doniford, where the council are letting you build. He’s not like that at all, though. He sits on the planning committee and tries to get everything overturned. Adam says he’s made a lot of enemies in the town. Caris wants Egypt,’ she said, putting her mouth next to my ear, ‘but Adam’ll get it because he’s the son.’

‘Surely he’d leave it to all of them,’ I said.

‘Oh no,’ she replied, ‘not Paul. He’s too canny for that. He knows they’d fight over it. Anyway, they couldn’t all live there. They’d have to sell, or buy each other out. He’s not above playing games, though,’ she said. ‘He likes to say he’s changing his will every now and then. He likes to get them all running around. I think it makes him feel powerful.’

‘Maybe he will change it one day.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s always gone to the eldest son, down three generations. You wouldn’t get away with that in my family, I’m telling you! We’re three girls and a boy, though. My dad wouldn’t dare. We’ve got a female advantage.’

Lisa was flinging things in plastic bags as the cashier slid them along. She spoke so carelessly that I didn’t entirely believe her.

‘As I say, it’s Caris that really wants it,’ she said. ‘Me and Adam aren’t really bothered one way or the other. It’s sad, isn’t it, the way things work out?’

‘Maybe you’ll give it to her,’ I said.

‘We can’t do that!’ shrieked Lisa jovially. ‘Anyway, we’re more likely to sell it and maybe give her a share of the proceeds. I can’t really see myself living up there, can you, miles from anywhere, with all those sheep and no proper driveway — I’d go crackers. Once,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘Adam and I had to stay the night up there and we were woken up by this noise in our room, and do you know what it was? A bat! Don’t you think that’s disgusting? I can cope with wasps and even mice at a pinch — but bats!’

*

In the afternoon I tried to persuade Hamish to come with me again down to the harbour.

‘Hamish, shall we go and see the boats again?’

Hamish said something that sounded like ‘nofuck’.

‘Shall we go down to the harbour?’

‘Nofuck.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘No. Not not. No.’

‘We can look at the boats and find some nets,’ I said, wheedlingly.

Hamish was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in the sitting room. He kept turning his head away from me, like someone distracted at a party.

‘He’s all right if you want to leave him here,’ called Lisa from the kitchen. ‘There’s the Teletubbies about to come on.’

‘I’ll take you down on the rocks and we can find some seaweed and pebbles and things,’ I said. ‘Then we can make some pictures like the ones mummy used to make when she was little, and wait for the waves to come and wash them away.’

Rebecca had two ways of talking about the world of her childhood. One of them was as a place where everything was wrong. The other was as a place where everything was right.

‘Tick crot,’ said Hamish, turning his head away from me in a manner I was beginning to find infuriating. ‘Ya ya ya.’

I realised that it was one of the features of our unpredictable family life that Hamish generally chose not to be refractory. He had been stubborn only in his refusal to speak, which now that I thought about it was almost the only area of his existence that fell entirely within his control.

‘Stop talking nonsense,’ I said crossly. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

I held out my hand but he disdained it like a duchess, with his nose in the air, so I grabbed his arm and tried to yank him to his feet. So solid was his resistance that he appeared willing to allow his arm to be torn from his body rather than move. He wanted no part of my scheme, to leave this warm room and go out there in the grey day, with the cold, tea-coloured sea brimming at the harbour wall, and the cars and the boats and the people and the wind, all nagging like things heard in sleep, pricking the unconscious and dragging it into wakefulness. I, too, began to doubt that it would be entirely pleasant, and like a little blade my doubt nicked my anger and it all came running out, hot and bilious. I would go on my walk, I would! And Hamish would accompany me, if only for the reason that there was no one on earth except him whom I could compel to do anything! I tried to wrestle him to his feet and discovered that it was much more difficult than wrestling him off his feet. He kicked me and started batting at me with his hands. I picked up his squirming, vigorous body and started walking with it towards the door. He roared in my ear. I felt the hot, wet spurt of his tears on my cheek. Holding him I experienced, suddenly, a longing for the time when he was a baby and I used to walk him up and down the creaking floorboards at Nimrod Street, holding him upright just as I was now, with his hot face buried in my neck and shoulder. He, too, seemed to recall those uncomplicated interludes, for as I walked with him towards the door he ceased to struggle and his body adhered to mine, grasping me as though with tentacles of ferocious need. His face, though bigger than it was, still fitted in my neck and shoulder. In Lisa and Adam’s well-carpeted hall I walked him about while he sobbed. It seemed truly a pity to me that he’d had to get so big, and yet retain the naked ability to feel. In the end I had to go back into the sitting room and sit down with him plastered over my front, while Lisa tiptoed reverently around us. After a while I looked down and saw that he had passed silently into sleep. His big, beaky face lay abandoned an inch or two from mine. I looked for a while through the rectangular window at the motionless vista of the garden and then my gaze contracted to the beige walls, so that in the silence I was conscious of nothing but the hot body that lay on my chest; and my consciousness of it grew labyrinthine, interior, until I became lost in the red folds of physical proximity and wandered about, asleep, in the drama there.

When I awoke the room was dim and full of shadow, as though it were being stealthily colonised by the natural forces of neglect. A long slice of light showed around the edge of the kitchen door. Behind it I could hear voices. There was a smell of cooking and the clattering of pots and pans. I heard Adam say:

‘Don’t put the garlic in now. It’ll burn.’

Janie said, ‘I hate garlic. I won’t eat it if it’s got garlic.’

‘Shall I not put it in then?’ said Lisa.

‘Yes, in a minute.’

‘No!’ wailed Janie. ‘Don’t!’

‘Is there any point putting it in if she’s not going to eat it?’

‘She’s not the only pebble on the beach. You’re not the only pebble on the beach, young lady.’

‘But hon,’ said Lisa, ‘think about it, it’s only one tiny thing. You probably won’t even notice the difference.’

‘Neither will she then.’

Hamish stirred on my chest and sat up. There was something seismic in our parting, like the crusty parting of the surface of the earth when the underlying plates force themselves violently upwards.