Rachel Cusk - In the Fold

*

Later I saw the gilded figure of Hamish running across the yard with his hair flying crazily in the wind and a smile on his face so large and unaccustomed that at first I thought he must be in pain.

‘Look!’ he shrieked. ‘Look!’

He was clutching something in his hand. Lisa and Janie and the baby were behind him, moving through the yard looking this way and that, like tourists. Lisa was wearing sunglasses.

‘Look!’

‘What is it?’ I asked. It was a piece of paper but I couldn’t prise it out of his fist.

‘You got a letter from mummy, didn’t you, Hamish?’ said Lisa, tucking a strand of hair sympathetically behind his ear as though he were a poor orphan.

‘Did you?’ I said, simulating pleasure. I was surprised to feel a little stab of jealousy at this revelation. Why should she be glorified for writing, when she was forced to do it simply by the fact of her absence? And why, if she was in the mood for writing letters, didn’t she write one to me?

‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, pet?’ Lisa continued, pityingly.

‘He can’t even read,’ said Janie. ‘Why is she sending him letters if he can’t even read?’

Had Hamish not been there I might have applauded this line of questioning, and perhaps hazarded the explanation that the letter had been sent out of a confused sense of guilt, mixed with a craven liking for showy, attention-seeking gestures which required the minimum of effort and carried high parental prestige.

‘Why doesn’t she just come and see him?’ Janie added.

‘She’s busy this week,’ I said, because Lisa was listening closely. ‘She’s working. She’s got a big exhibition she’s putting on at an art gallery.’

‘Clever mummy,’ said Lisa, with a meaningful intonation.

‘We did two this morning,’ said Adam heartily. His face was red and his jacket was covered in wisps of straw. ‘I had to get Michael in there at gunpoint. He thought he might have to put his hand up something.’

‘Men!’ exclaimed Lisa, tutting. ‘It’s perfectly natural, you know,’ she said to me. ‘There’s nothing disgusting about it.’

‘There wasn’t much to do,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’

‘Try saying that when you’ve got a prolapsed ewe, or twins, or the cord tied round somebody’s neck,’ said Adam grimly. ‘You’d know what the fuss was about then.’

‘Laura’s up at the house,’ said Lisa. ‘I said you’d pop in and say hello.’

I remembered Laura very vaguely, as a laughing, self-possessed girl with no particular lack of grace or attractiveness, who nevertheless advanced common sense as her chief characteristic and virtue. I remembered her round, flat, white, well-modelled face, like the blank, unpainted face of a Venetian mask, from which she wore her fair hair pulled back by an Alice band. When we passed through the courtyard next to the house we saw two children playing, both extremely fair and unkempt, a boy of about eight and a slightly smaller girl. Adam greeted them, which did not prevent the boy from raising what appeared to be a small crossbow and pointing it directly at him.

‘Put that down, Rufus,’ said Adam, quite angrily. ‘Can’t you see there are children around?’

‘I’m not pointing it at them,’ said Rufus. I couldn’t tell whether he liked the fact that nobody had accused him of being a child himself, or not.

‘You shouldn’t point that thing at anybody,’ said Adam. ‘Where did you get it from?’

Rufus shrugged.

‘Mum gave it to me,’ he said.

‘I’m sure she didn’t.’

‘She did!’ squeaked the little girl.

‘Good God,’ said Adam. ‘What will she think of next?’

I guessed that these were Laura’s children. Common sense was clearly no longer something she went in for.

‘Take it out to the field, will you?’ continued Adam. ‘I don’t want it anywhere near the house.’

‘You really shouldn’t be playing with things like that, Rufus,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s actually not very nice.’

‘It’s none of your business!’ shouted Rufus.

‘Well, it is my business if one of my children gets hurt,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it, Rufus?’

‘No one’s got hurt! I haven’t done anything wrong!’ yelled Rufus furiously. ‘We were just playing!’

He stormed out of the courtyard and a minute later, with a look of uncertainty, his sister followed him.

‘Honestly,’ said Lisa, rolling her eyes, ‘I only have to come up here and I start to think I’ve gone mad.’

Inside the house Laura was nowhere to be seen. Vivian and Brendon were sitting hunched at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. After the sunlight outside it looked as though they were sitting in a great cavern, or in the belly of a gigantic animal with the ceiling beams as its black, huge ribs. I noticed that Brendon had a large piece of gauze taped to his forehead.

‘Oh, hello,’ said Vivian presently, lifting her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know you were still here.’

‘We’ve just knocked off,’ said Adam.

‘Well, I don’t see how I can possibly be expected to feed you all! Laura’s turned up with her four and Caris will be back in a moment wanting feeding and I haven’t been able to get down to Doniford all week, you know, and I really think someone might have thought to bring just a loaf of bread or a bit of cheese with them,’ she said. ‘It’s incredible, really, how little people think. There’s Laura with a fridge at home the size of a room, all full of whatever it is her children will eat, and she takes it upon herself to have lunch here, where she says everything’s past its sell-by date. She’s been round all the cupboards, taking things out and throwing them away! Then she complains because there’s nothing left!’

‘Don’t worry, Vivian,’ said Lisa sourly. ‘We won’t be troubling you for anything to eat.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Vivian, ‘I’m sure I can find something, it’s just that you mustn’t mind what it is. I was going to boil up these potatoes, that’s all. I was sure there was a bit of ham in the larder but it seems to have gone. Perhaps the dogs took it.’

‘Mine don’t really eat ham,’ said Lisa. ‘Just a bit of pasta will be fine.’

‘I don’t know that we have pasta,’ said Vivian. She said it to rhyme with ‘faster’. ‘That’s all anybody eats now, isn’t it? When I was little we used to call it worms.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ said Janie.

‘We dropped in on dad yesterday,’ said Adam, in a significant voice. ‘He’s feeling a bit lonely.’

‘Is he?’ said Vivian. She looked around, as though expecting someone to step forward and explain why.

‘He’d like to see you,’ said Adam. ‘I think he was expecting you a couple of days ago.’

There was a silence.

‘Well,’ said Vivian finally, ‘to be completely honest, I’ve been having a few problems with the car.’

She shook her hair down over her face and then looked up at us innocently through her fringe.

‘The car?’

‘Yes. I don’t really like to drive it.’

‘Why not?’

‘There’s something wrong with the windscreen. Something’s happened to the glass.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Adam. ‘Has it broken?’

‘Oh no, nothing like that. I think it’s just got a bit old.’

‘Old?’

‘What are you talking about, Vivian?’ said Lisa.

‘It’s you who aren’t listening! I’ve told you, the glass has got too old to see through!’

With shaking hands Vivian flayed the skin from a potato and dropped it, scalped, back into the muddy pile from which she had taken it. Brendon picked it out fastidiously with his fingers and put it with the others in a saucepan of water.