Rachel Cusk - In the Fold

‘Vivian,’ said Adam, ‘have you been to an optician lately?’

‘I don’t see what an optician’s going to do about my car!’ said Vivian, laughing rather wildly.

‘It might not be the car. It might be your eyes.’

‘There’s never been anything wrong with my eyes. It’s sitting up here in the dark all winter — they get unused to the sun. It isn’t my fault, you know! When I go to Spain,’ she said, to me, ‘the problem simply disappears, even though one’s in the brightest sun day in and day out. I barely have to wear my sunglasses!’

‘It’s p-probably stress,’ said Brendon. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with multicoloured flying saucers on it. His face looked slightly lopsided, as though he had slept heavily on it. ‘Have you ever tried St John’s wort, Vivian? I can give you some if you like — I’ve got l-loads.’

‘Look,’ said Adam, ‘I’ll drive you down to the hospital this afternoon. It’s really not such a big deal.’

‘We get no light here from November to March, you know,’ said Vivian, to me. ‘We’re north-facing, that’s the problem. The sun goes all the way around the other side of the hill, where nobody actually lives! I can’t think why they built Egypt here, can you? Perhaps they did it in the summer not knowing how it would get. Sometimes I wish I could just pick it up and turn it around the other way. There’s a day in April when it comes back — one day a little triangle of sunlight appears on the floor, and the next day it’s a little bigger, and the day after a little bigger and so on, and then before you know it it’s starting to get smaller again,’ she concluded morbidly.

‘If we could go straight after lunch that would suit me,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve got some things I have to do this afternoon.’

‘Sometimes I’ll open a door or a cupboard and without expecting it I’ll feel as though I’m falling into a void, a well of blackness,’ said Vivian. ‘I almost feel a sort of presence. Do you know,’ she said suddenly, ‘when that happens I can often hear someone speaking my name, quite clearly speaking it!’

‘Vivian? Is it all right if we go straight after lunch?’

Vivian looked at him roguishly. I wondered if she was drunk again.

‘I think I’d rather go tomorrow,’ she said.

‘But he’s coming home on Monday!’

‘Well, in that case,’ said Vivian, ‘I don’t see what everyone’s making such a fuss about.’

‘Vivian,’ said Lisa, smiling, ‘surely you’d want to see Paul while he’s in the hospital?’

‘When I had my operation,’ said Vivian, staring beadily at her, ‘I was in hospital for five days. He wouldn’t come and see me because he was worried about carrying foot and mouth on to Egypt.’

‘Well,’ said Adam, ‘at the time that was understandable, when you think about it.’

‘I was losing my womanhood!’ cried Vivian. ‘I was being mutilated, and all he cared about were his sheep!’

‘Don’t you think you should let bygones be bygones?’ said Lisa.

‘A lot of people did things then that they regret,’ said Adam. ‘Don Brice threatened the inspectors with a shotgun, for heaven’s sake.’

‘He never apologised!’

‘You know what he’s like,’ said Adam. ‘He doesn’t like it when people are ill.’

‘When I came back,’ said Vivian unsteadily, her cheeks ablaze, ‘he sent me to Coventry for forgetting to write the cheques before I left. I think that rather takes the cake, don’t you? Don’t you think that it does? He wouldn’t let me go upstairs until I’d sat at the desk and signed them all! And he wouldn’t speak to me — not a word!’

None of us said anything. Vivian looked around with a mixture of triumph and concern, as though she had unintentionally extinguished us into silence too.

‘Well,’ said Adam finally, ‘I don’t really know about that. All I know is that he repeatedly said that he wanted to see you. Doesn’t that make a difference?’

‘I know why he does,’ snapped Vivian. ‘He wants to know what I’m up to. Well, if he asks you can tell him — I’ve had enough! Tell him that and see what he says!’

‘I’d rather you told him yourself,’ said Adam.

‘You’ve got to tell him yourself,’ nodded Lisa. ‘He’s your husband, Vivian.’

‘He isn’t my husband, you know,’ said Vivian darkly. ‘Not in the eyes of the church he isn’t. I was already married, you see. In the eyes of the church we’re living in sin!’

‘Janie,’ said Lisa, alarmed, ‘can you take Hamish and play outside?’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Janie.

‘I’m asking you to,’ said Lisa.

‘I’m frightened of that boy.’

‘That’s between you and dad,’ said Adam.

There was the sound of footsteps out in the hall. A woman came into the room carrying a baby. Both of them were very large and fair-haired and wore light-coloured, clean but very crumpled clothing, so that in the gloom of the kitchen, in their detailed amplitude and luminosity they had the appearance of figures from a religious painting. The woman’s face had a sort of wistful purity to it, in the trenchant setting of her thick-bodied, abundant middle age, that deepened this impression. The yellow light from the window, which some peculiarity of the Hanburys’ kitchen dictated should remain in compact beams like those of a searchlight rather than diffuse itself around, fell squarely on her face and on the maze of creases in her clothes. Another fair-haired child, of about Hamish’s age, came behind her and stood clutching her skirt with his fists. Rosettes of colour were appended to his fat cheeks.

‘You’re all here,’ observed Laura, for it was she, recognisable to me only by the stubborn, little-girlish convexity of her forehead. ‘Have you all come up for lunch?’

There was something in the way she asked this question which made the matter of how to reply to it more complicated than it ought to have been.

‘Not really,’ said Adam. ‘We just dropped in.’

‘Because mummy’s running pretty low,’ Laura continued, heaving the baby around on her hip. ‘If you’re all going to stay someone should really go down to Doniford and pick up some things. We’ve been over at the stream,’ she added, with red in her face. ‘Toby’s been trying to spear a fish. Didn’t there used to be trout in there?’

‘They’ve netted it lower down,’ said Adam. ‘The people who bought the place at the bottom of the hill are starting a trout farm. Don’t you remember,’ he said to Brendon, ‘that was what dad went so crazy about last year.’

‘Spear it with what?’ asked Lisa. She wore an expression of distaste.

‘You just tie a penknife to the end of a stick,’ said Laura, as though Lisa was likely to try it.

‘He said he was going to put sh-sheep dip in the water,’ said Brendon. ‘But I don’t think he ever did.’

‘Do you want to run down or shall I?’ said Laura.

‘I was going to boil up these potatoes,’ said Vivian.

‘Laura,’ said Lisa, drawing confidentially to Laura’s side and speaking into her ear, ‘you might want to check on Rufus. He’s walking around with a crossbow. He says you gave it him.’

Laura looked straight ahead while Lisa addressed her ear, an expression of amusement on her face, as though she were hearing something entertaining on the telephone.

‘Is he being really awful?’ she said delightedly.

‘It’s just that he says you gave it him.’

‘He got it for his birthday,’ said Laura. ‘He’s quite a good shot, actually.’

‘The thing is,’ said Lisa discreetly, ‘the other children won’t go outside.’

‘They’ve just got to stand up to him!’ cried Laura. ‘Tell them to shout at him if he bothers them. Is he being really awful?’ she asked again. ‘Nobody at school invites him home any more, you know. They’ve been told not to invite him home. He’s quite upset about it.’