Rachel Cusk - In the Fold

‘It might have fallen on any of us,’ I observed.

‘That’s what I said to mum and dad,’ said Rebecca. ‘I said, look, why all the fuss about the insurance? It’s good that it’s come down. Nothing can insure you against a balcony falling on your head. Thank God it happened, I say,’ she concluded urgently.

Charlie laughed. ‘You do put things in the funniest way, Becca. Mark says she reverses into her sentences,’ she said, to me. Mark was Charlie’s boyfriend.

‘Mark’s in Germany,’ Rebecca informed me, darkly, as though I might find myself there too if I wasn’t careful.

‘For work,’ Charlie added. ‘Not on holiday.’

She appeared to find this distinction so significant that a moment later she said: ‘Does anybody go to Germany on holiday?’

‘My parents go there every year on their way to the Salzburg festival,’ I said.

‘Do they?’ she replied, contriving to seem enthusiastic. Her manner contributed to my mounting impression that I was being humoured.

‘They like music,’ I said.

‘I didn’t realise you came from such cultivated stock.’

‘Oh, they’re obsessed with it,’ Rebecca said, as though cultivation were generally agreed to be a nuisance. ‘They made him start violin lessons when he was about three. That’s why his fingers are such funny shapes.’

‘Let’s see!’ Charlie exclaimed.

I held out my hands in front of her with the fingers splayed.

‘My God,’ she said, ‘they are . That one bends inwards.’ She pointed at the smallest finger on my left hand. ‘Look, Becca, it’s almost at a right angle to the others.’

‘I know,’ said Rebecca absently.

‘It’s the equivalent of foot-binding!’ Charlie exclaimed.

‘Not quite,’ I said.

‘Actually,’ Charlie resumed after a pause, as though to pacify me, ‘Mark says Germany’s lovely.’

Rebecca gave an astringent laugh.

‘Of all the things I can think of to say about Germany, that’s about the least convincing. “Auschwitz? Yes, it was lovely.”’

‘I think he was talking about the countryside,’ said Charlie vaguely.

‘Oh, the countryside,’ said Rebecca. ‘Where people said they never noticed anything.’

‘In fact, he did mention a few strange things,’ Charlie said. She gave the impression of continually arriving late in the conversation. It was unclear whether this was deliberate or not.

‘Like what?’

‘His German associates disapprove of his use of public swimming pools. Apparently it’s become a sort of standing joke. One of them said to him that he hoped Mark washed properly afterwards and Mark asked him why and he said because the pools are used by black people. Don’t you think that’s horrible?’

Rebecca looked stricken. ‘And what did he say?’

‘I don’t know,’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t think he said anything.’

‘I would have come home,’ Rebecca declared. ‘I wouldn’t even have hesitated.’

‘It’s funny how little we know about each other, isn’t it?’ Charlie said, to me. ‘Mark’s collating a study for the EU about the way national populations spend their time.’

‘I wouldn’t even have hesitated,’ Rebecca said again.

‘Apparently the Germans do hardly any work. That’s not what you’d think, is it? The French spend all their time grooming. I can’t remember what the English do. Could it be cooking?’

‘I never cook,’ said Rebecca dramatically. ‘Never.’

‘Mark thinks it’s interesting, anyway,’ said Charlie, shrugging her shoulders.

‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ said Rebecca. ‘He’s a man. Any chance to be dispassionate — any chance to surrender your humanity in the face of a statistic!’

Charlie said to me, with a rueful expression: ‘You can see we’ve been working ourselves up into a fever of female indignation in your absence.’

‘You should have heard Michael when I was in labour!’ exclaimed Rebecca, turning her sights on me. ‘He’d look at his watch and tell me I couldn’t be in pain because it wasn’t time yet!’

Charlie laughed.

‘Poor Michael,’ she said, shaking her head and then laughing again.

‘Why?’ said Rebecca. ‘Why “poor Michael”? Why does everybody feel sorry for him?’

I saw that she was actually angry: there was a brief thickening of her voice as she spoke which betrayed the fact. Hamish was sitting on Rebecca’s lap in an attitude of extreme limpness and pallor. He jolted this way and that each time her body discharged its surfeit of discontent.

‘Everybody doesn’t feel sorry for me,’ I said.

‘It’s just that he’s only just walked through the door,’ Charlie added, in mitigation of the awkward way I had phrased my remark. ‘He’s only been here five minutes and people are accusing him of deformity, and strange cruelty to pregnant women.’

‘I’m not people ,’ Rebecca said.

She folded her arms and looked down into them as though something were cradled there.

‘Anyway,’ Charlie continued, ‘where have you two been ?’

I sensed that she meant to recompense me for the bitter welcome I had received and perhaps for something else too, for other conversations by which I hadn’t been wounded because I wasn’t there to hear them.

‘A friend of mine has a family farm in Somerset,’ I said. ‘Hamish and I went to help with the lambing.’

‘What fun!’ cried Charlie, by which cheery expostulation I deduced that Rebecca’s revelations had been more gruesome than ever. ‘Was this a he-friend or a she-friend?’

‘A he,’ I said, although I thought it was a strange, suggestive question to ask, particularly in Rebecca’s presence. I caught a glimpse of something I had noticed in Charlie before, a certain blindness to the concept of virtue. Then it struck me that the tastelessness of the comment might be Rebecca’s own.

‘And how do you know each other, you and this sheep-farmer?’

‘It’s his father who owns the farm. My friend is a chartered surveyor.’

‘Gosh,’ Charlie said. She wore the expression of someone who has just opened a door and found something unexpectedly horrible behind it. ‘A chartered surveyor from Somerset. He must be scintillating company. Or is he one of those people like in Tolstoy, who make a philosophical occasion of themselves?’

‘I’ve met him,’ Rebecca said, as though this indicated we were about to hear the last word on the subject. ‘He’s the sort of person who seems quite exciting at eighteen but then ends up middle-aged before he’s thirty.’

Chagrined, I turned away from the table and began to look for something I could give Hamish to eat. I opened the fridge and was surprised to see it lavishly stocked. There were numerous luxurious packets of things, olives and expensive-looking cheeses and handmade pasta like little wrapped gifts in muted shades of green and cream.

‘We’re making Michael cross,’ said Charlie behind me. ‘Let’s stop or he’ll leave us sitting here on our own. We were discussing the chartered surveyor and his universal values. Is he superannuated, like Becca says?’

‘He doesn’t think he’s young,’ I said. I was speaking into the open fridge and so I allowed myself to say it a little spitefully.

‘I sense we’re being mocked,’ Charlie said to Rebecca. ‘Is he going to be a chartered surveyor for the rest of his life?’

‘I don’t think so. He always expected he’d take over the farm one day.’

‘Imagine that. I can’t think of anything nicer. Or worse, I’m not sure which.’

‘Nor is he. He’s considering going up north to work for his father-in-law.’

‘Who’s the father-in-law?’