Rachel Cusk - In the Fold

‘We never realised she was such a — such a bitch,’ Adam said in a thick voice. ‘Now that she’s gone, well — Caris says it’s like a spell has been lifted, a curse almost. And she’s right, the whole place feels different. It’s like it used to be.’

‘When?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Like it used to be when?’

Adam put his hand over the receiver. I heard him say, ‘It’s Michael,’ in muffled tones to someone else in the room.

‘Anyway,’ he resumed, ‘the big news is that mum’s moving back up. She’s selling her place in Doniford and moving back up to be with dad. Property in Doniford’s gone through the roof — she got a valuation today and it’s enough to make your eyes water. One thing’s for certain, she and dad won’t have to worry about money again. She’s selling right at the top of the market and she bought right at the bottom. They couldn’t have done it better if they’d planned it.’

I said: ‘Vivian seemed to think they had.’

‘Had what?’

‘Planned it.’

‘Oh, that nonsense,’ Adam said roughly. ‘Actually, when we were searching the house we found a letter. Before we knew about the dogs, this was. We were a bit, you know, concerned at that point because Vivian seemed to have vanished into thin air and her breakfast things were still on the table and her car was in the drive. It all seemed a bit suspicious. It almost looked like someone had offed her, until dad found this letter she’d put on his desk. She’d gone and got a solicitor in Doniford to write it. At least she had the decency to do that.’

‘What did it say?’

‘Oh, it was just a formal thing,’ Adam said. ‘You know, stating that she was transferring the deeds to the farm back to dad and all that. As I say, at least she had the common decency. It’s a big relief actually. For a second there …’ He tailed off. ‘Dad says it was his moment of weakness,’ he continued. ‘His one real moment of weakness in his life. Apparently she had him in an impossible situation. He let his heart rule his head — I suppose you’d say he forgot who he was. You should see him now, though. He’s like a spring lamb. They’re even talking about getting more dogs. Mum’s got some aristocratic German breed she’s after, great big things. All white, of course. Dad says it’ll look like we’ve got polar bears at Egypt. They’re at it already, as you might have guessed. The old routine.’

There was a silence in which some receding object seemed to be contained: a pause like a vista of the sea through which a boat was making its way, dwindling and becoming indistinct while barely seeming to move at all.

‘I really rang to ask about Toby,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Laura’s little boy. Toby.’

‘Oh!’ said Adam. ‘Yes, yes, he’s fine. Good as new. No harm done. Lisa did the right thing taking him in, it turned out.’

‘Thank Lisa for me,’ I said. ‘Tell her I appreciate everything.’

‘I will. Of course I will. I’ll tell her when she gets back.’

‘Has she gone somewhere?’

‘What? Yes, she’s gone back home. Up north, to her parents. She’s taken the girls.’

I was startled to hear this: there was something troubling in the sound of it that caused me to guess at what it meant.

‘She just wanted to, you know, go home for a bit. Get away from everything for a, ah, while. What’s that?’ he said, with his hand over the receiver again. ‘No, I’ll tell him. I said I’ll tell him. Caris says hello,’ he said garrulously, to me.

‘Is she there?’ I was surprised.

‘She says you should think about shaving off your beard. Maybe that makes more sense to you than it does to me.’ He laughed. ‘God, she’s dancing around like a big bloody gorilla! Shave it off, she’s saying. Just shave it off! She’s doing the hand motions and everything. God, you should see her!’

He laughed and laughed. I could hear her, a faint female echo shouting and laughing somewhere in the distances of the telephone.

*

I had a letter of my own. I found it on our bed one evening, resting lightly in an envelope on the cloud of the covers.

Downstairs Charlie and Hamish were cooking something. The rich smells came up into the white room. Charlie was staying for a week, maybe more. She picked her way over the rubble on the front steps as she came and went. She was on the shortlist for the teaching job at the university. She was sleeping in the room above ours and at night I could hear the creaking sounds she made as she moved around in bed. If she got the job I supposed she would move down here permanently, and though I doubted she would want to stay with us for ever I thought she could. I recognised in her presence something that spoke to my own weakness for transitoriness and dispossession. I thought that if only people lived the life that was in front of them everything would be all right. I didn’t think Rebecca could ever know how much it galled me to have become someone she thought she needed to get away from. The letter was written in pen, in large urgent scrawls and curlicues that left the paper pock-marked with indentations. It said:

Darling M,

The time has come for me to take my leave. You think that you don’t know it but you do.

I sat down on the bed and half-expected a wreath of its familiar scent to rise and lay itself over my shoulders, but all I could smell were the fumes from downstairs. I heard Charlie shrieking, ‘Quick, quick!’ and then raucous laughter.

Do you remember that lovely funny building near your old flat? The one that sat there and sat there with pigeons nesting in the roof and squatters moving in and out, and how we always talked about buying it and turning it into an art gallery or something — and then one day we saw a notice on the door that said ‘Change of Use’, and we realised someone else was doing what we’d said we would do and we felt sad, as if something had been stolen from us. That was before Hamish was born, and whenever I think about that building and wonder whether our life could have been different, I know that it couldn’t, because you can never be anything other than what you are.

You’ll laugh when you hear I’ve gone home, for now at least — but maybe you’ll be glad too. I’m sure you of all people would agree that I need to acknowledge the man who is my father, and to face my mother as a rival. A RIVAL!! Niven says that nurture for Ali is a threat to her femininity and I know he’s right. When I thought she was going to die, I realised how absent she was from my life as a nurturer. I needed HER to comfort ME! But she was the child too, she was the poor thing. I think she can only be happy with me when she’s giving me things, because then she can feel she’s got more. And the one thing she really has is HIM!! She plays the role of the child as a way of competing with me for his attention. As for HIM! I think it may take me my whole life to understand him — the way his charisma has afflicted me with the sense of my own betrayal. Michael, there was a time when I thought you could save me by possessing me, but now I know that can never be. Now I only want freedom. I want the freedom to be what you could never accept that I was.

I used to feel that you’d failed me, Michael, but now I think I can see you as the victim you really are. I think you have a very misconceived idea of morality. You seem to think that there’s a world of bad things and a world of good things whereas the truth is that there are only feelings. There is only emotion, and emotion is what you’re not good at, Michael. I think you have a lot of work to do on yourself. I don’t see your repression, your coldness, as being your fault. I think it has a LOT to do with your family and your fear of disapproval, your fear of really LIVING and your need to be close to dangerous people, to people who are dirty and vibrant and alive and who really FEEL. The problem is that you criminalise those people by trying to control them. That’s really your tragedy, Michael, as I see it.