Rachel Cusk - The Temporary

The residue of mirth drained from Stephen’s cheeks and Ralph was almost gratified to see a glint of sobriety in his eyes. It was difficult to slay his good humour, and there was a strange pleasure to be derived from being the proprietor of a situation serious enough to achieve it.

‘You prat,’ he said, more kindly. ‘What are you on about?’

‘She won’t — I don’t really understand it. I don’t know what to do.’

‘She won’t what? Bugger off?’

Ralph nodded.

‘When it first started, I thought she understood it was just a temporary thing. You know, a one-off.’

‘One-off!’ Stephen barked with laughter.

‘You know what I mean,’ said Ralph irritably.

‘All right, all right. Une fois .’ He laughed again. ‘De temps entemps.’

‘I mean, you can’t just tell someone, can you? I thought I made it as clear as it could be.’ Ralph shook his head. ‘She came round for dinner and it was quite friendly, but we didn’t exactly hit it off, for God’s sake. I was actually surprised when she offered …’

There was a pause, and in it the two of them reached for their glasses.

‘Consummation?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what was it like?’

‘I don’t remember,’ said Ralph stubbornly. ‘I was drunk.’

‘And since then?’

‘All right, I suppose.’

‘Fussy,’ said Stephen, raising his eyebrows.

‘No — well, yes, in a way, except that I don’t really care about all that. I mean, I do care, I want to care, but then she’ll say something and I just—’

‘Don’t give a shit?’

‘If I could see what was in it for her then at least there’d be something to, you know, get to grips with, but she doesn’t even seem to like me very much.’ As he said it, Ralph realized that it was true, that it was the most bewildering thing of all. His predicament seemed suddenly more inescapable than ever. Stephen’s face before him was perplexed. ‘That’s it, really. She doesn’t actually like me.’

There was silence, which the noise around them at first amplified and then engulfed. Stephen drained his glass, his head tipped back, his throat pumping.

‘Another?’ he said, standing up with his fingers on Ralph’s glass.

‘Thanks.’

While he was gone Ralph waited anxiously, as if his absence were some kind of judgemental interlude from which he would return with a result.

‘Things have been pretty sweet lately,’ said Stephen when he returned, setting the brimming glasses carefully on the table and sitting down. He stretched contentedly and gave a grinning yawn.

‘That’s good,’ said Ralph. He felt the jolt keenly, the brutal message that Stephen found him tiresome. A feeling of dislike for himself gathered and sluiced coldly over him. ‘Tell me what’s been happening.’

‘The pursuit of pleasure,’ said Stephen vaguely. ‘Grotesque but successful. For the time being, anyway.’

‘What was that problem you mentioned at work?’ said Ralph, driving back his growing awkwardness with ingratiation. He felt peeled and exposed. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

‘Oh, that. No, not really. They should have seen it coming. They sent me off to do a piece on girls’ boarding schools. Can you imagine?’ He laughed. ‘So I roved for a week through the groves of girlhood, and my God, there’s some talent there, old boy. Nothing like those speccy dogs they used to recruit from the local brain-bin for our end of term disco.’

‘So what happened?’ interjected Ralph. His voice sounded false with dread.

‘What do you think? One of them took a fancy to me, I invited her up for the weekend, and next thing the headmistress dobs me in to the magazine. Slapped hands all round.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Fifteen. Is.’

‘You’re still seeing her?’

‘Doing the school run, as they say. Very hush-hush, though. She’s an enterprising girl.’

‘Right,’ said Ralph despairingly.

Afterwards, they walked through the cold, electric sunlight down the Portobello Road towards Stephen’s flat. The light made Ralph feel fatigued, blinding him, blanching life from his skin. Stephen suddenly extended an arm and patted his shoulder jovially.

‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, looking into the distance like an explorer and wrinkling his eyes.

Ralph felt duly comforted. Stephen always provided him with curious remedies for the injury of his friendship. The bare assertion of his loyalty, their odd bond which had gathered so little to it over the years, was often the only thing which could palliate the pain which Stephen sometimes brought with him. Despite all that they had shared, Stephen still wrought in Ralph a unique discomfort, a feeling of terrible confinement within himself. He wondered now if that was how families felt, all that trapping knowledge, that looming history. Stephen knew too much about his past to believe in the secret alchemy of personal change. In his eyes he, Ralph, could never be more than the sum of Stephen’s knowledge, could never escape the arithmetic of those redundant selves and conjure himself from the air.

‘Maybe.’

‘Why can’t you just enjoy it?’ cried Stephen, exasperated. ‘You’re a lucky sod. Just enjoy it!’

‘I can’t. I’m not like that.’

‘Then tell her to fuck off!’

Stephen broke suddenly from his side and Ralph watched him run ahead. He began skipping and leaping wildly on the pavement, waving his arms above his head in a sudden deluge of irradiation, while the cackle of his laughter made its contorted flight back to Ralph’s unhappy ears.

Francine’s flat was irrefutably located at the western end of Mill Lane, and much as she might try to clothe the fact in whimsically stated preferences for longer walks to leafier branches of transportation, the Tube station at Kilburn was undeniably her most expeditious point of contact with the outside world. On the occasions — really only once or twice, in fact, and more towards the beginning of things — on which Ralph had come to stay, she had directed him to the longer route, believing that her lair was better approached from the more seductive angle of West Hampstead. He had taken matters into his own hands, of course, by consulting a map, and as seemed often to be the case these days Francine had found her persuasive version of things overridden by the more logical conclusions of research. He had been so serious about it, showing her the map on his arrival and drawing the route with his finger as if she had no idea where the Tube station was, and she was forced to pretend that she hadn’t in order to keep the tedious conversation brief.

‘Actually, I might even have gone a long way round myself,’ he had said, stern with puzzlement. ‘Now that I look at it, this way’s probably quicker.’

While he spoke she had remembered another conversation, with his friend Stephen at the party, and it had kindled in her a flicker of pleasure and irritation. He had asked her where she lived and when she said West Hampstead he had laughed.

‘That’s Kilburn to the likes of me,’ he had said, winking at her conspiratorially so that she had laughed too.

She preferred to stay at Camden anyway, for the dawning of truth over her own home had illuminated other things alongside its unpleasant location to place it irremediably into disfavour. These days the flat didn’t seem nearly as nice as Ralph’s, and even the masculine flavour of his bathroom — the only thing which, in the early days, had made her long to be back amongst her impedimenta — had been sweetened with the transportation of a half share of her abundant bottles and jars to its shelves. Ralph evidently hadn’t understood the rationale behind the relocation of her things — including several key elements of her wardrobe — and kept asking her if it was really necessary.