Rachel Cusk - The Temporary

‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’

Over the course of the weekend Ralph had read a whole lexicon of new expressions in Francine’s face, and he wondered if her features would learn them, would progress with them from her pristine prettiness to something more complex.

‘I only meant that I wanted it to be your decision,’ he had replied. A note of weariness crept into his voice.

‘Don’t think you’re getting out of this!’ she shrieked, sitting up in her chair.

‘Of course I’m not.’ He was horrified, but he forced himself to sit down beside her and place an arm around her shoulders. He was surprised to realize that it almost repelled him to touch her. ‘I don’t want to get out of it. All I’m saying is that you should choose, and whatever you choose is fine by me.’

The implication of his words was appalling, and for once he was grateful for Francine’s lack of expertise in meaning. She pursued him no further, and although Ralph was too frightened to ask her whether she intended to go home, she soon made it clear that she didn’t by telling him she was going to bed. He had sat up late on his own, tempted to fall asleep in his chair and pretend in the morning that he had done so by accident. In the end he had dozed for a while, and when he awoke after an hour with a stiff neck he forgot for a moment what he was doing there and endured a few seconds of dreadful confusion. Often, when he took himself by surprise by coming to in this manner, he even found it difficult to remember into which phase of his life he was surfacing; and he sometimes feared that his dreamlike grasp of things could be loosed by one of these sleepy interludes, returning him to the custody of a past he had thought escaped or, worse still, to a future he was attempting to flee. On this occasion he recalled the presence of someone in his bedroom and thought for a while that it was his mother, before the memory of Francine opened a door on reality and let the cold wind of her revelation rush in. He stood up and switched off the lights, and when he entered the bedroom the anonymous huddle of her form beneath the blankets filled him again with confusion. She didn’t stir as he lay down on the bed, not bothering to undress, but he heard her say something. It sounded like a name, ‘Mark’ or ‘Mike’, but when he said ‘What?’ she didn’t reply and he knew she must be asleep.

The bus stopped and Ralph got off. His head hurt, and fatigue lent the crowded pavement and grey, busy road a ghostly quality which made him walk carefully lest the ground should disappear beneath him. A small boy stood by the door to his office building, and as Ralph approached he turned and stared; not a rude or hostile stare, but more of an innocent, inquisitive look, as if in expectation of something. He hadn’t thought much about the notion of a child, but gazing into this boy’s dark, open eyes the singularity of what he had engendered broke from a crowd of possibilities and appeared to come and stand by his side. He stopped by the door, close to the boy now, and felt an inexplicable urge to take him inside off the street and perhaps take care of him for the day. The boy was still looking at him, but a woman’s shout from further down the pavement turned his head.

‘Rick! Rick!’

Ralph saw a young girl thundering towards them, a pram in front of her. Tails of hair flew about her face and her mouth was an angry rip.

‘You come away from there!’ she yelled. A stream of passers-by backed up around her and stared. She put out an arm without slowing her progress, as if with the intention of hooking the boy up as she passed. Ralph felt him flinch beside him.

‘I thought he was on his own,’ he said to the woman.

She stopped and grabbed the boy’s hand, yanking him towards her.

‘You leave him alone,’ she said, thrusting the fist of her face at Ralph. The boy still looked impassively at Ralph, his manacled arm raised above his head. ‘You dirty bugger.’

‘Really, I think that’s quite unnecessary,’ said Ralph stiffly, but the woman had already turned and continued her furious progress up the road. As he watched, he saw her let go of the boy’s arm for a moment and slap him hard across the backs of his legs, before seizing his hand again. He dangled for a moment, losing his balance, and then scuttled after her.

Roz was at her desk, her finger already clicking, and Ralph could hear the tinny acoustics of warfare buzz from the screen as he sat down.

‘Hello,’ he said loudly. ‘Nice weekend?’

‘Hello,’ said Roz. Her eyes didn’t move.

She had ceased to exchange pleasantries with him since his admission of treachery, and although Ralph had thought at first that the remission of her interest would improve things at the office, the sense of invisibility it forced upon him actually made his days less bearable than ever. He thought of describing for her the scene which had just taken place downstairs, but knew instantly that his sociability was merely a misguided nervous impulse guaranteed to earn a punishing silence.

‘How’s Frances?’ she said suddenly. Her voice was so loud that Ralph started. He looked up and met her eyes. They were guileless, but in his tremulous state he thought he saw a blade of malice glint behind them.

‘Francine,’ he said. ‘She’s fine.’

‘Oh,’ said Roz.

*

He hadn’t asked Francine to stay at his flat that evening and nor had she requested an invitation, but the mute agreement of their new complicity informed him that she would come and he hurried home earlier than his usual time. A few hours away from her had introduced him to the urgency of their situation, and he wondered why they had spoken so little of it over the weekend. He supposed they had each been waiting for the other to formulate an opinion strong enough to begin the business of action and reaction, but beneath the passivity of Francine’s aspect he feared the presence of something stronger, a predator which might be stirred by a glimpse of its prey. He had no way of knowing which of his tangled thoughts would prove the bait for her attack, and his diffuseness left him feeling unguarded and afraid.

She rang the doorbell moments after he had let himself in, with an eerie promptness which heightened his hunted spirits. He opened the door and she walked past him without saying anything, but the brief impression he had of her face told him that she looked oddly better than she had done over the weekend. He followed her into the sitting-room and in the stronger light saw that the solidity had returned to her features. He wondered if it signified resolution, and his heart began to pound in his chest.

‘How are you feeling?’ he said with ridiculous solicitude as she sat down on the sofa.

‘OK,’ she replied. ‘A bit sick, that’s all.’

She smiled at him, and he felt a companionable nausea rise up in his throat.

‘Francine.’ He sat down beside her. ‘Look, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I think we must decide soon what we’re going to do.’

‘Do you think you could make me some tea?’ she said. Her voice was sweet, but a momentary strain paraded across her features and she laid a hand on her stomach. ‘It helps.’

‘Of course, sorry,’ said Ralph.

He went into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge with his eyes closed. Already he was beginning to feel dangerously detached and he pressed hard on his face with his hands to remind him of the imminence of his predicament. It amazed him that Francine could continue to defeat him when he could see her so clearly, every mechanism on display like the guts of a clock. Worse still, he could also see that he was conspiring with her against himself, promulgating the consciousness of her advantage. She knew that there was no chance of him deserting her, and her knowledge — provided by him! — made her unassailable. There was nothing he could do but wait, in the faint hope that her muddled formulas would end in a passable result for both of them. His helplessness dragged at him, amplifying his first faint identification that morning with the mysterious entity of which Francine had such complete and bewildering charge into a stronger allegiance. It was a mistake, he knew, to start getting ideas about this captured pawn, this knot by which he had been tied, but the power of relation, of bound blood, both frightened and drew him. He felt its absolutes mired in the sinking ground of his dispossession. It hadn’t flowered yet into any definable emotion but its sturdy roots and trunk were exerting their pressure inside him. Feeling it there, growing tight in his chest all day, he had had to fight off hourly the temptation of thinking that he was no longer alone.