Rachel Cusk - The Temporary

‘Look, what’s this all about? Are you pissed or something?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve gone a bit nuts, then, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘You’ve wronged me.’

‘Yes, so you keep saying. Can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

Ralph tried to speak and felt a terrible constriction at his throat. He thought of Francine’s face above his hands, the face of a doll, her eyes empty as marbles.

‘She told me,’ he said, his voice strangled. ‘Everything you said to her, she told me. I know everything.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Stephen. His laugh rattled in Ralph’s ear. ‘Well, I wouldn’t take it to heart if I were you. We were both a bit pissed, that’s all.’ He laughed again. ‘My God, she was—’

‘You told her things about me,’ interrupted Ralph. The sound of his own voice excited him.

‘Did I? Can’t say I remember.’

‘Private things. You told her private things.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’

He muttered something else which Ralph couldn’t hear. He sounded distracted, as if he wanted to be off the telephone.

‘All my life,’ began Ralph; but then he stopped, unable to say something so portentous.

‘What was that?’

‘I said, all my life you’ve fucked me up.’ He strained over the words, finding them hard and unnatural. ‘All my life.’

‘Nothing to do with me. Fucked yourself up. Pathetic bastard, that’s your problem. Nobody forced you.’

Tears sprang to Ralph’s eyes and he put a hand to his forehead.

‘You’ve taken things from me!’ he said desperately.

‘Look, you only ever had one thing worth taking. She wasn’t yours anyway. As for the other one, she wasn’t worth the trouble it would have taken to shag her. Those are the facts. Now, why don’t you just toddle off to bed and get off my bloody case?’

‘She’s pregnant!’ burst out Ralph.

Stephen paused for a long time.

‘Not by me, she’s not,’ he said finally. ‘Anyway, you’re well shot of her.’

Ralph felt himself smelted down to his hot, thudding heart, saw the room around him and dissolved into its walls, evaporated in its corners.

‘And you,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I’m well shot of you.’

Ralph could hear the measure of his breathing, up and down.

‘Oh. All right, then.’

‘I don’t want to see you again.’

‘Righty-ho.’

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, yes, I think you’ve made yourself quite clear. Goodbye.’

The line went abruptly dead and Ralph replaced the receiver. The silence around him was towering, enormous. He lay back on the sofa, stretching himself out so that he lay flat. Birmingham, Lancaster, Crewe. He closed his eyes and waited.

It was better than she’d expected, especially after the long, unnerving walk through a vast catacomb of cavernous, neon-lit corridors in which she had distinctly heard the dungeon sound of dripping, its echo ghostly behind her footsteps. On the way she had come across two or three berobed old women stranded in wheelchairs like spectral, crippled sentries at isolated outposts. She had followed signs to the clinic, pinned intermittently on walls down which green limous streaks ran like eccentric beards, and had finally arrived after what seemed like miles at a newer and more hospitable door made of wood and chrome. She pushed it and entered a hushed and carpeted enclave where telephones quietly chirped and potted plants proudly proclaimed the tiny region’s luxurious independence. Its immediate resemblance to offices in which she had worked, or even the agency where she used to go to collect her cheques and receive news of her next assignment, at first soothed and then disturbed her. She instantly warmed to the superiority of her treatment, but remembering the collapsed and crumpled faces of the corridor’s abandoned residents, their lumpy, useless forms rooted like unattended overflowing bins in concrete wastelands, she wondered at the severity of her own condition that it should elicit such reverence.

‘What name is it, dear?’

She turned and saw a woman standing near her with a clipboard in her hand. She was wearing a white uniform, with a stiff white veil of the same material covering her head. For a moment she thought nervously that the woman was a nun, for the soft, coaching tone of her voice and her ready, pliant face seemed to anticipate tearful confessions.

‘Francine Snaith.’

Francine moved closer to the woman as she said it, in an attempt at discretion. The woman had a plastic rectangle pinned to her breast with ‘Nurse Rogers’ written on it. She could now see the entire waiting-room from where she stood. Other stout, white figures moved soundlessly around a neat row of chairs on which six or seven young girls sat like novices. At one end of the room was a large glass window, behind which a man sat. The telephone rang and he answered it.

‘How are you feeling, Francine?’ said the nurse.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Any sickness?’

‘No.’

‘Good girl,’ she said, nodding and writing something on her clipboard. ‘Why don’t you just pop over and have a word with John behind the window there, and then you can sit down with the other girls.’

Francine crossed the waiting-room. All of the girls looked up in unison as she passed and she glanced back at them. Their pale, worn faces were eager with recognition, as if urging some sense of community upon her, and she looked away. She stood at the glass and waited while John spoke on the telephone.

‘Right,’ he said, nodding. ‘OK, that’s fine.’

He was young, with dark ruffled hair and a lean face, and when he sensed Francine standing there he looked up, smiling, and raised a patient finger. She saw that he was handsome, and she felt a wrench of frustration at the disagreeable fact of her presence there, the undisguisable nature of its shame.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said cheerfully, putting down the telephone.

‘It’s OK,’ said Francine softly.

‘Name?’

‘Francine.’

‘Francine, Francine,’ he muttered, looking down at a typed list. ‘Francine Snaith, 110 Mill Lane, Kilburn, London. That you?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled.

‘Well, Francine, we’re running a bit late this morning, but you should be called in about half an hour. All right?’

‘That’s fine.’

Francine leaned on the counter, closer to the glass, and he looked up. An expression of surprise flitted across his face and he looked back down at his page.

‘Let’s see. Right, how will you be getting back to Kilburn?’

She hesitated, unprepared for his question and flattered by the concern it implied.

‘I don’t really know.’ She wondered if he would offer to take her home himself.

‘Oh. Well, we normally recommend that patients take a taxi home afterwards rather than public transport. Could you give me the name of the person who’s coming to collect you?’

Francine was silent. A wave of nausea mounted in her stomach and hovered trembling.

‘Nobody.’

He didn’t say anything for a moment, his pen poised.

‘What about your boyfriend?’ he said finally, without looking up.

‘I don’t have one.’

‘What about this name you gave to your doctor? Ralph Loman, is he not your boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Is there a friend you could call?’

‘No.’

He raised his head slowly and looked directly into her eyes. His gaze was evaluating, calculating not her assets but her lack of them. She knew that he felt sorry for her. The small office in which he sat was bright and ordered. He raised a hand to his chin and she saw the mocking glitter of a wedding band on his finger.