Rachel Cusk - The Temporary

‘Listen, if you need anything, I mean if there’s anything I can do—’ She was retreating from him into the crowd. ‘I’ll call!’ he said.

Francine Snaith was lodged in the gloomy oesophagus of the Metropolitan Line, where her enjoyment of the single customary pleasure of underground travel — that of observing her reflection in the dark windows opposite her seat — had been obstructed since Baker Street by the disorderly herd of standing passengers which had been driven by overcrowding down the narrow corridor in front of her. The enforced contemplation of a mis-shapen male belly which rose from a sea of pinstripe and thrust itself towards her had been bad enough at speed, but since the train had suddenly and inexplicably shuddered to a halt Francine’s ears were filled with the acoustics of its physical proximity. She heard breath complaining from obstructed nostrils above her, and from much closer the whining sounds of blockage. The mountain heaved alarmingly before her eyes. There was a gurgle of clearance and then the rush of fluids draining. Above the forest of flesh, a canopy of inquisitive faces turned at the sound. Francine closed her eyes, lest the thought of this hot, human filling in a dark pastry of steel and black earth should inspire feelings of panic. From the deluge of silence, a rank and humid mist of sweat rose thickly. The sea of bodies shifted impatiently, swelled and settled. Just as the stoppage seemed most permanent, the train suddenly lunged forward with a jolt as if it had been punched. People gathered themselves to a rising dissonance of coughs and clearing throats. Francine stirred also in anticipation of her imminent release as the train sped darkly through the tunnel. Finally the rolling scenery of the station slid tiled past the windows, its appearance an order to begin work on the already botched canvas of the day.

Minutes later, Francine was walking briskly to the front desk across the hushed marble reception hall of Lancing & Louche. She announced herself to the man sitting behind it, who picked up his telephone to dial Personnel.

‘Frances?’ he said, screwing his face up uncomprehendingly.

‘Fran cine .’

‘Yes, we’ve got a Francine for you in reception,’ he said into the receiver. He paused for a moment, listening, and then laughed. ‘That’s right. Yes.’ He guffawed and put down the phone. ‘Take a seat over there, love. Someone’ll be down to fetch you.’

Francine did not feel like sitting down, but the porter’s eyes were on her and she knew that such mild anarchies were disturbing to those in whose jurisdiction they occurred. She crossed obediently to the other side of the reception area where a bank of brown leather sofas waited. A muted rabble of voices was growing along a corridor near by, like a dog barking behind a closed front door, and their amplification as they entered the vast hall caused her to start. A group of men in dark, expensive suits burst through the glass doors and passed her as she sat down. Several of them glanced at her as they walked by. Their voices lowered once they were past her and then erupted into loud laughter. One or two of them looked back. A middle-aged woman came through the glass doors behind them, her aspect telegraphing the search for a misplaced object, and Francine stood up.

‘Francine?’ The woman smiled and held out her hand. Her teeth were large and yellow, and saliva glittered over them as if with the threat of mastication. ‘I’m Jane. Thanks for coming. Do you want to follow me?’

Francine followed Jane back through the glass doors. From behind her blonde hair appeared not to move as she walked, whisked into stiff peaks like beaten egg whites. They stopped at a wall of lifts and Jane pressed a button. Francine straightened herself as they waited and breathed deeply. The impending mountain of the day rose reluctantly before her, with its steep slopes of novelty and idle plateaux. Had she been able to walk in the fresh air after her journey perhaps she would have felt better, but the ascent directly from the station to the office block gave her the impression that she was still trapped in the now-carpeted intestines of a dream.

‘Did you have far to come?’ enquired Jane as they stepped into the lift.

‘West Hampstead,’ said Francine. ‘It’s not far.’

She could feel Jane’s eyes examining her, intimately but impartially like a pair of doctor’s hands.

‘I’m pretty, aren’t I?’ she almost blurted out. She had opened her mouth to speak. ‘Where do you live?’ she said.

‘Welwyn,’ said Jane.

‘Gosh,’ said Francine. ‘That must be a long journey.’

‘Actually, it’s very convenient.’

The lift rose like a lump in the building’s throat. Jane’s perfume, warmed by the confinement of her skin, dispersed and settled around them in a musky cloud. Francine felt a strong desire to escape.

‘You’ll be working for Mr Lancing himself,’ said Jane as they approached the top floor. She smiled. Her vast, moist teeth were alive, and seemed to perceive more than the tiny, carbonized eyes above them. Francine felt it was appropriate to look at them while she spoke. ‘Don’t worry, his bark is worse than his bite.’

The doors opened with a sigh and they emerged into a windowless corridor identical to that which they had left below, except for a gold-plated 5 stuck to the opposite wall in place of the large G downstairs. The brown carpet beneath Francine’s feet absorbed the noise of her shoes, amplifying instead the swishing sounds of clothing and the quick exchanges of their breaths. Jane turned to the right and began walking briskly, and Francine hurried to keep abreast of her. She felt disturbed by Jane’s air of permanent unfamiliarity, until she remembered that Personnel were always like that. She never usually saw them again after the first day. Francine was often left with disembodied impressions of people from these first intense exposures, a moustache here or large bosom there, a smell or a set of teeth, which together formed an area of clutter in her mind like spare parts littering a garage floor. Occasionally one of these strange, useless memories would rise unbidden in her thoughts and she would find herself unable to remember how she had acquired it or where it belonged. She would suddenly recall jobs she had done from which she could not retrieve a single face, while those faces which had become separated from their owners would drift about among her recollections like detached and meaningless ghosts.

‘This way,’ said Jane, listing suddenly and sharply to the left. She opened a door and the brown, mummified silence of the corridor was all at once broken by the familiar chatter and hum of the office and a bank of dull natural light emanating from the large windows to the far side. Francine followed Jane into the room. She felt dazed, as if she had just emerged from beneath deep water. The office was instantly recognizable, a flat, immaculate vista of steely geometry and manicured synthetic fibres, its variations in tone all conducted in the key of grey. Through the windows the low cloudy sky and iron hives of companion office blocks were visible. From the fifth floor one could see other fifth floors, the heads of buildings like a crowd of adults.

Several people looked up at the intrusion and Francine suddenly remembered herself. It was one of the advantages of her position that her novelty, the most fragile of all her arts, rarely had the opportunity to wear off. There was a perceptible lull and swell as things shifted to accommodate her. One or two people allowed their glances to linger like tenacious guests into stares. Seconds elapsed and eventually everyone bent their heads, or turned to gaze blankly into computer screens while their fingers tapped at keyboards in an imitation of tedium. Francine’s eyes swept the surface of the secretarial pool and then rose to confront what instinct informed her was a masculine inspection. The man wore a dark pinstriped suit and was examining her in an authoritative manner. His desk was on a raised podium, like a car in a showroom. Francine looked away and then back once or twice until the persistence of his stare caught her eyes and held them. At that moment he assumed a bored expression and dropped his attention back down to the slim pile of pages in front of him. He made a mark or two on the top sheet with a heavy gold fountain pen and crossed his legs away from her.