Rachel Cusk: The Temporary

In a call-box on Fortune Green Road, where Hampstead ends and Kilburn begins, a telephone was ringing. Francine Snaith heard it, and being possessed of the conviction that destiny had it continually in mind at any moment to summon her, felt it was intended that she should answer.

It had begun to ring just as she reached the top of the road, its call clear above the humming, dusky swarm of the pavement, and its imperative grew louder as she made her way alongside the throbbing traffic towards it. Several people walked quickly past the call-box, shaking their heads as if angered by its unsupervision, but one or two had stopped and were watching it with interest. The compelling pulse was loud in her ears as she reached the scene, and she felt herself drawn by it out of the crowd. In the glances this action drew she saw the natural acceptance of her distinction, and the busy pavement seemed to part before her. She opened the door, releasing its clamour into the street.

Once alone inside the shrilling enclosure, Francine was wrapped in warm air oily with urine and cigarettes, the manifestations of an anxiety she had often witnessed as she walked to and from the bus stop but to date had never shared; for the grooves of her daily routine, though rigid, at least ensured her safe passage past the brutalized individuals always to be glimpsed here, desperately shoving scrabbled coins into the hungry slit while from their downturned mouths Francine could occasionally hear snatches of a dark bureaucracy: ‘Just one night’, ‘I’ll pay you back’, ‘But you said you sent the cheque’, and, most often, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Her revulsion at these creatures was tempered by the safety of her distance from their misfortunes, and her confidence that the divide which separated them was fortified by sheer impossibility even permitted her to tend a small patch of pity for them. When she picked it up, the receiver was tepid and greasy with use.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh yes, hello,’ said a man’s voice, with an impatient sigh.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Well, yes, love,’ said the man after a pause. ‘As a matter of fact you can. Look to your left and you’ll see a red door.’

Francine looked and was surprised to see it right there, as if it had just sauntered up and stood outside without her noticing. It was scarred with a peeling eczema of paint.

‘I see it,’ she said.

‘Well, go over and ring the bell, if you would. Tell the bloke who lives there it’s Mike for him.’

Francine placed the receiver on the metal shelf beside the phone and left the call-box. The door of the house gave directly on to the pavement and necessitated only a few steps to reach the bell. She rang it three times and when nobody answered returned to the call-box.

‘There’s no answer,’ she said.

‘Oh. Must be broken, I suppose. Try shouting up at the window on the top floor.’

‘What should I shout?’

‘Terry, love. Shout Terry.’

Francine left the call-box and returned to the front of the house. A small group of people had gathered murmuring on the pavement. Having gained the impression that the situation concealed little personal profit Francine had been considering the possibility of escape from it, but the presence of an audience imbued her with exigence.

‘Terry!’ she shouted. ‘Terry!’

Moments later she heard the pounding of footsteps and the window being opened above her. A fine snow of dry paint drifted down to her feet as the sash hit the top of the frame.

‘Look, he is in,’ said a woman nearby, pointing up.

A fat man with a dark beard put his head out.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Mike’s on the phone for you,’ called up Francine.

‘Oh, not again!’ said the man, slapping his forehead. ‘Tell him I’m busy, will you?’

He slammed the window shut and pounded off. A few seconds later the house began to shake with the sound of loud music.

‘He says he’s busy,’ Francine dutifully relayed to Mike.

‘I don’t believe it!’ said Mike. ‘That bleeder owes me money! Three weeks I’ve been after him. Tell him I’ll be round — go on, tell him, see how he likes that.’

‘I can’t,’ said Francine. ‘He’s playing some very loud music.’

‘Well, what’s that got to do with anything? Chuck a brick through his window if he can’t hear you. See how he likes that,’ added Mike firmly.

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Why don’t you write him a letter?’

‘Who do you think I am? The bloody postman? I just want my money!’

‘I’ve really got to go,’ said Francine. ‘Goodbye.’

She put the phone down and left the call-box. Moments later, as she walked down the darkening street, she heard it ringing again behind her. She turned into Mill Lane just as the street lamps were switched on.

*

She had been on her way home through the premature dark of an overcast winter afternoon from the local park, where she had spent a chilling, unsatisfactory interlude during which the rare and strenuous exercise of solitude had failed to warm her. She had gone there with the intention of substantiating the illusion of being out, lest the seeds of the previous night’s party should, in her absence, bear fruit in the form of a telephone call; but also to get clear in her mind by a detailed reconstruction of events from whom she might, reasonably or not, expect one. She had been disappointed by the park, for having decided to grace the art of contemplation with her indulgence in it, it had not occurred to her that the proper accoutrements for its execution would fail to present themselves. The infrequency of her excursions into nature had given her vague, generic assumptions concerning its appearance, and in her search for the verdant scenery of thought she had not prepared herself for the discovery that such places might have problems of their own. The park was revealed to be a barren island circumnavigated by fuming rivers of Saturday afternoon traffic, unpopulated save by a small stream of pedestrians passing through it on the way to somewhere else. Lodged awkwardly on a bench at its perimeter Francine was comforted at least by the thought, which she met like an overnight train arriving from the previous evening’s events, that the world was neither so complicated nor so exclusive a place as she had imagined.

Sitting there she remembered the dark, glittering room — an art gallery, she had been told — whose floor, to her secret and continuing concern, had been thickly strewn with dry autumn leaves. They had covered her feet with a light, rustling crust and she had had to kick them away with unfaltering vigilance in deference to the high-heeled shoes she had gone out and bought specially at lunch-time. There had been paintings on the walls, their violent, mangled surfaces quiet in the shadows like undisturbed car accidents, and she and Julie had looked at one or two of them, just as a laugh because no one had spoken to them yet, even though the room was alive, palpable with the proximity of flesh and the flash of faces. It had seemed like ages that they stood there on their own. Julie had been temping at the gallery for almost a month, and she kept pointing out people she knew.

‘Why don’t we go and talk to them?’ Francine had said impatiently.

‘Oh, we’d better not.’

‘We look stupid just standing here.’