Rachel Cusk - Saving Agnes

She returned to the perusal of the magazine in her lap, while Agnes experienced a surge of annoyance, unmitigated by relief, that she should have to request details of her lover’s intimate habits from her treacherous ex-friend.

Curiosity, however, compounded her plight and she could not refrain from asking: ‘So how did he do it, then? I mean, how did he actually take the stuff?’

‘Smoked it,’ said Nina, not actually adding ‘stupid’ but severely implying it. ‘Needles are sleazy.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Agnes, in a tone which required no subtext.

It was after that that she really felt for the first time she had lost him. It was almost as if she was disappointed by this latest intelligence, dependent as she had been on the depth of his malignity to fuel her own angry responses. When she was younger, she had used to think in moments of severe pique at her family that they would all be sorry if she died; and death had seemed a small price to pay for the satisfaction of remorse. Now, imagining him going about his business with a conscience clear and bright as a lightbulb, she realised that such vengeance was not to be hers. He had done her no wrong, apart from preferring someone else. And whose fault was that?

‘You should smile more,’ John used to say to her. ‘You look better when you smile.’

It had never occurred to her to point out that if she had felt better, she would by implication have smiled more, for rearrangement was an inexorable part of their routine. He would tell her to wear this jacket, change that shirt, do her hair this way instead; and she really saw no reason why the expression on her face should not fall within the territories under his jurisdiction. He wanted to improve her, presumably so that he could love her more.

‘When I phone you up,’ he said one day, ‘you’re always in. Why is that?’

Whenever he was due to call, she always waited faithfully by the phone, dispatching other callers hastily lest he should find the line engaged and refusing to leave the house for a minute.

‘Well, it would annoy you if I wasn’t there,’ she reasoned, although bewildered by his question. ‘Wouldn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily. Sometimes it’s good to be frustrated. It makes things more exciting — it makes the object of your frustration more desirable. Do you see what I mean?’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t see what you mean. Are you saying you want me to go out specially when you call? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Forget it,’ he said lightly.

She couldn’t forget it. His perversity upset her. She knew it was all in the interests of making him love her more, but it looked to her as if he was running out of ideas. Until now, he had never actually asked her to love him less. Nevertheless, once or twice she did run to the bathroom at the sound of the telephone ringing and had leaned against the locked door, her heart beating senselessly until it stopped. It hadn’t seemed to change things much.

Nina spent even more time at Jack’s house after her argument with Agnes. Merlin started working late. Sometimes he and Agnes would meet in the kitchen at unsociable hours and they would stay up and drink beer while Nina’s room lay dark and empty above them like that of a missing child.

‘It’s like when someone walks out during an argument,’ said Agnes one night. ‘You’re left with all this anger and nowhere to put it. It seems really unfair. I mean, she started it, right? It was her fault. She should apologise.’

‘You did say, if I remember correctly, that you didn’t like her very much.’

‘I don’t.’

Merlin leaned wearily into the sofa.

‘You have to,’ he said. ‘All our names are on the lease. Besides, she’s your best friend. You have to like your best friend.’

Agnes told him about her early experiences of best-friendship at school, where the title was nothing if not transient and could be purchased or lost for the small price of a treasured object — a coloured pencil perhaps — given or withheld, or a favour done. ‘Swap me your rubber,’ came the cry. ‘I’ll be your best friend!’

Never one known for her stock of fancy stationery, Agnes had always found best friends to be in short supply. Once or twice she had purloined one with the bargain-basement currency of loyalty and love, but this kind of investment became more risky in view of the inevitable transformation of friend to enemy which had characterised relations amongst her peer-group.

‘It was always worse if you’d been their real friend,’ she said. ‘When they turned against you it meant they knew things about you. I don’t know, it was just worse.’

‘Well, presumably it was more hurtful,’ said Merlin. ‘But why did they turn against you in the first place? What did you have to do?’

‘Nothing. It just had to be your turn. Someone would suddenly say, “I think so-and-so needs to be taken down a peg or two, don’t you?” and that was it.’

‘The call to arms.’

‘I suppose so: Everyone knew what to do. It was all very matter-of-fact.’

‘Did anyone ever refuse to join in?’

‘Yes, sometimes. They were like invisible people, though. Outcasts. No one ever talked to them. Thinking about it now, I suppose they were actually quite brave. I would never have dared to do that.’

‘So why — why did the bullied become the bullies, if you see what I mean? How did people have so much power one minute and then none at all?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. Once you’ve had power over people, maybe they hate you more. At the time, it was just what you did to protect yourself.’

‘But there must have been a ringleader,’ Merlin insisted. ‘Someone who never got it in the neck. You must have had a leader on your terror campaigns.’

‘You’re right, we did. Her name was Christine Poole.’

‘You shivered as you said it!’ Merlin said gleefully. ‘I saw you! Christine Poole. Creepy name. Does she haunt your dreams?’

‘I suppose she does.’

‘Let’s go and find her!’ cried Merlin. ‘Let’s go round and do her over, shall we?’

‘I don’t know where she lives,’ said Agnes, smiling weakly.

This was actually a he. Agnes knew perfectly well where she lived. It was in an unremarkable terraced house in their local town at home. Once, when she was home from university, she had seen her walking down the street. At first she hadn’t recognised her. She seemed so much smaller and drearier. She had permed hair and a haggard face, and she was pushing a pram. They had almost collided on the pavement, as if thrown together by the fugal force of their shared past. A flicker of recognition had passed between them. Agnes had thought of all the times she had dreamt of this meeting. It was to be a form of revenge. She had planned to be beautiful and successful, maybe with a man on her arm. She had even thought of clever vicious comments and cutting remarks. In the event, however, the girl had shunted the pram off the pavement to let her pass and they had gone their separate ways without a word. Agnes had glimpsed her feet as she passed, crammed into cheap stilettos.

At the time she had felt sorry for her, and pity had assuaged her vengefulness. Christine Poole, after all, had got what she deserved. Now Agnes was not so sure about things. Now, if she went to visit her, as Merlin suggested, she didn’t know what would happen. Now she was the one with failure written all over her. She was not so certain of defeating Christine Poole. She thought of Nina, and it occurred to her that nothing might have changed.

‘Where’s Jean?’ said Agnes as she arrived in the pub, where they had planned to hold an editorial meeting to discuss the latest issue of Diplomat’s Week.