Rachel Cusk - Saving Agnes

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Jean, who did not seem to find this idea particularly amusing, ‘we were thinking of offering you the job.’

Her tone suggested that, based on the evidence of their conversation, this offer could at any moment be withdrawn. Agnes stared at her in amazement.

‘Me? ’ she said.

A fierce wind tore round the corner of Elwood Street, hurdling the low garden walls like a greyhound. The trees groaned in the dark while empty tin cans rattled percussively on the pavements. Agnes sat in the house listening to the storm brewing. A draught was whistling through the crack in the wall and she felt its cold breath on the back of her neck. She moved from the sofa to the armchair. Now it was licking her leg like a fawning cat. It was hard to think amidst all this disturbance. She got up crossly and slammed out into the desolate garden.

A deckchair left over from the summer was leaning against the wall, its striped innards fluttering darkly in the wind. She unfolded it and sat down. All around her were the blazing square of windows from other houses, astonished eyes in the darkness. She leaned back and looked at the moonless sky.

‘Agnes?’

Merlin clattered out of the back door and stumbled into the garden. He wrapped his coat around him and crumpled his face against the wind.

‘Getting some air?’ he said blithely, trying to get into the spirit of things.

‘I’m trying to think.’

‘Do you want some help?’ He sat down cross-legged beside her. ‘I’m very good on cosmic issues and I can throw in man trouble at a discount.’

‘You sound very cheerful.’ Agnes peered at him through the shadows of trees. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘Very perceptive of you. Well, let’s just say that I’m no longer in bondage to the power-crazed lusts of the dominatrix.’ He sighed contentedly. ‘I seem once again to be my own man. Whatever that means.’

‘So what happened? Did she catch you reading Cosmopolitan ?’

‘Nothing so tawdry.’ Merlin laughed. ‘I keep it well hidden beneath my desk. No, she has found a replacement, impossible though it may seem.’

‘Who?’

‘My male secretary, as it happens. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s sleeping my way to the top.’

‘Or his own.’

‘Or his own. Anyway, now that I’m an expert in the fickleness of womankind,’ he continued casually, ‘I may as well put it to good use.’

‘How?’

‘Well, you know.’ Merlin rubbed his face with embarrassment. ‘Like, a girlfriend.’

‘You mean you’ve got one? Who is she?’

‘No, no, I don’t mean I’ve got one. I’m just — well, open to offers.’

Agnes stared at him. She almost began to laugh, but the aspect of vulnerability in his face moved her instead to tenderness.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We’ve monopolised you for too long.’

‘Oh, it’s not that! I’ve never really thought about it before, I suppose. I always assumed I was something of a late bloomer. Besides, I preferred having women as friends. Maybe it’s to do with my upbringing. I’ve been well schooled in the effects of male iniquity.’

‘So now you’ve had a close encounter with the effects of female iniquity, you reckon it’s time to get your own back.’

‘Not at all. It sounds quite strange, I know, but I think that what happened made me see myself in a different way. Not as a friend of women—’ he cackled melodramatically — ‘but as a seducer of them.’

Agnes thought about this. At first it made her sad, as she thought it must do watching a favourite child grow up and hence away from those who had loved him first. And yet Merlin was no child! She had never thought before about how unusual he was. It seemed to her then that she never knew she had things until she lost them.

‘It won’t change anything,’ he said, watching her.

She wondered if he would become suspicious, defensive, embittered; if he would watch her and Nina with new eyes, understanding things about them, blaming them for a hurt inflicted by someone else. For a moment she felt she would have done anything to protect him from the course which now opened out so temptingly before him. She could tell him, as no one had told her, the perils that awaited him there, the hidden traps and future pains to which innocence was blind. She could save him from it, as she herself had wanted to be saved!

‘It will,’ she said resignedly. ‘But perhaps that’s no bad thing, after all.’ She met his gaze. ‘I suppose you have to find out for yourself.’

He nodded and leaned against her chair. They sat for a moment in silence. The storm appeared suddenly to abate and in the stillness Agnes felt they could have stayed like that for ever. Before long, however, a fresh gust of wind whipped around them and Merlin sat up.

‘So what’s up?’ He smiled cheerfully and added: ‘Doc?’

‘Well—’ Agnes folded her arms across her chest and sighed. ‘Jean’s leaving. They’ve offered me her job.’

‘But that’s great! It’s great, isn’t it?’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘Of course it isn’t! Why do you think I’m sitting out here, for heaven’s sake? Because I’m pleased about it?’

The door slammed and Nina stumbled out into the garden.

‘What is this?’ she yelled against the wind. ‘A bloody earth summit?’

‘It’s an open-air careers forum,’ replied Merlin, patting the space beside him. ‘Come and sit down. You might learn something.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Nina. ‘Both of you.’

‘Not me,’ Merlin innocently replied. He pointed at Agnes. ‘Her.’

‘Why? What’s up?’

Agnes threw Merlin a murderous glance.

‘I didn’t say anything!’ he protested.

‘What’s going on?’ Nina demanded.

‘Jean’s leaving,’ Agnes wearily repeated. ‘And they’ve offered me her job.’

‘Oh.’ Nina wrapped her coat around her chest. ‘Oh. What are you going to do?’

‘What is this?’ exclaimed Merlin. ‘I don’t understand. Somebody explain to me why I alone don’t feel depressed by this news. I thought I was supposed to be the sensitive one around here.’

‘Well,’ explained Nina. ‘It’s a big commitment. And Agnes isn’t even sure that she likes the company or the product. Am I right, Ag?’

Agnes nodded.

‘I take it you two have patched things up,’ commented Merlin despondently. ‘My double-agent days are over.’

‘Would you want to spend the rest of your life at Diplomat’s Week ?’ burst out Agnes. ‘I mean, I always thought it was something temporary — something to do while I was waiting for … for real life to begin, I suppose.’ She looked at them both imploringly. ‘If I accept, well, it will become real life.’

‘Is that so bad?’ said Merlin.

‘I think that rather depends,’ observed Nina, ‘on what she was expecting.’ She drew her knees up beneath her chin. ‘Unfortunately, things have an annoying way of not becoming real until they’re unpleasant.’ She laughed. ‘Do you remember how we were at college? We spent all our time drinking white wine and mock-identifying with the proletariat. Now I seem to spend all my time drinking bloody instant coffee and mock-identifying with students lounging around in sixteenth-century buildings.’

‘It’s a cross the middle classes have to bear,’ opined Merlin. ‘We come somewhere between hubris and entropy. Anyway, what was Agnes expecting?’

‘How should I know?’ Nina shrugged. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘Agnes,’ said Merlin sonorously. ‘Reveal to us your great expectations.’

‘Well—’ Agnes thought about it. ‘Aren’t everyone’s the same? Something glamorous, interesting, exciting—’