Rachel Cusk - The Bradshaw Variations

‘Oh dear,’ Thomas says.

He takes her upstairs to Alexa’s room to get a clean shirt, holding her by her tiny hand. Alexa is lying on her bed, reading.

‘Yuk,’ she says, when she sees the stain. She reminds him, in that instant, of Tonie. It is as though the two of them are lying on the bed, spectating on the curious mess Thomas has got himself into, on this strange little child he has been determined to acquire and is caring for so badly.

He sits Clara on the end of the bed and tentatively removes her shirt. She is entirely passive, letting him undo the buttons with her arms hanging limp at her sides. He opens the front, and though his heart stalls momentarily at the sight of the raw red surgical scars that score the length and breadth of her quail’s chest his demeanour remains perfectly calm. He finds a clean shirt and does up the buttons with feather-like fingers.

A professor comes to give a talk on the poets of the First World War.

The department advertised the talk, but in the lecture hall only a few of the front seats are occupied. Tonie is embarrassed. She had half-hoped to get out of coming herself, but everyone else is ill or away, and the professor is on her hands. She waits in Reception. He arrives, coming through the glass doors out of the dark street, where the traffic stands end to end in the rain. He is much younger than she expected. She glances at the printed flyer, to remind herself of his name.

They walk briskly along the grey neon-lit corridors to the lecture hall. Tonie tries to slow him down: she doesn’t want him in a mood of urgency. She tries to impart the attitude of casual acceptance that is the hallmark of her English department. She hopes that by the time they get there more people will have arrived.

‘Don’t expect a crowd,’ she says at the door. ‘They’re not very good at evenings. They go back to their burrows once darkness falls.’

He laughs politely. She sees that he is very smartly dressed. He is wearing a suit and tie, cufflinks, polished shoes.

‘Never mind,’ he says.

She opens the doors. If anything, there are fewer people inside than there were before. She introduces him — his name is Max Desch, from the University of York — and there is a faint sound of clapping as she leaves the podium. She sits a few rows back, alone. She watches him adjust the microphone, lay out his notes. For a long time he doesn’t speak. He gets various books out of his briefcase and lays them out too. Then he shakes his head, puts some of them back and gets out others. People start to turn around in their seats, looking back at her. They sense that something is wrong. They expect her to act, but what can she do? In a way, she admires him. She admires people who don’t do what they’re supposed to.

He is silent for so long that when he finally speaks into the microphone, everybody jumps.

‘Why don’t you all come up here?’ he says.

Everyone troops up on to the podium. They don’t even complain about it: they’re too unnerved. Tonie comes last. There are a few chairs up there and she sits on one. Other people sit on the floor. The professor sits on a chair.

‘The best thing about poetry’, he says, ‘is reading it. Don’t you think? I’ll just read one now.’

He reads a poem by Wilfred Owen. Everyone listens. He has an unusual style of reading. He declares each line flatly and leaves long pauses between the lines. He is not at all self-conscious, in his impeccable suit. One or two of the students laugh. But after a while everyone is quiet.

‘Who wants to go next?’ he says, when he is finished.

To Tonie’s surprise, a few hands go up. He points to a girl and passes her the book. It is Julie Bowes: Tonie often sees her on the bus, whispering into her phone and staring wanly out of the dirty window. She reads a poem by Rupert Brooke, the famous one. It is hard to think of something less associated with Julie Bowes than this poem. She reads it softly, falteringly, with her south London accent. Tonie’s neck and shoulders begin to ache. When Julie Bowes asks, ‘And is there honey still for tea?’ Tonie’s whole being cringes. She feels angry with the professor, with his suit and his cut-glass accent. She herself makes every exception for these students, who look so exhausted by life before they’ve even begun. She is angry that they should be made to read the patriotic words of public schoolboys. Yet they don’t seem particularly to mind.

The professor motions Julie to pass the book along. She gives it to Nile, a big silent boy in tracksuit and gold chains, trainers like showboats, his muscled legs uncomfortably crossed in front of him. He leafs slowly through the pages. Then he starts to read, Siegfried Sassoon. His voice is strong and beautiful, simple as a beam. It is as though he has never used it before; as though the poem has hewn it out of the substance of what he is. Slowly, Tonie gives in. She listens to the sound of them saying what they do not normally say. She sees how innocent they are, how unformed, how transitive. They pass easily into the vessel of the poem. For an instant, they become it. Her consternation and embarrassment fade. She is amused, impressed, and in the end she forgets to be anything at all. The hour passes easily. A feeling of comfort, almost of love envelops her. For the first time in a long time, she loves this place.

‘What about you?’ he says. ‘Will you read something?’

They are all looking at her. They want her to become human, like them. They want her to emerge from her authority, her fixed life, a small figure emerging from a large building. They want to see what she really is.

‘All right,’ she says.

Suddenly the book is in her hands. She reads where the page is open, Wilfred Owen again, ‘Insensibility’; a poem she remembers, though she hasn’t read it in years, hasn’t even thought about it. His voice speaking through hers surprises her. Like the others, she does not often say beautiful things. Yet the words seem to be her own — they feel like what she would have invented, if only she knew how to. They seem to delineate an unlived passion, a dark form, like a second, nameless body inside her own. When she reads the lines,

….. whatever moans in man

Before the last sea and the hapless stars

her voice trembles. The book is old, with yellowed pages. It is older than her, and Wilfred Owen is dead. She feels sad, sorry, as though he represented a missed opportunity; as though he has left her to go on alone, full of stillborn passion. When she has finished, she returns the book to the professor. Their eyes meet. ‘Goodbye, then,’ he says to the students.

He starts putting his books and papers back in his briefcase. They stand, hover uncertainly, trail towards the doors. They don’t want to leave: they want to be looked after. He has made them feel secure, and now they want to surrender responsibility for themselves.

Tonie remains behind, to see him out.

‘Is there somewhere near here we can get a drink?’ he says.

They go to the pub that is the traditional refuge of the English department, where Tonie half-hopes she’ll meet someone she knows. She doesn’t know what she’ll find to say to him. She watches him while he gets the drinks. Now that it is over, she isn’t sure what his talk really amounted to.

‘It was nice, hearing them read,’ she says, when he returns.

He puts the drinks on the table. His is something clear, gin or vodka.

‘Was it?’ He drinks from his glass, apparently indifferent.

‘Generally they don’t talk all that much.’

‘Talk is a snare,’ he says.

She glances at him, surprised. He is looking at her steadily. He smiles, a smile that is much less polite than the rest of him.