Rachel Cusk - The Bradshaw Variations

‘I like saying it,’ Katie says. ‘I say it all the time. It’s fun.’

‘What’s fun about it?’ Alexa says scornfully.

Katie shrugs, and twists her pencil in her stubby fingers. There is something attractive about her, something magnetising that Alexa feels guilty about. She gives Alexa the feeling that she has forgotten something important. She makes it seem as though it may not have been important after all.

Mrs Flack is calling out the words and people are putting their hands up. On the other side of the room, Maisie and Francesca put their hands up. Alexa would like to put her hand up, but she has not been listening. Because of Katie, she does not know the answers. The French words fall on her ears and die away, uncomprehended. This is Katie’s power, the power of ignorance. For a moment Alexa thinks she likes it, this huge, unspecified freedom that lies darkly all around the fussing, probing point of knowledge. Other people are writing things down. Alexa does not know what she is meant to be writing. She is lost. The drawings and the arrows and the words don’t fit together. It is as though she has lost sight of Mrs Flack and the others; as though one minute she was following them and the next they had turned a corner and disappeared. Mrs Flack turns and writes something on the board. Her round body jiggles as she writes. Katie nudges Alexa in the ribs and Alexa looks. Katie is half-standing in her chair, wobbling like a belly dancer. She is being Mrs Flack, wobbling and writing in the air. Petrified, Alexa pulls her back into her seat.

‘Stop it!’ she says in a whisper.

Katie laughs, a raspberry sound that bursts noisily through her lips and coats them with a sheen of spit. There is spit on the table too. Mrs Flack stops writing. She turns around, cocks her head, scans the silent classroom. Alexa stares straight ahead. Her cheeks are hot. She has forgotten that the lesson will end: she has lost the chain-like sequence of the day, the prospect of morning break and lunch, the light-filled distances of the afternoon. There is only this ever-enlarging present, extending outwards into the darkness of ignorance. Mrs Flack returns her attention to the board. When Alexa looks down at her worksheet, she sees that the paper girl and boy have changed. The girl has a dark scribble of hair in the middle of her skirt and big round bosoms on her shirtfront, and the boy has a carrot-shaped penis drooping obscenely between his legs. For a moment Alexa thinks that she has drawn these things herself. It is as though some shameful desire of her own has been mysteriously enacted. Mrs Flack will collect the worksheets at the end of the lesson. This one has Alexa’s name on it. Alexa is like the paper boy and girl, violated. Katie’s face beside her is white and grinning, her eyes large, her hand with its pencil comically twirling a strand of hair by her ear. At the sight of her face Alexa laughs, a laugh that struggles frantically in her stomach, that convulses her whole body and finally escapes, pealing, from her mouth.

Mrs Flack snaps round, outraged.

‘Alexa Bradshaw!’

Her voice is shrill and angry. Alexa sees the glaring face, the body briefly lit up with fury, the transformation of Mrs Flack from one thing into another. It is Alexa who has transformed her. The class is silent.

‘Alexa Bradshaw, will you be quiet!’

The sound of her own name is a kind of death. Then, unexpectedly, Mrs Flack is herself again. She picks up her marker; she returns to the lesson. She does not appear surprised, or disappointed. She does not say that Alexa has let her down. She does not comment on Alexa’s violated goodness, on the white record of her conduct that has now been stained. It is Mrs Flack, in a way, who has stained it. She has treated Alexa as she treats everyone. She does not love Alexa; she has never, Alexa sees, loved her. Yet Alexa feels guilty, as though Mrs Flack’s indifference, too, were her own fault.

She sits rigid and silent until the bell goes. She does not hand in her worksheet. Instead she folds it up tightly and puts it in her pocket. It has become possible to deceive Mrs Flack. The stain has made it possible. At break time she tears it into pieces and hides them under the rubbish in the bin.

On Saturday her mother is taking her to the city museum. Alexa stands in the kitchen in her coat while her mother puts things into her handbag.

Her father says, ‘Shall I come along and keep you company?’

There is a little underwater silence, a kind of blank.

Tonie says, ‘Don’t you have stuff you need to do?’

‘Not really.’

Alexa listens. The way her parents speak has changed. Their conversations used to travel towards agreement, the way in snap the cards keep turning until two identical ones come up. But now it is the differences Alexa notices. It is as though their talks stop before the end: the identical card is never found. They walk away unresolved, two people who don’t match.

‘I thought it would be nice to go together, that’s all,’ her father says.

Tonie purses her lips, forages about in her bag.

‘Really, I’m happy to take her,’ she says. ‘I’ve hardly seen her this week.’

Alexa doesn’t hear the end of that conversation, if it had an end. The scene in the kitchen has a ragged edge. The next thing she knows, she’s out on the pavement with her mother, walking downhill. She is holding her mother’s hand. They are flying over the cracks between the paving stones, over the dead leaves and empty sweet wrappers, flying away from the house, where her father remains.

‘Isn’t Daddy coming?’ she says.

‘No.’ Her mother sounds surprised. ‘Did you want him to come?’

She doesn’t know the answer to that question. Her mother squeezes her fingers.

‘I wanted it to be just us,’ she says.

‘Me too,’ says Alexa. Instantly she feels unhappy. She touches a lamp-post, for luck. ‘Can we have hot chocolate in the café?’

‘If you want.’

‘Can we have it first? Before we go in?’

Her mother is silent. They pass a lady standing on the pavement. She is talking on her phone, laughing. She is wearing a black coat. She is laughing and laughing, standing there.

‘Can we?’

‘No. We’ll have it afterwards.’

‘Why can’t we have it before?’

‘Because I say so.’

‘But why?’

‘Hey. Stop asking for things.’

Her mother has stopped and is looking around, to right and left. For a moment Alexa thinks she is looking for someone to tell, about Alexa’s behaviour. But they are only crossing the road.

‘Stop asking for things,’ she repeats, when they reach the other side. ‘We’ve only just left the house and you’re already asking for things.’

‘Sorry,’ Alexa says.

Her mother halts again. She bends down and puts her arms around Alexa, so that the street disappears and Alexa is lost in her hair and the folds of her clothes.

‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry,’ she says, into her ear. ‘I’m just tired. I need to get used to you again.’

Alexa wonders what this means. It gives her the feeling that she is in some way extraordinary. She wonders whether it means they will have hot chocolate first. They reach the main road and wait at the bus stop. Her mother seems smaller here, in the noise and the traffic. She is wearing a red jacket.

‘Where’s the bus?’ Tonie says. ‘Can you see it? Your eyes are better than mine.’

Alexa looks down the milling grey stretch. She looks for the form of the bus. She knows what she is looking for, yet she is anxious. It seems possible that she might not recognise the bus, or that it might not come. She looks at the shapes of cars and vans and lorries, wondering each time whether they are the bus.