Rachel Cusk - The Bradshaw Variations

CLAUDIA: She wasn’t in bed. She was talking to me.

LEWIS [ from his room ]: She can be in bed and talk to you at the same time. She could even be asleep and talk to you. She might actually have been hypnotised.

CLAUDIA: She obviously thinks it’s me who’s driving everyone into the ground and forgetting I’ve got a family, including a child of six whose growth will be restricted because nobody could be organised enough to put her to bed –

LOTTIE: Sometimes I think I’d like to be a nun.

CLAUDIA: — and I can’t say, look, it isn’t me, can I? I can’t tell her it’s because some people are completely selfish and think only of themselves. It’s a sort of joke [ laughs ], a joke, when I could have spent all day in my studio working, all day and all evening too, and still have been in exactly the same position as I am now!

HOWARD: Well, you could have, Claude. That’s a true statement of the position, isn’t it?

CLAUDIA: What is?

HOWARD: That you could have spent the day working, without any loss to the family.

[ Silence ]

CLAUDIA: Just like you do.

HOWARD: I suppose so. I don’t know. I’m only repeating what you said yourself.

CLAUDIA: You, who come home and find that the beds have miraculously been made and the house tidied, and the food bought and the children picked up from school –

HOWARD: I’m just thinking of you, Claude. Your happiness.

CLAUDIA: — you, who have a slave, an actual slave, an unpaid person whose time you own!

HOWARD: Lucia’s not a slave. We pay her, don’t we? We can pay her more. She can pick up Martha, she can do the shopping –

CLAUDIA: I’m not talking about Lucia. I’m talking about me.

HOWARD: You don’t have to do anything. You can have all day.

CLAUDIA: You can’t pay Lucia to be your wife.

HOWARD: All day, if you want it.

CLAUDIA: It isn’t a day — it’s a hand-me-down, it’s a thing made out of other people’s leftover time. You can’t be creative between nine and five, Monday to Friday except bank holidays!

HOWARD: Can’t you?

CLAUDIA: You don’t understand creativity! You don’t understand what an artist loses by being responsible for other people!

LOTTIE: Are we going?

HOWARD: No!

[ Silence ]

HOWARD: Look Claude, let’s forget it. Let’s forget the weekend. Let’s stay here.

CLAUDIA: We can’t. You’ve booked the sailing course.

HOWARD: I’ll un-book it.

CLAUDIA: And the children have been looking forward to it. We can’t.

HOWARD: Then I’ll take them. You can stay here. You can have all tomorrow and all the next day on your own.

CLAUDIA: [ Pause ] Now I feel like I’m being punished.

HOWARD: But you just said –

CLAUDIA: I feel like you’re saying, all right then, if you want more time we’ll all go off to Cornwall and have fun without you. You can have your time, but only at a cost. Only at the expense of fun.

HOWARD [ bemused ]: Then come.

CLAUDIA: All right.

HOWARD: Though perhaps we’d better go in the morning. It’s nearly eleven.

CLAUDIA: But then you’ll miss half the day! There’s no point in going if you miss half the day.

HOWARD: It doesn’t matter all that much.

CLAUDIA: We’re better off going now. There won’t be any traffic.

HOWARD: What about Martha’s growth problem?

CLAUDIA: She can sleep in the car. I’ll put some blankets and pillows in the back.

HOWARD: Oh, Claude, it’s crazy. We won’t get there till two. Wouldn’t you rather just relax and go in the morning?

CLAUDIA: It’s fine. I can’t bear the thought of crawling across England on a Saturday morning with everyone and their grandmother. It’ll be fun, rushing through the night, don’t you think?

HOWARD: Oh, Claude. Oh, darling. I do love you.

[ They kiss ]

LOTTIE: Are we actually going or aren’t we?

HOWARD/CLAUDIA: Yes!

Tonie goes to a party at Janine’s flat in Battersea. It is a warm evening and everyone is out on the terrace. Tonie looks around, not recognising anyone in the indistinct light. Then she sees Janine, a dark shape with pale accents, her bare arms and glittering dress picking her out from the others. But the terrace is crowded and Janine is far away. Tonie gets a drink. She wonders why everyone here is so formless and anonymous. Their bodies look lumpy in the dusk, their faces featureless and indifferent as stones. The lack of excitement almost frightens her. Only Janine, in the glamour of her party-giving, is distinct. The others, half-hidden in the shadows, don't seem to belong to the same reality as Tonie. Either they are unreal or she herself is.

She sees Lawrence Metcalf, too late to pretend that she hasn’t. He doesn’t move, but his eyes take on a devouring expression that obliges her to approach him.

‘How are you?’ she says.

He is tall, so that she has to look up to talk to him. He wears a gold hoop in one ear, like a pirate.

‘I’m very well, actually,’ he says, his eyes already moving around above her head. ‘I’ve just been in Stockholm for a few days, which was fantastic.’

‘You got your funding,’ Tonie says, resigning herself to the conversation.

‘Oh, absolutely. There was never really any question. The board put it straight through.’

‘That’s great.’ She tries to remember what his funding was for. Something to do with Vikings.

‘Stockholm is just a different world. Beautiful place, beautiful people, everything so clean and well organised — do you know it?’

Tonie does not know Stockholm.

‘They’re just light years ahead of us in every conceivable way. We’re like a Third World country by comparison, in terms of educational provision. And the quality of life is just staggering.’ His eyes dart around. ‘The women are pretty staggering too. Every other girl that passes you in the street is like a bloody goddess.’

‘Really,’ says Tonie.

‘And they’re pretty liberated, you know, I don’t mean in terms of the — ah — cliché about the Swedes, which they all seem to find quite funny, but in terms of their attitudes. You don’t get that female resentment you have here. Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Dieter?’

For the first time Tonie notices that there is another man there. He is much smaller than Lawrence. In the darkness Tonie can see only the bland oval of his face, and the watery shapes of his glasses.

‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ he says.

Lawrence throws back his head and laughs. The other man smiles slightly and looks at him inquisitively.

‘You see?’ Lawrence says to Tonie. ‘He doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. Resentment, Dieter. It’s what gives English women all those little lines around their mouths.’

‘I know what resentment is,’ the man says. ‘It is the ubiquitous consequence of sexual inequality. Swedish women are better protected by the law, that’s all. But it has to be enforced.’

Lawrence looks slightly sulky. Tonie ponders his big, fleshy face, his darting eyes, his luxuriant hair that he wears slightly long, curling around his gold earring. He is the sort of man that makes Tonie feel invisible. His interest seems to go in every direction but hers. She consciously dislikes him — why, then, does it trouble her that he has no interest in her? Why does she feel negated by the restless eyes of men like Lawrence Metcalf?

The small man turns to her.

‘I take it English men don’t have wrinkles.’

‘Only around their hearts,’ Tonie says.

He laughs warmly and his eyes glow at her behind his glasses. ‘That is much more off-putting.’