Rachel Cusk: The Country Life

I stood outside Buckley station, with one suitcase on the ground on either side of me, and waited. I had worried that Mr Madden would, never having met me before, have difficulty recognizing me when I arrived, but the station building and forecourt were more or less empty. As I stood there, however, my suitcases picking me out like quotation marks, I found that my attempt to conduct this simple train of thought in a logical manner was strangely confounded. I saw that the station was deserted, but failed to register the significance of this sight in relation to my anxieties concerning my arrival and recognition. Indeed, my acknowledgement of the emptiness of my surroundings, rather than reassuring me as to the ease with which I would be noticed standing there, lacked all memory of the importance the state of the station had assumed in my thoughts previously. This, it soon became clear, was the fault of an entirely new anxiety, which at the sight of the deserted station — a sight I did not, as I have said, find reassuring in any case — now came to torment me. What surprised me was how quickly this second anxiety had superseded the first. It suggested a certain powerlessness to my position, as if my only existence, my only mental function, was to register with each passing second the uncertain outcome of the next.

My anxiety, naturally enough I suppose, was as to the whereabouts of Mr Madden, whose absence at the scene of my arrival I had not, trapped as I was in this new, contingent, and entirely linear mode of thought, even considered. I wondered whether he could have had an accident on his way; a thought I entertained only briefly and with a distinct lack of concern. I could, and did, as I stood there, admit that Mr Madden’s existence was as yet a matter of complete indifference to me; and right up until the very second of his arrival would remain that way. It was interesting to think that, perhaps in five minutes’ time, I might care about something for which at the present moment I had no feelings whatever. The fact that I was giving such undue attention to my lack of feelings for Mr Madden began itself to seem rather portentous. I wondered whether some significance were being telegraphed to me from the future; a future in which, for example, I would fall in love with Mr Madden and look back on my former indifference with astonishment; or, if my love were unrequited, with longing. Perhaps, on the other hand, this message was reaching me not from the future but from a different room of the present. Were I to discover that Mr Madden had indeed met with an accident on his way to collect me, would I be glad of my impartiality or sorry for it? Could the very fact that I had thought of him having an accident have brought the accident about? And how would his accident affect my contract of employment with the Maddens? Was it selfish or merely practical to consider this aspect of things at a time like this, my indifference towards Mr Madden having already been established?

All of which took me forward by a few minutes, at which point I noticed that a blue car had drawn up and was crouched on the forecourt some ten yards away from me. I had a feeling of abrupt drainage, as if a plug had been pulled on the pool of some inner world. The car sat for some seconds, like an unexploded bomb, before the door on the right-hand side swung open. A feeling of intense fear rolled heedlessly over me. I realized not only that the man who got out of the car and began to approach me must be Mr Madden, but that I was also to have the first human encounter — discounting dealings with ticket collectors, newsagents and the like — I had had since that last day in Rome.

‘Sorry! Sorry!’ said Mr Madden, coming towards me with his arms flapping up and down.

He was very tall, and quite large, with black, shiny hair which bounced over his face, which was red, as he walked. He was wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, on which the peculiar motion of his arms revealed glimpses of two hidden islands of sweat. From a distance his face had looked oddly crumpled, but now I saw that he was smiling, a smile so forceful that it required the cooperation of all of his features to sustain it, so that it appeared oddly to be his fixed expression.

‘Sorry!’ he said again.

He was right beside me now, although he was too large and mobile for me to get a sense of him, as if I were at the wheel of a car and had to concentrate with all my might to stay on the road.

‘Have you been waiting ages?’

‘No,’ I said. It just came out, without my even having decided what to say. ‘Only a few minutes.’

In that moment, I knew, everything was set. By ‘set’, of course, I mean only in the most specific sense; I don’t want to imply that Mr Madden’s future, for example, was in my hands, nor that the more general pattern of events to come had been fixed by this one trivial exchange. What I am trying to describe is my belief that the first seconds of any encounter are those in which the important decisions are made, the fundamental characteristics established, the structural lines laid down. Had I, for example, produced some witticism in the course of my first exchange with Mr Madden, in place of what I actually did say, things might have turned out very differently between us. As it was, of all the shades of character I might have selected, I chose a kind of diffident reserve. He, as you have seen, presented himself as cheerful, kind and slightly distracted. I am not saying that our relationship did not progress beyond these roles, nor occasionally even move outside them; merely that this moment was the mould into which our fluid first encounter was poured, and that even when later we had gelled to form something firm and free-standing, its basic shape was always held.

I must have assumed a slightly stunned expression, because Mr Madden stood before me with an air of polite expectation, as if waiting for me to come to life.

‘Ready?’ he said finally.

It was only a second before he said it, but those early seconds, as I have said, seemed long.

‘Absolutely!’ I replied, even giving a little laugh. I knew that I was trying to escape the mould I had made for myself, and knew too that the attempt was futile.

‘I’ll take these, shall I?’

He bent down to pick up my suitcases. I was immediately worried by how heavy he would judge them to be, and what he might infer from it. As he bent over, I saw the top of his head. Being so tall, it was evidently not a part of him that many people saw — as its aspect of overgrown neglect testified — and looking at it I felt a curious tenderness for him, as if I had chanced on a secret door to his nature which the maze of social intercourse might have kept hidden from me. He straightened up and began walking with my suitcases to the car. I followed behind and watched as he opened the boot and heaved them in. Then, either out of good manners or because I still appeared somewhat stunned, he came round to my side of the car and opened the door for me.

‘You might want to take your coat off before you get in,’ he said. I caught the fugitive glance of his small, bright eyes. ‘Pretty stifling in there. It’s been sitting baking in the sun all morning.’

‘Right,’ I said.

For the first time since I had arrived, I noticed that it was indeed very hot, and that I was wearing far too many clothes. A fierce sun blazed overhead and the sky was brilliant blue. I had left London in an iron-grey bustle of turbulent cloud and gusting wind, and the change confused me. I tried to recall when it had happened, and wondered if I had fallen asleep on the train.

‘It was cold when I left London,’ I added, removing my coat. I was grateful that I seemed to have the possession of at least some of my faculties once more. Mr Madden would now know that I did not habitually dress for a hot day in winter clothes.