Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

‘How are you getting on?’

Being accustomed now to my passive role in discussion, it took me a moment to realize that Pamela was in the kitchen and was addressing me directly.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, nonchalantly. I drew a plate dripping from the water, and placed it gently on the draining board. My stomach was taut with expectation; for in that moment I had devised a way to injure Pamela, and to do so without inviting recrimination. My revenge, however, depended on Pamela entering into some form of exchange with me, and the difficulty lay in trying to initiate a conversation founded on what I had overheard without betraying that I had done so.

‘Ahhh,’ Pamela sighed, with vexation. I felt her linger behind me and waited to see if she would offer anything further. I heard the scrape of a chair and peered surreptitiously over my shoulder. She was sitting at the table with her head in her hands. ‘This was all I needed,’ she said.

I took this as a direct cue for manifestations of concern on my part.

‘Is he coming down?’ I said. The intimacy sounded awkward.

‘What?’ Pamela lifted her head, confused. ‘Oh, yes. Tonight. I’d better go and make sure that Mrs Barker’s changed the sheets on his bed. Piers will have to move his things.’ She made this last observation as if to herself. I wondered why Piers should have left a trail in Toby’s room, and was so dumbfounded by what this immediately implied that I was almost derailed from my plan. ‘God, I’m exhausted ,’ she groaned.

The chair scraped again, signalling that Pamela had stood up and was about to leave. The moment was far from ideal; but I had no choice.

‘Was he pleased about Caroline?’ I lightly enquired.

There was a profound and menacing silence from behind me. I busied myself nervously at the sink.

‘Caroline!’ uttered Pamela, in an awed whisper. ‘I completely forgot. Oh, God, how awful of me!’

My heart gave a little pirouette of glee. So pleased was I, in fact, with my own ingenuity that I had difficulty in restraining myself from rushing from the sink and engaging Pamela in a congratulatory embrace.

‘Selfish, selfish cow,’ whispered Pamela; not to me, I realized. ‘Oh, Stella, how could I have forgotten?’

‘You’ve got a lot on your mind,’ I consoled her. ‘It’s not surprising.’

‘I know, I know,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve just got to get myself sorted out! Oh God, I’d better go and phone him again.’ I heard footsteps approaching behind me, and then the light, penitent pressure of Pamela’s hand on my back. ‘Thank you, Stella. You’re very good. Look, why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off, once you’ve finished here. Martin shouldn’t be back until six.’

‘Are you sure?’ I said.

‘No, that should be fine,’ she conceded, after a pause. ‘I think I can manage. When you come back, we could all go for a swim.’

‘Great!’ I replied.

She shuffled mournfully from the room, leaving me to celebrate my triumph alone. I ran the taps and even hummed loudly, not wishing to hear anything of Pamela’s subsequent conversation from beyond the wall. I realized that I had become somewhat addicted to cunning; but even though I could see that so far I had lost more than I had gained by it, like a gambler this latest victory encouraged me to persist. The normal forms of control over a situation not being available to me, I felt that for the time being I had discovered a more covert way to survive.

Along with the satisfaction I had gained from rattling Pamela, the scene had yielded an additional bonus. Piers’s exile could, of course, be explained by a number of factors. My own parents, for example, had increasingly, as they grew older and the rooms became, through death and desertion, available, slept apart. The cause was prosaic — my father’s snoring — but there had never been any question of moving personal effects. My mother merely decamped when the noise became intolerable, and returned automatically when it had subsided. Her night-time paddings up and down the dark corridor were a midnight extension of the treadmill of their marriage, a tour of duty undertaken in a spirit of deep and sacrificial secrecy. The cautious creak of the bedsprings bore the imprimatur of love: for despite the glottal riot which had woken her, my mother’s own manoeuvres were conducted with pathological quiet.

Piers’s predicament, however, emitted the distinct scent of a mystery. I could not imagine the lovely Pamela snoring, although the possibility that she routinely roused Piers from his snores and ejected him, rather than move herself, was a distinct one; but the presence of his ‘things’ — so many ‘things’ that they presented an obstruction to Toby’s visit — hinted to the devious mind at a disaffection more malignant and incurable. If a falling-out were the reason for the separation, however, why would Pamela have revealed it so unthinkingly? I had certainly caught her at an unguarded moment, with the weighty prospect of a domestic assignment now before her. I had also, apparently engrossed in my washing-up and with my back turned, given the appearance of not listening to what she was saying. It did occur to me that Pamela considered me to be of so little consequence that I was more or less invisible to her; but the frequency with which she seemed to refer to me in her private conversations suggested that this was not the case.

Having pondered this latest development at such length, I found that the washing-up was done and the kitchen returned to its former glory. Judging by the silence from the hall, Pamela had finished her conversation and gone elsewhere. I looked at my watch and found that it was half-past three. Beyond the windows the afternoon simmered, unstirred by breezes. I longed for the postponed swim. There was still the problem of the sodden dishcloths to confront, however, and I decided that this might be the moment to make my escape to the cottage, where I could lay them out to dry in the sun, and think over all that I had learned.

Outside the garden stood still, as if held in a sultry jelly of heat and thick air. I made my way along the path between the twittering hedges to the cottage, feeling within seconds the urgency of getting into the shade. The whining of a lawnmower threaded its way along the path towards me, growing louder and more guttural with my approach. By the time I reached the gate the noise was quite deafening. Entering the garden I saw a man astride what looked like a miniature tractor, driving it bucking and lurching into the dense beard of grass in front of the cottage. Over one half of the garden, stems lay felled on their sides in long executioner’s rows. The strong, familiar smell of cut grass, a seasonal memory annually forgotten, flooded up from the lawn. I stood watching the man’s progress. He was wearing a large hat which covered most of his face, but as the tensile limpet of his body clung to the thrashing machine I caught glimpses of his neck, brown and knotty as old wood. This, I concluded, was dear old Thomas, mowing the lawn true to his word.

‘Good afternoon!’ I cried, wading through the grass with my hand shielding my eyes from the light.

Thomas drove roaring on through the stubborn crop, impervious, his skinny shoulders hooked over the handlebars. He was mowing in lengths, and when the machine abutted the cottage wall he turned it in a lumbering circle and began driving back towards me. I waved cheerfully, but when it became evident that he had no intention of stopping was compelled to step aside.

‘Good afternoon!’ I called again hopefully, as he ploughed furiously past me. I caught a glimpse of the rugged escarpment of his nose, and the blind socket of his mouth.