Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

His truculent back receded to the bottom of the garden, and having been twice slighted I decided to take cover in the cottage before he completed his turn. I have never had much of a touch in such situations. My parents had no gardener or cleaner, nor many visitors either, which may explain my lack of social graces; although I do not want to give the impression that I am using my parents to excuse away everything. They would be furious if they knew even a part of what I ascribe to their influence. Indeed, they have always suspected me of this tendency. ‘I suppose that’s our fault too!’ my mother would remark, if some entirely unrelated misfortune befell me. She would even, no doubt, if she were here, accuse me of blaming them for my habit of blaming them.

I stole away from Thomas, then, looking guiltily over my shoulder lest he should glance up and acknowledge me, and went into the cottage; intending to leave the door open as a further testament to my accessibility, should the need for conversation suddenly overtake him. I had the damp ball of dishcloths in one hand and was about to attend to it when I noticed something lying on the floor in front of me. It was a single slip of paper, and from its position I judged that it had been slid beneath the door while I was out. I picked it up and saw that it was a leaflet of some sort, crudely printed, and bearing the heading, in astonished capitals: ‘IT’S MADDENING!’

I dropped the dishcloths into the lap of the armchair and read it where I stood. Beneath the heading was printed the following message:

Fancy a walk in the country? Tempted to stroll across the hills and dales of the ‘magnificent’ Sussex landscape? FORGET IT!! Whether you’re down from the big smoke for the day, or just an ordinary local exercising your human rights, you’ll have trouble enjoying the simple pleasures of fresh air and scenery. Why? Because a fat cat farmer is out to stop you, that’s why! Our public rights of way are being sabotaged by this fascist feline, who has seen fit to make a menace out of an area of natural beauty. Innocent ramblers in the Hilltop area, beware! This farmer has declared war on YOU!! His name? Piers Madden. His game? Protecting his property by whatever means necessary from the honest public. YOUR LIVES ARE IN DANGER!! For more information, enquire at the post office.

At the bottom of the leaflet was inscribed the legend Property is Theft , with a kind of scroll beneath it. Thomas was now noisily advancing on his mower up the garden behind me, for all the world as if he intended to forge his way through the cottage, and I quickly shut the door, the leaflet still clutched in my hand. It took me several readings to make any sense of it at all. Of what precisely did Mr Madden stand so bitterly accused? What danger could he, mildness incarnate, possibly represent to the lives of the ‘honest public’? My unfamiliarity with the countryside and its attendant vocabulary meant that it was some time before I understood ‘public rights of way’ to mean footpaths; those being, in so far as I could deduce, ordained paths crossing private property along which anybody was permitted to walk. I liked, as I now knew, a walk; but I could not credit the practice, pleasant though it was, with the politics set out before me here, nor imagine their author to be anything other than a lunatic.

My first thought was to take the leaflet and show it to Mr Madden at once. That he was being denounced so liberally, possibly unbeknownst to him, was bad enough; but the thought that his detractor had trespassed deeply on his property, straying far from footpaths to deliver his vitriol, was worse still. It unsettled me to think that an intruder had made it to my door without being apprehended. I wondered if Thomas had seen anything untoward, but decided not to risk another social foray in that direction.

Just as I was about to leave the cottage with the intention of tracking down Mr Madden and reporting the incident to him, another thought struck me. What if, contrary to appearances, Mr Madden was in fact guilty of discouraging ramblers from his property? I did not suspect him of any degree of turpitude, and clearly saw the leaflet for what it was — a cheap patchwork of resentment and agitation designed to rouse the most brutal emotions in those who read it. It was, however, quite possible that Mr Madden had reasons for his hostility, if hostile he was. Perhaps he had had bad experiences with ramblers in the past, or found that they did damage to his land. If the pamphleteer was a fair example of the species, Mr Madden probably had everything to fear from it.

The thought, in any case, that he might be fully aware of the leaflet, and perhaps had suffered from similar attacks before, discouraged me from bringing it to his attention. Were the substance, if not the tone, of the allegations true, he might quite rightly regard it as none of my business. Were it false, he could feel humiliated. Added to this possibility was the delicate subject of my supposed ‘feelings’ for Mr Madden, and the hint of irritation I caught even when I petitioned him on more trivial matters persuaded me still further against disclosure. The ideal solution, I soon realized, was for him to find out about the leaflet without knowing that the information came from me. The easiest way for this to be done, obviously, was for me to put the leaflet through the front door of the big house unseen. In case anyone did see me, I could carry out this task under the pretence of going for a walk. More convincing yet, I could in fact go for a walk; and if in the course of it I found myself at the post office in Hilltop, I could perhaps carry my investigations further.

Having settled on my plan, I hurried to follow it through so as to be back well before six o’clock, the hour of Martin’s return. My single remaining problem was the vexing matter of my sunburn. Over the course of the day my skin had become less painful, but where my wrists and neck protruded from my shirt the tide of a violent blush remained high. I dared not look at my face in the mirror. Having no hat, and apparently intent on reconstructing the previous day’s activities to the letter, it seemed unlikely that I would avoid a repetition of its misfortunes. The thought of Thomas’s hat, capacious and floppy, was tempting; but having failed in the work of charming him, there was little hope of persuading him to lend it to me short of assaulting him in some way.

Being practical by nature, there was only so long that I would permit myself to be paralysed by a question of vanity. The leaflet in my hand was issuing an urgent summons to action; and I challenged myself to deny that the acquisition of aptitude for the country life required some degree of physical toughness. My skin would have to adapt, as my spirit was striving to do. I became aware of a particularly sweet and expansive silence blooming about me and realized that the roar of the mower had ceased. Opening the door I saw the barbered garden lying anaesthetized in the heat, with no sign either of Thomas or his machine. Seizing my moment, I bolted from the cottage, locking the door behind me and putting the key in my pocket.

Mr Madden’s mention of a gate leading to the drive lent me more purpose than direction in beginning my journey. I had no idea where this gate might be found, having never glimpsed a diversion from the route I customarily took to the big house. Indeed, it was hard to believe, knowing this route as I now did, that it could surprise me in any way at all. I was confounded, then, by the appearance immediately to my left as I emerged from the cottage garden of what was clearly a path. Given that I would happily have sworn on my life that no such path existed, there was something not a little sinister about its manifestation. I had had this feeling once or twice before since being in the country; a feeling that, as in a dream, the world had become a flaccid structure inflated — like a balloon, or the long, flat tunnel of a sleeve down which a motive human hand snakes — by convenience and will. The thought that perhaps everything was folded in this way, unwrapping itself at the command of my footsteps, was a disturbing one.