Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

‘If you are insinuating what I think you are, then I have to say that I think you have a depraved mind.’

‘But it’s true!’ He put down the record and wheeled his chair back to mine, his eyes glinting. ‘He’d kill me if he knew I’d told anyone. You’ll have to promise.’

‘I promise,’ I said, as though wearily; although in reality I was glad to have exchanged oaths with him.

‘It happened years ago — we hadn’t had Roy for very long and he was only a puppy. Anyway, one day I couldn’t find him, and I was downstairs looking for him and I heard this noise.’ He paused suspensefully, and then started to make a whimpering noise. ‘Like that, coming from somewhere underneath the stairs. So I called him, Roy! , very quietly like that, Roy! Here, boy! And the noise just carried on. So I came up really quietly, because I’d worked out that it was coming from the cupboard and I thought he’d been shut in and that I’d give him a surprise. And so I threw open the door, bam! And there he was.’

‘Who?’

‘Toby. With Roy.’ Martin chewed at his fingernail matter-of-factly.

‘What were they doing?’ I said finally.

‘Well, Toby had his thing out,’ resumed Martin conversationally. ‘And Roy was kind of squirming and trying to get away.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ I said.

‘Oh, he was desperate ,’ said Martin. ‘He used to go on about it the whole time. Muff this and snatch that and fucking the other. When I caught him that time he told me that a boy at school had said you could, you know, with a dog. I don’t think he did anything, actually, to Roy I mean. But he tried to.’

‘Did you tell your parents?’

‘Course not!’ said Martin scornfully. ‘He’d be a complete swine to me if I didn’t have something on him.’

There was a faint tap on the door.

‘Come in!’ called Martin.

The door opened and Pamela stood on the threshold. I could see immediately from her face that the ecstasy of an hour or two ago had begun to fade.

‘Darlings, I think we’re just going to have to go ahead and eat,’ she said, as if in mid-conversation. She looked around, bewildered. ‘Where are you both? It’s pitch black in here!’ She switched on the light, and I realized that the room had indeed been deep in shadow. In the glare Pamela looked small and rather sad. ‘Yes, we haven’t heard from Toby so I think we might as well just go ahead. Have you been having fun?’ She twinkled from one to the other of us with forced brightness. ‘I heard you up here in stitches a while ago, and I thought I’d leave you be.’

‘What time was he supposed to come?’ said Martin.

‘Oh, well, he was very vague,’ Pamela replied, studying her shoe. ‘You know what he’s like. He probably left it too late and then got stuck in traffic.’

‘What about that pathetic telephone of his? No, he probably hasn’t worked out how to use it.’

‘Don’t start, Martin,’ said Pamela, the ‘dangerous’ edge to her voice. ‘It could be broken, for all I know. He could have forgotten to bring it with him. He’ll be here soon, anyway, I’m sure.’

A telephone rang faintly from behind her.

‘Oh look, that’s probably him now. Don’t be long.’

She disappeared back down the corridor. I was glad that I was to be included at dinner, for lunch now seemed very far away, and my walk had made me hungry.

The garden was flooded in moonlight as I made my way back to the cottage later that evening. The moon was vast, pendulous and iridescent as a lamp above the cottage roof, so that it cast a silvery path for me all the way up the lawn. In spite of this, my footing was uncertain. The reason for this was that I was somewhat drunk, Mr Madden having been over-attentive to my glass during the course of a long and not altogether joyous evening. I have a weak head for alcohol, and had probably drunk more of it in the days since my arrival at Franchise Farm than during the entire month which preceded it. In addition, the increasing atmosphere of tension around the table as the prospect of Toby’s arrival decamped from the imminent to the distinctly remote, gave the sanctuary of alcohol a temporary but inviting gleam. Pamela grew maudlin, Piers taciturn, and Martin unsettlingly knowing, casting lingering glances at me across the table, silent bulletins which were evidently designed to inform me that should I care to request them, new insights were available from their source into what I had told him earlier.

‘I shouldn’t think he’ll come now,’ said Pamela in the end, rising to her feet expectantly as if hoping that the very act of stating a certainty would immediately bring about its refutation.

‘Probably not,’ concurred Mr Madden, stubbornly lodged at the table amidst the wreckage of dinner.

‘Oh, he is a wretch!’ she cried; and I saw then that she was genuinely hurt, and was trying to disguise it with maternal exclamations of disapproval.

Intriguing as all this was, my eyes were closing; but now, staggering into the cottage and turning on the lights, I rather wished that I had stayed longer; for the cramped, empty sitting room, which admittedly I had done little to make more homely, seemed to look peevishly round as I entered, as if it had spent the evening entertaining a loneliness which I had been appointed to meet but had kept waiting for hours, tapping its fingers and getting in the way. I flung myself into the bony armchair with the cavalier but disturbing thought that I would welcome, were I to possess it, still more to drink. This, for me, was entirely out of character; but so committed did I become to the idea that I was driven to get up again and search the kitchen cupboards to see if a stray bottle lurked there. My compulsion did not strike me as depraved. Rather, I felt frustrated with my circumstances, that I was so ill-equipped as to lack the means of being sociable with myself. I sat for a while in a kind of stupor, unoccupied. Just as it seemed that no barrier remained between me and the misery which lay vertiginously below, I remembered that I could in fact go to bed. This I did, without pausing to do anything other than remove my clothes and fling them to the floor; and once there, I turned out the light immediately and closed my eyes. As soon as I did so, the room took an alarming swoop, as if I were in the hull of a ship. I opened my eyes again, perturbed, and saw the silvered silhouettes of furniture settle. Closing them again, the same thing happened. A feeling of nausea formed itself in my swilling stomach. My eyes grated open like rusty hinges; but I immediately felt so tired that I was forced to close them again.

How long this opening and closing went on for I do not know, but eventually I suppose I must have fallen asleep, for although when I opened my eyes again it was still dark, I could hear the shrill pulse of birdsong outside the window. My first thought on waking was that a foreign body had insinuated itself into my mouth. This proved, on investigation, to be nothing more than my own tongue, which had through dehydration formed a sort of crust which sat snug against my palate. My head, in addition, was clamped in a vice of pain; and I rose automatically from my bed in search of water. Down in the glare of the bathroom, I realized that I was naked; and further, that my body was covered once more in the white crosshatchings that had tormented me during my first night in the country. All in all I made a pitiful figure; and this gave substance to the first real pang of longing for Edward that I had experienced. This longing was not predicated on the notion that he would have been particularly sympathetic to my plight; merely that he would not have allowed it to happen in the first place. Even that gives an impression of a solicitousness which I cannot in all honesty ascribe to our relationship. Really, the only reason why I even thought of Edward at that moment was because he would have been against my coming to the country at all; and that much only because coming to the country was irrational, and besides, involved going away from Edward.