Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

I waited, my heart suspended in hope.

‘OK,’ said Martin innocently. I felt immediate guilt at the effortlessness with which I had tricked him. It was, I realized, remarkably easy to husband motives in the presence of those who had none. ‘Have you got anything to drink?’

‘Like what?’

‘Booze,’ said Martin, to my surprise.

‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Where would I get that from?’

‘How should I know? Wherever other people get it from. A shop. I was only asking.’

‘I don’t have the money for that sort of thing,’ said I. By and large I had felt a sense of relief at my own poverty since being in the country, but just then, for the first time, the notion of tiring of it insinuated itself among my thoughts. Like someone on whom the grip of religious fervour momentarily loosens, I caught a glimpse of a route by which one day I might wander out of my conviction; a route which could lead me eventually to regret everything I now felt so keenly.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Martin. ‘Why don’t you go back into the house and get a bottle, and then we can go and sit in the garden.’

‘What do you mean, get?’ He had made his suggestion as if he were striking a bargain with me; and I wondered if he had guessed at the tawdry aim on which our cottage expedition was founded. ‘Are you suggesting that I steal a bottle from your parents?’

‘It wouldn’t be stealing.’ said Martin obstinately. ‘It’s just getting, like I said.’ He put his head back and looked up at me craftily. ‘No booze, no cottage garden.’

At that I was sure that he knew of my deceit. In the heat of blackmail I completely forgot that my gracious reception of Toby could have easily been forgone. I was conscious in that moment only of my own guilt, a feeling which invariably looms large in the mind, and which thus appeared to have cornered me in a position from which the only escape was an extreme, if criminal, act of penitence.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But only if you’re sure your parents won’t mind.’

‘Oh, they won’t,’ said Martin lightly. ‘Just make sure they don’t catch you.’

‘Where should I go?’

‘There’s a cupboard in the kitchen. There’s usually some stuff in there. It’s right by the door.’

I turned on my heel and walked quickly back down the path with a feeling of obstruction in my throat. My mind was a blank of panic and as I opened the back door and entered the quiet house everything seemed to list before my eyes. I trod noiselessly up the corridor and opened the kitchen door. The room was empty; and knowing that I had to act quickly, I went directly to the first cupboard. It was the same cupboard in which I had found the pills, and opening it for the second time I realized that if anyone had apprehended me at that moment, I could have given the excuse for my intrusion that I had come to take another. Sure enough, on one of the lower shelves I saw a rank of bottles; and grabbing the nearest, I shut the cupboard door and fled back down the corridor. Once outside on the dusky path I bent over and gasped several times. My heart was thrashing in my chest. I realized that I had not taken a single breath during the entire operation. My immediate feeling of relief was soon superseded by an overwhelming sense of triumph. I could scarcely believe my own daring; and as I skipped back up the path to where Martin sat waiting in his chair, I found myself starting to laugh.

‘Da-da!’ I said, waving the bottle gleefully before him.

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he said. ‘I was only joking.’

‘No, you weren’t!’ I said, horrified at his cruelty.

‘Yes, I was. Why don’t you go and put it back?’

‘I can’t!’

‘Never mind.’ He stretched out a hand for the bottle. ‘It’s done now. What did you get?’

‘I don’t know,’ I miserably replied, giving it to him. ‘I didn’t look.’

‘Gin,’ he said, examining it. ‘Didn’t you get any tonic?’

‘That was really mean of you.’ I turned his chair around on the gravel and began pushing him up the path towards the cottage. ‘I would never have done something like that if you hadn’t asked me.’

‘Yes, you would,’ said Martin. ‘If it hadn’t been in your nature, nothing would have made you do it. As it was you were off as soon as I’d mentioned it. Was it exciting, Stel-la?’

‘I suppose so,’ I admitted, my exhilaration punctured. ‘It seemed so at the time. I can’t believe I did it now.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ Martin replied.

We reached the garden and Martin leaned forward to open the gate, clutching the bottle against his lap. I propelled him up the path and then onto the grass, depositing him beside the apple tree.

‘I’ll go and get some glasses,’ I said sullenly, walking off.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Stel-la!’ called out Martin over his shoulder.

Inside, the cottage was cool with desertion. A smell of damp and neglect hung in the air. I went to the kitchen and found two smudged glasses in one of the cupboards. As I was about to carry them outside, it struck me that I had not looked in a mirror for some time, and that my appearance might require some attention in view of the impression of unstudied charm I hoped to give were Toby to ‘wander over’, as he had put it. Once I had thought of this aspect of things, it was hard to limit the exertions I was prepared to apply to it; my only constraint being that it was essential that no effort should appear to have been made. I put down the glasses and ran up the stairs to my room, aware that Martin was waiting for me outside; and it was probably the precipitateness his presence forced on my cosmetic interlude that caused me to seize from my suitcase — without the calm consideration that was their due — the cut-off trousers. Frantically I tore off my skirt and put them on, rushing to the mirror with my comb. My reflection was more or less what it had been the last time I had worn them; but what I forgot, as I hurriedly took this pleasing image away with me down the stairs and out into the garden, was that my delight on that previous occasion had been private. I had little idea of what others might think of this display of flesh. Its effect on Toby was uncertain; and on anyone else, unwanted.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ I said to Martin as I came out of the cottage door and approached him across the grass. ‘I was a bit hot, so I got changed.’

I was talking, I knew, to conceal my embarrassment; for Martin’s eyes had attached themselves to me, and were travelling unsparingly up my legs as I walked. He looked, frankly, astonished by my appearance; and it was hard to sustain the carelessness with which I was attempting to set about the business of preparing the drinks while so blatantly under examination.

‘What,’ he said finally, ‘are you wearing?’

‘Hmm?’ I looked up from where I had sat down beside him on the lawn. ‘Shorts. What does it look like?’

I had meant the remark to be a reproach.

‘It looks sexy,’ said Martin.

‘Thank you,’ I replied.

It occurred to me then that Martin might think I had put the shorts on for his benefit; and all in all, before long I was fervently wishing that I had remained dressed as I was, or could find an excuse to go back into the house and change again without looking idiotic.

‘Why did you get changed?’

‘I told you, I was hot.’

‘I don’t believe you, Stel-la.’

‘I just felt like it.’ I handed him a glass in which there was a small measure of gin. ‘Can we change the subject, please?’

‘Are you expecting someone?’ he said, taking the bottle from me and placing it furtively behind his chair.

I was about to reply adamantly that I was not, when I saw from the direction of his gaze that the question had been more innocent than it sounded. He was looking towards the bottom of the garden, from where there came the sound of footsteps approaching along the gravel path beyond. I realized that he had put the gin behind his chair to hide it, thinking that one of his parents might be corning; a gesture which suggested that I had been slightly misled concerning the seriousness of its theft. I was glad, in any case, that he had concealed it. Combined with the cut-off trousers, it might have given Toby — for they were his footsteps, I was certain, that we heard — an impression of dissolution. The figure of a man came into view, and for a brief moment everything in me seemed to rise to its feet in anticipation; until I saw that my visitor was not Toby, but the man I had met earlier on in the field, the unfortunate Mr Trimmer.