Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

At the sight of us sitting there his expression did not change; indeed, it was hard to know whether he had seen us or not, and if so whether our presence there was a necessary, expected or unwelcome feature of his intrusion. He opened the gate and began toiling towards us up the garden. In the wake of a disappointment, even the most well-intentioned approaches can seem a pest; and at the sight of Mr Trimmer’s curiously compacted face, and the diffident set of his clumsy body as he drew near, an unrestrainable irritation took hold of me.

‘Hello?’ I called out imperiously, as if to a stranger caught sneaking about my property.

‘Afternoon,’ said Mr Trimmer, drawing to an immediate halt at the sound of my voice and apparently waiting for permission to complete the final two or three yards to where we sat. He raised a hand as if to touch an invisible hat. As he lowered it, his eyes fell upon my exposed legs.

‘Hello, Jack,’ said Martin affably, grinning at him in an evil manner. He waved an arm in encouragement. ‘Come on over. Have you come to see Stella?’

There was a considerable pause.

‘I met her,’ said Mr Trimmer, planting himself in front of us where we sat, with his eyes averted and his hands clasped before him, like a man about to sing the national anthem, ‘in the top field.’

‘Ah,’ said Martin.

I felt that Mr Trimmer had been intending to enlarge on his description of our meeting, but that Martin’s peremptory assent had cut the thread of his discourse. He fell silent, his face working in a peculiar sideways motion, apparently recovering from the interruption. His eyes strayed to my legs and then darted away. Presently he seemed to have gathered his momentum once more, and opened his mouth to speak.

‘She was taken ill,’ he said. ‘I came to see if she was better.’

‘I’m much better, thank you,’ I said. I found that I too was speaking slowly. My face was burning. I caught Martin looking at me out of the corner of my eye. ‘It was very kind of you to come.’

Despite my lugubrious diction, that fact that I was speaking directly to him seemed to hit Mr Trimmer like a strong jet of water. His face wore a crumpled expression of heroic resistance, as if at any moment he might fall over.

‘I was going to mend that step,’ he said. ‘I was on my way to do it when I saw you.’

My complaint had evidently been festering in his thoughts all afternoon; and touched by his avowal, I refrained from enquiring as to how he had thought he would mend the step with a gun rather than a hammer and nails.

‘I realized that you probably were,’ I said, anxious that my reply sounded more complex than it actually was. ‘Afterwards. I would have hurt myself if you hadn’t stopped me.’

Martin was watching this tortured exchange with unconcealed fascination, an unpleasant smile on his face.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically in the hope of drawing our interview to a close.

Mr Trimmer stood on, plinthed on the grass by his large, leather-booted feet.

‘Would you consider,’ he finally pronounced, while Martin’s head wagged up and down below him at every word, ‘coming out with me one evening?’

‘Oh!’ I said, horrified. I laughed shrilly. ‘That’s very kind of you. I don’t know if I can, though. I’m usually quite busy over at the house in the evenings.’

‘No, you’re not,’ declared Martin. ‘She’d love to come out with you, Jack. She can come tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ said Mr Trimmer to Martin, as if he were responsible for the transaction. Seeming to realize that this was incorrect, he turned back to me. ‘Would that be all right?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, defeated.

‘I’ll call here at eight, then.’

‘That would be lovely,’ I rallied. ‘I’ll see you then. Goodbye.’

Mr Trimmer seemed surprised at being so abruptly dismissed, but he took it well enough, and bidding goodbye to both of us turned and made his way back down the garden, his elbows flying out to either side as if he were in a hurry.

‘Thanks,’ I said to Martin.

‘It serves you right.’ He raised his glass to his lips. ‘Besides, you said you liked him.’

I lay on my back on the grass. ‘What on earth are we going to talk about for an entire evening? And where will we go?’

Martin did not reply, and when I looked at him I saw that he was watching me with a peculiar expression on his face.

‘You’ve got nice legs,’ he said in a strangled voice.

Some time later, Martin and I moved uncertainly through the penumbral gloom of the garden back to the house. We had drunk the better part of the bottle of gin, the remainder of which I had hidden at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards. My theft of the bottle had seemed more and more extraordinary to me as the evening progressed, particularly under the increasing influence of its contents. Martin’s behaviour with Mr Trimmer, and the underhand manner in which he had contrived my assignation with him, as well as the assignation itself, took on similarly absurd proportions. In fact, only my inebriation remained real, along with thoughts of what the Maddens would do if they discovered it.

The effect of the gin on Martin was even more worrying. He had grown boisterous and red-faced, and by the time I had wheeled him to the back door and up the corridor was singing a raucous medley of unidentifiable songs, accompanying himself with writhing motions on an invisible guitar in his lap.

‘Calm down!’ I whispered fiercely in his ear as we manoeuvred our way through the annexe and into the hall. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble.’

‘Oh, Stel-la!’ he whined, lolling back in his chair. ‘Don’t be so cross all the time. You’re always … cross .’

His head fell forward, as if he were asleep. At this I was genuinely alarmed and I stopped the chair and knelt beside him.

‘Martin? Are you all right?’

His head shot up so suddenly that I leaped back in fright.

‘I’m fine. You’re the one that should be worried.’

‘Why?’

‘You look weird.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I dunno. It’s your eyes or something. They look weird. And you’re still wearing your shorts. My mummy won’t like those. Not at dinner.’

Withered by this unexpected blast of acuity, I stood paralysed in the hall. In the evening’s confusion, I had entirely forgotten the inappropriateness of my outfit.

‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘I’m going to go and change.’

At that moment, Pamela’s voice issued faintly from the drawing room.

‘Stella? Martin? Is that you?’

‘Yes!’ bellowed Martin.

‘Where’ve you beet ? We’ve been waiting for you for hours !’

‘Too late,’ he said. ‘Come on, it doesn’t matter. They won’t even notice.’

Why I accepted this pabulum of reassurance I can’t imagine. In the dreaminess of drink I had forgotten the sharp prick of the social misdemeanour; but I felt it in all its steely agony as we entered the drawing room and the assembled company’s eyes lighted as one on my cut-off trousers.

‘Good God!’ said Pamela, a menacing smile on her face. ‘Those are very saucy!’

‘Wheeew,’ whistled Toby, lounging contentedly on a sofà at the far side of the room.

‘Drinks?’ said Mr Madden, rising dutifully from his chair.

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

‘Yes, please,’ said Martin. ‘Leave her alone,’ he added, directing his remark at Toby, who was still whistling away on the sofa.

‘It was intended as a compliment,’ drawled Toby. I realized that only in that moment had the idea of me entered his head; and that he was entertaining it, moreover, idly, for want of anything better to do. The tangled skein of my wasted, thought-racked afternoon rose up before me in all its monstrous fantasy.