Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

‘Right,’ I said.

‘So.’ She leaned back, wedging her backside on the window ledge beside which we stood and folding her arms. ‘How are you finding life with Martin?’

Our abrupt arrival at intimacy surprised me. I had found it hard enough to communicate with this curious creature as a professional; but as a woman, she seemed even more alien. At her question, I immediately became aware of her physical appearance. She was shorter than me — although before I would have thought her much taller — and slightly plump beneath loose, silky clothes. Although I could see little of it, I sensed that her flesh was soft and yielding, as if she had no bones. Several silver necklaces circled her throat, and three silver earrings studded one ear. I noticed that she was wearing quite a lot of make-up, which formed creases around her eyes and mouth. Her lips were a moist, lurid red. On her chin rose one or two pimples, at whose peaks her make-up gathered in a sort of volcanic crust. Her short hair was a purplish red, and was elaborately styled in a wispy, feathered cap around her face. She was quite attractive, although whether because or in spite of these cosmetic blandishments it was hard to tell. Her face and hair, held together apparently by great force of will, seemed poised on the brink of chaos.

‘Fine,’ I said. I sensed an occluded bitterness in her nature, as if she were concealing some complex, self-serving mechanism which any information I gave her might inadvertently nourish. ‘I’ve only been with the family for a few days.’

‘Oh, right ,’ she said, nodding as if to herself. Unruly noises were coming from the other end of the room. ‘And how are you finding the Maddens?’

She was not interested, I saw, in me; or rather, her interest was indirect, and travelled through me in the hope of reaching the goal of Martin’s family. I was surprised that she should be so indiscreet in her curiosity about them.

‘I like them,’ I curtly replied. ‘As I said, I’ve only been there a few days.’

‘Oh, you’ll get used to them,’ she said, as if I had complained that I had found them uncongenial. ‘A lot of people find them a bit stand-offish, you know, but once you get to know them— Can you keep it down, please? ’ She projected her voice powerfully to the other end of the room. The sound startled me; and one or two of the others looked round, their faces white and vacant with surprise. ‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘I’ve got to know Mrs Madden quite well since Martin’s been coming to the centre. She often drops in just for a chat. I think she’s a really lovely woman underneath it all. People get very jealous, you know, in a place like this.’ She assumed a thoughtful expression. ‘They’ve got nothing better to do than talk. If you’re attractive and rich, like she is, then you’ve got to accept that people are going to gossip about you. And living in that house, as well!

I’ve only ever seen it from the outside, mind you, when I drop Martin off. Apparently they never ask anyone in. What’s it like inside?’

‘It’s very nice,’ I reluctantly admitted.

‘ He ’s a bit of a dark horse, of course. Nice, apparently, but quite odd, There’s been all sorts of rumours about him .’

‘What sort of rumours?’ I could not restrain myself from asking.

‘Oh, I shan’t dignify them by repeating them, Stella.’ She gave me a look designed, I felt, to inform me that she found my curiosity distasteful. ‘Besides, I wouldn’t want the Maddens thinking that I was passing on gossip.’

There was something not quite right about my conversation with Karen Miller. Although we might have appeared to be communicating, there was no spark of contact between us. This was not merely the customary awkwardness of strangers. It was as if some membrane lay between us which I was unable to penetrate. Our mouths were moving; our words roughly conformed to the principles of verbal exchange; and yet our discourse merely mimicked conversation, in the way a mannequin does a human body.

Looking at her, I found myself wondering what Karen Miller’s life outside the centre was like. I tried to imagine her home, her family and friends, and could not. She was not, I hazarded, married: she emanated solitude, boundless and uninterrupted. She did not have the look of one circumscribed by cohabitation. I wondered then if that was what I looked like; if the freedom for which I had given up all restraints and claims was that which I saw before me in Karen Miller.

‘I wouldn’t repeat it to them,’ I indignantly replied. I did not worry about what she might think of my importunity. I did not believe, in any case, that she knew anything about the Maddens that had not been dredged from the common pool of idle speculation. ‘I know,’ I coaxed, ‘that there have been some problems about the public footpaths crossing the farm.’

Karen Miller opened her mouth wide.

‘Timothy!’ she called. I glimpsed her tongue, moist and plump. ‘Give Jenny back her picture! Well,’ she continued, after a pause, ‘it’s mostly just the usual hanky-panky, although people around here have got such tiny minds, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get it all from books. You know, the upper classes, at it day and night. As I say, they’ve got nothing better to think about.’

‘I’m sure Mr Madden isn’t involved in anything like that,’ I said.

‘Well, you never know, do you? She ’s certainly had her fair share.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Well, it’s not exactly top secret, is it? You could probably go and look it up in the public library. I felt quite sorry for her, having her name in the papers and that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I thought I said to keep it down! Look, I’d better get on,’ she said, all at once brisk. ‘Will you be all right over here?’

I assured her that I would. As I watched her walk away, the bossy motion of her legs defined beneath the thin material of her trousers, I had a strange thought. Nobody loves her. I don’t know why this uncharitable notion occurred to me, and with such certainty. It was something to do with the way she walked. Perhaps it was merely because I did not like the way she walked that I deemed her unlovable. My intuition, however, seemed more subtle to me than that. She did not have the self-consciousness of one who had been singled out. She walked as if no one had ever watched her do so. For the rest of the afternoon, while Karen Miller went about her desultory ministrations, I was unable to prevent myself from embroidering her hapless person with my own insights; and by the time she was commanding the group to finish what they were doing and put away their drawing materials, I had created so monstrous a vision of her future that it was all I could do to stop myself from taking her to one side and pressing my message upon her. Instead I urged her in my thoughts to apply more diligence to the business of securing some affection for herself; to bend, to submit, to deploy whatever wiles were necessary to lure a companion into the dreadful pit of her loneliness. It was imperative, I felt, that she should not be complacent in this matter.

It was for myself, I don’t doubt, that I was worrying. After we had bidden goodbye to the group and begun making our way back down the corridor, I was so rapt in the examination of my own deportment that I even forgot the ordeal which awaited me out in the car park. All that mattered, in that moment, was that I should solemnly undertake never to walk like Karen Miller.

Martin and I sat side by side out in the car park. Having had neither the foresight nor the skill to leave the car in the shade, the atmosphere inside it even after we had opened all the windows was oppressive. A strong, unpleasant smell of hot rubber radiated from every surface. The steering wheel was scorching to the touch. To our left, at the entrance to the car park, a long pair of tyre marks described twin arcs across the concrete in the heat, two incriminating fingers pointing at us.