Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

‘We can’t go on like this,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to tell your parents everything.’

As soon as I had sat down in the driving seat, my body had gushed all over with sweat. A trickle spouted from my cheek and ran down my neck.

‘You’re doing fine, Stel-la.’

‘I could get us both killed.’

‘So could anybody. Cars are dangerous.’

‘That’s no argument. Your parents wouldn’t agree. We’ve just been lucky so far, that’s all. What if I injured you? You could be crippled for life.’ There was a pause. I broke out into a fresh volley of sweat. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘You might be doing them a favour,’ observed Martin.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Surely it’s up to me? I’m the one taking the risk.’

‘That’s a very selfish way to look at things.’

‘So is your way.’

‘No it isn’t. I’m sacrificing my job and my reputation for your safety.’

‘You’re sacrificing my happiness for your guilt, you mean. I’ll be depressed if you go. The others have all been awful. Mater doesn’t have a clue. Look, it’ll be fine. You’ll improve in no time. You’ve just got to practise.’

After a heart-stopping slew out of the car park, we were back on the road. Everything that had happened in the interval took on the texture of a dream. My only reality was this maelstrom of noise and motion, this perilous enclosure in which every second dripped with risk and the world beyond the windscreen was transformed into a hostile adversary, on the elusion of which my life depended. The thing I disliked most about driving was its contingency. To drive was to be in a perpetual state of stress. One could not, while driving, merely stop doing so.

‘What did you think of the centre?’ said Martin conversationally, once we had left Buckley in a reproachful fanfare of car horns.

‘I can’t talk.’

‘Keep to the left, Stel-la. We’re going to change gear. Clutch!’

‘Did it work?’

‘Yes. So what did you think? Stel-la?’

I was dimly aware that Martin had asked me a question, but the mechanisms required to answer it could not be activated whilst I was in this state of siege.

‘ Leemealone! ’ I said, unable even to divert the resources necessary to the proper formation of words.

‘OK. Slow down a bit. We’re almost there. Keep to the left. That’s it.’

Miraculously — particularly seeing as my instinct was to steer towards any object which came within my sights — we did not meet a single car during the entire journey from Buckley to Franchise. By the time we had reached the gates at the bottom of the drive, my exhaustion and terror were such that our safe arrival was an inadequate comfort. Of all the feelings I might in the innocence of my pre-driving projections have imagined for myself in the wake of a successful return voyage from Buckley, the terrible, infantile self-pity which welled up in me as we chugged to a halt in front of the house was the furthest from my expectation. It was as if I had experienced some primal violation. I felt the novelty of a desire for my mother; proof, if confirmation were needed, that the whole business of driving was unnatural and that to be inured to it would be to acquire an inhuman range of attributes.

‘I was beginning to wonder where you two had got to!’ said Pamela, when we presented ourselves, wan and subdued, in the kitchen. ‘I suddenly realized after you’d gone, Stella, that Piers forgot to insure you to drive the car. And then when you didn’t come back I got dreadfully worried that something had happened to you.’

‘Oh!’ I put my hand over my mouth, as something was peeled up off the trampled floor of my memory. ‘I meant to ring you and say that I was staying at the centre for the afternoon! I completely forgot.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Pamela genially. ‘I phoned and they told me you were there. It was fine. No, we’re the batty ones, forgetting that insurance. Thank God you didn’t have a crash.’

With Pamela being so kind, I was tempted to fall upon her with a weeping confession; but her mention of the insurance had set my mind once more to cunning. I wondered if she and Piers could be encouraged to keep forgetting it, only to be reminded too late each time Martin required ferrying to Buckley.

‘So what did you make of it down there?’ she enquired, putting on the kettle. ‘Was Mrs Miller at the helm?’

‘Mrs Miller?’

‘Karen. Red hair. Rather tarty, in a hippyish way.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ With a rush of shame I remembered the afternoon’s speculations concerning Karen Miller. ‘I didn’t realize she was married.’

‘Oh, goodness yes. Her husband’s a local cheese. Councillor. Frightful bore called Roger. She’s pretty frightful too, actually. Martin’s got some noise he makes for her.’ Martin, his face bright with approval, made a series of loud, lowing noises. Pamela laughed. ‘ That’s it. I suppose we’re being horribly unkind. She means well. And she really does such good work.’

The centre, I could see, was the object of one of Pamela’s unshakeable loyalties. It required little more for me to keep my opinions of the place to myself.

‘I’ll tell you something about her , though,’ said Pamela, then, drawing to the table with the empty teapot held distractedly in her hands. ‘Martin, you’re not listening, are you?’

‘No,’ said Martin.

‘ Apparently ,’ said Pamela in a confidential tone, ‘she and Roger are involved in some extraordinary club in Buckley. You’d never think it to look at them in a million years, but somebody told me it’s true.’

‘What sort of club?’

‘Oh, you know, the ones where a group of friends get together once a week and swap.’

‘Swap what?’

‘ Wives ’ whispered Pamela. ‘It’s got a funny name.’

‘Swinging,’ said Martin.

‘That’s right. Swinging. What they do is all get together at one of their houses, and the men put their car keys down on the table and the women pick them up. And off they go.’

‘Where to?’

‘What? Oh, they don’t go anywhere in the car !’ Pamela gave a peal of laughter. ‘They go to one of the bedrooms and have it off.’

It could just have been the albeit minor car element, but I found the notion of what Pamela had described absolutely nauseating.

‘That’s disgusting,’ I said.

‘Isn’t it?’ said Pamela delightedly. ‘Some horrible little semi in Buckley just shaking. Apparently it’s frightfully common.’

It took me some time to realize that she meant widespread rather than vulgar.

‘In a way, you can see why they do it, though,’ continued Pamela. ‘In many ways it’s safer than having affairs. Everybody’s equal and it’s all out in the open. As long as there wasn’t somebody you dreaded getting. I suppose they couldn’t be that fussy. Or perhaps they learn to recognize the car keys. They all have to agree to keep frightfully mum about it, though.’

‘In case the police find out?’

‘It’s not against the law , darling,’ said Pamela, giving me a look of amazement. ‘No, it’s just so that they don’t get jealous. The men start having punch-ups, apparently. It all sounds absolutely exhausting to me.’

I remembered then what Karen Miller had said about Pamela having ‘had her fair share’. A whole new dimension, a subterranean realm of operations of which I had been unaware, was revealing itself to me.

‘Where are the others?’ said Martin.

‘Over at the field. They’ll be back before long and then we’ll have supper. Do you two want to go and amuse yourselves until then?’