Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

‘Police come up.’ He gave me a crafty grin. ‘They don’t find anything, though.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I fixed it!’

He burst out laughing; a terrible, preternatural sound, which made heads turn towards us.

‘So,’ I patiently resumed, ‘Mr Madden breaks things and you fix them before anybody can get hurt.’

‘That’s so.’ He nodded and tapped his head again.

With the excitement of these discoveries I was becoming thirsty. Mr Trimmer had inched his way down his own glass, which now stood almost empty. I curled my fingers significantly around mine, in the hope that he would take the hint. He didn’t.

‘But why,’ I said, clearing my dry throat, ‘why don’t you talk to him about it? It seems a bit of a waste of your time, after all.’

Even as I said it, I knew that I had taken a wrong turning; and I was rewarded with what could not have been less than five minutes of impenetrable silence. I fidgeted impatiently with my glass while Mr Trimmer absorbed my mistake. I was becoming exhausted with the effort of extracting information from the dark and tortuous passages of his mind, but I was not about to give up. I felt myself to be apprehending something of great significance. Who was Mr Madden protecting himself from? And was there a genuine reason for his doing so, or merely the fact that he was, as Mr Trimmer had put it, ‘mental’? I wondered if the creature and his undercover band of lobbyists had anything to do with it. It seemed unlikely that it was they whom Mr Madden feared. What threat could they possibly present to him? I remembered the nooses nailed to the creature’s wall, and felt a dark qualm of fear. Presently I realized that Mr Trimmer was staring at me and I gave him an encouraging smile.

‘What you saw was nothing,’ he immediately announced.

Horribly, I saw that this was the way to coax from him what he knew.

‘You mean the broken step?’ I smiled again, this time more broadly.

‘That’s it.’ He nodded. ‘There’s guns.’

‘Guns?’ My smile slipped and I hoisted it back, shifting my knee out from under the table and putting it into full view for good measure. ‘Where?’

‘All over. Everywhere.’ He fixed his eyes on my knee as he spoke, as if he were reading from it. ‘Some have been there so long he forgot about ’em. I have to watch him. He’ll get his self shot up one of these days.’

‘But how?’

‘Walk in front of ’em.’

‘You mean they’re loaded?’

He looked at me cross-eyed and made a strange motion with his hands, as if he were threading a needle.

‘Trip wires,’ he said finally. ‘Learned it in the army, he did.’

I sat, dumbfounded, for some time. Mr Trimmer was staring reproachfully at our empty glasses. He shook his head and sighed. Then he looked at his watch, his eyebrows shooting up in an unconvincing expression of surprise when he saw what it said.

‘Better be going,’ he said finally.

He stood up abruptly and began walking towards the door. I had no choice but to follow him. The inside of the pub was now penumbral, as the evening outside had faded to the point at which electric light seems to deepen rather than illuminate the darkness. Mr Trimmer opened the door and went out into the dusky High Street; but before I could go after him, I heard a familiar voice emerge from the shadows.

‘ Hello ,’ it said. ‘Fancy meeting you here!’

I turned and saw the creature, slumped in a chair at a table in the corner by the door. It smiled at me delightedly.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Out with Mr Trimmer, are we? Wonders will never cease.’

‘I can’t stop. He’s taking me home.’

‘I’d watch yourself, dear. He can get a bit frisky when he’s had a drink.’

‘I think I’ve found out what happened to Geoff.’

‘Really?’ The creature raised a sarcastic eyebrow. ‘I wasn’t aware of any — how shall I put it? — ambiguity in the matter. Has Mr Trimmer been sweet-talking you? I didn’t think the oaf had it in him.’

‘It’s not what you think. I’ll come and see you tomorrow.’

‘As you like.’ The creature shrugged. ‘You know where to find me.’

‘Goodbye.’

It raised its skinny arm in a salute.

‘Toodle-pip!’

Outside, Mr Trimmer was sitting motionless in the Land Rover. He started the engine when he saw me. My thoughts in turmoil, I barely noticed the fact that he drove considerably more slowly on our return than he had on the voyage out. Indeed, so distracted was I by all that I had learned during the evening that when a few minutes later the Land Rover ground to a halt in the darkness, it took me some time to realize that we were not sitting outside the house but lodged in the shadows at the bottom of the drive. I turned to Mr Trimmer, my arms and mouth open to form a protest, and at this invitation he lunged at me across the seat, chest-first like a diver, and flung his body against my own in an artless collision.

‘Oh, baby!’ he cried, squirming against me. ‘Oh, baby!’

So utterly shocked was I by this turn of events that his wet, inert lips managed to make contact with my own before I succeeded in placing my hands on his straining chest and throwing him off. Disgustedly, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

‘ Mr Trimmer! ’ I said.

I put my hand on the door, intending to get out and run, but then Mr Trimmer turned the key and started the engine again. He did not look particularly abject. In fact, he looked angry. His lower lip jutted out. From the side, with his eyes flat against his head and his pouting lip, he resembled a fish. He put the Land Rover into gear and accelerated up the drive so quickly that the wheels spun noisily on the gravel. He shrieked to a halt outside the house and sat, his hands gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. He began to mutter to himself, although I could not make out what he was saying.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said anxiously. ‘I had a lovely evening.’ Still he did not respond. ‘Well, goodbye.’

I got out of the Land Rover and carefully shut the door. I could not prevent myself, as I walked slowly across the drive, from glancing over my shoulder to see if he was looking at me. His dysfunctional glare burned at me through the windscreen in the gloom. As soon as I had made it around the corner and through the gate, I began to run. The night was moonlit, and I found my way up the path easily. At the cottage door, I could still hear the grumble of the engine idling. I stood there, waiting to hear him leave, my heart thudding in my chest. The minutes dragged on. I wondered what on earth he was doing. Finally, I heard the distant grinding of gears, and the noise of the engine grew momentarily louder and then faded into the silence. I went into the cottage and made straight for the cupboard in the kitchen where I had put the gin.

‘Stella!.. Stella!‘

I opened my eyes. The movement generated a wave of pain which gathered momentum as it rolled up my forehead.

‘ Stella! Are you there?’

Sunlight poured onto my face through the bedroom window. Dimly I remembered that I had forgotten to draw the curtains the night before. My body was heavy and lifeless on the bed, like a great anchor to which my bobbing head was attached.

‘Are you there?’

Slowly, the vast and far-flung continents of thought, perception and memory, shrouded in the receding mist of sleep, were drawn together into the bright pinprick of consciousness. I bolted up in bed and looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock. I had overslept. Pamela’s voice asserted itself, reconstituted in my mind. She must be downstairs, come to find out where I had got to. I threw back the covers and ran to the top of the stairs in my nightdress.