Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

‘Stella?’

What happened next could only have been the noisy activity of a few seconds, but for me it possessed the heightened deliberation, the glassy silence, of a dream. I reached the top of the stairs. I looked down the well and saw Pamela’s upturned face at the bottom. I opened my mouth to speak, took a step forward, and flew. As I fell, I was struck by how impassive Pamela’s expression was, watching me; and even before my back had made its first, brutal contact with the stairs, I had registered the embarrassment of my accident, regretted the foolishness of my facial expression as I had it, considered the social difficulty it would present, and decided on the exertions necessary to the re-establishment of normality in the wake of my unforgivable violation of it. I bumped once, twice, three times, before sliding, stiff and prone as a board, to Pamela’s feet; where I lay for some time, gazing up at her, without moving. I was waiting, as one would wait for examination results or a salary, to be informed of the exact quantity of pain my tumble had earned me; quite a lot, I thought, judging by the sound I had made as I hit each of the steps. I tried to prolong that moment of anticipatory numbness; but too soon, a symphonic swell of agony, powerful beyond all my imaginings, rose up in a great chorus from the back of my body.

‘Are you all right?’ said Pamela sharply.

‘I don’t know. Shit.’ It was unlike me to swear, but the word seemed to offer some appeasement to the pain. ‘That really hurt,’ I added helplessly.

‘Yes, you positively flew ,’ said Pamela. She looked as if she were about to smile. I wondered whether she was going to do anything.

‘Shit,’ I said again. The ache reached a crescendo and held there. Pamela folded her arms. ‘Jesus.’

‘Look, take your time, why don’t you,’ she said eventually. ‘Come over to the house when you’re ready. I simply came to find out what had happened to you.’

‘I overslept,’ I said, wild now with pain.

‘Well, there’s no hurry. Just come when you’re ready.’

She turned and trod lightly off, before I had a chance to say anything more or even get up from where I lay on the stairs. Her response to my accident seemed, on the surface, profoundly cruel; but oddly, even though the vulnerability of my position exposed me to feelings of self-pity, I did not believe that Pamela’s had been an entirely wanton display of indifference. I had forced on her a moment of intense intimacy by falling down the stairs; an intimacy she was unable, whether through ineptitude or fear, to sustain, and whose attendant demands for sympathy, kindness and practical help she could not meet. She was not maternal; by which I mean that she did not appear to have given up, as so many mothers did, her self-regard. Yet her protection of her independence was so fierce — preventing her, as we have seen, even from offering the most desultory help to someone in need — that it suggested one of two things: either that her hold over it was fragile; or that she felt herself to be so constantly importuned by others, who might commandeer her mind and body, that she drew back from any physical or emotional invitation as if it were a trap. Remembering her inappropriate style of behaviour with Toby, it struck me that perhaps what I had seen was of a significance less dark than I had initially thought. Perhaps the language of sexual allure was the only one Pamela knew; or the only one, at any rate, in which she could communicate.

By this time I had picked myself up and carefully ascended the stairs to my bedroom. Twisting round to look at myself in the mirror, I saw several stunned, white areas on my back which I felt sure would bloom before long into bruises. The skin was so searing to the touch that it took me some time to dress; and even longer, crouched at the top of the stairs, to pluck up the courage to inch my way down them. Finally I managed to stagger along the path in the heat and up the back passage into the big house.

My predicament was not simplified by the fact that I appeared, doubtlessly by virtue of the empty stomach on which I had finished the bottle of gin the night before, to have acquired a hangover. It had seemed necessary at the time to staunch the turmoil of my thoughts with liquor; but the evening was even more confused now in my mind than it had been in its tumultuous aftermath. I had not solved anything by my drinking binge, which was probably in addition to blame for my uncertain footing on the stairs. Filled now with self-disgust, I concluded that I had a drinking problem. Indeed, I had been drunk at the end of almost every evening I had spent in the country. I had gone so far as to steal drink to appease my habit. In fact, the only evening on which I had not been drunk was when I had been prevented by poverty from becoming so. Even thinking about drink caused a swill of nausea in my stomach. I laboured up the stairs, bending now forward, now back, undecided as to which of my ailments to favour.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ I announced, bursting into Martin’s room.

I was dimly aware, borne along on this rush of necessity, of two startled faces looking up at my entry. The first was Martin’s. The second belonged to Mrs Barker; the horror of whose presence I was forced to delay while I sought some outlet for my imminent regurgitation.

‘In the sink,’ said Martin immediately. ‘Over there in the closet.’

He sped along a diagonal trajectory towards the sink, while I approached at an adjacent angle from the door. We met at the closet door; he opened it; I lunged inside; and immediately gave forth a hot stream of bitter bile. Halfway through, Martin placed his hand on my sore back. I shot up with a howl of protest, banging my head on a ledge above the small sink.

‘ What ?’ he said anxiously.

‘Hand!’ I sputtered.

He removed his hand and I vomited again, retching hopelessly from my withered, empty stomach. Placing my hands on the sink I hung my head, exhausted.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ I heard Mrs Barker say from behind me.

‘I don’t know,’ said Martin in a low voice.

‘Too much to drink last night, I’ll be bound,’ said Mrs Barker, with horrible accuracy. ‘Will you be all right here, young man? I’d better get on. I’ve lost enough time already this morning thanks to this one.’

Waves of humiliation coursed down my spine. I tried to summon the strength to speak but could not. Instead, I retched again.

‘Hmph!’ said Mrs Barker triumphantly. ‘She’s had a bellyful.’

‘It’s probably a stomach upset,’ said Martin. ‘Off you go, Mrs Barker. We’ll be fine here.’

I stood over the sink for some time after she’d gone. Finally I raised my head and saw myself in the mirror above the sink. My face was bright red and my mouth covered with slime. A white mark stood out on my forehead from where I had banged it against the shelf. Tears of effort shone around my eyes.

‘Have you a tissue?’

‘Hang on. Here.’

Martin’s hand insinuated itself into the compartment, waving a tissue like a flag of surrender. I wiped my face and blew my nose and then turned shamefully around.

‘Come on. Why don’t you lie on the bed?’

Martin took my hand and wheeled me trembling to the bed. I lay down, curled on my side.

‘I fell down the stairs,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘This morning.’

‘That must have been why you were sick. It’s very common if you’ve taken a knock.’

I felt something cool on my forehead and realized that it was Martin’s hand. He began stroking my hair, which had stuck around my face, matted with sweat.

‘Poor Stel-la,’ he said.

‘Mrs Barker. Will she tell your mother?’