Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

‘Apparently it ages you terribly,’ I unkindly remarked. ‘It can also give you cancer.’

‘Oh, you don’t believe that , do you? People who say that sort of thing just want to stop everyone else from having fun. I didn’t have you down as a killjoy, Stella,’ he added reproachfully.

‘I’m not,’ I said quickly, wounded by his judgement. ‘Apparently it’s true.’

‘ Appawently it’s twoo! ’ he mocked. ‘Don’t tell me’ — he opened his eyes wide and looked exaggeratedly over his shoulder — ‘don’t tell me, it’s all a conspiracy. ’

‘No, I—’

‘Oh God, they’re all out to get me! They’re following me! Help!’

He stopped and doubled over, incapacitated by laughter. Watching him I had a feeling of despondency which made me want to get away from him. Even his physical beauty seemed all at once remote and unsatisfactory. It was a mere spectacle, and one I was weary of watching.

‘I’d better go,’ I said.

Toby abruptly stopped laughing.

‘Enjoy.’ He shrugged disdainfully. ‘Rather you than me.’

I turned and began to walk away from him down the drive, my posture awkward with the thought that he might be watching me. Before I had got very far, a shout caused my shoulders to stiffen.

‘Cheer up!’ he cried from behind me. ‘It might never happen!’

The walk to the village seemed even more arduous than usual. My irritation with Toby had set my heart pounding, so that it seemed to thump in unison with the angry bang of the sun against the sky. Several times I forgot entirely why it was that I was going to the village at all, and as my motivation wavered my steps frequently slowed to a trudge. My promise to visit the creature was by turns oppressive and insubstantial. I wished that I had not made it; and yet I had a small, worrying consciousness of what it would signify were I to renege. To turn around and return to Franchise Farm would have been a form of submission to the Maddens; although what precisely would have been relinquished by doing so was not clear to me.

‘Hello, dear,’ said the creature, emerging from the back room just as I staggered in from the street, inadvertently slamming the door so that the bell gave a wild shrill. ‘You look all in. You shouldn’t go hiking about in this heat without a hat and water. You wouldn’t catch a rambler gallivanting in that fashion. What’s wrong with your back?’

‘I fell down the stairs,’ I panted, leaning sideways against the post office counter and clutching at my spine.

‘They’re not taking very good care of you, are they? You won’t last the week at this rate.’

‘It’s not their fault.’

‘Touchy on that subject, are we? At any rate you should mind how you go. You’ve got to be a bit more careful in the country than you do in town. Got to watch yourself. Can’t just go running about as you please and then catch the bus home.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Let’s have a look at that back, then.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘That’s as maybe, although I don’t see how you’d know. A back’s a tricky thing. You may have chipped a bone, but it’s unlikely you’d have got here if you had. Probably just a bit of bruising, for which I have the very thing.’

The creature shuffled across to the door to the back room and held it open commandingly. Obediently I headed down the gloomy corridor, its strong and now familiar smell confusingly assailing me like a memory, and waited at the end while the creature switched on the light.

‘Let’s have that shirt up,’ it said matter-of-factly, crossing the room — which was exactly as I had last seen it, although now it looked shabbier and more pitiful somehow — and opening the cupboard. I took the opportunity of looking more closely at the newspaper clipping by the door which had caught my eye during my last visit. There was the blurred picture of Pamela, with the words ‘Lovers’ tiff behind farm attack, say police’ above. Beneath it was written the following:

The apparently motiveless attack on a local farm, which left several farm buildings and expensive machinery badly damaged, and which is thought to have resulted in a serious fire in one of the barns, may not have been the work of hooligans as was previously thought, Sussex police said last night. Franchise Farm, near Hilltop, was vandalized late on Monday night, in a devastating attack not discovered until the following morning when the farm manager, Mr George Trimmer, arrived for work.

‘Them’s snuck in, the b****s,’ Mr Trimmer told the Buckley Enquirer. ‘Must’ve greased their shoes. Never heard a dickey-bird over the big house.’

Police spent several hours at the scene, where damage included extensive graffiti, much of it reportedly obscene, spray-painted on walls, in the hope of finding some trace of the perpetrators, but by Monday night could not even confirm whether the attack had involved more than one person. On Tuesday, however, a telephone call to Buckley police station shed some light on the mystery. The caller, whom police have refused to name, alleged that the attack had been carried out by a spurned lover of the farmer’s wife, Mrs Pamela Madden.

‘It did seem to make sense,’ said one officer, who asked not to be named. ‘Many of the expletives were aimed at a specifically female target. It was pretty strong stuff, and all. I had to ask my teenaged son what some of it meant!’

Mrs Madden, who has lived at Franchise Farm all her life and has four children — the youngest of whom, a six-year-old boy, is disabled — refused to comment on the incident and is reportedly very distressed. Police confirmed that they had brought in a man for questioning, but would not comment on speculations that the man was the father of Mrs Madden’s youngest son, nor give any clue as to his identity.

‘Ancient history,’ said the creature, who was by now standing directly behind me. ‘They had to let him go in the end. She didn’t want to press charges.’

‘But was it true?’ I said sadly.

‘More or less. Not that I’d want to pay that old rag the compliment of saying so. Pack of scandalmongers, if you ask me. It’s the only time I’ve ever felt sorry for Mrs Snooty-Drawers. I dare say she could be forgiven for liking a bit of the rough stuff. But if you play the game like she used to, you can expect some trouble.’

‘Used to?’

‘Oh, she’s good as gold these days. Reformed character, from what I hear. The cripple put paid to all that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Retribution, dear. Thought she was being punished for her sins. Not that God came into it, as far as I can see. People like Pam, they like to think they’re lucky, do you follow me? Oh, they may act like they were born to it and all that, but deep down they’re frightened. They’ve got less freedom than you and me. Because if things go wrong for them, they’ve got nothing to blame it on. They just put up and shut up. They’ve got nowhere to go, see? No flexibility. So when little Pam saw it coming down, she changed her story, turned misfortune to her advantage. These days everyone thinks she’s a saint. Isn’t it marvellous the way she looks after that boy herself instead of putting him in a home. Course she never lifts a finger. That’s what you’re for. Clever.’ The creature tapped the side of its head. ‘You couldn’t accuse her husband of that, mind you. He should have made tracks. You can’t forgive a betrayal like that, not really. It eats you up inside, turns you funny in the head. She made a laughing stock of him. But he’s just the same, see? Nowhere to go, nothing without his money and his house and his privilege. So he just shuts it out like they all do, pretends nothing’s happened. It’s heart cancer, dear. A very middle-class disease.’