Rachel Cusk - The Country Life

Having established what I intended to do, and made my dark commitment to it, I found myself in no hurry to begin. I lay for a further half-hour, only vaguely aware of the fugitive motion of thoughts flitting from beam to window sill; until the sudden consciousness of my empty mind seemed to invite more predatory notions. Quickly I got up to escape them; but crossing the room to find my clothes I glimpsed myself unexpectedly in the wardrobe mirror. Before I could fend it off, the sight had filled me with a sense of my destitution. Not being braced against my reflection, I had caught myself unawares and through this brief gap had seen the thing which presented the unfortunate but irremovable obstacle to my own disappearance. What surprised me was to realize how familiar this sight was. I had seen it on busy London pavements, amidst a throng of faces: one or two whose eyes looked out from their bodies as if from behind bars, as they paid for the crime of permitting their misfortunes to outweigh the space their flesh was entitled to occupy.

Some ten minutes later, I was washed and dressed, in the cut-off trousers — the only item, despite the freight of association they carried, that I did not now regard as a ‘uniform’ — and a short-sleeved T-shirt. I had become so used by now to the heat that I had stopped expecting it to change — indeed, I had forgotten the cadences of weather entirely. Even so, I was forcibly struck as I opened the cottage door by the charged fury of the day. Something brutal had invaded the air. It rushed at me, unnatural and molten, and as I stepped out into the garden I felt the agony of it on my skin, fighting it into my mouth and lungs. I was becoming frightened of the heat. It was out of control. What if it just kept getting hotter? What were we expected to do? I had a desire for some authority to whom I could report it, and wondered if I should go and tell Mr Madden. It was quite some time before the idiocy of this notion struck me. I set off down the garden in search of some shade. It was by now almost midday, and due to my oversleeping and general languor about the bedroom I had had no breakfast. The thought of food was repellent to me, but I felt this to be a trick of the heat and determined to go over to the house and find myself something to eat.

The back door was unlocked, and as I entered the dark passage its abrupt cool and shade caused my head to spin. For some seconds I was entirely blinded by the change, and I loomed dizzily, bumping against the cold, stony flanks of the walls. I was alert nonetheless for signs of Mrs Barker, for although I was not personally troubled by my intention of scavenging for food in the Maddens’ kitchen — given that they had not yet offered to advance me any money with which I might buy some myself, nor indeed appeared to have given the matter of what I was eating for breakfast much thought at all — I recognized it to be rather indefensible — or at least to require an energy to explain it which I did not in that moment possess — to others. The house was quiet, and I deduced from the pungent scent of polish which harnessed the air that Mrs Barker had completed her morning’s ministrations and gone home. Reassured, I stole up the passage and into the empty kitchen. The room was immaculate and oddly unwelcoming without its usual occupants. The neat arrangement of chairs and table, the scrubbed surfaces and gleaming floor, had a suspicious, superintendent air, as if they were witnessing my intrusion and would register any betrayal — a stray crumb or fingerprint — of it with disapproval.

With an artificially casual motion I strolled to the refrigerator and opened it. Its contents — carefully sealed dishes of leftovers, leafy fronds of salad, silver bricks of butter, packages of raw, pink meat, a number of expensive-looking jars of relish and suchlike — seemed both horribly private and utterly inaccessible. Any incursions there would, I felt sure, be complex both in execution and concealment. My appetite began to retreat. I made to shut the door again in defeat, but as I did so a large bottle lolled forward from the bottom shelf. Anxious that it would fall, I lunged down and caught it by the neck; at which point there was a terrific explosion which almost knocked me over with fright, and a geyser of foam spurted up from the mouth of the bottle and splattered over my legs. It all happened so quickly that I could not comprehend the nature of the disaster for some seconds. My heart thudded in my chest as the sour smell of wine gave off its terrible clue. I lifted the bottle with a trembling hand. The dark green glass with its elaborate gold label confirmed what I already suspected. It was champagne, of a variety, moreover, which I knew from my previous life to be inordinately expensive. A shred or two of foil clung to the bottle’s lip, from where its cork had evidently blasted as a result of my inadvertent agitations. I was surprised to see how much remained: despite my dripping legs, the bottle was still three-quarters full.

My first thought was to retrieve the cork and attempt somehow to stuff it back in. Still holding the bottle, I began a panicked search, which eventually turned up the missing cork, still in its wire cage and cloak of foil, lying on its side beneath the table. I saw immediately that I would not be able to force it back into the bottle unless I pared it down with a knife, for it had fattened into a stubbornly flared shape. Even were I to succeed by this method, I realized, the champagne would still be ruined by the loss of pressure.

Within a short time, I had considered all my options; which were, admittedly, limited. The first was that I succeeded somehow in acquiring a bottle of champagne to replace that which I had ruined. I had, at least, the time to attempt this, but with neither money nor transportation was restricted to the faint hope that this bottle would be available in Hilltop, and available, moreover, in such a way that I would be able to steal it. The second option was that I conserved the remains of the bottle as best I could and confessed everything to Pamela — offering, perhaps, a portion of my wages in recompense — when she returned. The third was that I drank the contents of the bottle and proceeded similarly.

While the first of these two alternatives would undoubtedly result in the champagne being wasted, my response to the crisis would at least constitute an albeit futile attempt at virtue. The other was more pragmatic but easily misconstrued: I could, for example, be accused of inventing the story of the exploding cork — which, when considered in that light, did seem rather incredible — to conceal my craven theft and consumption of the champagne. The former course, though illogical, was evidently preferable. At that moment, however, I had a vision of Pamela’s face as I apologetically handed her an almost full bottle of flat champagne. ‘Why on earth didn’t you just drink it, you silly girl?’ she cried.

Being by now familiar with the vicissitudes of Pamela’s sense of etiquette, my vision struck me as a likely one. Addled, I thought the matter through again. It grew more and more irresolvable with every approach, until my mind was so knotted that I was forced to sit down at the table with my head in my hands and my eyes closed. As I did so, a notion slyly snipped its way through the tangle. I opened my eyes and regarded it with awe. What if I merely absconded with the champagne and then denied having had any involvement with its disappearance? Pamela had successfully been duped over the bottle of gin. Why should she not be again? In fact, her memory of that episode could be the very thing to undermine any conviction she might have about the champagne having been in the refrigerator when she left the house that morning. The whole affair began to gather significance in my mind, until I became convinced that I had been intended to steal the gin as a sort of foundation for the grander theft I was now designing.