Sarah Hall - The Beautiful Indifference - Stories

And he breached it. A slap or two to begin with. Public argument, things that couldn’t be unsaid. An infection passed on, him saying it was you not washing properly. Then the rumour, the pregnancy, the local slut. It lit you inside and smouldered your innards hotter and hotter, until the bloom got livid. But you bore it, kept it in, even seeing that other woman round town, yes pregnant, being called frigid outside the Rafa club when you tried to take him home, the tenderness at the back of your throat from choking on him, being forced to. You bore it, until you couldn’t bear it any more. The one-year-old daughter — paid for informally, you found out — black-lashed and beautiful just like her father when you finally saw her. You initiated a confrontation with him. And got one. And the police too. One of whom was his cousin, who filed a dodgy report. The courts were not involved. Hard times for farmers. Work stresses. Mitigating circumstances. You packed a bag, got the money out, and left. He’s not come down to find you, with his shitty wellies or apologies or demands. All that remains between you both is that historical red piece that clawed away and is missing somewhere now, that urgeful hybrid creation, carrying flames along its back as it moves. You look at your face in the mirror. Still attractive. You wonder if you’ll ever be able to use your body again for more than basic living.

You don’t get the job. There are one hundred and sixty other candidates. They tell you as soon as you’ve interviewed that you are under-qualified. They suggest taking some unpaid internships, though the competition for these is also fierce. You go home. Your friend is away overnight at a festival. You open one of her bottles of wine and sit in the garden and drink it. You sit on the bench and look at the dead bees. You collect a few and put them on the seat beside you, arrange and rearrange them. You sit for a long time. The moon is dilated. It is enormous. A supermoon. It is as close to the earth in its orbital ellipse as it’s been for ten years. You know that the Solway tide will be affected. The haaf-netters will not go out and tread the sands. There will be curious minor occurrences. A dead hawk, perched upright on a fence. Lame cattle. You finish the wine. You watch the moon set. You lie down on the bench and sleep.

In the morning the sun is warm. Your head hurts. Your neck is stiff from lying on the wooden slats and your arm is completely numb. You have slept for only a few hours. Carefully, you sit upright. Then you see it. There, in the corner of the hedge, is a disruption of colour, perhaps ten feet away from where you have been sleeping. You think at first you must be mistaken. But you are not. It’s a fox. It is a rust-red, blaze-red fox. And it’s big, though it seems juvenile, with oversized ears and paws. It’s sitting upright, arch-jawed, snouty, and is scanning the garden with brilliant topaz eyes. You hold still. You try not to make any sounds. It is not looking at you, though it must sense you are close, must have assessed the degree to which you are or are not a threat. You are tolerable. It’s looking at something else. Your housemate told you there were foxes in London, lots of them, brash urban scavengers responsible for tearing open bin bags, pungently scenting their patrols, so tame you could almost play with them, but you didn’t really believe they were so fearless.

You’ve only ever seen foxes in the north before. There they were pale orange and discreet, sloping along roadsides, diminutive on the moors, or cowering from the hounds. This one is unapologetic, going nowhere, as if it owns this city enclosure. It is as if the creature has been stoked up from the surroundings; its fur like a furnace, eyes sparking. You watch it scan the air. It follows the heavy, resinous flight of a bee. It is a candid little hunter. It crouches for a moment, then springs up on its back legs. The jaws open and snap shut, and as it lands it shakes its red head furiously.

The children had left for school an hour before. I’d cleared up after them, putting stray, dusty socks into the laundry basket, rinsing plastic yogurt pots and stacking them in the recycling bin. I’d had time to shower, dress, make myself some coffee, and was about to turn on the computer. On the display screen of my phone the number came up as Private. A polite male voice asked if he was speaking to Hannah, and if I knew where to come. I stuttered and hesitated. There was a long pause, unbearably long it seemed, filled only by the insectile pulse and tick of the satellite connection. I thought about hanging up, and switching off my phone, but finally I said, Yes, I have the address. Thank you. Thank you for checking.

Of course, he replied, his tone even, as if he was used to transactions of gratitude.

I remember thinking afterwards that the call had been well timed. It was considerate. In some small way this was reassuring, though I was still uncertain about following through. It was one thing to have found the nerve to call the number on the back of the card that Anthea King had handed me. It was another altogether to dress myself smartly, as I knew I would, get into the car, and drive fifty miles into the city. For the sake of what? A change in my life to which I was not entitled, and was not even sure I wanted to make. I had no idea how long the appointment would last or what it would involve. And if it had not been Anthea who had made the recommendation, I probably would have put aside the idea.

But she had assured me that there was no chance of anything unprofessional occurring. The company was private and reliable, and she had been a member for over a year.

It’s a nice term, isn’t it, member ? she had said during one coffee morning together. The Agency is like that. Everything feels very tight. Very secure. Life rarely offers us these opportunities without making a hell of a mess afterwards.

I’d looked across the table at her. Perhaps I was looking for excitement flinting at the back of her eyes, or desperation, because I felt myself to be increasingly desperate. Her hand was cupped around the china mug, her thumb stroking the dark smudge of lipstick on its rim. She was smiling. She appeared unruffled. She could have been talking about anything — a yoga club, a salon.

Don’t look so tense, Hannah darling, she had said. Really. You deserve this. Everyone deserves contentment. You have to look after your health. It’s amazing how truly discordant life seems if you feel wrong within yourself. If you feel lacking.

Her smile lengthened, and I thought, as I always did in her company, that she was a very attractive woman. Her hair was tawny and full, expensively fletched with auburn, and it sat brightly against her blazer. From behind she might have been mistaken for a young woman, trim and energetic as she was. But her face was heavily lined. If anything she looked older than her actual years, perhaps by almost a decade. Her attitude remained youthful, animating the mature, textured face, and it was this combined quality that was most appealing. Men flocked around her at parties, topping up her glass and listening to her upbraid politicians and culture ministers, as she did in her weekly newspaper column. Her laughter rang above the noise of any gathering, rich and inelegant.

I’d known Anthea since the children began primary school. The other mothers had probably assumed she was grandmother to the little girl, Laura, whose hand she was holding. And until the child said, Kisses Mummy, and pulled her down so she could reach her cheek, so had I.

Well, now we can all return to our bloody lives, she’d declared slowly, once the sons and daughters were beyond the school gate. She’d caught my smile and snorted, putting her hands to her mouth. A week later we had exchanged telephone numbers. Soon after we began socialising as couples — our husbands knew each other by sight, it turned out, from the university campus. She introduced me to a new group of women in the town, a vibrant artistic set of varying ages, who went into the city intermittently, to work, to attend book launches and ebullient, champagne-driven gatherings. A couple of them were journalists, one was married to a radio presenter, and one worked in television. They were all friendly and, if not uncommonly beautiful, were svelte, fine-boned, and bought rich, top-end cosmetics.