In the Fold by Rachel Cusk Read Free Book Online

said Ali, ‘just shut up, all right?’
    ‘Yeah, just fucking shut up,’ added Rick.
    Rick and Ali often spoke like this to their children. With the exception of Rebecca, they all recognised verbal abuse as a form of good manners. For the Alexanders, conventionality in matters of domestic conduct was the ultimate humiliation. For example, I remember around this time an evening duringwhich Rick repeatedly accused Marco of being cold to Ali, because he wouldn’t let her drop him off at school on her way to work, but insisted on walking there himself.
    ‘Why don’t you want her to take you?’
    ‘I just thought she might want to steer clear of school for a while,’ Marco finally disclosed.
    ‘Why?’
    There was a pause.
    ‘She didn’t make the list,’ said Marco heavily.
    ‘What list?’
    ‘The list .’
    ‘Oh,’ said Rick.
    ‘What list?’ I asked.
    ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Rick. ‘Well, that’s a fucking disaster.’
    ‘There was nothing I could do,’ said Marco, holding out his hands helplessly.
    ‘You’ve got to get her on the list,’ said Rick.
    ‘Believe me, I tried. No can do. It’s a democratic process.’
    ‘What list?’ I asked again.
    ‘Go on, tell him,’ said Rebecca loudly to her father and brother. ‘Tell Michael exactly what you’re talking about! God, I don’t believe it,’ she added, putting her head in her hands.
    ‘What’s the list?’ I said.
    ‘Every year,’ said Rebecca, with disgust, ‘the pupils at Marco’s school make a list.’
    ‘Of what?’
    ‘Mothers.’
    ‘You know, the fit ones,’ said Marco.
    ‘They make a list of the mothers they’d most like to sleep with,’ said Rebecca in a sing-song voice. ‘They vote on it.’
    ‘This is the first time she hasn’t made it,’ Marco said.
    ‘It’s so embarrassing for her,’ said Rick.
    ‘I know, I know,’ said Marco. ‘I told them, I really did. Apparently it happens all the time with the top year, because so many younger mothers are coming up the school. Believe me, I tried, but Alex is a real stiff. He hates my guts.’
    ‘So make friends with him,’ said Rick. ‘Kiss his arse. Just get her on.’
    ‘I can’t!’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I’d have to nominate her myself,’ said Marco sheepishly. ‘That’s the only way. I just thought, you know, there has to be a limit.’
    *
    The day our son Hamish was born I woke in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark. The night seemed to have been full of shadows and motion, like a night spent on a train. Rebecca was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her great body made a depression in the mattress that seemed infinite.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
    She sighed.
    ‘I’m so tired,’ she said indistinctly.
    ‘Can’t you sleep?’
    ‘I’ve been up for hours. I’ve been pacing the room, like mum said to do.’
    Her voice palpitated dramatically between self-pity and common sense.
    ‘Does that mean it’s started?’ I said.
    ‘I can’t believe you didn’t wake up,’ she said.
    I considered this, there in the thick, crumpled dark.
    ‘Well, one of us might as well get some sleep,’ I said.
    ‘How could you sleep with me walking around your bed? What did you think I was doing?’
    ‘I didn’t realise you were walking around.’
    ‘How could you lie there asleep while I was in pain?’ she shrieked.
    I had to remind myself that what I had or hadn’t done was now irrelevant. Events were overtaking us. In the taxi Rebecca sprawled, affronted, on the back seat, while I sat next to the driver. Every time I glanced back at her, her belly seemed to rise and impose itself between us. It seemed to erupt through the surface of the life on which we had agreed,and I saw everything cascading down its numinous sides. I felt a part of that landslide: I felt myself plummeting down to a region of irreparable disorder. Occasionally Rebecca would groan, a melancholic, interior sound. I tried to hold on to her in the jolting car when she