Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk Read Free Book Online Page B

one who pitied but could not empathise. Their prearrangement assuaged all memory of pain. In moments of doubt she could call on it and it would run to her side, faithful as a dog. Moreover, like a good exam result it confirmed both future and past; for she had in the past few days endured several private flashes of an agony too raw to be acknowledged, as memories of her performance in the sweaty arena of their intimacy jumped out at her unbidden. His call permitted this testing hour, which she had all but blanked out, to be received back into history: she had passed; she was normal. She could now squirm and smile secretively with valid pleasure at the memory.
    â€˜So have you guys done it?’ said Greta, colliding in mid-air with the winged passage of Agnes’s thoughts.
    â€˜Yes.’ Agnes considered the addition of ‘of course’, but settled for ‘We have, actually.’
    â€˜Wow.’ Greta bit vociferously into an apple. ‘That was quick.’
    Nina had once told her that if ever she felt her fancy turning to unhealthy devotion, she should imagine the object of her worship in the fifth form at a school disco: aged sixteen or thereabouts, skin crawling with adolescent pustulence, odorous and sweating and heaving himself drunkenly across thedance floor. Such a picture was bound to demote her demigod from the heaven realm to the human, or perhaps even lower, and was designed to relieve her from the discomforts of excessive admiration.
    Such practices may have allowed Nina to become the cool and distant lover she was purported to be, but Agnes, although sensing an imminent need for such stringent measures, was not by nature an iconoclast. She had tried to imagine a time when she might have found him charmless and had only been able to picture him young and lovely in a distant corner; aloof from the malodorous crowds, desperate to get away and sit beneath the moon, writing poetry perhaps. Such trains of thought, furthermore, inevitably led to the contemplation of her own ungainly youth, which, had she shared its details with her lover, she felt sure would have had the effect on him which Nina’s suggestion had designed.
    John had used to solicit tales of her adolescent embarrassments with glee. He had loved all her uglinesses and seemed to delight in the evidence they gave of her humanity. Once, when she had fallen over and cut her knee, he had watched her pick off the scab and had taken the crusty flap of skin from her hand. Agnes, who had thought she was removing the hideous excrescence unobserved, cried out in protest and shame. To her horror, and later wonderment, he held it up in the air for a moment and then put it in his mouth.
    â€˜There,’ he said, smiling and swallowing calmly. ‘Now I know what you taste like.’
    â€˜What shall I wear?’ said Agnes, standing dolefully before her wardrobe.
    â€˜Where?’
    Nina lay down on the bed and kicked off her shoes. One landed in the bin and the other hit the wall, leaving a small black mark.
    â€˜Yes.’
    Agnes ran her hand along the rail where jackets and shirts hung like obedient ghosts, like escorts.
    â€˜You don’t say “yes”.’ Nina screwed up her face. ‘You say “to the cinema” or something.’
    Agnes took out a jacket and held it up. It hung elegantly from the scrawny neck of the coat-hanger, svelte and poised. It looked better without her.
    â€˜I’m going to the cinema with Jack, actually,’ Nina continued. She stretched her legs into the air and twiddled her bare feet on their joints like flesh-coloured periscopes. ‘Tomorrow. You know what he said when I suggested it? He said, “Oh, great, we can sit in the back row and snog.” Can you believe that? It was so funny.’
    Agnes replaced the jacket and it eyed her with disdain. She did not want to look glamorous. He would think she was trying too hard, although in reality it would be equally