The Country Life by Rachel Cusk Read Free Book Online

his way, but soon realized that he was merely sweating profusely. ‘I’ve brought over your cases.’
    â€˜Oh, thank you,’ I said. I wondered whether I should invite him in, knowing that my decision would ‘set’ all future policy for visits between the two properties. ‘It’s terribly hot, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Going to be a heatwave,’ puffed Mr Madden, wiping his brow. ‘Good news for us, of course.’
    He turned and looked at the bright, twittering garden.
    â€˜Well, I’ll let you get on,’ he said finally. He picked up the suitcases and heaved them past me just inside the front door, withdrawing immediately from the threshold. ‘You’re coming over later, are you?’
    â€˜Pamela said to come at six.’
    â€˜Righty-ho.’
    I saw that our early intimacy was struggling to survive, and that we were now speaking through Pamela, as if on telephones linked by her exchange. Unfortunately, I could think of nothing to say which would rescue our nascent friendship. Mr Madden turned with a sort of lurch, and trod heavily off down the path, raising his hand behind him in farewell.
    Not wishing to shut the door rudely on his retreating form, I strayed out into the garden after him, vaguely imagining that I could busy myself there. I walked around a little, shielding my eyes from the sun, but my botanical illiteracy – as opposed to the domestic fluency with which I was finding my way around the cottage – set me rather at odds with my surroundings. I don’t wish to give the impression that the garden displeased me in any way. It was simply that it seemed far less mine than the house, and I was very glad to recall that Mr Thomas was to take responsibility for subduing it. Still, I stood my ground for several minutes there on the grass, until something large and buzzing swam up before my eyes and collided with my forehead. I recoiled, crying out, although there was no pain. It was then, as my heart thumped with the shock, that I became aware of a menacing edge to the heat of the day, as if the sun had boiled over or burst its confines in some way. All at once I could bear it no longer, and hurried back into the cottage.
    The two hours passed there quite quickly. Desperate suddenly to cool myself down, I ran a cold bath in the narrow tub,and lay in it for a while. The intimate sight of my naked body was oddly embarrassing in the foreign bathroom. It was difficult to relax while so exposed in a new place, the timbre of whose interruptions and emergencies were still unfamiliar to me. I was anxiously braced for another knock at the door, or for a face to appear at the tiny window beside me. As I rose, dripping, I realized to my dismay that I had brought no towel with me from London. I cast about, looking for something with which to dry myself, and finding nothing was forced to run, huddled and wet, up the stairs to the bedroom, leaving a dark trail behind me. There I was no luckier. I stood naked in the centre of the room, immobilized by frustration, as when one is unable to accept that a solution to a ridiculous and unforeseen problem does not lie close to hand. Eventually, ashamed and filled with self-doubt, I began to dry myself inefficiently with the papery, flowered edge of the eiderdown on the bed. As I did so, I was reminded of a time when, as a very small child, I had been caught on the lavatory with no paper, and had sat there casting about in a similar manner. Eventually, I had been driven to dab myself with a bath towel. (The very thing which now, of course, I lacked; the thought that I had had one surplus then, and had used it in such a wasteful manner, doubled my frustration.) My parents, although I could not remember how, had found out about my secret gaffe, and standing in the sloping bedroom I was beset by a painful memory of their – quite unjust, in my view – fury.
    In the event, the force of the sun streaming through the