The Temporary by Rachel Cusk Read Free Book Online

left below, except for a gold-plated 5 stuck to the opposite wall in place of the large G downstairs. The brown carpet beneath Francine’s feet absorbed the noise of her shoes, amplifying instead the swishing sounds of clothing and the quick exchanges of their breaths. Jane turned to the right and began walking briskly, and Francine hurried to keep abreast of her. She felt disturbed by Jane’s air of permanent unfamiliarity, until she remembered that Personnel were always like that. She never usually saw them again after the first day. Francine was often left with disembodied impressions of people from these first intense exposures, a moustache here or large bosom there, a smell or a set of teeth, which together formed an area of clutter in her mind like spare parts littering a garage floor. Occasionally one of these strange, useless memories would rise unbidden in her thoughts and she would find herself unable to remember how she had acquired it or where it belonged. She would suddenly recall jobs she had done from which she could not retrieve a single face, while those faces which had become separated from their owners would drift about among her recollections like detached and meaningless ghosts.
    ‘This way,’ said Jane, listing suddenly and sharply to the left. She opened a door and the brown, mummified silence of the corridor was all at once broken by the familiar chatter and hum of the office and a bank of dull natural light emanating from the large windows to the far side. Francine followed Jane into the room. She felt dazed, as if she had just emerged from beneath deep water. The office was instantly recognizable, a flat, immaculate vista of steely geometry and manicured synthetic fibres, its variations in tone all conducted in the key of grey. Through the windows the low cloudy sky and iron hives of companion office blocks were visible. From the fifthfloor one could see other fifth floors, the heads of buildings like a crowd of adults.
    Several people looked up at the intrusion and Francine suddenly remembered herself. It was one of the advantages of her position that her novelty, the most fragile of all her arts, rarely had the opportunity to wear off. There was a perceptible lull and swell as things shifted to accommodate her. One or two people allowed their glances to linger like tenacious guests into stares. Seconds elapsed and eventually everyone bent their heads, or turned to gaze blankly into computer screens while their fingers tapped at keyboards in an imitation of tedium. Francine’s eyes swept the surface of the secretarial pool and then rose to confront what instinct informed her was a masculine inspection. The man wore a dark pinstriped suit and was examining her in an authoritative manner. His desk was on a raised podium, like a car in a showroom. Francine looked away and then back once or twice until the persistence of his stare caught her eyes and held them. At that moment he assumed a bored expression and dropped his attention back down to the slim pile of pages in front of him. He made a mark or two on the top sheet with a heavy gold fountain pen and crossed his legs away from her.
    ‘This is Francine,’ said Jane loudly. She threw her voice in the direction of another man on the far side of the room and then followed keenly after it like a dog chasing a stick. The man wore a pinstriped suit identical to that of his colleague, but sat behind a desk whose podium raised it just perceptibly higher. At the sight of Jane advancing briskly towards him he stood up and put out his hand, as if anticipating the transfer of a baton. His gesture had been automatic, but as he comprehended the nature of the interruption Francine saw him waver in his maintenance of it, his arm flopping feebly as if the mechanism designed to retract it had suddenly failed.
    ‘Francine, this is Mr Lancing. Francine will be lookingafter you,’ said Jane, raising her voice for Mr Lancing in the manner of a matron in an old