The Temporary by Rachel Cusk Read Free Book Online Page A

people’s home.
    ‘Hi,’ said Mr Lancing in an American accent. The blood appeared to flow back into his dysfunctional arm and it twitched perkily, inviting Francine to shake it. He had a boyish, grinning face over which a map of age had been laid as if artificially. His clear eyes peering through the tanned and withered skin gave him the appearance of a child wearing a rubber mask. ‘Great!’ he said enthusiastically.
    ‘Hello,’ said Francine, shaking his hand.
    Mr Lancing continued to grin at her and she noticed a slightly dead expression behind his eyes.
    ‘Well, that’s the introductions over with,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll just show Francine to her desk, Mr Lancing.’
    ‘Give ’em hell!’ said Mr Lancing. He clenched his fist and punched it into the air.
    Jane laughed shrilly. ‘We will, Mr Lancing,’ she said.
    Francine’s desk was a right-angle of grey counter-top positioned near the foot of Mr Lancing’s podium. The desk was fenced in by a capacious window to the side and a wall on which shelves were hung to the rear. Along the shelves were arranged a large number of box files, their vertical labelled spines inscribed like tombstones. In front of the desk stood what appeared to be a coffee station, a small table on which a kettle fumed in a dry and dissolving landscape of shiny brown pools and white hillocks of sugar, interspersed with tiny dark granular boulders, stained spoons, and damp fists of used teabags. Francine’s objections to this arrangement were strong and immediate, not least because it formed a second channel of interference – the first being the rows of files – which permitted the unrestricted access of office traffic to her territory. She moved behind her desk and saw that it put her in view of the whole room. From beyond the plastic plain of the desktop, a chirping forest of computers appearedto monitor her movements with their single unblinking eyes. She wrestled for a moment with her faint-heartedness, knowing that if she cowered from this corporate ecology she would disable herself for survival within it, becoming victim to a new range of cruelties whose invisibility did not lessen her faith in their existence. Mr Lancing and his colleague sat atop their rival podia, dumb and vigilant as marble dogs at a gate.
    ‘I’ll just run you through one or two things,’ said Jane. She manoeuvred her broad hips round to the other side of the desk, as powerful and clumsy as a car. ‘Do you mind if I just sit on your chair for a minute?’
    ‘Not at all,’ replied Francine. In such a place territories were as quickly and fiercely marked out as they were returned to their anonymity. She moved to stand behind Jane so as to observe her instructions. On the chair, the cheeks of her buttocks were forced sideways like a tomato crushed underfoot.
    ‘You’ll be in sole charge of Mr Lancing’s diary,’ said Jane, lifting a large ledger from the far end of the desk. It had scraps of paper stuck to its cover and protruding from amongst its pages, scribbled relics of other hands. She opened it and began to leaf through the blueprints of days long since passed, with their emergencies of meetings and lunches. The diary was thick with arrangement and rearrangement, its pages gnarled into relief by the hieroglyphics of rounded handwriting . ‘Here’s today’s schedule,’ said Jane, turning to reveal a fresher page. ‘11.30 Haircut’ read Francine.
    The phone on her desk began suddenly to shriek. Francine started and stepped automatically aside so that Jane could pick it up.
    ‘Let’s see if you can answer it,’ said Jane, revealing her large teeth.
    ‘All right,’ Francine replied, bright with loathing. She picked up the vibrating receiver, and in the imperative of itssudden silence felt necessity overpower apprehension. ‘Mr Lancing’s office,’ she said smoothly.
    ‘Gary there?’ barked a voice in reply. Its American accent took her by surprise, disabling her comprehension as if