The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk Page A

he hasn’t been to work for three weeks! He just doesn’t seem to get better. He spends all day moping around the house in his dressing gown.’
    Tonie has known Claudia for years, has caught her eye over countless family dinners, has stood beside her, their smart shoes chafing their feet, at christenings and funerals, has held her babies in her arms. She knows the forms her joy and resentment take; she has heard it for most of her adult life, Claudia’s part, like the melody from an other section of the orchestra.
    ‘But what is it?’ she says.
    Claudia looks into the dark distances of the windscreen.
    ‘Something to do with his lung, apparently. He finally went to the hospital two days ago and got it X-rayed. He thought it was flu, but flu doesn’t just stay the same day after day, does it? I’ve been saying, you know, for heaven’s sake go to the doctor and get a diagnosis! Get a diagnosis! Get a diagnosis !’
    She thumps the steering wheel.
    ‘So he did get one,’ Tonie reminds her gently.
    ‘Well, only after he’d laid waste to all my work plans and virtually barred my path to the studio, because he felt I should be looking after him, even though this was my first real chance to do some painting since the children went back to school after the summer –’
    It is now December: the Christmas holidays start next week, as Tonie must suppose Claudia knows. They drive along in silence for a while.
    ‘Anyway, it turns out he’s got a patch,’ Claudia resumes.
    ‘What’s a patch?’
    ‘Just a sort of dark – patch , on the lung. They want to do a whatsit, a biopsy. I suppose sooner or later they’ll tell us what it is.’
    Tonie presses her palms flat against her thighs. The night is as fine as pitch. Outside the trees and railings are already rimed with frost. They are in a suburban area she doesn’t recognise, big houses, their bulky forms dark, smart silvery cars in driveways with white frost on the windows. Everything looks perfected, abandoned. They pull into one of the driveways, ring the bell at a door lit by carriage lights. It is a big, rambling place. The bell sounds deep in the house. Tonie is afraid.
    A large woman, robust and richly dressed as an opera singer, opens the door. At the sight of them she flings out her arms.
    ‘Darlings!’ she exclaims.
    They are in a room full of people. The woman makes a lot of noise. Tonie can’t hear what she’s saying, just the sound she makes saying it. Her name is Dana or Lana. The room is bright, busy, confusing. The walls are painted red. There are African sculptures, primitive masks, a tiger skin nailed above the fireplace. Tonie looks at the other people, middle-aged people with crumpled faces and thinning hair and soft shapeless bodies. They are depleted, exhausted-looking among the giant ebonised phalluses, the carved forms of pregnant savages. Claudia is talking to a documentary film-maker. She asks him questions about himself while Tonie watches. He is pale, moon-faced, with eyes like chips of vacant blue sky: Tonie notes the consideration with which he has dressed himself, his look of battered fashion. He has recently returned from filming in the Galapagos Islands.
    ‘How fascinating ,’ Claudia says, so ingratiatingly that Tonie thinks she must be being ironic.
    She asks him one thing after another, like a mother spooning food into a baby’s mouth: when he comes to the end of one question she is ready with the next. They hear about the iguanas, about the turtles coming up the beach to lay their eggs, about the valour of his dedication to vulnerable beasts. Claudia nods and coaxes and smiles, and every time someone offers Tonie a drink she takes it.
    ‘Why do those films always make the world look like it’s perfect?’ Tonie asks him.
    He ponders her, the baby in his chair: is she friend or foe?
    ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I sort of see what you mean. We’re editing out all the mess, aren’t we? People don’t realise that just out of shot