The Country Life by Rachel Cusk Page A

the kitchen counter until the rapid beating of my heart subsided. I examined the tin can I had bought, which contained something called ‘luncheon meat’; a substance widely consumed, I believe, during the last war, from which period the dusty, crepuscular tin appeared to date. Despite having little appetite for the stuff, I was relieved to discover that the tincarried a device for opening itself; but minutes later, searching a drawer for cutlery, I found a tin opener in any case. I assembled my meal, which consisted of two rolls without butter containing pink slabs of luncheon meat and a cup of coffee, and carried it on a plate out into the garden.
    It must, at this point, have been early to mid-afternoon, and outside the heat was so searing that it seemed to have blanched the garden of colour. I arranged myself upon a blasted patch of grass, taking care to keep only my right side in the sun, and began to eat. I do not have a particularly weak stomach as far as food is concerned, but the ‘luncheon meat’ was grotesque in appearance. A more imaginative person than I would doubtless have seen all manner of horrors in the sinister pink mush, and I bolted it down, keen to avoid having this type of thought myself. I had progressed to my coffee, swatting at a gang of wasps and other insects lured by the crumbs on my plate to pester me, when the sound of Pamela’s voice caused me to jump.
    â€˜Didi, darling, you couldn’t fling over my sunglasses, could you?’
    I looked around, startled. The voice had seemed to come from nearby, and yet Pamela was nowhere to be seen. For a moment I sat in utter confusion; but when I heard nothing further, began to think that I must have imagined it. Seconds later, however, I clearly heard Pamela’s voice again.
    â€˜Thanks, darling.’
    This time, I felt quite upset. I turned my head this way and that, telling myself that Pamela must be somewhere in the garden, but knowing in the pit of my stomach that she was not. At that moment I heard a laugh, long and low; again, definitely Pamela’s. I had heard that laugh in the hall of the big house the night before, and was not likely to forget it, nor anything else about that evening, in a hurry. Hearing the laugh, then, I thought that I would go mad. It was absolutely impossible that Pamela could be more than a few feet away, and in the end Iwas driven to get up and search for her, peering ridiculously behind the apple tree and to the sides of the cottage. Finding nothing, there was no more for me to do than sit back down again. I waited, electrified, my heart pounding. There was a much longer silence this time, but eventually the voice came again.
    â€˜She is, she is,’ it said. ‘But it’s early days yet, you know.’
    I was concentrating so hard that I could hear the thud of my own heartbeat in my ears. It was so loud that I was unable to hear anything above its noise, and I slapped the side of my head with my hand to try and make it go away.
    â€˜Well, it was so bloody dreadful last time. We were
this
close to just paying out to get someone professional in, you know.’
    This time I was able to analyse the sound closely enough to hear a slight echo at the end of each word. Through some freak of the landscape and the exceptional stillness of the hot air, Pamela’s voice must be being carried all the way from the back of the house. It was obvious to me now that what I was hearing was one half of a conversation; the ‘Didi’ referred to evidently being positioned behind some obstacle which prevented her responses from reaching me. In almost the same moment as I solved this bizarre mystery, I realized that it had a considerable – indeed, an unthinkable – bearing on me. Pamela, it was suddenly clear, was discussing me with her friend.
    â€˜I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘There wasn’t time beforehand, and we’ve both tried to hold off from