The Country Life by Rachel Cusk Page B

interrogating her before she’s had time to catch her breath. She
seems
nice enough, though. Rather mousy, you know.’
    I had stopped breathing.
    â€˜That’s right!’ Pamela shrieked with laughter. ‘I know, I know.’
    I was kneeling by this time, my whole body straining in the direction of the house. The sun grated on my sore skin, corrosive and painful.
    â€˜Bog-standard middle, I’d say,’ said Pamela. ‘Well-spoken.She seems quite intelligent.’ Then, minutes later: ‘Oh, nothing very interesting. Some sort of secretary.’
    For a few minutes I could hear nothing at all. The sounds of the garden were amplified in the silence, and after a while grew so loud that I feared that I was missing something.
    â€˜Do you know, I don’t think he even notices when we get a new one,’ said Pamela then. ‘He’s such a darling. They all
adore
him. This one’s got a
dreadful
crush on him already.’ I heard a long, horrifying peal of laughter. ‘Of course I haven’t. He’d be
mortified.
God, I must be the only woman in the world who doesn’t need to worry about her husband having it off with the au pair.’
    I cried out in dismay, there in the garden, and swiftly clapped a hand over my mouth as it occurred to me that the strange echo could just as easily work in the other direction. Some time passed, during which I remained kneeling and alert, but no further conversation came my way. I was profoundly upset and disturbed by what I had overheard. I could not even offer myself the obscure consolation of thinking that I had got what I deserved for eavesdropping, seeing as Pamela’s comments had been forced upon my inadvertent ears. My hatred for Pamela, which ever since my arrival at Franchise Farm had been struggling to burst the confines of propriety, broke free and coursed boiling about my veins. For a few minutes I was quite demented with anger and shame, and found myself thrashing and writhing on the spot like a wild animal. My thoughts were in havoc, a babble of concerns from which I could wring no sense, and before long I had exhausted myself so entirely that I fell to the grass, panting. Aware, even in the midst of this chaos, of my skin, I managed to heave my weary body onto its side so that the burnt patches were out of the sun; at which point, much to my surprise, I fell asleep.

Chapter Seven
    I awoke to find the garden shrouded in the delicate summer gloom of evening. All around was quiet, save for the last, fading strains of birdsong, and in the stillness I felt a profound calm holding me on the brink of sleep; a pause in which neither my mind nor body was properly engaged, and during which I lay, as innocent and unquestioning as a pebble, on the warm grass, with no memory of my capacity for thought or movement. This pause lasted for some time; and then several things happened at once. The dusky garden, whose soft: quiescence had minutes earlier been wrapped close about me, drew back with the menace of unfamiliarity. The silence of the looming trees grew sinister. I had not the faintest idea of where I was, and jumped up straight away from the grass. As I did so, every bone in my body cried out in protest. Bolts of cramp shot through my legs, and my skin felt as if it were crackling or crumpling like paper. Just then, a monstrous and unannounced surge of nausea rose up through my stomach to my mouth. I leaned over and vomited copiously where I stood.
    That all this should have happened without my really having ascertained who or where I was left me in a state of shock. I stared at the heap of my own vomit in the dim light, and wassurprised by its luminous pinkness, strident even in the dusk. The luncheon meat was thus summoned from my memory, and with it the reluctant cavalcade of the day’s events, so unexpectedly severed by sleep. I wiped my sticky, wet mouth with the back of my hand and turned to face the cottage. I had left