The Temporary by Rachel Cusk

over him he knew the residue of his miseries still lived in him, leaking its deleterious perfume daily into his thoughts. Nevertheless, he had always regarded his wounds as things inflicted on him by other people, and it was odd to be spoiling something for himself. He supposed it had happened because Francine had expected him to lead her, had been unable to draw him away from his descent, until he had found himself wishing she would just go home and leave him to plunge back into his darkness.
    She had been something of a disappointment to him, in fact; he could admit that now that his hopes for the evening had subsided. When he had opened the door and first seen her, he had had the impression of someone who shouldn’t have been there at all, someone so unrelated to his own life that for a moment it had seemed impossible that the drinks and dinner would still go ahead. It was her clothes, probably, a strange executive uniform which was as resistant to hissensibilities as armour and which made her presence at his door seem unnatural. He knew she must have just come from work, and yet he hadn’t been able to find enough in the personality of her job to fill its outward appearance, and he was left with a sense of her as a strange mannequin who had come to pose in his sitting-room. She was beautiful, of course, but her beauty could find no conduit through which to flow to him: it remained forcefully packed in her face, a disruptive presence.
    Of course, he had made a complete fool of himself, spinning idiocies for conversation, capering with the mimicry of charm in the absence of all his better qualities. It had astonished him to discover that even so she was willing to shine for him. He had expected her to be filled with the skills necessary to find him out, blade-sharp with social acumen, but she merely went along with it all with an air of slightly dumbfounded acceptance , for all the world as if his madness was something of which he had mastery! Then again, perhaps the poor girl was only being kind in trying to normalize him; or perhaps, Heaven help her, she too felt herself to be on trial. In his mind he rose and regarded their situation from above. From a larger perspective, things hadn’t been so bad. They had drunk and conversed in a civilized manner, and now Ralph was going to serve dinner. He saw them eating it, their bodies cold and private beneath their clothes, his thoughts swarming at the glass of his eyes.
    He removed the risotto from the oven, and was amused by how appropriate its unfathomable horror now seemed. It looked uglier than ever, aged by its long, dry stint in the heat, and Ralph considered sacrificing it to save the evening in its death throes, dropping it on the floor and taking Francine out to a place where the noise of life would perhaps provide them with a clue as to their part in it, and where by imitating the people around them they could improvise their own littledrama. Fatigued suddenly with drink, he decided against it. It would be unwise to animate the strange creature they made together and watch what he knew would be its ghastly, fleeting dance. He just wanted to get through it, tunnel through the hardest, shortest route which would deliver him to solitude.
    He loaded everything on to a large tray and bore it down the hall and into the sitting-room. Francine was on the sofa and Ralph felt a sudden impulse of pity for her, for he had given her nothing to do while she sat and waited, and his relentless tidying had deprived the surfaces of the room of interest. She had the neat, apprehensive appearance of someone awaiting an appointment, and his pity was overcome by a fresh surge of bewilderment at her presence there.
    ‘Here we are,’ he said brightly, desperate to rouse her. ‘Do you want to come and sit down?’
    She got up from the sofa and walked carefully towards him, and he suddenly saw that her mystery was an effect of her silence, a knowing vacancy in which people were invited to