The Country Life (19 page)

‘You've got a lot on your mind,' I consoled her. ‘It's not surprising.'

‘I know, I know,' she wailed. ‘I've just
got
to get myself sorted out! Oh God, I'd better go and phone him again.' I heard footsteps approaching behind me, and then the light, penitent pressure of Pamela's hand on my back. ‘Thank you, Stella. You're very good. Look, why don't you take the rest of the afternoon off, once you've finished here. Martin shouldn't be back until six.'

‘Are you sure?' I said.

‘No, that should be fine,' she conceded, after a pause. ‘I think I can manage. When you come back, we could all go for a swim.'

‘Great!' I replied.

She shuffled mournfully from the room, leaving me to celebrate my triumph alone. I ran the taps and even hummed loudly, not wishing to hear anything of Pamela's subsequent conversation from beyond the wall. I realized that I had become somewhat addicted to cunning; but even though I could see that so far I had lost more than I had gained by it, like a gambler this latest victory encouraged me to persist. The normal forms of control over a situation not being available to me, I felt that for the time being I had discovered a more covert way to survive.

Along with the satisfaction I had gained from rattling Pamela, the scene had yielded an additional bonus. Piers's exile could, of course, be explained by a number of factors. My own parents, for example, had increasingly, as they grew older and the rooms became, through death and desertion, available, slept apart. The cause was prosaic – my father's snoring – but there had never been any question of moving personal effects. My mother merely decamped when the noise became intolerable, and returned automatically when it had subsided. Her night-time paddings up and down the dark corridor were a midnight extension of the treadmill of their marriage, a tour of duty undertaken in a spirit of deep and sacrificial secrecy. The cautious creak of the bedsprings bore the imprimatur of love: for despite the glottal riot which had woken her, my mother's own manoeuvres were conducted with pathological quiet.

Piers's predicament, however, emitted the distinct scent of a mystery. I could not imagine the lovely Pamela snoring, although the possibility that she routinely roused Piers from his snores and ejected him, rather than move herself, was a distinct one; but the presence of his ‘things' – so many ‘things' that they presented an obstruction to Toby's visit – hinted to the devious mind at a disaffection more malignant and incurable. If a falling-out were the reason for the separation, however, why would Pamela have revealed it so unthinkingly? I had certainly caught her at an unguarded moment, with the weighty prospect
of a domestic assignment now before her. I had also, apparently engrossed in my washing-up and with my back turned, given the appearance of not listening to what she was saying. It did occur to me that Pamela considered me to be of so little consequence that I was more or less invisible to her; but the frequency with which she seemed to refer to me in her private conversations suggested that this was not the case.

Having pondered this latest development at such length, I found that the washing-up was done and the kitchen returned to its former glory. Judging by the silence from the hall, Pamela had finished her conversation and gone elsewhere. I looked at my watch and found that it was half-past three. Beyond the windows the afternoon simmered, unstirred by breezes. I longed for the postponed swim. There was still the problem of the sodden dishcloths to confront, however, and I decided that this might be the moment to make my escape to the cottage, where I could lay them out to dry in the sun, and think over all that I had learned.

Outside the garden stood still, as if held in a sultry jelly of heat and thick air. I made my way along the path between the twittering hedges to the cottage, feeling within seconds the urgency of getting into the shade. The whining of a lawnmower threaded its way along the path towards me, growing louder and more guttural with my approach. By the time I reached the gate the noise was quite deafening. Entering the garden I saw a man astride what looked like a miniature tractor, driving it bucking and lurching into the dense beard of grass in front of the cottage. Over one half of the garden, stems lay felled on their sides in long executioner's rows. The strong, familiar smell of cut grass, a seasonal memory annually forgotten, flooded up from the lawn. I stood watching the man's progress. He was wearing a large hat which covered most of his face, but as the tensile limpet of his body clung to the thrashing machine I caught glimpses of his neck, brown and knotty as old wood. This, I concluded, was dear old Thomas, mowing the lawn true to his word.

‘Good afternoon!' I cried, wading through the grass with my hand shielding my eyes from the light.

Thomas drove roaring on through the stubborn crop, impervious,
his skinny shoulders hooked over the handlebars. He was mowing in lengths, and when the machine abutted the cottage wall he turned it in a lumbering circle and began driving back towards me. I waved cheerfully, but when it became evident that he had no intention of stopping was compelled to step aside.

‘Good afternoon!' I called again hopefully, as he ploughed furiously past me. I caught a glimpse of the rugged escarpment of his nose, and the blind socket of his mouth.

His truculent back receded to the bottom of the garden, and having been twice slighted I decided to take cover in the cottage before he completed his turn. I have never had much of a touch in such situations. My parents had no gardener or cleaner, nor many visitors either, which may explain my lack of social graces; although I do not want to give the impression that I am using my parents to excuse away everything. They would be furious if they knew even a part of what I ascribe to their influence. Indeed, they have always suspected me of this tendency. ‘I suppose that's our fault too!' my mother would remark, if some entirely unrelated misfortune befell me. She would even, no doubt, if she were here, accuse me of blaming them for my habit of blaming them.

I stole away from Thomas, then, looking guiltily over my shoulder lest he should glance up and acknowledge me, and went into the cottage; intending to leave the door open as a further testament to my accessibility, should the need for conversation suddenly overtake him. I had the damp ball of dishcloths in one hand and was about to attend to it when I noticed something lying on the floor in front of me. It was a single slip of paper, and from its position I judged that it had been slid beneath the door while I was out. I picked it up and saw that it was a leaflet of some sort, crudely printed, and bearing the heading, in astonished capitals: ‘IT'S MADDENING!'

I dropped the dishcloths into the lap of the armchair and
read it where I stood. Beneath the heading was printed the following message:

At the bottom of the leaflet was inscribed the legend
Property is Theft
, with a kind of scroll beneath it. Thomas was now noisily advancing on his mower up the garden behind me, for all the world as if he intended to forge his way through the cottage, and I quickly shut the door, the leaflet still clutched in my hand. It took me several readings to make any sense of it at all. Of what precisely did Mr Madden stand so bitterly accused? What danger could he, mildness incarnate, possibly represent to the lives of the ‘honest public'? My unfamiliarity with the countryside and its attendant vocabulary meant that it was some time before I understood ‘public rights of way' to mean footpaths; those being, in so far as I could deduce, ordained paths crossing private property along which anybody was permitted to walk. I liked, as I now knew, a walk; but I could not credit the practice, pleasant though it was, with the politics set out before me here, nor imagine their author to be anything other than a lunatic.

My first thought was to take the leaflet and show it to Mr Madden at once. That he was being denounced so liberally,
possibly unbeknownst to him, was bad enough; but the thought that his detractor had trespassed deeply on his property, straying far from footpaths to deliver his vitriol, was worse still. It unsettled me to think that an intruder had made it to my door without being apprehended. I wondered if Thomas had seen anything untoward, but decided not to risk another social foray in that direction.

Just as I was about to leave the cottage with the intention of tracking down Mr Madden and reporting the incident to him, another thought struck me. What if, contrary to appearances, Mr Madden was in fact guilty of discouraging ramblers from his property? I did not suspect him of any degree of turpitude, and clearly saw the leaflet for what it was – a cheap patchwork of resentment and agitation designed to rouse the most brutal emotions in those who read it. It was, however, quite possible that Mr Madden had reasons for his hostility, if hostile he was. Perhaps he had had bad experiences with ramblers in the past, or found that they did damage to his land. If the pamphleteer was a fair example of the species, Mr Madden probably had everything to fear from it.

The thought, in any case, that he might be fully aware of the leaflet, and perhaps had suffered from similar attacks before, discouraged me from bringing it to his attention. Were the substance, if not the tone, of the allegations true, he might quite rightly regard it as none of my business. Were it false, he could feel humiliated. Added to this possibility was the delicate subject of my supposed ‘feelings' for Mr Madden, and the hint of irritation I caught even when I petitioned him on more trivial matters persuaded me still further against disclosure. The ideal solution, I soon realized, was for him to find out about the leaflet without knowing that the information came from me. The easiest way for this to be done, obviously, was for me to put the leaflet through the front door of the big house unseen. In case anyone did see me, I could carry out this task under the pretence of going for a walk. More convincing yet, I
could in fact
go
for a walk; and if in the course of it I found myself at the post office in Hilltop, I could perhaps carry my investigations further.

Having settled on my plan, I hurried to follow it through so as to be back well before six o'clock, the hour of Martin's return. My single remaining problem was the vexing matter of my sunburn. Over the course of the day my skin had become less painful, but where my wrists and neck protruded from my shirt the tide of a violent blush remained high. I dared not look at my face in the mirror. Having no hat, and apparently intent on reconstructing the previous day's activities to the letter, it seemed unlikely that I would avoid a repetition of its misfortunes. The thought of Thomas's hat, capacious and floppy, was tempting; but having failed in the work of charming him, there was little hope of persuading him to lend it to me short of assaulting him in some way.

Being practical by nature, there was only so long that I would permit myself to be paralysed by a question of vanity. The leaflet in my hand was issuing an urgent summons to action; and I challenged myself to deny that the acquisition of aptitude for the country life required some degree of physical toughness. My skin would have to adapt, as my spirit was striving to do. I became aware of a particularly sweet and expansive silence blooming about me and realized that the roar of the mower had ceased. Opening the door I saw the barbered garden lying anaesthetized in the heat, with no sign either of Thomas or his machine. Seizing my moment, I bolted from the cottage, locking the door behind me and putting the key in my pocket.

Mr Madden's mention of a gate leading to the drive lent me more purpose than direction in beginning my journey. I had no idea where this gate might be found, having never glimpsed a diversion from the route I customarily took to the big house. Indeed, it was hard to believe, knowing this route as I now did, that it could surprise me in any way at all. I was confounded,
then, by the appearance immediately to my left as I emerged from the cottage garden of what was clearly a path. Given that I would happily have sworn on my life that no such path existed, there was something not a little sinister about its manifestation. I had had this feeling once or twice before since being in the country; a feeling that, as in a dream, the world had become a flaccid structure inflated – like a balloon, or the long, flat tunnel of a sleeve down which a motive human hand snakes – by convenience and will. The thought that perhaps everything was folded in this way, unwrapping itself at the command of my footsteps, was a disturbing one.

Nevertheless I took the path, and found it to lead easily to a small iron gate, on the other side of which lay the pebbled shore of the Maddens' front drive. I cut stealthily across the gravelled expanse, my frame rigid with casual cunning, and made as if I was intending to stroll past the front door and on down the avenue. Just as I drew level with the door, however, I darted to the right, ascending the steps crabwise with all possible haste. Panting, I poked my finger through the heavy silver slot and peered through it, scanning the long, tenebrous tunnel for signs of life and the minatory glare of Roy. Seeing nothing, I fed the leaflet quickly through the gap and heard it fall with a whisper on the other side. Unfortunately, the lid appeared to be sprung in some manner, and despite the careful easing of my finger free, it slammed down with a loud rap as soon as I had released it. I waited, frozen, for the sound of footsteps; for I had decided in that moment that it was too dangerous to run away, given that I might not have time to find a hiding place. I was glad to feel, even in my terror, that my mental processes seemed to be accelerating somewhat. Many people would have fled panicked from the scene as if under fire, and then been run to ground in the open spaces of the front drive.