The Country Life (34 page)

‘Stella!'

I turned around and saw the teacher bearing down on me, her arm extended and her face transfixed by a sociable smile.

‘Karen Miller,' she said, grasping my hand and shaking it. Having already told her my name, I was somewhat lost as to
the correct response to this greeting. ‘It's great to have you here,' she continued. ‘I always think it's very positive for carers to see the kind of thing we do here.' She laughed ruefully. ‘Although I'm afraid they weren't on their best behaviour today. I wouldn't want you to think that it was always like that. Most of the time we have really useful discussions.'

‘I'm sure you do,' I said, nodding. I saw that she required some assurance that I would not form a bad opinion of her class, which I might then remove from her jurisdiction and disseminate.

‘The discussions are designed to help the children come to terms with their situation,' she continued. Her large eyes pinioned mine, but strangely I did not feel that she was looking at me. ‘Our aim here is to enable them to socialize their disability. A lot of them feel very isolated without this sort of contact. Here they can just relax and be themselves. We wanted to create a space above all in which children like these feel
normal.
'

‘Right,' I said.

‘So.' She leaned back, wedging her backside on the window ledge beside which we stood and folding her arms. ‘How are you finding life with Martin?'

Our abrupt arrival at intimacy surprised me. I had found it hard enough to communicate with this curious creature as a professional; but as a woman, she seemed even more alien. At her question, I immediately became aware of her physical appearance. She was shorter than me – although before I would have thought her much taller – and slightly plump beneath loose, silky clothes. Although I could see little of it, I sensed that her flesh was soft and yielding, as if she had no bones. Several silver necklaces circled her throat, and three silver earrings studded one ear. I noticed that she was wearing quite a lot of make-up, which formed creases around her eyes and mouth. Her lips were a moist, lurid red. On her chin rose one
or two pimples, at whose peaks her make-up gathered in a sort of volcanic crust. Her short hair was a purplish red, and was elaborately styled in a wispy, feathered cap around her face. She was quite attractive, although whether because or in spite of these cosmetic blandishments it was hard to tell. Her face and hair, held together apparently by great force of will, seemed poised on the brink of chaos.

‘Fine,' I said. I sensed an occluded bitterness in her nature, as if she were concealing some complex, self-serving mechanism which any information I gave her might inadvertently nourish. ‘I've only been with the family for a few days.'

‘Oh,
right
,' she said, nodding as if to herself. Unruly noises were coming from the other end of the room. ‘And how are you finding the Maddens?'

She was not interested, I saw, in me; or rather, her interest was indirect, and travelled through me in the hope of reaching the goal of Martin's family. I was surprised that she should be so indiscreet in her curiosity about them.

‘I like them,' I curtly replied. ‘As I said, I've only been there a few days.'

‘Oh, you'll get used to them,' she said, as if I had complained that I had found them uncongenial. ‘A lot of people find them a bit stand-offish, you know, but once you get to know them—
Can you keep it down, please?
' She projected her voice powerfully to the other end of the room. The sound startled me; and one or two of the others looked round, their faces white and vacant with surprise. ‘Yes,' she continued, ‘I've got to know Mrs Madden quite well since Martin's been coming to the centre. She often drops in just for a chat. I think she's a really lovely woman underneath it all. People get very jealous, you know, in a place like this.' She assumed a thoughtful expression. ‘They've got nothing better to do than talk. If you're attractive and rich, like she is, then you've got to accept that people are going to gossip about you. And living in that house, as well!

I've only ever seen it from the outside, mind you, when I drop Martin off. Apparently they never ask
anyone
in. What's it like inside?'

‘It's very nice,' I reluctantly admitted.

‘
He
's a bit of a dark horse, of course. Nice, apparently, but quite odd, There's been all sorts of rumours about
him
.'

‘What sort of rumours?' I could not restrain myself from asking.

‘Oh, I shan't dignify them by repeating them, Stella.' She gave me a look designed, I felt, to inform me that she found my curiosity distasteful. ‘Besides, I wouldn't want the Maddens thinking that I was passing on gossip.'

There was something not quite right about my conversation with Karen Miller. Although we might have appeared to be communicating, there was no spark of contact between us. This was not merely the customary awkwardness of strangers. It was as if some membrane lay between us which I was unable to penetrate. Our mouths were moving; our words roughly conformed to the principles of verbal exchange; and yet our discourse merely mimicked conversation, in the way a mannequin does a human body.

Looking at her, I found myself wondering what Karen Miller's life outside the centre was like. I tried to imagine her home, her family and friends, and could not. She was not, I hazarded, married: she emanated solitude, boundless and uninterrupted. She did not have the look of one circumscribed by cohabitation. I wondered then if that was what I looked like; if the freedom for which I had given up all restraints and claims was that which I saw before me in Karen Miller.

‘I wouldn't repeat it to them,' I indignantly replied. I did not worry about what she might think of my importunity. I did not believe, in any case, that she knew anything about the Maddens that had not been dredged from the common pool of idle speculation. ‘I know,' I coaxed, ‘that there have been some problems about the public footpaths crossing the farm.'

Karen Miller opened her mouth wide.

‘Timothy!' she called. I glimpsed her tongue, moist and plump. ‘Give Jenny back her picture! Well,' she continued, after a pause, ‘it's mostly just the usual hanky-panky, although people around here have got such tiny minds, I wouldn't be surprised if they get it all from books. You know, the upper classes, at it day and night. As I say, they've got nothing better to think about.'

‘I'm sure Mr Madden isn't involved in anything like that,' I said.

‘Well, you never know, do you?
She
's certainly had her fair share.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Well, it's not exactly top secret, is it? You could probably go and look it up in the public library. I felt quite sorry for her, having her name in the papers and that.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I thought I said to keep it down!
Look, I'd better get on,' she said, all at once brisk. ‘Will you be all right over here?'

I assured her that I would. As I watched her walk away, the bossy motion of her legs defined beneath the thin material of her trousers, I had a strange thought.
Nobody loves her.
I don't know why this uncharitable notion occurred to me, and with such certainty. It was something to do with the way she walked. Perhaps it was merely because I did not like the way she walked that I deemed her unlovable. My intuition, however, seemed more subtle to me than that. She did not have the self-consciousness of one who had been singled out. She walked as if no one had ever watched her do so. For the rest of the afternoon, while Karen Miller went about her desultory ministrations, I was unable to prevent myself from embroidering her hapless person with my own insights; and by the time she was commanding the group to finish what they were doing and put away their drawing materials, I had created so monstrous a vision of her future that it was all I could do to stop myself
from taking her to one side and pressing my message upon her. Instead I urged her in my thoughts to apply more diligence to the business of securing some affection for herself; to bend, to submit, to deploy whatever wiles were necessary to lure a companion into the dreadful pit of her loneliness. It was imperative, I felt, that she should not be complacent in this matter.

It was for myself, I don't doubt, that I was worrying. After we had bidden goodbye to the group and begun making our way back down the corridor, I was so rapt in the examination of my own deportment that I even forgot the ordeal which awaited me out in the car park. All that mattered, in that moment, was that I should solemnly undertake never to walk like Karen Miller.

Martin and I sat side by side out in the car park. Having had neither the foresight nor the skill to leave the car in the shade, the atmosphere inside it even after we had opened all the windows was oppressive. A strong, unpleasant smell of hot rubber radiated from every surface. The steering wheel was scorching to the touch. To our left, at the entrance to the car park, a long pair of tyre marks described twin arcs across the concrete in the heat, two incriminating fingers pointing at us.

‘We can't go on like this,' I said. ‘We're going to have to tell your parents everything.'

As soon as I had sat down in the driving seat, my body had gushed all over with sweat. A trickle spouted from my cheek and ran down my neck.

‘You're doing fine, Stel-la.'

‘I could get us both killed.'

‘So could anybody. Cars are dangerous.'

‘That's no argument. Your parents wouldn't agree. We've just been lucky so far, that's all. What if I injured you? You could be crippled for life.' There was a pause. I broke out into a fresh volley of sweat. ‘Sorry. I wasn't thinking.'

‘You might be doing them a favour,' observed Martin.

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘Surely it's up to me? I'm the one taking the risk.'

‘That's a very selfish way to look at things.'

‘So is your way.'

‘No it isn't. I'm sacrificing my job and my reputation for your safety.'

‘You're sacrificing my happiness for your guilt, you mean. I'll be depressed if you go. The others have all been awful. Mater doesn't have a clue. Look, it'll be fine. You'll improve in no time. You've just got to practise.'

After a heart-stopping slew out of the car park, we were back on the road. Everything that had happened in the interval took on the texture of a dream. My only reality was this maelstrom of noise and motion, this perilous enclosure in which every second dripped with risk and the world beyond the windscreen was transformed into a hostile adversary, on the elusion of which my life depended. The thing I disliked most about driving was its contingency. To drive was to be in a perpetual state of stress. One could not, while driving, merely stop doing so.

‘What did you think of the centre?' said Martin conversationally, once we had left Buckley in a reproachful fanfare of car horns.

‘I can't talk.'

‘Keep to the left, Stel-la. We're going to change gear. Clutch!'

‘Did it work?'

‘Yes. So what did you think? Stel-la?'

I was dimly aware that Martin had asked me a question, but the mechanisms required to answer it could not be activated whilst I was in this state of siege.

‘
Leemealone!
' I said, unable even to divert the resources necessary to the proper formation of words.

‘OK. Slow down a bit. We're almost there. Keep to the left. That's it.'

Miraculously – particularly seeing as my instinct was to steer towards any object which came within my sights – we did not meet a single car during the entire journey from Buckley to Franchise. By the time we had reached the gates at the bottom of the drive, my exhaustion and terror were such that our safe arrival was an inadequate comfort. Of all the feelings I might in the innocence of my pre-driving projections have imagined for myself in the wake of a successful return voyage from Buckley, the terrible, infantile self-pity which welled up in me as we chugged to a halt in front of the house was the furthest from my expectation. It was as if I had experienced some primal violation. I felt the novelty of a desire for my mother; proof, if confirmation were needed, that the whole business of driving was unnatural and that to be inured to it would be to acquire an inhuman range of attributes.

‘I was beginning to wonder where you two had got to!' said Pamela, when we presented ourselves, wan and subdued, in the kitchen. ‘I suddenly realized after you'd gone, Stella, that Piers forgot to insure you to drive the car. And then when you didn't come back I got dreadfully worried that something had happened to you.'

‘Oh!' I put my hand over my mouth, as something was peeled up off the trampled floor of my memory. ‘I meant to ring you and say that I was staying at the centre for the afternoon! I completely forgot.'

‘Don't worry,' said Pamela genially. ‘I phoned and they told me you were there. It was fine. No, we're the batty ones, forgetting that insurance. Thank God you didn't have a crash.'

With Pamela being so kind, I was tempted to fall upon her with a weeping confession; but her mention of the insurance had set my mind once more to cunning. I wondered if she and Piers could be encouraged to keep forgetting it, only to be reminded too late each time Martin required ferrying to Buckley.

‘So what did you make of it down there?' she enquired, putting on the kettle. ‘Was Mrs Miller at the helm?'

‘Mrs Miller?'

‘Karen. Red hair. Rather tarty, in a hippyish way.'

‘Oh. Yes.' With a rush of shame I remembered the afternoon's speculations concerning Karen Miller. ‘I didn't realize she was married.'

‘Oh, goodness yes. Her husband's a local cheese. Councillor. Frightful bore called Roger. She's pretty frightful too, actually. Martin's got some noise he makes for her.' Martin, his face bright with approval, made a series of loud, lowing noises. Pamela laughed. ‘
That's
it. I suppose we're being horribly unkind. She means well. And she really does such good work.'