Free A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk Page A

hours, the particular self I tried to bring to my care of her, have been as superfluous as my fury and despair. All that is required is for me to be there; an ‘all’ that is of course everything, because being there involves not being anywhere else, being ready to drop everything. Being myself is no compensation for not being there. And accordingly, the whole peopled surface, the occupation of my life has been swept away by her cries. That she has stopped crying I take as an indication that she judges my training to have been successful and the rank of mother attained; a signal that we can now, cautiously, get on with the business of living together.

Loving, Leaving
    Poor Mary Lennox, child-heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s
The Secret Garden.
Born unwanted by her
distrait
Raj-socialite parents, living an isolated life amongst servants in India, she grew up bitter, unsweetened by love. Had tragedy not felled her, uprooting her and planting her in friendlier soil, she might have stayed that way.
    The cholera had broken out in its most fatal form and people were dying like flies … Mary hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she knew nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She only knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed backwhen the diners rose suddenly for some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by the cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes open, and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for a long time.
    When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories … The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive. Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves. But if everyone had got well again, surely someone would remember and come to look for her.
    But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more and more silent … It was in that strange way that Mary found out that she had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib.
    I am occasionally struck by the obsessive concern for the physical safety of small children which pervades any discussion of pregnancy, birth and the early years of life. From the moment of her conception my daughter became a magnet for prescription, embroiled in debate: about alcohol units, smoke-free zones and breast versus bottle, about future dairy and gluten allergies, room temperature and sleeping position, about immunisation schedules and vitamins. Even from
before
conception, in fact, when I was urged to purge and scrub my body for her future sake, to convert it from inferred hell-hole to temple. I find something unsavoury in such