Free In the Fold by Rachel Cusk Page A

aide, promising extravagantly to take care of the problem herself, as solicitous for my absence as I was eager for the absence itself to effect some change in her. On the subject of the Hanburys she seemed to have trouble striking the note she wanted: she tried to find it both predictable and inexplicable that I should be going to see them, and when she referred to them at all it was as “your friends”. At night I lay beside her and the presence of her still, coiled body was as exigent and declarative as that of a stranger on a long journey, someone dozing in a neighbouring seat; a person captured in a ceaseless act of self-manifestation, whose absence, when it comes, will be felt, in the failure to maintain a hold on even a remnant of her humanity, as a kind of death.
    On Wednesday morning Rebecca drove us to the railway station and left us there an hour and a half before the departure of our train. She couldn’t stay, she said, as irritated as though we had asked her to; she had so many things to do. Her manner was strikingly changed. She seemed now to find nothing of significance in our departure, to herself or to us. I felt that I could lie down on the pavement outside the station where she left us and not know whether it was in relief or despair. My heart was clenched like a fist in my chest. I watched her drive away, fast, and it was as though the little wavering car had streamers attached to it, which fluttered frantically around its vanishing form. Later, when our train pulled into its station and I saw Adam Hanbury standing onthe platform in a padded brown coat and a deerstalker hat, my eyes attached to him like the first object seen after waking from a dream. I looked at him, mesmerised by his solidity, until he saw us through the window and raised his hand.

THREE
    Vivian said it was a good thing Caris was coming. She said she needed help with the dogs.
    Out in the passage, the dogs were scratching at the kitchen door. Their claws pushed it and the wind pushed it back. The wood banged around in the loose frame and the banging sound made them bark, as if to alert themselves to what they had done. Through the door they could be heard rattling away down the passage. Almost as soon as they’d gone they came back again in a hurtling crescendo of tapping sounds and hurled themselves against the door once more.
    ‘One feels like a stranger in one’s own home,’ said Vivian gloomily. ‘It’s a bit much, when you think that I’m the one who feeds them. Other people always seem to have something more important to do, don’t they? They never used to come into the house,’ she said, to me. ‘Now they go sniffing around like a pair of policemen. I try to keep the door shut but I can hear them panting through the keyhole. It’s quite sinister.’
    ‘You wouldn’t like being here alone,’ Adam observed.
    ‘We’re not all as idiotic as Marjory Brice!’ said Vivian. ‘She thinks men are constantly trying to get in through her bedroom window.’
    ‘Well, don’t expect Caris to handle them,’ said Adam. ‘She hates those dogs. You’d get more help from the Queen Mother.’
    ‘In Spain, a dog has to know its place,’ Vivian informed me, in a significant tone. ‘A dog has to work. People say the Spanish are cruel to animals because they don’t let them sit on the sofa and lick the dinner plates but at least they know their place.’
    Unseen by Vivian, Adam rolled his eyes.
    ‘I have friends who own a ranch outside Madrid.’ She pronounced the word ‘Madrid’ in an accent of severe authenticity. ‘Alvaro has lurchers. Three of them, all black, terribly elegant. They’re almost like people, though not the sort of people you ever meet. I asked him once how he’d trained them and he said he beat them. Beat them to within an inch of their lives! After that, he showed them nothing but respect. He never laid a finger on them again. I think that’s rather dramatic, don’t you?’
    ‘Very,’ I