The Country Life (6 page)

‘How
hysterical
,' said Pamela, a long, light peal of laughter drifting out through the open door.

Mr Madden stopped at the doorway and stood back, his hand out.

‘After you,' he said.

I entered a very large room painted a dramatic dark red, with two huge windows draped by long, heavy curtains in a gold material looking out onto the front drive. I noticed the ceiling immediately, which was very ornate and covered in leaflike mouldings with a type of flower, a sunflower by the looks of it, at its centre. There was a vast marble fireplace with a mirror
above it, and in front of that a richly coloured rug. The room seemed to contain a great deal of furniture, and I had an impression of gleaming, finely carved wood, the delicate legs of velvet sofas and side tables. There were several paintings on the walls, large and dark with carved gold frames. Pamela sat on one of the sofas near the fireplace, her legs tucked by her side, with a glass in her hand. I noticed immediately that she was wearing the same clothes as she had done earlier, a faded shirt and a pair of worn, closely fitting jeans. Opposite her sat a young boy, with shining black hair, like Mr Madden's.

‘Here they are!' said Pamela, turning and smiling at us from what appeared to be a great distance. ‘Come in, Stella. Goodness, you look very smart! Piers, would you get Stella a drink?'

‘What will you have?' said Mr Madden.

‘We're on G-and-Ts,' said Pamela helpfully, raising her glass.

‘Or you could have wine,' interposed Mr Madden, ‘or vodka, or sherry. What would you like?'

‘G-and-T will be fine,' I said hurriedly.

‘Come over here,' said Pamela, patting the sofà beside her. She laughed, the residue of the hilarity I had overheard. ‘Martin's just been telling me
such
a funny story.'

I looked at Martin. He was looking at Pamela. He had a very large mouth, and a bad complexion. Curled beside him in a glossy black heap was Roy; an alliance, I felt, to be feared. I hesitated before sitting down, wondering whether Pamela would introduce us formally, and if so, whether I would be expected to get up again. I felt she had behaved slightly improperly in not introducing us, and so with the boldness which an unknown situation can sometimes grant instead of shyness, I held out my hand.

‘I'm Stella,' I said.

He turned his face rather menacingly towards me. With a frenzied pang it occurred to me that perhaps he did not have the use of his arms. Eventually, though, after long seconds, he reached up easily and took my hand. I was surprised at finding
the dry, warm vastness of his hand at the end of his thin, tentacle-like limb. Slowly, again, he turned his head away from me and resumed looking at Pamela. I felt as if I had committed a social misdemeanour, and sat down awkwardly.

‘I think you two will get along very well,' said Pamela. ‘Perhaps some of Stella's good manners will rub off on you, Martin.'

Everything was very quiet suddenly.

‘Oh, fuck off,' said Martin finally; quite casually, I tell you, his large chin jutting out from his shrunken, compacted chest, which appeared to be directly joined to his head without any neck. I glanced down secretly and saw his legs, which hung thin and tapered like roots from the tuber of his small body. His head, and facial features, were out of proportion with the rest of him; much bigger, that is, like the great lolling wooden head of a puppet on a stick of body. His exaggerated features made his face very expressive, like that of a cartoon character. The only other part of him which seemed to have any life were his long arms.

‘How did you get on?' said Pamela, turning away from him.

‘Oh, fine,' I said, too loudly. I was straining to penetrate the atmosphere of tension in the room.

‘Here we are,' said Mr Madden, striding through the door with a tray. He handed me a heavy glass, made of carved crystal. ‘Get that down you, m'girl.'

He sat down heavily on the sofa opposite ours.

‘How are you, old chap?' he said, leaning over and ruffling Martin's dark hair.

‘All right,' said Martin. His voice was sullen, but his lips flapped open, showing a sudden gap. His mouth was very dark inside. He shook his head slightly after Mr Madden's petting.

‘He was very rude to Stella,' said Pamela.

‘Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean it,' said Mr Madden cheerfully. ‘Did you, old chap?'

‘No,' said Martin, loudly. ‘Can we just drop it?'

‘No, we can't just bloody drop it,' said Pamela. Her voice bolted with anger from her throat so suddenly that it made me jump. I could feel the sofà begin to vibrate beneath us. ‘Stella's been very kind and left everything to come all this way just for you, and you can jolly well give her a proper welcome.'

‘Brrr!' said Mr Madden, looking at the ceiling.

Martin had put his hands on the wheels of his chair and begun to rock himself back and forth.

‘You will damn well apologize to Stella!' said Pamela.

Martin continued to rock, his head buried in his chest and his hair flopping to and fro over his face.

‘Go on!' said Pamela. ‘Or it's supper on a tray in your room! I'm not having this sort of behaviour in my house. I've got a good mind to send you back to the centre and you can bloody well stay there overnight.'

‘It's fine,' I interjected; I was, as you can imagine, extremely uncomfortable.

‘No it's not fine!' snapped Pamela, turning her angry, wrinkled face towards me.

‘Darling,' said Mr Madden hopefully.

‘
Sorry, Stella
,' said Martin loudly. The words came from his chest, so low was his head bowed. ‘All right?'

‘Thank you,' said Pamela.

Martin muttered something.

‘What was that?' said Pamela.

‘Nothing,' said Martin.

‘I heard you!' said Pamela, her body rigid beside mine on the sofà. ‘Go on, say it out loud, you coward!'

Martin raised his head slowly and looked at her. His eyes were positively frightening.

‘Silly cow,' he enunciated clearly.

There was a terrible moment of silence. Then, to my astonishment, Pamela burst out into loud laughter. Martin's eyes, which had been dark and narrow, dilated with humour as
he looked at her and his mouth split like a wooden mouth into a huge smile. The two of them looked at each other, laughing.

‘When's dinner?' said Mr Madden.

‘In a minute,' said Pamela, still laughing. She leaned over and pulled Martin's hair affectionately. ‘You
are
a bloody nuisance.'

‘Bloody bloody,' said Martin.

I had become very nervous during this exchange, and was gripping my drink and sipping from it as if it offered some refuge from the inappropriateness of my presence at a family quarrel. It was a great relief to me when Pamela rose and summoned us all to dinner. I left my glass on a side table, as the others had done, and turned to file out after Pamela. Martin, however, unnoticed by me, had spun his wheelchair around the back of the sofa as a short cut and emerged from behind it in my path. Fearing a collision, I stopped and let him go first. He didn't look at me, but sped off into the hall, with Roy trotting heavily behind him. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Mr Madden dutifully gathering the discarded glasses onto his tray.

‘Do you want a hand?' I said, in an attempt to ally myself with him.

‘What?' He looked up, surprised, as if he had thought himself alone. ‘No, no, just go ahead, I'll be along in a minute.'

In the hall, there was no sign of Pamela and Martin, and my solitary steps were loud as I headed for a doorway at the end. Again, however, I seemed to have become lost. The door opened only on to a cupboard, filled with umbrellas and coats and the ends of hockey sticks. I returned to the hall, and as I could see no other door but that leading to the drawing room, had no choice but to await Mr Madden. After long minutes, during which I stood agonized in the hall, he appeared with the tray, and I thought I saw in his expression a slight exasperation at the sight of me.

‘Lost again,' I said quickly, with a laugh.

‘We'll have to draw you a map, won't we?' he replied, really quite cheerfully. ‘We're eating in the kitchen tonight, I think. It's through here.'

I concentrated closely, not wishing to be so foolish again. Mr Madden pushed with his shoulder against the wall on the right, and as he did so I saw my mistake. Part of the wall was in fact a door, panelled with dark wood like the rest of the wall and thus camouflaged from view. Also, it had no handle, being a swinging door, which was why Mr Madden had been able to open it by pressure from his shoulder. I followed him through it and it swung shut behind me. We were now in a dark antechamber. Mr Madden opened the door directly in front of him, and there we were in the bright kitchen. Pamela and Martin were at one end of it, close together as if they had been talking. They were not talking now. Pamela looked around and smiled. There was something in her smile, taking in both of us as it did, which unnerved me.

‘Oh,
there
you are,' she said.

We ate at the large kitchen table, myself and Mr Madden on one side, Pamela and Martin, who ate with his wheelchair drawn up to the table, on the other. The food was excellent – country food, I suppose you would call it, in that it was quite plain – and with it we drank red wine. I cannot tell you how much I drank, for Mr Madden seemed to be refilling my glass without my really taking account of it, but after a while I felt less nervous and rather remote. I wondered whether I would always eat with the Maddens, and decided straight away that I would not – my cottage had its own kitchen, after all, and I remembered something Pamela had said about coming over in the evening and watching television if I wanted to, which sounded more like the exception than the rule. It then occurred to me that the meal might be docked from my wages, and I experienced considerable anxiety attempting to estimate its value. I realized then that the Maddens hadn't made my position
quite clear to me. In my mind I recalled the advertisement anew – I could remember it word for word – and found it interesting to notice how different the few lines I had scanned so closely for clues seemed to me now that I was actually here.

We had progressed to the gooseberry pie by now, and seeing the advertisement as if before my eyes I began to choke on a mouthful of it. I had, unfortunately, received a shock at the very moment when a large piece of pastry was making its way down my throat, and with the surprise it lodged there, causing me to cough loudly. There was a clatter as the assembled company laid down their spoons.

‘Goodness!' said Pamela.

‘Hold still!' said Mr Madden, grabbing my arm firmly.

‘Give her a good slap,' said Pamela.

Mr Madden administered a firm pat to my back and the piece of pastry flew into my mouth. I closed my Ups tightly to prevent it from travelling out onto the table, and managed awkwardly to swallow it.

‘All right?' said Mr Madden.

‘I'm fine,' I said, coughing slightly. My eyes were watering. The imprint of Mr Madden's fingers remained warm on my arm. ‘Thank you.'

As you can imagine, I was mortified by my performance, even though the Maddens had been very kind; except for Martin, whose eyes I had felt unmoved upon me as I choked. There was something malevolent in his gaze which turned even the smallest and most natural gesture into a false act. There was
a flutter around the table, nevertheless, as a result of my accident, and in these distracted seconds I was able to return undetected to my contemplation of what had precipitated it. The fact was that I had no driving licence. Of course, it occurred to me that I might have misremembered the advertisement, for my ability to drive had not actually been mentioned by the Maddens in my dealings with them thus far; but in my heart, I was sure that the words I had recalled were correct. I found it hard to picture my original reading of the fatal fact; or rather, I remembered it glancingly, like something casually and unconsciously witnessed which later becomes crucial evidence. I shook and dredged my memory, wanting more from it than it seemed to contain. I had just, I supposed, trodden the requirement underfoot in my great hurry for the job; and the Maddens had, of course, assumed that I wouldn't be applying for it at all had I not possessed the specification which was, though ‘essential', too mundane to mention.

Horror upon horror unfolded in my thoughts as I considered the consequences, and had the Maddens not now been engaged in a lively conversation on another matter, I believe I would have confessed my deception there and then. As I have often found to be the case, however, having missed my moment I found myself less and less able as every second passed to hold on to the courage necessary to an act of assertion. This first compromise with falsehood led to others, and as one minute became ten I found my revulsion for untruth slowly settle into a sly accommodation with it. I was already thinking how I could get around the obstacle without actually declaring it, and as my mind was working in this devious manner Pamela looked at her watch.

‘Bedtime for you, young man,' she said. She stood up and began piling plates on top of one another. Roy, perhaps with the hope of availing himself of the meal's detritus, issued from his basket and drew sniffing to the table.

‘Why?' wailed Martin, fondling his muzzle. ‘It's still early!'

‘I'll take him up,' said Mr Madden, stretching his large frame and yawning. He got up and, pushing back his chair and walking round to the other side of the table, grasped the handles of Martin's wheelchair. From my seat I could see them both, father and son, and although Martin appeared to submit willingly to the prospect of his removal, this sudden vision of his dependence aroused my pity. For a moment I forgot my troubles, feeling nothing but shame for my early dislike of the boy. His eyes met mine, and seeing as Pamela was distracted by the clearing of plates I risked giving him as kind a smile as I could summon. After the smile had been there for some time, I saw that he was not going to smile back. Then, to my dismay, he put out his tongue; quite slowly, and not at all secretively, as if he didn't care who saw him do it. His tongue was long and thick, like a dog's, and I found it difficult to dislodge the memory of it even after he had replaced it in his mouth.