The Country Life

Chapter Nineteen

We entered a reception area, with plastic chairs in a row against one wall and a long desk along the other. Both walls were almost entirely covered with drawings held there by drawing pins. Some were very childish; others quite accomplished. My attention was caught by a portrait of a woman drawn in bold pencil. She was sitting rather self-consciously, with her hand beneath her chin, and a slightly tense, impatient smile on her lips. I immediately recognized her as Pamela.

‘Did you do that?’ I said to Martin.

‘Yes. She hates it. She thinks it makes her look old.’

I could not comprehend how Pamela could fail to be pleased by Martin’s evident talent for drawing; but looking at it again, I saw how her vanity might have overpowered her delight. Martin had certainly caught her likeness in a manner which foreshadowed what was to come, rather than reflected past glories; but there was something ineffably more real to the picture also, which could only be the work of intimacy and which revealed things about Pamela that I suspected but could never properly have expressed. He had captured her self-regard — a form of insolence which surprised me — and a certain affectation of manner too. Most tellingly, he had included in his picture the fact that its subject did not like being examined; that she regarded his scrutiny as presumptuous and threatening, and the act of drawing itself as rather suspect. It was difficult not to wonder, with his animadversion so publicly displayed before me, what else Martin thought about Pamela.

‘Afternoon, Martin!’ said a cheerful voice.

‘Hello, Mary,’ Martin replied. ‘This is my friend Stella.’

A woman had emerged from a door at the far end of the room, and now took up a position behind the desk. She was quite elderly, with grey hair set in waves. I was momentarily confused, thinking that I recognized her.

‘Stella, is it?’ she said, to me. ‘Nice to have you here, love.’

I realized that she resembled the woman who ran the village shop in Hilltop.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You’d better hurry in,’ she said. ‘I think they’ve started without you.’

‘Started what?’ I said, following Martin through a doorway at the end of the reception area and down a long corridor.

‘Discussion,’ he said. ‘That’s how they kick off. You’re not supposed to miss it.’

The corridor, like the reception area, was hung with drawings. From the far end, I could hear a growing rabble of voices. Although it didn’t particularly resemble mine, the place reminded me unpleasantly of school. I was conscious, strangely, of my physical size, and of the freedom of my own clothes as I walked. We reached the end of the corridor, and Martin pushed open a door directly ahead which stood slightly ajar. The noise I had heard from the corridor was abruptly silenced. I followed behind him, and as the door swung shut I was confronted by an extraordinary scene. The room was large and very light, with windows all along one wall; and in the centre of it, the sun glancing off them in blinding flashes of steel, was a throng of wheelchairs.

‘Well, look who’s here!’ said a woman’s voice.

For a moment I could not work out which among the blank, mute faces which stared at us from within the vast metallic tangle of apparatus had spoken. Looking up, my eyes met a pair level with my own, and I realized that the woman who stood at the centre of this curious circle must be the teacher.

‘Hello,’ I said, addressing myself to her. ‘I’m Stella.’

‘Hello, Stella!’ she replied; not, I felt, entirely convinced by my attempt to communicate with her as one adult to another. She looked down at her blood. ‘Say hello to Stella, everybody!’

There was a dissonant chorus of ‘Hello, Stella,’ which began as a rumbling groundswell and tailed off into fluting chirps of welcome. Martin wheeled himself towards the group and took up a position on its fringes. His face was sullen. I lingered awkwardly, looking around for a chair.

‘Stella, why don’t you sit over there?’ said the woman, pointing to a chair by the wall.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Why can’t she sit with us?’ interposed a boy’s voice gruffly. The words were slightly slurred.

‘Yes! Yes!’ chorused some of the others in agreement.

‘I see.’ The woman laughed ingratiatingly. I sensed that she was not pleased by this minor uprising. ‘Who thinks Stella should come and join our group?’

There was an immediate bristling of raised arms and straining torsos.

‘OK,’ she said, looking around the group with an expression of concentration, as if conducting a serious calculation of votes. ‘Well, it looks as if you’re very popular today, Stella! Do you want to draw your chair up just there? That’s it.’

I moved my chair and sat down again. Raising my eyes, I saw that every face was turned towards me and I smiled stiffly. From where I sat, I could only see Martin’s shoulder and the side of his head.

‘Martin!’ said the woman, raising her eyebrows and opening her eyes wide. ‘Would you like to tell us why you were late again?’

She spoke very clearly, as if there was some danger that he wouldn’t understand what she said. The portion of Martin I could see didn’t move.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘We talked about this last week, didn’t we? I think we all felt that your lateness was a problem, and that the others felt undermined by it. I think you said that you were going to make an effort to be on time, didn’t you?’

‘It was my fault!’ I interrupted, horrified by the woman’s remarks.

‘Stella says it was her fault,’ said the woman after a pause, never taking her eyes from Martin. ‘Is that true?’

‘I was supposed to drive him and I got delayed,’ I insisted.

At this the woman turned to look at me. Her expression was steely.

‘We like to let the children speak for themselves here, Stella,’ she said. ‘Is that true, Martin?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Martin.

Trying to distract myself from the extreme dislike I was taking to this woman, I looked around at the group. There were about thirty of them, in roughly equal numbers of boys and girls. Most of them seemed considerably younger than Martin; several were barely more than children. It was very odd to see in replica the features I had come to associate with Martin’s singularity. In numbers they took on the look of a species; and realizing this, I am afraid to say that I found myself in strong disagreement with the whole character of this convention, and not merely with its leader. The notion that Martin’s misfortune should be promoted to the status of a characteristic struck me as wrong. It did not now surprise me, given the indignity of his qualification to attend it, that he disliked the centre so intensely.

‘I think some of the others feel that by being late you’re giving out strong messages that you don’t want to be part of the group,’ persisted the woman. ‘I think you felt that, Marie, didn’t you?’

Her wide eyes described a significant arc, landing on a girl of about Martin’s age sitting opposite me on the other side of the room.

‘Yeah,’ said Marie. Her voice was high-pitched. She had long, fair hair and a tragic expression.

‘I think you felt that Martin was trying to seek attention, didn’t you?’ said the woman presently, when it became clear that Marie was to say nothing more.

‘Yeah,’ said Marie.

‘What do you say to that, Martin?’

‘It’s crap,’ said Martin.

One or two people sniggered.

‘Miss!’ said a younger boy with a thick basin of dark hair, his arm shooting up. ‘He said crap!’

‘I know he did, Stephen,’ sighed the teacher. ‘Don’t you remember that we agreed Martin could sometimes use that sort of language, because that’s how they speak at home? Do you remember that?’

‘It’s true,’ I assented, nodding.

‘Martin, do you see now how distracting your late entrances are? Do you see why the others might think you’re attention-seeking?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Good. So will you be making more of an effort in future?’

‘Yes,’ said Martin irritably.

‘OK!’ said the woman brightly, the musical cadence of the word signalling a change of subject. ‘Let’s begin our discussion, shall we? This week I wanted to talk about feelings.’

‘Feelings,’ repeated the group. There was something incantatory in the woman’s tone which made the response automatic.

‘Now,’ she continued. ‘Who can tell me what feelings are?’

Hands shot up into the air.

‘Let’s see.’ The woman pursed her lips and made a selecting motion with her hand, as if she were choosing a sweet. ‘Elizabeth.’

‘They’re emotions,’ said Elizabeth, an unfortunate-looking redhead.

‘Ye-es,’ said the woman coaxingly, implying that the answer had been insufficient. ‘What sort of emotions?’

‘All sorts,’ said Elizabeth quizzically.

‘That’s right. Good and bad. Who can tell me a good feeling? Stephen.’

Stephen was straining again with his arm aloft.

‘Eating chocolate!’ he cried.

‘Ye-es,’ said the woman, even more doubtfully. ‘But that’s more of a sensation, isn’t it?’

‘When your team wins at football!’ said another boy.

‘Good!’ beamed the woman.

‘When your friend comes to see you!’

‘Good!’

I was edging back in my chair in the attempt to catch sight of Martin. He was sitting with his head erect and his eyes closed, with an aspect of almost mystical contemplation. As I was looking, he opened his eyes and gazed at me.

‘Now,’ said the teacher, when the volley of positives had subsided. ‘What about bad feelings?’

I sensed that of the two subjects, this one interested her more; and that she would not be so easily pleased by the children’s answers concerning it.

‘What about bad feelings?’ she said again, giving the word every nuance that facial expression and intonation could muster.

‘When you’re sad,’ chirped a little girl beside me.

‘When you’re sad,’ repeated the woman triumphantly, looking around at the group. ‘What makes you sad?’

There was a fidgeting silence.

‘Martin,’ she said presently. ‘What makes you sad?’

‘Take your pick,’ said Martin, shrugging.

‘Stephen, what about you?’

‘Dunno,’ said Stephen in a small voice.

I had my eye on Elizabeth, being more articulate but less defensive, to supply the correct answer; and sure enough, when her forays among the male contingent had proved unproductive, the woman’s gaze settled confidently on the girl.

‘Elizabeth?’

‘When people don’t treat you as normal,’ said Elizabeth reliably, her fleshy white face barely moving.

‘When people don’t treat you as normal,’ echoed the teacher, distributing the phrase with her eyes over the whole group. ‘And how does that make you feel?’

‘Sad,’ said Elizabeth, nonplussed.

Now that I was settled in my chair, and had more or less got the measure of my new situation, the frantic pressure which had been pounding in my chest all day began slowly to subside. My drive to Buckley underwent in my mind the miraculous reduction which time can effect on an unpleasant past event, while other anxieties, emerging from its shadow, grew correspondingly larger. While I had certainly succeeded in conveying myself and Martin to the centre without injury, my accomplishment accrued in my mind a debt to luck which I had not attributed to it at the time. Concerned only with the immediate problem of getting to Buckley that afternoon, I had failed to take into account a future regularly punctuated by these journeys; a future which must, given my reliance on chance rather than skill in the matter of driving, contain down one of its dark trajectories a horrible accident by which I would repay all that I had borrowed from fortune. Despite Martin’s willingness to enter into my deception, I knew that by continuing to drive in this manner I would be taking unacceptable risks with his life; and yet his compliance was so tempting, given the consequences of an admission of truth to the Maddens, that I found myself as I sat there without the clear intention of confessing the problem to them at the next opportunity. How could I confess to the Maddens, now that I had exposed not only their car but also their son to danger? Seen in this light, it seemed incredible that I had not been honest when honesty had come at a more reasonable price; but I was beginning to realize that no amount of calculation could cure what probity would have prevented.

‘Now just calm down everybody,’ said the teacher, making leavening motions with her hands.

I realized, surfacing from my reverie, that some kind of argument had broken out around me. Its centre appeared to be Marie, the piercing register of whose voice rose in indeterminate squawks and exclamations above the waves of commentary sweeping the group. The teacher’s face was a medley of triumph and fear, as if she were savouring the perils of her job and tasting her own competence as she negotiated them.

‘I’ve got the right to my own opinion,’ complained Marie.

‘Marie’s got the right to her own opinion,’ confirmed the teacher above the noise.

‘That’s like saying I’ve got the right to pick my nose,’ said Martin clearly from the back of the group. ‘Everybody would prefer it if I didn’t do it in front of them.’

Martin’s comment detonated explosions of laughter all across the room.

‘I really don’t think—’ said the teacher amidst the pandemonium.

‘That’s typical!’ shrieked Marie. ‘That’s typical!’

‘—that sort of remark is what we’re all about here, Martin.’

Martin did not reply. A brief hush fell over the room. Then a boy with an oafish face and untidy hair put up his hand.

‘I support Martin!’ he said loudly, looking to his hero for approval. ‘Marie talks too much. She’s always complaining.’

‘Yeah! Yeah!’ chimed a choir of variously pitched male voices.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ wailed Marie.

‘Now look.’ The teacher’s expression of bland geniality was momentarily dislodged by a flash of anger. I saw that her patience with the group was the result of some effort, and that a narrow margin separated it from her loathing. ‘Now look,’ she said, more calmly. A thread of hysteria ran through her voice. ‘Let’s all just cool off, shall we? This space is meant for discussion only. If you can’t all discuss things without arguing’ — she looked nervously around the group. I sensed that recourse to a more authoritarian style of leadership was imminent — ‘then we’ll have to abandon these sessions. Is that clear?’ Silence reigned, ‘Is that clear?’ A grumble of assent rose sheepishly from the wheelchairs. The teacher surveyed the group at a level just above their heads, as if ascertaining the efficiency of their suppression. She wore a slightly vengeful expression as she guarded her painstakingly constructed democracy. ‘Now I think we’ll end here. You can all go and find your drawings and carry on where you left off on Monday. Quietly!’ she commanded, stemming an outbreak of chatter as the group broke up and its constituents began turning on their axes and spinning away to the far end of the room.

I was surprised to hear that more drawing was on the agenda, as from what I had seen so far the building already seemed replete with the group’s artistic efforts. I immediately saw in the occupation the slender pretext of distracting the group with minimal effort on behalf of the teacher; a motive I was beginning to suspect underlay the whole character of the ‘sessions’. Now that the others had dispersed, I was left rather isolated on my plastic chair; and eventually I stood up and, having nothing else to do, busied myself with replacing the chair where I had found it.

‘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.