The Country Life Read Free Page B

car door shut (I had sat down in the passenger seat by this time) and proceeded around the front of the car to the other side. I looked at him through the windscreen. The car was quite still for a few muted seconds. Then the door opened and he was in, noise and movement reinstated as abruptly as they had been suspended.
    â€˜We’re off!’ he cheerfully cried, starting the car, putting it into gear and lurching forward in a single movement. ‘Sorry again to have been so late.’
    I waited, assuming he would want to provide an explanation, although by that time I had forgotten that he had been late at all; and forgotten too, as before, the anxieties attendant on his lateness. He laughed suddenly, a single barking noise which jerked his head back as it exited from his mouth.
    â€˜That’s it,’ he said. ‘No excuse, I’m afraid.’
    â€˜Perhaps you got stuck behind a herd of cows,’ I said, much to my own astonishment.
    â€˜Perhaps I did,’ he replied, rewarding me with another bark.I had been going to explain that this was how I might have imagined country life to be, making a joke of my being from London, but to my satisfaction he seemed to have understood my comment without further explanation.
    We appeared already to have left Buckley, although I could remember nothing about the town, despite the fact that I had been looking out of the window. The road was now very narrow, and to either side I could see fields and trees which the bright sunshine gave a look of fixity, like a landscape in a painting. I thought of saying this but decided against it. Mr Madden drove very quickly, with a sort of proprietorial confidence which I was in no position to question, giving two sharp hoots of his horn at every sharp bend we approached. It seemed unlikely, given that our car clearly filled the width of the road, that this call would provide adequate warning to whatever might be travelling towards us. I sat rigid in my seat, oscillating between the secure thrill of fairground fear and the terror of real risk; and felt almost relieved when, rounding a corner, a vast, muddy tractor reared up at us on the road ahead. In that panicked, overcrowded second I knew we were going to crash and I must have cried out, for after Mr Madden had swerved unperturbed onto the verge, barely slowing his speed, and delivered us safely back onto the road beyond, he turned his head and looked at me.
    â€˜Sorry!’ he said. ‘Pamela’s always telling me I’m a menace. Forgot you weren’t used to it.’
    â€˜I’m fine,’ I shrilled.
    A feeling of despondency came over me. I felt as if everything had been ruined by my overreaction. Combined with the mention of Pamela (that being, of course, Mrs Madden), the episode served to remind me that the sunny drive was but a prelude to the immovable and at that moment forbidding fact of my employment with the Maddens, which I had all but forgotten. I had been existing in the temporary heaven of believing that I was the guest, rather than the servant,of this world of which so far I had had such an intriguing glimpse. I saw that my new situation in life would require a more extensive range of adjustments than I had anticipated. Any calculation of happiness or sorrow, satisfaction or complaint, would now have to include the weight of my inferiority. There would be benefits, I did not doubt, in relinquishing my stake in the world – it was with the certainty of collecting them that I was making this journey – but they would come at a price. I could not afford, on this budget, to imagine – as admittedly I had there in the car – that I was a friend of the Maddens invited to stay; and still less to entertain a scenario in which Mr Madden was my husband, bowling with me along these bright country lanes. I couldn’t, however, help it; any more than I could avoid fostering an immediate and irrational dislike of Pamela. My