The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

by Penelope Lively

  No, I am not dismissive of television. A powerful medium, as one is grimly aware.

  I don’t think that history has a place on television? I haven’t said that, nor would I. Lavinia was very eloquent in programs with a wide appeal, I don’t doubt. Merely, I have never felt tempted in that direction myself. You must find others to assess her contribution to that area of historical studies—if that is an appropriate term.

  No, I am not acquainted with Simon Schama.

  Yes, she was indeed somewhat charismatic, I believe, among younger colleagues. I didn’t come across them myself. Belinda Hemingford? That name does ring a bell, vaguely. In Lavinia’s York days, you say? Well, I was then of course at East Anglia—my first professorial appointment, as I’m sure you know. We had the Norwich house, to which she returned every weekend, and held, I have to say, something of a salon—people invited all the time. Very popular with my colleagues—Lavinia’s Saturday suppers. I suppose I had not been previously known for creative hospitality.

  Creative? Well, she invited all sorts of people. I discovered aspects of the university quite unfamiliar to me. Sociologists. Media Studies. I was not always impressed.

  Of course she did the cooking. Academic salaries do not run to employing caterers.

  No, I am not able to cook.

  What did she serve? Good heavens, I’ve no idea—so long ago. I may not have much noticed at the time. My task was to pour the drinks.

  Beer. Modestly priced wine. Look, if I may say so, we are straying rather far from the essentials of Lavinia’s life.

  I shall have to reflect a moment on this . . . Let me see. If I am to describe her, Lavinia was . . . she was . . . Competent. Energetic. Purposeful. Well liked. Yes, people liked Lavinia.

  I suppose so. I found her attractive. Others too, I dare say. Intellectually? It is hard to quantify an intellect. Lavinia was a good scholar—the early work is testimony to that. Possibly not . . . remarkable. Academia abounds in entirely competent scholarship. That occasional flare of genius . . . Lavinia did not perhaps have that. But a sound mind—definitely.

  I would prefer not to discuss my own work.

  Yes, we had shared interests. We both liked to walk. Offa’s Dyke, once. Wenlock Edge. Though these were rare excursions—neither of us able to take much time off. Travel, too—but, again, little opportunity. I do not much care for the theater—Lavinia did. Equally, I seldom watched television. Lavinia had what I suppose one must now see as a certain professional curiosity. I am rather less socially active than she was. Hmmn . . . I seem to be finding more points of departure than otherwise, but I think you can take it that we were a reasonably companionate married couple. And that is as far as I propose to go in consideration of my marriage, I am afraid. I hope you will understand.

  A further occasion? If you wish.

  *

  Interview with Belinda Hemingford. University Women’s Club. September 3rd 2014.

  Goodness, it’s hard to know where to begin with Lavinia. I mean, there’s public Lavinia and private Lavinia, and for me she was both, really. We were in the same department at York—you know that—but she was older and established, and I was just an assistant lecturer, but she absolutely took me under her wing. She was like that with younger colleagues. If she approved of you. If she didn’t . . . Well, she could be quite dismissive, Lavinia. Not everyone . . . But academia is red in tooth and claw, here and there—plenty of enmities.

  Begin with public? OK. Terrific speaker—students flocked to her lectures. Great teacher. Active in university politics—furiously opposed to universities being taken over by the administrators—run by bureaucrats instead of academics, she used to say. It was the time when that was happening. And she was beginning to be noticed outside, around then, taken up by the BBC, you’d hear her on the radio quite a lot. Her big book came out then—Love and Labor: The History of Childhood. She sat on some major committee—Royal Commission on something. There was a profile of her in a Sunday newspaper—I’ve still got it somewhere, full-page photo, and there she was—very glam with that shoulder-length ash-blond hair, wearing black pencil skirt, red blouse, knee-high boots. That was how I felt about her, you realize, stashing away a newspaper clipping. But not everyone . . . There were people who didn’t care for a tall poppy. Resented her. And of course she was up and off when she got the London professorship. They’re probably more comfortable with tall poppies in London.

  Private? Oh, well, private. And she was quite private, come to think of it. Even if you knew her pretty well—thought you did. Not the confessional type. I was with her a fair amount—she took me off on a working holiday once to France—“Come on—a week reading and writing by day, fine dining by night.” Goodness, I was so thrilled. But she’d never talk about herself. Her views on what was going on in the world, gossip about colleagues, academic shop—plenty of all that. Funny, she could be. Sharp—not malicious, just occasionally barbed. People who’d got up her nose. So you see I realize I can say what she was like—a sort of climate of mind—clever and astute and kind—yes, kind—but critical and quite judgmental and ambitious, yes, but the kind of ambition that’s about the thing being done, not the person doing it. So I can tell you the mind-set, as it were, but I really don’t know what went on with her. What she felt. What—who—she cared about.

  Her marriage. Oh, you’ve spoken to Gerald Plant. I see. I wonder how much speak there was . . . Casaubon personified, I always thought. Why on earth Lavinia . . . But a marriage is impenetrable, isn’t it? I mean, Lavinia was thirty or so when they married, there’d been some relationship earlier that she ended, maybe she just needed a tether of some kind. Companionship. But how much of that she got from Gerald Plant . . .

  Oh yes, he’s highly regarded, as a historian. The last word on the French Revolution. One of the last words. Has his followers. Areas of patronage. I’m not in them. He’s probably barely aware of me.

  Children. Presumably they didn’t want any. I can’t see Lavinia as a mother.

  Friends. Well, I suppose I can consider myself one. Though I didn’t see all that much of her after York. She was so busy—so hither and thither. But we kept up. I’d always go to her for advice, for an opinion. She would read my stuff. Oh, she had various friends, Lavinia. I didn’t know all of them, by any means. Men and women. She was good at men friends, without any sort of sexual element—at least so one assumes. There was that guy Steve Addison she worked with on the television series . . . But no, I don’t think . . . No, I really don’t. I don’t think Lavinia had time for—well, for affairs, that sort of thing. Goodness, how have I got on to this? We’re talking about friends. Yes, Lavinia had friends.

  Sure—I’d be happy to talk to you again. I dare say there’s all sorts of things I’ve forgotten for the moment. Yes, just e-mail me.

  *

  Interview with Simon Barker. Highgate. September 20th 2014.

  Lavinia Talbot. No, I don’t find her an eccentric choice—just that she seems so recently with us, and now pinned out as biographical matter. Poor Lavinia, one feels, in a way—defenseless. I don’t mean that as a criticism of your trade, but I think you’ll see what I mean. I wonder what she would have felt about it.

  Yes—colleague. Rather than friend, I have to say. And that—colleague—only in that we worked in the same institution. I’m not quite sure why you feel I’m the man to come to for the lowdown on Lavinia?

  More detached view . . . Ah, I see. You’ve been the rounds of family and cronies. Well, detached is correct. Different department—I was Politics, as you know. But Lavinia was a big wheel in the college, you couldn’t but be aware of her. Forceful committee woman. Persuasive, perhaps I should say. Good at getting what she wanted. Plenty of operative charm.

  Did I like her? I suppose not. But you couldn’t help being interested. The television work had made her something of a public figure. A celeb, as my daughter says.
Academic celebs aren’t so thick on the ground. And then she went even more public—chair of Enquiries and Royal Commissions and stuff, chair of the British Museum Trustees, all that. And her looks . . . that blond bob, her animated manner. She was striking to the end. I remember her on Newsnight not so long ago, it seems, banging the drum about attitudes toward childhood. And then, suddenly—obituaries. Cancer, was it? Ah.

  Why was I less than keen on her? We had a few run-ins over college matters, but that wouldn’t necessarily . . . more, she just felt to me somehow outside my remit. Mutual, I have to say—she didn’t particularly notice me unless she had to. She had her acolytes, Lavinia, and I wasn’t one.

  She manipulated people. Fattened up her department with special posts for this and that—new Readership, a second Chair. All by sweet-talking in the right places. Those of us less talented in that direction felt upstaged. And then of course . . . outreach. The mistress of outreach, Lavinia. The BBC would have been lost without her—she reinvented the historical documentary. More or less banished dressed-up actors posturing around. Which meant more of her, of course—I dare say that was the idea. Though she presented well—that one has to admit.

  Was it good history? Well, I’m hardly one to say—not my field at all. Can’t say I watched all of it, anyway. My wife used to be rather glued, I remember.

  Yes, there was a fair amount of sniping within the profession. Populist stuff, that sort of comment. I have some sympathy. And Lavinia was plugging her own particular interpretation, and those who disagreed couldn’t respond, not having program makers at the BBC in their pocket. And rather more than that, as rumor had it.

  No, nothing. Forget I said that.

  Of course she was ambitious. You don’t get where she did without plenty of maneuver. Single-minded, discard any impediments. No children, you note. And I doubt if Gerald Plant was allowed to be much of a hindrance. You’ve talked to him? Ah, you have. That is a diplomatic reply, I take it.

  The books. Haven’t read most of them. Love and Labor got a lot of attention—that’s what really put her on the map, I suppose, when it came out. I did look at that, when she came to Temple. It was considered such a coup, getting her. Thought I’d better see what had been got. The book’s quite a compelling read, I’ll grant you that. Contentious, I gather, in parts. Arguing against earlier owners of childhood studies—Lawrence Stone, is it? People like that. New interpretation of attitudes toward childhood and the treatment of children. Well, people tend to be interested in that, not just academia, and she had a knack of accessible writing. I believe it made her a fair bit of money.

  Really? No wonder she could dress the way she did. And that house in Primrose Hill.

  Yes, once or twice. She gave parties. Even those on the outer rim of her radar got invited occasionally—such as me. No, I don’t remember Plant being present. He had his Oxford Chair by then. Probably considered a London college outer suburbia.

  Oh, there’d be all sorts there. Lavinia had a wide acquaintance. Academics, journalists, BBC people. Recognizable faces. My wife thought it a great lark—too easily impressed. I remember standing observing, with mild amusement. Ah, there’s Bernard Levin. And A. J. P. Taylor. And Huw Wheldon. She had an interesting address book, Lavinia. But most of the people then in it are no longer with us, so you’re reduced to the likes of me. Not at all. Quite prepared to help if that’s what I’m doing. Though I’m beginning to feel anything more I have to say will be scraping the barrel. Some way on with the project, are you?

  Loose ends . . . Indeed, if you think I can tie up any of those do get in touch.

  •

  What you do not know, of course, and never will, is that I found Lavinia desperately attractive. That—all right—I lusted after her. That if in the same room I had to steel myself not to keep looking at her. Just once, way back, in her early days at Temple, I let myself indicate this, couldn’t help it. Made a pass, of a kind. And got the brush-off. Definitive. So definitive it was as though the moment never was. Not the slightest indication from her, ever, that it had happened. Steve Addison. Oh no, it wasn’t just rumor. So Steve Addison was in some other league, was he?

  *

  Interview with Steve Addison. Muswell Hill. October 10th 2014.

  Yes, of course, quite happy to talk about her. You get to know someone pretty well when you work with them, and Lavinia was fantastic as a colleague in that way. She became a real pro—you forgot entirely that television wasn’t her first calling. And we learned from her—she gave us ideas, she innovated.

  Well . . . the whole idea of the series was hers, of course. Floated it in the right quarters. But then she soon persuaded us to drop the enactments that were so often done—said: “I can tell it, with the right background support. We don’t need Italia Conti kids playing Victorian factory workers.” Absolutely—it worked. Her elegant presentation, and all the images we had the researchers find, and the occasional film sequences, the readings . . . Hugely emotive.

  You have seen it. Good. So glad you agree. Yes, I always feel it was a seminal piece of filmmaking. We set a trend, I think. And Lavinia had a big hand in it. Without her suggestions it would have been done in a much more conventional way. In fact, it was because of her suggestions that the Beeb agreed to make it an eight-parter instead of the four originally planned. Exceptional—a prime-time history documentary of that length. The Child in History—my title, I may say. She always felt it too sweeping, because we weren’t covering all history, she pointed out, just from the Middle Ages on—but I wanted something memorable. And it has been—memorable. The use of contemporary evidence—diaries, letters. Lavinia standing by that coal tip reading out the account of nineteenth-century child miners. The images we found, using them with Lavinia’s voice-over. No dressed-up Italia Conti kids . . . Just sober, powerfully effective images, and language. Everything from eighteenth-century child hangings to the more endurable side—Little Lord Fauntleroy, literary presentations of childhood. Lavinia was immersed—she’d come to every meeting with a new burst of ideas—“Listen, I’m thinking that we could use Silas Marner. Children’s play rhymes . . . Hogarth . . .”

  She was . . . It was more than a work project for her—she was emotional about it. She was identifying, you felt, in some way. Sometimes she’d make us do a take again: “I was too—too committed. Again, please, more detached this time.” But she wasn’t detached—the whole thing was straight from . . . straight from the heart as well as the head. That’s what made it so effective. Goodness—what a time that was, making it all.

  Yes. Yes, I used to see something of her afterward.

  Yes, I suppose you could say she had become a friend.

  Look here—you know, don’t you; I can see it in your expression. I wonder who told you.

  Five or six years, we were lovers. After the filming. It began then, and went on. And never quite ended. We weren’t lovers anymore but we’d talk, we’d have lunch now and again. Right up till . . . oh, six months or so before she died. And she never told me she was ill. Supper somewhere, all her news—but not that.

  She was six years older than me. And after we broke up—well, stopped being lovers, we never broke up—I got together with Denise, who I’m still with. Not that you really need to know that—you’re not interested in me, except as ancillary to Lavinia. And . . . I’m thinking that I’m not going to say all this is off the record, for your purposes. My relationship with Lavinia. Why should I? Denise knows. As for Gerald Plant—I don’t really care. Maybe he knew anyway.

  He didn’t mention me? Well, he wouldn’t, would he? Tightarsed so-and-so, I thought, the only time I met him.

  I never felt she was older. She had that extraordinary verve, energy, sense of fun. When you were with her, life went up a notch or two—brighter, sharper. Not that I was ever with her enough—snatched nights, a rare weekend, a week once in Italy. Not furtiveness on her part—more, her schedule.
Though we were fairly furtive. She didn’t want us to be common knowledge—though clearly . . . well, you’ve picked up on us somehow, all this time after. As for Plant . . . it was a pretty detached marriage by then, I doubt if they were often under the same roof. She never talked about him—referred to him occasionally in passing. I never had any idea what she felt about him. No guilt, I imagine: “I’m a married woman, I shouldn’t be in bed with Steve Addison.” I was a free spirit, myself—I’d had a relationship for quite a while which had ended before Lavinia came into my life.

  Enriched my life. Was my life, I suppose, for that time. I adored her. And that’s not for the record. There’s a limit to Denise’s tolerance.

  Yes, you can ask that. Somehow . . . oh, I don’t know—we didn’t exactly drift apart, it was more there was less to the physical side of things, it was warmth rather than passion, we were just seeing each other less often. And eventually not so much at all. But always a closeness, when we did meet. There was that feeling of shared time—shared history. And, dammit, I’m proud of that. Proud to have shared time with Lavinia Talbot. I think she was someone rather notable—and obviously you must too, or you wouldn’t be doing what you are.

  Notable how? Well, her work—and I count The Child in History as part of that—not just the books, her teaching, the whole academic shoot. All that public service, chairing this and that. I don’t know so much about all that, though of course I read Love and Labor, we drew on it a lot for the series. A whole expression of mind, you could say—a productive and original mind. Notable for that. But there was herself too—the personality—and that’s what is inaccessible for you, isn’t it? Frustrating, it must be. You can look at photos, and read her, and hear what people say, but in the end you can’t reach her. I’m realizing how odd it is—she is in my head, Lavinia, I see her and hear her—what we call memory—but I can’t pass that on to you. I sit here, owning, as it were, all sorts of images, incarnations of Lavinia, and I can’t share them, even if I wanted to, which in fact I don’t.