The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

by Penelope Lively

  Mrs. Bennet

  In deepest Devon, in 1947, Mrs. Bennet lived on. Not as such, you understand, fictional or otherwise, but in the person of a Mrs. Landon, Frances Landon, who was married to a man of deficient means, and had three daughters, now of marriageable age.

  The Landons had moved from Berkshire to Devon when the youngest daughter, Imogen, left school at sixteen. Pamela—now twenty—and Clare, eighteen, had also left at that age. They all had a taste for country life. Ted Landon’s best attempts at successful work had been rural-based. Berkshire was edging toward suburbia, and, crucially, was without the sort of real country gentry that it would be promising for the girls to meet. You needed deep country, the shires. They would have to move.

  A nice house was found, eventually, on the edge of a village in Devon, foothills of Exmoor. Pretty little nineteenth-century house with outbuildings, good garden, paddock, and an extension that could do for Ted’s study or office.

  Ted Landon drank a bit. Well, more than a bit. He had had a quiet war, tucked away in the War Office in some menial position, and had perhaps picked up the habit then, whiling away solitary evenings when his wife and the girls were safely away from the bombs. He was supposed, now, in Devon, to be helping out a local land agent, but little helping got done. The land agent had picked up, early on, that Ted was not likely to be sparking on all cylinders after his lunchtime break in the Red Lion, and called on him less and less. Before the war, Ted had tried apple farming, and chickens, and cattle feed salesman, but none of these had seemed to be quite his métier.

  He was fifteen years older than Frances. She had married him in a panic, when twenty-four, with no one else in sight and spinsterhood staring her in the face, she felt. Dread word, not yet at its last gasp, nowhere near, indeed, bouncing ominously back in the wake of the Great War. Men were at a premium; young, marriageable men were gold dust, sought after, fought over. The debutante dances of the early 1920s were red in tooth and claw, and Frances had not made a kill. She saw contemporaries succeed, and sail off into the sunset with a ring on their finger, or fail, and fade away to help Mummy in the garden, or do good works. In the circles in which Frances moved the Pankhursts had been referred to with shock and disapproval; a nice finishing school was all a girl needed—a course at a Constance Spry place. Which Frances had done; she could arrange flowers, bake a cake, whisk up a soufflé, cook sole meunière. She could smock a baby’s dress, knit a sock, iron a shirt. Groomed for homemaking, she was. And then there were no men. Except for Ted Landon.

  It had not been a bad marriage. Not too bad. The girls had been the great thing, arriving in quick succession, and Ted’s inability to make a success of anything had become only gradually apparent. Apple farming was hard work; battery chickens brought in no money at all, by the time you’d paid the men and the overheads; cattle feed salesman was frankly demeaning.

  What was in mind was unspoken, but they were all aware—Frances positively so, the girls nervously but dutifully. Ted perhaps not at all, comfortably inured with the Sporting Times, his pipe, and a brandy or two.

  Once settled in the Devon house, everything nicely put to rights, Frances looked about her. She soon saw that they did things differently here. Suburbia was far away. Here, the lanes rang to the sound of horses’ hooves; daily, girls on nicely groomed ponies clattered past their door, done up in jodhpurs and hacking jackets. Young men, too. Periodically, the hunt poured past; hounds with waving sterns, the red-coated huntsmen, the whole field—an acreage of horseflesh, jodhpurs, hunting coats, bowlers. Girls, men.

  They attended the Boxing Day meet at Churleston Manor, and stood on the fringes while the field milled about, reaching down from horseback to take a glass of sherry and a mince pie, shouting greetings: “That the new mare, Jane? Super.” “Good to see you out again, Oliver. Arm all mended, is it?” The four Landons looked and listened. Nothing was said, but everything was understood.

  The girls were going to have to get into the hunting field.

  “But, Mummy, we can’t ride.”

  That could be addressed. The local riding school was run by a Polish cavalry officer (or so he said). Colonel Kowalski was a part of the Second World War diaspora, washed up in Devon after heaven knows what wartime adventures, and nicely filling the slot left by the death of the aging lady who had formerly been instructing the county’s young. Colonel Kowalski had the indoor school refloored, the outdoor manège returfed and refenced, and acquired a stable of ponies and horses of requisite size and temperament. The establishment was seen as vastly more professional.

  The girls bumped round and round the indoor school and the manège, shouted at by the Colonel. “Hup-hup-hup, Pamela. Clare—keep that pony’s head up. Heels down, Imogen, down.”

  After months, and considerable expenditure, the Colonel declared that Pamela at least could be considered a reasonably competent rider. Most work had been done on Pam, for obvious reasons. This was to be a carefully paced venture: Pam first, then the others in due course.

  But there was more to come, much more. If you ride, you need a horse.

  This was where Mrs. Halliday came in. Marcia Halliday was the neighbor beyond the Landons’ paddock, inhabiting a small thatched cottage that seemed inappropriate for its owner, a woman of patrician gentility, whose icy upper-class speech could freeze a room. She rode, she hunted. No, she lived for riding and hunting—out with the South Devon twice a week, the East Devon now and then, not forgetting the Devon and Somerset Staghounds. Her two horses occupied the field adjoining the Landons’ paddock. Frances had struck up an acquaintance—passing, it seemed, Marcia Halliday’s forensic social scrutiny, and when she confided that the girls were learning to ride and, well, Pam would love to have her own pony, Marcia had taken an interest. This was her territory entirely; possibly she sensed the general purpose, and saw the point. There was no Mr. Halliday in sight, but presumably there had been one.

  Marcia Halliday took the whole thing in hand. After a brisk sourcing operation she came up with Willow, a rather inaptly named gray cob, solidly built, fifteen hands, not much to look at, which was why he came relatively cheap, but sound in wind and limb. Marcia tried him out on a day with the South Devon, and said that for her he would be on the slow side but she thought he might do well for Pam: nice temperament, didn’t shy or kick, not much good over fences but she had the impression Pam wasn’t that keen on a jump anyway.

  Pam was not. Jumps filled her with horror. Colonel Kowalski had forced her over the two-bar in the manège and then the three-bar, less than knee-high: “Lift up into it, Pam, lift up. He can feel you holding back, so he does.” Pam clung to the horse’s neck, heart thumping, stayed on, just about, came down on the other side. No, she was not keen on a jump.

  Willow was installed in the paddock. One of the outbuildings became the harness room. Frances had had no idea a horse required so much equipment: the saddle, bridle, halter, blanket for winter. The brushes, the sponges, the buckets, the saddle soap. The bales of straw for the other outbuilding, converted to a stable. The oats. The expense.

  And then there was Pam herself. Smarter jodhpurs than the second-hand pair acquired for the lessons. Black hunting coat. Black dress boots. White stock. Bowler. And Marcia Halliday said she thought a veil: “Not entirely appropriate if you’re not riding sidesaddle, but it does rather set a gel off.” Marcia herself did ride sidesaddle, on occasion, and was definitely set off by the veil, haughtily handsome, like some Trollope heroine.

  More expense. Alarming expense, but needs must. The season came. Pam was launched, shepherded by Marcia, instructed to the hilt: always keep your horse’s heels away from the hounds, don’t barge at gates—wait your turn, never get ahead of the huntsmen or the whippers-in, on a run . . . (as if that were likely).

  In fact, as Pam soon discovered, a day out with the hounds was mainly spent standing around with fifty other riders at the side of some copse, while baying so
unds came occasionally from within. Or proceeding slowly along a lane, jostled by fifty different riders. With any luck, you could avoid anything more alarming than a brief canter across a plowed field. She never saw a fox. Marcia Halliday would sometimes disappear, and return exhilarated, having been in at a death: “Never mind, Pam—I’m afraid you missed that run. Another time. Willow rather pulled up after that last sighting, didn’t he?”

  Willow was no more keen than Pam on a good gallop. By tea time, he had his eye on home, his stable, and the cleaning-up process, no doubt pleasurable for him, hard work for Pam. The rubbing down of steaming flanks, the scrubbing of the tack, dunking of the bridle in a bucket of cold water, scrub and scrub, work with saddle soap on the saddle and all leather. It took ages. All to be done immediately, in the dark winter evening, with aching limbs, before you could collapse into a hot bath. Frances, Clare and Imogen would hover, help, anxious for a report.

  Actually, it wasn’t going too badly at all. Pam had been noticed. Quite right too—tallish, slim, good figure, she looked very well in the beautifully cut cream jodhpurs from Harry Hall (expensive trip to London), perfectly fitting black coat, crisp white stock, and the bowler and veil. On only her second day with the South Devon, hanging around a copse with a group of others, young James Pinnock, son of a big local gentleman farmer, edged his horse alongside her. “Haven’t seen you out before. James—James Pinnock. New to the South Devon, are you?”

  Pam introduced herself, shyly. She admitted herself new to hunting, indeed. That seemed to go down rather well. James Pinnock became masterful, protective. He instructed her on hound lore—“I’m not boring you, am I? Rotten scent today—we shan’t get much of a run.” He produced a silver flask from his pocket, took a swig, wiped the mouth carefully with a remarkably clean handkerchief, offered it to Pam.

  Pam took a sip of brandy, giggled, handed the flask back. The giggle gave her pink cheeks, behind the veil. James Pinnock gleamed at her, above his red coat—fresh-faced, confident, established, scion of Devon soil. “Good show. See you out next week, I hope.”

  And then there were others. The Master’s son, who helped her to mount again after Willow had stumbled at a bank and unseated her. “Clumsy fellow, he wasn’t giving you a thought. Here, you need a knee up . . . I’m Tony Bateman. I don’t think we’ve met?” And Adrian Slope, twenty-eight-year-old ex-Army, son of Sir John and Lady, who got chatting to her outside yet another copse. Quite a long chat.

  The pinnacle of the season was of course the Hunt Ball. To which Frances had given much thought. She learned that you went to the Ball in a party, by convention, though once there things would become more of a free-for-all. The convening of the party was a major problem, and in the end she managed to do no better than herself and Ted, with the vet and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Culver, and their seventeen-year-old son Gordon, mired in sullen adolescence, radiant with acne, but he would have to do as a partner for Pam. To start off with.

  And, in the event, it was the Hunt Ball that did it. Pam danced the first dance with Gordon Culver (rigid, treading on her feet). Tony Bateman asked her for the next. And then James Pinnock demanded her. For the next, and the next. Gordon Culver spent the evening sitting at the side, staring at his shoes and wanting to go home. Pam danced and danced. With James Pinnock. Slow foxtrots, cheek to cheek, the lights down now.

  The engagement was announced six weeks later. The Pinnocks were perhaps not too thrilled with the match—Devon nabobs farming five hundred acres—but declared gallantly that Pam was an awfully nice girl. Contemplation of the wedding was a matter of anguish for Frances. Expense, expense—how could it be done, on an appropriate scale? The Pinnocks, however, had summed up the situation: a financial imbalance, unfortunately, between the families, but they did not propose to lose face locally with a skimped affair. A tactful word was had with Frances: they would be chipping in, substantially.

  The wedding was a delight. Mrs. Bennet could relax, a little: one down, two to go.

  Clare took over Willow. Married Pam had available any horse that she wished, and in any case she was rather phasing herself off the hunting field, to concentrate on life as landed gentry; she was to have her own bantam-rearing unit—so sweet, bantams. Absence from the hunting field would in the long run prove to be a bit of a mistake, leaving James a soft target for other men’s bored and predatory wives, but that lay in the future.

  Clare and Willow set to, next season. They both knew what to do: stick with the crowd, hang around copses, lanes, gates, and with careful management all but the briefest dash across a field could be avoided. Seize every opportunity to be noticed, to get chatting. Clare too looked well in the black hunting coat, altered to fit.

  Off the hunting field, Clare had struck up an acquaintance with Jane, a girl her own age whose parents were both local schoolteachers. Jane did not hunt; she appeared surprised at the idea of hunting. Jane was going to Oxford. This, in turn, startled Frances. She couldn’t see the point of Oxford, for a girl. Except, she remembered wistfully, for the men. There would be loads of men—you’d be spoiled for choice. In a wild moment she wondered if possibly Immy . . . No, no, that was outlandish.

  The hunting season proceeded: mud, rain, frost, snow. The aching limbs, the harness-room housework. The gradual accretion of young men who greeted Clare, and with whom she exchanged pleasantries.

  It has to be said that she did not do as well as Pam had done. David Hammond’s father was the major estate agent in the area—well-regarded local figure, but perhaps not quite top-drawer. While Frances was just a touch disappointed, you do not disparage a bird in the hand, and the Hammonds had this lovely little manor house all lined up for the couple.

  Another wedding.

  Just sometimes, Frances felt an odd kind of unease, disquiet, as though there were some faint seismic shudder from her known world, known assumptions, known expectations. That Jane girl, with her Oxford. A cousin’s daughter, Pam’s age, who was working in the BBC. An old school friend of Pam’s who was in Paris, doing a course at the university there.

  And then there was Immy.

  Immy had embarked on the hunting season, but with evident reluctance. Immy had become a bit—well, bolshy. She had lost the traditional compliance of the Landon girls, and argued about things. Had opinions. Refused to wear a nice skirt and twinset all the time and acquired a pair of slacks. Insisted that they take a real newspaper, other than Daddy’s Sporting Times. She read it. Wasn’t interested in the royal family. Dragged her feet when asked to help Mummy with the flowers. Kept getting books from the local library. Said she wished she’d done Higher School Cert. Smoked.

  And then, halfway through the season, she said she wasn’t hunting anymore. She hated hunting. I know what it’s all about, Mummy, she said, and I’m sorry, but it isn’t going to work, for me.

  Frances remonstrated, sighed, admonished.

  “But, Immy, darling, what will you do?”

  Immy had that all arranged, it seemed. Sue Tallant who drove the Mobile Library was in desperate need of a voluntary helper (possibly paid a bit, in due course). “So interesting,” said Immy. “Helping people choose books. And we’ll be going all over the place—up on the moor, everywhere.”

  Frances had not, of course, meant “What will you do?” in this narrow, practical sense. She had had the wider vision in mind: strategy, the essential goal. She sighed. “Yes, dear,” she said. “I see.” Sue Tallant was a nice enough woman. In her forties—competent, confident. Not married.

  That seismic shift again. What was going on here? Why was Immy flouting the obvious procedure? The successful procedure—she had only to look at her sisters.

  During the next months Immy and the Mobile Library trekked to and fro across the county—to villages and hamlets, up rutted tracks to isolated farms, to cottages where lived one old lady, up over the moor, down into the combes. The library always got through, rain or shine; books
—the essential lifeblood. Immy learned librarian skills; she learned also what in years to come would be called people skills—how to steer one client toward a good travel book, identify a thriller they had not read for another, coax the old boy who couldn’t see a thing he fancied.

  People abounded. Books are essentially a social medium. After a while, Immy had friends and acquaintances hither and thither—a range, a revelation of people, often quite unlike those among whom she had grown up. She felt interestingly untethered; she found that society is much more expansive, more flexible than she had ever realized.

  She got to know Bruce Weatherspoon in the pub at Exford, where she and Sue would sometimes stop off for a lunch break. He was working behind the bar, an occasional day job that helped support his real work as a stonemason. Immy had felt awkward at first about going into a pub (I mean, women on their own don’t, do they?), but Sue had no such inhibitions, and soon it became entirely normal—locals nodding a greeting. And Bruce Weatherspoon.

  Bruce had been to art college in Bristol. His father was a blacksmith, so this was something of a departure, but welcomed by his parents. So Bruce too was Devon born and bred, but at the other end of the spectrum from James Pinnock.

  As Immy was well aware. At first, their meetings were clandestine. Bruce had an old rattletrap of a car, and would pick Immy up at the edge of the village, well away from her home, and take her to his cottage, where he had his studio, and she would watch in fascination as he worked on a headstone, an inscription, a memorial.

  By the time Immy took Bruce to meet her parents she and he had decided on the future. “I can’t tell them this time,” she said. “Not right away. My mother may guess, anyway.”

  Mrs. Bennet did, but without the rejoicing that you would have expected (mission achieved . . .). Frances and Ted Landon received Bruce together, Ted so befuddled with brandy that he was vaguely under the impression that this was a chap about some plumbing problem, Frances speechless with surprise that morphed into dismay. Immy’s face told her everything. That, and her ease with this person, this young man with beaming, ruddy face, work-calloused hands, and speech that . . . The West Country accent is charming, of course, but not . . . not on the lips of a potential son-in-law.