The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

by Penelope Lively

  And I, of course, have no pension, and the career is a stop-go affair—no work, spasmodic work, lucky break and zoom ahead: Advance to Go, bank error in your favor, collect £200. Scriptwriting, directing, ideas man—ask me and I’ll do it. Professional enabler of stories (except period rubbish like this). I love stories. So much more satisfying than real life. Real life goes on and on, plotless and pointless. A story has form and content, beginning and end, significance.

  Which my own, of course, does not. A beginning, an inevitable end. Various climactic points in between, but show me the form, let alone the significance. Our hero contrives, year-by-year, decade-by-decade, contrives himself into this and out of that, any continuous progress foiled by circumstance. Someone else beats me to that ideal job. They pull the plug on the sitcom. My script is binned. Go back three spaces. Go to Jail. Move directly to Jail. Go back to Old Kent Road. Where’s the shape, the meaning? No script editor would look at it twice.

  Alison would say. Oh, I know all too well what Alison would say. That I don’t plan. That I don’t calculate. And that I’ve chosen a hand-to-mouth, footloose sort of business. Unlike her.

  I’ll have to compensate for the birthday boob. Take her out for a nice dinner next time I get down there. Which might be rather soon. Nothing lined up so far after this job, which will mean a fallow period, and a taste of West Country life. And married life.

  Can’t afford the London flat anymore. Not at the moment. Maybe at some point, if there’s an Advance to Go.

  Hand-to-mouth, footloose. Also—flexible, invigorating, challenging. Intriguing, exciting. I have not seen the inside of an office in my life. I juggle workmates, friends. When you land up with a turkey, like this current enterprise—well, you always know there’s an end in sight. Three more weeks, on this one.

  Don’t mind where I am—can function anywhere. Don’t need a home, as such. Don’t need a base, I was going to say, but that’s not quite true. Fact is, she serves as a base. Sort of base. There—I’m admitting it.

  There’s what you admit, and there’s what you don’t admit. I admit that I have a short fuse, that I am leery about going to the dentist, that I am needle shy, and have been known to pass out at the sight of roadkill. I admit that I am susceptible to women, that I have occasionally fiddled my expenses, that my credit rating is poor, that I could lose a bit of weight. I admit that my spelling is erratic, that I have never read Wuthering Heights or seen a production of Hamlet, that I can’t mend a fuse or change a tire, that if I have to sing I am out of tune.

  This list is getting rather long.

  One more. I admit that I have never had a good relationship with my daughter. Ella.

  I don’t admit that I am lecherous, violent, criminal. Could not do so because I am none of these things, just averagely deficient. Not a philistine either—just averse to cultural clichés.

  So . . . Life as Barry H. Roughly speaking, leaving out much. The script editor in me says—come on, where’s the narrative? All right, so there’s no shape, no significance, but you’ve been round the block, haven’t you? Had your moments, your days to remember.

  Oh, yes. One, anyway. Day you would rather not remember. Let’s not go there.

  Chef’s lasagna was indifferent. The bottle of red is going down nicely. Tell you what—I’ll give her a ring. Alison. Say happy birthday.

  Not there. “If you would like to leave a message . . .” Out on the razzle, if such a thing is possible in the depths of the West Country. And Alison has never razzled. But evidently the birthday is being celebrated, which is good. That may mitigate my own offense.

  Ella? Call Ella? Not something I much do. And not at ten o’clock at night after a few glasses of red—she’d spot that at once. No, pack it in, Barry. Fold up this particularly insignificant day and put it away.

  *

  I haven’t told my mother about you yet, by the way. Saving you up as a treat. She never cared for my ex so she’ll welcome you.

  Inspection? Oh yes, inspection at some point. But it’s too far for a weekend and I can’t start taking days off yet—I was lucky enough getting this job as it is. I may have to keep you on a back burner for some time, as far as she’s concerned. Yours are easy—a short hop on the Metropolitan Line. Did I do all right, on Sunday?

  She does? Ooh—that’s made my day! Lovely manners . . . wait till I can tell my mum. She’ll take it as a personal compliment—entirely her doing.

  Don’t I? Talk about him. My dad. No, I suppose I don’t. Actually, my dad has never much liked me. Do you know—I’ve not really said that to anyone before. I feel all funny, saying it.

  Oh, if I knew why . . . I don’t think I was a particularly horrible child. Maybe he just didn’t like children. And there was only me, after Luke died.

  Two. Around two, he was. Couple of years younger than me. Awful for them. And of course my dad always was away a lot, doing what he did. I mean, they couldn’t have been more different—Mum all focused and applied and him skipping from one project to another, in and out of work, gone for weeks and then back home chewing his nails and taking handouts from Mum.

  Hang on—no way would I inquire after your career prospects when I’ve only known you for, what, eight weeks and anyway . . .

  Nine, is it?

  Anyway, in fact I would think in a marriage it’s no bad thing for people to be in quite different kinds of work. No, with them, it wasn’t the work thing, it was more they were—well, never really on the same page. Were? Are. Why do I keep saying were?—they’re still married. Though I sometimes wonder why. And I’ve never said that to anyone before. What’s going on, that I keep saying stuff to you I haven’t said to other people?

  Oh . . . Yes, I sort of feel that too.

  I mean, they are so not like your parents. But there they are, still married. It’s as though there was some sort of umbilical cord they can’t shed—quite the wrong term but you know what I mean. Something that holds them together when nothing much else does.

  Me? Oh, no. No, no. I’m sort of incidental, I think—though not to my mum. No, it’s not me. Anyway, you’ve had enough of them, I don’t know what started me off on this . . . Oh, not telling Mum about you just yet.

  *

  Ella sounds cheerful these days. This new job working out well, I imagine. And I don’t seem to be hearing that Sam mentioned.

  Barry coming next week, apparently: “Thought I’d take a break for a bit, and head west, if that’s OK with you.” I know what that means—he hasn’t got any work lined up, and nothing in prospect. All right. It’s as OK as it ever has been. No more, no less.

  For a bit. Yes, for a bit can be quite—well, quite companionable. And . . . there’s what we never talk about. It’s as though being together now and then keeps it alive. All of it. What we still need, and what we could do without, that hangs there, always.

  Oh, well. So I e-mail back: “Fine. See you, then.”

  I’ll be busy, anyway. He can make himself useful, come to think of it—clean the gutters for me, paint the front gate. Never a homemaker, Barry, but it won’t hurt him to apply himself to mine. Earn his keep, to put it really meanly.

  Way back, way back at the beginning, there was some homemaking. Combined homemaking. The little house in Highgate that we could barely afford—me with starter job and Barry getting that lucrative sitcom series, and then nothing for a while—how it would always be for him. But home was made: the kilim rug he gave me one Christmas, the Hockney print we chose together, the William Morris Willow Bough curtains I made, the blue and white junk shop china we collected.

  The children.

  I’ve still got the kilim, the Hockney, the china. Curtains left behind. Along with much else: the way we were then, the way I felt then, the way no doubt that he felt then.

  Some of my friends and acquaintances down here don’t realize I’m married. There have even b
een people trying to do a bit of matchmaking, rather touchingly: “Alison shouldn’t be on her own . . .” An amiable widowed vet has been offered, and a divorced solicitor, at a somewhat obviously constructed supper party. Well, that would give Barry his comeuppance, wouldn’t it? “I have to tell you that my affections are otherwise engaged.”

  Unlikely.

  Maybe I should flourish Barry while he’s here. Have people in, take him about. The immediate neighbors have seen him before, and probably think I have a fancy man who visits from time to time. I can’t be bothered with explanations.

  No, I shall carry on with my life as usual, and Barry will hunker down in the house, watching a lot of television, making a lot of phone calls, checking his e-mails every hour or so. And in due course, after a week, two weeks, a few weeks, he will announce that he is off. We will eat a meal together in the evenings, chat a bit. We will have the occasional spat. We will never, ever, talk about then, back then.

  He had to give up the London flat, so this is now his only base. Pretty tenuous base—my spare room, in which he keeps a few things. I have other visitors so he is not allowed to take over. I can’t imagine living like that—perching in someone else’s house. He has never considered this one in any way his (well, it isn’t), and behaves always like a guest with perhaps certain rights of occupation.

  What rights?

  I have never said: don’t come.

  Enough of Barry. I am busy, busy. My colleague is away so there are extra visits to be made, a backlog of paperwork. This incomparable landscape lies out there, requiring constant vigilance—peppered with Grade II listed buildings, rich in unspoiled scenery, and full of people poised to make a quick buck out of it or indulge their lust to interfere with what should be left undefiled.

  Ninety-five percent job satisfaction. The errant five percent is accounted for by the siting of my office window, too close to a main road. Relatively meager dissatisfaction, one might say.

  Life satisfaction? Let’s not go there. No, let’s take a peek. On the credit side: Ella. This house, entirely mine and entirely earned by my own hard work. The job, of course. Friends. Knowing I have made the best of things. The new herb garden, the green jacket I got last month, the fact that I have had that wisdom tooth out. Oh, come on—this is getting silly.

  Debit? Oh, plenty. Knowing I have turned a blind eye to Barry’s various infidelities. Knowing . . . knowing I once made a stupid mistake. That I am sixty. That I have varicose veins. That there is rising damp in the utility room.

  That there is only Ella.

  I said, let’s not go there. So go no further.

  *

  Go west, young man. Middle-aged man, in my case. A spell of all that dinky greenery, looking like those pre-war Shell advertisement posters, of Alison’s spare room (please, love, could there be a new mattress at some point?), of internet searches, DVDs in the afternoon, early nights. Oh well, a fallow period is often no bad thing—relax, unwind, polish the creative faculties. Work up some ideas. Chase up some old contacts. Check up on who is doing what.

  See Alison.

  Don’t see much of her now, in that sense. Fully clad only. We haven’t slept together for years. By mutual agreement. Tacit agreement. No dramatic renunciation. Just, we stopped.

  Her house. Very Alison—everything just so. Color co-ordinated, good taste all over the place, striking pictures, warm, comfortable. Here and there a whiff of the past—something that says: remember? That Hockney, a particular rug, the breakfast china.

  I remember anyway—don’t need things to remind me.

  Remember occasionally a certain slap in the face. Her and Michael. Finding out about that. Finding out she had been having it off with my brother.

  Not for long, I think. A fling. He’d always had an eye for her. But still . . .

  Yes, yes, I know. I know, I know. Look, in my trade temptation is rife. Young actresses are very pretty.

  Actually, remembering is odd. There are great tracts of . . . of darkness, oblivion, and then some moment of clarity. The close-up in a movie. Something said, something seen. Often quite trivial; other times not trivial at all, oh no.

  Driving somewhere, Alison beside me, and she says, “I’d kill for a beefburger right now.” We laugh. This is so un-Alison, and we both know it.

  A ladder. Alison at the top of it, wallpapering in that Highgate house. And, looking at her, I get an idea for a sitcom about domestic life.

  Trivial, both. But oddly clear.

  And this: Ella, in a swimming pool—child Ella, frog-like arms and legs thrashing—and Alison walking backward in the water ahead, arms out, encouraging.

  The bridge. Packhorse bridge, they call them. Gray stone. Low walls. Arched above the river. Its ends sunk into projecting stone piers. Stones that jut from the river bed. Stone, stone.

  Not trivial now. And so clear.

  Arthouse movie stuff, memory is. Fragmented narrative, jumpy footage, much left out, allusions you’ve got to be sharp enough to pick up. Not the sort of thing I’ve ever been involved in professionally, but I can see where it’s coming from. That’s the inside of my own head.

  Not a place where I want to spend much time. And the trouble is that at Alison’s I rather do. On my own, except for her; no work pressures. A tedious mulling process goes on: inconsequential simmer of thought which tends to home in on dissatisfactions and from which surface these shards of the past—memory and what passes for thought bumping along in tandem. Makes me restless, discontented.

  Right—the object of the exercise is to line up some more work. So get down to it, Barry. Make a list of old contacts to chivvy. Develop the idea for a drama-documentary on fracking. Take another look at that old comedy script—it’s been the rounds but could be given a polish.

  *

  We can’t go to see my mum at the moment. My dad’s there, apparently, and the whole package is more than I can face. But we will, when he’s off again, which means when he’s got some work. I feel a bit sorry for him, actually—he must be seen as pretty old, in his game, somewhat past it.

  No—it’s not my childhood home. Mum moved down there when I was nine or ten. Before that it was London. Bits of London bob around in my head still—somewhere green, Hampstead Heath probably, and feeding ducks on a pond, and a Christmas pantomime. You don’t remember your childhood? Oh, come on, everyone has flashbacks. Dog bit you! Where? Well, there’s no scar that I can see, but clearly it was traumatic if that’s absolutely your only memory. The things I can remember aren’t traumatic at all, just sort of snapshots. Not particularly interesting—just there. That was where I was once.

  My brother? Luke. No, I don’t remember him really. Just the vaguest impression of some small presence bumbling around and me being jealous because Mum was paying attention to him. It’s memory of an emotion more than a memory of him. I’d have been three. I was four, just, when it happened.

  Go to Aldeburgh for the Bank Holiday weekend? Well, why not, since we won’t be going to my mum’s.

  *

  Barry has done the gutters. I hardly had to ask. He has cut the grass. In fact, Barry seems all set to be obliging. He took me for dinner—a belated birthday celebration: “Where do we find a Michelin-starred outfit around here?” “We don’t,” I said. “We go to the Royal Oak.” Which we did, and where we were seen by various people who know me and were clearly intrigued. The word will be out that Alison has a . . . companion.

  Which, in a sense, I have. An intermittent companion. We go back a long way, don’t we? That in itself is a form of companionship. Not the conventional marriage, but a kind of linked progress.

  Over dinner we tiptoed into forbidden territory. Don’t know how that happened—we never do, normally. Must have been the bottle of Chilean Merlot. We were talking about our ages—me being sixty, him with sixty in sight: “Oh, darling, don’t remind me. Christ, I’ll h
ave to dye my hair or something—there aren’t sixty-year-olds in my world.”

  “Thirty years,” I said.

  “Thirty years what?”

  “Thirty years we’ve had. Well, sort of had.”

  He pulled a face. He knew what I meant.

  And then I said it. Heaven knows why. “We nearly didn’t.” And I told him how I was within an ace of suicide, that time. A few months after . . . Drove to this multistory car park, went up on the top, stood there. A long time. Then didn’t.

  “Christ, Alison.” He put his hand over mine, awkwardly. “Well, thank goodness.” He shook his head. “Not like you . . .”

  “No,” I said. “It wouldn’t have been like me. I’m not the type. Reason prevailed, I suppose. I thought of Ella.”

  He nodded.

  We had tiptoed far enough. We pulled back, talked quickly about something else.

  But there—it was out. I had spoken of it for the first time, and to him. Next day, it lay around, both of us remembering and knowing that the other did. We were rather nice to each other. And now, a week later, it is not unremembered, but digested and silted over, a part of the general subtext of what is known, established. We are still being perfectly nice to each other, but less deliberately so.

  And it wouldn’t do to start bickering, anyway. His time here is finite, presumably, as always. Sooner or later he will announce that he has landed some work, and he’ll be off.

  What happens when, one day, there is no more work?

  *

  Alison dropped a bombshell. In the middle of a somewhat indifferent meal in this horsebrass-and-hunting-print country pub. Where you felt yourself eyed up by the local haut monde.

  She had a suicidal moment. Back then. Soon after . . .

  Bombshell because so not Alison. So out of character. Making you realize how she must have been, then. Making you think of things going on without her. Just me, for Ella.

  Whew! One of those near-misses that life so generously serves up. The alternative existences that you glimpse. Well, I’m glad there hasn’t been that one.