The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories Page 3

  On the third day I went out into the fields with the bride’s sisters. We were on weeding duty. Stuff growing; you weeded everything that wasn’t the right stuff. Bent double. Back aching. Hot. The girls chattered and laughed. I didn’t.

  Everybody was being perfectly nice to us, but brisk. Firm. Our position was made quite clear. You have to earn your keep. Pay for the trouble we’ve taken.

  El garage? we said, glumly. El auto? Cuanto tiempo?

  Shrugs. Three more days, maybe. Four? Five? The farmer’s son, driver of the pickup, who had taken the Hillman to the garage, indicated difficulties. Much trouble, many problems.

  After weeding duty came . . . more weeding duty. Different stuff growing in another field. Again, weed everything not the right stuff. When finished weeding—fetch water. And—oh, bueno, if you’ve got nothing to do now you could clean and chop these vegetables for the soup.

  I said to Tony, “I told you we’d had enough of Spain. We should have ditched the Hillman and gone to Greece.”

  “Right now, I’d rather like to go to Brighton.”

  His fresco now covered most of their kitchen wall, a study of the extended family. People had been brought in by the day, not a second cousin left unturned. Now, it seemed, they had run through the lot. Not the end of Tony’s work, though, as the farmer indicated. Backdrop required. Put in the farm buildings—here, see? Behind, like this. And animals—cow, goat. Bueno, bella pintura. He had taken to standing over Tony, observing every brushstroke, expressing approval—or not.

  I learned how to pluck a chicken. Ugh. The chicken was a treat for Sunday lunch, a scrawny thing. It served ten people. You didn’t get much chicken.

  El garage? El auto? Pathetic, we were.

  Pronto, pronto.

  I had blisters on my hands. Hoeing, that was. Hours of it, where they grew their vegetables. And sore knees. At night, on the hay bales, we bickered.

  “If you’d listened to me, we’d be in Greece now.”

  “I kept saying—look, we really should find a bank before we go any further.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I damn well did.”

  “Artista!” I said. It sounded like a term of abuse.

  He sighed. “Let’s not fight. Sorry.”

  “OK. Sorry.”

  We made it up, observed by the chickens.

  Another day.

  And another, on which there was activity. A man stopped by, driving a battered lorry. Who had, it seemed, some message for the farmer. Long exchange, much bonhomie. The man departed. Discussion between farmer and son. Uncles appear, and join in. Finally, we are summoned.

  El auto—terminado! The car is ready. Everyone most genial—smiles all round, as though this were a personal achievement.

  Great! we say. Fantastic!

  Vámanos, then.

  We were to be taken in the pickup by the son. We collected our stuff, said our good-byes. Long spiel from the farmer’s wife, amiable but with, you felt, a bite there. You may have learned a thing or two, was the gist of it, I think.

  Gracious farewell to Tony from the farmer, as from a patron who might well provide a reference, if required. Tony took a photo of the fresco. Black and white, of course, in those days, and it came out very murky, when we had it developed. I wonder if he’s still got it.

  We drove to the village where the garage was, bumping around in the pickup. And there, indeed, was the Hillman, now viable, as was demonstrated. Starting up without protest, engine running nicely. Two new tires.

  The bill.

  Ah. Of course, we said. Sí, sí.

  The pickup and its driver had departed. Whatever made us think the garage repair bill might have been covered by our labors at the farm?

  We produced the traveler’s checks, with brave confidence. El banco? Looking around, cheerfully, as though there might be one just over there, by the grocery store and the homely bar.

  A stony glance at the checks, from the mechanic. Banco? What banco? Dinero, por favor.

  It came to both of us that life might be about to become even more daily than it had just been. We looked at each other. A fresco on that whitewashed wall at the back of the garage? Nice portrayal of truck, pickup, old car or two?

  And me? Heave tires around, like that boy over there? Wash forecourt. Wash trucks.

  “No,” I said.

  Negotiation, we realized. There was a way. Where was there a bank?

  Twenty kilometers, it emerged, eventually, in the nearest town. And yes, all right, the mechanic would come with us in the Hillman, we would cash our check, pay him, and return him to the garage. The bill to be adjusted to take his time into account.

  And so it was. On the way, this man became rather more amiable. He had noticed our painting equipment in the back of the car.

  “Artista?” he inquired.

  We said that, yes, we were indeed artista.

  He laughed. Continued, after a moment: “Dinero?” Laughing again.

  Much money in that, is there?

  No, said Tony. Niente dinero. At least—poco dinero. So far.

  The mechanic gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. Amuse yourself then, mate.

  We arrived at the bank, paid off the mechanic, returned him to his garage.

  I don’t know if we were both thinking the same thing. We never really discussed it. The trip rather disintegrated after that. We headed for Portugal, but it had lost its charm; we found we didn’t any longer much care for rural life, and made for cities. Tony suddenly found street scenes inspiring.

  I was thinking about money, and how one had somehow underrated it. I thought about peasants—sorry—counting out every coin in those markets. Stronger stuff than I had thought, money.

  Back in England, we sort of drifted apart. I haven’t heard of Tony in years.

  I’ve carried on painting, of course. Clive has always made a point of saying, “My wife’s an artist, you know.” There’s a cachet, no question. He brings home a packet, as a barrister, so it’s been neither here nor there if I sell things or not—we don’t need the money. I’m glad I realized when I was young that actually money signifies. I’ve been able to—well, organize my life so much better.

  The Row

  They had had a row. A long-drawn-out, well-nurtured Sunday row. It began in the kitchen, over breakfast, a slow simmer coming to the boil, and then it flamed further, up in the bedroom, she making the bed, he looking for a clean shirt. It subsided, sank to embers, but then, downstairs, later, they blew on these and up it came again nicely, flaring here and there every few minutes, words muttered, spat out, hurled from room to room: “You always . . .” “Don’t tell me you . . .” “And another thing . . .”

  She couldn’t think why she was married to him. What had possessed her? The world is full of men—men of every size, shape, persuasion, clever men, funny men, charming, potentially devoted men, men who would put the rubbish out without being asked, men who would fix a dripping tap, ravishingly handsome men who would send you weak at the knees, calm authoritative men you could rely on in a crisis, men destined to become prime minister who would attribute all their achievements to one’s support and sacrifice, men who would forgo anything in order to foster one’s own glittering career, men who didn’t sing out of tune in the shower, men who picked up their socks, men who cooked and washed up after.

  Some of the men she had missed out on gleamed at her, almost perceptible—a smile of invitation, conspiratorial glances.

  All those . . . Any of those . . . And she had him.

  It is called pair-bonding. Animals do it. It is a universal compulsion to shack up with someone else, something else. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. We do it, for better or for worse. Oh, big laugh—that ironic choice. Chuntered out by goofy vicar at our wedding, glasses slipping down his nose all th
e time and then he’d hunch them up, and my new shoes were killing me, big mistake, those Manolos, two hundred quid and never worn again.

  Pair-bonding is for reproductive purposes, in animals. We just do it for the sake of it, many of us. We ourselves have not reproduced, David and I, we are not even considering reproducing at the moment and right now the reproductive act is out of the question. Yuck.

  You shack up at that time of life when everyone else is shacking up. So, inevitably, you shack up with one of those in sight and available at the particular moment. Instead of the myriad others that are not. Human pair-bonding is about as considered, as deliberate, as the pair-bonding of seagulls or termites or whatever. Actually, termites breed in colonies, don’t they? So not appropriate. Equivalent of Mormons, or some oriental harem. But point being that pair-bonding, shacking up, is essentially driven by circumstance.

  She considered her own circumstances, back then. She had probably known about eighty to a hundred men around the right age. Subtract those that were gay or married. Still leaves quite a few; you lost some as others laid claim to them, but more would have hove on the scene. So there was a choice, but derisory choice when set against general male potential. She might just have been allocated an unpromising pool.

  Pond. Puddle. And she had fetched up with him.

  At lunchtime the row could have dwindled to sullen ashes had he not mentioned that he would be away next weekend. Boys’ jaunt with old college friend: have a go at rock climbing.

  At once, a whoosh of flame from those embers. “And when do I . . .” Back to business, all guns firing.

  She knew that particular old college friend, and didn’t care for him. A blokey type, a man’s man, a “meet you down the pub” man. She couldn’t remember if he was married or not. Poor her, if he was.

  Online dating vastly expands the availability pond, of course. It becomes an ocean, indeed. She knew one or two people who had tried it, but did not report favorably. One said it was exhausting and most of the men were suspect in some way; she had settled for a friend of her brother’s in the end, whom she’d known for years. Another had had a bad experience in a taxi, and was trying to sue the website. No, online dating was somehow artificial, it flew in the face of nature, you didn’t want to go there. Have been there.

  Nature? But it’s nature that serves up the whole situation. The compulsion to pair-bond, shack up, build a nest, get a mortgage, go to Ikea, get self-assembly this and flat-pack that, end up paying a man to assemble and unflatten, blame each other, have first row, second row, third row, become row proficient.

  Did she and David have rows pre-marriage? In courtship days, in early living-together days? Amiable spats, she seemed to remember, rather than your full-scale practiced row. And back then there was the satisfaction of having made a choice, settled for this particular man. He had novelty appeal; if there were shortcomings you were happy to overlook them, you were in this new place, coupledom.

  Coupled. Coupled in conflict, today. Together in adversity. Upstairs and downstairs, with breaks for rest and recuperation. Rancor filled the house—a sour miasma. The house, the home, the three-bed semi in Plumstead freighted with its enormous mortgage, filled with his things and her things and their things—the house, the home, the hearth.

  The cage, she thought, today. The Sartrean hell in which we snarl at each other and I don’t know why I’m here rather than in all the other places I might be with all the other men there might have been. Beckoning homesteads scrolled before her eyes like estate agents’ advertisements: Cornish cottage by the sea, Cotswold manor, New York brownstone, hacienda, villa, château, old Provençal mas. The men too, except that they were less defined, a shadowy elusive crew, mere suggestions of intriguing otherness, the ones you would never know.

  Instead of the one you know inside out, in sickness and in health, in bed and out of bed, in love once and in whatever it is that one is in today. Some maddened mutation of love.

  What’s he doing now? Banging about in the garden shed.

  Oh, he’s going to cut the grass. Which he does only when in a temper. Something satisfying about hurling a machine up and down, it seems.

  Grass. It occurred to her that grass had assisted their first meeting. Not cutting it—sitting on it. She traveled back to that moment: there is she, sprawled on the grass at the edge of a village green, cricket match going on—thwack-thwack—and there is he, sitting down alongside, saying, “It’s a bit damp, isn’t it?,” gallantly offering her his jacket as rug. If she hadn’t gone to stay with her friend Sophy that weekend at Sophy’s parents’ home she would never have fetched up at a cricket match, cricket matches so very much not her thing, have never watched one since. And if she had not gracefully accepted the jacket, and it turned out that he’d known Sophy from primary school days and was working in London now and she would meet up with him again at a party Sophy gave a few weeks later.

  If I had not gone to that party, if I’d had flu, broken a leg . . . If I had not known Sophy, indeed, and that was because of working with her at that bookshop and striking up a friendship. Any of those ifs, and I wouldn’t have met him at all, instead I’d have met . . .

  One of those shadowy others. The might-have-beens.

  Whoosh, whoosh—the rhythmic surge of the mower, now. It should be soothing. Is not.

  Everything he does is abrasive, today. His very presence is abrasive. That presence she once had longed for, counted the days until, reveled in.

  I mean, for heaven’s sake, one was in meltdown, waiting for phone calls, messages. Nothing else mattered, the rest of life pushed aside, on hold.

  She thinks of this, returns to this person she once was.

  That first time we went out, after he’d talked more to me than to anyone, at Sophy’s party. Tate Modern, lunch, a walk by the river. Degree of meltdown, already. Couldn’t stop looking at him.

  It’s a form of insanity, isn’t it? Mental derangement. You have lost control, your life is no longer your own—in service to emotion, expectation.

  First time we kissed. Outside that flat I was sharing. In the rain. Standing on the step, rain on our faces. For weeks after that, months, rain made me think of it.

  First time we went to bed. Oh. Oh, oh.

  All those first times. It’s this process of discovery, isn’t it? The exploration of a someone else, full of surprises. Ah, he loves opera, like me. He doesn’t like curry—fine, nor do I, from now on. He votes Lib Dem, he drives rather fast, he’s queasy about spiders, he’s got a mole on his left shoulder, he plays a mean game of Scrabble, he gets hay fever, he has read Ulysses.

  Eventually you run out. You aren’t surprised. You begin to know what he will say, do.

  So? That’s no big deal, is it?

  Well, familiarity breeds . . . No, it doesn’t. Shouldn’t.

  He’s going to slam the mower up into the shed now, come out, walk back across the lawn, our little pocket handkerchief lawn, march into the kitchen through the back door, carefully not looking over at me, here on the patio reading my book.

  All that time we didn’t have a mower and a minuscule lawn and a patio and all these accessories to marital gracious living. The time in that poky one-bedroom flat, meaning flat with one and a half rooms, kitchenette and bath.

  She thinks of that time.

  Me learning how to cook. Well, both of us, but me becoming best at it, so we tacitly agree that I am principal cook. He is euphoric about my chicken chasseur and we have this joke that he only married me for gastronomic satisfaction.

  He is in perpetual negotiation with the bossy bloke on the ground floor about David leaving his bike in the communal hallway. We call him the Gauleiter and conspire to think up suitable propitiatory offerings: a cactus, a jar of sauerkraut, a henbane plant.

  Time of constriction, frustration. Well, no, it doesn’t seem to be, when summoned up, when subjected to fo
rensic gaze.

  Then me getting the BBC job and at almost the same time he is promoted and suddenly we have quite a lot more money and after a while it is good-bye to the flat and here we are as snug as you like in suburban bliss.

  The pad, the nest, the cave.

  Sound of kettle being filled, from the kitchen. He is making himself tea.

  She unfurled that whole length of time, from the cricket match till February this year when the purchase was completed and they owned a house and a mortgage, the marriage officially consummated. She homed in on specific points, for further inspection. Our wedding, and never mind the goofy vicar and my stupid shoes, there was that moment looking at each other when he put the ring on my finger. When we did that walk by the sea, and he said, “Come on, quick . . .” Has anyone else ever made love on a June morning in a hidden-away grassy bowl beside the Underhill walk at Lyme Regis? When we drove back from seeing my parents, down the M1 through the night, the new Carmen CD on full blast, singing along. When we had that weekend in Bruges and saw those paintings through exactly the same eyes—aesthetic empathy. When I broke my toe and he did everything for us both, when we climbed Skiddaw and hugged each other at the top of the world. When he was knocked off his bike and they called me from A & E and for one hideous moment I thought he . . . When he brought a huge bunch of peonies for my birthday—last year, was it? Or the year before. Oh, he’ll remember.

  But I can’t ask him. We’re having a row.

  It occurred to her that he too had all this in the head, every moment of it, but differently skewed, his view not hers, and that was interesting in itself, all those moments twice preserved. How different were they? Could you, together, unpick each and identify where you saw the same and where you didn’t? Plump out a memory, as it were; give it, for each, a further dimension.

  That’s the thing, isn’t it, she thought, you’re so bound up with someone else that you share time itself, you have whole chunks of time in common. But then there’s a whole lot more that isn’t—all of him before we met, all of me. Time now when we’re not together.