The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

  Martin comes down, arrives in the kitchen. He has that abstracted, shuttered look that means, Harriet knows, that he is still locked away in some cave, studying the outline of a horse, or wrestling with the challenge of explaining his new theory.

  She waves a hand in front of his face. “Sit down. It’s roast bison, with bone marrow for afters.”

  Martin blinks, sits, smiles wryly, vaguely. “Fish pie—great.”

  So how has your day been, Harriet?

  Martin does not say this, so Harriet thinks it, for him. Actually Martin has never said this, that she can recall. So she tells him anyway. She tells him that she has been to one of the publishers for whom she works—Harriet is freelance—to discuss a new undertaking. She tells him that the undertaking will be a challenge because it is a work on climate change, scientific, technical, but she welcomes it: “At least I’ll learn something.” She does not tell him that the commissioning editor, Jim Bowles, has become quite a friend. Martin is not really into her friends. That is to say, he is perfectly agreeable if he meets up with any of them, but he tends to forget who is who and what it is they do. For himself, he has colleagues rather than friends. Her initial observation that he was not a party sort of man was correct; Martin’s attitude to social occasions is that if necessary he will oblige, but all things being equal he would prefer to opt out.

  But that’s fine, she has thought. I didn’t set up with him for his carousing potential.

  So she goes out on her own, quite a lot. And that is fine. Of course it is.

  Harriet tells Martin about this new piece of work: “But not for a couple of weeks or more—I’m still on the Ruskin book.”

  Martin tells Harriet the fish pie is excellent. He adds, thoughtfully, that the Aurignacian fish hook is proven to be perfectly viable. A colleague of his made a replica, out of bone, and tried it out in the Dordogne. He caught things. They ate them.

  Harriet is intrigued by the thought of Martin hunter-gathering on the banks of the Dordogne. “When was that? Who made the fish hook?”

  “Oh, ages ago. He was a German guy. Artifacts specialist.”

  Harriet has had to piece together Martin’s past. He does not seem to be all that interested in it, himself; he may be absorbed, Martin, but he is not self-absorbed. She has established his career path, just about, and she knows that he has had a couple of girlfriends—well, sort of girlfriends—but that she is his first abiding partner.

  Abiding for a couple of years now. No—nearly three. Goodness, is it really?

  Martin finishes off the fish pie, appreciatively. They clear up the kitchen, together. Harriet goes into the sitting room, where she will read, or watch television. Martin returns to his study, and his screen. This is their evening, as are many others.

  Sometimes Martin has evening commitments at his university. And sometimes Harriet will meet up with friends, or go to her book group. Harriet’s friends are a mixed lot, but it is with other women that she is most intimate. The book group consists mainly of women, though this is fortuitous rather than deliberate. Perhaps women read more, perhaps men don’t care to join book groups: discuss.

  Plenty of discussion at the book group—about the book in question, about, often, much else. The book in question will have generated argument about why this character behaved thus, and whether that one was provoked by the behavior of a third, and whether or not the narrative is credible. There will be conflicting theories. And a light supper with a glass or two of wine.

  Harriet enjoys the book group. As much as anything, she enjoys the glimpses it affords of other people’s minds—of how they are thinking, responding, as opposed to the way in which you yourself think, respond. A conflicting attitude can make you reconsider your own. Or you may think: Idiot! She just doesn’t get it, does she? Either way, there has been a salutary shuffling together of individual minds.

  Living with Martin, and with his work, has made Harriet think quite a bit about minds, about what they do or do not do. She has thought about the minds in the caves, those minds that so preoccupy Martin, those unimaginably distant minds.

  A mind rinsed clean of knowledge. A mind that knows nothing of time or space, that is rooted in its own here and now. A mind that has observed birth, and death, and is presumably impressed, in some way. But a mind that knows absolutely nothing about contraception or sanitation or immunization or the expanding universe or weapons of mass destruction or the law of gravity or economic determinism. Or, indeed, how to think about what this mind does not know.

  I know, thinks Harriet, what I do not know. I know that I know very little, on the scale of what there is to be known. I am richly educated, in a twenty-first-century Western kind of way, so I have scratched at the foothills of knowledge. My head is stuffed, in fact, but an essential part of the stuffing is an awareness of my own ignorance. My limitations. The mind in the cave does not even know that it has limitations.

  I know that I can find out. I can ask, I can listen, I can read, I can Google. I can be curious about the art of Michelangelo or the origin of species or how to set up my new Panasonic portable phone or cook Tuscan bean soup. My curiosity can be abstract, or practical.

  Martin’s interest in those cave minds includes speculation as to whether they were capable of something called theory of mind. He tried to explain this to Harriet once: “It’s the brain’s ability to empathize—for a person to conceive of an alternative point of view, that someone else may be thinking or responding differently from oneself.”

  “Oh, heavens,” she said. “In that case I’ve known plenty of people without it.”

  He frowned: this is a frivolous response to a technical term. “If they were autistic, possibly. Otherwise, it doesn’t apply.”

  “So did the cave people have it?” she said humbly.

  “We don’t know. We may never know.”

  In her early days with Martin, Harriet had been rather admiring of his capacity for detachment, and amused by that dismissal of bothersome things like bills that should be paid or bank statements that should be glanced at or his mother’s birthday that should be remembered. Harriet found herself taking over these matters, and was aware that he was properly grateful. In those early days, the gratitude was often expressed—a quick hug, the book he was reading in bed discarded as she joined him.

  Perhaps less often nowadays, but there you go. Nearly three years. A relationship sort of settles down, doesn’t it?

  Those other two longer-term relationships of hers had not so much settled as suffered internal combustion. So they were not comparable experiences.

  Harriet had dealt with all there was to do with the acquisition of the semi in Walthamstow: the house search, the mortgage application, the removals from her flat and from his. Martin was comfortably impervious to his surroundings. So long as he had a room in which to work, anything would do. She would have liked to share the nesting process rather more, but learned that there was no point in trying to interest Martin in choice of curtains or the hanging of a picture.

  Well, fine. That way, there are no disagreements.

  In two years—no, nearly three—you do not so much get to know a person as discover them. You discover that weakness for pain au chocolat, the aversion to cats, the impressive mathematical ability, the inability to find the car keys, the preference for red wine, the horror of any formal occasion, the taste for old spaghetti westerns.

  All of which adds up not to a person but to aspects of a person, and leaves out, of course, a vast amount—the seven-eighths of the iceberg, as it were, the more secretive aspects of the person that may never surface at all.

  So which bits of Martin have not yet surfaced?

  Harriet is copy-editing a book about John Ruskin right now. She has found this intriguing—the art, the writings, the Victorian mores. She has rather taken to Effie, Ruskin’s wife—a marriage that ended in annulment. The marriage was
unconsummated, and this writer, like so many others, speculates on the reason for this. It seems possible that Ruskin, who had never seen a naked girl before, had been aghast at the sight of Effie’s pubic hair.

  Poor Effie, thinks Harriet. For some reason, her thoughts turn to Martin at this moment. This is not a Ruskin situation; Martin has never been aghast at the sight of Harriet’s pubic hair. He does not seem to have much noticed it. As indeed, she has come to realize, he fails to notice a good deal. But Martin is not Ruskin—oh, no. He has consummated. With enthusiasm, back in those early days. Off and on now. Perhaps more off than on. Well, nearly three years—obviously things would steady up, wouldn’t they?

  The Martin that Harriet now knows is not exactly the Martin with whom she had first embarked. That Martin was more indistinct; she had a good idea of him, but there was much infilling to be done. Today’s Martin is more substantial—tastes, preferences, aversions and all, alongside, of course, the dominating tendency to be sitting at a screen considering aurochs and bison and the like and not to have noticed that it is time for supper, or way past time for bed.

  A shortcoming that it is easy to live with, she thinks. My goodness—others have to endure infidelity, or alcoholism, or domestic violence. A degree of inattention is nothing to complain about. Some might appreciate it. You wouldn’t want a man who was looking over your shoulder all the time, would you?

  Harriet’s friends sometimes ask after Martin, since they don’t often come across him. As though to check up. And Harriet will establish him: he is working on such and such, he is off to a conference in Washington. She has outlined him, as it were, for Jim Bowles, this work acquaintance who seems to be becoming a friend. A new friend is always welcome. Harriet is reasonably well equipped, but can always find room. Essential ballast, friends, when you live with a person who doesn’t care to socialize, and who doesn’t much converse . . . No, that’s not fair—Martin converses. But he converses rather on his own terms. If the matter in hand engages him, if he began the conversation.

  Conversation, consummation, thinks Harriet. More off than on? Oh, stop this.

  Sometimes, Harriet wonders about having a child. She is thirty-four. It is not yet a question of now or never. But getting that way. Once, she had wondered in the direction of Martin. Hinted. Floated the idea. Martin had not reacted. Harriet’s wonder—her hint, her float—had not reached him, apparently.

  So it would seem that he himself is not wondering.

  And there is work, for both of them. And the daily, weekly, monthly, slippage of time. Harriet finishes copy-editing the Ruskin book, moves on to this new project, which is indeed quite demanding. Martin is . . . What is Martin doing? She asks him, over another kitchen supper.

  He is assessing the incidence of portable art in eastern European cave sites, he tells her. The keynote talk for an impending conference.

  Portable art? Oh yes, those deer and bears and things they carved on small pieces of bone. Nobody knows quite why. The minds in the caves at work.

  When and where the conference?

  Vienna, he says. In a couple of months’ time.

  Harriet has never accompanied Martin on any of these professional trips. He has not suggested it. Others, she has gathered, do sometimes take along wives and partners. Like footballers, she thinks—the glossy cohort of WAGs. Except that academic WAGs would not be like that at all, they would quite likely be academics themselves, and some of them would be men. Dowdy rather than glossy, and quite without any shopping inclinations.

  Harriet would not want to go, in any case. She doesn’t mind being on her own for a few days, or, indeed, for the occasional longer periods when Martin goes off for a serious encounter with some cave. She has occasionally taken the opportunity for a jaunt with friends.

  But at the moment she is immersed in the complexities of climate change, with this new commission. Jim Bowles has been in touch, concerned that all goes well: the author in question is known to be tricky to work with. They have met up for a drink, with business not on the agenda.

  If Harriet is late in, of an evening, Martin does not seem to notice. She may find that he has drifted down to the kitchen and is making himself an omelet. He neither complains nor inquires.

  Over this time she is late in on several occasions.

  She is late in, she is distracted, her mind is not on the things to which it is usually applied: work, remember to pay the council tax, remember to get stem ginger and kaffir lime leaves, phone Mum, get cash, go to the gym. It seems to her that this new, distracted mind must be visible, swirling above her head like a thought bubble. Martin must surely see it. He has been talking and she has not heard a word he said; he has not noticed. She stares out of the window—and she is not a person who sits and stares; he comes into the room at that moment and she has gone on staring, but he just rummages around for the book he was after, and goes out again. Harriet’s thought bubble is invisible, it seems.

  Theory of mind. So much for that, she thinks. My mind is churning away, it is loud, conspicuous, but Martin is quite unaware. My wildly unstable point of view is not apparent to him.

  Which is, of course, just as well. She is going to be late home again tomorrow, and does not need to explain.

  She feels guilty. Of course. She is taking advantage of . . . Of what? Of Martin’s capacity for inattention. Of Martin’s ability to be elsewhere. Her thought bubble, in her mind’s eye, has a sour yellow tinge of guilt.

  But it is also a euphoric thought bubble. It is full of surprise, of wonder. How can this have happened? Whatever it is that has happened.

  And must not happen. Cannot happen.

  How does someone morph from a man you have been talking to about a work commission to the person who fills your mind, the person you must see, the person you ache to see? How can a face that was neutral become the face that makes the blood run quicker, the face that lights up that pub, the sushi place, the Italian restaurant, the bar at St. Pancras, that walk along the Embankment?

  How can I, thinks Harriet, turn from a woman who was moving peaceably enough from day to day to one who can’t sleep properly, who is forever in a state of anticipation or recollection? Who stares out of the window when working, doesn’t listen to what people are saying, checks her phone every ten minutes?

  Harriet knows that Jim Bowles is like this, too. Theory of mind is operative here. She knows what he is feeling, thinking; he doesn’t have to tell her. She sees it in his eyes: at that pub, the sushi place, the Italian restaurant . . .

  Jim Bowles is not a bit like Martin. He is expansive, he is talkative, he talks about books he is publishing, books he would like to publish, books that someone ought to be writing. He is convivial, gregarious, he likes to get out and about. He is prepared to get interested in anything. He is fervently interested in Harriet and is trying—pathetically—to play this down. He knows that Harriet lives with Martin. He knows that this is going nowhere, should go nowhere.

  Jim Bowles is not with anyone. He once was married—he was until last year. He has a little girl of five, who stays with him every other weekend.

  Harriet goes with Jim and the little girl to the zoo. It has come to this. Martin is at the university, where there is a weekend colloquium, so she has no need of explanation. Harriet is entranced with the little girl, Lucy. I want one, she thinks, I want one. Even, I want this one.

  This may be going nowhere, but it goes on. Whatever it is has become inescapable now, a fact of life, a fact of Harriet’s life, of Jim’s. Harriet feels that she is two people: ordinary, workaday Harriet at home in Walthamstow, and the other Harriet, who is quite often not at home, and absentminded when she is.

  She came in quite lateish one evening, and found Martin in the sitting room. Not up in his office.

  He smiled at her. A smile that was reserved, friendly, almost complicit. “Had a nice time?” he said.

  She
couldn’t remember where she was supposed to have been. The book group? A film with Emma?

  Yes. Thanks. A very nice time.

  Harriet’s thought bubble filled the room, it seemed to her. The sour, yellow, guilty thought bubble. They went upstairs to bed and it trailed up there with them. She prayed that Martin would not want to make love. He didn’t.

  The time came for that conference of Martin’s. In Vienna. Where he would deliver his keynote talk on portable art in eastern European cave sites. He would be away for a week.

  It was inevitable. Inevitable that Harriet should have told Jim Bowles this. Inevitable that when she did so they would have stared at each other in that pub, the sushi place, the Italian restaurant, wherever it was, and thought . . . thought the same thing.

  They went to Lyme Regis. Chosen for no particular reason except that Jim had once published a book on Mary Anning, and had always thought he’d like to go there, and that a weekend of illicit love seems somehow to require the sea. They walked on Charmouth beach, they walked along the Undercliff. They ate fish and chips on the front.

  They lay in a warmly friendly B and B that assumed them to be a couple, which was both disturbing and exciting. They lay in bed, sated, together, content. Harriet’s thought bubble was not around, whisked away by one of those crying seagulls beyond the window. Jim Bowles lay staring up at the ceiling, holding Harriet’s hand. He spoke of Lucy. He said he had always hoped for another child.

  That did it. That did it for Harriet, once and for all.

  Back in London, in the sushi place, she said: “I’m going to tell him next week. I tried last night, and then just couldn’t. Next week, definitely.”

  “I’ll tell him tomorrow,” she said. In the Italian restaurant.

  “I love you,” Jim said. In bed in his flat, early one evening. He has said this before, and will say it again. Harriet had not heard this for so long.

  “At the weekend,” she said. On the Embankment. “At the weekend I’ll tell him. Oh God, I don’t want to have to do this.”