The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

  “She’s had to learn to, as an only.” Vanessa regretted this at once, expecting interested comment, or some revelation about Jill’s own childlessness, but Jill merely embarked on an account of recent visitors, whose child had been an absolute pain.

  The men returned. Time for the lunchtime excursion. Martha, summoned, asked if she could stay here.

  “By yourself?” snapped Vanessa. “Of course not.”

  Martha began to say something. Fell silent. Remained so throughout the meal in the pub. Her parents were also subdued. Philip had heard about another case of Nick’s, in unremitting detail, over several fields and through an otherwise delightful bluebell wood. Vanessa now knew that Jill had a resident housekeeper in London (“Spanish, brilliant, quite simply keeps the show on the road for us”) and that her clothing needs were attended to by a personal shopper (“She sources everything and saves me all that traipsing around—I can give you her name”).

  Lunch ended. Vanessa felt gastronomically assaulted. Philip had indigestion. Back at the house, there were more Sunday papers and desultory chat on the terrace. Martha vanished.

  And, at last, the moment came when Vanessa could decently propose departure. She went upstairs to pack up their things, and came down in rather better spirits.

  She put their bags in the hall and went out onto the terrace. “Martha! Martha! We’re going now.”

  Jill was saying that they must come again sometime. “We’re rather booked up for the rest of the summer, but it’s lovely here in autumn.” Nick was proposing lunch at his club, to Philip: “. . . must get together again at some point.”

  “Martha! Philip, could you go and round her up?”

  Philip wandered off into the garden. Vanessa stood about, exchanging niceties. Philip returned, towing an apparently reluctant Martha. There were good-byes all round. The Dennisons piled into the car. The Sanderbys stood waving. Gravel crunched under the tires. “Good-bye, good-bye.”

  “Whew,” said Vanessa.

  “Sorry,” said Philip.

  “Never mind.” Generosity could again be afforded. “Part of life’s rich pattern.” Vanessa turned to Martha. “All right? Sorry it wasn’t much of a weekend for you.”

  “Oh, we had a really nice time.”

  Vanessa swung round. “We . . .”

  “You told me they didn’t have any children,” said Martha. “So who was the girl in the garden?”

  License to Kill

  “Coat,” she said. “No, the red one, please.”

  The girl got the red one, stood there with it.

  “Scarf, please. Gray scarf.”

  “Shopping list!” said the girl. Pouncing, triumphant.

  “Put butter. I forgot. And J-cloths.” She was eighty-six, and forgot much. The mind was porous; some things lodged, others did not.

  The girl wrote. And drew a cat with whiskers, back view of. And a smiley face. She was eighteen. Might try that Aussie shampoo. Might go to Oxford Street with Lindy, at the weekend.

  They went out of the front door. Cally said, “Shall I do the mortise lock, Pauline?”

  “Yes—do it.” The agency had asked if she would rather be Miss, and she’d said not. Hospitals don’t now, either, one had noticed. Neither here nor there, as far as she was concerned, so long as they knew who you were.

  Slow and careful on the steps, for her. Cally jumped the last three, stood at the bottom checking her phone, remembered she wasn’t supposed to when working, shoved it in her pocket. She said, “Shall we get a coffee when we’re in Marks?”

  Pauline considered. Coffee, and one might need a loo before this shopping expedition is done. There’s the bank, and Boots.

  “Mmn. Maybe.” You plot, daily. Face down circumstance. Measure out your life with . . . not coffee spoons—pills. Line them up with breakfast, lunch, supper. Never mind mermaids, and lilacs in bloom, and all that stuff. He hadn’t a clue. In his twenties, wasn’t he? It’s pills, and have I phoned the surgery, and did I pay that gas bill, and have I got my debit card?

  Have I?

  She delved in her bag. Ah—there. Shall I eat a peach?

  “Peaches,” she told Cally. “Stick them on the list.”

  “You said they never got ripe, last time.”

  “I’ll persist. Dare. Maybe we will have a coffee, too.”

  In the bank, Cally had to put the number into the cash dispenser for her. Not easy to see them, now.

  Cally said, “That bank person’s staring at me. Thinks I’m up to no good. Using your PIN.”

  “I’d better give him a smile. There. He’s lost interest—I am not under coercion.”

  “Mind,” said Cally. “If you were going to nick someone’s card and march them to the bank, they’d hardly just go along with it and stand there watching.”

  “They might if they’d lost their marbles. What he was thinking, perhaps.”

  “Three twenties and two tens. I’ve put them in the purse. And the card. Here . . . Boots next?”

  I can look at the shampoos while she’s waiting for her prescription, she won’t mind. That’s the thing about this job—there’s spare time, sort of. Easy, and spare time, and this Pauline’s fine, not like her in Brunswick Gardens—do this, do that, and never a thank you. Ninety-five, that one is. How can a person be ninety-five years old?

  They found a chair for Pauline, by the prescription counter.

  “Yes—go and browse. I shall be here for some time, I can see.”

  And time is no longer of the essence. It is baggy stuff, disposable, no need to preserve, allocate. Actually, that’s a legal term, isn’t it? Of the essence. To do with contracts. In non-legal life you just mean the need to hurry.

  I have hurried, she thought. I have been hurried. Now, I no longer hurry. Days are capacious, to be idled through. Butt ends of my days. Oh, for heaven’s sake, enough of that stuff. Mental sediment—all that was once read. Extraordinary, the accretion of it all. What one has done, what one vaguely knows. The arbitrary archive.

  The pills came. Whole bag of them. The ones to be taken before a meal, the ones after, the ones with. The pharmacist inspected the haul: “I think you’re familiar with all these?”

  “Tiresomely familiar.”

  The pharmacist was young, Asian, pretty. Delicate small hands folded the bag shut and passed it to Pauline. Nice smile.

  “Thank you.”

  Science A levels. Degree also, I think. The world will always need pharmacists. Wise girl. In fact, will need them more and more, with the expanding horde of the likes of me. Dispense pills, or make them—that’s the business to be in.

  Cally had returned, with Boots bag.

  “Satisfactory?” said Pauline.

  “I’m trying a new shampoo.” And black nail polish, but she wouldn’t care for that.

  Marks & Spencer was the serious challenge: Pauline’s grocery requirements. They began to work along the aisles. A slow process. Pauline was a judicious shopper. She peered, considered.

  Cally pushed the trolley. She drifted, in the head, eyed people, fished for her phone, remembered and put it back. She needed to text Lindy, and Mum—that would have to wait. Nice—that girl’s jacket. Zara? Oh yuck, that kid with a runny nose. If I have children . . .

  She thought briefly of these unimaginable children. Binned them. Too far away. Well, out there somewhere, but not of interest just now.

  Saturday night? Nothing fixed up. Lindy? Or that Dan? They were in Vegetables. “Where do these beans come from?” said Pauline.

  “Kenya.”

  “Ah. Large carbon footprint, then. Still, I want some.”

  Kenya. One had a spot of bother once in Mombasa. Had to use the whole bag of tricks. I’d know him now—the face. And the name. But I can’t put a tag on that woman I met last week. “Mustard,” she told Cally. “I forgot that.
”

  “OK. We’ll get there. You’ve still potatoes and salad things.”

  “Right. And use your phone while we’re having coffee. That’s fine by me.”

  “Oh,” said Cally. “There’s no need. I . . .”

  “I noticed you wanting to, dear,” said Pauline. “Tea break coming up.”

  Embarrassed, Cally focused on lettuce. Many forms of lettuce.

  “Do you like the mixed baby leaves?”

  “No, let’s have those Little Gems. Absurd name. Small lettuces, they are.”

  “My dad grows them, I think. Gardening’s his thing. I used to like helping him but I’ve gone off it. The worms and stuff. I’m more of an indoor person.”

  “So what’s in mind for the long term? You don’t want to be dancing attendance on old women indefinitely.”

  “Oh, no,” said Cally. “I mean . . . well, I mean I really like it, of course, but . . .”

  “But with all options open. Quite right.”

  When I was her age, thought Pauline, the options were confusing. They always are. Who’d be young? Everything wide open, which means that the not chosen is discarded. Junked. I have junked being policewoman, interior decorator, estate agent, High Court judge, Home Secretary.

  “I’m wondering a bit about nursing,” said Cally.

  “Only a bit?”

  “I’m not sure about blood. I’ve not been awfully good with that.”

  “I imagine you get inured to it,” said Pauline. “But if in doubt, maybe look elsewhere.”

  “I like cooking. My mum thinks perhaps a catering course. City and Guilds there is. Hospitality and Catering.”

  “Nice idea. Distinct possibility. Now, where are the potatoes?”

  “Over here. Is it baking you want?”

  “Jersey Royals. Or are we in the wrong time of year?”

  Yes. Spring, they are. And this is autumn. For a moment I was untethered. Adrift in time. Alarming. But now I am hitched again to a Tuesday in October, and in need of a rest. “We’ll head for the coffee place,” she said. “My knee is complaining. Grab a bag of small potatoes and find us somewhere to sit.”

  Cally organized a table, queued up for two coffees, rejoined Pauline.

  “Good. We’ve earned this.” Pauline took a sip of her coffee.

  “Hot. Have to leave it a minute. You do your texting now—rest period.”

  Feeling a little exposed, Cally told her mother she was in Marks with the Albert Street lady, who was OK, nice in fact, and I’ll let you know about Sunday this evening. She arranged Lindy for Saturday. She nudged Dan. She drank her coffee.

  “Yes,” said Pauline. “Why don’t you investigate this catering idea. Might lead to all sorts of things. Oh, it’s such a teaser—the road not taken. Do you know that poem? ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I / I took the one less traveled by.’ Hackneyed, rather, now, but he had a good point.”

  “I expect you were a teacher, Pauline, were you?” said Cally kindly.

  Pauline finished her coffee. “No, dear. I was a spy.” She collected her bag, her stick. “Well, we’d better get on, I suppose.”

  They got up. Cally followed Pauline. She saw her looking much as she had before. Really old. Those thick glasses. The stick. But looking also . . . different. She was talking about chicken now, Pauline. Something about how she roasts a chicken with tarragon and lemon.

  Cally stared at the chicken carcasses. “License to kill?” she ventured.

  “Well, yes. But it wasn’t called that. There was a euphemism. Find me the small size, could you—I can never finish the medium ones.”

  “Were you . . .” said Cally. “Did you spy sort of on your own?”

  “No, no. It’s an organizational operation. Have you heard of MI5 and MI6?”

  Cally said that she had.

  “Well, then. And it’s less James Bond than you’d think. Office work, to an extent.” Pauline examined a proffered chicken. “That one will do nicely.”

  Office, and what one might call exit periods. Most of which are still there with absolute clarity. Not in chronological order, and richly peopled. Oh, people above all—a filing cabinet of faces. One was always good at filing faces, of course.

  They had reached oil and dressings. “Which mustard?” asked Cally. “And we want olive oil.”

  Like onions, she thought. A person is. Layers. And you haven’t a clue. You just look at the top. An old person’s just an old person, you think. Anyone is. Her there in that awful pink skirt too short for her, my mum’s age she is. And him with the dreadlocks.

  She said, “Did you . . . spy . . . go spying . . . in lots of far-away places?”

  “A good Italian oil, I like,” said Pauline. “And a lemon-flavored one.”

  Chimborazo, Cotopaxi . . . In fact one never made it to either of those. Nor yet Popocatépetl. But Mogadishu . . . No, this lass doesn’t need to know about that episode in Mogadishu. Or Kinshasa.

  “I suppose I did. It tends to be a global procedure. But forget speedboats on blue Bermuda waters or car chases in Singapore. More, waiting about in train stations and meeting up with people one would have preferred to avoid.”

  “I’d like to travel,” said Cally.

  “Said to broaden the mind. Though that depends rather on the condition of the mind in question. I have known some well-traveled minds that were nicely atrophied. Now—how’s that list? Where should we be heading?”

  “Marmalade. With J-cloths later. I’ve been to the Algarve,” said Cally. “I tried to learn a bit of Portuguese. Please and thank you, at the least.”

  But Pauline didn’t go on Thomson Holidays, she thought. I don’t know what she did, or what that person she once was did, but it can’t have been lying on the beach and looking for the right taberna. Not if licensed to kill. She stared at Pauline’s back. Tweed-clad, somewhat bent, inscrutable.

  Pauline stumped ahead, thinking again about faces. That gallery in the head. From a display of grapefruit, a particular mug-shot surged. Yes, yes, she said. I remember you. Without enthusiasm.

  Training, of course. An essential technique. What you didn’t know was that you would be stashing them away forever.

  A known face among the avocados, too—not unwelcome, but irrelevant, now. Get away with you, she told him. I’m through with all that, and so are you, wherever you are.

  “Actually, we’re the wrong way,” said Cally. “We want to be over there.”

  “Aim me at marmalade, then.”

  Time was, one was pretty good at direction. Which came in handy, on occasion. Saved the situation, indeed, once. Peculiarly nasty area of Marrakesh.

  She came to a stop. “Thick-cut. Golden Shred. Lime, is that, for heaven’s sake? Who needs all these? Where’s plain Oxford? Right. What else?”

  “I’ll nip down there for the J-cloths,” said Cally. “Then we’re done.”

  When she returned, Pauline was considering her purchases.

  “There’s an awful lot here. Are we going to be able to manage it?”

  “Oh, yes. With your trolley thing. It holds ever so much.”

  “Right. Let’s get done with this, then.”

  Queues at every checkout. “Maybe here,” said Pauline. They lined up. Pauline noted that the woman ahead lived alone, had a cat, a weakness for milk chocolate, liked a glass of wine, planned to clean her oven and polish some silver. It dies hard, she thought, the instinct to observe, identify. Tiresome, rather, nowadays. I don’t need to know about this lady’s home life.

  “Bear in mind,” she told Cally, “that whatever you do choose as occupation, in due course, will form the habits of a lifetime.”

  “You mean, Hospitality and Catering and I’ll think canapés and cupcakes for ever?”

  “It goes with the territory, I imagine. I am doomed to pry, and make inf
ormed guesses. But today I have made a bad choice. Wrong queue, we’re in.”

  Two customers ahead of them, trouble had brewed. A man had loudly pointed out that his egg carton included one that was broken. (“Should have checked, shouldn’t he?” said Cally.) A replacement had been sent for but now he was in dispute with the cashier over whether or not the chicken korma was included in the mix and match offer.

  “It said so. I saw quite clear.”

  “You see, it means . . .”

  “It’s what was said. You telling me I can’t read?”

  The dispute smoldered. The queue grew restive. Pauline leaned against a display of fruit gums.

  “Way back, in my training days,” she said, “I went on that course where you learned how to strangle a person with the bare hands. I think I am about to exercise the skill for only the second time.”

  Cally looked at her. Blinked. Looked away. Looked back, and Pauline was checking her purse for her debit card: dumpy, gray hair, that coat slightly worn at the cuffs. She did say that. Yes, she did.

  Some accommodation had been reached, ahead. The man gathered his bags and departed.

  “Just as well,” said Pauline. “He was quite a big chap. Ah—here’s my card. Now, are we really going to get all this in?”

  The shopping was paid for, stowed away. They emerged into the street. Pauline paused to hitch her bag over her shoulder. “There. Thank you, dear. Mission accomplished.”

  Not that one ever said that. Merely—returned to the office and set about filing the report. Now, I file for my own satisfaction, and today is a reasonable day, with my knee not too bad, and those autumn leaves are as though never seen before and look, just look, at the berries on that sorbus.

  Cally did not see leaves or berries. She saw street, cars, people, all much the same as half an hour ago but somehow vaguely unreliable. She felt, oddly, older. A slightly different person, who knew more. Who knew to make adjustments. Maybe not Catering and Hospitality, she thought. I may not be a Catering and Hospitality person. I don’t know who I am yet, do I? Who I may be.