Martha & Archie
Part 1
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Part 2
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part 3
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Martha & Archie
And when they kissed, there was no colour, there was no sound. There was just the kiss.
That was an important fact for both of them. Archie was a synaesthete, which meant that for him, words had tastes. Martha was a synaesthete too, but for her, words had colours. The other difference, of course, was that Martha knew what it all meant.
And so there they stood, in the empty bar of Archie’s pub, the silent moment that follows such a kiss lying around their shoulders like a blanket. Neither spoke – neither knew what to say, or if they did, they didn’t want the words, with their intrusive sights and flavours, interrupting this moment. Martha had waited too long for it.
Eventually, Martha spoke.
“Cauldron,” she said.
Archie smiled, knowing she had chosen her word with care.
“Bread and butter pudding” he responded.
Swirls of gold and orange floated in front of Martha’s eyes.
“Ribaldry.”
“Mmm, raspberry jelly.”
Pink and green jets, like fireworks.
“Gesture.”
“Vanilla and chocolate chips.”
Lilac mist.
And so they continued as the light faded and snow drifted gently against the windows, enlivening each other’s senses with carefully chosen words.
*
Archie didn’t know he was a synesthete. All he knew, before Martha, was that eggshell tasted like chips. Carpet tasted like sticky toffee pudding. Jumper tasted like over-ripe mangoes, shoes and socks like meringues and onion gravy respectively.
Archie didn’t talk much.
Words in Archie’s mouth rolled around like unexploded bombs. His tongue and teeth and lips not only felt the shape of them forming, but awaited with apprehension edged with nausea the unexpected taste that would fill his mouth as his lips closed around the last syllable.
As a baby Archie had screamed inconsolably the more his grandmother begged him not to cry – the word cry was like raw meat in his mouth. Eventually through trial and error and despair Archie’s grandmother had found that rocking him gently and whispering “horse-shoe, horse-shoe” would calm him down instantly; milk with a touch of honey.
These days, running the pub, Archie was exhausted pretty much all the time. Now Gerry was telling him about this new woman he had met at a bar in the city over the weekend. Gerry was keen.
“She was a good-looking lady, let me tell you. She had the most fantastic skin…”
Archie had been doing well up to this point, no tastes had cropped up that were too hard to disguise. But skin…
“I’ve never seen skin like it on any woman before. It was like, like something was lighting her up from the inside…” Gerry took another generous pull of beer. The woman had slowly become more beautiful over the evening with each gulp. “It was like her skin was shining, y’know? But not in a sweaty way.”
Archie was beginning to shine in a sweaty way.
“An’ it wasn’t just the skin on her face, either…the rest of her was just so soft…like she had skin made out of velvet…” Gerry’s eyes were beginning to glaze over.
So were Archie’s. He was gripping the edge of the bar hard enough to make his knuckles white.
“’Ere Arch, you all right? Lookin’ a bit peaky there…”
Archie took a deep breath and blew it slowly out of his mouth.
“I’m fine Gerry, I’m fine.” As long as you don’t say skin again…
Martha found it almost impossible to imagine how Archie could run a pub with his condition. She herself had moved up here to get away from people – she found the endless showers of colour that fell before her eyes each time somebody spoke to her so…distracting. She had moved into her tiny cabin by the lake so that she could choose not to speak to anyone for days; it was a place where she could rest her eyes in the silence of the snow, and occasionally play her piano, if she was feeling a bit washed-out. Then she’d braved the local, forcing herself to be sociable, and she had seen him behind the bar.
Martha was observant – a few more visits had confirmed what she suspected. He was a synaesthete too, but not colours…you could tell by the occasional grimace that crossed his face as the regulars chatted away. From then on she couldn’t stop looking at him, watching for every troubled look, every forced swallow, taking note of the words that caused such discomfort.
Martha wasn’t the only one who watched.
Martha hadn’t lived here all her life, like Archie. She had once worked in an office down south, receiving planning applications, plotting the locations of new buildings and developments on maps, scanning images in to the computers. Plotting and scanning, scanning and plotting. Until she plotted her escape. It wasn’t that it had been a bad job, it was just…there had to be more. She didn’t fit. She could go for months on end believing that she did, of course. That routine of getting up, feeding the cat, going to work, chatting to people about what they did at the weekend, what was on TV last night, where they were going on holiday, coming home, feeding the cat again, feeding herself, watching TV and going to bed. That routine could fool you into thinking that you fitted somewhere, that what you were doing was right, as it should be. But every so often, Martha would sink into a kind of restless depression, sometimes for weeks at a time. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t what she was meant to be doing. She didn’t really care what the people in her office were planning for the spare time in their lives, and for every day of that depression as she walked to work she would think, I just want to be at home. At her desk she would think, I just want to be in bed. At lunchtime, Only four hours until I can leave. She knew that was not right.
It was during these depressions that she realised that her mood could affect the colours she saw. Words still kept their signature colour, but it was several shades darker if Martha was in the midst of a bad week. One day, as she was plotting the position of a new housing development on a map of the area and counting down the hours until she could go home, the chatter of the office formed an immense cloud of turning twisting dark shades in front of her vision, purples and burgundies bleeding into navy, steel grey, pitch black. The colours merged and swirled around her, the endless meaningless noise of her co-workers building up until she shut her eyes and pressed her hands over her ears. I don’t want to be here. Then where do you want to be? A voice asked her. With her eyes still tightly shut against the gathering storm clouds of colour she saw a small wooden cottage beside a lake, all covered in snow. There.
From across the bar, Enid watched the southerner watch her grandson. She had a feeling that there was an understanding there, a sense of recognition. Enid was a great believer in her feelings. Almost as much as she believed a good cup of tea could solve almost anything.
“Well,” the word from her mouth sounded like an h had got lost it in somewhere, “you’d better come in and have a cup of tea.”
Martha followed the old lady into the cottage, prepared for either variation of old-lady-tea that Enid might offer – hot milk that may at some point have had a teabag waved at it, or stuff stewed so long that you could see the shine of the tannin on the surface. Enid lived up the hill from Martha, and had called to her from her front garden as Martha was walking back from the village. It was a bitter day, and Martha had complained of the cold. Also, she knew who Enid was related to, and was curious as to why she had called her over. It was too cold a day to be hanging around in your garden.
As she ducked through the low-beamed door in to Enid’s kitchen, Martha’s eyes widened. Every wall of Enid’s kitchen was covered in shelves. And on every shelf was a small black box with a cream coloured label on the front.
“What would you like, dear? Chai? Keemun? A drop of Gunpowder Green? I fancy a cup of Lapsang Souchon, myself.” And without waiting for Martha to answer, she began looking along the rows of shelves for the right little black box. “I try to keep them all alphabetised, you know, but sometimes they do get a little muddled!” she confided, pushing her spectacles up her nose with a wrinkly finger. “Well, what’s your tipple?”
“Um, I’ll just have what you’re having.”
Enid found the box she was looking for and placed it on the dark, uneven surface of the kitchen table. Then she located two white mugs, a milk jug and a teapot, placed them on the table, and filled the kettle with water to boil. Carefully she measured out the loose tea, looking for all the world like a tiny wizened woman apothecary, white hair frizzing about her head, spectacles sliding down to the tip of her nose. Before long Martha was sat opposite Enid with a mug of dark golden tea in her hands, inhaling the smell of winter bonfires.
“So…you understand Archie’s condition.”
“Yes. I mean, I think so.”
“And how’s that?”
“I’m a synaesthete too.”
An eyebrow raised.
“Synaesthesia…that’s what it’s called, what we’ve got.”
The eyebrow remained raised.
“It means that the bits of our brains that deal with the senses have got a bit…mixed up. Like they’re wired up wrong, so sounds turn into tastes or colours, or maybe you see what’s being said in front of you, like someone’s typing it behind your eyes…” Martha trailed off under Enid’s unwavering gaze. “There’s lots of different kinds,” she added meekly.
“Colours, eh? That’s what you’ve got, then?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“You don’t look like you’re about to vomit at every other word I say, for one. But you do look…sort of like you’re being sidetracked. Like you can see something they can’t. Which of course, you can.” She kept looking steadily at Martha, who was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Enid continued, “Synaesthesia…what colour’s that, then?”
“Sort of yellowy-green.”
“And you’ve a soft spot for my Archie.”
It wasn’t a question. Deep pink bubbles turning to red floated before Martha.
“He doesn’t know what it is, mind, his tastes. Never went to any doctors about it. Maybe it would be good for him to know it has a name.” She took a slurp of bonfire-tea. “Words are important.”
Martha just nodded.
“Ask him to your cabin.”
Martha just stared.
The restlessness was like a panther pacing in Martha’s stomach. She sat down, picked up a magazine. Flicked over the first three pages, then two at a time, then turned all the way to the back cover. Chucked it on the sofa next to her. She got up, went to the fridge. Opened it, surveyed the contents. Half a block of cheese, cracked and hard around the edges. Some tomatoes. An unopened carton of fruit juice. Two tubs of low fat olive oil spread. She looked in the cupboard, but she didn’t want biscuits either. She flicked the kettle on, went back to the fridge for milk and instead poured herself a cold class of cranberry juice. The kettle reached boiling point and clicked off.
“Bugger,” she said, and a burst of violent purple exploded before her eyes.
It had been snowing for three days. Martha loved the snow. Standing by the lake after a heavy snowfall was so peaceful – not only were there no words to fire up her colour vision, but the land around her was also wiped clear of colour. It was restful to her eyes, this way of seeing but not seeing. Like this, she could allow more of the world in. She lived alone, with her cat, in a small wooden house by the side of the lake. She had a piano. After weeks of snow had let her eyes recuperate, she would play – it was not only words that caused colours to drift before her eyes. Musical colours moved more sedately than words – mists rather than fireworks and explosions. Veils of vermilion, cobalt, ochre, depending on the notes her fingers plucked from the keys. After playing she would feel exhilarated, exhausted, as if emerging from a trance.
Living alone was a necessity. She could not entirely understand how Archie could live his life surrounded by people, lots of people at once, all talking to him, triggering those tastes that must become a mish-mashed cocktail in his mouth night after night. But on the other hand…she went to the pub for company, just to be in the presence of others…one other in particular.
Abandoning the boiled kettle she slipped on her coat and gloves and stepped outside. Out there in the snow she stood alone, snowflakes drifting around her, muffling all sound. No words. Before her eyes only a clear white expanse. No sound, no colour. She tilted her face up to receive the snow, flakes cool on her eyelids, calm, meaningless. I must bring Archie here, she thought.
She had done it. She had asked him to come up to her cabin. Actually, she had asked him to come and help her move all the firewood nearer to the back door of her cabin. A lame excuse, she knew, but somehow the words “would you like to come to my place for dinner?” had been impossible to say. The lime green smoke wafting in front of her eyes at the time hadn’t really helped matters. But still, she had asked, and he had agreed. Perhaps not as quickly as in the fantasy conversation in her head, but he had agreed all the same. And it had snowed again. Martha stood bundled in her warmest coat and boots beside her woodpile, and watched for his arrival.
Martha. Now that was a difficult one. Sort of like cabbage, with a bit of oily rag mixed in as well. But she’d looked so worried, standing there at the bar asking for his help that after he’d swallowed down the taste of her introduction, (“Hi, it’s me, Martha…”) he’d agreed to give her a hand shifting her logs. Lord only knows why she’d asked him; there were other people who lived closer to her up by the lake. But Archie didn’t mind. He’d seen her, of course, in her regular spot over by the window. She didn’t really speak to him much, but she smiled. That was good, as far as Archie was concerned; he liked quiet people. They’d had a little smiling rally going, last time she was in…like tennis. Catching each other’s eye, returning the smile. It beat pointless bar chitchat any day of the week. Yes, Archie thought, maybe going to help her would be a nice way to spend the afternoon…
“I thought it must be something like that,” said Archie, a little wonderingly. “I never knew it had a proper name, though. And you’ve got it too?”
“Well, a kind of it. I see colours when I hear sounds.”
“What like?”
“All sorts. Could be like a cloud, or mist. Could be like fireworks. Or bubbles, or bursts. It all depends.”
Archie looked at her for a while, her face pinked by the cold.
“That sounds beautiful,” he said.
Martha was speechless. She had never thought of it as beautiful before. It had been distracting, annoying, exhausting, and always there. But never beautiful.
“Well,” she cleared her throat, “lots of people have it in some form or another. Thousands.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. In fact, some doctors say that everyone has it, to some level.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if you ask an ordinary person – a non synaesthete – to tell you what colour they think a certain note is, on a piano for instance, then pretty much everyone would say that low notes are dark colours and high notes are light colours. And that’s a basic kind of synaesthesia. They’ve done experiments on it.”
Archie was quiet for a few minutes, digesting all this new information.
“Then everyone could see the world like you do,” he said at last.
They were still out in the snow – Martha had said that it helped her to think more clearly as she explained to Archie what they had in common. But now the sky was darkening and the cold was starting to make Martha’s flushed cheeks sting, so she suggested they go inside. Archie had a better idea. “Lets go back to the pub – more choice of warming drinks.”
When they got back to the pub, Enid was still minding the bar and insisted that she continue to do so, so Archie and Martha took up her usual seat by the window and continued to talk. Archie realised how aware Martha was of his tastes – of course, she couldn’t avoid every unpleasant word, but he could tell she was trying. It took her quite a long time to answer his questions.
They were still talking when the bar emptied and Enid wiped down the tables before disappearing without a word. Archie, suddenly aware of the hour, stood and moved towards the bar. He stopped suddenly and turned to ask Martha,
“Do you have a nickname, by any chance?”
She got up from the table and joined him in the middle of the empty bar.
“Well, my dad used to call me Ma, when I was little.” She stood close to him, tipping her head up to make eye contact.
“Ma…” Archie smiled as he rolled he word around his mouth. “That’s good…like…warm bread…” The gap between them got smaller, and there was just the kiss