Serial Monogamy (15 page)

Have you ever been to America, Mrs. Ternan? Oh. Really. Fancy that. Touring the theatres, I imagine. Long before your daughters were born, of course. Such a trip would have been impossible with young children.

What a pity your two eldest girls could not be here today. Oh, but I understand, their work must come first and so lovely for you they have followed you in to the theatre. No sugar, thank you, but a slice of lemon would be lovely. Yes, I believe I will, thank you: I am always partial to a bit of seed cake. Why this is all very pleasant. Such a cozy room and how pretty it looks in the sunshine.

And in what year did you visit America, Mrs. Ternan? Why, just a few years before us. We went over in '42. It was a remarkable experience, like nothing I have lived before or since, although I cannot say I would wish to repeat it.

We'd been married only a few years and I was by then
the mother of four. Walter still had a wet nurse; Charley, our eldest, was about to turn five, and the girls were two and three. Our babies. Goodness how we loved them, a cozy little family. I didn't want to go, I have to say. As a mother yourself, you'll understand that I could not imagine leaving children so young, for such a time. We calculated we would be gone four months and in the end it was six. When Mr. Dickens first proposed it, I refused to consider it. It was the only occasion I can ever remember where I contradicted him outright. I probably do not need to tell you that Mr. Dickens does not like to be contradicted.

But I don't think I was being stubborn or selfish. I understood the benefit of the tour. He needed to meet his American readers, and talk to American publishers. Perhaps stop the fiends from simply copying the British editions without ever paying. He thought if he could just show himself in the flesh on the other side of the Atlantic, so that he was not simply a distant name but a real man, it would both reward his readers and perhaps shame the thieving publishers, to whom we must have lost thousands of pounds. Besides, he was fascinated by the Republic and so wanted to see if its liberties truly provided happiness for its citizens. He needed to meet Americans and he wanted to see America.

Yes, it made sense for him to go, but I felt my place was with the children. When Mr. Dickens first proposed the trip I wondered if they would even remember their father after an absence of such a length. He always adores
the babies and I cannot imagine little ones could have a fonder father but when he sets his mind to something he will never give way until he has seen it through. He was determined to go, and so the children and my scruples in their regard were merely obstacles to him. He insisted he needed me at his side and pointed out the children could be well taken care of by others. Of course, they had their nanny and in the end both our families happily took charge of them, and our friends the Macreadys too.

You know Mr. Macready professionally, I imagine. It was he who persuaded me to go in the end—or rather Mr. Dickens had him persuade me. He thought I would be more susceptible to the arguments of a disinterested friend. I felt so torn between my two duties: Did you ever suffer those moments where your husband seemed to pull you away from your children? Mr. Macready has, of course, remarkable rhetorical skills, as many an audience can attest, and he set about persuading me with all his powers. He convinced me that he and Mrs. Macready, who had borne many children herself, would love ours like their own. Finally, Mr. Macready convinced me that my first duty was to Mr. Dickens—or at least that the larger mistake was not to meet his needs.

We set off in January and the Atlantic storms were ferocious that winter. Did you cross in a steamer? Ours was one of the first and they were reputed to be much faster than sail, but in the end the boat was so subject to the weather, it took longer and was, of course, much less
comfortable. The cabins are so horribly cramped. I remember Mr. Dickens' face when we first entered our state room at Liverpool and he realized he would have to live in such quarters for the next ten days. Imagine if someone had told him that it would be three weeks before we saw land again! I tried to make the best of it, tucking things in every corner, and told Mr. Dickens we must pretend we were living in a doll's house, but it is hard to feel cozy when you are as sick as we were. We spent most of the voyage in our bunks, calling out to our maker.

We were greatly relieved to finally arrive in Boston and what a welcome we received. There were cheering crowds at the dock and outside our hotel; there were banquets in our honour. Mr. Dickens used to say that we were treated like royalty, and that I played the staunch Albert to his monarch. Indeed, I don't think I have ever smiled and waved so much nor shaken so many hands. At first, it was most gratifying, but the crowds and the demands on his person rapidly began to wear him down, and he increasingly missed the comforts of home, which did put him out of sorts.

We met many congenial people in Boston, writers and scholars, and Mr. Dickens hired a secretary there, the good Mr. Putnam. We depended heavily on him because I simply could not keep up with the correspondence. Mr. Dickens was soon dictating dozens of letters a day. Requests for meetings. Invitations to parties. One person wrote repeatedly asking if Mr. Dickens might not spare a
shirt as a souvenir! When we travelled south to New York and Philadelphia, Mr. Putnam came with us, and we were thankful we had him, for beyond Boston we found the crowds more pressing and the people less congenial.

The worst of it were the bores. We would go to a banquet and be pursued by men with wild schemes or ladies suffering from literary ambitions. My job was to keep them at bay, to change subjects, miss hints and ignore conversational demands. I would come away with promises of manuscripts, blueprints and business proposals that would all follow us to our next destination, but the more we were assaulted, the more I repelled. I became quite good at it, and Mr. Putnam and Mr. Dickens would laugh about it and ask how could we possibly sail through the day without Mrs. Dickens at the helm.

If the crowds in the cities were exhausting, so too were the roads in the country. We proceeded by land and by river boat through Ohio and Kentucky and travelled as far west as Missouri. I have never seen countryside like it, so wild in parts and so grand in others. I don't imagine you went West, Mrs. Ternan. The prairie is a sight to be seen, like a mighty mountain laid on its side.

Well, that is the view from the coach at least, but inside the coach, it was another matter altogether. How we bounced, how we shook. We were bruised all over by day's end. I did not complain, taking the view that every new inconvenience was an adventure to be discovered or a joke to laugh over at day's end. Anything was better
than seasickness. Mr. Dickens always praised my vigour and calm; he would call me his intrepid companion.

The most remarkable part of our voyage was surely the sight of the falls at Niagara. Did you see the falls during your trip, Mrs. Ternan? The spectacle is almost spiritual, didn't you think? And the sound, both deafening and yet somehow soothing. Mr. Dickens was so impressed he thought the water spoke to him. He said he heard the voice of Mary, my sister, calling to him as she did the day she died. Our grief was still very fresh in those days; it had only been four years. She was but seventeen and had come to help us with the baby when Charley was born. She suffered some kind of attack one afternoon and died the following day. Mr. Dickens was quite overcome by hearing her voice at Niagara and wept that night in our room telling me about it. I comforted him as best I could under our restricted circumstances.

We recovered ourselves and made for Toronto, a dismal city with muddy streets, although the citizens were much more polite than those in America and did not press themselves on Mr. Dickens in the same way. We liked Montreal far better, and Mr. Dickens had a grand time there organizing theatricals with a local regiment. His theatrical projects always improve his spirits and put his energies to good use, and the excitement helped somewhat compensate for that which he had so missed during our long voyage. Mr. Dickens has always been a most affectionate husband and I hope I have been an affectionate wife, but
our voyage would have been impossible had I been with child during that period. Over the years, Mr. Dickens has never enjoyed the restrictions my confinements imposed on him, but during the months before our departure for America he swore himself to chastity with some fervour because he knew how necessary that was if I were to accompany him. Once there, however, the intensity of his motivation dwindled just as his enthusiasm for America flagged. He grew more and more disillusioned with the state of the Republic, finding Americans grasping and uncouth; meanwhile, he grew more and more discontented with the state of our relations. It was all I could do to hold him off until that last month when we felt we might safely resume marital life in all its fullness.

After a big farewell banquet in New York, we returned by sail—no more steam for us!—and thankfully this time the voyage took only the promised ten days. We landed in Liverpool one morning and made for London at once. How we had missed the children! Of course, there had been letters to and fro; their uncle and the Macreadys had regularly reassured us the children were happy and well, but it was not until I saw their faces that I realized what a burden of anxiety I had carried for six months in their regard. We coddled them and kissed them for days and in a few weeks all was right again in our little family.

It remained our little family for some time, however. It was almost two years after that Frank was born; there's almost four years' difference between him and Walter. I
was becoming increasingly alarmed, I must confess, that our American gap had put an end to a growing family, that somehow my capacity for motherhood had been diminished by our unnatural abstinence in those months. You can imagine my joy when I first guessed that my fifth was finally on its way.

“T
here's a mistake here.”

“Really?”

It's Jonathan on the phone. I have sent over the latest instalment for his Wednesday deadline. He, typically, is calling Friday with his changes.

“I get that it's Catherine Dickens speaking. Very clever. But she's eating cake…”

“Yes.”

“But before, what's her name, Mrs. Ternan, was offering her store-bought biscuits. Remember the bit about biscuits from Fortnum and Mason's.”

“Yes, I do.”

“And she took sugar in her tea.”

“Yes, no biscuits, two lumps of sugar, all three of Mrs. Ternan's daughters were present and it was a rainy day.”

“So, she went a second time?”

“I doubt it. We don't even really know if she went once. This is all speculative.”

“Speculative?”

“Yes, I am writing fiction, after all. So this is a different version, a different piece of speculation about what might have happened if Mrs. Dickens came to call.”

“The readers won't understand that. If they notice at all, they'll think it's a mistake.”

“Maybe they're smarter than you think.”

I argue the point with Jonathan, who finally agrees to the inconsistencies if he's allowed to put his own headline on the piece. “Mrs. Dickens, Take Two, or something like that.”

On Saturday, Al is much more appreciative.

“I like the seed cake and the slice of lemon,” he says, looking up from the paper. “Nice touch.”

“Thanks.”

“So we are going to hear from the wife?”

“Yeah, I thought it was about time.”

“Is she going to issue warnings? ‘Let me tell you now, dear, before it's too late, he snores.' ”

I laugh. It's the first time Al has appeared anything but irritated by the serial.

He goes back to his reading and finishes a few minutes later.

“How did you figure out the abstinence thing?”

“Just by charting the gaps between her pregnancies.”

“Clever you. Who would have imagined someone with ten kids practised any form of birth control.”

“Ten pregnancies, and at least two miscarriages,
in fifteen years. And then he dumped her for a younger woman.”

The minute I say it I wish I could take it back. I can't keep beating Al with that stick. But he seems unperturbed.

“If only they had the pill,” he says, folding up the paper.

“Have I done enough?”

“No, miss. You keep eating them.”

“I love fresh peas. I don't know why we bother cooking them.”

Nelly was sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas awkwardly with one hand and popping many of them into her mouth while Jane smeared suet on a leg of lamb she was preparing for the oven.

“I imagine Mr. Dickens likes his lamb a little pink?”

“I have no idea.” Nelly paused, puzzled by her own answer. “Is that an odd thing not to know?”

“No matter, miss. I'll cook it nice and rare so that if he's late, it won't be overcooked.”

“And if he's early?”

“Well, then he will just have to wait a bit.”

“Maybe if you overcooked it and turned the peas to mush, he would take me to a nice restaurant in the city.”

“Or maybe he will just send another one of his baskets.” Jane laughed. Nelly liked her new servant's boldness. In the theatre, the Ternans had grown up with a merry band of actors, managers and dressers who did not make large distinctions between the classes. Nelly felt a rather familiar camaraderie with Jane.

“Maybe he will. And,” she added a little bitterly, “I will just stay home in Slough.”

“Slough must be dull for you after Paris, miss.”

“I don't mean to disparage your home, Jane, but everything is dull after Paris.” There was a little pause and then, as though to soften the thought, Nelly added, “I didn't live in Paris that long, though. Mainly I lived in the countryside in France and I didn't like that much either.”

“They all speak French, I imagine.”

“That didn't bother me. I knew some French and it improved while I was there. I just felt homesick, that was all. I missed my sisters.”

“You were lonely, miss.”

“Yes. I was. Do you like dogs, Jane?”

“Oh yes, miss. I love dogs.”

“Good. That's settled then. I am going to get a dog.”

“What kind of dog were you thinking, miss? My father has a lovely bulldog. People think they are fighters but he's the sweetest creature. Of course, you'd want something smaller.”

“Why something smaller?”

“Well, with your hand, miss. You wouldn't want a big dog tugging at the lead.”

“No. I suppose not. I'll get a small dog.”

Nelly's right hand had not healed properly since the railway accident. Charles had made an appointment for her with a surgeon in London, who said she had severed a nerve and that she would probably never regain full use of it. Jane was under instructions never to let her lift anything for herself, although Nelly wondered if this was not a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. She suspected she had done the real damage after the accident, tugging at Charles's bag with her cut hand, thereby saving several chapters of
Our Mutual Friend
but permanently injuring herself. She could not fully close her palm now. Pincer movements were difficult, so it was sometimes hard for her to pick up an egg without breaking it or to retrieve a dropped earring; fine work that required both hands, such as sewing, was impossible and her handwriting was still a bit wobbly, but she could just manage the piano and was determined not to lose that. A little music, if she were alone in the evening, was a comfort to her. Other things, like combing her hair or shelling peas, she was learning to do with her left. Charles, meanwhile, had taken to referring to her as the patient and routinely sent over baskets of delicacies as though she were convalescing.

Three hours later, Nelly and Charles were sitting at the table both poking listlessly at their food in a lengthening silence. The lamb was dry and only edible if covered with lashings of gravy while the roast potatoes, appealingly crispy an hour previously, had gone soft. Charles had arrived late and flustered because he had missed his usual train; by then the meat had sat so long in the oven it was all but ruined and Nelly had eaten enough raw peas she really did not feel like much dinner.

“Did you finish number seventeen?” she asked finally, after searching about for some topic of conversation.

“No.” He poked at his food with his fork but didn't eat. “I can't find my way to it.”

“Don't you need it ready by tomorrow? I was going to read it through tonight.”

“Yes. Well, I'll be late.” He gave up on the food, pushing aside his plate, and slumping back in his chair.

“Doesn't the printer—”

“Damn the printer.”

She made no reply but rose from her chair, gathered up their plates and approached the door that separated the parlour where they ate from the kitchen behind it. She had to balance the plates against her body with her right arm to turn the knob with her left; it was an awkward business and took her a moment but Charles did not look up from the table. She put the plates down and scraped their uneaten food into the scrap bucket, trying to hide the lamb under the vegetable peelings so as not
to give offence to Jane. She transferred the plates into the sink, where the servant, who had left the meal in the oven and retired to her room before Charles arrived, would wash them the next day. There was a bowl of stewed fruit and a pitcher of custard waiting on the kitchen table, so she stuck her head back into the dining room. Charles had still not moved and was staring blankly at the floor.

“Will you have some fruit and custard?”

He did not reply at first but looked up when she repeated herself.

“No. No, thank you.”

“You haven't had much to eat.”

He examined his shoe and then knocked it against the table leg but said nothing.

“Would you not like something else to eat?”

He kept staring at the floor.

“Charles…” Her voice held a small note of warning.

“Oh.” He looked up finally. “Umm. I'll have some cheese.”

When she returned with the block of cheddar Jane had left in the pantry, he was now leant over the table, shifting bits of cutlery to and fro. He cut a slab of cheese for himself and turned to her.

“I'm not good company tonight.”

She did not try to contradict him.

“No one can be expected to be good company every night of his life.”

“No, but I wasn't good company last week either, as I recall.”

“No, you weren't.” He had been equally morose on both occasions he had visited the week before, but she had felt more energetic herself and had teased him out of his mood those nights, entertaining him at the piano. Tonight, she waited; she was annoyed by his behaviour and refused to be the one who threw him a lifeline and pulled him out of the water yet again. She had seen his dark moods before, in the years on Mornington Crescent when he despaired over the future of his sons, lamented his daughter Katey's hasty marriage, worried over a particular chapter or railed against a publisher, but they had grown markedly worse in recent months. For a moment she felt nothing but recalcitrant and bloody minded, her own anger washing over her. They sat there for a bit before she relented.

“Do you still dwell on the accident?” she asked.

He nodded and swallowed as though choking down emotion before he could speak.

“The noises. I hear those appalling noises…I think I will be fine; I get to Paddington, all chipper. I sit in my carriage saying last week's fuss was an aberration; there is nothing to it, little more than a quarter of an hour. Half an hour and I will be in your arms; what is a quarter-hour's journey in exchange for an evening of bliss?”

He smiled at her winningly but she made no response to the flowery compliment; their dinner had hardly seemed blissful.

“And then…” she prompted him.

“And then the whistle blows, the train starts to move. At first we shunt our way slowly out of London and that's all right, but when we gather speed I can feel the fear rising in me. And when the carriage shakes or leans around a bend, my memories take over. I hear the screeching, and the people crying…”

“Yes. It was horrible,” Nelly said with almost perfunctory sympathy. “I found my trip to town to see the doctor quite difficult.”

“Afterwards, it makes it difficult to write,” he continued. “It crowds out the stories. It is as though my brain is still too busy with it to invent other dramas.”

“I don't forget it either,” she replied without malice, turning over her right hand to show her scarred palm.

“No. No, of course you don't, my dear.” He reached for her hand, but she had withdrawn it under the table.

She felt the accident had become for them a convenient fiction. Of course, it had happened and it had been horrific, traumatizing and unforgettable. Yes, it was now difficult to even make the twenty-minute ride into Paddington. She knew that he went to and from the city in a state of high anxiety; the occasional time she took the train, she sat there clutching the arm of the seat and starting at the slightest lurch or unusual sound. She knew she was in trouble if she started to see a swath of blue silk in her mind's eye; she would hang on with her eyes closed, breathing deeply and just waiting until it was over. She
preferred her mother and sisters to come and see her in her new home at Slough rather than going to them: Maria was married now and living with her husband in Oxford, but Nelly had yet to visit them there. Still, it was not the memory of the accident that was the cause of silences between her and Charles, and she doubted it was the accident that made it difficult for him to write. It was the memory of the moments afterwards that afflicted them, whether they said so or not. He had failed her, and she supposed that he knew it, and she supposed that he also knew she found it difficult to forgive. They did not speak of any of this but let the accident stand as a kind of code for the trap in which they found themselves.

“I'm sorry, my dear. Let's have some music. That will cheer us both.”

She dutifully took her place at the piano and sang for him for a bit, an Italian aria or two that Fanny used to sing, the English folk songs that he preferred. Gradually, once again, his humour returned to him and he began to entertain her with tales from the magazine office, where a sub-editor had mislaid proofs and found them again under a colleague's bacon sandwich, and from Gad's Hill, where the gardener had severed a water pipe and created a gusher in the middle of the lawn, mundane disasters all told for the greatest comic effect. She laughed despite herself but when he took her hand and swung her arm in his old way, saying teasingly, “Shall we to bed, milady?” she dropped her hand away.

“I think I will stay down here and read for a bit.”

“Nelly…”

“The light is better here. I want to finish my book.”

“But you were supposed to proofread for me tonight.”

“You said you hadn't finished number seventeen.”

“No, I haven't,” he said grudgingly. “I just meant, well, you can't have been planning to read your book…”

“No. I wasn't but now I want to.”

He stood there staring at her for a long moment; she looked unblinkingly back with no visible emotion, standing there as apparently unmoved as she had stood a few months before on the embankment at Staplehurst.

“I am sorry,” he said finally. “I am truly sorry.”