Serial Monogamy (4 page)

They sat on a grassy bank for several hours before another train was finally commandeered to take them in to London. In other circumstances it might have seemed a pleasant-enough spot to wait, a sunny bank overlooking a marsh-like riverbed alive with bird calls and butterflies on a June day, but their vigil felt only like a second nightmare after the horror of the accident itself. Half the train had fallen from the track into the low-lying land; behind their carriage, a jumble of others lay in a broken heap that looked as though some petulant child had smashed its train set. Various men, some railway employees, some passengers apparently, were busy extracting people, and the results had made a battlefield of the low land. Bodies, it was not clear whether dead or alive, lay on wooden planks that had been turned into makeshift stretchers. Cries of help could be heard from the tangle of metal and moans of pain from those who had been
brought outside. Nelly noticed one man lying on the ground bleeding from a gash that ran the entire length of an exposed calf and another figure, its clothes so ripped and its face and head so covered in blood she was not sure whether it was a man or a woman. “Don't look, Nelly; please, don't look,” her mother whispered urgently, tugging at her arm—but try as she might to look away at the sky or the ground, she found she could not stop her eyes from returning to the scene.

So, she watched the men, at a distance of perhaps one hundred yards, as they busied themselves about the wreck like ants on an anthill, bringing up planks, lifting out bodies, in some instances even prying bits of twisted metal out of the way of their efforts. After perhaps half an hour of this, she noticed a woman lying on the ground with a man on his knees beside her—Nelly was not sure how long this couple had been there; perhaps the woman had been freshly removed from the wreck during one of the moments when Nelly had succeeded in following her mother's example and had averted her eyes. The man seemed to be talking to her, comforting her, and as he looked up for a moment from this task, she recognized Charles. He stayed with the woman for several moments but then dropped her hand, got up slowly and moved on, walking amid the other passengers and stopping again to offer help. She was puzzled by him leaving the stricken woman, even if there
were many others in need. And then as the motionless body continued to lie there, it occurred to Nelly that perhaps the woman had just died in Charles's arms.

Now that Nelly had noticed him, she could spot him easily, his trim figure moving about in the wreckage helping where he could.

Her mother, noticing her silent concentration, looked up from her skirt and followed her daughter's eyes.

“There's Charles,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Helping…”

“Yes.”

They were one of many little clusters of survivors too stunned or too injured to help, merely watching as more and more hands gathered around the train. Locals from the village and surrounding farms began to arrive, the men carrying boards, shovels and crowbars with which they clawed at the wreckage, the women offering bandages and food. One harried doctor, identifiable by his bag, moved among those lying around the wreck while an efficient sort, perhaps a clergyman's wife or a teacher, tended to those on the bank. She removed the blood-soaked handkerchief from Nelly's hand and wrapped it very firmly. The bleeding had slowed so that the wound was now visible and Nelly could see a deep, ugly gash.

“You'll want to get that looked at when you get to London, my dear,” the woman suggested.

“But when will we get to London?” Nelly protested.

“They are bringing up another train, I think. Shouldn't be too long.”

But it was long. Later, a young woman approached them shyly, a farm girl in a stained skirt with a basket over her arm.

“Would you like some milk, miss, and some bread? And the old lady too?” Nelly and her mother gratefully accepted the simple food, both drinking straight out of the earthenware jug before handing it back to the girl.

Finally, the new train did arrive, shunting itself very slowly up to the front of the wreck. Men began unloading bags from the cars that still stood on the track to transfer them to the new train, and a conductor approached the bank where they sat and directed them back across the makeshift boardwalk. Nelly had long since lost sight of Charles, but as they made their way to the train, she saw him again, hurrying toward the dangling carriage that had been theirs. He clambered up onto the crates that still stood there from their own rescue before an official reached him and stopped him. She could not hear what was said but he was arguing with the man, gesturing toward the carriage. She supposed the sight of baggage being removed from other cars had awakened him to the fate of his own. She stopped herself from crying out to him but instead hurried in his direction, carrying his bag in her good hand, willing him to look up. She was about fifty feet away from him when he did see her, stopping in mid argument as he stared across the space between them.

He looked at her with anguish in his face but made no move toward her. She looked down at the bag she was carrying to draw his eyes to it. He gave her but the slightest nod of recognition. It was such a small look that passed between them, neither the railway official, relieved to see he no longer had to argue with the gentleman who had been insisting on climbing back into a dangerously positioned carriage, nor the other passengers now all moving back toward the track would have realized that the gentleman and the young lady even knew each other. Charles turned without a word. She bit her lip and looked down at her dress. The skirt was badly stained with blood and soot and torn in several places while the hem, which she had caught on the ledge climbing out of the compartment, dangled beneath it. Her fresh start hung in tattered silk around her. She looked up in time to see Charles's back as he moved slowly toward the head of the train and she wondered now at the price she had paid for Paris gowns.

I
f each of us is the protagonist of his or her own story, then surely we must all graciously acknowledge that the hero dies in the end. But not at thirty-seven. With two school-aged daughters.

I'd like to say that the possibility of premature death has taught me to appreciate life more, filled it with days of smelling roses and sipping tea. The truth is the treatments make you so sick and exhausted, you don't have the energy to savour anything.

And then afterwards…afterwards…Well, I do try to value what I have. Sometimes I do this mental exercise, this little game to remind myself how lucky I am. I pick the happiest day of my life. I guess a lot of women might still say that their wedding day was the happiest. Ours was a small affair at Toronto's city hall followed by dinner with our two families who did their best to conceal their mutual distrust. I remember it mainly as anxious.

The night the twins were born stands out, but more
for drama than joy: the rush to the hospital; the hours of pain; the excitement of their arrival—and then the aching pleasure of seeing those little scrunched-up faces and tiny hands and knowing they were mine. But it was a feeling so rapidly displaced by the logistics of sleeping, nursing and diapering, a highly practical project made to feel oddly abstract by the time that fog enveloped it, that neither the word
day
nor the word
happy
really seem to apply.

I think of ordinary days instead. I see images of my family in my mind's eye, and I remember an afternoon—the girls must have been about four—when we walked the Scarborough Bluffs.

Al and I were never outdoorsy. We had begun our courtship as earnest academics debating Dickens' use of narrative voice into the small hours. As I recall our first years together, any time not spent working was spent at the kitchen counter with a glass of wine or, better yet, in bed. I think that in the first place we shared—before the twins were born and we moved to our current house—there were a few pots of flowers on the porch. I suppose I must have bought them and put them there, but gardens, let alone parks, were something beyond our horizon.

The arrival of children forced us outside, walking the streets to soothe them to sleep or visiting the local playground with plastic spades and pails jammed into the bottom of the big double stroller. As their toddling legs grew longer and stronger, we explored farther afield.
On the weekends, the four of us began to walk down into the ravines near our house, dark, magical places where Al would marvel with the girls at every twig and every pebble. Perhaps it was because Al had not grown up in Canada that he became so intrigued by what seemed to me the most pedestrian of local species. Soon, he had taught the girls to name all the trees they saw: “That's a red maple” or “That's a spruce,” a four-year-old would announce, to the surprise of any passersby in the vicinity. And I learned to welcome the treasures they busily collected from the ground and handed to me for safekeeping. I did put my foot down and ban sticks and stones from the house, so we kept what was soon an overflowing basket on the front porch, occasionally topping it off with a prized bird feather. I think it was my idea to explore geology. Al had often explained to the girls that the hill that we drove down any time we went to Daddy's office at the university or paid a visit to our friends Becky and David was the shoreline of a lake that had been there back in the days of the dinosaurs. I'm not sure the chronology of that is quite right, but they were excited by the idea that all of downtown Toronto used to be under water and that dinosaurs used to roam a shoreline located at the bottom of their backyard. Al began explaining glaciers and, wanting to be a sport and contribute to the project, I said, “If you want to see rocks, let's go to the Bluffs.”

And so one day—I think it was spring; it was windy
and cold; I remember us all complaining about it—we bundled into the car and drove across town, out Kingston Road, and stopped at Bluffer's Park. I'd been there once before, dragged out there on a moonlit night by an enthusiastic boyfriend who wanted to show me the eroding cliffs that stretch eastwards along the Lake Ontario shore.

We played on the beach at the bottom of the cliffs, throwing pebbles into the lake and running along the sand, and then drove back up to the top to get the view. You cross a bit of parkland to reach the edge and Anahita set off at a run with Al right behind her, Goli struggling to keep up and me bringing up the rear. I remember seeing the three of them, strung out in front of me like three frames of a moving image: Anahita's small figure racing ahead, her long hair flying all over the place, and Al's slender back leaning forward, one arm outstretched as though to catch her, and Goli's compact little body chugging along in pursuit, legs churning like an old-fashioned egg beater. There were the three things dearest in the world to me, fanned out before my eyes like a gift, and I slowed my pace and fell back to admire them. Al, as though sensing the moment too, turned back to look and caught my eye over Goli's head. He did not call out or urge me to catch up, he just smiled at me. Al's smile is usually a small, conspiratorial thing that draws you seductively into his ambit, but this was the biggest, silliest grin I'd ever seen on his face, as though he too could not believe his good fortune.

I reached them as they stopped at a barrier with signs warning that the cliff edge was dangerous. Before I could protest, Al, who often scoffed at Canadians' obsession with public safety, was lifting the girls over the wire cable and clambering after them. Each of us grabbing a child's hand, we approached the edge and peered down the cliff face, the girls oohing and aahing at the sheer drop. It did feel unsafe, and the second they had glimpsed it, Al and I quickly backed up, pulling the children away, lest our most precious achievement fall into the void below.

I don't remember what happened on the drive home. Perhaps Al recalled springtime in his grandparents' garden in Tehran, as he did for us sometimes, or Anahita and Goli sang a song taught them by Ms. Batra, the kindergarten teacher they both adored. Or maybe there were tears because I vetoed ice cream on the grounds it would spoil supper.

Perhaps when we arrived home, Al and I prepared a nice meal and everyone remembered how to use their forks and knives. And after dinner, Al did bathtime and I did storytime and once the children were asleep, we found ourselves together in our adult bed with a few moments to spare.

Or maybe we were late and tired, and I was increasingly short-tempered and we ate takeout pizza straight from the box. And after dinner, Al mumbled something
about end-of-term marking and spent the rest of the evening in his tiny office in the attic, ignoring a temper tantrum or two on the floor below.

Perhaps it was one of those family occasions when at least the adults managed to be their better selves, embracing life's simple pleasures with serenity and facing its many frustrations with patience, remembering that they loved and were loved in return.

Or maybe we were selfish, competitive and angry.

I don't recall the rest of the day. I just hold on to that image of the three of them running ahead of me through the grass, knowing that there I had achieved a peace that the happiest of my characters might have envied.

Nelly could not think where Fanny and Maria had got to and here was Mr. Dickens, come all the way from London, and needing conversation.

“Shall I ring for some tea, Mr. Dickens? It's almost eleven. I'm sure my sisters will be here any moment,” she said, trying gamely to play the role of the gracious hostess in the unprepossessing surroundings of the boarding house's front parlour. They had only arrived the day before yesterday and she was not at all sure that either the landlady or her maid of all work would respond to a bell, although there was a small brass one sitting on the mantel.

“There is no hurry, child. No great hurry. I suggested to your mother we might all drive into the country for a picnic lunch.”

“That would be lovely. Such a beautiful day,” she said, not indicating that her mother had already told her
of this plan before she had hurried back to the theatre to see if the manager and, more importantly, his helpful wife might not join them and so provide a second chaperone for the girls. The previous evening, the manager had been effusively grateful when he had been introduced to the writer after the curtain, so the couple seemed likely to agree. Nelly already had her bonnet and gloves at the ready on the hall table.

“Oh, quite beautiful. Indeed.” Mr. Dickens leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. She smiled back and pondered what to say next; this was just the sort of situation in which she relied on her older sisters to take the lead; Fanny was always so clever and Maria had got on famously with Mr. Dickens when they were performing his new play together in Manchester, and had clearly impressed him. Indeed, Nelly secretly suspected it was largely thanks to Maria's captivating talents that the great man had bothered to stop in Doncaster to watch them all perform at the Theatre Royal on his way south from a walking holiday in Cumbria.

For her own part, she had thoroughly enjoyed the performances in Manchester the previous month and found Mr. Dickens easy enough to talk to when there was theatre business to be done, the discussions of blocking and voice and lighting and costumes that she had known all of her life. Indeed, the whole experience had been joyful and friendly; she had only a minor role in the main event but did appear in the little farce that closed the
evening in which Mr. Dickens himself played an old man ridiculously in love with his young ward. Nelly played the ward and found her co-star not the least bit grand, despite his fame; there was much chatting and easy laughter during rehearsals and after the performance. Now, however, that he appeared not as a colleague with work at hand but as a gentleman paying a courtesy call, she felt much less sure of herself.

“I hope you enjoyed last night's performance,” she tried again.

He laughed.

“I enjoyed your performance.”

“Oh, but Maria is really far more gifted than I. Her singing was so lovely; I do envy her her voice,” Nelly said, trying to stick with the topic that she supposed interested him the most.

“Your sister is a remarkable performer, but I don't think you need envy her in any regard,” he replied.

He sat there, saying nothing, smiling benignly at her. The silence lengthened, but it did not seem to bother him for he just kept smiling. Nelly was thinking hard about what to say next when her mother came into the room. “Oh, there you are,” Mrs. Ternan said to Nelly with some annoyance. “I thought you had gone with your sisters.” She then remembered herself. “Mr. Dickens. How do you do. So kind of you…”

“I didn't know where they were, Mother,” Nelly replied over top of Mrs. Ternan's belated niceties.

“It's my fault, Mrs. Ternan,” Mr. Dickens said, advancing to take her hand. “I sent her sisters off to the High Street to fetch us a picnic before Miss Ellen had appeared. You must forgive me; in my eagerness to depart on our excursion, I decided we should not waste any time.”

Nelly felt caught out and wondered why he hadn't told her Fanny and Maria were off shopping but supposed she hadn't actually asked him.

“Well, no harm done,” said Mrs. Ternan, reclaiming her composure. “Mr. and Mrs. Eliot have agreed to accompany us.”

“Have they? How kind of them,” Mr. Dickens replied.

“Very kind. Mr. Eliot knows the environs well and has suggested the best route to be taken to reach Conisbrough Castle.”

“He will prove invaluable then. What a good thing that I have rented two carriages.”

After some discussion, it was agreed that Mrs. Eliot would join Mr. Dickens, Nelly and Maria in one barouche while Mrs. Ternan and Fanny would sit with Mr. Eliot in the other. Nelly felt badly for Fanny that she was not to share the honour of the famous writer's company at such close quarters as her younger sisters, but she supposed her mother, who had been sent into a flurry of calculations and preparations by the suggestion of a drive into the country, was right and that it would not
have been proper for the three girls to ride unaccompanied with Mr. Dickens. It was an impression confirmed when Mr. Eliot winked broadly at Mr. Dickens as he helped his wife up, saying, “You're a lucky devil, Dickens.” At first, she thought he was jokingly boasting about the company of his own wife whose arm he was holding as he said these words, but then, to her shame, Nelly saw him nod knowingly in her own direction.

It was not that such a disagreeable remark shocked her; the theatres were filled with gentlemen who presumed and her mother was filled with useful advice about how best to deflect their little remarks or their unwelcome glances, but it did surprise her in Mr. Eliot, who had seemed so deferential to Mr. Dickens the previous evening. Now he all but elbowed him in the ribs as though the two men were old friends out on the town. Mrs. Eliot laughed raucously. Nelly blushed for them both, but as their carriage moved forward, Mr. Dickens talked so amiably about the Yorkshire countryside and so knowledgeably about the history of the ruined castle they were about to visit that the awkward moment quickly passed.

Two hours later, she found herself edging her way up the narrow spiral staircase of the castle's keep, glad she had worn stout shoes for the outing. Sir Walter Scott had set some of the action of
Ivanhoe
at Conisbrough and
Mr. Dickens was delighted by the literary connection. After they had picnicked on the grounds beneath the castle with its huge cylindrical keep looming over them, Mr. Dickens had led the party up the earthworks that would have once formed the castle's moat and into the ruins proper, recreating for them as they walked the miraculous appearance of Aethelstane of “Coningsburgh” at his own funeral. Mr. Dickens fairly pranced about from crumbling wall to ruined tower, calling on them to imagine what the place must have looked like in the twelfth century, its mighty portcullis opening to receive the funeral procession of solemn knights and weeping ladies who believed the heir to the Saxon throne had died in battle.

However, once they arrived at the entrance to the keep and looked inside, their eyes adjusting to an interior lit only by the occasional shaft of sunlight coming through narrow slits in its walls, the party was divided.

“I am not going up that,” Mrs. Eliot declared frankly as she peered disapprovingly at the steep staircase of worn steps and missing stones.

“Looks unsafe,” agreed her husband.

“But just imagine the view if you did manage it,” Mr. Dickens encouraged.

In the end, Mrs. Ternan reluctantly agreed that she and the Eliots would stay below while Mr. Dickens accompanied Nelly and her sisters, who were all eager to try the stairs. So, they departed with a reassuring promise they would turn back if it became dangerous.

They climbed a piece, what felt like a storey if not two, but it was hard to tell on the narrow spiral and the going was slow. They picked their way gingerly up each step with Mr. Dickens taking the lead, urging them on and warning the sisters of any rough footing ahead. Eventually, they emerged in a large chamber with the remains of a huge stone hearth, which he knowingly declared to have been the great hall. Peering out its few narrow windows, they could catch tantalizing glimpses of the surrounding countryside, but when they approached the next flight of stairs hoping to go higher for yet better views, they found the first steps had entirely crumbled away. Mr. Dickens nimbly scrambled up the remains, all but hoisting himself up the tight walls of the staircase to reach a step that was intact. From there he peered up and around, promising, “It gets better from here. I can give you each a hand up.”

Maria demurred and hung back while Nelly stepped forward. In the middle of the three, Fanny put out a hand to restrain her younger sister but by the time she did so, Nelly had caught Mr. Dickens' hand and, despite her long skirt, vaulted herself up to where he stood.

“Nelly…” Fanny protested, but Mr. Dickens overrode her, saying, “Nothing to fear; we will just see how far we can climb. We'll stop if there are any more gaps.” And with that Nelly and Mr. Dickens disappeared from sight.

They could not, it turned out, go far; within another turn of the staircase, they found its roof had fallen in
and they were facing an insurmountable wall of rubble. They turned and picked their way back into the room where Maria and Fanny were waiting, eager to get out of the cold castle and back downstairs into the September sunshine.

As her sisters pushed on, Mr. Dickens, so bold in climbing up the stairs, now hung back, taking the steps very slowly and continually turning back to Nelly, who was following him, to offer his hand.

“Careful,” he said. “Down is always more tricky than up.”

Soon, Fanny and Maria were out of sight around the next turn and Mr. Dickens stopped altogether. He just stood there for a moment, then he took a big breath and turned back to her.

“Nelly,” he said emphatically, as though reassuring himself he had got the name right. “…I hope I may call you Nelly.”

“Of course, Mr. Dickens.”

“And you must call me Charles.”

“I couldn't possibly, Mr. Dickens.”

“Why not?”

“It would not be right.”

“Pray, what could possibly be wrong if I have invited you to call me thus?” He sounded a trifle put out and Nelly hurried to explain her thoughts, although she found it odd to be having such a conversation in the confines of the castle's crumbling staircase. “You are too great a man for
me to take such a liberty, Mr. Dickens. It would be too familiar of me.”

“Nonsense. I want you to think of me as a friend, some intimate with whom you may dispense with unnecessary formalities.”

Nelly found her heart beating a little faster at the notion that such a man as this should take such a friendly tone with her and thought hard how to respond correctly: “I would be honoured to consider you thus,” she said. “My sisters and mother and I are a small family—I think you know my father died when I was just a girl—and your friendship would be a most welcome addition to our little circle.”

Mr. Dickens, for that is how she would continue to think of him for some time, looked slightly discomfited by that.

“I am so glad…” he said.

“I am sorry, I have been hasty in my enthusiasms. I did not wish to burden your friendship with my family with undue expectations.”

“No, no. Not at all, Nelly. It's just I had hoped…well, I am still a young man. This may sound odd to you, but inside I feel I am but a boy.”

In the gloom of the staircase, she looked at him in puzzlement: it was hard for her to see any boy in a man of his achievement and wealth, a writer known throughout the Empire, a father and husband who lived in some palace in London that could house his wife, his sister-in-law, his
many children and all the servants it must take to care for such a ménage. Such a personage seemed very far removed from both her meagre theatrical engagements and her youth. “A boy?” she repeated.

“A boy.” He looked at her fondly, and reaching up to her on the step behind him, he took her hand in his. “Your boy,” he said and leant toward her, craning his neck upwards to get his mouth level with hers.

Her dawning horror must have shown plainly in her face for, before his lips reached any closer to hers, he stopped and recoiled with an expression of pain as shocked and pure as if she had just bit his hand.

To make matters worse, someone was coming. They could hear heavy breathing and the rustle of skirts from below, and Mrs. Ternan's head now appeared in view as she struggled her way up the stairs. Evidentially she was not best pleased with how far behind her sisters Nelly had fallen. As she saw the pair above her, she stopped only long enough to catch her breath before saying pointedly, “I hope there is no misunderstanding, Mr. Dickens.”

“None at all. None at all,” he said as he turned from Nelly to resume his descent, but his face remained dark.

On the way home, Fanny took her turn sitting with Mrs. Eliot and Mr. Dickens while Nelly and Maria rode back to town with her mother and Mr. Eliot in silence. By the time they reached their lodgings, it was the hour to change and get ready for their evening's performances, for they still had several nights to run in their Doncaster
engagement. At their door, Mrs. Ternan, as if to compensate for any lack of civility shown by their earlier encounter, thanked Mr. Dickens most warmly for his generosity in planning their outing and, not wishing to presume he would be attending the theatre again that night, asked whether he would be staying in Doncaster much longer before he returned to London.

“Not long,” he replied. “I'm for the overnight train.”