B07BDJY6Y9, page 18
‘How long do you think we’ll be down here for?’ I ask, but Norma just shrugs and says, ‘Until the Lord’s done ragin’.’
I sit on a box of old magazines, with my laptop on my knees, and work on my conclusion. Rome, I write, was exceptional. If anyone wondered, ‘Why Rome?’ at the beginning of my thesis, I am certain that, by the end, I’ve answered the question. There was nowhere else like it in the nineteenth century, no comparable meeting point where ideas and inspiration could move so freely between people of different nationalities, genders and sexualities. When Elizabeth Gaskell wrote that it was the ‘tip-top point’ of her life, it was because, in those three months she spent in Rome, she was free to communicate, to express herself as an artist and to receive ideas from others in a way that was impossible anywhere else.
I do not, in my thesis, write about love. I let it sit below the surface, as it did in the lives of my subjects, a heartbeat.
Hours later, water has begun to seep through the ceiling on the far side of the space. I point this out to Norma, who nods and says, ‘Just so long as it’s water coming down, and not the house going up, we’re all right.’ Just then, the pain in my right side that began in LA returns, a twisting, wrenching sharpness, and I have to bend over my knees and take deep breaths to stop myself from yelling. I pant through it, waiting for it to pass, and trying to distract myself by reading and re-reading the words I’ve just written. Norma notices me crouching and staring, bemused, at my computer screen, and says, ‘You’ll make yourself crazy, tapping away at that damn machine all day. You should look at something else for a change.’ I’m about to gasp a reply when, as suddenly as the pain came on, it subsides.
I feel as though I have woken up. I am disoriented. The chickens have settled, huddled together near my feet; in the corner of the room, water is still dripping from the ceiling, amassing in a black puddle. I turn to my computer. I look at thesis.docx, and discover that I have finished. I have reached the end. It brings me up short.
When Gaskell dreamed of America, did it look like Rome, as is given in A. V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard’s The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell (1997), or like home, as in Jane Whitehill’s Letters of Mrs. Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton (1932)? This divergence of readings of the same word is symptomatic of the link between the three places evoked here and in Gaskell’s other writing: Rome was home, and America, defined by her relationship with Charles Eliot Norton, was therefore like both Rome, and home. Rome was where Gaskell was free to encounter new art, and other artists, to forge her own relationships and to tell her own stories. It was a city through which she saw new worlds.
Norma scatters grain on the floor at her feet, and the chickens strut towards her, clucking. The cursor blinks after the final word, ‘worlds’, on my screen. Below it, the word-count is bulging; I’ve reached the limit. There’s still a strange feeling in my side where the pain was, a dull echo, but for now, all I can think is that I’m finished. The Americans Mrs Gaskell met in Rome have been researched, their works and ideas recorded. My own American, who is back in Boston, has been visited, kissed and given up. It is time for me to go home.
1878
William’s Party
Mr William Wetmore Story decided to throw a party. It had been years since he’d last done so, since his apartment at the Palazzo Barberini had been noisy with the voices of guests, and with music, and with laughter. He had been back to America over the summer, accompanied by his son Waldo, to give a series of lectures on the subject ‘What is the Use of Art?’. He had toured town halls, artists’ institutes, small cities, had met Americans of every description – educated, uneducated, rich, poor, curious, incurious – and all of them had seemed foreign to him, citizens of a country that was no longer his own. He did not recognize America, with its railways and factories and strange smells. Even the voices seemed different, the accents more distinctive. Waldo was even more lost than he, staring bemusedly at the place that was, purportedly, his homeland. He was twenty-three years old and had never lived there. Father and son were both strangers in America.
When they reached Rome, he felt a surging joy to be home, to be surrounded once again by people he loved, who understood him, amongst whom he had lived for thirty years. So, he began to plan a party. That autumn he would celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of his arrival in the city. He would gather his old friends together again. Robert Browning was back in Italy for the first time in seventeen years; he had left when his wife died, and William had seen him in London sometimes, but never, since then, in Rome. Mr Gibson was dead now. Mr Powers was dead. Mr Hawthorne, too. Miss Hosmer was still there, more eccentric than ever, though Miss Stebbins had run off to America with Miss Cushman, and Miss Cushman had died of pneumonia. Miss Hosmer was less sprightly, more reserved, and had turned her attention away from art and towards mechanical invention: she was working on a perpetual motion machine and had patented several designs. She had collected another member to what William had taken to calling her ‘Harem (scarem)’ of lady sculptors, a Miss Edmonia Lewis, who worked at her marble harder than anyone.
He had been sour, bad company to his artist friends in recent years. He had watched them applaud each other and become famous, had read profiles of them in journals, and couldn’t help feeling embittered. It was true that his talents, too, had been recognized, but it felt as though the attention he received was too little, too late, considering the years he had worked, the contribution he had made. It did not please him the way he had thought it would, the way it seemed to please those around him. He had written all those books of poetry. He had created all those statues, which clustered in his studio like a theatre audience awaiting curtain-up. And yet all people wanted to see or talk about was his Cleopatra, because that was the statue Hawthorne had described in The Marble Faun. Was it really true that his greatest claim to fame would be his role in that blasted novel? Was he, William Story, to be remembered more for Hawthorne’s work than his own? He had been irritable and resentful, even to Robert; he had published a snide poem in the Atlantic, complaining of ill-treatment by his critics and peers, venting his disillusionment.
Fame seemed, when out of reach, how sweet and grand!
How worthless, now I grasp it in my hand!
Give me the old enthusiasms back,
Give me the ardent longings that I lack, –
The glorious dreams that fooled me in my youth,
The sweet mirage that lured me on its track, –
And take away the bitter, barren truth.
What matters now the lauding of your lips,
What matters now the laurel wreath you plait
For these bald brows, for these gray hairs? It slips
Over my eyes and helps to hide my tears.
I am too old for joys – almost for fears.
Now, restored in the Palazzo Barberini after his American tour, he saw that it had been wrong of him. His friends had always looked to him for fun, for gaiety, for the continuity of dear old Rome the way they had always known it. He should not, now, let them down. It was not their fault that he was miserable. It was not their fault that they were praised more warmly than he was by the press, that they were happier. He would throw a party, and everyone would come, and he would be at the centre of everything again.
The courtyard of the Palazzo Barberini was glowing; lamps lined the driveway and encircled the fountain. On each stone step that led to the Storys’ apartment was a candle, flickering, illuminating separate spheres of ancient stone on the way up. Inside, William’s daughter, Edith, was sitting near the door, bouncing her baby on her knee, ready to greet guests. William himself roamed uneasily from room to room, checking everything was in order, the piano tuned, the wine ready, his most wellloved statues correctly positioned to receive the best light, until Emelyn snapped at him to sit down and let her worry about it. He went then to the window, and watched the first carriage arrive; young friends of Waldo emerged, their faces golden in the lamplight, laughing and excited as they crossed the courtyard to the staircase. Moments later he heard them enter the apartment, Edith’s welcome, Waldo’s greeting, the noises of general cheer, of a party beginning. More carriages were drawing up; there was a line of them at the gates, and in the parlour somebody began to play the piano. He felt something lift from his chest, a kind of giddiness beginning in his groin, his stomach, and he began to beam.
As the rooms filled and the volume of their combined conversations rose, William moved between circles, sampling and moving on, lifting titbits from one to drop into another. There were murmurings about Auguste Rodin, a French sculptor who had been in Italy a few years before, but was now in Paris, showing a work entitled The Age of Bronze.
‘There is something new in it,’ Miss Lewis said. ‘It is so entirely true to life, and yet, unlike anything ever seen before.’
‘It’s a low type of art,’ countered William, who had seen a photograph of the statue in the newspaper. ‘The fellow has talent, but will never come to much unless he elevates his mind. There is so little to be gained in mere expressiveness. He wants a nobler subject.’
Another group was discussing a new story by Henry James entitled Daisy Miller, which had appeared that summer in the Cornhill Magazine.
‘It is not so brilliant as Roderick Hudson,’ said a young woman, a friend of Edith. ‘I did not see that she really had to die at the end.’
‘Oh, she absolutely had to die,’ said Edith, looking wry. ‘We could not possibly allow such an improper young lady to go unpunished.’
‘For goodness’ sake, you have both spoiled the ending,’ said Miss Hosmer. ‘I have only just reached the part where they get to Rome.’ She looked away for a moment, and her expression softened. ‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘Mr Browning has come.’ And there, on the other side of the room, was William’s old friend, aged, but not beyond recognition, striding towards them and reaching out a hand to shake his.
‘Here you are,’ said Robert. ‘Here you still are.’
‘Here we still are,’ said William. ‘All of us who are left.’
Miss Hosmer took Robert’s hand and murmured, ‘Ah, I’ve missed this ugly paw,’ and then the three of them stood, looking about them, saying nothing for a long while.
William thought of breaking their silence with something along the lines of, ‘It’s just like old times,’ but in truth it was not like the old times. There were too many absent friends, too many who had left or died, and they who remained were too old to dance, or to put on the plays they once had performed. The younger generation was singing now.
When the last guest had left, William stared at the apartment, empty, silent, Emelyn dozing in a chair by the fire. Edith and her husband had already gone to bed. Waldo was smoking at the window, looking down at the courtyard where the servants were extinguishing lamps. The fountain folded over and over itself, glittering until the last light went out.
‘Did you have a good time, Father?’ said Waldo, turning.
Beside him, William looked out at the dark, ruined city, and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘For years and years,’ he said.
2016
Accoutrements of womanhood: three observations
One: An Engagement Ring
I see them on the tube, these women. My eyes slide to the fourth fingers of their left hands, where diamonds sit against their skin, leering at me as they catch the light. I try to imagine their lives, which seem, from the safe distance of the other side of the carriage, somehow defined by this thing they have decided to do. I know nothing else about them. They are going to get married. That is all. They are the heroines of their own love stories. Nothing has gone wrong for them yet.
Depending on my mood, my own unchosen, undecorated hands seem either childish and embarrassing, or brave, alternative, independent, as I fold and unfold them in my lap.
Two: A Baby on Board
When the woman has collected not only her engagement ring, but also, next level up, the secondary gold band, she is ready to have a ‘Baby on Board’ badge pinned to the lapel of her coat. For this, she is either awarded a seat on the tube, or a wall of eyes turned the other way, pretending not to have noticed her.
Even more than I stare at diamond rings, I stare at the rounded stomachs of pregnant women.
I have reached a state of more-or-less relaxed ambivalence about marriage. I am embarrassed and annoyed by its excesses and its smugness, envious of its securities. But children, the possibility, pros and cons of them, preoccupy me. If Max and I had stuck to our original timeline, we’d be living together in the same country and the idea of creating a new human would not seem as distant, outlandish, impossible, as it does to me now.
I am thirty. I am single. I am no longer heartbroken, but still, the idea of being with someone who is not Max feels impossible. The idea of being with someone who is Max is clearly impossible. I order an information pack from a sperm bank and when it arrives in the post, I leaf through it over a glass of wine and try to imagine what it would be like to have a child without the help of someone else.
I ask my mother about it. ‘Aren’t you worried that it will affect your writing?’ she says. ‘I’m not sure you’d be able to write, with a baby to care for.’
This does not seem positive, but it is also, I hope, not necessarily true. I turn to Louise for a second opinion. She is nine months pregnant, large, uncomfortable and very ready to discuss children with me. ‘Would you have the baby if you weren’t with Frank?’ I ask. ‘Would you have the baby by yourself?’
She pauses to think about it, stroking her stomach as though, like a crystal ball, it might reveal the answer. ‘You know, I really don’t think I would,’ she says after a while, and then, seeing that I am crestfallen, ‘but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Maybe it would be fine.’
Three: A Baby
On the day I am due to submit my completed Ph.D. thesis, the pain in my right side returns so intensely that I can’t move. I kneel on all fours on the floor and rock back and forth and breathe noisily as though I’m in labour. In a panic, I call Louise, who arrives with her newborn son, Zachary, in a sling and administers painkillers to me. Later, when I am calmer, she puts the baby next to the two bound copies of my thesis, takes a photo and sends it to Izra and Holly with the caption ‘some of the things we made this year’. Then she takes the thesis to the exams office at King’s on my behalf.
By the time she texts to reassure me that she got it in on time, the pain has vanished again. ‘I didn’t tell them I wasn’t you. I just handed it over with the paperwork. They said congratulations on finishing,’ she writes, ‘especially with a new baby.’
2016
Critic
Two months after Louise and Zach submitted my thesis on my behalf, and two weeks before my viva is due to take place, the pain in my right side returns yet again. There was a brief respite when things seemed to be getting better; I still needed to pee all the time, and my back had started aching, which I attributed to carrying an increasingly heavy Zach around, but at least the pain was gone. Then, one Saturday morning at 4 a.m., I wake myself up screaming.
I try to reposition myself in the bed, to find a way of lying that lessens the pain. I take paracetamol, and then ibuprofen, and then aspirin. Still, it feels as though something is breaking inside me, and I can’t keep myself from yelling with each exhale. I am back on the floor, rocking like a disturbed zoo animal, and when I call my parents to ask for advice, I have to explain what is going on in short bursts, between howls.
‘I think you need to go to hospital,’ my mother says, at which point it seems very obvious that I do. I call the out-of-hours doctor, who listens to my alternating whimperings and shrieks, and sends an ambulance.
I am still in my pyjamas, and in the half-hour before the paramedics arrive, I undertake what, in my current state, is a colossal challenge: I put on a bra. Every stage of this process is excruciating and I stop at several points to retch: lifting my top over my head to take it off; reaching up to my underwear drawer; sliding my arms through the straps; twisting my hands behind my back to hook the clasp. By the time my doorbell rings, I am half delirious with pain and have thrown up on my bedroom floor, but I am, triumphantly, wearing underwear.
I am strapped to a trolley and loaded into an ambulance, still yelling so loudly that my neighbours come to their windows and stare. My last glimpse of the street as the doors close behind me is of curious, craning faces. Once we set off, the paramedics give me small doses of morphine, which don’t stop the pain, but dim it for a few minutes at a time. We arrive at King’s College Hospital. A brief glimpse of the sky overhead as I’m wheeled inside. A corridor. Suddenly the paramedics aren’t here any more, and the painkillers have worn off, and I am yelling again, and someone says, ‘Who is dealing with this?’ A small white room. A nurse asking me what I’ve taken. I say I don’t know. I give her my arm and she swabs it with alcohol: cold, rough against my skin. A needle.
‘I’m giving you morphine, OK?’ she says.
‘A lot?’ I ask.
‘A lot,’ she says, and already I can feel it taking effect, wrapping itself around me like insulation. I can still feel the pain, but I am detached from it, far away from myself – from the self that is lying on the trolley in the white room, no longer yelling but whimpering and mumbling at the ceiling. I lose any sense of time, and instead I am content to exist in my morphine-dream, in which a person like me is in pain, a person for whom I have a great deal of sympathy, but who is separate and beyond my control.
