The Poets' Wives

by David Park

  There’s something I’ve never told William about because the memory causes me shame but although I don’t know why, it too demands its time and will not be denied even though it happened a lifetime away when I was a child in Battersea. It concerns a traveller who came to the district at intervals and it was said that he was the seventh son of a seventh son and that he had healing hands. He travelled in a covered wagon that served as his home and in it he carried all manner of goods for sale – cloths and beads of coloured glass, little mirrors and purses, bottles of perfume and medicine that he claimed could cure all sorts of maladies. He’d take the covering off the wagon and set up his stall on the green opposite the tavern and at night he’d sing and tell stories for the price of a drink. And he knew how to play a crowd better than any preacher or those who stand for election and he could make them laugh or cry with equal ease. There were those too who were ready to claim that by the laying on of his hands or by taking some of his medicine they had been miraculously cured of some illness so it was said abroad that Mary Clark had conceived a child after many years of barrenness and that Henry Smith had been healed of the ague. It is also true that in the fullness of time there would be those who whispered that Mary’s child bore a singular resemblance to the traveller rather than her husband.

  In a place where nothing much happened his arrival was welcomed and he had a handsome charm for all the women and friendly good humour for the men and was able to tell them stories of foreign countries and their strange customs. He wore a leather waistcoat and a spotted handkerchief at his throat and in his swarthy skin there was much of the gypsy about him. Although many sneered he claimed he could tell fortunes and at night a succession of women made the journey to his wagon to have theirs told. My own mother went secretly, instructing me to tell our father that she was gone on a message to her sister if he enquired about her absence. When she returned she was breathless and on my persistent questioning claimed he knew everything about her and told her things about her situation that none without a special gift could possibly have known. But when I asked her what had been foretold she grew flustered and said she couldn’t share it with me or anyone and I wasn’t to ask. And she’d bought a little cloth purse embroidered with coloured beads and so pretty I always desired it and when possible I liked to touch it and think it mine.

  As a girl I suffered from cramps and sore pains beyond what might be expected when it was my time and I was always frightened that something terrible would happen to me and that the bleeding would never stop. None of the old remedies seemed to bring any relief and it was one summer when everyone worked the long hours of the day to bring in the harvest that I fainted and had to be carried home on my father’s shoulder and put to bed. We told my father it was just the heat but my mother knew better and as she pressed the damp cloth to my brow she asked me if I wanted to try a cure from the traveller. And somehow I hoped that from such an encounter I too might get a pretty purse. I was no more than thirteen or fourteen then and foolish in my thinking. When I agreed my mother told me that it must be my secret because my father would not approve the cost and had expressed no faith in what he called foreign scamps.

  That night my mother told him she was taking me to her older sister’s house who had girls of her own and would know what was needed and we left him sitting drinking in the evening sun after his long day’s labour. When we got to where the wagon was settled for the night under a hedgerow flecked with white blossom and beside a bank where foxgloves lolled in thick swathes, rabbits scattered at our approach. The covering was up and at our call there were whisperings and then a sudden hush for silence before we heard his voice asking what was wanted and when my mother explained, also in a whisper that I couldn’t hear, he said we must return in an hour but that I must come alone.

  My mother asked me if I was willing and in truth thinking of nothing more than I might gain one of the purses or have my fortune told I said I was and so when the time was up I stood before the wagon once more. He let me wait there for a few moments then opened the flap and helped me inside. I was struck by an intense curiosity about how he could live in this little space with not much more than a straw-filled pallet and pillow along one side of the cart and a chest that I assumed contained all his possessions and wares along the other. He beckoned me to sit on a stool and although not tall my head was not far off touching the canvas canopy. He had an oil lamp but the summer’s evening had no need of it yet and behind his head hung a mirror and a ring of silk scarves.

  The first thing he asked me was my name and the second if I had the money. As I gave it to him my fingers touched his hand briefly. Then he told me I had a pretty name and a pretty face and he asked me my age and when I told him he said why I was almost a woman and no longer a child. Then he talked of how I must trust him for the cure to work and if I didn’t trust him or questioned him then I could never be made well. And when he asked me did I understand I nodded, my eyes all the time looking at the chest where I guessed he kept the purses and wondering if the few coins I had would be enough to buy one.

  Abomination to use a child so and I have often prayed that he will find his just reward either in this life or the next. And I see him now standing so close to me that there is less than an arm’s length between us and I stare into the darkness of his eyes and hear him say he must touch where needs healed, feel the breath of his speech on my face. Then he places his hand where none has ever been and when I flinch then squirm away he tells me that I must trust him if I am to be made well and his other hand touches my hair and I am suddenly frightened that he will grab it tight and hold me there so I stand motionless and shamed until a few moments later both his hands drop away and he smiles at me and tells me that I have the cure. I am shaking a little but when he tells me to go I show him the coins and ask if I have enough to buy one of his purses but he only smiles and shakes his head and I rush away as quickly as I can and find a place to cry where no one will see.

  I have never told William of my shame and even then I said nothing to my mother or anyone else. The shame is my secret but there are times when I think that Will sees and knows everything that has ever happened to me and there are times also when his words salve the pain as I recite over the bitter memory,

  Cruelty has a Human Heart

  And Jealousy a Human Face

  Terror, the Human Form Divine

  And Secrecy, the Human Dress

  The Human Dress, is forged Iron

  The Human Form, a fiery Forge.

  The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d

  The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

  What evil hunger the traveller’s heart sought to satisfy through the rest of his life I shall never know but we never saw him after that summer. The village gossip said some cuckolded husband had sworn death to him if he ever showed his face again but I cannot say if this is true or merely tittle-tattle. What I do know is that time and God’s providence cured me.

  And I want to tell William that these might do so again God willing but I am unwilling to hurt his tender care so that now in my old age I submit myself to this strange treatment that his friend Dr Birch has developed and my rheumatism is to be helped by electricity, something that I don’t fully understand but that William avows his confidence in and I have no wish to be ungrateful for their ministry to me. We go to his medical rooms that are full of strange items and machines such as I have never seen before or since and William takes a deep interest in everything, and then the doctor, who is small and bird-like but kindly in his manner, tells me that there is nothing to fear and that I shall come to no harm. There are jars and cylinders, a glass-mounted object with a wooden handle to the end of which a brass ball and wooden point are fitted. I am placed in what he calls the insulated chair and then he applies the ball of the glass-mounted object that has been connected to what he names as the prime conductor by a wire to the parts of my body that are afflicted by the pains, and then as I gasp there is a stream of electric sparks and Dr Birch asks
me to trust him as he applies the brass ball to my spine. He tells me that passing these gentle shocks through my body will serve to free it of its malignancies and William comes and stands close to me but at the doctor’s orders does not touch me and I feel no pain only a curious creeping sensation and the sparks still flicker across my eyes even after they have faded into nothingness. I think it helps and I tell William so but mostly because I don’t want to disappoint him and as we walk home he talks of the sparks and there is an excitement in his voice and I think in truth he would like to experience the sensation. Then as we pass some street-sellers, their wares spread out under the shelter of arches, on impulse I make him stop and I buy a little purse all embroidered and shiny with beaded glass.

  What have we to fear in death, William is always saying, when it is nothing more than walking from one room to the next and his words make me remember the death of his younger brother Robert. For fourteen days and nights in the exercise of the utmost faithfulness William sat at his brother’s bedside and ministered to him both in body and spirit. At the final moments William saw his beloved brother’s spirit departing his body and ascending skywards with a joyous clapping of hands to be with Christ. Afterwards William fell into a deep slumber and slept for three days and nights.

  When it is our appointed time he tells me we must also rejoice but I am fearful when I think of him being called before me. And so I do not like this life mask that Deville asks to make because although he calls it a life mask I know that he’s thinking of preserving Will’s image in anticipation of his death. So Will sits with his face covered in wet plaster until it hardens and two straws are the only means by which he breathes. It becomes increasingly hot and unpleasant and when in the fullness of time it is removed the plaster pulls out some of his hair. I am not much in favour of the final head – it makes Will look unnaturally stern and because his eyes are closed it shows none of the light that burns there and the tight press of his lips transport him into the realms of unresurrected death. Afterwards I bathe his face with warm water until it soothes away the mottled redness but even when he smiles at me I think of the mask with its closed eyes and then when I shiver a little turn away so that he doesn’t see.

  And this is also the shiver of what must inevitably come as creeping up silently like a hunter there arrive the years when time’s hand begins to rest more heavily on him and wound with longer periods of illness. Then in the knowledge that his race is almost run he gives himself to his final watercolour illustrations of Dante with renewed vigour and concentration and the colours are as bright as anything his hand has ever made. And I give him back his own words and tell him that everything he has created from the world of the spirit will live long after he has gone and that pleases him. He has reached three score and ten, the allotted span, and we are married almost forty-five years. So many years; the days rush in against each other until it feels a lifetime is but a single day shaded in a host of different colours.

  I think of it all now in this my final house – sometimes I get confused about the houses and what took place under which roof. I do not think of it as a home but somewhere I must wait and hold myself in readiness. This is not a house he ever lived in so at first I worried that he wouldn’t be able to find me but he is surely guided by love and there is scarcely a day when he doesn’t come and then it feels like all the homes we shared and everything in the past is somehow here in this one place. The pages of two lives that are one life and sometimes I am that young bride again in Battersea with flowers in her hair and sometimes I am the learner of words stepping into what seemed like a foreign country that I thought was forever barred to me but which opens itself until I step into its open garden. I like to think that it is the garden of love in which I have lived and while all things wither and fade, my hair brittle and grey, my body shrivelled, my heart is able to sing that there is no diminishing of love, no fading of the light.

  He still ventures forth as best he can and continues to draw and work with all the strength he can muster and I watch him and see that what burns there is untouched by age and ill-health. There is a miracle in that and it makes me think of Moses seeing the burning bush and there are times when I think I too stand in a holy place. It is the world’s loss that they do not see what I see and a prophet is always without honour in his own country. I try not to think of the hardships that accompanied all our days, how many times we had to scrape and struggle to live, but can’t stop recalling with both a smile and a little shame when as a young wife I once served him an empty plate for his evening meal and told him that while his head was in Paradise our bodies needed food and the wherewithal to buy it. I was angry then, telling him that none of the shopkeepers would accept payment in dreams and visions. And so for a while at least he turned his hand more fully to making the money we needed to live.

  His body grows ever weaker and he has to take to his bed but continues to work. These are dark days to recall and the colours I paint them are muted with sadness. I am increasingly filled with a dread of him leaving me, the selfish thought leading me into a fearful confusion about how I shall be able to live the first and every following day without him. He likes me still to read to him and sometimes I think he feels a pride in it as if I am his best pupil. And sometimes too I sing a little and all the old agitations and furies seem to have worn away from him so what is left is a calm, the still small voice of holiness.

  On the final Sunday evening, the weather mild and the city itself as if becalmed into a final rest before the returning world of labour, he continues propped up in bed to work on the Dante drawings. When I ask him how he is he speaks of being ‘very weak but not in spirit and life, not in the real man’ and he smiles and reminds me again of the imagination which ‘liveth for ever’. I look into his eyes and see the light flicker and am afraid, think of turning away because it is more than I can bear, but then he stops his work, all the brightness flooding back, and says, ‘Stay, Kate, keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me.’ He draws me as best his trembling hand can manage and it moves and quickens my heart more than anything else to know that I am his final image and as he works he tells me we shall never be parted and when he’s finished he holds my hand and tells me not to cry because soon he will throw off all the fetters and cares of this world that is not our true home and exchange it for the gardens of paradise. His voice holds no fear even though it slips slowly into a whisper so I have to lean in close to hear him and as I do so he lays his hand briefly on my cheek before it falls away again and then he is gone into glory.

  I am a ghost to myself, barely existing at first, moving through the house as if I have no corporeal presence and without need for food or sleep. Sometimes I get up in the night and sit at his table and wait for him to come and start his work but there is only his empty chair and the unused press. Soon he will tell me to sell everything, give me instructions on what I must do with all that remains, but during these first days there is only a solitary emptiness that nothing seems able to end. I feel shut out from him just like all those years ago when I held his letters I couldn’t read and just as I felt that time by the sea in Felpham when he had his visions. I try to find comfort in telling myself that he will find our lost child and together at last they are waiting for me to join them. But in truth there is nothing that can salve the sorrow that feels as if it will crush what is left of me so that I breathe and move only through what feels mechanical.

  Sometimes I spread what remains of William’s pictures carefully on the floor under the window and look at them even more closely than ever and there are so many questions that I regret not asking. I like too when the sun streams through the window and makes the colours freshly new but not even the light can reveal the full mysteries of these worlds and yet I have to believe that in time all will be known to me and the dark glass through which I view them now will be removed for ever, my immortal eyes open, and I shall see the eternal world in the way he saw it. I know that
only in that moment shall I stand beside him as his equal.

  At intervals there are those who arrive to buy his work and although reluctant and wanting often to say they should have come when he was living I have been told by William that I am to sell everything but when they ask me the price I tell them they must return in a day or so after I have had a chance to consult with Mr Blake. And if there are those amongst them whose manner or character are not to my pleasing I refuse their money. And the sketches he did of me are not to be bought for any price but are destined to stay close to me as long as I breathe.

  I stand and watch the light illuminate all the holy images carefully spread on the floor and for a moment the world seems to fall silent and the noise from the street below is stifled and borne away to some distant place. Then by the rustle of some watching angel’s gossamer wings the paintings stir a little and raise themselves as if touched by celestial hand and I hear the still small voice of the Divine and everything is burnished brighter than earthly colours could ever fashion. The whole world turns silently and there is nothing but my breathing and then to shield themselves from the bright intensity of the colours my eyes blink and in that moment the noise of the street flows back into the room and all is changed once more.

  The first time when he returns to me is when I am at my lowest and he comes one morning without warning, as if made from particles of light, his black suit shining, and he takes his seat once more as if he has returned from one of his walks through the city’s streets. I blink and wonder if I am still in some dream but when I open my eyes he is there and the light from the window shines both around and through him and when he speaks his voice is gentle and full of love. He tells me I must be patient and that soon he will come and take me home. But as he will do so many times in the future he answers my impatient questioning by telling me that it must be in the fullness of time when everything is ordered and ready.