I, Ada

by Julia Gray

  ‘You are to leave this house immediately,’ she says.

  He gathers his books with the speed of a wounded soldier, horseless and fleeing from the site of a battle that has been lost. Mamma escorts him out, one hand flared like a claw at the small of his back, as though she wishes she could push him over and send him sprawling down the front steps. I melt into the library shadows as they pass, neither of them casting a glance in my direction.

  ‘James,’ I whisper.

  But it’s too late; he’s gone.

  All the feeling in my body has turned to liquid; it bubbles up in my blood, riddling me with rage and frustration and a kind of flat, dull sense that, once again, Mamma has won...

  Distantly, the front door slams; footsteps crunch; my banished tutor leaves Fordhook for the last time. My hands shrink into balls, my nails cutting into my palms, tears misting the corners of my vision.

  ‘Why must she always win?’ I say bitterly to the empty room. ‘It is as though she is my enemy, and not my mother.’

  I wait for her to come back, but she doesn’t. It is beginning to rain; slow, lardy drops are gliding sluggishly down the pane, making a mockery of my tears. Why hasn’t she come back? Rather aimlessly, I leave the library, ears alert. Passing the drawing room, I hear the Furies, murmuring in shocked whispers.

  ‘All this time, my dear – all this time, why, under our very noses!’

  ‘Come, Selina. He seemed such a nice young man—’

  ‘It was Ada who led him astray.’

  ‘Now, now, we cannot be sure of that...’

  ‘But do we know what actually happened?’

  ‘He says... the young man claims that nothing improper took place...’

  ‘Oh, I find that very hard to believe!’

  ‘Dearest Annabella is quite beside herself. She has gone to lie down, and we shan’t disturb her until morning.’

  It is so like Mamma, I think, as I beat a retreat towards the kitchens, to be rendered prostrate by her own victory. I can just imagine her, lying flat on the coverlet, demanding a tincture of something, a cold compress. What about my feelings? Who is going to minister to me, in my moment of defeat? I am light-headed with self-pity. And rage. Without even really noticing the direction of my steps, I make for the boot room, where I put on my outer garments, my walking boots, and suddenly I am outside, in the rain, pulling my hood up over my head. I stride down the driveway, wanting to plant my footsteps in the exact spaces where James stepped not so very long ago, but the ground is slithery with mud. Where I am going? I think I decided the moment she sent my tutor away, although I didn’t know it at the time.

  Didn’t I promise myself that where he went, I would follow? I meant it. I will follow him unto the ends of time, or failing that, to his house. The only slight problem being that I am not entirely sure where he lives. A walk across the fields, he said, but in which direction? Scanning my memory for snatches of half-forgotten conversations, I walk on. At the end of the lane is a forked path; where I would turn left for the parish church and Ealing Grove, I turn right, find a gate – I am sure that this is the way; I am sure he described it so – and climb over it, and find myself in a barren field. There is a path – well, more of a nettle-strewn track; I keep slipping on the ground, and realise that I am wearing someone else’s boots. A hollow marble-roll of thunder; the rain doubles. I can feel seams of droplets along my eyelashes. I start to wonder if I should turn back; but I don’t want to, for what is there to go home to? Furies, and lessons and disappointment? No: better to drown in this joyless field, on my own terms, than be subjected to a life that I no longer want to lead.

  I cast myself as the heroine of my own tragic romance. As I trudge along the path, I can almost see the words unfolding on the page before me.

  Ada, who had suffered most unjustly at the hands of the Furies – and, of course, her own mother too – was finally unable to bear the life that they had so painstakingly laid out for her. The storm was bitter; the rain sliced through the heavens like butter knives, and yet she felt nothing but freedom as she forged a path towards the humble house where her lover lived...

  Carried away by my own composition, I walk smack into a gatepost, and let out a squeal of surprise. Looking about, I see houses: a small cluster of them, painted pale colours, with thatched roofs. There’s no one about, but by now it is raining so much that I wouldn’t expect to see anyone outside.

  The Old Rectory. That’s it: that’s James’ house; I’m sure of it. Rain-drenched, riddled with so many emotions that they have all, by now, dissolved into one, I stand rather confusedly outside the door. An iron bell dangles from the lintel. I look up at it, hesitate, and then, instead, take hold of the door-knocker. But just as I’m about to knock on the door – a single tentative tap of brass – the door swings open and a woman looks out.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she says.

  I open my mouth, incapable of speech, furious with myself for not utilising my slippery cross-field tramp to fashion for myself something to say at the end of it.

  ‘But... you are Ada Byron,’ says the woman, and I realise that she is James’ mother.

  ‘Your hands are the same,’ I say, through chattering teeth. ‘You... you have the same hands.’

  ‘Come inside,’ says the woman, perhaps not understanding this. ‘Come into the warmth.’

  She draws me into a small room with a lit fire; the walls are crowded with oil paintings; a small harpsichord sits, loved-looking, in the corner. All at once I feel the pull of a home – not a rented mansion with a hundred uninhabited rooms – but a real, family home, where siblings share secrets at the end of a long day. Perhaps, I think, I can come and live here – at least until we are married. This woman looks as though she would make an excellent mother-in-law, and I shall be an exemplary daughter. They might not have very much money, but I shall be able to contribute plenty, I’m sure. If Mamma agrees to the marriage, that is. But at the thought of Mamma, the glass sphere of my daydream begins to acquire long fractures. She would never agree to the marriage. James Hopkins does not have a title; he has no land; he is not of my class... It will not matter that we love each other absolutely. She will not care.

  ‘Wait there, if you please,’ says the woman, motioning for me to make myself at ease, and disappears with a rustle of fabric. Not wanting to sit down, I stare into the fire, and then take in the colours of the walls, the furnishings, so that at least I will always be able to remember the house where James Hopkins lived.

  When the woman returns, she is accompanied by a tall man with dark hair, broad shoulders and James’ upturned nose. Behind them, with the abashed tread of a child caught stealing, is James himself. For a moment, he looks at me, and then he looks away, as though it is too painful to meet my gaze. And I realise that short of running away, eloping, there is really nothing that we can do, James and I.

  This entire affair has been a misadventure.

  ‘Miss Byron,’ says the tall man, who must be James’ father. ‘We must take you home.’

  Fordhook, Ealing

  April 1833

  Freedom. It’s something I think a good deal about. What makes a person free? What gives one person the right to exert any kind of direction over another? Why should a parent seek to control their own child with such overwhelming, unilateral dominance that the child’s every action is more or less predetermined? If they are acting out of love, out of genuine concern, does it make this control more justifiable?

  This is the question that I ask myself, as Mr Hopkins takes me back to Fordhook in a borrowed carriage. The rain thrums aggressively on the roof; as we sit in embarrassed silence, I can practically hear the man’s thoughts, as uncomfortable as too-tight boots. What happened between this young lady and my son? Who was the instigator? What, oh what, will Lady Byron have to say? Several times, he clears his throat, reaching for words that never come. Rounding a be
nd, we roll onto the flat plain of the hilltop; if it wasn’t raining so heavily, we’d be able to see the metropolis below the trees, busy with its machineries, its engines, quite disinterested in whatever small, inconsequential drama might be taking place above it.

  ‘We are good people, you know,’ says Mr Hopkins, breaking the silence. His voice is very different to his son’s – coarser, lower. ‘We don’t want any scandal.’

  At this, I look at him, levelling my gaze to his. ‘Are you thinking about my father?’ I say.

  The question seems to jolt him; he opens his mouth, dumbly, like a herring. ‘I’m thinking about everyone,’ he says.

  Part of me is angry. Two lovers have been forcibly separated, and all this man can think about is family reputation. Does he have no regard for the happiness of his own son? Could he and his wife not have supported our being together – rejoiced in it, even – rather than dispatching me back to Fordhook like a parcel that must post-haste be returned to its sender? Do they care nothing for the romance of our situation?

  ‘I would have gladly married him,’ I say.

  ‘That’s as may be, Miss Byron,’ he replies.

  A vision swims into my imagination: we stand, James and I, in the Fordhook drawing room, before some designated officiant. We are demure; we are elated; our hands are, perhaps, just touching as we prepare to murmur our vows. Then the vision darkens and changes: the Fordhook drawing room vanishes, and in its place some unknown chapel appears. James is there – a little older, his hair a little darker, but otherwise no different – but now it is someone else by his side. She is un-Ada – tall and fair, perhaps, with an expression on her face of soft satisfaction. She has never visited a shed at midnight, and never will.

  At the thought of James marrying someone else, a single tear wobbles down the side of my nose; I turn my face to the window, so that Hopkins Senior will not see it.

  I am not present at whatever conversation takes place between James’ father and Mamma upon my return to Fordhook. I can only imagine that it is brief and perfunctory. Perhaps the Furies hover at the fringes, lending support to Mamma; or perhaps they don’t. I am expecting to be summoned to my mother, but it is Mamma who comes to find me, later, in the garden. The rain has stopped, although droplets are still pattering irregularly from the trees, the only sound in an otherwise still space.

  ‘I blame myself, Ada, more than I can say,’ she begins.

  This startles me; whatever I was expecting (remonstrations, accusations, dire warnings of as-yet-unheeded consequences), it wasn’t this.

  ‘I have not been present enough,’ Mamma goes on. ‘I know that now. Even when you were a baby, you know... my own mother would tell me that I was going away too often, spending too much time in spa towns. She would tell me to come home, and I wanted to, Ada, but at the same time I just didn’t have much confidence in myself as a mother. Your grandmother and your nurses would do a better job than I would.’

  It isn’t like Mamma to admit fault. She indicates to me that she wishes to walk around the rose garden, and I – rather grudgingly – fall into step beside her. She goes on: ‘Perhaps, in my efforts to ensure that you received the same thorough education that I myself received, I placed too many restrictions on you. Too many governesses, too many lessons.’

  Thinking of the board that she made me lie on, unmoving, as a correction for inattention or poor work, I make a little sound at the back of my throat.

  ‘I should not have been surprised that you threw yourself into the arms of the first young man who took notice of you,’ says my mother. ‘I was your age once; I remember how it feels.’

  I doubt this.

  ‘In coming home willingly, I do believe that you have understood the error of your ways. Ada, I want you to know that I... I do forgive you.’

  The rose beds are rocky-looking and drenched; the rose bushes spike out like brittle webs at all sorts of angles. Briefly, I picture myself as a rose, thorns razored smooth, expertly pruned into submission. Then I cast the image aside; it is a dull one.

  ‘I believe that, if we all exercise great caution, no word will ever escape of this matter,’ says Mamma. She looks at me sideways. ‘You do understand, don’t you? No reference must ever be made to what has taken place with your tutor. I want no mention of him in your letters (certainly you will not be writing to him), and I shall make no mention of him in mine. If we can endeavour to forget his name entirely, so much the better.’

  We have walked around the entire perimeter of the rose garden, and are back where we started. ‘Well, Ada? And what do you have to say?’

  I wonder if she wants an apology; she sounds as though she does. And, in a way, I am sorry. What James and I did was wrong; there is no escaping the fact. If we had run away together, the outcry we’d have caused would have been barely imaginable. Especially given the fact that I am Byron’s daughter, and famous for it, whether I like it or not. But I am angry too, and the emotions serve to cancel one another out, as neat as a balanced equation. Mamma’s speech was a pretty one. But in making it she proved, once again, that what she really wants to do is to control me, and any stories that concern me, and any situations that involve me. For all that she claims to regret the amount of control she has exerted over me, the reasons underlying her actions are proof of the reverse.

  ‘I understand,’ I say at last, not very loudly.

  She pouts, as though she expected something better, something more. Then she walks back towards the house, stepping quickly, holding her skirts a few inches above the wet ground. I watch, loving her and hating her at the same time and almost equally. Above the house, the clouds have the swirly look of chilled milk, and I stare at them furiously, willing them to drift apart into cottony puffs. If I stare for long enough, pouring into my gaze every morsel of intensity that I possess, could I summon a rainbow? I wait a minute, and a minute more, but no rainbow appears. Mamma is now a tidy dark-clad figure in the distance.

  Another picture is growing in my mind: my father on his way to cross the Channel for the final time, the horses galloping so madly that it is all he can do to hold himself upright in the carriage. His creditors are at his heels. He leans back, eyes closed, exhausted by it all. He is not only escaping from those to whom he owes money. For a moment, he has a vision of my mother’s face: cold, drawn, effortlessly calculating... and he thinks to himself that he will soon be free of her and her infinite need for control. He laughs bitterly; his valet looks over, solicitous, but Byron doesn’t care to explain. Perhaps he thinks of me, his daughter – longingly, forlornly – before turning his thoughts once more to the journey ahead.

  Staring at my mother’s retreating form, I say under my breath: ‘I understand why my father left you.’

  Surrey Zoological Gardens,

  May 1833

  On another of her regular visits to Fordhook, Mary Montgomery sees that I am ill at heart and proposes an excursion to the newly-established Surrey Zoological Gardens.

  ‘It will take you out of yourself, Ada,’ she promises, as we begin the carriage journey, which will take the best part of an hour.

  I am interested to see the Zoological Gardens, a place I’ve never been, and know little about. I am also glad of Mary’s company. I do need to be taken out of myself; it is six weeks since James Hopkins was banished from my life, and I feel that I have retreated inside the bubble of my own thoughts, simmering with resentment and confusion. On the surface, I have shown a good deal of contrition, offering my heartfelt apologies to all involved – the Furies, and Nanny Briggs, and, of course, Mamma. I deceived them, and deceitful behaviour is shameful.

  I even allowed, last week, a physician friend of Mamma’s – Dr Combe – to examine my head. Dr Combe is a phrenologist, which is to say that he is devoted to the study of the appearance of the human skull. I sat perfectly still as he laid his hands on my head, allowing him to press the bumps and the bones,
the plains and hollows, feeling all the while – rather irrationally – that he was trying to get at my secrets with his probing fingers.

  The diagnosis the doctor gave Mamma was nothing I couldn’t have told her myself. ‘Ada is a young woman of unusual intelligence,’ he apparently said. ‘But she is very wilful.’

  I can’t imagine this came as a surprise.

  But in spite of my show of regret, I am still quite bereft, adrift with longing, unable to concentrate on any of my lessons. Every night I summon a memory of James’ face – the tilted nose, the burnt-butter hair – and each night I am saddened that the memory is growing fainter. After a few weeks, I am beginning to worry that my much-improved shorthand is the only thing that survives from the time I spent with James Hopkins.

  Heartbreak is not my only concern. Two days ago, Mamma announced in her rather abrupt manner that I am to be presented at Court. It was framed not as a request, but as a command. When I was younger, I used to confide in my cat, but there is only so much that cats can offer in return, and I do feel as though I could do with some advice. I resolve to ask Mary what she thinks, at some appropriate moment. The carriage travels over Vauxhall Bridge, and I watch the water of the Thames, entranced by it, green-grey, both busy and tranquil in the May morning light.

  ‘Just think how useful this place would be for the student of botany or zoology,’ says Mary, as we disembark at the entrance to the Zoological Gardens.

  I wasn’t, I confess, expecting such expanses of water – they cover an extraordinary portion of the gardens. I think at once of Lake Lucerne and Lake Geneva, mapping the memories of those places over the sight that is presently before me. There are more birds than I’ve ever seen before in one place – swans that glide across the glass surface of the water, stately as porcelain sugar-bowls; flamingos that stand one-legged in the shallows. We visit the elephant house – not, at present, home to any elephants, to my disappointment, but to a collection of wapiti deer – and the aviaries, where large birds of prey loom darkly in corners, ruffling feathers, while a flock of curassows (hailing, apparently, from South America), steals our attention for several minutes. There are trees from almost every part of the globe and each is labelled, to show where it originally came from. Mary tells me that a good many rare shrubs have recently been donated by the Duke of Devonshire; indeed, there is almost no square of land that is unadorned with some kind of plant.