Nina In Utopia

by Miranda Miller

  ‘My wife has been ill. Our guests are waiting for their fowl, my dear. It will be cold by the time you have finished your little flight of fancy. More sirloin, Mrs Humphreys, or would you prefer the fowl?’

  I carved and valiantly talked of the weather as I recommended the new potatoes, but Nina was beyond my control. She waved the carving knife and fork alarmingly as her eyes flashed like a demented diva.

  ‘My husband thinks I should not speak of these things. But why should we speak of vegetables?’

  Our guests, although plainly hungry, were not looking at their plates at all but staring at their hostess.

  ‘You are overwrought, my dear,’ I said in my best bedside voice. Then I muttered to Lucy, who stood at the sideboard beside me, ‘Get your mistress up to her bedroom and lock the door from the outside!’

  Lucy obediently sidled down the table but hesitated to disarm Nina of her carving weapons. As she approached Nina gave her a beatific and wholly inappropriate smile. ‘Dear Lucy! In this life you are only a servant. But there will come a day when there will be no more servants and masters, no division at all between men and women or rich and poor. All will dress alike and live in perfect freedom and our stuffy old customs and formalities will be buried with us.’

  The Reverend Humphreys caught a whiff of religion and asked distastefully, ‘Have you been vouchsafed some, ah, vision, Mrs Sanderson?’

  Nina turned to him rapturously. ‘Yes! It is only now I realize how blessed I have been. When my beloved child was taken from me and I was in the slough of despond I was comforted by a vision of a future London. You don’t believe me?’ She looked around at their incredulous faces.

  William gave a snort of laughter, disguised as a cough. Muscles twitched around the mouths of the ladies on either side of me. The fowl was cold, the atmosphere colder. Lucy had given up trying to restrain her mistress and the guests turned back to their food as I talked about our plans for the summer, trying to imply that it was only grief that prevented us from going yachting in Nice or shooting in Scotland or taking a cure in Baden Baden. My envy seethed as our guests languidly exchanged boasts, as if sitting in a first-class railway carriage were almost too much effort to bear.

  William turned to me. ‘And what do you think of this Russian war, Charles? I take the view that it’s a quarrel between two packs of monks about a key and a star, and we should not have involved ourselves!’

  The Reverend Humphreys and Sir Archibald frowned, and I remembered that they are not yet my patients. I heard the death rattle of the last of Pa’s liberal sentiments as I said with a straight face, ‘Our national honour is at stake, William. If only the Duke were still alive to save us. Let us raise a toast to the great man and ask ourselves how he would have acted.’ I looked bellicose and so did our guests, with the exception of William who has married a large private income and can afford controversial opinions.

  Nina had fallen ominously silent at the other end of the table, aware that her utopian seed had fallen on sterile ground.

  Lucy and Emma removed our plates and brought in a dazzling array of sweets: strawberries in a meringue basket; a raspberry mousse; preserved ginger; a pink ice in the shape of a pear. We drank Moselle with lumps of ice in each glass, and there was a general murmur of appreciation. For ten minutes I was able to believe that my dinner party had survived the dangerous rocks of Nina and was sailing into a safe harbour where happy, well-fed patients waved at me from the quay.

  There was a wave of cooing and ahhing, the tribal noises with which ladies greet a child. Looking behind me, I saw Tommy standing in the doorway, very small and fragile in his white nightgown. I gestured to Emma to remove him at once - the child had been well bribed to put himself to bed and stay there - but before she could catch him he ran down the table to Nina.

  A sensible woman would have told Emma to carry him firmly off to bed. My wife, however, embraced him and sat him on her knee, making a great deal more fuss of him than she has made of me these last few weeks. Our guests smiled and pretended to be charmed by her maternal affection, but I was bitterly aware that their own brats never see their parents for more than five minutes a day. Tommy, having made himself the centre of attention, ate a few strawberries from his mother’s plate and gazed around the table for amusement. Our guests’ smiles were stretched to breaking point by the time he turned to Nina, stroked her hair (the soft curls I used to play with every night) and announced, ‘My mama can see what’s going to happen when we’re all dead. My sister’s dead. I don’t want to die.’

  I trust that at his expensive school my son will learn the art of conversation.

  ‘Bedtime!’ I approached him with what was intended to be a playful roar. ‘Here comes the Bedfordshire bear!’

  ‘No!’ he screamed ‘I don’t like you, Papa. I want to stay with Mama.’

  Tommy’s eyes and nose were a river of tears and snot. I paused in mid growl, aware that instead of being charmed by my jocularity our guests were embarrassed.

  Never have I been so relieved to see the ladies leave the table, carrying Tommy and his tantrum with them. With six men in the room the temperature lowered, port was passed and a civilized atmosphere prevailed. At first William and I sat in silence while the other gentlemen present discussed the Russian war and the Irish famine, which was, they agreed, the result of free trade, sloth and fecklessness. It was also, the Reverend Humphreys insisted, a punishment for Catholicism.

  When William came to sit beside me some of our old student intimacy revived, although I was uncomfortably aware of his superior fortunes and told him so.

  ‘I believe, as did Napoleon, in destiny, Charles. An unlucky man has generally only himself to blame.’

  ‘Then I must have sinned greatly if these are my just desserts,’ I muttered bitterly into my second glass of port.

  ‘Come now! You have a comfortable house here, a charming wife and son, the seeds of an excellent practice.’ My silence encouraged him to be franker. ‘Your wife - what a delightful woman, so unspoiled - must have suffered greatly from the loss of your child. Women live so much in their emotions. And I know how hard it is to survive in London on the rather dour principles we learned in our youth. We must meet one day and discuss the alternatives.’

  The conversation became general again.

  Soon after we joined the ladies for tea and some wobbling Mendelssohn from Mrs Porter, who doubtless learned to sing and play and embroider by the time she was six. But that was a long time ago. As our guests departed at half past ten I was struck by Nina’s comparative youth and beauty.

  As she turned away from the door after bidding goodnight to the last of our guests Nina made a heartbreaking picture. Seen against the black-and-white tiles in the hall her face and shoulders and arms looked so very white, her dress and hair in its chignon black as the rage I could feel dissolving in me together with the angry words I had been saving up all evening. I tried to caress the lovely curve of her neck, but she turned away from me.

  ‘No more songs, Nina? I should have enjoyed it if you had sung for us. Far more than the mechanical warblings of that accomplished scarecrow William has married. You used to sing so spontaneously, for sheer joy, like a nightingale.’

  ‘No more songs,’ she repeated in an unfeeling voice before climbing the stairs to her solitary bed.

  And I lie here on mine, the couch in my study that is becoming far too familiar. I feel like an uninvited guest in my own house. With night and loneliness come the sour aftertaste of wine and the painful questions I could not ask that drooping, childlike figure in the hall. Once I could say anything to Nina, but now I need to talk about her, to discuss and judge and strive to understand the stranger I am married to. In all of London there are only two people in whom I can confide: her sister, who for all her limitations is a good woman and has known Nina all her life; and William, who most certainly is not a good man but whose devious and ingenious mind might help me out of my predicament.

  HENRIETTA’Sr />
  JOURNAL

  SATURDAY

  I have not kept a journal since I was fourteen years old and full of spleen against the world. Since then I have wielded a needle more often than a pen, and I ask myself for whom I am writing this. For GOD sees all our thoughts and has no need of written communication. I must confess at the outset that the impulse behind these words is all too human. I write for you, to you, in the foolish hope that one day you will read these words.

  This afternoon I could hardly believe it was really your name, mumbled by Rachel so that it sounded like ‘dockersudden’, and suddenly there you were. You transformed my tiny sitting-room. How many silent hours I have spent here, working away at my embroidery and longing to see you, to talk to you. Now that you were with me I could only stare.

  ‘Are you unwell, Henrietta?’ you asked in your dear voice, that some might think brusque but not I, for I know there is a treasure trove of kindness buried in you.

  ‘Only surprised. You have never been here before. Rachel, it is very hot. Fetch Dr Sanderson some seedcake and lemonade.’

  Rachel is a dear girl. When she came to me from the workhouse at twelve she could hardly speak for stammering. She said her name was Rat and her mother and father were Don’t Know. But I have made a Christian out of her, and as she poured our lemonade she asked in a terrified whisper if I was very ill.

  ‘No, Rachel, I am quite well. But I am afraid my sister is not - is that right, Charles?’

  ‘How quickly you come to the point,’ you said with relief. ‘In fact, she is simply not. I mean I have not seen her since yesterday morning.’

  ‘She has abandoned you?’

  ‘It seems she left the house yesterday morning at about midday and did not tell the servants where she was going. I fear for her safety - my Nina is such an innocent - yet I fear more for a scandal if I advertise her disappearance.’

  ‘What kind of scandal?’

  ‘Henrietta, you know as well as I how tongues wag, even though my wife is the purest of creatures.’

  ‘I have always thought you tolerate her caprices wonderfully well.’

  ‘Caprices?’

  ‘Come, we have known one another too long to be reserved. You have always indulged my sister’s childish whims, her trivial interests and airs and graces. I remember once, seeing her with poor darling Bella, thinking they were like two little girls playing together instead of a mama with her child.’

  ‘Why, Henrietta, I did not know you had so sharp a tongue. Not having had any sisters myself, I thought you loved one another.’

  You lay back on my chaise-longue, so handsome in your black suit, a glass of lemonade in your hand. You studied me, as if for the first time. I could not sit. Your presence galvanized me. I walked up and down the tiny room as thoughts and feelings I had strangled fought for life.

  ‘I have tried to love her, have prayed that she might change. But Nina and I are so different, it amazes we that we shared the same parents. As a child she was false, simpering, flirtatious -’

  ‘You seem to forget that I knew you both as children. And Nina was a most enchanting child who has grown into a delightful little woman. I am lost without her.’

  The adoration in your voice silenced me. I never was adored.

  ‘You must help me, Henrietta. Where can she be? I know she would never willingly leave our happy nest, and who could want to injure my sweet little bird? Come, you know her, is there anything in her past that could explain this disappearance?’

  Before your visit I had been sitting contemplating a dismal future. No sweet little bird but a stringy old hen of thirty-three years, dwindling dividends from my railway shares have left me struggling to maintain my tiny rooms in Newington Green. Last year I had to let Lucy go to your household and make do with Rachel, who is more of a charity case than a servant. Even if I moved further outside London, humiliating economies would be necessary. I have begun to study advertisements for governesses, although I have known too many of that victimized regiment to have any illusions about their fate - at best to grow old in genteel poverty in a stranger’s house and, at worst, to be the butt of contemptuous insults. I do not wish to live in idleness, but a lady who turns her talents to any profitable use is degraded.

  Yet now you were showing me another path. I could be helpful to you and perhaps make friends with my sister at last. I shivered to think that at last I could play a useful part in your life. I would be able to see you more often, and perhaps, if Nina’s spiritual condition were very bad, I might even live beneath the same roof as you.

  ‘I hesitate to speak ill of my own sister …’

  ‘I ask only for the truth. If you bear bad news I shall not shoot you.’

  You sat on the edge of my chaise-longue, your knees almost touching mine in the tiny room. I had never before seen your face so close. I gazed into your grey eyes, bloodshot from lack of sleep, with wrinkles in the corners I had never noticed, and saw railway tracks on your brow. You had promised not to shoot me, but Cupid’s arrows targeted me when I was fourteen, and it was sweet torture to be alone with you. My heart danced a tarantella, my hands shook, but my voice was steady, as if this was a speech I had learned long ago.

  ‘Nina was always my parents’ pet. A kitten with fluffy fur and adorable purrs and sharp claws she kept for me. Of course you adored her. Everybody did. It was only at our school, where souls and brains were more admired than looks, that Nina’s charm failed to work.’

  ‘You must have been very jealous.’

  The word stung as if you rubbed lemon juice into my flayed skin. ‘Of what? Of sly tricks and coquettery and simpering falsity?’

  ‘Was she a coquette? Did she tell falsehoods?’

  I felt my power over you like a gas lamp flaring on a foggy day. ‘Nina flirted and fibbed from the moment she could talk until that day when you first saw her. Do you remember? We were gathered around the pianoforte in our old parlour and she was singing with our mother, who had long been her slave.’

  ‘It is among my most sacred memories. She wore a white dress with a blue sash and clung to your beautiful mama so tenderly. But I don’t remember that you were there, Henrietta.’

  ‘Of course not. I was in the shadows, unwatched, watching. I watched your enslavement over many years, and until you came today I thought you were still worshipping at her tawdry altar.’

  ‘And now? You are not concerned for her safety?’

  ‘I would pity the villain who tried to abduct my sister.’ As soon as I had spoken I was ashamed and wished I could staunch the venom that wells up in me.

  You stared at me in silence for a long time. I watched you weigh two Ninas, two Henriettas: your darling plaything sat in the scales of your judgement, as on a seesaw, with her double, duplicitous in every sense, opposite her. Beside your two wives you saw the sister-in-law you had always known, heavy, grim and charmless, weighing down the scales against her new and surprising self. Identical in plainness, alas, but very different in spirit and of interest to you for the first time.

  Well, my sister is exceeding light. She sprang out of the scales and floated up to your heart. I watched as she possessed you again, like a fickle lodger who has gone off on holiday but returns at last to her old home.

  When you left my house an hour ago it was with a reserved and nervous air. You had no use for scales or four different women, you only longed for the one wife you thought you owned. At the door you gave me a look full of suspicion. I have been weighed and found wanting. Wanting you, Charles.

  SUNDAY

  Now my words sprawl across the pages for May. This plain brown leather journal was not bought to record thoughts and feelings, and the pages are almost empty for the first months of 1854: committee meetings, prayer meetings and household accounts. I have run ahead of time, I am already writing in June although the May sun illuminates my shabby upholstery and every line in my face.

  Today I placed an advertisement in The Thunderer, since you had refused to do
so. Mrs S— of H— Street could only be recognized by a handful of people. Naturally, I don’t wish to draw attention to my sister’s disappearance but to help to find her. I sent Rachel with a note to enquire if Nina had returned.

  MONDAY

  This morning James brought a note to say that my sister has reappeared. It was raining, but I crossed London at once to call on her. Arriving very wet and anxious, I was told by an embarrassed Lucy that Mrs Sanderson was indisposed. I looked up at the drawn blinds on the bedroom window and back at the face of Lucy, whom I have known since she first came to work in my house as a grubby child of twelve.

  ‘I am not some old dowager to be fibbed to.’

  ‘I’m not fibbing, ma’am.’ Lucy was near to tears, for I have told her what happened to false witnesses. She spends enough time in the kitchen for hellfire and griddles to be very real to her.

  ‘Where is the child?’

  ‘Master Tommy is in the nursery, ma’am.’

  I longed to storm your house, to question Nina and educate Tommy and bring you the spiritual succour of which, I sensed, you were in so much need. Lucy stood there like a guppy, her mouth open as if she were terrified of me. In fact, it was I who felt afraid, of your family fortress that excluded me. I let Lucy close the front door on me and stood for a moment on the pavement, gazing up at the rows of blank windows as I thought how far you have come since you were our father’s assistant.

  The omnibus was cramped and muddy, and when I returned to my poky rooms they seemed to have shrunk. The chaise-longue you sat on a few days ago shines in my dismal parlour.

  Nina replied to my notes with unsisterly reserve, and I still do not know what really happened.