Nina In Utopia

by Miranda Miller

  ‘Soulmates. Is this part of your new religion?’

  ‘It’s where lonely men and women try to get together.’

  She blushed and turned the pages quickly to ‘Clubs’.

  Four months ago now.

  Ben is coming tomorrow. I must get that ridiculous corset out of the way and bring his toys and books down from the loft. If I see Annabel at the gym tonight I’ll invite her out to supper. All this fantasy has become a kind of drug. Living alone isn’t good for me. I feel as if I’ve regressed to my adolescent self when I felt an outsider both at home and at school and retreated into a kind of Victorian daydream. Why Victorian? Alice, I suppose, and my unfashionable taste for Pre-Raphaelite art and Tennyson and Browning and both the Scotts, the novelist and the architect. When I was sixteen I dreamed of creating magnificent Gothic palaces like Pugin and hand-crafted interiors like Morris. Sentimental kitsch, as Kate used to point out in disgust. She was always perfectly at home with modernism, and she argued me out of love with romanticism or at least into love with her. But even in my marriage I felt lonely. Solitude is a deserted corridor I sleepwalk down, hoping to encounter another face from another time.

  Nina’s awful jokes and puns, her disgusting habit of not flushing the loo, her infuriating tears and swoons; since I met her Nina’s London has become quite solid. It stands behind my own city like a puppet master behind his marionettes, and I am hungry to smell her fog, to walk her streets by gaslight and see her still Georgian city sprout with the glorious fruits of Victorian architecture. When I told Nina she was a Victorian she looked bewildered. I wonder what they will call the present age when I am dead. I think I’ve always been a temporal misfit. I’m too dreamy, serious and romantic for the twenty-first century.

  That desultory fling with Kerry or was her name Carrie? How could I explain a one-night stand to Nina? I wonder how people talked about sex and love before Freud. Perhaps they didn’t. What happened between Nina and me was brief, but it certainly wasn’t casual. She has changed my way of seeing myself and my city. I can’t switch on the television without wondering what she would think of the invariably harrowing news. She would cry, of course, once she realized these horrors are our reality. Perhaps we should all be crying, every day, all day, until we stop torturing and murdering and starving each other.

  Silky hair. Captain Silk, the fittest name in the world, for silk never can be worsted. To be haunted by awful jokes is even more ridiculous than … last night at the gym I thought I saw her. Not thought so much as sensation, hope, craving. I’d finished my workout on boring machines and was in the steamroom, trying to sweat out a cocktail of toxins from my drinking bout with colleagues the night before, from the cold I had last week and the more deadly poison left over from my marriage to Kate. The steamroom is like a small tiled shop where we all sit on shelves, most of us past our sell-by date. As it’s mixed, we primly wear swimming-trunks and bikinis or swim-suits. Half-naked, we sprawl in the heavy swamp-like air and eye each other through the flattering mist.

  I felt my skin grow taut as the heat invaded it. Sensuality returned after the cool detachment of my working day and the grimly puritanical gym. My quest for health ceased to be self-punishment and became pleasure as my eyelids drooped, my nipples tingled and I felt an erection fill my tight swimming-trunks. I lay back on my marble shelf; specks of colour and light floated behind my eyes and gradually settled into recognizable images like beads in a kaleidoscope. Someone threw sandalwood on the hissing steam machine and transformed a cell off Baker Street into an erotic Alma Tadema phantasmagoria of nymphs and fountains. Nina was lying in one of the pools behind my eyes. I could see her soft, white naked body, her hair spread out above it like seaweed.

  The door to the steamroom opened with a click, cooler chlorine-scented air rushed in from the pool, and I opened my eyes. She was there, a pale, beautiful phantom with a mass of dark hair gliding through the steam towards me. I sat up with a gasp and opened my arms to her.

  ‘Fuck off,’ said the phantom.

  BEDLAM

  WHEN CHARLES SUMMONED me down to the drawing-room I did not know what I should find there. I thought it was some kind of tea party I had not been notified of and that the gentlemen were his friends. I remembered Dr Porter from our dinner party and tried to be pleasant, although he seems to me to be a weaselly sort of fellow.

  Charles said, ‘These gentlemen have come to ask you a few questions, my dear.’

  At once I felt like a criminal, and when Charles withdrew from the room I longed to follow him. It is a long time since I have been his dear. He wears his disapproval of me like a great wide-brimmed hat that hides his eyes. We used to sit on the sofa hand in hand for whole evenings and gaze into each other’s eyes and talk. I could still paint his eyes as they were then, softest grey, tenderly reflecting the rounded image of his beloved. His little bird that flew away and could not find her way back into her cage. I did not mind being in a cage with Charles when he was gentle and kind, but now there is no more kindness in him, and those doctors who barged into our drawing-room were not kind either. Although it was a sultry afternoon I felt their chill and folded my arms over my plain black dress to hug my soul deep within me where they could not harm it.

  Dr Porter behaved as if he were the umpire in a game of croquet and I was the ball that would not pass through the hoops. He thinks himself handsome, but I see the weasel behind his mask. Dr Morris was very red with a veneer smile and piggy eyes. He sprawled fatly on the sofa, and he was all stuffing. Dr James sat beside him and pretended to be my father, but I wasn’t taken in. My father is dead and would never have sent me away. Rub-a-dub-dub three doctors in a tub. All great chums and members of the same club.

  They shook my hand and were so polite that I shivered. Dr Porter was very gracious and invited me to make myself at home in my own house. ‘Sit down, Mrs Sanderson.’

  I sat on the green wing chair, which is Charles’s chair, and laid my arms over the green velvet arms. I wished I had Charles’s arms to support me still, but I was alone with them. They surrounded me on three sides like a medical fence. Then I saw that Dr Morris had a copy of the letter I wrote to Charles after my visit to Jonathan’s London, and I wondered how Charles could have taken that piece of me and handed it round to his friends like a slice of pie. I understood that they had come to devour me and that whatever I said they would tell clankers about me, and then I felt very much afraid.

  ‘Don’t be nervous, my dear. We won’t hurt you,’ said Dr James like the wolf in Red Riding-Hood.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  Dr Porter thought this was a good opening shot. ‘Let us come straight to the point. Your husband is very concerned about you and has asked these two distinguished gentlemen to examine you.’

  ‘And if I fail your examination?’

  Dr James has grey mutton chops and a voice like gravy. ‘Let us not speak of failure. William, you have alarmed Mrs Sanderson. Would you like me to examine you alone, my dear?’

  ‘I would prefer not to be examined at all.’

  I stared out of the window at a nursemaid moving through the dusty heat haze with her two charges. Whenever I see two children I think they are Bella and Tommy. When Bella died a part of me slid into the grave with her. A slice for Bella and another for the doctors. Perhaps that was why I felt so insubstantial on my chair. If I stopped holding on to the arms I thought I might float away and be very little missed by anybody.

  ‘Mrs Sanderson?’ said the fatherly wolf.

  I wondered who Mrs Sanderson was and continued to gaze out of the window.

  The three doctors fussed together on the sofa. They whispered and coughed and egged each other on like pancakes. Then I felt Charles come back into the room. I looked around, and there he was just inside the door staring at me. I knew from his red face and awkward gait he had been drinking in his study again. He keeps bottles of brandy and whisky there and drinks a great deal nowadays, but it was I who had to be examined.


  ‘Now, Nina, be a good girl.’ He spoke to me as if I were Tommy, and I knew I ought to be cross, but the sound of his voice was so dear and familiar. I wanted to be touched by him, not examined by the other men. Then I remembered that he had showed them my letter and tried to stop feeling again.

  Charles and Dr Porter sat on the gilt chairs as if waiting for a play. I was the play. Dr Morris and Dr James stayed on the sofa and looked at me in a distinguished way.

  Dr James poured more gravy into his voice. ‘Now, Mrs Sanderson, Dr Morris is going to examine you first, and then I will examine you. Your husband and Dr Porter will remain in the room to make quite sure that our examinations are fair and independent. Is that satisfactory?’

  ‘You speak as if I had some choice in the matter.’

  ‘My dear lady, we are here to help you.’

  ‘And if I do not want your help?’

  ‘Nina!’ Charles said in that tone that still flies straight to my heart although I tried to bang the gate shut against it.

  I turned away from the window and looked straight at Dr Wolf who stood up and left the room. Dr Pig stared at me with suspicious little eyes while Dr Weasel watched us furtively, and Charles … I wish I could think of him as a silly animal dressed up in clothes. If he were in a menagerie I would throw a bun through the railings at him and go home. But he is always a man. And I was already at home.

  Then Dr Pig held out my letter, and I hated to see his fat fingers slime all over the words I wrote only for Charles.

  ‘Mrs Sanderson, I believe you wrote this, ah, document four months ago.’

  ‘Yes. It was a private letter to my husband.’ I turned and glared at Charles, who lowered his eyes and would not meet mine. He did not blush, for he was already very red from drinking, and, besides, he does not blush now that his skin has become so thick.

  Dr Pig tried not to smirk as he read from my letter. The others quivered and snorted with suppressed laughter as he read several pages aloud. His monotonous voice transformed all marvels into medical formulae. I felt half-dead with mortification, and my eyes were so full of tears that I could not even see Charles.

  When he had finished crucifying me Dr Morris said in the same calm porky voice, ‘Now, Mrs Sanderson, this elephant you saw. How large was it?’

  I knew there was no right answer. Whatever I said now I was condemned to sound mad. I decided to be a truthful idiot. ‘It was a little taller than this house.’

  Dr Weasel could not resist sticking his sharp snout in. ‘And was it pink by any chance, Mrs Sanderson?’

  ‘No, Dr Porter, it was not. Pink elephants, I believe, are a common symptom of delirium tremens. I do not drink alcohol. You and my dear husband are more of the pink-elephant persuasion than I.’

  Although my voice shook, I held back my tears of rage and triumphed to think I had clawed back a little of my dignity. But I was not able to hang on to it for long.

  Dr Piggy Morris did not care whether or not I liked him, and indeed I disliked him intensely. ‘Now let us be frank, Mrs Sanderson. All this stuff about dancing girls and goblins and footmen in claret velvet and giants and freed slaves and fairy music and an enchanted garden of Eden - it is all so much twaddle, is it not? Concocted from dreams and tales you have told your children. We are not children, Mrs Sanderson. Now, your husband tells us that you discharged your domestic duties quite satisfactorily until your mysterious disappearance in May.’

  I stared incredulously at Charles who had discussed me with this repulsive stranger as if I were an unsatisfactory parlourmaid. Charles would not look at me. He sat on his chair - guilt on gilt - and muttered to his weaselly friend.

  Dr Morris was enjoying himself. Perhaps he is tired of being a doctor and relishes being a barrister, and now I was in the dock. He waved my letter at me contemptuously. ‘Here is more moonshine and foolishness. Multicoloured angels and Scheherazade and even a pirate ship! But there is darkness in your faery realm. Semi-naked people and centaurs and men. I see that there are men in paradise.’

  He read again from my letter and tossed my own words back at me like bones he had picked and stripped of all goodness. He stole my beautiful interlude with Jonathan and turned it into something vile and degraded. I think I became hysterical, but Dr Morris’s voice did not stop. Every time I said something he wrote it down in a brown leather notebook, and this made me even more nervous.

  Then Dr Pig left the room and Dr Wolf re-entered it. Now he was holding my letter to Charles as if my private thoughts and feelings were the prize in a secret game they were playing together.

  ‘Mrs Sanderson, please accept our sincere condolences for the tragic loss of your daughter.’ Dr James was all greasy chops and buttered eyeballs, and he wanted to spread his butter over me, but I only glared at him. ‘In my work as an alienist I have come upon many cases similar to yours. Ladies have weaker brains and more tender hearts than gentlemen, and so they very often lose their wits from love or grief. It is up to us to find them again.’

  He beamed as if expecting me to be grateful for being told I had windmills in the head and was weak-brained. I was not grateful.

  Then he adjusted his sheep’s clothing so that his teeth and eyes looked very sharp.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell us more about this fellow Jonathan? Are you in the habit of accepting the hospitality of strange men?’

  ‘I was very tired.’

  ‘Exhausted. I don’t wonder after all your travels in time and faery realms. However, those of us who have no magic carpet and must live ploddingly in this nineteenth century cannot resist a few questions.’

  I do not remember exactly what happened after that. He asked his questions, and they were very insulting and presumptuous and upset me. I looked around for Charles and saw that he had left the room again. Phrases like bullets flew around the room until my heart was so full of lead I could not speak, and I put my hands over my ears to keep out his voice.

  Then Dr James said he had finished examining me and Dr Morris came back into the drawing-room. My letter lay on the table in front of them, its pages crumpled and scattered like a toy they had finished with.

  They muttered together, then turned to Charles and said they were ready to sign the certificates. I kept my hands over my ears and shut my eyes against their cruel faces, but their voices crashed through my hands and eyes to invade me. Their voices chanted the words to disenchant me:

  moral insanity

  singular wayward eccentric

  strange humours and escapades

  aversion to those she formerly loved

  disturbance of the natural domestic affections

  confusion and dismay in this once happy household

  she has betrayed her affectionate and honourable husband

  non compos mentis to be confined to the Bethlem Royal Hospital

  I fell at the foot of their pyramid and sobbed. My father had a book of old Hogarth’s prints. The rake in The Rake’s Progress ends his life in Bedlam, and I knew that I should find it full of lost souls and depravity and wickedness and brutality. I shrieked and yelled and begged for mercy and was so terrified of being sent there that I fainted.

  When I opened my eyes I was still in our drawing-room. I lay on the sofa and could not move my arms. Faces floated above me. I could see the farmyard doctors’ and Charles’s, too. His cheeks were all scratched and he had a bruise over one eye. He stared back at me with an expression of fear and anger, and I wondered if I had put the scratches and the bruise there. Not me but the other Nina who sees and does strange things. Singular, wayward, eccentric Nina.

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out, for words had failed me. I will not trust in them again. I discovered my arms were tied to my sides and I was wearing a strait-waistcoat like the one my father used to put on patients he said were crazed. It was made of harsh canvas and stank of madness and death, so I started to weep again. I heard Charles say they should wait until it was dark, and I felt more than ever like a corpse that
had to be buried in the night. Lucy came in and silently handed my small black suitcase to Charles.

  Suddenly I wanted my naughty little boy. I thought of all the times Tommy had been punished because he was bad when perhaps he had not intended to be bad at all. I longed to hug him and tell him I was sorry for loving Bella more than him. I forced myself to speak again and asked Lucy where Tommy was.

  She glanced at me and looked frightened as if I were already a ghost. ‘Master Tommy is in the nursery, madam.’

  ‘I want to say goodbye to him. If you are sending me away what will you tell him?’

  Charles said, ‘Tommy must not be distressed.’

  ‘Tommy is six years old. If his mama disappears do you not think it will distress him?’

  Charles looked very cross as if he would prefer me to be a silent corpse. His injuries made him look ignominious, like a drunken ruffian who had been in a fight.

  ‘I want Tommy!’

  When Charles’s face did not change and he did not even look at me I said it again. Then I screamed it and screamed again and Charles finally looked at me with hatred and I found I was screaming at him with hatred and then he made me drink something and I thought it was poison and there had already been so much poison that I did not care.

  After that it was dark. I did not know if the darkness was within me or without me. Two people carried me, I think it was Charles and James. We went downstairs and there was a carriage waiting. I looked back at our house and thought I shall never see it again. There were two faces at the nursery window. One was Tommy’s, and I could see Henrietta behind him. I wanted to swoop up there like an eagle and hover outside the window while Tommy climbed on to my back and fly away with him, but there were bars on the nursery window, and Henrietta would stop me - she always stops me. Now she has stolen my son and my house, and she will steal Charles if he lets her. But I was not an eagle and did not even feel like a girl woman lady mother wife sister as the dark carriage drove through the dark streets.