Nina In Utopia

by Miranda Miller

  HENRIETTA’S

  JOURNAL

  SATURDAY

  How stupid I have been. A foolish, ugly old maid. How could I imagine that I was loved? I cannot even love myself. How you must have laughed at me; how they will all laugh. Of course, I can never leave this room again. You prefer bright eyes to intellectual conversation. What man would not? Your disgust was so very obvious. As if some ghoul had arisen from the grave and embraced you. Well, the grave will come soon enough, and I shall welcome it.

  Shall I create a temporary sensation by jumping off Waterloo Bridge? There is nowhere to go. I have no father, brother or husband to watch over me. What am I to do with my life? I know that I am neither clever, handsome or young. I cannot return to my dingy little rooms, for I have no more savings; I gave you all my money. I was so glad to be of service to you. This ink flows with the salt water to blot and blur the page. My diary, that was to have been a gift to you. How often have I imagined your delight as I showed it to you. How you would exclaim and laugh, and we would share our tenderest innermost thoughts.

  Such stupid dreams. All the time you thought me plain and dull, serviceable enough when Nina went off to Cloud-cuckoo-land. You did love her, adored her, the nasty little flirt. She was scarcely out of short skirts when she took your heart and kneaded it like clay. I used to feel nauseous, watching you stare at her. Whenever she came into the room you blushed and stammered and hobbledehoyed and never looked at me.

  That deathbed in a rookery was a lie, the kind men tell to maiden aunts and village idiots. You have found some tuppenny Nina to debauch, and every night I must watch as you go to her.

  Once I thought I had an immortal soul and my fancy roamed the world. I believed that with brains and determination I could lead an interesting life and do valuable work. A governess in Bath, a missionary in Bulawayo: there was GOD’s work to be done, and I was to do it. I would live a pure, simple and cheerful life, for I was determined that I would not be a nuisance, a drag upon society, but an active, bustling old maid. You were a secret shrine I worshipped at, tiptoed up to and never dared to touch. I should earn my bread in toil and pain.

  But there was rebellion in my heart, and Satan, who is cunning, daring and cruel, saw it there. When you came to me that morning to ask for my help my soul leaped out to you like a salmon into a river of life. Such hopes I had, such hopeless hopes. A lifetime of faith I had built up brick by brick over twenty years came crashing down that morning, and now I can no longer hide behind it. A woman by herself in the world can do nothing. I am naked, indecent, as I was just now with you.

  As soon as you left the house last night I began to fear that your strict principles and fearless integrity would lead you into danger. I heard Lucy and Rachel tittle-tattling about the cholera raging in the slums and thought - just a few hours ago I thought - that you were risking your life to help the poor. Without you the house seemed so vast and silent. After the servants had gone to bed I sat alone in the drawing-room and filled the shadows with my memories of you. I can hardly remember a time when I did not love you. Last night those beloved images of Charles Past surrounded me.

  Like actors in a pageant they told a story I longed to hear: you and I have always loved; we belong to one another at a level far deeper than the marriage service. My sister’s wiles and fripperies distracted you, but now that she is a lost woman, a poor seduced creature, we two are free to love.

  For so many years I have lived with my secret wound. Last night I held out my hand for help and it was slapped. I have no place in the world. I want to think of spiritual matters, but I can think of nothing but you.

  The clock struck three, shocking me back into the present. I began to be terrified that you had been set upon by a gang of ruffians or lay helpless with fever in some dreadful rookery. My heart thundered every time I heard passing horses - I remembered that you had left on foot but feared you would be brought back on a stretcher. I could not move. To go to bed would have been a betrayal of the love I yearned to prove.

  I had to wait up for you. In those empty hours I was seized by the conviction that, if you did return alive and well, we must consummate our love. I looked at myself in the glass above the mantelpiece. I was wearing my faded old nightgown and my face was innocent of adornment. I wanted to be beautiful for you but told myself that you valued my honesty and simplicity. I am not a young woman, so it does not signify what I wear. In your shyness (the voice of Satan inveigled me in my head) you did not dare to declare your passion, and so I must be brave and offer myself to you.

  Four o’clock sounded, and five, and still I sat on in a trance of love. All the passion that I have been starved of was distilled into those hours. I listened for you with every nerve. I felt like a tree waiting for rain, like a dog quivering for the hand of its master. I felt so intensely that I was quite certain you must be feeling exactly the same.

  When at last I heard footsteps I ran to the window and stared out down Harley Street. I heard your beloved voice greet the night-watchman. The early sun shone on your beautiful head as you stood on the pavement and stared at the door, and I willed you to look up and see me. But you did not.

  So I rushed downstairs to open the front door and hold you in my arms. But as the front door opened some other imaginary door closed, and you did not come into my embrace. You brushed past me in the hall, thanked me abruptly and hardly looked at me. I could not take my eyes off you. Your clothes were creased and grimy, and there was a strong smell of alcohol. Still I could not see the man who stood there, only the man I had adored all night. Convinced that you were nobly struggling to suppress your love for me, I took a step towards you and hurled myself against you with a moan. Our noses bumped. My mouth searched for yours, your arms held me tight, or so I thought. I shut my eyes and waited for paradise. I had never been so close to a man before. I could feel your heart beating against mine and smell your tipsified breath.

  ‘Good Lord, Henrietta, whatever do you think you’re doing?’

  You pushed me away. On your dear face, which is like a map of my soul, I read disgust and amusement. I heard a rustle and a stifled giggle on the stairs above me.

  You coughed and said, ‘No, Henrietta, you must not be distracted from higher things. You are too good for me.’

  Sobbing, I turned and ran until I reached my room. But it is not mine. I have nothing now, not even my dignity. This journal is my bloodletting, where I lance my boils and dip my pen in their pus. Now all the pages of this little book are filled with my handwriting, it is finished, and I think I am finished, too.

  HE will not forget me when HE counteth HIS jewels. A flawed jewel. Perhaps HE will forgive me for loving you too much and not loving Tommy and Nina enough.

  You gave me this laudanum to help me sleep. I hope it brings me dreams of you.

  CHARLES

  IWAS VACCINATING a baby when old Emma appeared at the door of my surgery. The infant screamed in the arms of its pretty mama as my needle approached. Emma glared at me so ferociously that my hand shook, and I almost missed the baby’s vein. I wonder where William finds his admirably faceless servants. A servant should not express any feelings, but Emma’s face is large and red and as coarse as her voice. She was Nina’s nurse but often behaves more like an aunt who knows far too much about us all. This morning her presence was most intrusive and attracted the attention of my waiting patients.

  ‘I am working, Emma. Please come back later.’ I glared back at her and vowed yet again to pay her the wages I owe her and replace her with a younger, more discreet servant.

  ‘You’d best come now. The living can wait.’

  Her words and tone were so ominous that I did follow her, murmuring apologies to the patients in my waiting-room. On the stairs we did not speak, but the old woman’s back crackled with rage and grief. I was expecting to find one of the servant girls, Rachel or Lucy, enceinte. But instead of going up to the attics Emma led me to the door of Henrietta’s room.

  My sister-in-la
w lay upon her single brass bed, sprawled on her back, still in the hideous nightgown she wore when I returned early this morning. I knew at once that her sleep was eternal. I have seen many corpses but perhaps never one whose life was so unfulfilled. The phial of laudanum I gave her last week lay empty on her bedside cabinet, and one of her stiff hands clutched a brown leather notebook. Henrietta’s eyes were open. She stared up at the ceiling with an expression of baffled indignation, as if the deity she had served so fiercely had disappointed her. As we all did. I pocketed her notebook and realized that Emma was silent in the doorway, staring at me with such hatred that I instinctively raised my arm to shield my face.

  ‘Poor lady.’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’

  ‘It is not seemly to criticize the dead.’

  Emma appeared to swell in the doorway, as if inflated by bellows. She shouted at me with the most brazen effrontery, ‘Seemly, is it? I’ll give you seemly, Dr Charles-bloody-dig’em-up-Sanderson, grew up in a knocking-shop with your pa who was lucky not to swing at Newgate -’

  ‘How dare you insult my father’s memory -’

  ‘Your pa was a pleasant enough fellow, very simple and plain-spoken, though we all knew he did Sir Astley’s dirty work for him. You’re the snake in the grass. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to with your sneaking in and out, and as for your treatment of my lovely young ladies, you packed Miss Nina off to Bedlam -’

  ‘This is outrageous! Keep your voice down. My patients will hear!’

  ‘Do you think I care who hears me?’

  ‘Leave my house!’

  ‘I’d of gone long ago, only I couldn’t bear to leave Miss Nina and Miss Henrietta. Now you’ve locked up the one and done t’other in -’

  Incensed by her effrontery, and beside myself with fear that our quarrel would be overheard, I told the old baggage that I could no longer tolerate her presence beneath my roof. Or words to that effect. Emma departed in a flurry of tears and vulgarity, and I had to return to my patients.

  All day Henrietta’s dead body hovered in the air between myself and the sick. I was afraid to revisit her corpse alone, so I sent James with a message to William, asking him to come as soon as possible to sign the death certificate.

  After my last patient left I shut myself in my study and steadied my nerves with a decanter of sherry. Until Henrietta was safely at the undertaker’s I knew there would be no peace in my house. Lucy brought in a decanter of claret with some cheese and biscuits and cold beef together with a pile of letters on a tray. A bachelor supper. As my household empties around me I feel more and more unmarried. I am sure I did not imagine Lucy’s flirtatious wink as she turned to leave the room. Under Henrietta’s regime such thoughts would have been smothered.

  Most of the letters on the tray were bills and could be safely ignored, but I did open one with a Surrey postmark. It was from Tommy’s school, enclosing a letter from him. His ‘housemother’, a Mrs Jenkins, wrote that I am not to worry about him as he will soon settle down. She has made some attempts to correct the appalling spelling and punctuation of my son’s blotted and blurred epistle, proof that he is woefully in need of an education:

  Dearest Mama, [No mention of Dearest Papa, who pays his school fees.]

  I think they sent me here because I kild you. I think of you all the time so perhaps you think of me Thompson says you cant think becoz you are ded if you are not ples send me mony so I can buy toffy for the other fellows and they won’t lauff at me and call me mammysick and spooneywally I hop you can read what I am riting they say my handriting is very pore and I am very stupid.

  Wen I was a littel girl and you wer at hom it was much more jollyer. I did put on Bellas nitegown but I dident mean to kil you I only thort you wud luv me. If you are not ded ples come and see me and bring me nice comfits with caraway seeds Mama ples I want to liv with you in the byootyfull sity with the laydees in pantaloons.

  Tommy

  His signature dissolved into rows of red and yellow chalk kisses and hugs. I suppose I always knew that Tommy was the ghost that terrified poor Nina and made her flee our house. And our marriage. Well, it is no use being angry with him now. There will be no more children, and I must make my peace with the one I have, however lamentable his spelling may be.

  As I sat alone in my darkening study waiting for William to come and sign Henrietta’s death certificate, my eyes played tricks upon me. I have been too long wedded to that cold-blooded demon called Science to believe in ghosts and all that bosh, but at times our buried life exhumes itself.

  So it was this evening, when my study filled with shadows and memories of all the people who once lived in this house with me. I saw Bella, in her white frock with the pink sash, much loved and already half-forgotten. I strained to see the charming details of her face, but they eluded me. Bella held the hand of Nina, who was young and happy and gay as I have not seen her these many months. Tommy sat on the floor beside them, playing quietly with my books, building them into a tower that collapsed every few minutes. He still had his babyish long curls. I longed to stroke them but could not move from my desk. Henrietta stood behind the others, tense as always, staring at me with such reproachful eyes that I looked away and nervously fingered the brown notebook in my pocket.

  Somewhere on the threshold between waking and dreams, sobriety and drunkenness, they visited me. I had not invited them and did not know how to behave in their presence. The silence grew oppressive and then ominous, as if words I dreaded hung in the air between us. It became so dark that I could not see where my visitors began and ended, but still I could not stir myself, not even to light a candle.

  At last I heard the front door bang and footsteps came up the stairs towards me. Never have I felt so glad to see my old friend. William is so emphatically of this world, and his enormous absorption and devotion to Number One is a shining example.

  ‘All alone in the dark, Charles?’

  ‘All alone.’ My voice sounded strange, as if it had returned from a long journey.

  ‘What happened? Was it an accident?’

  ‘My sister-in-law took her own life.’

  ‘These spinsters! They have so little life to lose. Where is the corpse?’

  We lit lamps and carried them up to Henrietta’s small room. With William beside me I felt like a professional man again, exercising my duties. Henrietta lay at an undignified angle. Alone, I could not have touched her, but with William beside me I calmly closed the eyes no husband ever kissed and drew the shroud kindly over the poor withered breast where no child’s head has ever lain.

  ‘Poor creature. Did you not tell me, Charles, that she had conceived a secret passion for you? I believe I met her once. Was she not an exceptionally plain woman, of a dull or vinegar aspect with an I-have-seen-better-days air? But I dare say her mind was a perfect Augean stable of uncleanness and lustful thoughts of you -’

  ‘Ours was a treaty of friendship, pure and simple.’ Again I felt her diary in my pocket.

  ‘Still, she lived here alone with you, the object of her adoration. Disappointed love results in furor uterinus. How often have I seen it!’

  Now that she was dead I felt a strange urge to protect Henrietta from his cynicism. ‘She was a most excellent lady, intelligent and full of energy. But she was a fidgety Christian that could not let her soul alone a minute, and the world had not the slightest use for her virtues.’

  ‘A woman should only be educated enough to praise and sympathize with her husband.’

  ‘She was too old for husband-hunting and hoped to find useful work outside the family.’

  ‘As Hegel says, the individual is subordinate to the family. Without the family there is only the mob.’

  I thought of Nina’s muddled ravings of the future. ‘Yet a time may come when respectable women do work and have a life outside the home.’

  ‘Then I pray I may not live to see it! Who that ever listened to the confused inanities of ladies’ chat would give females the
vote or any serious responsibility? You know how I adore the sex, Charles, but women have neither heart nor head for abstract political speculation. Such matters may be safely left to us. The dear little things are our weaker, better halves, and home is the appointed scene of their labours. The superior strength of our reasoning faculties and bodies and the firmer texture of our minds are simply a fact, my dear chap. Why, the female cerebrum averages two ounces less in weight than the male.’

  ‘There is no arguing with your science. And yet …’

  ‘You are sentimental. Now, to business. What shall we write on her death certificate? I take it you don’t want any scandal?’

  ‘A doctor with a mad wife and a sister-in-law who has committed suicide is hardly likely to attract patients …’

  ‘Quite. Then let us agree that she misunderstood the correct dose of laudanum and took too much …’

  ‘Thank you so much, William …’

  ‘Not at all. We are friends and must help each other.’

  The old quack signed the document and twinkled at me, no doubt calculating the next favour he will ask of me.

  We had a few drinks together in my study, and then William went home. It was late, but I knew I would not be able to sleep. I was reluctant to return to the upper regions of the house where the dead and the absent are so … present. I was very glad that the door of Henrietta’s room was firmly shut. Tomorrow morning the undertaker will remove her, and I will know a little peace.

  I took Henrietta’s diary out of my pocket, where it had felt so heavy all those hours, and started to read. What a chronicle of pathos, frustration and wasted energy! To find myself the target of such hysterical arrows was quite exhausting. I did not wish Henrietta’s pitiful scribbling to fall into the wrong hands, and so I burned her little book in the grate in my study. I sat in my old green leather armchair to watch the fire dance its mocking ballet. The orange tongues licked delicately at Henrietta’s sad confessions, then devoured the book in greedy rage, subsiding at last into dark red caves of mystery. Each fire we make enacts a rise and fall, ending in a little death, un petit mort - no, I must not distract myself with sensual phantasy. I have my own ascent to think of and cannot waste any more time.