Then I slowed down and wandered on to the pier by the Oxo Building. Projected out on to the black river, I found myself alone with scavenging gulls and waves slapping on the beach. For a few minutes natural life pushed the throb of lights and traffic into the background, but the city pulled me back, and I opened myself again to its currents of energy.
I turned left just before the National Theatre, although I still had no idea where I was going. Behind the cosmetic surgery of the South Bank are dreary car parks, rotting concrete tunnels, stinking traffic and unplanned, unloved streets I usually avoid. I crossed the hideous Imax roundabout, where the drum-shaped white elephant sulks inaccessibly, and skirted the tangle of bridges and roadworks at the back of Waterloo Station. The last time I came here was when Kate and I set off on Eurostar for a romantic weekend in Paris that ended in tears and rows.
I didn’t know where I was walking or why. I was cold and tired and thirsty but couldn’t stop; movement had its own logic as if I were an ant following a path of invisible pheromones in the darkness.
Memories of Nina were acting themselves out in my head so intensely that I hardly knew what was in front of my eyes. I saw us in the shower together, that night we went to the club in Soho and got drunk. I felt her body against my skin for the first time, shampooed her glorious hair and soaped her breasts. Then I wrapped us both in the same vast green towel and fell on to my bed with her. Later, I dried and combed her hair, then wrapped myself in it like a sailor willingly beguiled by some mermaid.
I remembered Nina’s laugh, surprisingly loud and sensuous, and her slightly husky voice as she primly recited her dreadful jokes: ‘How must you spell honey to make it catch ladybirds?’
I took my mouth from her nipple for long enough to ask, ‘Tell me, Nina.’
‘M - o - n - e - y.’
We were in bed at the time, and I wasn’t feeling too critical, so I stroked her hair and laughed. ‘Nina, I’m going to report you to the pun police.’
She took this as a compliment. ‘Do you like my hair?’
‘It’s the most beautiful hair in the world. Any world, yours or mine.’
‘I know a joke about hair. Why is a bald man like an invalid?’
‘I’ve absolutely no idea.’
‘Because he wants fresh hair.’
Nina dissolved into infectious giggles; her shoulders and breasts shook as I lay beside her in the dark. That night we made love and talked for hours, but it wasn’t enough.
A lorry swerved and just missed me. The driver swore at me in unmistakably 21st-century English. I ran across the road and found I was in front of the Imperial War Museum.
The last time I was here was when Ben was three and had a crush on aeroplanes, especially bombers. He must have picked up on my pacifism subliminally and found his first way of annoying me. Being a dutiful dad, I took him to the museum and let him hug the objects of his fantasy. It’s the last museum I would want to visit. I walked through the black metal gates and stood in front of the museum, wondering how I had got here.
Two enormous illuminated metal guns pointed at me threateningly. Behind them loomed the graceful silhouette of the dome and portico. A party of belligerent primary school children came out of the bright mouth of the building, chattering and giggling. I moved out of their way, over to the right.
The park had settled into the cold night, and out here the sky, freed of the streetlights and dense buildings of the inner city, was reddish grey and wide. Old lamp-posts softly illuminated the path, and I was drawn by a flickering glow in one of the upper windows. I thought I saw a face up there and felt compelled to walk towards it over the frosty lawn until I stood, staring up, beneath the illuminated window. A face stared back at me.
I felt Nina before I saw her. My heart galloped with fear and excitement as her face became more vivid; not the one-dimensional sketch of an oval I had seen on my computer screen but a real woman, smiling down at me and waving, with dark curls around her shoulders. Her lips moved behind the glass, and I longed to touch her and kiss her and talk to her.
I rushed towards the entrance, convinced that if I ran up the stairs to the top of the building and turned right I would find her.
‘We’re closing now, sir.’
I backed away from the closing doors and ran back to the window where I had seen her. But the building was dark, and I couldn’t even remember at which of the blank windows I had seen her.
Disappointment chilled and paralysed me. I couldn’t leave and sat for a long time on a bench under a tree, staring up at the dark top floor. I had some crazy idea of staying all night there. The last of the visitors left the museum, and I noticed there was a way into the adjoining park through some bollards. I got up, so stiff and cold that I could hardly walk and stood on the path waiting for her to appear again. But she didn’t, of course. I was alone again, a fool chasing shadows and stumbling away from dreams.
CHARLES
TO ST GEORGE’S Fields for the Bedlam Ball. I hired a brougham for my transpontine excursion - a rare extravagance, but one can hardly walk in full evening dress. I felt very grand in my white trousers and waistcoat and black tailcoat and hoped a few of my distinguished neighbours saw me climb into my carriage. I usually say that I walk everywhere for my health. The health of my bank balance.
Seen from the comfort of a leather seat, nocturnal London is a whirl of colour and gaiety, and I passed hundreds of elegant people flocking to parties. For many of my fellow Londoners every night is a social event, but I am a martyr to Mammon and must work far more than I carouse. This thought made me recall some lines of Wordsworth that drummed in my head:
Such pains she had
That she in half a year was mad
And in a prison hous’d
And there, exulting in her wrongs,
Among the music of her songs
She fearfully carouz’d.
Nina, however, is not in prison but comfortably housed. Many a husband whose wife had connection with another man and returned with misty moonshiny tales of the future would have cast her out into the street. Instead, I am paying to have Nina cured and have even offered to have her under my roof at Christmas. She has rejected my generosity and refuses to reply to my courteous notes. Tommy and I must be motherless and wifeless for the festive season in the home she has laid waste. I shall continue to tell my son that his mama is dead, for even if Dr Hood pronounces her cured I cannot ever again trust such a wife. And so I am condemned to solitude and mutton cutlets at home, unless Professor Benvoglio makes a fortune.
That night last summer when I delivered my fallen angel to the gates of the asylum, trussed and chloroformed, I was too grief-stricken to observe the building. Last night the hospital was illuminated by flaming torches, and the blaze of elegant carriages and bejewelled females was quite magnificent. Hood has succeeded in making Bedlam the toast of clever London.
What a graceful madhouse he reigns over! I suppose this is the moral architecture we hear so much about. It is not nearly so large as Colney Hatch, that great monument to modernity and progress, which is the size of a town. Well, this favoured island is the most civilized and advanced country in the world, and so we naturally produce more mad people than the inferior nations. We are all galloping too fast, demanding too much of life, and our nation is changing with such speed that it is not surprising that frail womankind cannot keep up with the pace.
I admired Cibber’s statues in the grand entrance hall. Acute Mania is chained and naked; I am surprised the Archbishop of Canterbury has not campaigned to attach a fig leaf to him. Dementia looks vacant and lost; his face reminds me of Nina’s after her disappearance. Pope called them the Brazen Brainless brothers. Well, she is brazen, I suppose. My heart thundered in anticipation of seeing Nina again, and I lingered downstairs.
For a few moments I felt as confused as a schoolboy at his first evening party. Hood has hung some watercolours and embroidery by his patients, including some very singular works by Richard Dadd
, who is to be confined there for the rest of his days for murdering his father. Inside niches there are two old painted wooden statues - a young man in short breeches and a bare-breasted female - holding out bottles as almsboxes. ‘Pray remember the poor lunaticks, and put your charity into the box with your own hand.’ I did and felt a pleasant glow of virtue. This hall is something of a museum to madness. I felt a twinge of envy as I always do when reminded of my own aspiration. As yet mine is only a museum in the air, but one day, with hard work and William’s help, I will build the Sanderson Hall of Curiosities on solid ground. If I have sometimes compromised my medical ideals this wondrous exhibition will make Tommy proud to bear my name.
I climbed the grand staircase to the large glass-sided ballroom on the top floor, where homemade paper flowers and chains decorated the walls and ceiling. Trays of wine, ale, cakes and biscuits, which were also no doubt homemade, were passed around .
On the other side of the ballroom a group of about thirty patients, presumably the exemplary maniacs, stood around in evening dress. I could not see if Nina was among them. Their costumes had a slightly neglected and lopsided look, and there was the atmosphere of a school concert. We were the parents and relations, desperately hoping that our children would not disgrace us. They stood far away from the guests, silent and awkward, surrounded by scribbling journalists. I felt suddenly ashamed and confused; Nina might be here, in the same room with me, yet we did not speak or even know one another. I wondered how many others here had spouses and relations among the inmates.
Looking around me I was struck by the distinction of the guests. Yes, Hood is making a very good thing for himself out of the mad business; they say he is anxious to attract a better class of lunatic. Well, God heals and the doctor takes the fee. I wonder if William and I could set up a private establishment. I oughtn’t to throw away such a chance of extending my practice.
Sir Thingummy Whatsisname was there, that barrister whose opinion is always blazed all over the letters page of The Thunderer. He has an opinion about everything, it seems, and I saw him sniffing around the asylum, no doubt forming yet another. I also recognized Lady D—, who is so massive and so addicted to good works that I wonder if she devours the orphans, widows and lunatics she patronizes.
Charles Dickens, the popular novelist, was standing in the centre of the ballroom as if about to dance, surrounded by toadies. I was surprised by his ungentlemanlike manners, his cockney voice and flashy clothes. He did not actually waltz but spoke very loud, as if on stage. ‘Yes, poor old Dadd. He grew up in Chatham, you know, like me. Never met him, and it’s too late now.’
Mr Dickens proceeded to act out Dadd’s murder of his father, playing both parts, for the amusement of his friends. I thought this in very poor taste and turned away in disgust. No doubt his next novel will feature a brilliant painter who stabs his papa and is locked up in a madhouse.
Hood made a speech before the official opening of the ball. He is dark, more like an Italian hairdresser than an English doctor. The women in the audience looked up at him adoringly, and the little group of mad folk waiting to dance surged towards him. I have seen fashionable preachers in West End churches exercise the same magnetism over their congregations. There was hysteria in the air and a sickening fever of admiration. The fellow gazed at us with complacent eyes and proceeded to make a conceited speech praising his own methods. He held up large photographs to illustrate the success of his methods: Lilian B—, who has learned to spend her time making clothes instead of tearing her own, and Margaret J—, a cowering, depressed skeleton who has become plump and cheerful. I hoped that these ladies were not among us. Or perhaps they were and relished their peculiar notoriety.
With a theatrical flourish Hood held up a pair of manacles that had been converted into stands for flatirons and declaimed, ‘Sympathy, courage and time can release the manacles of the spirit.’
His speech was rapturously applauded. It never fails to astonish me how easy it is to bamboozle the general public with scientific twaddle.
Then we all stood in a circle and watched the ball. A lady at the piano struck up a waltz, dreadfully fast, as if she were a Pianola being wound too swiftly. The assembled lunatics chose their partners suspiciously quickly, and indeed as they danced towards us I saw that each wore a small number around his or her neck on a chain. Rather like Bread and Butter, a game popular at Tommy’s juvenile parties.
Several of the inmates rebelled or lost their nerve and clung to the walls. One chap, very short with an enormous red beard, wandered around the edge of the ballroom like a peripatetic bush. An elderly lady, whose black dress had slipped off her shoulders, was unable to find her corresponding number. She burst into tears and stood sobbing into her bouquet of paper flowers until an attendant led her away. A gentleman with white hair and a mild countenance hugged himself and swayed all alone. Although he was at least sixty he reminded me painfully of poor Sam, who used to stand in the corner of our parlour for hours in just such a private universe, humming and singing softly to himself. He was not put there as a punishment, for our kind father never punished us. My brother had sentenced himself to solitude, and nobody else could release him.
The dancers did not look at each other but kept their eyes fixed on Hood as if he held the key that wound them up and produced their disturbingly mechanical oscillations. During the mazurka and the polka the speed of the music and dancing became positively dervish-like. The watching crowd murmured encouragement and appreciation, but the dancers did not speak. It was a grotesque parody of a ball. The main ingredients were there but something was wanting: pleasure, gaiety, joy.
Of course, I saw her at once. I could not move towards her, and she did not look at me. Once it would have been agony to see her in another man’s arms, but I did not, could not, feel anything at all. Our encounter had the atmosphere of a dream, an unpleasant one. She was dancing with a tall, bald fellow, who held her as stiffly as if she were indeed a mechanical doll. They came waltzing towards me, and I could not take my eyes from Nina’s face, which was like a waxen mask of her real one. She stopped in front of me and her partner waltzed off alone, perfectly content to hold an invisible partner. Nina stood a foot away from me, and the watching crowd parted around us as if aware that we needed to talk. We did, but no words came. Her enormous dark-blue eyes were as cold as the charity she must live on for ever, and I knew we were not even in the same dream. How often have I grieved alone in my bed, aching to lay my head on her breast and be comforted. Well, I must find some other breast. Nina has her own crow to pluck.
At precisely nine o’clock a whistle blew, and, as if it were the signal for an express train, the lady at the piano played ‘God Save the Queen’. We all attempted to keep up with her, but she rushed off without us and left us quite breathless, still singing our praises of dear Victoria after the train had fled.
There was rather a stampede to get down the stairs. I think we were all relieved to go back to our own lives and to leave Hood with his truant minds. Nina is in the best of hands, and there is nothing more I can do for her.
AFTER THE BALL
WE LEFT THE ballroom in a twittering flock as if our lives had started again when the whistle blew. Lavinia was flushed with triumph as if she had just performed in the Hanover Square Rooms to great acclaim, although I thought she had jangled and rushed even more than usual. In the ward they stood around like mawkish schoolgirls giggling and prattling about their partners and the great folk who had come to watch us. Our paper flowers drooped, and our voices sounded shrill and gushing. I could not bear to join in and stood alone at the window where I had seen Jonathan, looking out at the black velvety lawn. My eyes painted his strange garments and dear upturned face on to the night. But there was nobody there. Only the frosty grass desert and the high wall that keeps us in our place.
All the time I had been dancing I had felt quite certain that Jonathan would be waiting for me. I was so confident of my imminent departure for the future that th
e ball had seemed quite insubstantial. When Charles’s face loomed out of the misty crowd I could see it only as a blob among many blobs. I thought, your eyes have shrunk and James has not put your collar on quite straight. I shall not see you again, and it is of no importance since I am going to be with Jonathan, and you will be quite worm-eaten, and one cannot yearn for a skeleton. I did not yearn a bit. I stared into his face and wondered that I had ever thought him handsome. He has grown very thin and looks like a death’s head upon a mop-stick. He did not speak to me and indeed seemed quite spiflicated by the sight of me. Charles stared at me as if I was something odious under his microscope, while number twenty-three, my partner with the grogblossom nose, danced off and seemed quite happy alone.
I was so sure that Jonathan must have found a way into the building that I went into my cubicle and looked under the bed for him. Bella used to do this before she climbed into her little white bed in the night nursery, looking for tigers escaped from the zoological gardens. That reminded me of Tommy, and I thought how cruel it would be to abandon him just after sending Emmie off with that picture letter.
I do not wish to escape from my zoo unless I can go with Jonathan to his wonderful city where men and women live quite freely and without lies and hypocrisy. It will be like living in a novel by George Sand where the only sin is to deny love. I will draw more pictures for Tommy of the shimmering glass towers and the people who look more like broomsticks than hour-glasses sitting at chairs and tables in the clean streets where they celebrate an endless victory. He will understand and be happy for me, and when he is asked what his mama died of he will reply that she died of joy.
The other ladies have gone to bed now after feasting on every morsel of that sham ball. The marionettes have finished their dance and must be laid in their boxes. All around me the hospital sleeps.
Nina In Utopia Page 23