Mrs Gaskell and Me

by Nell Stevens

  These are things I applied for when I was looking for ways to get to, and spend time in, America, when Max and I were on the same page about the benefits of being in the same country. Now that I have been firmly uninvited by Max, they arrive, like forgotten boomerangs that have returned to hit me in the face.

  2015

  Saliva Study

  I am sitting on the twenty-fifth floor of the Tower Wing in Guy’s Hospital at London Bridge, and a dental assistant is dribbling lactic acid onto my tongue with a dropper, then sucking spit out of my mouth with a tube. The acid fills my mouth with saliva and I have to resist the urge to swallow as I lie back with my mouth open, staring at the pattern of ceiling tiles above me, and the triangles of darkness where they have come loose.

  We would like to invite you to take part in a study being conducted for a Ph.D. in Mucosal and Salivary Biology. You should only participate if you want to. Please take time to read the following information carefully. Talk to others about the study if you wish.

  The goal of this study is to collect salivary proteins from individuals who have not suffered from dental erosion. These proteins act as a barrier that protects against dental erosion. Saliva and tooth enamel from patients who have experienced dental erosion has already been collected. We are investigating what occurs when this saliva and tooth enamel is exposed to healthy salivary proteins.

  Once the first round of saliva collection is completed, I am given a mouth guard to wear: it was moulded on my last visit to the Dental Research Unit, and has been fitted with enamel from other people’s teeth. I try not to look too closely as the assistant produces it. I close my eyes, open my mouth, and nod when the man says he’ll be back to take it out in an hour’s time.

  When he has gone, I sit, swallowing compulsively, and then I get out my notebook. I should spend the spare time working. I should jot down some thoughts about the way my nineteenth-century artists used spiritualism in Rome as an alternative mode of collaboration, a similar kind of distance-bridging effort to the journeys they had made to reach Rome from their homelands. I am participating in the study in the hope that it will inspire a new, matter-of-fact approach to my own research: the student of Mucosal and Salivary Biology researches teeth and I research books and perhaps I can convince myself that those two things are not so different after all. Instead, my tongue still squirming from the sting of the acid, I begin a letter to Max.

  Dear Max,

  I have written you so many letters. Most of them start by claiming that I don’t know what to say, and then somehow go on for several pages, saying things. I have them saved in scraps and pages on my computer, scribbled in the backs of notebooks. Maybe one day I’ll try to make sense of them; probably they will quickly become irrelevant. None of them are the right thing to send now.

  The reason I do not know what to say – and then go on to say so much – is that for the past few weeks I have been oscillating between love and rage. These two emotions turn on themselves, over and over again. The more I love you, the more I rage against the person who took you away from me so incomprehensibly, who is also – you. I walk around London in a fog of love for you, and then, inevitably, predictably, as I sit on the bus home, I feel myself sliding into fury. I spend the rest of the day stinging with anger. Today, I woke up feeling simply and warmly in love you with again. I will stay like this for a while, and then the pattern will repeat: the magnitude of the loss will catch up with me and I will be overtaken by hurt and resentment.

  When I am loving, I read the things I wrote to you when I was angry and feel ashamed of myself for being so thoughtless, selfish, unsympathetic, self-righteous, entitled. When I am angry, I read the loving letters and think how spineless and cringing and pathetic I was to have written them. And so, what follows is not really a letter. It is just a collection of paragraphs. It is a fraction of the things I wish I could say.

  I hold my missing of you in my body. I feel it in my stomach and my neck and my skin. I ache so strongly for your hands and lips and breath and voice that I feel bruised. My every impulse is to get on a plane to see you – and then I remember that you refused me that. You told me not to come. You said that you would not have been able to express any more in person, that it wouldn’t be worth the expense of the flight, but it is an insult to your intelligence and mine to suggest that communication would be no easier if we were on the same side of the Atlantic. You cannot deny that of all the things that came between us, the most damaging was the simplest: the miles.

  There are so many things I want to tell you: news, ideas, dreams, things that have changed. It is my first impulse to tell you, whenever anything happens. And then, almost at once, I swallow that urge. All the things I want to say, all those reaching hands, are slapped away, almost as soon as they appear. I know if I were to tell you, you’d say, ‘That’s great,’ or ‘I’m really happy for you,’ like a distant friend, like someone who is not at all involved or affected. You started doing that a few weeks before we broke up and it hurt, although I didn’t understand why at the time. I can’t bear to hear you do it again.

  I saw a baby on the tube yesterday, very new, all scrunched up in its father’s arms, fist clenched around his little finger. It hit me that what I have lost is not just you, not just the future I thought I would have with you, but our children, too. I had begun to believe in them. Now they are gone. They were going to exist and now they never will. The baby on the tube and its father got off at Oxford Circus, and I watched them walk right down the platform and take the exit for the Central Line.

  Everything beautiful makes me think of you.

  I miss sending you poems. I miss waking up to poems from you. I still have the instant thought, whenever I come across something I like, that I’ll send it to you. At first, I saved those things in a long, strange anthology on my computer. Then I deleted the file and now I can’t remember what was in it. My mind keeps coming back to the last poem I sent you, the night before you broke up with me – Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Sonnet 14’ – and wondering how you could possibly have read it and still have done what you did. Perhaps you found it banal.

  A few days after you told me you didn’t want to be with me, the New York Times published a story about how to deal with a breakup before Valentine’s Day. In the article, various writers described their experiences of heartbreak and their advice for recovery. Some were better than others. It was a perfectly average piece, but at the time it struck me as miraculous.

  What I am trying to say is that I want to go home. Because you are home for me. You are the person with whom I most clearly recognize myself. I feel cast adrift, horribly homesick, being cut off from you. And I thought I was – I can’t help but believe I still am – that person for you, too. I wish you would come home.

  I dreamed that you and I were trying to go on holiday, but everything was going wrong. It was one of those frantic, panic-stricken dreams in which you cannot get where you need to be and everything is upside-down. I turned up at the airport without my passport. I had to go back for it, but you had already gone through security. When I got home, I discovered a child in my bedroom, turning all the lights on. I found my passport, and the only thing I had to do was figure out how to turn off the lights, but there were bulbs everywhere, and switches everywhere, and every time I tried one it would illuminate a different part of the room. There were twenty minutes to go until departure time. I called you. You said it would be all right, I would definitely make it. And I was still on the phone with you as I watched the flight take off. I knew you were on it, without me, but still you kept saying that I was going to get there in time, that everything would be fine, even as the plane disappeared from view.

  There was a night last summer when we sat out on the beach on Cape Cod in the dark with a bottle of wine. I was in love with you. You were in love with me. It seemed very simple. I was getting cold, and I told you so, and you said we should go inside. We went back to the cottage. That was it. And now I keep thinking abo
ut that moment, how casual I was about cutting it short, how certain I was that we would have countless other opportunities to sit out on the beach in the dark and drink wine together. If I had had the faintest suspicion of what would happen a few months later I would have stayed on that beach with you all night.

  Nell

  The assistant bustles back into the room, glances at my notebook and says, ‘Ooh, looks like you’ve been making good use of your time.’

  The mouth guard makes it impossible to speak or smile, for which I am grateful. I shrug.

  ‘So you’re doing your Ph.D.?’ he says, as he reaches over to slide the guard out. It comes loose, trailing saliva.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, wiping my mouth and running my tongue over my teeth.

  ‘Never a moment to lose, huh?’ the assistant says, looking a second time at my scribblings on the page.

  After another round of acid-induced-saliva collection, I leave the hospital with a piece of paper confirming that I will be paid two hundred pounds for my participation in the study, and a bitter taste in my mouth.

  1857

  The First of Many

  There was nothing for it but for them to meet: your husband and Mr Norton. Two halves of your life were set to close around you, in the genteel arena of the house on Plymouth Grove. The visit was the result of a long negotiation: you had suggested dates to Mr Norton but he had written to say he was needed elsewhere; he had suggested dates to you but for days when your guest rooms were already occupied. In the end, he had moved prior engagements around to make time for the visit. You had insisted that he come while the Art Treasures Exhibition was in Manchester, and so, dutifully, he did.

  The morning Mr Norton was expected, you couldn’t sit still. You paced between the parlour and the kitchen, annoying Hearn. You called the housemaid, Mary, to check the guest room was ready, and when she said it was, you told her to clean it a second time. Marianne looked out from her room and said, ‘Oh, mama, please, no more guests! Are you not tired of being agreeable? I do so want leisure to sulk and be silent in.’

  ‘It’s for Mr Norton,’ you said, and your daughter’s expression softened.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘in that case, I don’t mind.’

  Even Marianne, it seemed, was not immune to Mr Norton’s charms, and the memories of your Italian days he would bring with him.

  You tried to see your house the way he would see it. Would he notice the newly upholstered furniture, the tasteful wallpaper, the Indian rugs, all paid for with the proceeds from Mary Barton and Ruth? Would he want to see the corner of the table where you wrote, ink-splattered and covered in the ongoing edits of the Life? There were small grooves in the wood where you had pressed too heavily with the pen. You so wanted him to see it, the table and the evidence left on it by your work. You wanted him to look over the revised manuscript and tell you what he thought of it (and you wanted him to take your side, to rage on your behalf over the violence you were being forced to inflict upon your own text). You wanted him to see that you were still a writer here, in Manchester, the same woman who had told him ghost stories all over Rome. You did not want that to be drowned out by the presence of the house, and of the husband.

  In Rome, Mr Story had shown you photographs of American houses, with wooden slats instead of bricks, shuttered windows, and dark forests behind. Everything in the pictures had looked new, wild, foreign. You imagined alligators, bears, a menagerie of predators, lurking in the shadows. To Mr Norton, Plymouth Grove would seem solid and flat and safe. Manchester would seem grimy and dull. Perhaps, you, too would seem that way to him, out of the Roman sunlight.

  It was hard to believe he would really come, and yet, before you had time to doubt, to fixate on the unlikeliness of it all, there he was, walking in long strides up towards the house. You rushed downstairs to greet him, calling to the girls and Mr Gaskell as you ran.

  You opened the door yourself. ‘Oh you came, you really came.’

  You had half expected that he would seem different in Manchester to the way he did in Italy. Everything seemed dingier to you, more drab. But here he was, unchanged, his face as bright and open as when you first saw it on the Corso, surrounded by the gaiety of the carnival.

  He was beaming. ‘Is it only two months since I saw you in Rome? It feels like years.’

  You were about to agree, to tell him in a rush about a million thoughts and ideas and feelings you had had since then, but you sensed, without turning, that Mr Gaskell was behind you.

  Mr Norton’s expression became a little more formal as he said, ‘Mr Gaskell,’ and held out a hand. Your husband stepped forward and shook it.

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Mr Norton said, which was not a lie, exactly, you thought, but certainly a very generous version of the truth. ‘It’s an honour to make your acquaintance, sir.’

  And just like that, the day was underway, and Mr Norton was in your house, speaking to your youngest two girls, whom he hadn’t met, and reminiscing about Rome with Meta and Marianne, and being deferent and knowledgeable in conversation with Mr Gaskell, asking him about the Cross Street Chapel, and about provisions in Manchester for the working poor. In the afternoon, you left Mr Gaskell in his study where he was happiest, and set off for the exhibition. Once you arrived, you sent the girls to find refreshments so that, just for a moment, you could stand in the modern sculpture court with Mr Norton, and let the crowds stream around you, and pretend that you were in Rome again, that you had just stepped into the Capitoline Museum and that when you walked outside you would do so into bright sunshine and the sound of the pifferari’s raucous pipe music.

  ‘How is everyone?’ you asked. ‘How are Mr and Mrs Story? And Miss Hosmer? Is Miss Beecher-Stowe still there? Has Mr de Vere made any conversions?’

  ‘They all miss you,’ Mr Norton said.

  ‘We miss them.’

  ‘It is really not the same at the Casa Cabrale these days. Mr Story was talking, in fact, of moving – the Prince Barberini has offered them rooms at his palazzo.’

  ‘Oh, no! They can’t move!’ You were horrified at the thought. ‘It must always stay the same, exactly as it was. I couldn’t bear it if anything changed.’

  Mr Norton smiled, but it was not his usual, full, glowing smile. ‘I shall pass on your orders to the Storys.’

  That night, when everyone had retired, you sat alone at your writing table. Above you, in the room you had made Mary prepare and re-prepare for him, Mr Norton was getting ready for bed. He would sleep on your sheets, under your blankets, his head on one of your pillows. After a summer in which your house had been full of guests, it was only now that it struck you how close they were, how intimate it was, to have another person in your house, breathing your air and touching your things.

  In the morning he would breakfast with you all, and be witty and charming and make the younger girls fall in love with him and Mr Gaskell think he was a ‘serious, clever fellow’, and then he would prepare to leave. He would apologize for not staying longer, and say he wished he could, and you would be sorry, too, but optimistic. You were confident that before long, you would go to America. You would see him in his own country, in one of those wooden houses in the dark, American woods. It would be the first of many visits. ‘I will see you soon,’ you would say. It had been true last time, when he had been the one to say it. It would be true again now, you were certain.

  But that night, sitting alone in the room beneath the bed where he was sleeping, you surely wondered about other outcomes, other versions of the story. He was only a few feet away. You could have padded, silently, upstairs. You could have opened his door.

  2015

  Winning

  ‘Congratulations on winning a tailor-made honeymoon!’ The first line of the email is visible before I open it. It is spam, and instead of deleting the message out of hand, I pause to feel sorry for myself, to think how perfectly the universe conspires to prod fresh bruises, to needle raw nerves.

  Offer me penis en
largement. Offer me an inheritance from a Nigerian prince. Do not offer me love, or the trappings of love.

  Masochistic, embracing self-pity, I open the message. I am the winner of a luxury, bespoke honeymoon to India, it says, including flights, accommodation, personalized itinerary and three romantic excursions of my choice. I am invited to attend the offices of a travel agency in Marylebone, who will be delighted to work with me to create the honeymoon of my dreams. The email is addressed personally to me, and as I read through, despite myself, I begin to feel a creeping interest. I experience a little bubble of excitement at the thought that perhaps something real and hilarious and sort of wonderful has actually arrived, electronically, in the Rare Books Reading Room on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon. I text Holly: ‘I think I’ve won a honeymoon …’

  On a second read-through, I notice that the email is written in a slightly unusual font, from a woman called Tanya at a PR company whose name I don’t recognize. The thrill subsides: it is a scam, after all. I will respond and Tanya will present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and all she will need to secure the booking is my card details. I feel embarrassed to have believed in it for the few seconds when it seemed possible. I think about a friend who, in our first year of university, received an email promising him a cut of several millions of pounds, tied up in Russian bonds, if he would act as a middle man in a complex series of international transactions: he came to my room with a wild glint in his eyes, stammering, momentarily convinced that this was a possibility, that dazzling things could happen to normal people. That was in earlier days of internet scams, before we knew any better. Now: I write to Holly again. ‘Wait, no, maybe I haven’t.’

  I have no memory of entering a contest to win a honeymoon to India, but still, it is undeniably the sort of thing I would have done. All those library days spent sifting through web pages for opportunity and luxury and distraction might have paid off. In recent months I have had other, underwhelming, successes on this front. I won tickets to the London press screening of an action movie marketed at teenage boys. I won a signed print from an artist I neither recognized nor particularly liked.