by Annabel Abbs
* * *
The next morning I woke early to the rumbling of the London underground train which ran immediately behind our apartment. Mama was already up, dressing for her ‘wedding day’. She’d bought an expensive new outfit of the latest fashion – a swirling skirt that barely covered her knees and a figure-hugging coat with the latest cuffs. Even though it was a warm summer’s day, she insisted on wearing her favourite fox fur round her neck and a cloche hat which she pulled very low. “So as no one can see me,” she said with a tight smile.
When the lawyer arrived, he said the story was all over the Daily Mirror and that there were crowds of Fleet Street photographers, not only outside the Kensington Register Office, but up and down Campden Grove.
“I can get us past the newspaper men but, unless you have a back door, I don’t advise Miss Joyce leaving the house,” he said. So I agreed to stay home, besieged and imprisoned.
“Do some of your drawing. That calms your nerves,” said Mama as she powdered her nose for the third time.
“Prepare for the worst though,” the lawyer added. “All the Sunday newspapers will be there and they’ve a lot of pages to fill.” And then he handed his rolled up copy of the Daily Mirror to Babbo and told him to look at page three.
“Oh, Jim, read it out,” squeaked Mama.
“Notice has been given at a London register office of the forthcoming marriage of Mr James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, aged forty-nine, of Campden Grove, Kensington.” Babbo paused and cast his eyes over us all, as though he was on stage and we were his eager audience. “The bride’s name has been given as Nora Joseph Barnacle, aged forty-seven, of the same address. Mr Joyce is the author of Ulysses. According to Who’s Who, he was married in 1904 to Miss Nora Barnacle of Galway.” He hesitated, his lips twitching slightly as though he was trying to suppress a smile. “Mr Joyce’s solicitor stated yesterday, ‘For testamentary reasons it was thought well that the partners should be married according to English law’.”
“What on earth does ‘testamentary’ mean?” Mama asked.
“Ah.” Babbo paused and straightened his bow tie. “That was my idea. It doesn’t mean anything but it reads well, don’t you think?” He sounded smug and arrogant and for a minute it occurred to me he was enjoying all this – the legal wrangling and wordplay, the attention and publicity.
“Mr Joyce thought it was vague but important and legal-sounding enough to throw them off the scent. We’ll see if it works.” The lawyer sounded uncertain but Mama nodded vigorously in agreement and Babbo smiled to himself.
“I like that line about ‘the bride’s name’.” Mama tittered. “Miss Nora Barnacle of Galway – in the Daily Mail along with the film stars!”
“Time to sally forth, my bonny bride.” Babbo smirked at Mama and tucked his cane carefully under his arm. I stood scowling at them as they prepared to do battle with the newspaper men and the photographers. But neither of them noticed me as they left the flat, Mama adjusting the rake of her hat and tucking away stray hairs, Babbo very upright and experimenting with the angle of his head.
* * *
I awoke the following morning to hear my parents laughing and chuckling. I found them sitting in the parlour, surrounded by newspapers.
“How grumpy you look in this picture, Jim.” My mother chuckled as she raised a copy of the Evening Standard in the air. “And do you see how shapely me legs look! I am glad I bought that skirt. I was thinking it might be too short at the time. You know, too short to get married in!” She giggled girlishly.
“Have a look at this, Nora. They call you Nora Barnacle, Spinster.” Babbo pushed a copy of the Sunday Express towards my mother, his eyes lit with pleasure.
“You naughty boy!” My mother wagged her index finger suggestively at Babbo. “You’re thinking you might sell more books now, I’ll bet.”
Babbo said nothing but carried on beaming.
“Or are you thinking o’ the days when I was Nora Barnacle, spinster, of Galway – oh you naughty, naughty boy! Well, I’m just plain old Mrs Joyce now and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She simpered and reached eagerly for the newspaper.
“Rejoice, Mrs Joyce, no longer joyless or juiceless but joyful juicy Mrs Joyce.” Babbo was chortling, his shoulders shaking with laughter.
“Oh, I did feel a fool,” my mother squealed.
“And have you seen this telegram from Giorgio?” Babbo passed her a thin envelope. “In Paris they’re saying the wedding is nothing more than a stunt to publicise my books!” He slapped his thigh in mirth. “We are wedicising my work, Nora, my flora.”
As I stood in the doorway, soundless, unnoticed, I felt only revulsion and bitterness at their ridiculous enjoyment of themselves. Anger began to surge through me. How swiftly their sense of shame was ebbing away.
I went back to my room, slamming the door with all the force I could muster.
* * *
It was warm under the covers, dark and comforting. I felt like a seed dibbed deep into the dark earth. Or a truffle, warty and scabrous, lying curled and silent amongst rotting beech leaves.
As I lay there I could feel something inside me spluttering into life. I tried to imagine it as a shoot preparing to burst forth from a seed or a bulb. But at night it felt like something else. Something I didn’t understand and couldn’t name. It scratched and gnawed at me. It frightened me. And beneath my eiderdown with the sprays of pink roses, I breathed and breathed and breathed.
* * *
I stood in the dank and gloomy hall of Campden Grove, waiting for the bell to ring. Beckett was in London and was coming to dine out with us. Babbo kindly asked if I’d mind him joining us. I demurred but then thought it might help me to see him, to show him what he’d lost through his own foolishness. And I had no friends in London, no one of my own age with whom to converse or reminisce.
When the bell pealed, I opened the door and there he was. Beckett – his blue-green eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his beaky nose, his gaunt face that still looked as though it had been chiselled from stone. When he saw me he stepped back in surprise, as though he wasn’t expecting me, as though he’d been tricked in some way. And then he recovered himself and said how grand it was to see me.
“Weren’t you expecting me to be here?” I asked in a faltering voice. I suddenly felt the air around me compressing and buffeting me, pushing at my lungs.
“Oh yes, Mr Joyce said you would be joining us and I was very pleased.” Beckett’s fingers strayed to a boil on his neck, then to his hair, then back to the boil. “But you look – you look different. You look tired, Lucia. That’s all.”
I exhaled in relief then gave a short laugh that was meant to sound joyful, even a little coquettish. But it came out more like the bark of a nervous dog.
“It’s been a difficult time for us all,” I said. Then I remembered how much my parents enjoyed the newspaper coverage of their wedding, how outraged Babbo was that The Times hadn’t covered it and that the New York Times had hidden it away in its ‘Marriages, Deaths and Births’ column. So I added, “Difficult for some of us, at any rate.”
“I imagine you’re looking forward to being an aunt?” Beckett’s voice was stiff and formal, as though I was someone he barely knew.
“Oh that,” I said carelessly. “I suppose so. Babbo is pleased his lineage is to be continued. Let’s hope it’s a boy, hey?” I gave a little trill of laughter but stopped abruptly when I saw Beckett eyeing me oddly. “Anyway, welcome to Campden Grave. More like a grave than a grove, don’t you think? Come and have a drink and then we’ll go out. I want to hear all your news.” I kept my voice bright and took a long deep breath at every opportunity. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear his news or not. Seeing him again agitated me and my stomach seemed to be full of skittish sliding eels. I suddenly longed to be in my bed, deep under the covers. Why had he come? Why had I agreed to dine with him?
Instead, I said, “We’re going to eat at Slater’s. It’s just round the corner.�
��
“Grand,” said Beckett.
I realised I hadn’t taken his coat or hat or led him into the apartment. We were still standing in the dimly lit hallway with its stained wallpaper that rippled and bubbled with damp, and its odour of cooked cabbage and fungus.
And then Babbo’s voice rang out. “Beckett, is that you? Come through, come through and have a drink.”
* * *
Over drinks, and then dinner, Babbo and Beckett discussed their work. My mother crowed about the excellent roast chicken she bought round the corner every day, and her wedding, and Giorgio and Helen’s expected baby. I pushed a veal cutlet round my plate and tried to hide how dejected and desolate I felt. I tried to laugh in the right places and look serious and sad at the appropriate moments. But I seemed to get my timings all wrong. When Babbo talked of his struggles with Work in Progress I laughed manically, and when my mother tried to lighten the mood by making jokes about the English, strange whimpering sounds came up from my throat.
“Won’t you eat something, Lucia?” My mother jabbed her fork at my plate with its pile of mangled food.
“I don’t feel hungry,” I said. “I had a big lunch today.” She knew, of course, that I’d had no lunch, but how could I explain the nausea that lay like a coiled snake in the pit of my stomach?
Beckett asked me, carefully and politely, how Stella and Kitten were and whether I was enjoying London. I told him I had no idea how Kitten and Stella were because Stella had gone to study at the Bauhaus in Germany and had no address for me, and Kitten was very upset when I destroyed our dream of a dance school, and she had no address for me either. I could hear my voice becoming clamorous and sharp and I could see my mother glowering at me, but I continued. Since he asked.
“No, I don’t like London. The apartment’s horrid. I have no friends at art school. They won’t talk to me because I’m a bastard. I have no life of my own here. I hate it! I want to go back to Paris – as soon as possible. I hate the English. They’re all donkeys! I just can’t escape them in London. They’re everywhere, always staring at me. They know I’m a fucking bastard.” The words tripped and fell from my lips, each one louder than the one before. I frowned, puzzled at how my larynx was talking – no, shouting – of its own accord.
People at the next table stared at me. Babbo stared at me. Beckett looked at his plate and concentrated very hard on cutting up his steak. My mother glared at me. And then Babbo started talking in Italian, telling me everything was going to be all right, that I could go home whenever I wanted, that I could stay with Giorgio in Paris. I didn’t say much after that. And Beckett, sensibly, didn’t ask me any more questions.
When we left the restaurant I was talking quite normally again. Babbo asked Beckett if he’d like to join us the following week for dinner, before his return to Dublin. Only I saw the look in Beckett’s eyes, for it was the look of a man corralled. Only I saw the pleading, soft-soaping look in Babbo’s eyes. Only I knew that Beckett couldn’t refuse my father.
“Just tell my father you don’t want to come, Beckett. Go on – just say it! Tell him the truth! You don’t want to be with me. You don’t want to dine out with a cross-eyed bastard. I don’t care. Just say it!” And Beckett looked at me in surprise and then his cheeks flooded with colour and he quickly looked away.
“Come on, Lucia.” Babbo put his spidery hands on my shoulders and wheeled me round, towards Campden Grove. And when I looked down I saw the pavement of Kensington High Street, littered with small mounds of dog shit. And when I looked up at the darkening sky, it seemed unsteady and trembling, as though it could fall in at any moment. And when I turned my head, there was Beckett, walking up Kensington Church Street, his shoulders all bent and hunched. Oh Beckett. My Beckett …
* * *
That night I knew there was something dark and monstrous inside me, lurking, waiting, biding its time. I couldn’t explain or describe it, but it scared me. Sometimes it jumped into my throat and took control of me. I said nothing to my mother. And I couldn’t bother Babbo. He had his great Work in Progress to complete. Nothing must come between him and Work in Progress. And so tired. I was so tired. I couldn’t dance any more. I had no energy. And my mother said the flat was too small. Just climbing the stairs made my breath come harder. The simple act of dragging air into my lungs exhausted me. I concentrated on my drawing – my drawing and my breathing.
20
Autumn 1931
Paris
It was Babbo’s idea. Ever since I started drawing lessons, he’d talked of us embarking on a project together. After returning from London I was at a loss. I didn’t have the energy to start a new dance class and I seemed to have no friends left in Paris. Only Kitten, and she was always busy with her fiancé. We no longer lived in Robiac Square. Instead we had a small airless apartment in Passy with moss growing in the bathroom and dark stains all over the ceiling. More and more I felt like a husk, empty and helpless. I took to sitting in my room and staring into the mirror, asking how I could scratch out a life for myself now. Asking who I was and who I was to become. But my reflection gave no answers and my mother became more and more irritated by my inertia.
So Babbo asked me to design illuminated letters to accompany each of the thirteen poems that the Oxford University Press was publishing, in a special edition to be called The Joyce Book. The editor asked thirteen composers to write musical settings for each poem. I was to be a part of this illustrious crowd of artistic brilliance.
The Book of Kells must inspire me, Babbo said. And so it did. On good days. But on bad days I saw serpents and, when I looked at my lettrines later on, I saw the serpent’s head plain and clear, tangled in the strokes of dove grey, smoke blue and softest rose pink.
* * *
For three months I worked on Babbo’s lettrines. All day and every day. Slowly and painstakingly. Babbo said they were beautiful. My mother said nothing. Finally, they were parcelled up and sent by special delivery to Oxford. But at the beginning of December, as the Paris air turned chill and brittle, the lettrines were returned. They had arrived too late. The poems had already been typeset.
Babbo said he had another idea, a better idea. He got straight to work touting my lettrines all over Paris. A week later he told me the Black Sun Press had agreed to print twenty-five special editions of his poems with my illustrated letters. They were to be printed on thick ribbed paper and bound in raw green silk the colour of a tart apple. Each page was to be interleaved with green tissue paper. My name was to be embossed, alongside Babbo’s, on the front cover. My illustrations would leap from every page. They would be works of art, collectors’ editions of James Joyce’s poems.
But a week later Caresse Crosby of the Black Sun Press called. I heard Babbo talking to her on the telephone. I heard the long silences as he listened. I heard the despondency in his voice as he said ‘Thank you, Mrs Crosby’ and ‘Goodbye, Mrs Crosby’. When he hung up and came into the parlour, he couldn’t look me in the eye. He stood awkwardly by the window, looking out at the cloudless colourless sky. He lit a cigarette, blew out a long plume of smoke, and told me Mrs Crosby could find no American buyers for our work. I felt an undertow of defeat, of stillbirth, flowing round me, pressing in on me. Babbo quickly regained his composure. He told me he had another idea and I must give him time.
* * *
My Janus-faced mother visited Helen Fleischman-Joyce every day. If she wasn’t at Giorgio and Helen’s apartment, she was out and about in their car, with their chauffeur. I didn’t care. I never liked her anyway.
* * *
“She frightens me, Jim. There, I’ve said it.”
“You mustn’t let her King Lear scenes intimidate you, Nora. No doubt it’s a simple hormone imbalance that can be resolved with a good doctor.”
“That’s not what Giorgio’s thinking. He knows her better than we do. Those two were always thick as thieves.”
“And what is Giorgio saying, as poor Lucia sits a glooming so gleaming in the gloa
ming?”
“That she’s going mad and should be locked up, Jim. In a lunatic asylum.”
I saw Babbo’s stockinged feet twitching on the sofa and heard the strike of a match. Then Mama moved towards the door and closed it, and all I could hear was my heart stumbling against my ribs.
* * *
January 1932. A light snow fell over Paris. I sat at the window, the blind raised just a few inches, watching the snow as it drifted and settled. I thought of Alex Ponisovsky and how much time we’d been spending together. He no longer gave Babbo Russian lessons. Now he came to the house only to see me. He was gentle and kind, courteous and well-meaning. As I thought of Alex, smiling quietly to myself and watching the snow, my mother said something that made me freeze, that made every muscle and sinew in my body stiffen with shock.
“Lucia,” she said. “I think you should know something. I think it’s better you’re hearing it from me before you’re discovering it for yourself. Mr Beckett has left his position in Dublin and come back to live in Paris. He’s living on the rue de Vaugirard.” She looked at me as though she was expecting a response. But I had nothing to say. I slowly turned my head back to the window and as I watched the snow, pale and feathery against the black sky, a single word circled inside my head. Why? Why? Why?
“I’m glad you’re all right with that. Likely you’ll bump into him some place or other – you know how ’tis in Paris. Haven’t you anything to do, Lucia? Why don’t you do some o’ your drawing? Just look at this snow. If it don’t stop soon we’ll be snowed in, just before His Lordship’s big birthday. That won’t do. No, that won’t do at all.”
* * *
Sometimes I strangled my mother, my two gloved hands wrenching her flabby neck. Sometimes I force-fed her with Babbo’s morphine, spooning it expertly down her throat. Sometimes it was nothing more than a casual push that sent her toppling from our balcony. Whatever the method, the dream was the same. But recently others had entered my dreams too. Babbo, Giorgio, Helen Fleischman. I frantically measured the morphine, but there wasn’t enough to go round. I pushed my mother over the balcony, but Babbo or Giorgio saw me and so I had to push them over too. I saw the terror in their eyes as I cast them to their death. One by one, the people in my life were killed, swiftly, efficiently, without mercy. Each dream ended in the same way. Once I’d murdered, I left the apartment with a skip in my step. I went to the quayside stalls on the Seine, where the caged birds were sold. I opened every cage and let every crested canary, every blue-eyed cockatoo, every peach-faced lovebird, every scarlet macaw, fly freely into the air. And when the last bird was wheeling in the sky above me, and my ears were flooded with the sound of birdsong, I woke up, sweating and shaking.