Angelmonster (15 page)

Papa understood. “By which he means he is not of the aristocracy, I take it?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Such considerations mean nothing to Shelley, of course.”

“Of course.” Papa looked at Shelley approvingly. “I shall make it my business to procure a copy of Mr Keats’s latest poems, and give it to you as a wedding present.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Shelley, bowing.

When dinner was announced, we sat down in the dining-room of my girlhood as if we had never eaten a meal anywhere else. Tom, who waited upon us, could not forbear to smile at me when he passed with the soup. “Good evening, Miss,” he said.

My exile had apparently affected everyone in the house. I was touched, and asked after Tom’s wife. Mama, who disapproved of talking to servants during meals except to give orders, tut-tutted, but I took no notice. Her power to command me had diminished now.

When Tom had gone and Mama had made her customary remarks about the temperature of the soup, my father turned a serious eye on me. “We have spoken of Shelley’s work, Mary,” he said, “and even of that of Mr Keats, of whom I have scarcely heard. But what of your own writing?”

I took two sips of soup during the silence that followed, aware that Shelley was waiting as intently as Papa for my answer. I rarely spoke to Shelley about my growing desire to publish a story. A novel, perhaps, of the kind Claire admired so much. And although he had offered to help me with my writing during my estrangement from my father, I never showed him any of what I considered to be “scribbles” – sketchy, half-planned paragraphs on the backs of the pieces of paper containing his poems, which I gathered up in order to copy neatly for him. The copies made, I never threw the papers away but stored them carefully for my own use.

“I have an idea for a novel,” I admitted. “But it is very hazy at present. I cannot even decide upon the end.”

“That never stopped a novelist yet, to be sure!” cried Mama. “I cannot count the number of novels I have read with disappointing, muddled endings. I say to William, ‘William, you are a writer – why, you should write a book about how to write!’”

While she trilled with laughter at this witty anecdote, I smiled at my father. “I thank you for your enquiry, Papa. I am persevering, and will keep you informed.”

Mama had lost the thread of our conversation. When Tom came in to get the soup plates, she signalled him to fill our wine glasses.

“You have talked enough of poetry and novels, my dear,” she said to Papa. “This is an occasion to talk of wedding breakfasts and bridal finery, is it not?” She raised her glass. “To marriage!”

We dutifully echoed the toast, and sipped our wine.

“You have been raiding the cellar, sir,” said Shelley appreciatively.

My father bowed in acknowledgement. “A fine wine for a happy reunion,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Shelley, looking at me between the branches of Mama’s most elaborate candelabra. “I drink the health of my future wife and her parents with all my heart.”

As we drove back to our hotel that evening, I nestled close to Shelley in the carriage. He seemed tired, and did not want to speak.

I could not untangle my feelings. At a stroke, Harriet’s despair had made us respectable, bestowed honourable citizenship on our son, and restored my beloved papa to me. I had even been gratified by the greetings of the familiar servants of my childhood. But could happiness and grief sit well together in the same heart? Could Shelley and I truly celebrate, with finery and a wedding breakfast?

I thought not. To the disappointment of Claire and her mama, it was with very little ostentation that I stood beside Shelley a few weeks later in a small London church. Claire wept, Mama smiled, Papa blew his nose and looked at his feet. So, on a damp day in the middle of that winter of damp days, for good or for ill, my romantic poet and I were married at last.

Shelley could not pray. After the death of Harriet I was forced to the conclusion that an atheist forfeits the commonplace comfort of prayer when he proclaims his atheism
.

Night after night he could not sleep unless he took a draught. Even when he did, he slept fitfully, often starting up with a cry. I pitied him from my heart. He was adrift in the isolation to which he had driven himself
.

Under his influence I believed in the power of love and the human spirit. Together we had discussed the unanswerable questions of existence, both natural and supernatural. But in moments of agony I still prayed. When my daughter had died, I had pleaded with God to give her the eternal bliss that my dear mama already enjoyed
.

But if Shelley could not believe in heaven, in redemption and forgiveness, what did he suppose had happened to the spirit of this girl he had loved, who had given him two children and, in despair beyond any known to him, had drowned herself and her unborn child? What, in his own moments of agony, did he imagine?

Guilt, a skilful tormentor of even the clearest conscience, plays havoc with that of an already tormented man. Shelley drank wine, and brandy when he could get it. When strong liquor failed, he took opium. That he wept I was certain, though he tried to conceal this from me. I heard his suffering in the bleakest depths of bleak nights. I knew his faults, but my love was strong
.

“Have no fear, my love,” I whispered to him as the first birdsong began after another empty night. “Fanny and Harriet are at peace, even if we cannot be.”

ITALY WILL SAVE US

P
ast scandal, however, is not quickly forgotten.

We were legally married, and William soon had a pretty sister, a baby girl we named Clara, the English version of her aunt’s French name. I hoped to live happily with the people I loved, bringing up my children in peace, secure in my father’s readmission of me into his society. But Shelley and I were not called upon, nor invited to call. We were unable to penetrate a society in which people desired to protect themselves and their children against irregular households such as ours. The presence of Claire and her child, a little girl named Allegra, whose father was nowhere to be seen, turned suspicious eyes on my new husband. Even the judge in Shelley’s petition to gain custody of his eldest children, Ianthe and Charles, ruled that such an immoral man was not fit to be a father.

We decided we must go away again. This time Shelley needed no persuading from Claire and me. He was under the influence of someone else.

“George adores Italy,” he informed us one day. “He has an apartment in Venice, and a summer villa at Padua.”

“With mistresses already installed in them?” I asked.

“He believes,” Shelley persisted, ignoring my interruption, “that Italy will save us from this infernal gossip we suffer in England. We can settle very contentedly in some pleasant Italian place, where society is more liberal and artistic people gather.”

Claire was impressed by this mention of artistic people, a group to which she had always felt she naturally belonged. “Oh, Shelley! If George is not too far away, do you think he will come and visit dear Allegra?”

“There is nothing to stop him,” Shelley assured her.

Except his disinclination to do so
, I observed to myself.

To Claire’s delight, George arranged to join us at our rented villa in Pisa. But when we arrived there, an exhausted party of the three of us, our three children, Elise, and an English nurse with the charming name of Milly, letters awaited us. One, addressed to Shelley, was in George’s hand.

“He is not coming,” Shelley informed us. “He will send a servant to collect Allegra and take her to stay with him in his house in Venice.”

“Why does he want her to go there?” asked Claire, bewildered. “And am I not to go with her?”

“Apparently not,” said Shelley abruptly. Then he looked at her, and softened his voice. “Have no fear, my dear Claire. George wants the best for your daughter. Trust him.”

I turned away from Claire’s stricken face, and Shelley’s hollow words, knowing that nothing would lessen the pain of parting with her child. Shelley, of all people, knew this. But he would not side with Claire against George.

In the end, to appease Claire, George allowed Elise to accompany Allegra to Venice rather than sending his own servant. As the carriage carried the screaming child away, and Claire collapsed against me, I felt, though it shames me a little to record this, a measure of relief.

It had been decided that Allegra would remain in her father’s charge, leaving Claire free to take the position of governess she had long talked of. All hope of going on the stage had now been discarded. As I comforted her, I wondered whether after all this time Claire might soon cease to be our responsibility?

As the summer wore on, Shelley began to suffer severe pains in his stomach. That he was ill was without question, though he dismissed the seriousness of the symptoms. After three days of vomiting he became feverish. I was alarmed, but no physician we consulted could offer either a diagnosis or a remedy.

“Nervous exhaustion,” said one.

“Overwork and anxiety,” said another.

“A light diet,” said the first.

“Feed him on as much beef and red wine as he can stomach,” said the second.

They agreed, however, that an opiate such as laudanum would ease the patient’s discomfort. Both recommended larger measures than Shelley had taken before.

He suffered prolonged periods of the derangement we had witnessed at the Villa Diodati. Refusing to go to bed he would wander around the house, or even outside it, in the middle of the night, his eyes glassy and unseeing. He wept and laughed by turns. He could not read, nor write. I prayed to God that our children were too small to remember what they saw.

Claire, immersed in her own sorrow, liked to be near him. She read to him, and made new copies of his poems. She wrote the letters he dictated. I was so busy with housework and children, I knew not what they discussed during the hours they spent together. But gradually she became his confidante. He no longer shared troubles and pleasures with me, but turned instead to her. And slowly, very slowly, he recovered enough of his former strength to take up a pen himself, and set to work again.

In this fashion, strewing the floor around the couch with pieces of paper, written and overwritten with verse, which Claire gathered up and copied, he passed the days. And then, one August afternoon when the shimmering heat of Italy surrounded the villa, pouring in windows and doors and filling up its rooms, we received some news.

Shelley’s couch had been placed in the coolest room in the house. He lay there wearing his house robe, and I was sitting at the window sewing, when we heard a shriek from upstairs. Within seconds Claire had pattered down the stairs and entered the room in great agitation. There was a letter in her hand.

“Allegra is ill!” she announced. Her brimming eyes flashed. “She is with Elise at George’s villa in Padua!”

“And where is George?” I asked.

She consulted the letter. “Still in Venice. He cannot get away.”

“Why not?”

Ignoring me, she folded the letter and gazed tearfully at Shelley. “I must go to my daughter!”

“Indeed you must,” said Shelley calmly. “I shall take you there.”

I was astonished. “But George, even if he is in Venice, will not allow it!”

“George will not know,” Shelley declared. “But if he finds out, I wager that he will do what is right when a child’s life is in danger.”

“And what about
your
life?” I protested. “You are not well enough to travel to Padua!” I turned to Claire, who stood with the letter in her hand, her face flushed, her tears drying. “
You
do not think Shelley is well enough to come with you, do you? You must go alone!”

Shelley spoke before Claire could open her mouth. “A lady cannot travel alone in Italy, as you well know, Mary. And we have no male servant.” He rose from the couch. “Make haste,” he instructed Claire. “We must leave immediately.”

“I am to stay here with Milly and the children, I suppose?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Shelley, half rising from the sofa, his arm half out of the sleeve of his robe. “For pity’s sake, the children cannot travel such a distance in this heat!”