Angelmonster (19 page)

“What matter? I am here now.” He took my hand and kissed it. “All I require is my fellow sailors, if their beautiful wives can spare them, and we can be off.”

I did not protest. George’s influence over Shelley was at the bottom of this scheme: flushed with the idea of being master of his own boat, George had encouraged Shelley in a similar plan. “You cannot dwell on this delightfully wild coast and not have a boat!” he had declared. Shelley, of course, needed no further entreaty.

Edward’s friend Trelawny and another ex-naval officer, Captain Roberts, had designed and built George’s boat, the
Bolivar
. Shelley, too, had ordered a boat from Trelawny and Roberts, and it was this vessel, the
Don Juan
, that George and the boy had now sailed down the coast from the boatyard at Livorno to her new master.

Shelley, Edward and George were planning to set off on what they called a sea voyage, though Jane and I foresaw that the “voyage” would only be around the headland and back, in the sunshine, accompanied by much wine and singing.

The boy had moored the boat and was sitting in the bow, dangling his legs over the side, awaiting his captain’s orders. I seized the moment.

“George, will you look after Shelley?”

His eyes narrowed. “My dear child, if you are so anxious, why not prevail upon Shelley to abandon the whole enterprise?”

“How can I? You know that the boat is a toy he must play with until he is bored with it.”

Ever since that frightful night at the Villa Diodati, George had respected my intelligence, and sharpened his own wit upon it. He listened to me.

“George, it is a fault in Shelley’s character that he takes everyone to be exactly as they present themselves,” I said.

He nodded. “And when his idols are discovered to have feet of clay, naturally he will never admit to his former idolatry.”

“Exactly.”

“I will do what I can, my dearest Mary,” George continued, “but Shelley is headstrong.”

I lifted my head. He smiled the smile he had first bestowed upon me when he had jumped out of another boat, on another shore, so long ago. It was the smile of a grown-up in a world of juveniles. I offered my hand, and he kissed it. Then, remembering I was not decently clad, I gathered the shawl closer around my nightdress. “But now, George, you must come up to the house.”

The kitchen was very dark after the brilliant light outside. As George and I entered we almost collided with a newly-awakened Shelley. Struggling excitedly into his waistcoat, he greeted George. “Is she fitted and ready? Is there wind enough for us to cast off?”

“Of course.” George sat down and cut himself some bread. “After I have breakfasted.”

With little regard for Percy, who was playing on the floor with a wooden mouse on wheels, Shelley strode out of the kitchen door and ran down the beach. We saw him hopping and splashing in the water. Then he stopped, turned to grin at us, turned back, almost overbalanced, and whooped with glee at the sight of the boat. Even Milly, who was usually overawed by George’s presence, laughed.

“Edward! Edward!” Shelley cupped his hands around his mouth and called up at the windows of the villa. “Edward! The boat is come!”

George was sitting contentedly at the table, eating bread and cheese. “A toy, I believe you said?”

I picked up my little boy and sat down, signalling to Milly to bring a pitcher of wine. “Do not stay away long, George,” I begged. “I want Shelley here with me. I do not feel well, and do not want to be left alone with Jane and the children. I have been left often before, but never in such a place as this.”

George did not speak, but pressed my shoulder.

When Edward and Jane appeared, George took them to admire the boat, leaving me with Percy on my lap and a heart full of longing. Longing for what, I knew not. For my lost children. For my husband’s elusive love. For something I could not name.

Percy squirmed, resisting my arms with all his strength – he wanted to go and see the boat too. I put him down, and he ran out to join them, jumping into Shelley’s arms. I put on an old petticoat and joined them barefoot. Shelley did not kiss me.

Within half an hour the three men had boarded the boat and cast off, and were clambering about telling each other what to do, and laughing and pretending to push one another into the water.

“Stay close by the shore!” I called.

“Do as the boy tells you!” instructed Jane.

But the wind had already taken the sails, and they were too far away to hear.

MONSTER

I
never saw sea more beautiful than the waters of the bay at Lerici. Its colours were the deepest blue and purple, changing with the current and the weather. At twilight, when the lights on the fishing boats bobbed like fireflies in the bluish air, the sheen on the water was smoother than glass.

Beyond the reach of the bay the grey mist of storms might obscure the horizon, but Lerici was sheltered from the winds by the headland. The sea was so calm that any reflection – the village, the masts of the moored boats, the rising moon – was a perfect representation of itself. Jane and I never tired of walking with Milly and the children in the shade of the olive grove that lay behind the villa, watching the metallic solidity of the water under the Italian sky.

Edward and Shelley sailed their new toy round the headland with George, then George went back to Livorno, where he kept the
Bolivar
. While he was away they spent each day out on the sea, coming back with faces as leather-brown as any fisherman’s and appetites greater than our housekeeping funds could satisfy.

We also received a visit from Claire. There was no doubt that grief and experience had changed her. Her pertness had become cynicism; the outlines of her face were harder. She was losing the pliable prettiness that had been the scourge of my happiness for so long.

But prolonged separation and the loss of our children had nevertheless united us: I could not be harder on my sister than life itself had been. And on an airless June afternoon, fate decreed that once again she and I would face elemental forces together.

I felt unwell. I had not been strong since Percy’s birth, and this weakness, in addition to our double bereavement and the cold chasm between Shelley and me, had made me ill. Jane and I were both worn out by the daily challenge of putting food on the table and keeping ourselves and our children clean in this most primitive corner of Italy. My body could not support the life of the child I carried. That desperate afternoon, knowing I was bleeding, I collapsed on the kitchen floor.

It is the blood that I remember best. All else is a blur of frantic voices and distorted faces, but I still see the cloths abandoned on the floor, caked crimson, then, as the blood dried, brownish-black.

They could not stop the bleeding. Jane and Claire did their best for a long time, then Claire went in despair for Shelley. “She is dying,” I heard her say. “For God’s sake, why does the physician not come?”

“He cannot get to this place easily, any more than anyone else can,” Shelley told her bleakly. “I have sent for him. Now we must wait.”

“But by the time he arrives, Mary will…”

“Quiet! Let me see her.”

In that woman’s world Shelley did not flinch from acting like a man. He brought ice from the store beneath the house and crushed it with an ice pick. Again and again, his clothes soaked with water and blood, he scooped up crushed ice and applied it.

All I knew was pain. I struggled against unconsciousness, while Jane, weeping the whole time, held my head and Claire bathed my face. I screamed. I could not bear it, but I had to bear it; I knew my child was lost. I must scream – or die.

Later, when the bleeding had at last abated and Jane had gone to Edward, who had waited all those long hours in the kitchen with his head in his hands, Shelley sat down beside my bed. Claire, sniffing, left the room. The physician had sent word that he would come by four in the afternoon; it was now eleven o’clock at night.

“Lie as still as you can,” Shelley instructed me – unnecessarily, for I could not move. “You must not start bleeding again. Claire will look after you.”

There was only one candle alight. I opened my eyes, and my heart jolted.

“Oh! Oh, God!” I cried aloud.

For I beheld my monster. In the fast-dying candlelight, I encountered for one ghastly minute the hellish vision of my imagination.

Matted hair, drenched and bloody, plastered itself to the creature’s cheeks. He wore a filthy shirt, smeared with gore. Dark-circled, luminous eyes gazed in exhaustion from their bony sockets. The countenance, whose flesh stretched over bones as clear as a naked skull, was sunken, and glistened in the meagre light. The pallor of the face was alabaster-white, alabaster-smooth, and regarded me with the frozen gaze of a statue.

“Shelley!” I screamed. “Shelley, where are you?”

“Calm yourself, Mary,” came his familiar voice from behind the dreadful mask he wore. “I am here.”

“I thought –” My lips were dry. “I thought you were –”

“I am here,” he repeated, stroking my hand. “Do not be afraid.”

It was almost dark. Shelley took another candle and lit it from the one that was almost spent. I watched him perform this simple domestic task, my gaze following his white hands, my heart filled to bursting.

“Did you save my life?” I asked.

He leant near me. Like Claire, he had lost his angelic beauty. But he remained my angel and my monster; I could not escape.

“I did what any husband would do,” he said softly. “And you would do the same for me, if my life was in danger. Now, go to sleep until the doctor arrives.”

When he had gone, I wept. For what he had said, but much more for what he had
not
. Why,
why
did he keep his love hovering tantalizingly close, but always further away than I could reach?

I recovered slowly. After Claire had gone, I settled down to long days of convalescence. Jane would not let me help her or Milly. I sat on the beach or the rocks, watching as Edward and Shelley amused themselves “improving” the
Don Juan
.

As usual, Shelley could not resist flattering George by imitation. Within a week of George’s visit to Lerici aboard the large, impressive
Bolivar
, my husband had summoned the boat-builder Roberts. New, higher masts had appeared on the
Don Juan
, and narrow decking had been placed each side of its cabin.

“Whatever are they doing?” Jane wondered, shading her eyes against the sun. “Do they need to scamper about like rats, merely to get a boat fitted up?” She looked at me in exasperation. “You do not think they mean to
race
Lord Byron’s boat, do you, Mary?”

“Would such an idea surprise you?”

“Not at all. And they would surely lose, whatever improvements they made!”

She sighed, and then laughed. I laughed too. A swell of relief surged through me: I had survived, and Percy was thriving, and Italy was glorious, despite all its local hardships. Life would, as always, go on.

That evening Shelley made an announcement. “Edward and I have a most excellent plan,” he said.

“Oh no, not another
plan
!” said Jane good-humouredly.

“Yes, indeed,” insisted Shelley. “Edward and I set off tomorrow to sail the
Don Juan
to Livorno, to see George.”

“Alone?” asked Jane, widening her eyes. “But are you sure –”

“Not quite alone,” interrupted Edward. “George’s boy will accompany us, remember.”

“Thank the Lord,” said Jane mildly, exchanging a look with me.

George’s boy, whose name we had discovered to be Charles, was at that moment eating soup with Milly in the kitchen. As a necessary addition to our household he had to be fed, and Milly, only a couple of years older, was not averse to his company.

“We leave tomorrow,” said Shelley enthusiastically, “and return one week from that day. At least, that is our plan.”

“Ah! The plan!” laughed Jane.

The next day was a blazing, shimmering July day. The water in the bay looked as purple as Caesar’s robes, but according to Edward there was enough breeze to allow a voyage to Livorno. We watched them stack their belongings on the boat. With her feet bare and her dark hair gleaming in the glare of the morning, Jane looked as lovely as a Greek statue magically given movement and colour. The children were almost as excited as their fathers; they shrieked as they played in the spray, wet to the skin but happy as savages.

The
Don Juan
lay at her moorings, looking every inch as romantic as Shelley could desire. His belief that the sea is in every Englishman’s blood was about to receive its strictest test, but that morning even my jaded eye was seduced by the beauty of the boat.

Her white masts caught the sparkle of the sunlight as the boy climbed up to the yard-arm and began untying the ropes. The sight of the mainsail dropping like the veil of a giant’s bride stirred my soul. It was a small boat, according to Shelley, and in no way as gorgeous as the
Bolivar
, of which he would remain forever envious. But to me it looked large, fearsome, powerful.

I put on my bonnet and followed Jane to the water’s edge. Half my heart dreaded this adventure. But the other half was jealous of the easy, masculine world that allowed it. I had not often wished to be a man, except during childbirth, but I wished it now. I wanted to share with Shelley what he was sharing with Edward.

For shame
, I said to myself, watching Edward embrace Jane.
Are you so weary of being jealous of a woman that you welcome the chance to be jealous of a man?

Shelley was already on the boat. He had taken a curt leave of me in the house, saying he did not care for displays of affection in front of servants, and was now assisting the boy with the sails. I watched him, thinking how mysterious it was that this tall, bony, untidily groomed man, now almost thirty years old and bound to me by the ties of marriage, was now bound to the world by fame and reputation.

The impulsive early career of the aristocratic atheist Shelley had been was no longer discussed in literary circles. Shelley’s poetry was now acknowledged by critics and public as masterful, and it was ever a source of pain to me that the success of his poetic output of the past few years seemed to have eased neither his nightmares nor his desire to punish his health by means of his restrictive diet, and of course alcohol and opium. But any mention I made of this was met with the observation that sales of all his published poetry together had never remotely matched those of even
one
of George’s best-loved works.