Angelmonster (20 page)

“Even
Adonais
, my lament for poor Keats,” he would say peevishly, “a poem I consider to be among my finest, did not sell better than George’s
Don Juan
.” Then, with a sigh, “George must have the common touch, which I lack.”

Despite his pessimism, however, Shelley’s increasing fame as a poet was eclipsing his notoriety. Gossips had less to gossip about now that we had been married for several years. Claire had left our household and her child of dubious paternity was dead. Indeed, we had been away from England for so many years, and were now in such a lonely place, that our unconventional style of living was invisible. Perhaps it was even forgotten.

Shelley called to me from the deck. I waved, and called back, and they began to haul in the anchor. There were tears in my eyes. He was still my unholy angel, however much the years had changed him and made him famous, and I was still drowning in love. It was not lack of love that had maintained the frozen waste between us for so many months, but fear.

Shelley had turned from me because I could not love him as I wished, for fear of his not returning my love. That precious moment after he saved me from death had dissolved into bitterness when he had merely told me that I would have done the same for him. He had not saved me because he loved me.

Long after that day I wondered why I did not do what instinct beckoned me to. As the boat pulled away from the shore, and the wind began to make Shelley’s hair whip this way and that and his clothes shudder against his limbs, longing surged through my body, and overcame me. I wanted to run into the water and, while he was still within earshot, tell him how dear he was to me. I wanted to tell him that I did not think he had murdered our children, or betrayed Harriet, or desired any woman but me.

But I did not do it. I ran two or three steps towards the water, but Jane, knowing how weak I had been since my blood loss, caught me and lowered me gently to the sand. She put her arms around me and let me weep, until Percy came to see what was the matter with his mother and the boat disappeared round the headland.

THE BURNT-OUT HEART

I
n Italy there are laws relating to death which might seem strict, even violent, to inhabitants of a more northern climate. Shelley once told me that after John Keats had died of consumption, everything in his apartment in Rome had to be burned, for fear of infection. But in England doctors do not believe consumption to be infectious. Doctors and lawyers! What a weighty influence they have on all our lives, and deaths!

This law is strict, but there is another even stricter. To avoid plague being brought to Italy, the quarantine law states that anything washed up by the sea onto the coast – even a human body – must be burned.

Before Shelley, Edward and the boy set off for Livorno, I barely knew of this law. But within two weeks its existence had assumed a bewildering importance.

A week after their arrival in Livorno, the crew of the
Don Juan
set out for their return voyage to Lerici, in weather quite different from the brilliant calm in which they had left us. Away from the shelter of the coast, a sudden squall blew up, and the
Don Juan
sailed into it.

But the hull of the boat was not designed to support the top-heavy mast Shelley had insisted be added. When a violent gust caught the inexperienced sailors unawares, the vessel quickly overturned and her passengers were thrown into the treacherous waters almost before they knew what had happened.

This was the only comfort anyone could offer Jane and me. Poor Edward, accustomed as he was to large vessels, could not have predicted or remedied the fate of a small boat at the mercy of the weather. Roberts himself, who was watching the
Don Juan
through a telescope from the Livorno lighthouse, saw the storm envelop several larger vessels as well as Shelley’s boat. When it had passed, he again looked through the telescope. All the other boats were there, but, as the last drops of mist evaporated, he realized that the craft he had built had disappeared.

The horror of those days refuses to fade. It is as bright in my memory as heaven itself, or the deranged alchemist’s dream of gold.

Jane and I travelled to Livorno to try and find out what had happened. We returned to Lerici without news, but the dreadful truth awaited us there. A letter from Roberts said that three bodies had been washed up on the beach at Livorno, and, according to Italian law, had been buried there immediately. Within days they would have to be burned.

Jane diminished before my eyes. With her beauty concealed by the blank face of shock, she sank noiselessly to the floor, her dress mushrooming around her. “Is it certain, Mary?” she whispered.

“We shall hear soon enough,” I said.

I left her and went to my bedroom. I lay on the bed, exhausted, until I heard a carriage, and Milly crying. It was Edward’s friend Trelawny, a man I had never properly trusted and whose presence in my life was dictated solely by the whim of a husband I was now almost sure I would never see again. But I was grateful to him for making the difficult journey. To receive confirmation of my widowhood by letter would have been insupportable.

I went to receive him. “Thank you for coming,” I said, as he bowed.

He could tell by my face that I needed no protection from the truth. “They are identified,” he said. “Where is Mrs Williams?”

“Let her rest. She has not slept these twenty hours. I shall tell her.”

He bowed again. Poor Trelawny: he was an ineffectual person thrust onto the pages of history by dint of his acquaintance with a famous poet. Even as I looked at him I wondered if that fate would also be mine. But how dearly I wanted to secure my place in history by my own hand!

“After so long in the water, and in such stormy weather, the bodies were battered beyond recognition,” he said. He did not look at me. Dear God, he could not.

“How was the identification made?” I asked faintly. “And who made it?”

He still could not look at me. He lowered his chin. The large stock he wore at his throat muffled his voice. “Roberts identified Edward by his boots. The boy was the most whole. I myself saw the corpse of your husband, Mrs Shelley.”

I waited in horror.

“It was very far gone, very far gone indeed. But his jacket remained, and although I did not recognize the jacket itself, in the pocket I found a book I knew definitely to be Shelley’s.”

Trelawny did not give in to weeping, though I feared he was close to it. From his pack he brought an object almost unrecognizable as a book, and presented it to me. “It contains his writing on the flyleaf. It is still readable. The Italian authorities accepted this identification, and I rescued it before they threw him into a makeshift grave. My dear Mrs Shelley, how sorry I am to have to bring you this!”

I shrank back, holding onto the back of a chair for support. I knew which book Shelley habitually carried in his pocket: the volume of Keats’s poems from my father’s bookshop. It was the voice of Adonais. I had copied out
Adonais
many times, but since Shelley’s death the prophetic nature of the poem’s closing lines had not struck me. Now, they came back to me with force:

“My spirit’s bark is driven
,

Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng

Whose sails were never to the tempest given;

The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!

I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;

Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven
,

The soul of Adonais, like a star
,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.”

Trembling, I took the misshapen book. “Thank you, Mr Trelawny, for your pains,” I said, gesturing for him to sit down. “You will eat and drink with us, will you not?”

I had Milly bring wine, bread and cheese, and Trelawny talked for a long time. Jane awoke and joined us, and although we wept, I knew that our ordeal, like Shelley’s, was almost over. We could not attend the burning of the bodies but awaited Trelawny’s account of it on his return.

Each minute of the next three days is distilled, second by second, in my heart. Jane and I lived in a dream, attending to the children and helping Milly by laying and clearing the table, baking, washing clothes and hanging them out to dry. We wandered in the garden, on the beach and in the olive grove, clinging to each other.

The weather was hot and still. The sky and the sea were one, a dome of deepest blue, the horizon barely visible. Though we were aware that only a few miles along the coast a fire had consumed the bodies of the two men we had loved, eloped with, borne children for, we did not speak of it. We wrote no letters, we made no arrangements. The world rolled on, but we did not notice it.

On the fourth day Trelawny broke the spell. He arrived by boat, carried over a calm sea by an experienced crew. As he stepped out clumsily, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, I could not help but torture myself. What unforgiving God, I wondered, had made the sea calm today, yet less than a week ago had sent a storm to drown my husband? Had Shelley been right all along when he said that God does not hear our prayers because there
is
no God?

We took Trelawny to the house, where he described how he and Roberts had laid the bodies on metal racks, and watched while the fire blackened them.

“Write it, Mr Trelawny!” urged Jane, her small hands covering her cheeks, her eyes bright. “Write it down, so that the scene will be recorded for future generations!”

“Should I?” Trelawny turned to me uneasily. “Is not a personal tragedy best kept private?”

I swallowed. “Mr Trelawny, it
is
a personal tragedy for Mrs Williams. But for me it is not. Mrs Williams is right: the events of Shelley’s death should be reported to the world. Those who have made him famous deserve to know the circumstances of his end.”

“Very well, then.” He contemplated the floor for a moment, then he raised his eyes to meet mine. “May I see you alone for a few minutes, Mrs Shelley?”

“Of course.”

I led him into the garden. We had not gone two steps down the path when he stopped and withdrew something from the pocket of his jacket. He offered it to me. “Please, Mrs Shelley, take this. I retrieved it from the embers.”

I thought it would be Shelley’s watch, or a piece of his clothing. But when I unwrapped the object from its covering of filthy, blackened paper, shock made me gasp. I almost threw the thing to the ground: it was Shelley’s heart.

“The fire had almost destroyed it,” explained Trelawny, much agitated. “As you see, it is black and burnt out. But I give you my word that this is the heart of your dear husband, snatched from his funeral pyre.” He took out his handkerchief again and wiped his face. “It was the least I could do. Of Edward Williams nothing remained.”

Revulsion and joy fought each other as I made my reply. I thanked him, and we gazed together at the small, charred thing in my hand. Then I wrapped it again, and put it in the pocket of my dress, and went with him back into the house. I do not think to this day that he had any idea of the overwhelming import of his gift.

For eight years I had fought for the very thing that now lay in my pocket. At last, by the cruellest means possible, I was in possession of Shelley’s heart.

Later that evening, when Trelawny had departed and Jane was in bed, I went to the trunk in my bedroom, which contained my secret manuscript. There it lay, under my winter gowns. I took it, and, holding it close to my breast, returned downstairs to the drawing-room. I sat at the writing-desk, placed the manuscript on it and felt in the pocket of my dress for Trelawny’s gift.

I unwrapped the paper and looked at the heart. I remembered how repulsive Shelley had found the notion of cutting up body parts for experiments. How he had shrieked with fear that night at the Villa Diodati when the idea for this very manuscript had been born!

I tore some clean paper from the back of my manuscript. Nausea rose in my throat, but I wrapped the heart anew, making a tighter, neater package than Trelawny’s. I felt a strong desire never to look at it again. Knowing it was mine was enough; I did not need to display it to the world.

The story was nearly finished. Proudly I took a pen and sharpened it. The dream was over: all that remained of Shelley was his ashes, and the thing contained in the package that lay beside me on the table. He was neither my angel nor my monster any more. The unbearable sorrow we had endured, the passion we had felt and the estrangement we had not been able to conquer had vanished from the world. I was alone now.

But I was not lonely. I opened the manuscript; the black words on the title page presented themselves boldly on the white paper. As I read them, my heart folded with love – for the man I had lost and the man I had made.

Frankenstein
,
or The Modern Prometheus
,

I read. Then I dipped my pen in the ink and added,

by Mary Shelley
.

THE DEVIL’S PROMISE