The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (35 page)

“Surely you do not believe that such a thing lives on the estuary?”

“I know nothing, sir. I am a poor black sweeper. But I wonder what this thing is that moves under the water.”

At this point the carriage arrived, with Holborn as its destination. Job stood up and went over to the horses, which seemed to recognise him. They became still when he spoke to them and stroked them. I called up to the driver. “Do you have a seat?”

“Inside, sir. One of the parties is leaving.”

So I mounted the step and, within a short time, the carriage was on its way to the city.

WHEN I CAME BACK
to Jermyn Street, I went at once to my study where I had left some of my calculations. I renewed my work with fresh enthusiasm, knowing that I was close to a precise formula for the reversal of the electrical charge in the process of its formation. If I were able to create and to maintain this
negative force, it might subvert and utterly undo the power of the original charge.

I was interrupted by the sound of voices, and of laughter; then Bysshe and Mary came into the room, with Fred following. “I could not stop them, sir,” he said. “They rushed me from the door.”

“I cannot be stopped, Fred.” Bysshe was in the highest spirits. “I am Phaethon in his fiery chariot. Have you heard of Phaethon?”

“There is a fly driver in Haymarket, sir.”

“Fly? That is a new word, is it not?” Then he turned to me. “May I present to you, Victor, Mary Shelley?”

I rose from my chair, and embraced them both warmly. “When did you do this?”

“This very morning. In St. Mildred’s, Bread Street.”

“For the sake of any future children,” Mary said, “we observed the form.”

“It was a lovely ceremony, Victor. Mr. Godwin cried. I cried. The parson cried. God bless us all!”

“I did not cry.” Mary was smiling as she spoke. “And I do not think that God will bless us.”

“Old Father Nobody had nothing to do with it,” Bysshe replied. “We are free. We are not exiles on the earth. Will you join us for tea at the Chapter? I can promise you the finest Marsala in London.”

“Do come,” Mary urged me.

It was not a place, in truth, I would recommend to the newly married. It was one of those eating houses that have preserved the manners of the last century while manifesting all the inconveniences of the present one. The parlour was dark,
even in the early afternoon, since precious little light filtered through the thick and small-paned windows. The beams were large, the roof low, and the space was partitioned into a number of dark wood compartments or “boxes” as the Londoners call them. The word has always reminded me of coffins.

The three of us were shown to a “box,” and Bysshe immediately ordered a round of ham sandwiches with a bottle of sherry. An elderly waiter, of gloomy demeanour, proceeded to serve us. He was wearing knee-breeches, in the old style, with black silk hose and none too spotless cravat. I gathered from Mary that his name was William. “Will the foreign gentleman,” he asked Bysshe, “be requiring mustard?”

“I will ask the foreign gentleman.” He said this in the most grave manner. “Will you be requiring mustard?”

“I think not.”

“You have your answer, William.”

“Very good, sir.”

Mary burst out laughing, after he had walked away with dignified step. “He has never been known to smile,” she said. “People have perished in the attempt.”

She broke off as William returned with the sandwiches. Bysshe fell upon them as if he were quite famished. “We have good news, Victor,” he said. “Byron has invited us to join him on the shores of Lake Geneva. Your old home.”

“He has rented a villa there,” Mary told me. “In the event of an imminent marriage, as he put it, he has thrown the doors open to us. You are invited.”

“Me?”

“Why ever not?” she replied.

“Do you know the name of the villa?”

“Diodati,” Bysshe replied for her.

“Diodati? I know it well. I have climbed into its garden at night, and tasted the fruit.”

“An omen, my dear Victor,” he said. “You must taste the fruit again. We will travel to Switzerland together.”

Bysshe was in a state of great exhilaration, and I could not resist the tide of his enthusiasm. So I consented. I believed, too, that a suspension of my labours and calculations might assist me; the mind needs rest as surely as the body, and I trusted that a period of indolence would restore all my faculties. We agreed to set out within the month.

“We will speed across the plains of Holland—” Mary said.

“—And see the castles of the Rhine nestling in their turpitude,” Bysshe added.

“And you, Victor, you will see your old familiar places.”

“I am afraid,” I replied to her, “that I will seem a stranger there.”

Bysshe laughed and signalled for another bottle. “You are a stranger everywhere, Victor. That is your charm.”

“I wonder that Lord Byron has invited me.”

“He must enjoy your company,” Bysshe replied. I was not so sure that I would enjoy his, but I said nothing. “Byron is an odd being. He is at once courageous and defensive, deeply proud and deeply uncertain.”

“I think,” Mary said, “that he feels shame. He feels his deformity.”

“I take it,” I asked her, “that he has a club foot? That is the phrase, is it not?”

“Yes. That is the phrase. But the pain goes deeper. He is ashamed of life. He wishes to expend it quickly.”

“He can be very fierce,” Bysshe said, “with the people around him.”

“That is because he is fierce with himself,” she replied. “He has no mercy.”

William, without prompting, had brought over another plate of ham sandwiches. Bysshe attacked them with renewed appetite. “I wonder,” he said, “that he has not been wholly spoiled by his success. I have said that he is proud. But he has no vanity.”

“You mean,” Mary replied, “that he deigns to speak to mortals such as ourselves.” Bysshe seemed offended by this. She noticed his reaction and added, very quickly, “Of course he respects you as a poet, Bysshe. He is disparaging of his own verse.”

“It comes too easily to him. He sees no merit in that which flows freely. He relishes a struggle.”

“I agree with him there,” I said. “Out of adversity comes triumph. All great natures aspire.”

Bysshe raised his glass. “I commend your spirit, Victor. Death or victory!”

Mary evidently disliked this turn of the conversation. “That is easy for you to say. Men have an appetite for glory.”

“And women have not?” he asked her.

“We wish for a different kind of renown. We do not seek conflict. We seek harmony.”

“I drink to that,” he said. “But sometimes the world will not allow it. That reminds me, Victor. Byron wrote of dreadful storms.”

“We are used to storms in the mountains.”

“No. These are out of all reckoning. The local people prophesy a season of darkness. From some unknown cause.”

“I look forward to it,” I said. “I like the aberrations of nature.”

AT THE END OF THE MONTH
we assembled at Dover—Bysshe and Mary with their young serving maid, Lizzie, myself and Fred. It was Fred’s first journey out of England, and he was in a state of high excitement. He had never seen the open sea. “I expect,” he said, “that we will see islands and such like.”

“There are very few of those, Fred,” I replied, “in this stretch of water.”

“Just a bare flat plain of sea, then?”

“I am afraid so.”

“How deep is it, sir?”

“I have no idea, Fred. You must ask the captain when we board.”

“Deep enough for whales?”

“I am not sure.”

“I would welcome the opportunity of spying one of them,” he said. “I saw a print of one knocking over that boat.” He was referring to an incident eleven months before, when the
Finlay Cutter
was broken up by an irate whale. “Beg pardon, Mr. Frankenstein. Not meaning to suggest any danger.” He had gathered up our luggage and, whistling to a porter, spoke to him very confidentially and persuaded him to transport it down to the quay where our boat was berthed. The
Lothair
was undecked, and with much pulling and pushing we were
eventually lodged in two small and uncomfortable cabins. “This is snug,” Fred said.

“We will not be here long.”

“That must be the smallest window in the world.”

“I do not think that is the word in English. There is a nautical term for it. Porthole.”

“It is of glass, sir, and you can barely see through it. So I call it a window.”

The captain, a surly fellow named Meadows, scarcely bothered to stop as he walked along the corridor between the several cabins. “We set sail now,” he said. “Without delay. The wind is fresh.”

Within an hour we had begun our journey and were upon the open sea. Fred could scarcely contain his excitement. “It is very boisterous, sir. My stomach hits the floor and then comes up into my mouth.”

“You should sit, Fred. You will be ill.”

“Not me, sir. I have ridden in my father’s cart. The streets of London are worse than any sea. Look, sir. Over there. There is the whale I mentioned.” I looked out of the porthole, but I could see nothing through the spray. “Did you not see that creature following us? It popped its head in and out of the water.” I looked again, and for a moment thought that I glimpsed something. But it had gone beneath the waves.

“It was a piece of timber, Fred. A plank.”

Bysshe came into our cabin. “Mary is unwell,” he said. “She wishes to be left with Lizzie. I have given her a powder, but the sea is very high.”

“High and low at the same time,” Fred said. “It is a regular seesaw.”

“But we are making progress, I think. Come and sit with me, Bysshe.”

“Yes. We will discuss old tales of sea adventures. We will relive the journeys to Virginia and the Barbadoes. We will hail the sapphire ocean!” Bysshe had a wonderful ability to rise above circumstances and, as we sat in the tossing cabin, he entertained me and Fred with the tales of sea journeys he had read as a child. He recited with vigour the lines from the
Odyssey
where Odysseus sails up the narrow strait between the islands of Scylla and Charybdis where the sea
“seethed and bubbled in utter turmoil, and high overhead the spray fell on the tops of the cliffs.”
It was Bysshe’s own translation, and I am sure that he composed it as he went along.

There was a sudden knock on the door of the cabin, and Lizzie stood before us. She gave a little curtsy. “Please to tell you, Mr. Shelley, that my mistress is a deal better and craves a little bit of your company.”

“I shall be there, Lizzie, before you are gone.” He gave me a hasty adieu, and retired.

Fred and I sat in silence, Fred whistling as he looked out of the porthole. “Do refrain from that noise, Fred. It is giving me a headache.”

“There goes that whale again.”

“Are you sure? I am not convinced that whales frequent these waters.”

“Where there is water, sir, there is a whale. Look.”

I went over to the porthole. “I can see nothing, Fred. You are dreaming. Will you please seek out the captain, and ask him how much longer we will be at sea?”

“He is an old cuffin,” Fred said on his return from the
captain’s quarters. “A matter of hours, he says. How many hours, I says. Am I God, he says. Far from it, I says. Then he slams his door shut.”

It was indeed a matter of hours—hours more than I had anticipated, since for a while we lay becalmed in the wallowing sea. Eventually Bysshe came into the cabin. “We are approaching land,” he said. “The seamen are scampering about.”

There was in fact some delay, and our ship was becalmed just before we reached the harbour; but a sudden gust was admirably caught by the captain, and we reached our moorings. There was a line of various coaches and carriages along the dockside, some already taken and some waiting to be hired. Mary, with what I soon discovered to be her usual expedition, went up to one of the drivers and engaged in some form of bargain: we had agreed to hire a carriage to take us through Holland and part of Germany, even though Bysshe had expressed a desire to travel through France and Italy. Yet his wish was quite ignored by Mary, and it was agreed with the driver that we would ride through the plains of Holland before going onward to Cologne. “I have heard from others of ruined France,” Mary said as we settled in the carriage. “The Cossacks have spared nothing. The villages are burned, and the people beg for bread. The
auberges
are filthy, too. There is disease everywhere. Really, Bysshe, France is not the country of your imagination.”