“Yes, I suppose she must. It is for the best.”
After Claire’s departure, the distance between Shelley and me widened even further. I could not forgive him for his betrayal and the suspicions that tormented me still. Had he promised to continue his affair with Claire in return for her taking the governess post? Did he burn her correspondence? How often would he insist on going to Livorno?
Shelley was even less forgiving than I. He did not forgive me for accusing him of our children’s murder. He did not forgive me for insisting that we rid ourselves of Claire. And he did not forgive me for being the person he loved better than Harriet.
“Why did you agree to elope with me?” he asked one evening, gazing at my misshapen body as I lay on the sofa, trying in vain to sleep. “Why did you not send me back to Harriet?”
No answer was possible. I was silent.
“If you had not been so attractive, and willing, Harriet would never have drowned herself. And even if she had, it is your insistence upon staying with me that has made the judge refuse me custody of Ianthe and Charles,” he said.
I could not allow him to heap on my head the guilt that should have been on his. I had to speak.
“I suppose you have conveniently forgotten the presence of another man’s child inside Harriet’s corpse?” I demanded. “Why is it my morals, not hers – or indeed yours – which are now called to account?”
“You are cruel,” he complained. “You will kill me yet.”
“And I am supposed to feel sorry for you?”
When Shelley slept, or was out of the house, I wept. Secretly, I prayed. I placed my faith in the knowledge that the light of the sun in the east, which begins as a pinpoint on the horizon and grows into a brilliant arc before the eyes of the transfixed observer, conquers darkness not once, but daily, for eternity.
And light did come back, as gradually as that eternal dawning. My second son was born.
William had borne my father’s name; our new son bore my husband’s. Shelley’s first name was Percy, a kingly name from the pages of English history, which his family had bestowed on its members for generations. He had always disliked it and never used it, but he granted my wish.
“I care not what his name is,” he said, stroking the baby’s face. “I only care that he lives to pass it on to his own children.”
“God grant that,” I murmured.
“It is not the will of God that determines such things,” he said.
As has often been observed, the toiling creative mind is driven hardest when suffering is at its height. During those terrible months, both Shelley and I retreated from the world, depending on our writing to calm us. My manuscript was contained in a leather letter-case – a gift from Papa long ago – which I could close up and pretend held only letters if anyone should approach. Shelley knew that I was writing a story, and he said he would be interested to read the result. But he no longer attempted to give me advice on its writing; he knew how jealously I guarded it.
Poems, and fragments of poems, lay around the house on torn pieces of paper, or untidy notebooks, or were scribbled on the back of letters, or lists, or on the flyleaves of books. I collected them together, taking over Claire’s former employment of making fair copies and insisting that Shelley prepare the manuscripts for publication. I would not allow his casual approach to the business of publishing bar his path to poetic immortality. It lay within his grasp, as George and I well knew. As for my leather-bound manuscript, in its hiding-place under my gowns in a trunk … its future was less certain.
The first year of Percy’s life wore on. He was a winter baby, though this caused me little anxiety, as the months of cold, damp weather that endanger babies in England are not among Italy’s hazards. Winter brought falling leaves, and cool breezes. The sun on the hillsides made long, blue shadows. And my son celebrated his first birthday in good health.
Gradually, Shelley’s mood changed. The first thing I had ever admired him for – his reckless disregard for any attempt to stop him doing what he wanted – returned. He became restless.
“Mary, I am determined to get George down to the coast with us next summer,” he declared. “I am wild to sail again, as we did in Geneva.”
I looked up from my reading. “Is George an experienced enough sailor? There is a great difference between Lake Geneva and the open sea.”
“Of course he is!” Then, after some thought, “Or he has an experienced boy, at least.”
I smiled. “And does he have a boat?”
“He is having one built as we speak,” he said eagerly, crouching beside my chair with some of the boyish enthusiasm I had thought I would never see again. “A splendid vessel, to be called the Bolivar.”
I touched his cheek. Fleetingly, some of our past intimacy returned. Shelley seized my hand.
“Mary, I can bear this living death no longer. You and I must live again. We were drowning, but we will resurface.”
SAILOR
When I suggested that Shelley seek the company of our new neighbours, I thought that entering the lives of strangers would distract him from his reckless desire to be a sailor. But I could not have been more mistaken.
“An English couple have taken that white villa you always say looks like a wedding cake, not half a mile from here,” I announced one spring day, without looking up from my writing. “Milly has met their maidservant, who told her they have a little boy and another child expected. They are called Williams. You might introduce yourself to them, if you have nothing better to do.”
Shelley approved. “Why, let us call on them tomorrow!”
But there was no need. They called on us, greeting us warmly as soon as Milly showed them into the hall.
“What a happy circumstance,” said Jane Williams, smiling brilliantly as she entered the salon, “that your son is so near ours in age!”
“Indeed,” agreed Shelley. He turned to her husband. “Shall we walk in the garden, while the ladies converse? I prefer air and exercise over salon talk, and perhaps you do too.”
Edward Williams bowed, and allowed himself to be led outside. I knew what Shelley was doing. He wanted to find out the couple’s background before we disclosed ours, and he was well aware that women alone can achieve this far quicker than in mixed company.
“I understand your husband is a poet,” began Jane Williams when they had gone. “His fame goes before him in Pisa, I must tell you!”
“He is indeed,” I told her proudly. “And what is your husband’s profession?”
To my surprise, she blushed, and hid her face behind her fan. “Edward is not my husband,” she admitted. “The gossip that pursues us in England has driven us to settle here, in good time for the birth of our new baby.”
So she knew my background already, then. If she had not, she would not have disclosed such intimate facts about her own at our first meeting. She and Edward knew that we, too, had run away from scandal.
My heart warmed towards her. “Has Edward a wife living?” I asked.
“No.” She closed the fan. Her composure was returning, but the lids of her large eyes remained lowered. “But I am not free. I married in haste at sixteen. My husband was … unsatisfactory, so when I met Edward…”
“I understand,” I said, with feeling.
“He was as you see him now: handsome, full of life. I ran away with him. I took his name and live with him as his wife. I will never go back.”
I extended my hand. “Jane… May I call you Jane?”
She nodded, extending her own hand. I noticed how small it was, smaller even than Claire’s. Our fingertips touched.
“The similarities in our circumstances are striking,” I observed. “I wonder whether Shelley has found things in common with Mr Williams?”
“Oh! Call him Edward, please. And I doubt it,” she added, giggling. “Edward is a seafarer.”
My heart quickened. “Is that so?”
“He was a captain in the navy, although, disappointingly, he ne
ver served under Admiral Nelson himself. His passion is the sea.” Her smile widened. “I cannot imagine a poet and a sailor will find much to speak of.”
“Do not believe it!” I told her. “Shelley shares the same passion. He will be overjoyed to meet someone who actually knows how to sail.”
“Oh, Edward does not know how to sail!” exclaimed Jane. “He leaves it to his boy!”
As the spring wore on, Edward and Jane Williams became our constant companions. I respected Jane for her calm beauty, and her intelligence. And her story had touched my heart; she, like me, had been cast adrift as a result of falling in love. Attending at her confinement, I admired her baby girl and enjoyed the company of these new friends.
I knew I had to lift up my head and live again. I had not yet celebrated my twenty-third birthday, and Italy was not the place for sadness or jealousy.
It remained, however, the place for death.
“Alas!” cried Shelley one morning, his eyes scanning a letter that arrived from a literary friend in London. “Mary, we shall never have the pleasure of John Keats’s company after all. He is dead!”
I put down my own letter, from Claire. Though Shelley’s acquaintance with Keats was small, and my own had been conducted entirely through the young man’s poetry, I could not but be moved. “How?” I asked bleakly.
“‘Of consumption,’” read Shelley, “‘in Rome.’ He is buried in the same cemetery as our dear William.”
“Oh!” My heart convulsed in my breast and I put my hand to my throat. “Poor Keats! What a tragedy, to die so young and in possession of such genius!”
Shelley looked up, his eyes alight. “Indeed, Mary, it is a tragedy. I must write to George.”
He sat down at the writing-desk and chose a pen. “Where have you put that volume of Keats’s poems your father gave us?” he asked. “I must reread his lines.”
Claire’s letter contained more pleasing news. It seemed that my husband’s scheming concubine had been removed even farther away from us. The Livorno family had not lasted long as Claire’s employers, and she was now living in Florence. In the last words of the letter she even hinted she may take a position in Russia, a notion I could not but applaud.
“How is Claire?” asked Shelley, scribbling busily.
“The same.”
I did not choose to speak of Claire to Shelley. I knew he received letters from her and burned them.
But as the year wore on, the increasing warmth of the sun melted grief and suspicion. I began to believe, as Shelley had promised, that we would surface, and live again.
It gave me joy to see Shelley and Edward shed the formality of early acquaintance and form a friendship fuelled by their love of sailing. They hired a small boat, which they took out every day on the canal that runs between Pisa and Livorno. Shelley learned quickly. He was soon boasting that he knew the handling of boats better than George, and was looking forward to mocking his wealthy friend’s ham-fistedness.
“George’s boat is almost completed,” Shelley announced one evening when the Williamses were dining with us. “He is impatient to sail it.”
He glanced at Edward, who took up his part readily. “Shelley and I have a plan.”
“Oh, a plan!” exclaimed Jane, looking at Edward with her languorous eyes. “Why do men always have to have a plan?”
“Do not jest, my dear, we are in earnest,” said Edward. “What do you ladies say to moving to the coast? We shall take one villa only, to save money, and Shelley can have his own boat built.”
“Why?” Jane and I asked together.
The next question was obvious to both of us, but it was Jane who voiced it. “Edward, dear, is not the sea around this coast dangerous?”
Edward kissed Jane’s hand. “I am honoured by your concern,” he told her. “But remember, my love, I have survived the tempests of the Cape on several occasions.”
I was not convinced. “I agree with Jane,” I said to Shelley. “The plan to live together is a good one, but I must question the wisdom of buying a boat. Where will the money come from?”
“Mary, do not trouble yourself over such things,” he said. “Do you think I plan to have a craft the size of George’s Bolivar? Of course not!”
“There, Jane, you see?” said Edward, smiling affectionately at her. “Even Mary’s common sense will not deter Shelley from sailing on the sea. His appetite for adventure will never be satisfied.”
“Shelley cannot swim, Edward,” I ventured.
“No more can I,” said Edward.
They both burst into laughter, and I knew my case was lost. But after dinner, when Jane and I had retired to the salon, our conversation returned to the subject.
“They are all for going to the coast, Mary, and getting Lord Byron to join them there,” she said anxiously. “Tell me, is Lord Byron a knowledgeable sailor? And is he less reckless than Edward and Shelley?”
I could not help but laugh outright. Unsettled, Jane waited with a frown. “Why do my words amuse you?” she asked solemnly.
“Oh, Jane! I am not laughing at your words,” I assured her, “I understand your fears only too well. But if I could only begin to describe the way Lord Byron approaches life!”
“Why? Is he as wild as he is reported to be?”
I composed myself, and considered. “Perhaps … it is best to say that his desires sometimes exceed his prudence, and he is wealthy enough to indulge them.”
“Alas!” cried Jane, and put her hand over her mouth.
“Do not make yourself unduly anxious,” I added, more optimistically than I felt. “George has none of Shelley’s childish abandon. He is a calculating man, who would not risk his life merely for the sake of adventure.”
Her eyes looked into mine, over the hand she still held to her mouth. Then she took her hand away, and grasped my own hand with it. It felt damp from her breath. “But Edward would,” she said softly. “There is a madness in him. And that madness, I feel sure, has touched Shelley.”
I thought I was dreaming. I thought I was being carried across a calm ocean in a boat, rocking like a baby in its mother’s arms, content. But as I surfaced from sleep I realized I was truly being rocked, by Shelley repeatedly rolling against me. I sat up and, fumbling in the dark for a tinderbox, lit the candle in the stand on my side of the bed. I held it aloft and looked at Shelley in the small light it shed.
He was sweating, and the skin on his face had the cold, white sheen of fear it took on when his mind detached itself from reality and he sank into nightmare.
“Shelley!” I whispered, trying to restrain him with my free arm. I was too weak – he continued to roll like a lunatic in a straitjacket. “Shelley, wake up!”
His eyes were staring but he did not seem to be awake. I was afraid. Putting down the candle I tried with both arms to calm him, but he was stronger when demented than when rational. “Allegra!” he shouted. “Allegra, I am dying!”
Oh, God. It was two weeks now since we had received the news that Claire’s child had died of typhoid at the convent school where George had insisted upon sending her. A distraught Claire had visited us at Pisa, throwing herself upon Shelley as if she had decided to employ him, and only him, as her comforter. Day and night he had borne her grief-induced hysteria. She had fought him and he had restrained her. She had screamed like an animal, keeping Percy awake, and Shelley had talked to her for hours, until she was calm again. The strain of this unlooked-for appointment, and the resulting lack of sleep, had pushed him further into dependence upon opium.
“How much have you taken?” I demanded. Reaching across him, my heart filling with panic, I felt for the bottle beside the bed. In the candlelight I saw it was almost empty.
“My Allegra, my darling…” he murmured. “Claire, dearest…” He sat up suddenly, his hands clutching his head. “See my blood? I am covered in blood!” he groaned, lying down again and squirming in evident, though imagined, agony.
As I was powerless to end the nightmare, I di
d what I had become accustomed to do. I lay as far away from him as I could, on the very edge of the bed, all my senses alert, facing him so that he could not attack me unawares.
By the morning he would have sunk into torpor, his face as white as the pillow he lay on, the veins in his eyelids showing blue. When he awoke, about midday, he would have no recollection of the apparitions that had peopled the darkness and made him scream.
And I had learned, after so many years, to make no mention of it.
DON JUAN
The villa we moved into with the Williams family was on the coast near the village of Lerici, in the north-west of Italy. The location was wild, the house primitive and the dialect of the local people incomprehensible. We felt as if we had taken a step into an alien world.
That Lerici was a beautiful place was not in doubt, but housekeeping and care of the children was not easy in such an inaccessible place. A few days after our arrival I remarked to Shelley that we might as well be on a South Sea island for all our contact with society.
He beamed at me, squinting against the sun, which streamed into the garden where we were trying to dig a vegetable patch. “My dear Mary, what more could you desire? There is clean water, and a fire, and beds in the bedrooms.”
I sighed, straightening my aching back. “I suppose so. But there are not going to be any vegetables until rain has softened this earth, and it will be months before that happens.”
“Let us stop this pitiless task, then,” he suggested, “and be thankful.”
I did my best to get used to life at Lerici, but something prevented my nerves from settling. I had difficulty sleeping, and suffered sudden rapid beatings of my heart.
I did not forget the fear I had felt during Shelley’s latest nightmare, but I stored the memory of it in a deep, seldom-visited place. Allegra joined the ghosts of children I had loved, whose spirits slumbered by day and hovered on the edge of my repose by night.
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