The Bohemian Girl

by Frances Vernon

  *

  Within a day, Diana’s family seemed to her to become caricatures of their old selves, dancing foolishly around her in bewilderment and rage. She remained quiet and determined, observing their vagaries; and the thought of Michael entirely prevented her being made unhappy by them. They were almost strangers, and Diana felt free, because she no longer belonged to them.

  Five days after Violet’s dance, Diana met Michael down by the trees north of the Serpentine, a part of Hyde Park visited by few of her friends. She could have met him in her sister’s house, as she had already done twice that week: but she wanted nothing to do even with Violet, who had been so sensible and kind.

  ‘Well, darling? Why’s the need to be so clandestine?’ said Michael, folding up his Irish newspaper as soon as she came up looking anxiously for him. ‘Lady Montrose hasn’t turned nasty?’

  Diana jumped. ‘Oh, dear one! No, she hasn’t, but I don’t want to use her.’ She blinked at him and took in her breath. ‘Michael, tell me, are you perfectly sure –’

  ‘Do you want us to be married soon? Is that it? Why, Diana? Don’t you remember saying six months?’ he told her, smiling suspiciously, and putting one thin, heavy arm round her waist.

  ‘My love.’ She squeezed his hand because he understood everything at once, more quickly than she did herself. ‘It’s so difficult, you’ll be horribly insulted and I can’t blame you.’

  ‘Ah?’ Michael reached up and picked a sticky leaf from one of the lime trees. There were a few late boats on the Serpentine, and its water was soft steel blue: dark green in the shade.

  ‘Papa had the – impertinence, when he’d read Kitty’s wretched letter, which I told you about as you know, to get one of his friends at the Home Office to make enquiries about you at Scotland Yard. Words dropped in the right ear at Brooks’s, all so very discreet, don’t you know?’ She longed for him to kiss her.

  ‘Did he now?’

  ‘Well, of course, there’s been such a dust kicked up at home that Kitty’s letter was nothing to it. Of course I wasn’t shown anything yesterday, because I know there could be nothing to show, no papers but oh, you can imagine. Papa insists you’re the very worst kind of Fenian, and of course, he says he’ll cut me off without a penny if I marry you. Truly. So old-fashioned – so humourless – he was shouting so that people must have heard it across the street. I never guessed he could behave like that.’ She sucked in her lips as she thought of it.

  ‘So what precisely did he say, about my being a wicked Fenian, Diana? Which to be sure, I am.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Diana, turning her umbrella in her hands and looking at him with eyes as determined as his own, ‘he actually said the police suspect you of having been – mixed up in a minor way with that group of Fenians – is that quite the word – who murdered Lord Frederick Cavendish in Phoenix Park. Years ago. Apparently, there wasn’t enough evidence.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Michael. Suddenly he gripped her elbow. ‘And do you believe them, Diana? Would you believe me a murderer?’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic!’ said Diana, thinking irrelevantly of all he had said to her so fiercely on the subject of free Ireland and the treachery of Parnell.

  ‘You don’t? Say you don’t.’

  ‘Michael, I do not believe that, whatever you had to do with the Land League when you were young, you had anything to do with that kind of violence.’

  ‘I did not.’

  Her head jerked. ‘Stop looking at me so coldly. Damn you.’

  ‘Diana! Ah, darling, don’t cry then – don’t cry – hey. But I have to be sure of you, don’t I?’

  They cuddled, softly and warmly, and a nurse with a perambulator clucked at them. Michael took his head from out of her hair.

  ‘Well, shall I be making the arrangements for us to be married as soon as possible, at the registry office?’

  ‘Yes, Michael.’ How marvellous to submit.

  He took hold of her chin, and studied her face, which was on the same level as his own. He had often wanted to be taller and to look down on more people. ‘Diana, this isn’t rebellion against your family? You want me, myself, all I can truly give you – not just to escape from home and shock the lot of them? It’s for love you’re doing this?’

  ‘Yes, I want you … dear one, you do understand? It’s got nothing to do with rebellion, as you say. That would imply that I almost enjoyed their – hatred of you, wouldn’t it? And I hope to God they’ll come round one day.’ To look at him make Diana feel charitably towards all the World.

  ‘Well, so they may, but I doubt it.’ He did not sound very displeased about this. ‘We’ll be poor, you realise that? I’m not deceiving you.’

  ‘Yes, of course I realise.’

  ‘You won’t have more than one maid, for everything. No servants, Diana. No pretty dresses.’

  ‘I can do very well without.’

  ‘Yes, you’ll look your best without. And when you’re my wife, you won’t be able to see your friends, only mine,’ Michael said, putting another arm round her.

  ‘Some of my friends may not cut me.’ Diana smiled.

  ‘Perhaps they won’t, then. So we’ll be married in a day or two.’

  ‘Yes.’ He was reality, she thought, the only reality.

  ‘I’d have you down on the grass now, if it weren’t so damned public,’ Michael said. He looked with a gleam in his eye at her dark grey dress, which had obviously been chosen because it was sober, suitable for Bayswater and almost middle-class. ‘But of course I can’t disturb your costume. My dear, your discretion is admirable,’ he said.

  ‘Kiss me,’ said Diana.

  ‘We’ve years to do that, and more,’ said Michael. ‘I said I wouldn’t disarrange your clothes, but I love you.’

  When Diana returned to Queen Anne’s Gate it was twilight, and her parents guessed what she had been doing. She had meant them to guess. They hustled her into the morning-room at once, though it was time to dress for dinner at Lady de Grey’s.

  Diana wondered why she had never before seen how stupid they were, and how idiotic was their way of life. She remembered her nursery and schoolroom and debutante days, Julian Fitzclare and the battle of the latchkey fought a year ago, and it seemed to her that never before had she questioned anything, or seen any truth at all. Now that she was perfectly certain in her own mind, nothing they said could affect her even for a moment. Yesterday, she had been affected for moments together: thrown back for whole minutes into their world by the mad revelation that Michael was a murderer.

  The cynics about love are wrong, she thought: ‘a cynic is he who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’

  ‘For the last time, Diana, have you been to meet Molloy?’

  ‘No, Papa, I have not.’ How glorious to lie, and how curious it was that she had never told a direct lie to either of her parents before.

  ‘Diana, it is – very difficult to believe you are not telling an untruth,’ said Angelina. ‘You hardly seem to want us to believe you. It’s your manner.’

  ‘Unconvincing!’ said Charles. ‘I am going to repeat myself, Diana. If you do marry this man – and I’ll never give you my consent, blessing, whatever arguments you use, I wouldn’t even if I were satisfied that the police’s suspicions are unjust – I’ll give you absolutely nothing to live on.’

  ‘No, Papa.’

  He glared at her under his eyebrows, and she thought what a fine picture he made. ‘What a pity we don’t live a hundred years ago. I’d have no hesitation in locking you up in your bedroom – absolutely none. I’d do it now, if you were a couple of years younger. Oh, I give you credit for not being fool enough to try to elope, but I’m warning you,’ he added.

  Diana imagined climbing down a rope-ladder. ‘Why are you so angry with me?’ she said. ‘You’ve never been angry before. You didn’t shout at me even when I gave up Julian – although you disapproved so much.’

  ‘Isn’t it clear!’ muttered Lady Blentham.
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  ‘You weren’t proposing then to marry a man who’s very possibly the worst kind of anarchist!’ said Charles.

  ‘He is not an anarchist, and he’s never plotted to kill anyone.’

  ‘Whether he is or not,’ said Angelina with an effort, ‘he is a – a freethinker, Diana, and though I suppose you don’t object to that he … He would be an impossible match on every count. My dear, I know you are in love, but you can’t marry him. You know that. It won’t last.’

  ‘Mamma …’ said Diana, turning. Her father stared at Angelina too.

  ‘In love!’ said Charles, interrupting. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I am in love, Papa. Even though you may hate the expression – do you think it vulgar?’

  ‘I tell you you’re not going to marry him. You can’t possibly do so if you have no money and I-will-give-you-nothing, do you hear me, girl?’

  ‘Please don’t speak to me like that, Papa.’

  ‘Don’t you –’

  ‘Diana, neither of us will be able to see you, if you do this,’ said Angelina, though she did not mean this quite literally. ‘You must not do it. Oh God, if I only had not consented to your having a latchkey, a bicycle! If only I hadn’t tried – so hard – to accept that these are modern times – none of this would have happened. I wanted you to be happy. I blame myself, entirely.’ She was not going to horrify herself by treating Diana as she had treated Violet three years ago.

  ‘Angelina, don’t be so emotional. Really, my dear!’

  ‘Mamma, very likely something worse would have happened if I’d been – more innocent, ignorant. Isn’t that what you’re implying? Ignorance isn’t always a protection.’ The full truth of this struck her for the first time.

  ‘Oh, heaven help us.’

  ‘I won’t have any child of mine create a scandal. God, how does one cope in these cases – like a damned bad novel!’

  Diana stood still, looking straight ahead of her at the undrawn curtains, still faintly smiling, because nothing could touch her save Michael’s hand. She was amused because her parents had at last surprised her, by acting just a little out of character. She had not thought Lord Blentham would be deeply distressed, as Angelina was, but she had expected him to persuade and to try to understand. She had supposed Lady Blentham would threaten and be unrelenting, in her own cold, disgusted style. It was her father, who made a show of his indulgent fondness for her, who was doing that now.

  ‘Love is not what you think it, Diana,’ said Angelina.

  ‘It’s silly to talk like this,’ said Diana, looking from one old person to the other, and thinking how odd and impotent both looked. They had been tyrants, but she forgave them. ‘If you don’t want anything to do with me – if I marry him –’ she said ‘if as a precaution against being locked in her room like a heroine, but she did not really feel vulnerable – ‘then just cut me, I shan’t mind – really, I don’t think I shall. I know what I want, what’s best, and if it happens, after a few months no one will remember – it won’t matter – it’ll be all right. Life is like that!’

  This was the longest speech she had made to her parents on the subject of her love. Obviously, they hated her. Diana thought how frail a thing was family love, dependent always on good behaviour. It was that, of all things, which they expected her to try and preserve as the most precious thing in life. She did feel badly when she said: ‘Of course you’re quite right, I shan’t do anything very stupid, like eloping. I do hope you’ll consent.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’ said Lord Blentham.

  CHAPTER 10

  MICHAEL

  Diana stood outside the registry office and wondered already what on earth she had done. She looked about her, blinking as though it were a brilliant morning, though in fact it was a damp summer day: 15 June, 1896.

  She noticed everything, above all the hand on her arm: it was as though she now had to look at the most commonplace things from a wholly different angle. In the street there was a grey horse, a dirty boy, a sweet-shop and a gutter running with a plait of fresh rain. She was glad, she thought, that they had gone to be married in Holborn. Glad that Michael had not chosen territory she knew, which she now imagined she would not try to see again.

  ‘Frightened?’ he said, leading her down the steps and on to the pavement.

  ‘Oh, well, the die is cast!’ she replied without hesitation.

  ‘Love can be a killer,’ said Michael, patting her arm as she smiled. ‘Come, we’re going home! I’ll teach you not to regret marrying me, Diana Molloy.’

  ‘Home,’ said Diana, crying with happiness at last. ‘It’s most efficient of you – to have made a home for me, just like … Dear one.’

  For the time being, they were to live in Michael’s studio near Charing Cross. He had persuaded his landlady to let two extra rooms by telling her that his future wife was an Honourable, and that he would soon be able to pay.

  ‘Shall we take an omnibus? Have you ever been inside one, Diana?’

  ‘No,’ said Diana. ‘Let’s take one!’

  She felt properly transformed by the ride in the smelly, crowded omnibus, and when they alighted two streets from the house she had never seen, it seemed to her that she had always been Mrs Michael Molloy, wife of a poor artist. And yet the most extraordinary moment, at which Michael might prove that the descriptions given in Fanny Hill were based on fact, was still to come. She was as nervous as an unkissed virgin was expected to be.

  *

  Michael looked down at his wife’s hot face, and took a strand of hair off her forehead. She had taken kindly to the delightful pain which was his gift to her, every bit as kindly as he had supposed. He had been very careful with her, pressing but gentle, as he had been ever since their first meeting – six weeks ago. He meant never to change, because he loved her so much and, against heavy odds, had succeeded in gaining her. He reflected in his present triumph that despair was ridiculous, that all his life he had been able to gain anything, so long as he desired it with all his mind and made full use of his talents for insolence and obstinacy. Michael smiled. Whatever it cost him, he would not let Diana suffer too much from the change in her circumstances, which he understood so much better than she did. She had cost him quite a lot already.

  ‘Alanna,’ he said, a word Diana knew from novels set in Ireland. ‘Sleepy?’

  She stirred in the curtained daylight, and a chink of sun picked out the freckles on her pink nose. ‘Michael?’ she whispered.

  Diana looked up at him. His odd face was now mauve and blue, shadowed like a face in one of his paintings. Love strangled her and she began to cry: but these were not the quiet tears of bewildered joy which she had shed several times before. Her sobbing was tumultuous, and loud.

  ‘Diana! Are you regretting this – are you? D’you want a divorce then, d’you want to go back to Papa?’

  ‘No! No! Never – how could you think so!’

  ‘Why are you crying like this?’

  ‘I don’t know – I just don’t know. M-michael, you must never be angry, never – you’re all I have now, all I could ever want, just you, just you truly, I’ll die without you, I’ll die if you’re angry! Oh, try to understand.’

  ‘Ah, it’s the power of sex,’ he said. ‘I won’t be angry then – and I’ll look after you as well as well can be. So long as you never regret it.’

  ‘How could I do that? Oh, you must understand!’

  ‘I do.’ Michael held her closely in the hot and crumpled bed. He had already had the sense, in view of her virginity, not to undress her completely or to take off his shirt. ‘We shan’t do this again for two days – not till you’re stronger, and wanting it. What’s more, I shan’t die in the meantime.’

  Diana giggled, but did not stop weeping. ‘So much more than I imagined – love – my first time, doing this, and it wasn’t painful, not terrible – not in the way they say, but quite differently! I ought to have felt – oh, it’s more than any human being can stand, it’s not
safe, such intensity.’

  ‘Write a poem about it,’ said Michael, stroking her neck.

  She calmed down for a moment. ‘Perhaps I will. And will you paint me?’

  ‘I’ll paint you. Did I really not tell you I would before?’

  ‘So odd,’ Diana said quietly, ‘what we did tell each other – and what we haven’t yet.’

  *

  In August 1896, the Molloys bought a house in Mornington Terrace, Camden Town. Diana was pleased that her house overlooked the lines running north from Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras: Michael’s old studio had been next to a railway station, and she found the noise of trains erotic. The house was hers, bought with some of the £500 left to her by her godfather more than a year ago. Michael said it was better to rent, but Diana had an idea that any house was a good, solid possession. She was glad that the Married Women’s Property Act enabled her to use her money as she liked and that Michael, who was willing to give her anything, did not seriously object.

  She stood now in Michael’s airy new studio, and thought about servant problems. She had engaged a girl who called herself a cook-general, who cost twenty-five pounds a year but was a good-natured slut and would have to go. Diana believed that now she had learned to cook eggs and sausages and stew, she could manage the house tolerably with a charwoman alone. Michael, though he had once told her she would have no servants, was now encouraging her to engage two. He wanted a cook and a house-parlourmaid, and he swore they could afford it.

  Diana had learnt early that he expected a girl of her class to be thoughtlessly extravagant, and her instinct for economy both impressed, amused and annoyed him. She had explained that, by the standards of their own set, the Blenthams were not rich, and that she had been used to dressing herself on fifty pounds a year. Michael teased her, saying she had a genius for exaggeration, and told her he insisted on employing two servants for her comfort.