A Fatal Likeness

by Lynn Shepherd

  She shakes her head.

  “And you did not go to her—wake her mother?”

  Again she shakes her head, the tears running down her cheeks.

  “You could have prevented it,” he says eventually, “and yet you did nothing. Is the enmity between you really so deep that you heard your sister’s baby in distress, and yet made no effort to help her?”

  She turns away, reaching out blindly to the railings, one hand to her mouth. “No, no—”

  “I hope, Miss Clairmont, that you never suffer the loss of a child. That you are never haunted by the pain of knowing that your baby’s death might have been averted, had someone cared enough to intervene.”

  She is gasping now, sinking slowly on her knees in the mud and filth of the street.

  Maddox watches her for a moment, then beckons to Fraser to take her back to the carriage. And when he turns he sees Shelley still motionless at the grave that will swallow his dead child. Suppressing his own repugnance, Maddox makes his way among the broken and uneven slabs to where the young man is standing, the rain dropping slow and heavy on his face, and hair, and clothes.

  “We must go. It would not do to be discovered here.”

  Shelley does not reply, does not even seem to hear. Maddox glances down, despite himself, and has to cover his mouth at once against the stench. The mud in the bottom of the pit is black with putrefaction, shards of sodden wood and half-recognisable bones jut from the slime, and beneath a thin film of sludge, a hand hangs listlessly within its withered skin. Then for the briefest of moments the rain eases. The water stills, and there, where the poet’s face should be reflected on the surface, there is a white and grinning skull-face, the eye sockets seething with maggots.

  Shelley starts back with an animal cry and Maddox grasps him by the shoulder. “It is nothing, an illusion of the light. Come—we must be gone.”

  And slowly, eventually, the young man turns to Maddox a face aghast and allows himself to be led away, stumbling now and half falling, his hand clutched at his side. And behind them, as they go, the sexton watches them from his lair, muttering something indecipherable under his breath.

  Maddox expects to hear from Mary Godwin within hours—at the very least the next day—for surely she can no longer pretend, even to herself, that she can remain safely with Shelley? But as two and then three slow weeks slip by his incomprehension turns to anger—to indignation at being so used, and a resolve to forget her—to leave her to reap the terrible consequences of her choice. A fine resolution, but one that works only in theory, and cannot withstand her actual presence. It is a Friday, and Maddox is on the point of leaving—on the point of going downstairs to his waiting carriage and a dinner engagement with the Home Secretary—when Fraser opens the office door and shows her in. She stands on the threshold, hesitating, and he gives a slight bow. It feels stiff, and no doubt looks so, because when he raises his eyes again he sees none of her usual self-assurance.

  “Miss Godwin.”

  “Mr Maddox.”

  She comes a tentative step farther into the room. “I am aware that my manners have been deficient. That I should have thanked you—by letter if not in person—for what you did to help us. Think not, please, that because your assistance was unacknowledged, it was also unappreciated. Speaking for myself, I felt your kindness deeply.”

  “And Shelley?”

  “I am sure he too—”

  “I did not mean that, Miss Godwin. You know I did not.”

  “You are asking, I take it, as to my intentions regarding Shelley. They are—unchanged.”

  He moves towards her. “How can you say so? Now that you know the danger you are in? You said, when we last spoke, that I was right—that you should have listened to me—that you would never have lost your child—”

  “You have not seen him,” she says softly. “He is tormented by what has happened—he swears he never intended to harm the baby—that he has no recollection of that night—”

  “And what happens when you have another child? What happens when you wake in the night and find his hands at another newborn baby’s throat?”

  She turns away to the window. “I think about the little thing every day. It is foolish, I suppose, yet, whenever I am left alone to my own thoughts, I always come back to the same sad place—that I was a mother, and am so no longer. I dreamed once that it came to life again—that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. And then I awoke and there was no baby.” Her voice is enough to break a harder heart than Maddox’s, but even he notices that the baby is no longer ‘she’ but ‘it.’ And that she was never given a name.

  “So you intend to remain with him? After everything he has done?”

  “What other choice do I have? And even were that not so, I love him so tenderly—my life hangs so in the beam of his eye—my whole soul is so wrapped up in him—I would do anything for him—even—even—”

  She is now sobbing bitterly, nakedly, a woman who does nothing private in plain sight, and holds herself in check from all the world. He goes towards her and stands at her shoulder, speaking so low his words brush her skin like breathing.

  “I asked you this once before, and received no answer. So I will ask you again. Who is this man Hogg, and what business takes him to your lodgings at all hours, day and night?”

  She is shaking her head. “How can I refuse him?” she says miserably. “It is what he believes—what he wants—that we should—that Hogg and I—that he and Claire—”

  Some part of him had expected this, some part of him knew it was the only feasible explanation, but it is wholly different to hear it, spoken in such neutral tones by this girl not yet eighteen, who has just lost her child.

  “I can scarcely imagine any man capable of such an abomination—that he should sit contentedly by and watch you in the arms—the bed—of another man—while he—”

  He strides to the far corner of the room, unable to contain his fury.

  “You do not understand,” Mary whispers, the tears rolling slowly down her face. “When first we met I would listen to him talking of the freedom and happiness of all mankind and my own passion would rise to meet his. And for man to be free, love must be free—Shelley says we should not shackle ourselves to one person for life—that the failure of his marriage is proof of the terrible error of such a dogma—that we—the four of us—might show a new way to live—might defy convention and find a new mode of existence in which all is shared—in which there is no jealousy, no recrimination—”

  “And is that what has happened?” he cries, twisting back to face her. “You forget that I have seen you, you and Shelley and your sister. Can you place your hand upon your heart and tell me that you are not jealous, not resentful, not bitter to the very dregs of your soul?”

  “Of course I am!” she sobs. “I see the way she touches him—toys with him—and I want to tear her apart with my own hands. When she is wretched I rejoice, when she goes out with him, hour after hour, I wait at home, brooding, with poison in my heart. When he goes to Sussex to hear the reading of his grandfather’s will, she goes with him, when a cradle is to be bought for my baby, she goes with him. She refuses absolutely to return to Skinner Street, and there is nowhere else. It is almost impossible to bear.”

  “And Hogg?”

  “He disgusts me. I tried—Shelley begged me and I tried. He said Beaumont and Fletcher had one mistress and why should we not do the same—surely his genius was a match for theirs? And so I wrote to him.” She flushes. “You would call it flirtatious—unworthy—and I cannot defend myself from such a charge. I wanted to keep him at bay—to do as Shelley wished and yet postpone as long as possible the moment when I would be expected—when he would ask—I spoke of my pregnancy—that my affections would surely increase with time—”

  She sighs heavily and wipes her eyes. “I think on those words now and I am sickened. For I did not know then, that Shelley once proposed exactly the same to that little
fool Harriet—that she should take Hogg for her lover. And now—now he dares suggest it to me—”

  Her breast is heaving with suppressed anger, and Maddox eyes her thoughtfully, wondering how much of her distress is to be found rooted there—in insult, rather than injury. And whether it is a coincidence that having discovered this, she is now here.

  “And your sister? Have she and Shelley—?”

  “He swears to me that they have not. That he awaits my decision as to Hogg. But I can prevaricate no longer. I am not with child. I have no child.”

  “But that does not mean you have to agree! He may talk of you as his treasure and his prize but you are flesh and blood, not a possession, however exquisite, to be passed around his friends! A woman like you—with your talents—your intelligence—in God’s name do not allow yourself to be so trapped—so used!”

  “Oh, Mr Maddox,” she says softly. “Nothing in that house may be done in God’s name. Not even that.”

  “Then for heaven’s sake leave it!”

  “And leave them together?” Mary cries. “After all I have suffered, all I have lost, surrender to her? And even were that possible, where should I go? My father will not speak to me—my friends have disowned me—I have no money. There is not a house in London that would receive me—”

  “Then come here.”

  The words are out before he knows he has said them. They stare at each other, aware a boundary has been passed, a barrier broken.

  “It is,” he stammers eventually, “a big enough residence. You might be here a fortnight and I should not even know it. And there are the servants—there would be no suggestion of impropriety—”

  She smiles wanly. “As if I, of all women, were in a position to care about my reputation.”

  He turns away, desperate to find some small task to perform, all too uncomfortably aware that he is the one who has laid himself open, now, to entrapment and misuse. But when Mary replies her voice seems very small, and very docile, and very far from devious. “I am grateful indeed for the offer. Should I have need of it, I will accept it.”

  And when he looks up, she is gone.

  It is more than a month before he sees her again. A month taken up with a coining case in Whitechapel, and a murder investigation that has him from the house until late in the night. And it is, indeed, late when he returns home one night to find the maid hovering in the hallway.

  “What is it, Phyllis? Have my dinner brought up to the dining-room, would you?”

  “There’s a visitor, sir.”

  “I cannot see anyone tonight—pray ask them to return in the morning.”

  “It’s that—that Miss Godwin,” she says with a sniff of disapproval. “She’s been waiting here these two hours and more. Has her bags with her too.”

  “Very well, Phyllis. Show her up to the blue room, would you, and I will see her afterwards in my office.”

  When he opens the office door there is no lamp burning, and he considers for a moment ringing the bell to have one lit, but then changes his mind. He goes to the window and opens it wide. The moon is full on the Thames, and under the London smell of horse dung and human filth there is the faintest hint of Spring.

  “Shelley once said that his mind without me was as dead and cold as the midnight river when the moon is down.”

  He turns. She is in the doorway, all in white.

  “But he is,” says Maddox softly, “without you now.”

  “And the moon is up.”

  She comes to his side and looks down towards the water. “I remember the night we crossed from Dover to France. It was such a beautiful evening—little wind, and the sails flapping in the flagging breeze. Then the moon rose, and night came on, and with the darkness a slow, heavy swell and such a violent sea that the sailors almost despaired of us making Calais. Hour after hour passed, and we were still far-distant, when the moon sunk in the red and stormy horizon and the fast-flashing lightning became pale in the breaking day.”

  Maddox leans against the glass, his breath misting the pane. “You should write. You have a gift for it.”

  Mary smiles. “Perhaps. But my talent is but workaday set against Shelley’s.”

  “You might earn your own living by it, nonetheless.”

  And be free of him. The words unspoken resonate in the air.

  “What brings you here?” he asks at last.

  “Hatred. Treachery. Violence—Oh, do not fear,” she says quickly, seeing his face, “I am not harmed—I was not the victim. I was the perpetrator. That is why I had to leave. I did not know myself capable of such rage, such terrible cruelty.” She turns and walks back into the room, her features dissolving in the shadow. He will wonder, afterwards, whether this were not deliberate; whether she stood so far away that he might not see her face, not read what would have been visible in her eyes.

  “After I saw you last—what you said—you gave me the courage to remonstrate with him. To beg him to reconsider. And my loss—our loss—his inconsolable contrition—has changed him, truly it has. He told me I was everything, she nothing. That I alone can shield him from impurity and vice. That if he is absent from me long he shudders with horror at himself—”

  “Good God, what does that mean—what sort of man says such things—”

  “Please—let me finish. He promised that he would find a home for Claire, away from us—he has even persuaded her to advertise for a position. And he took me away to Salt Hill, just he and I alone. We had three blissful days among the green fields and the trees and the solitary lanes. I was”—her voice breaks—“absurdly happy. Happier than I have been for many long bleak months. I even found it in myself to write affectionately to Hogg, now that he was to be no more to me than a friend.”

  She pauses, and he sees her raise her hand to her eyes.

  “And then, when we returned, it was to new lodgings and I thought, surely now things will be different. How naïve I was—how idiotically hopeful! Because now they can hide it from me no longer—I can see it with my own eyes.” She takes a shuddering breath. When she speaks again her voice is raw with rage. “They have been deceiving me, Mr Maddox, week after week, month after month. No doubt since the very day we first left London together. All the promises he made me were lies—vile brazen lies. All those hours he spent with her—all those journeys they took together—have ended the same way. With him in her bed.”

  There is a silence. She is breathing hard now, to retain control.

  “So,” says Maddox, “Miss Clairmont is with child.”

  She nods, and puts her hand again to her eyes.

  “And you—?”

  “I struck her, Mr Maddox. I raised my hand and I struck her. I have always deplored violence—always seen it as the worst manifestation of man’s bestial nature, but at that moment, as she stood there, smiling that complacent self-adoring smile, her hand caressing the child she will bear Shelley—the child I should have had—it was as if a demon had overtaken me. I lost consciousness for a moment, I think, for the next thing I remember was Shelley lifting me to my feet and kneeling in alarm at her side. It was only then that I saw she had fallen—she was in pain—there was blood—but I felt no remorse—felt only that she deserved her pain, for the hurt she had given me.”

  Again the silence, again the sound only of the clock on the mantelpiece.

  “They sent for the doctor,” she says at last. “But I had gone before he arrived. I had nowhere else to go, so I came here.”

  Maddox goes to the table and pours her a glass of brandy, then returns to the window. As he gave her the glass he felt the cold in her thin fingers.

  “I should retire,” he says eventually. “I have an appointment early tomorrow.”

  Yet despite his words he does not move, but remains staring down at the street, and the houses, and the silver river.

  “I have often wondered,” she begins hesitantly, “that first day when I came here—to this house—how it was that you knew my name.”

  He
does not turn, but senses her approach, senses her nearing warmth in the chilly room. “You resemble someone I once knew. She had not your colouring, but your height—your face—your features. I thought—just for a moment—”

  “And her name was Mary?”

  He nods. “Is Mary.”

  “I am sorry. The way you spoke of her, I thought she must be—”

  “Dead? No.” He shakes his head. “She lives and is happy. If she is dead, it is only to me.”

  She places a hand gently on his arm, and when he turns at last to look at her it is as if her words have conjured the ghost he has so long striven to forget. Her hair is as dark as ink in the blue light, and this last difference gone she is uncannily, unbearably, like the woman he once loved. Something of this she must have seen—something in his eyes must have changed—for she lifts her face towards him and brings her mouth to touch his skin.

  “You do not mean this,” he says in despair, as her cheek brushes his. “You will regret it—you do it for the wrong reasons—it would make me no better than him—”

  “You have not betrayed me—you have not told me lies—”

  He seizes her shoulders now. “And is this not a lie? The worst lie of all?”

  But it is too late—she can feel his body deny his words. And as she draws his head towards her and her lips part, he hears her whisper, “She is gone but I am here. If you wish it, I will be your Mary. I will be the love you lost.”

  It is long since he has taken a woman to his bed; longer still since that act was anything but a business transaction, concluded to the satisfaction of both parties, but this coupling is like no other he has ever had.

  He tells himself, afterwards, that she has had no lover but one, and that everything that unnerves him can surely be traced to that. For he is unnerved, and profoundly. She is no virgin, but he senses all the same that he is breaching a locked wall, that this is for her an initiation, an opening of places cold and closed. And yet she is no prude either: His own desire spent, there is a striving for satisfaction—a willingness to ask for what she wants, both in words and in gestures, that he has found in no other woman, and will never find again. And when, at the end, she turns her back to him silently in the dark, and he realises what it is she expects him to do—to take—the hot blood comes to his face and he buries his face in her hair, murmuring, “No, not that, not that.”