The Twisted Heart

by Rebecca Gowers

  ‘Really? That doesn’t strike me as true.’

  ‘No, I used to care about him in a different way. My—I don’t know—my selfless concern for him, if I ever had any, has slowly been worn away.’

  ‘You have to look out for yourself, too,’ she said. What else was she to say? ‘Hey,’ she continued, mentally changing tack, ‘I’m sorry Graham didn’t ask you one single thing about yourself. Maybe he had fog-bound sex on some balcony last night and it left his brains frizzled.’

  ‘That was so cold, out in the damp like that,’ said Joe.

  ‘Well, it was; but wasn’t it also—’ Kit couldn’t finish her sentence.

  ‘You were inspired,’ said Joe, ‘by my inspiring balcony?’

  She pulled a pious expression. ‘It was pretty good, by my standards. Although I admit that using the word “standards” in this context might be pitching it rather high. Oh God.’ She didn’t want to pursue this. ‘Outside—’ she said, ‘doesn’t it make you wonder why you ever do it inside? Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘I love wood smoke,’ she said.

  ‘Is that what it was? You were certainly different.’

  ‘So were you.’

  He laughed. ‘I wasn’t worried the whole time you were going to jump up like a startled horse and run away.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘That may not be such a good way of putting it,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. What were you expecting? You’re a funny person, you know. You—’ he stuttered a second.

  Kit’s thoughts went aslant, to The Soiled Dove and the Honourable Plaistow Cunninghame—to how he had found Laura Merrivale more and more unappealing, the happier she’d become. ‘You don’t find inexperience attractive though, do you?’ she asked quietly.

  Joe smiled round at her with his eyes. ‘Not so much that I’d miss it when it was gone. Please,’ he said, ‘don’t look so troubled.’

  Meta Cherry, Kit thought.

  ‘Just—don’t run away like a startled horse, that’s all,’ said Joe.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  He was guiding her in the opposite direction from town.

  ‘I want to pick up Humpty’s car. It’s a few streets this way.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you were just saying about coming to Botley because you were worried about Graham. I thought you were making it up.’

  ‘No. I credit your brother with being able to handle a drunken cab ride on his own.’

  ‘I have to say,’ said Kit, ‘I can’t think when he last talked about himself in front of me in quite such an open way, even if I couldn’t understand it. Usually he plays everybody’s uncle kind of thing, or at least a not-so-gloomy bon viveur. I don’t usually see him just on our own, you know? It’s usually family, kind of thing. Didn’t you think there seemed to be something pretty wrong? Could you tell? I don’t know if I should say something to Saskia. What can I do, though? I wonder whether—his mother died last year, not nicely either, I believe, wasn’t found for several days, and without them ever having been reconciled, her and Graham, I mean. Honestly, he’s a sweetie pie really. He’d help anybody. If he met the Queen, he’d try and help.’

  ‘Yes, he told me he could get me in on this double-flush loo cistern thing.’

  ‘Don’t, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to.’

  ‘It’s bound to be a con. And anyway, they already exist, for God’s sake. Michaela’s a fan.’

  ‘He didn’t say they didn’t exist. He said there’d be a market of millions while everyone converted.’

  ‘That’s what I mean, though. He’d say the same thing to the Queen, “Tip me the wink and I’ll get you in on green cisterns”.’ Kit sighed again.

  ‘Who’s Saskia? His wife?’

  ‘Yes. You know, they’re my people, but they’re people who—they have these little bookcases along their landings, but none inside the rooms.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what your face looks like when you say that?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes, at least they have books. Saskia’s from Holland. Isn’t Graham the type of person you can exactly imagine marrying a foreigner? She’s tiny. She always gives me these completely enormous garments for Christmas, like I’m a Guinness Book of World Records giant. I slightly dread it every year. To her I’m completely vast, even though I’m actually,’ Kit pulled her stomach in, ‘reasonably slim. Once, she gave me these American pyjamas with a pair of bottoms that were so loose around the waist that even with elastic they fell off me straight onto the floor. And they had this label in them that said, “One size fits most”.’

  ‘I like the sound of them,’ said Joe.

  ‘They were flannel with bluebirds on,’ said Kit, with much disdain.

  ‘Here it is,’ Joe said, of a small and dented car. ‘I stole it about three months ago.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I got in a panic, thought Humpty was going to end up killing himself, let alone anyone else, so I lifted his keys one evening and parked it where he wouldn’t find it. Every couple of weeks I move it from one out-of-the-way street to another so it doesn’t get reported.’

  ‘Hasn’t Humpty reported it himself?’

  ‘He’s not exactly tight with the police,’ said Joe, opening the tin-pot doors.

  They dropped down onto the punctured seats. It was miserably chilly inside and smelled of mould.

  ‘Joe,’ said Kit, as the engine finally took. He seemed to have gone into a dream. ‘Joe, you know in the movies,’ she said, ‘where an important character gets in a cab, hands the driver wads of dollars and says, “Just drive”.’

  ‘Yes. Usually a yellow cab in New York.’

  ‘Exactly. Do you think we could do that for a little while? I love going in cars. I know it’s arctic—’

  ‘I’ve put the heater on—’ he said.

  ‘—and it’s a waste of petrol and will increase our carbon footprint by several sizes and contribute to destroying the planet—’

  ‘Put that way, how can I refuse?’

  ‘—but it would be so lovely just to sit back and prowl along the streets going nowhere special, just for a little while.’

  ‘You aren’t starving?’

  ‘I am, but I don’t care. Are you?’

  ‘I can survive.’

  ‘Is that okay then?’

  ‘Yes, if it’s what you’d like. My pleasure.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He turned right and drove out onto the ring road, and they drifted around the city in silence, occasionally overtaking a crawling lorry. A couple of times, on a gear shift, the engine made a guttering sound, at which Joe swore. But apart from that, neither of them spoke.

  They did an entire circuit like this, mainly sticking to the slow lane. Only when they reached the north side of town for the second time did he ask, ‘Enough?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  He took the exit ramp and began to head back into Oxford. ‘So, Charles Field’s notes,’ said Joe, breaking in on Kit’s empty-headedness, ‘what exactly’s the plan now with the Grimwood question? You have anywhere else new to go with Oliver Twist, or are all avenues exhausted?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Kit in a small voice.

  He glanced sideways at her. ‘I do agree with you that it’s a lot of similarities,’ he said, ‘although, back then, how different were two violent prostitute-murders going to be?’

  ‘Yes, but Eliza’s murder wasn’t some regulation, ten-apenny type affair,’ said Kit, pulling herself together—not that there was any point them discussing it if all they were going to do was repeat themselves. ‘I told you, it registered in the public consciousness as so extreme that when a Telegraph journalist tried to explain the Ripper killings half a century later, it was Eliza’s murder he came up with by way of comparison.’ Kit crossed her arms and looked out of the side window at the straggling periphery of the city, annoyed when Joe seemed to reply with a noise part way betw
een a hum and a cough.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He frowned.

  ‘What?’ she said again, impatiently.

  ‘Kit?’

  ‘Yes?’

  He hesitated, evidently trying to work something out before he spoke, then cursed under his breath as they were forced to slow to meet the tail end of the stalled inbound traffic.

  ‘What?’ said Kit.

  ‘All right, don’t bite my head off. You said Dickens wrote Oliver Twist—started it in—started it when?’

  He shifted down through the unreliable gears.

  ‘February, 1837.’

  ‘And Eliza was killed?’

  ‘May.’

  ‘May, 1838?’

  ‘May 26th, 1838. That’s correct.’

  ‘Okay. And Dickens wrote the book in instalments, but, you said, didn’t plan it out well in advance, right?’ They were categorically in a jam now, shunting a few metres at a time.

  ‘Well done,’ said Kit sarcastically, ‘you were really paying attention.’ Then she clasped her forehead with both hands and whispered, ‘Oh God, oh God. Joe! Dear God.’

  ‘Right, good,’ he said, allowing himself to sound pleased. ‘So tell me, when was Oliver Twist completed, the writing of it?’

  ‘I’m so stupid, I’m not sure,’ said Kit. She lowered her hands again, but with her fists clenched tight. ‘But I—it must have been—latish in 1838? But, yes, when did Dickens actually compose Nancy’s death scene? Not before May, surely? Shit. How on earth can I not have—’

  ‘Hey,’ said Joe, ‘it happens. Don’t worry. What we do know is that the murder is near the end of the book, yes?’

  Kit shook her head distractedly and whispered, ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Any time,’ replied Joe, in a comically debonair voice. The traffic mysteriously eased and they speeded up again.

  ‘I’m crazy,’ Kit said. ‘I mean, God, Joe, I wonder. This way round it would all make sense, wouldn’t it? I mean, wouldn’t it explain everything? If Dickens copied from Eliza—you’re saying—if he wrote Nancy’s murder after Eliza—afterwards, then for starters, none of the coincidences have to be coincidences any more: they’d be on purpose. Oh, wow.’

  ‘Yes, while the slight differences would probably make sense as adjustments to fit with the novel’s pre-existing plot.’

  ‘Exactly. Although, I mean, if Dickens based Nancy’s death on Eliza’s, pretty much right after it happened, what a gruesome thing to do. Fucking hell. But at the same time—how can I not have seen this? If you’re right—but you must be.’ Kit thumped her legs with her fists. ‘If you’re right, Joe, then it has to be admitted that Eliza’s death would have been like a gift to Dickens, or at any rate, extraordinarily perfect for his needs.’

  ‘That is a bit disturbing.’

  ‘Yes. Because, by the summer of 1838, he’s already established Sikes as a robber, pimp and insanely violent bully, with a room he shares with his benighted prostitute girlfriend, who’s afraid of being killed. All that would be there already. Then once Eliza has been done in—if this chronology’s right—well, Dickens would find himself provided with just an amazing template for how his own set-up might play out in real life.’

  ‘What’s more,’ said Joe, ‘unless the dates prove not to fit, but as you’ve inadvertently been indicating all this time, it would seem he really followed the details incredibly closely.’

  ‘You’re telling me. I mean, a half-dressed girl on her knees—Nancy starts her death scene half dressed in bed, and so did Eliza, exactly the same—defence wounds, implicitly Eliza begged for mercy, possible self-sacrifice before the man she loved, because her silence implied not wanting him to be caught. Exactly that happens with Nancy. Eliza had her knees “crouched” under her, fell over backwards, Nancy the same. The rug: Sikes throws it over the corpse then plucks it off again because it’s worse to imagine than to see. And Hubbard gave evidence that it was he who pulled the bedding back off Eliza’s corpse. And there’s this shocking moment at the inquest where they describe the police—it was the police who pulled up the blinds to let the dawn sun in on the scene. What does Dickens do? He has this great play on the light, with Sikes sitting there until the sun rises, and its beams bounce off the pools of blood on the floor.’

  ‘Even Bull’s-eye’s bloody feet,’ said Joe, ‘if Dickens read that letter in The Times about Eliza’s dog—’

  ‘Yes, yes, Dickens ninety-nine per cent certainly would have seen that. And, what do you know? He has a dog in his story already; so, fine, his dog can positively wade through the stuff and get its feet completely drenched. And Joe,’ said Kit urgently, ‘everything I told you before about Hubbard going off his head, the unburied corpse putrefying, and him escaping a vengeful mob out of a window at the back of the prison—wouldn’t it figure if Dickens riffed off all of that for Sikes: why don’t they bury that ugly thing? Honestly,’ she cried, hunching forwards into her seat belt, ‘how can I not have seen this? How can I have gone at it backwards all this time? I was so close. I’m so stupid.’

  ‘Don’t do yourself down, please, that’s ridiculous,’ said Joe. ‘You’re the one who refused to give up on it all. You just went all the way to London because it was still bothering you.’

  ‘Speaking of—’ Kit shook herself. She put a hand to the clock on the dashboard. ‘Joe, would you mind terribly if—’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I—haven’t said what, yet.’

  ‘I know.’ He grinned. ‘It doesn’t matter. The answer is, “not at all”.’

  ‘It’s just, if we were to drive straight on into town,’ she said, ‘my college is still open, our library I mean; we could make it with about—probably, twenty minutes to spare? I could smuggle you in and we could quickly check Oliver Twist’s publication history, plus look at Dickens’s letters?—try, if at all possible, to pin down the dates? I have to know, Joe. I won’t be able to sleep, otherwise. I can’t stand it. Obviously, if there was a single sentence anywhere in which Dickens connected Nancy to Eliza, it would have been noticed. But we might find something, some tiny, overlooked detail, and we should certainly be able to find out if the chronology works. You must be exhausted, and I’ve completely screwed up your evening, but would you mind?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll cope,’ he said, ‘You haven’t screwed up my evening, and at this point I’d like to know, myself. We’ll find somewhere to dump the car and run.’

  In town, Joe found legal parking, by a miracle, and though they didn’t run, they did walk extremely fast, their spirits high.

  ‘Thank God for Graham’s crisps,’ he said. ‘Why haven’t you fainted?’

  ‘I haven’t felt like it,’ replied Kit flippantly.

  When they got to her college, she took him by the hand and drew him in, waving at the porter on duty. They stepped lightly round the first quad and she put her key-card through the swiper at the bottom of the library staircase, causing the mechanism on the old oak door to click, so that she was able to push it open.

  ‘Magic,’ said Kit.

  They crept up the ancient stairs to the rows of ancient, carved bookcases. ‘Lucky what we want’s the most basic stuff imaginable,’ she whispered, taking Joe to the literature section. There were various other students in there, papers spread far and wide across the pews and tables where they were settled.

  Kit pulled an annotated copy of Twist off the shelves, which she slung in front of Joe, then took the earliest volume of Dickens’s letters for herself.

  ‘That’s it?’ he said.

  In reply, she hissed, ‘Go!’

  So there they sat, opposite each other along a narrow table, in concentrated silence, reading against the clock.

  Joe flicked back and forth between various notes and appendices to the novel. Kit scrambled through clumps of pages in the large tome in front of her. She felt sick with anticipation, and her fingers trembled as she hunted.

  With five minutes to go, she sat back, slowly raising her eyes
to meet Joe’s steady gaze.

  ‘Yes?’ she whispered.

  ‘You first,’ he said.

  She smiled rapturously at him. ‘I’ve got it. You, too?’ Her hands were freely shaking now, rather as they had that morning, except with excitement. ‘Between the letters and the footnotes, it’s pretty much all here,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well,’ she breathed, ‘the actual first publication date of Nancy’s death scene was November 9th, 1838. You have that as well? After Eliza: that’s definitive. But listen to this, Joe. Back in March of that year, Dickens sent a letter to this guy called Frederick Yates about an unauthorised stage version of the novel. It was the first play version anybody attempted to mount, and the instalments were only half way through, so obviously the people staging it needed to come up with a conclusion to the plot. So Dickens writes to Yates and says that, hey, there’s no fear they will somehow reveal the correct ending, because—listen to what he says, Joe, late March, 1838,’ Kit opened the volume at the relevant page, ‘he says, “I am quite satisfied that nobody can have heard what I mean to do with the different characters in the end, inasmuch as at present I don’t quite know, myself”.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘yes, in March, Dickens had been publishing instalments for a year, but he hadn’t yet quite figured out everyone’s ending. Then, as we know, two months later, on the night of May 26th, Eliza is killed. Now, bear in mind that the inquest and investigation and so on were being reported in the press on an almost daily basis for at least the following month. I can tell you in parenthesis, for example, that The Times had a report near the end of June that Hubbard’s brother had just auctioned off the complete contents of the house in Waterloo, including Eliza’s bloodstained bed sheets.’

  ‘That’s nasty.’

  ‘I know,’ murmured Kit, ‘although typical for the times. Anyway, blow me down, on July 10th,’ she flipped through the book to the second page she needed, ‘i.e., a couple of weeks after that, what did Dickens write to his publisher, Richard Bentley? I should mention that they were hoping at this point to have Dickens finish the manuscript by September, so the pressure was really on.’ Kit looked positively beatific at what she had to say next. ‘So, yes, July 10th, Dickens writes to say, look, don’t worry about Oliver Twist any more, because, basically at last, I guess, “I have planned the tale to the close”. Yes? Meaning, before Eliza’s murder Dickens hadn’t planned out the characters’ endings, but right afterwards, he had. 15th July, he started to work on the last third of the novel. And on—’ she turned the book’s pages, ‘2nd October, he tells a friend he’s finally done it and killed Nancy. Quoting exactly: “Nancy is no more.”’