by Forrest Leo
‘It is a pity, Mr Pendergast,’ said she, in a voice which was low and husky and altogether glorious and in retrospect rather like a siren’s, ‘that much like Mr Savage’s poetry, ambergris needs no fiery refinement.’
‘Does it not?’ cried Lady Whicher.
‘Not a bit. Its value comes from its unaltered chemical makeup.’
‘Ambergris or Mr Savage’s poetry?’ demanded Blakeney.
‘Precisely!’ I interposed, and just like that I was again on top. I attempted to thank my fair saviour, but the words transmuted by some reverse alchemy into an attack on Pendergast and his countess.
I will not bore you with the continuation of our match, as it proceeded through the duration of the second and most of the third course. I won in the end, but the victory was hollow to me—the entire episode was nothing but a cover to hide the fact that I could not speak to the woman beside me.
It was Vivien who at last broke the silence between us, and so I may say without hesitation that the fault for my current predicament lies squarely upon her shoulders. Had she not said anything I would not have been able to, and would have returned home to Pocklington Place that evening with a feeling of cowardice and self-reproach which would have lasted for a day or a week and then given way to my accustomed cheer.*
Instead, I left that evening with a wife.
I do not mean literally, of course—our courtship, while brief, was not that brief. But later when Simmons asked how the dinner had gone, I believe my words to him were, ‘I have found a wife, and I haven’t the least intention of letting her go.’
Bitterest of ironies! If I could return to that night in March and relive it, I should have eaten my foie gras with relish, taunted Pendergast with pleasure, and never spared a second glance at that awful creature on my left. Could I even return as a spirit and whisper in my own corporeal ear, I should whisper with such urgency, ‘Ignore her, sir! She will be your death!’
Well, but I cannot and I did not. Instead, when over the oysters she enquired, ‘What are your thoughts on the matter, Mr Savage?’ I turned and lost myself in those damned eyes and knew I was finished and did not mind a jot.
I will not here recount my wooing. It was, looking back, strangely joyous and brings me pain to recollect. There was throughout it a bizarre sense of burning happiness—a prickly feeling on the back of my neck, a pleasant tightness of the chest: something more than contentment, greater than the satisfaction of a match well made.
I thought it was the sensation of being in love. I have learned that it was not, it was the joy of the chase. I wonder now if I oughtn’t have been a hunter. Perhaps I still could be one. I am certain that Simmons keeps an ancient musket somewhere, and I could steal a horse from my coachman and sally forth to murder foxes—or stow aboard an Arctic vessel and try my hand at clubbing seals, which cannot be difficult. But that is neither here nor there. I am a poet, I am a married man, and I am resolved upon my own immediate suicide—for I married for money instead of love, and when I did I discovered that I could no longer write.
Two
In Which My Sister Returns from School for Reasons Best Omitted, & I Am Forced to Deliver to Her a Previously Unmentioned Piece of Intelligence.
I sit trying to write. I cannot. I have written no poetry in my six months of marriage. I have written drivel, doggerel, detritus, but nothing worthy of Calliope’s mantle.*
I sit at my desk in my study in my house which is called Pocklington Place which is in a nice part of London with which you are almost certainly familiar and so I shall not name for I do not like callers. My desk is mahogany and very large. It once belonged to an earl, but he was a wretched poet and so he died and now it is mine.* That is called justice, and I would there were more of it in this world. My study is large, as it is also my library. My library used to be upstairs, but it became apparent that I should spend my life walking up and down the stairs between my library and my study unless drastic action were taken. So I called in an architect who called in several workmen who charged me a prodigious amount of money, and I bid them remove the floor of my library—though I might equally have said the ceiling of my study, for they were one and the same (the one being directly below the other). They did this, with much banging and sawing and hammering, and they put in several very tall sliding ladders so that I could reach my books, and a very grand spiral staircase made of wrought iron which leads to a sort of balcony ringing the room on what used to be the floor of the library and the ceiling of the study, and where there are a few armchairs. When the workmen left, I had the grand, two-storey study in which is the mahogany desk at which I now sit trying vainly to write.
If you have ever written, you will know that it is either an arduous business or a simple one, but rarely in between. For me it used to be the one but is now the other. (I trust that you know which I mean when.)
I rise. I tear my hair and gnash my teeth. I chew the sleeves of my smoking jacket, which is red velvet and threadbare and which once I believed to be lucky but do not any longer. The words will not come.
‘Simmons!’ I call.
I am pacing, which is a habit of mine when I am agitated.
‘Simmons!’ I yell again. ‘Simmons, where are you? I am agitated!’
I pace my way to the door and wrench it open to call down the hallway, but he is standing there already. Which is a habit of his.
‘I’ve decided to kill myself, Simmons.’ I have been considering it for some months, but I have been putting it off because the weather has been fair. It is now foul, and still I cannot write, and it is time to do what must be done.
‘Very good, sir,’ says he. He is a good butler. ‘Might one ask how?’
I am moderately taken aback. In all my months of contemplation the question has never occurred to me. It is a good one, I reflect. ‘Don’t know,’ I say. ‘Hadn’t thought. I suppose I’ll just shoot myself.’
Those who are not well acquainted with Simmons say that he has no expression in either his face or voice, but I have known him these very many years and know better—and right now he looks pained.
‘Oh sir,’ he says. ‘Begging your pardon, but who do you imagine would have to clean up the brains or the heart fluid or what have you?’
‘Who?’ I ask, wondering if there is a special branch of the public works committee one calls in such instances.*
‘Me,’ he says. Apparently not.*
‘I see. I’m sorry, Simmons. That was inconsiderate of me. I apologise.’ Firearms, clearly, will not do.
‘Think nothing of it, sir,’ he rejoins handsomely. He truly is a paragon.
I am now confronted with the reality of my situation. Somehow it had never seemed so real before; but when faced with the notion of poor Simmons scrubbing my brains off the bookshelves, my mind protests. But I am no coward. I plunge forward. I ask him if he has any recommendations.
‘Sir?’
‘For the manner in which one might best take one’s own life.’ Simmons is at times amazingly quick to apprehend, and at others needs clarification. I wonder where his brain goes during the latter periods. I do not think of him as having an imagination, but I am perhaps wrong. It occurs to me that I have not in my life considered what happens inside other people’s heads. I must write a poem about it someday.*
‘I see.’ He is pensive for a moment, then says, ‘I understand that drowning is, all things considered, not a bad way to go.’
I am disappointed in him, and tell him so. ‘I’d have thought better of you, Simmons. If I drown myself, my corpse is likely to float downriver and wash up on a foreign shore and frighten to death some poor Froggy* child building castles in the sand—and all because you had a frankly quite selfish aversion to a few minutes of brains clean-up. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
He looks suitably remorseful. ‘I am, sir. Frightfully ashamed. What about gassing yourself?’
‘Now you’re thinking, old boy! I believe you’re on the right track.’ I am immensely cheered. It seems not only a quick and a clean method, but also a romantic one. To die from the newly installed gas jet would be tantamount to being literally killed by Progress, which is one of the more poetical thoughts I have had in some time.* I am about to tell him so when the doorbell rings. Simmons excuses himself and leaves the room.
Alone, I consider the gas lamp flaring overhead. I do not care for it and never have. Gas seems to me a most monstrous thing, impure, foul-smelling, and expensive. I have read of a young inventor in the North who makes the most marvellous contraptions powered entirely by steam, which seems to me a much better thing. Steam comes from water which comes from rain which comes from the sky. I like the sky, and I like rain. Gas, on the other hand, comes from I know not where, so I cannot know whether or not I like its progenitor. It occurs to me even now that it is truly the progeny of humanity, which makes me feel all the more justified in my distaste for it. It is reassuring when one realises that one’s prejudices are not groundless.*
I hear Simmons open the door, and then the bottom drops from my stomach. An unmistakable voice squeals, ‘Simmons!’ and I hear luggage being dropped and even from here the sound of Simmons gasping for breath as Lizzie throws her arms around him.
For it is Lizzie. She enters my study in a whirlwind which proves it. My sister looks much as I do—her skin is pale, her hair is dark, her eyes are blue, and she is not a large person. I am biased, but I believe her to look quite well. She is dressed for travelling. Her cheeks are flushed with wind and happiness, her hair is tousled, and she hurls herself into me before I can rise. She smells of autumn and of Lizzie, which are my two favourite smells in the world. At any other time in my life I would be glad to see her.
‘Hello, little sister,’ I say as she crushes the air from my lungs. Though she be but little, she is fierce.
She at last releases me and stretches me at arm’s length. She studies me and it makes me nervous. It has been the better part of a year since she set eyes on me, and I fear her opinion. I do not fear the opinions of many men, but I do fear hers.
‘You look awful, Nellie,’ she says. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Simmons comes in before I can answer, straightening his tie and brushing a speck of dust from his immaculate uniform. ‘Simmons,’ Lizzie carries on imperiously, ‘what have you let him do to himself? He looks like death. We may need to fetch a priest.’ I wish Lizzie would not talk as though I am not present.
‘Yes,’ says Simmons. ‘I am afraid he may not be constitutionally suited to—’
He is about to say ‘marriage,’ and it occurs to me in a moment of panic that I entirely failed to mention to Lizzie that I am no longer a bachelor. I tried to include it in several letters, but the words never quite materialised. It is as I said—now that I am married, I can no longer write. Lizzie would never forgive me if she knew that I married without her permission. I hurry to interrupt Simmons before he can say the awful word.
‘Do you know,’ I cut in, ‘I met a priest this evening. I was walking home and he had tripped over a loose cobblestone and was cursing the Devil for putting it in his path, and I stopped and said to him, “Oh sir, for shame! Does not the poor Devil have enough to bear as it is? Besides which, you’re a priest! And I’m a poet! Without the Devil we’d both of us be out of a job!” I thought myself distinctly clever. The priest, though—’ And then something else occurs to me. I round on my sister and demand, ‘Why are you not at school?’
Lizzie’s eyes widen with a panic that is not, I believe, far removed from what I felt a moment before. I hope I was not so transparent. ‘It’s so good to see you both,’ she babbles, ‘but I must look a fright. Let me change and freshen up and I’ll be all yours and then you can tell me what’s happened to you.’
I glance at Simmons and see that she is an open book to him also. ‘Lizzie,’ I say sternly, ‘what are you doing home?’
Her eyes flash about looking for some means of deliverance. She finds none and decides to makes a run for it. ‘Got kicked out,’ she blurts. ‘Back in half a second!’ And she dashes from the room.
I call after her, but to no avail. When Lizzie decides she is going to do something she is infrequently denied. ‘This is your fault, Simmons,’ I say.
‘Very good, sir,’ says he.
I am becoming flustered. I am not brittle by nature, but I do not like it when I have set my mind on something (for instance, suppertime suicide), and something else (for instance, my beloved little sister) comes along to upset my plans. Which is not to say that I am not happy to see Lizzie, because I am, though I do worry about her being home—it was a good school she was at (I had better not say which one), and I know her to be an excellent student, which means that for her to have been kicked out she would have had to do something truly—
‘By the by, sir,’ says Simmons, interrupting my thoughts, which is not necessarily a bad thing as I have a tendency to let them run wild, ‘I anticipate a problem.’
I haven’t the slightest idea what he is talking about, and tell him so.
‘Her room, sir—’ he begins, and my heart sinks. I had forgot about her room.
‘NELLIE!’ Lizzie shrieks from upstairs.
‘Simmons,’ I say, ‘this dreadful day has gotten worse.’
Lizzie is a dainty person, but her feet as she storms down the stairs do not sound dainty. She bursts through the door in a towering fury.
‘What have you done to my room?’ she demands.
‘Well, Lizzie,’ I say in my most reasonable tone of voice, ‘it’s complicated.’
I pause to consider the best way to put matters, because they are indeed rather complicated. Before I can go on, she says, ‘Where are my things?’
‘In the attic.’
‘And who,’ she continues, as full of questions as ever, ‘is living in my room?’
I cannot lie to my only relation upon this earth, but I am not yet ready to tell her the whole truth if it can be avoided. I quickly formulate a plan. I believe I may be able to gloss over some facts and change the subject. If I do so smoothly enough, she may not notice what it is I have said; and if I follow the revelation with a strong enough remonstrance then she may become distracted.
‘My wife,’ I say. ‘Now, tell me immediately why you were kicked out of school.’
‘Your WIFE?’
‘The importance of a good education—’
But she is not to be thrown off the track, and interrupts me. ‘You got MARRIED?’
I ignore her, less now for the sake of the defunct plan than because I am warming to my subject. ‘Were you doing your work?’ I demand. ‘You weren’t, were you? I never figured you for a laggard, Lizzie. Laziness—’
‘I am not lazy! I got kicked out for a dalliance with the dean’s son.* When did you get married?’
I match her fury. ‘A dalliance? You had a DALLIANCE? You’re sixteen!’
‘Yes,’ says this creature I no longer know, ‘one wonders why I waited so long. WHY ARE YOU MARRIED?’
I find myself unhinged. To hear that one’s sister is kicked out is a blow, but to find that she is kicked out for dallying with a tallywhacker is something that would break even the hardest man. ‘I am married, Lizzie, because we ran out of money, and so to keep us clothed and keep our house and KEEP YOU IN SCHOOL, I sold myself to a rich woman, and now I can’t write and can’t even figure out how to take my own life in a way that isn’t horribly inconvenient for those I leave behind me, and FOR GOD’S SAKE YOU HAD A DALLIANCE?’
Lizzie is perversely calmed by my anger, and becomes at once logical. ‘Nellie,’ she says sternly, ‘I really think there were better financial alternatives than marriage.’
‘Believe me, Lizzie, I wracked my brains and at the end of the day the only alternative was selling you i
nto prostitution, which would never have worked.’
‘That isn’t funny, nor is it— Why wouldn’t it have worked?’
‘No one would have bought you.’
Her unnerving calm is shattered. ‘PEOPLE WOULD HAVE BOUGHT ME!’
‘No,’ I say, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Would people have bought me, Simmons?’
‘Indubitably, miss.’
Simmons is the bravest man I have ever met, but in this one respect he is a coward. He never can bear to hurt Lizzie, even at the expense of telling her the truth. But Lizzie is rather a magical creature who exerts a strange pull over mere mortals, and I resolve not to think less of Simmons.
I find I must continually stop myself from contemplating her dalliance. I am not a prudish man, let it be understood. This age of morality is not one I have an affinity for, nor is it one I deem good.* But be that as it may, when one hears that one’s sister is— As I say, I must stop myself from thinking on it. It is best unthought, unspoken, and unheard.
Lizzie meanwhile seems pleased to have found an ally, and appeals to his good sense on the matter at hand. ‘How could you have let him do this, Simmons?’
‘I cautioned him against it, Miss Elizabeth,’ he says. ‘Indeed, I did my uttermost to dissuade him, but he was resolute.’
Lizzie looks at me with a mixture of pity and annoyance. ‘Nellie,’ she says, ‘I’ve never thought of you as stupid, but you’re forcing me to reconsider.’
‘Her parents were desperate for a poet. If I didn’t marry her, Pendergast would have.’ It is my last-ditch vindication, and I expect it to carry weight.
It doesn’t.
‘Where is she?’ demands Lizzie without acknowledging that I have spoken.
‘Who?’
‘Your wife.’
I wince at the word. I do not like the word. I do not like the woman, and so I do not like the word. ‘Out,’ I say.
