In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

  6

  The conference in London is a success, especially Ann’s paper on Simcox; and then it’s all over. The classes resume. Except that on Thursday I wait in my office for Hans to come, and he doesn’t show.

  I sit there. It’s five past two, he’s usually dead on time. Then it’s two thirty, and he’s still not here. He’s clearly not coming. But there’s no text from him either.

  It’s just a class, I say to myself. I must get on. I click on email, the emails multiply and replace, but after staring I grab my purse and head down to the canteen. I can’t think why I want to go there, really, except that I want to leave my office. Just then there’s a bleep from my phone. ‘Ann broke her leg. Be in touch about class, H.’

  In the corridor, the department secretary confirms it: Ann slipped down Staircase E, on the lower ground floor. She’s at UCH hospital.

  Marcus is in a frenzy about liability, as the stairs are in our department.

  The secretary sends Ann a bunch of flowers, and a small posse go to visit her the next day.

  I don’t. In my flat, I attempt to understand myself like a forensic investigator. I peel an orange, digging my nails in — scrap by scrap, the peel comes away. I remember what I felt when Hans didn’t come to my office. I separate the parts of the orange, segment by segment, put them out on the plate. I pick up the bangle that Ann left a good two months ago, contemplate twisting it out of shape, quickly put it down. The white walls of my flat, in the open afternoon light, look terrifically boring. I haven’t put up pictures, I realise.

  Later that day I collect Billy, but her scampering irritates me. Yes, cancel Venice, I think. Next day at work, I have a headache, speak sharply to the student who’s late with her essay.

  A text comes from Ann, asking me to visit her at the hospital.

  Arriving in the lobby, I ring her to ask what she wants. A coffee, she says — flat white, please, not a cappuccino.

  ‘Anything to eat?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘You must need something.’

  ‘I don’t,’ — crisply.

  My eyes feel dusty; there’s a smell of disinfectant. At the florist, I buy a miniature rose in a pot; as soon as I’ve paid for it, the pink looks sickly. In the loo, checking myself in the mirror, I catch, with a lightning shock, a saccharine, over-tender smile on my face. So this is what I am! Up on the fourth floor the corridor is warm, with a smell I recognise — enclosed yet clean, attractive yet faintly repellent. I press the button; I’m buzzed into the ward.

  Ann is in a room on my left. ‘Kate! Hi!’ she says, when she sees me. The sight of her gives me a slight pain. I think I’m jealous. It’s an awful feeling. Her leg is suspended in a pulley-contraption, cased in plaster, the outline smooth as snow. She wears a pale-blue hospital gown.

  ‘I’m not bad,’ she says, in answer to my question. Her face looks rested. ‘Now Kate, I’ve emailed Venice to let them know what’s happened. Because obviously I can’t come.’

  ‘What about crutches?’

  ‘What, with those bridges?’

  She is tired, almost glad to be in bed, she declares.

  ‘But I am wondering,’ she goes on, ‘and this is a big ask, if you could possibly read my Simcox paper for me at Venice.’

  ‘Me —’

  The ironies are rising.

  ‘Hans should read it.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? He’s your husband.’

  She takes a breath, neatly laces her two hands together, looks intently at them. ‘First, I want a woman to read it. Second, I haven’t found Hans,’ — she hesitates — ‘he doesn’t get my way of thinking. He’s not supportive. He didn’t want me to apply to Venice.’

  ‘Didn’t he?’

  ‘He’s very critical. He puts me down, that’s the truth of it.’

  The hospital lights are hot, my hands are damp. I have the tumbling sense that everything is becoming clear. I’m wondering, in fact, if I know Hans. He’s married, but interested elsewhere. What does that tell me about him? How did it go bad between them? Perhaps with neglect of Ann. Perhaps he’s undermined her for years.

  He blocked Jo Devlin: spectacularly petty. I look round the hospital room: the walls are square with no give.

  Ann, regarding me narrowly, picks up a cracker from her bedside tray; breaks it, piece by piece; drops the bits with an airy gesture back on the tray.

  ‘I wasn’t going to go,’ I say.

  ‘Please, Kate. I’m asking you.’

  The pale-blue hospital gown is large on her slim shoulders. I’m torn. I say I’ll think about it.

  7

  Two days after deciding to read together, Marian and Johnny Cross were seated in the dining room at the Priory, side by side, with a copy of Dante’s Commedia in front of them on the table. Marian shifted in her seat, cleared her throat. She had a cold and she couldn’t help making this noise. But with Johnny so close, she was embarrassed.

  She had felt constricted, too, when he had arrived. She suggested they read in the dining room, even as, painfully, she was regretting her original suggestion they read together in the first place. It suddenly seemed odd. She was fond of Johnny, who had been a pleasant, even treasured part of their life for so long, but she had never, she realised, spent time alone in his company. She had straight away noticed the formal cut of his jacket, and the way his grey suit drained his face of colour. And as they went together to sit in the dining room, she had a moment of shamed awkwardness she didn’t understand.

  In the first hour, it wasn’t clear how to proceed. Marian asked questions. It was soon evident Johnny understood nothing of the background to the poem, though he had a struggling grasp of the Italian.

  Haltingly, woodenly, Johnny was reading:

  Allor fu la paura un poco queta,

  che nel lago del cor m’era durata

  la notte ch’i’ passai con tanta pietà.

  He turned to look at Marian, questioningly.

  She said: ‘Will you translate?’

  Johnny nodded.

  ‘So … was the fear … made … soft — no, quiet, che, that —’

  ‘Which,’ put in Marian.

  ‘which, nel lago, in the lake, del cor. del cor.’

  Johnny stopped.

  ‘Of the heart,’ said Marian.

  Johnny cleared his throat. ‘Had lasted … the night … that I passed, con tanta pietà.’ He turned to look at her. ‘That I passed with — much pity.’

  ‘Pietà,’ said Marian, ‘A beautiful word. And meaning, too’.

  It was April, there was green outside the window: Easter time, the time of pietà. The small birch tree had its new leaves, but cold rain was falling.

  Then Marian read aloud in her mellifluous voice the three lines that Johnny had said, but her tone rode with the rhythms. She began to feel easier as she did so.

  ‘You say it well.’

  ‘But you will get better,’ she said gently, and she was pleased to be able to offer him kind words. ‘So … Then quieted a little was the fear, which in the lake-depths of my heart, had lasted throughout the night I passed so piteously.’

  They were silent. Now Marian lost sight of all her earlier embarrassments with Johnny. She was feeling the weight of the words, her dark months without George. The lake-depths of her heart. Johnny was looking straight ahead of him, with that slightly wooden expression. She understood. He was self-conscious. And he probably found it strange to be sitting near her, in this house that was now so queerly empty, without George’s vivacious presence.

  But she sensed that the words moved him also, his eyes were dark with feeling.

  He said: ‘I fear the relevance of these words for you.’

  ‘It does feel relevant,’ she said, simply.

  Neither spoke.

  ‘Perhaps —’ b
egan Marian.

  ‘You have had enough,’ said Johnny, quickly.

  She said she thought she had. He rose, his chair scraping noisily, at which he grimaced.

  ‘I hope we can try again. I will be a better student —’

  ‘You will be. You are,’ she added. It suddenly seemed important that they did not immediately abandon what they had begun, and when he suggested returning in two days she agreed.

  This will occupy me, at least, she said to herself, once he had gone.

  When he returned, three days later, she had again the feeling that an over-large man was coming strangely close, in this dining room. As they turned the pages of the book, she noted his large hands, and the clean, groomed fingernails. She remembered George’s dark-yellow cigar-stained and bitten fingers, his hopeless habit of biting his fingernails. She half smiled; it was painful to think of this. She must marshall her will, help them both.

  ‘I will read,’ said Marian. Her sadness was growing; she fought it. She would do what she could to make this interesting. She read, with the gentle, easy authority of the teacher:

  Tant’è amara, che poco è più morte;

  ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,

  dirò de l’altre cose ch’i v’ho scorte.

  Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai.

  ‘Now,’ she went on, ‘do you want to try?’

  ‘Do I dare!’ sighed Johnny, with a slight smile. The smile pleased Marian. He was not bored, he was not disgusted by being so close to her older, lined face, he did not resent her atmosphere of nearly undiluted sadness. ‘Do not expect, Aunt, that I can do like you.’

  ‘I do not expect that.’

  He looked hard at the Italian verse in front of him. He was biting his lip. Then: ‘It is … so — bitter, but to treat of the good that I found — for you — I will speak of things … I have learned for you.’

  ‘Imperfect, I’m afraid,’ he muttered.

  ‘It isn’t quite right,’ said Marian. How glad she was to be able to put her mind to this. Now it was she who couldn’t help, even from her sadness, giving a faint smile. ‘I think you are confused about the word vi, and the V apostrophe. Without wishing to be pedantic,’ she went on, in a tactful, light voice, ‘the word vi can be a pronoun “to you”, but in this context it is the adverb “there”. He is talking about the good he found there, and what else he discovered there.’

  As he left, Johnny stammered his thanks, and said something about having something to live for. It was half a joke, but it felt real, too.

  Johnny began coming regularly. To teach, Marian found, was helpfully distracting. To help ease another’s sorrow — even to be aware of another’s sorrow — was good. She found the emptiness of her days slightly leavened by this regular appointment; in its small way, it was something to look forward to.

  8

  Some weeks later, Marian drove to Highgate Cemetery, dismounted, walked to the Dissenter’s Area. A granite slab had been laid: George Henry Lewes, Born 18th April 1817, Died 30th November 1878. Scrubby grass had begun to grow around it, weeds were green and fresh and proliferating. Marian placed her copy of The Times on the ground, knelt on it, then began to uproot the weeds, pulling gently so that they would not snap, but would bring up their thin trailing roots. The roots reminded her of George’s tadpoles, when he had started training himself to become a biologist. Once she had pulled them up, she laid her own posies of violets and pansies on the grave.

  Pitifully small. Why had she not brought larger flowers? How neglected it looked, the stone garishly new, the untended lumpy grassy earth. Next day, she took the carriage to Covent Garden market. Robert warned her to be careful. The air was full of dust and bits of straw, the street was stinking, strewn with rotting vegetables.

  ‘Did you buy the whole shop, Ma’am?’ asked Robert, when Marian came back, carrying a big basket of flowers; behind her walked a boy, arms wide with three great bouquets of roses. Robert drove her back to the cemetery, the gardener helped lay out the flowers. When she left, his grave was now the most flowery part of the cemetery, a small oblong of clustering pale roses.

  Back home she went to bed. Her forehead was damp, Brett said she had a fever.

  It was beyond comprehension.

  For weeks now she had been reading Dante with Johnny. The last time had been three days ago. But how could she describe it? A day of such extremes. Only that morning she had read three letters from George from the month just before they left for Weimar, in their first year together. She was full of George then. When Brett announced that Mr Cross was here, in the dining room, she experienced a sudden lurch of dislike, almost repulsion, at the younger man waiting for her there, with the Dante on the table — and a stab of self-loathing, also. He had looked at her and then begun reading, with a high colour. In that second, she knew he had detected her repulsion.

  But after she had sat down, she noted the flicker in his cheek she had seen before, a tiny spasmodic muscle, and she was swept by pity for him. It would offend him if they stopped this reading altogether. They read the twelfth canto, and it was beautiful to enter the regions of the poem, away from herself, and to have Johnny’s attention so fastened on her explanations, and to see him lighten as he listened.

  ‘Cotanto maestro,’ murmured Johnny, after she had talked of Dante’s own life.

  ‘Flatterer.’

  ‘Not at all. I mean it. It is a great pleasure for me … to learn like this.’

  He had turned to face her. His smile was gone; he seemed to be probing her own expression, with a pleading look, too.

  She dropped her eyes, but she too was smiling, in the strange, sudden joy she was feeling.

  ‘I hope we will meet soon,’ she said formally, when he went.

  ‘We will.’

  And how was it that, for an hour that day, she felt as if, in a small way, she had company? She liked his large, quiet masculine presence, even his well-cut City clothes pleased her in a way she didn’t understand.

  She had an image of her insides: as if a tiny being, perhaps the size of Tom Thumb, had been placed there. A good little seed had been planted. And some absolutely diabolical oppression lifted.

  It felt like salvation.

  She wrote to Blackwood that day: I am much stronger than I was, and am again finding interest in this wonderful life of ours.

  And that afternoon, looking into the garden, she was glad they hadn’t chopped down the ash tree as planned. Then she thought of going to Witley later this month. The thought of Witley, the slanting meadows — open under the sky — was suddenly attractive. In the drawing room, she found Charles.

  ‘My dear Charles, you have done so much for me,’ she said, in a voice of sudden, moved happiness. ‘I don’t know how I can thank you.’

  Yes, she would go soon to Witley.

  Since then, Johnny had come twice more. And she, sitting beside this much less educated man, found it pleasurable to try to make what she saw and experienced in the poem available to him. In so doing, she experienced the poem more richly than ever before. Periodically, she drew on her extensive knowledge of the political and theological background. Johnny would get up, at times, and walk around, talking about what he understood and saw, and how he was beginning to appreciate the Italian sounds (he did his best to imitate her more idiomatic rendering); she watched his reactions smiling. ‘You are a good student,’ she said to him then. He had crossed the dining room in a purposeful motion that had surprised her, to kiss her hand. She caught her breath.

  ‘You will come quite soon,’ she said, with a faint smile, as he was leaving.

  ‘I will.’

  Lying in her bed, she was flooded with terror. In her diary, she wrote the word Crisis.

  9

  By the time she left for the countryside, for Witley, in late May, she had had several days in bed with renal pai
n; Dr Paget had come and prescribed her a pint of champagne a day. ‘A whole pint,’ he had repeated severely.

  ‘I will,’ she replied, meekly.

  Days earlier, Blackwood had published Theophrastus Such, with a Notice inserted inside: The Manuscript of this Work was put into our hands towards the close of last year, but the publication has been delayed owing to the domestic affliction of the Author.

  Arriving at Witley, the cab took her down the familiar road from the station. When they reached the Heights, she half shut her eyes. The clipped large yew bush on the right; the house, wide, gabled, red brick, hanging tiles, like small flags, below the roof. All the same as it was.

  She tipped the driver, asked him to leave the bags in the porch; walked round to the back terrace overlooking not just the gardens below but the whole valley: meadows, fields, small trees.

  When they had first seen it, it was Johnny who had taken her and George round. He’d shown them the rooms, the grounds, talked of Tennyson living just near. It had been a day like this, in golden November. Except that today the earth was at the opposite end of its circuit — it was May and the world was unfolding and opening. Looking across the fields she could hear a faint humming in the misty light everywhere. The air was soft and had the soapy, intoxicating atmosphere of late spring. She could hear the servants inside: what sounded like boxes being dragged — a bang, a clamorous noise like cutlery being dropped, a cry. They had come down before her. Now Brett was singing the song she sang when she thought no one else was listening.

  Marian walked down to the lime tree, to the bench where she’d often sat with George. As she sat, she could remember George, putting his shoulders back, resting his forearms on the low back edge of the bench, in an attitude of the greatest freedom and relaxation. How he enjoyed things, relished things! He would have liked that cloudless sky — would have been funny, possibly sorrowful, reflective, all in the same ten minutes. Only weeks ago, she had finished re-reading his biography of Goethe — the words full of his spiced, lively mind. She closed her eyes. Her mind was sliding.