A Muse to Live For

by Katherine Wyvern

  It’s like a paralysis of the mind. I wish my soul could vomit, but it can’t. It’s petrified in grief.

  I have my drawings of her scattered all around me on the rug, so many drawings, some quick and rough, but lively, some quite finished, with exact care. Lovingly. Her hands, and the delicate arc of her nostrils and her lush lips, and most of all her eyes, they all torment me, and yet I can’t stop gazing at all these silent phantoms of her, drinking her in, all that is left of her.

  Then there comes a day when I think, I won’t let that happen to me again. I will not let this loss kill my vision. I can, I can still create. Even without her. Even the pain of her loss is an emotion, is something more than the barren emptiness I had before. And what am I to do with it, if not paint? There is nowhere for it to go, out there. There is no one, no one at all, to tell all this, to tell her hands, her lips, her icy, flaming eyes. I can only fold inward and let it bore further in, deeper and deeper, until it finds a nerve to pluck, the nerve that will—eventually, across the river of pain and loneliness—create.

  But how? How?

  There is a higher truth, somewhere, infused with light, and light and light, while all else, me most of all, is darkness, nothing but darkness. I cannot tell this truth, but maybe, maybe, I could paint it, paint snatches and fragments and glimpses of it … but she was the key, she was the lens that broke this white blindness and made it into colors. She was the taut, thin subtle silk along which the quicksilver of my vision dripped, from the unutterable void—to me. She allowed me to go to places, places within myself, that I am not able to access otherwise.

  She brought that world and this world together. She made them sing in tune.

  For a week, she made me whole.

  And now she is gone.

  If only, if only I could have her back.

  Because whatever they may say, art is not enough. What is the point of art, if you are not with me? What is the point of life if you are not here to share it?

  And so it is that on the fifth day, in a fever, I pick up my coat and my hat and I rush out, unbrushed, unshaven, to look for Gabrielle, my Gabrielle.

  I will not lose you. I will not. I will not. This time I will not lie down and take it meekly. I will get you back, take what it may.

  My first stop of course, is James Street. But her streetlamp shines on a stranger, a face empty of all meaning. I go ‘round and ‘round Leicester Square and its surroundings, searching every corner, every shadow, and then walk further and further afield. Every whore I meet, I ask the same questions. Do you know a Gabrielle Kenny, have you seen her, do you know where she lives? They look at me with reserve, suspicion, hostility, sometimes pity, sometimes mocking. Sometimes they reply with scorn, or open mirth. Gabrielle Kenny has gone to a nunnery. Gabrielle Kenny stole a judge’s wig for a lark and was transported to Botany Bay. Gabrielle Kenny is wed to a one-legged sailor and lives in lodgings in Gosport, with a dozen children, all of them one-legged. I go back again the next day, and then again and again, but she’s gone. She’s vanished.

  There are times when I think, not of doing away with myself, no. Pitiful bloated bodies, and boots, and shawls, bonnets and collars wash up every day at low tide on the filthy muds of the Thames, flotsam and jetsam, the bits and pieces and fragments and exuviae of humanity driven to the last edge of despair, and then one step further. I don’t think I can do that to myself of a will.

  No.

  But a man can slip.

  A man can fall. A man can have an accident, and never quite know that he had meant it to happen. There are days when I think, would it change anything? If I died tomorrow? Would it change anything at all? I am nobody. And all the paintings I had meant to make, are nothing, will never be, without her.

  At times, I sit here in my room, this room empty of her, empty of all life, and I know that something scorched that lay dead inside me was unlocked when our eyes met, had uncoiled in scaly spirals, like ferns in the spring, and then expanded into an improbable vibrant hope … and now it’s gone, blasted by whatever it is that tore her life apart from mine. She did so much more than sit for my pictures. She had become the focus, the vanishing point of the broken perspective of my days.

  Because above all this, above all the things I think of my paintings, of my drawings, of my feeble art, above all this, there are these three words that ring in my head like a tolling bell, regular, and merciless, and hungry, and consuming, and louder than anything on the clamoring streets of London. Nothing I can think of can keep them out. They howl at me, day and night, night and day.

  I love you, I love you, I love you.

  I wander the dark nights, alone, blundering into people, walls, corners, horses and whores, gates, and church-doors, a man blinded, blinded, and groping in the dark. Where are you, where are you? Where are you, I want to cry, to shout, a madness on me. I won’t lose you, not you, not ever, I will not—lose—you.

  When I find you, my love, I will never let you go again. When I find you, my love, I will explain to you… I will make you understand…

  But first, first, I must find her again. I must find her, or die.

  But it’s dead easy to die for a woman.

  Any fool can die for a woman. To live for her, that takes altogether more courage, doggedness and imagination.

  ****

  Gabriel

  After seeing Nathaniel, after coming home through those dreadful, hounded streets, I am not myself anymore.

  I am in pain all over, bloody, bruised and torn, in body and soul. It is all I can do to drag myself home, and sneak in as quiet as a shadow, and creep up to my garret, to lie down and die.

  I think this is what I will do, really. Just lie down here, and let myself vanish.

  How long can it take, to starve to death?

  If I don’t eat, if I don’t drink, if I don’t cover myself, if I just lie here in the cold, shivering like this, I will shiver myself into kingdom come and be done.

  So I lie on my cold bed, in silence.

  The rent is paid, and I don’t need food; there’s no reason to go anywhere.

  Mostly I sleep. I don’t take off my clothes, my fine clothes I made to go to Chelsea and sit for Nathaniel. I lay my head on the pillow, and we lie here together, me, and the husk of the woman I was, or could have been, or never will be, waiting for the end to come. If I die in my skirt, perhaps they’ll bury me as a woman. I wonder how thoroughly they will search the body of a starved Irish whore, before they toss her in some unmarked grave. With some luck, they won’t bother at all. Just another dead whore, they’ll say.

  They’ll never know that I was the belle of the ball once, that I was a great lord’s own mistress, that I wore a different silk gown every day, and I had piano lessons, and a rope of pearls, and that one day, one day, one day I broke a painter’s heart, and my own along with it.

  Oh, Nathaniel. Oh, his face, his face when I told him I was leaving forever. That I should bring that memory into my grave. Oh, let me die quick, for the love of mercy.

  But it’s not quick, of course.

  As I sleep, I dream sometimes, and I see scattered pieces of my life, all so jumbled together that when I wake, I cannot tell the time, or day, and if the dream is really over, or if I am dreaming of myself awake.

  For a while I don’t think of food at all. Maybe it’s a day, maybe more. Then I become so hungry that my whole belly is a knot of pain and emptiness. I don’t know if it is my stomach or my soul. I had such splendid meals once, in that great house, caviar and oysters and pheasants, and truffles, but in fact I am tormented, of all things, by the memory of the lukewarm soup Bessie brought to me that night. Perhaps because it’s the last meal I ever had. Or perhaps because it’s the last act of kindness I’ll ever know.

  Then the hunger goes away finally, and there is nothing else to struggle with. I don’t even feel like smoking. There’s nothing left to do but waiting.

  It’s a long wait.

  You’d never guess what a slow, l
onely, dull business it is, starving yourself to death.

  But really, there’s nothing to it, if you have nothing to live for. If there is nowhere to go, no one to see, it’s really quite easy to lie very, very quiet and wait for the next minute, and the next one, and the next one again, until an hour has passed, and then another, and then the day is through, and night covers all.

  I think I have become rather good at this, at letting time go, letting the minutes fall silently one by one, like motes of dust, while my mind and my body drift away, ever a bit closer to the last darkness.

  It’s as good a plan as any, a grand plan, in fact, and I am asleep once more when it fails.

  ****

  “Holy mother of Christ! Oh, sweet Mary and Jesus! Oh, dear God in Heaven!”

  That’s it, I think, I did it. I’m dead. Hallelujah!

  I thought I’d go to hell, too, but apparently, I made it to the other place. Fancy that.

  Then there’s the clang and splash of a pail of water hitting the floor, and my brief glimpse of heaven slips away forever.

  The shrill voice of the scullery girl rings like a gong in my empty, echoing head as she shrieks again on the stairs. Then there’s the clatter of feet rushing down, and the piercing voice shouting (shouting! In Mrs. Gride’s house! Can this be real?) “He’s here, he’s here, he died in his own bed, he did… oh the woe and the grief, oh that poor, sweet boy…”

  Doors banging, more voices.

  “Who’s dead?”

  “Someone’s dead?”

  “Top floor is dead, in his own bed.”

  “What, Gabs Kenny? Dead? No! Oh, no, no, no!”

  There are doors banging all ’round the stairwell, wailing, sobbing. Perhaps I have gone to hell after all.

  And then more steps, more feet, heavy feet, and Bessie’s voice again, weeping and blubbing , “No, no, I am not going back in there, Mrs. Gride, not for any money! Oh, he’s gone and done himself in, like my old ma! Oh, sweet Mary, Mother of God!”

  “Pipe down, Bessie, or I will do you in, with my bare hands. My head’s like to split from all your bawling! Lord, what a banshee you’d make, if you could but fly. And you, back in your rooms, all of you! Silence, silence! This ain’t a bleeding bear baiting, damn it!”

  And then there are steps in my room, a hand on my shoulder. I try to cover my ears and my face. I don’t want to see, or be seen. I only want to be gone forever.

  “Well. And so you are here. When did you ever come in? Nobody heard you. Nobody knew! We thought you’d been scragged out there. Are you dead or ain’t you?”

  “I am not,” I croak, hoarsely, through dry, parched lips. “I wish I was.”

  “Yes, well, and don’t I wish that I was the damn Queen of England? I will not allow it, sir. Not in my house. I won’t have it. Bad business, a corpse in the house, so you might as well pick yourself up and start behaving like a sensible person. Bessie, stop blubbing, you heard the gentleman. He ain’t dead. Go fetch a basin of tea, this minute, with double sugar, and a nice bit of muffin. One more sniffle and I’ll give you real cause for grizzling.”

  And indeed, the next sounds I hear are a shrewd thump and a low shriek, and then Bessie’s feet running down the steps two at a time again. Then Mrs. Gride’s voice booming down the stairwell like a foghorn. “He ain’t dead! Go back to sleep, the lot of you! You hear me? He ain’t dead, just daft.”

  For a woman who insists on keeping such a quiet house, she’s got lungs of brass, that’s for sure.

  “Well, I thought you’d gone and got yourself killed on the street this time. Never knew you were here at all. Not a peep to be heard through the door. Gave it some days, then I sent the girl up to clean the room and pack your things. You sure know what keeping quiet means. I like that in a youngster. But there’s such a thing as taking it too far. Well, well. Come now, sit up, like a good boy, or by God I’ll give you such a buss alongside the ear that you’ll be dead for real.”

  I don’t think I can stand being beaten again, so I roll and sit up and flop down. No strength at all. Mrs. Gride stands there as stern as judgment day, arms crossed, and with an effort I sit up again. My head swims, like I’m dead drunk.

  “That’s better. Never liked to talk to the back of someone’s head. It ain’t natural. Now, you’ll have a tea and a bite, and then wash, and then you’ll go and do whatever it is you do for a living these days. I will not have a lodger dying on me, you understand? It will not do. Not in my house. You are queer enough as it is, without turning up as a tragic corpse on top of everything. If you want to be dead, you’ll have to arrange it somewhere else.”

  “You are throwing me out?” I ask, too muddled and weak to make any sense of her words.

  “I am keeping you alive, is what.”

  “Why?” Why can’t she bloody let me die in peace in my own bed? I paid for it until the end of the month, damn it.

  “’Cause corpses don’t pay next month’s rent, that’s why.”

  Ah.

  “Besides, it upsets the girls, and you see what a commotion they put up. My nerves can’t take it, not at my age and all.”

  It seems to me that Mrs. Gride’s nerves are made of a particularly well-tempered kind of steel, but what do I know?

  When Bessie comes back with tea things on a tray, Mrs. Gride presses a cup in my hand and points a finger at it.

  “Drink.”

  I think the stuff will kill me. Just the smell of it makes me almost gag. Then the thought that it might kill me makes me take a sip, and I gag for real. Mrs. Gride’s hand shoots up in the air and I duck, spilling half of the tea in my lap.

  “Down it goes, or I will thump you on the head! Drink! What will it be, tea or thump?”

  And so it is that I find myself on the street again, feeling like a puff of wind might blow me over. Because I’m too damn weak to argue with my fucking landlady.

  If I want to die, I’ll have to do it out here in the drizzle, like a stray dog.

  For some days I stay away from Leicester Square. I am in no state to prowl the fancy streets with any dignity. But after a few dispiriting and rather terrifying nights in the dark haunts of the East End, pleasuring drunken sailors, thieves, and prison birds, I make my weary way westwards again. What can I do? If I am not allowed to die like a half-decent human being, I will have to make a living somehow.

  Chapter Four

  "Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round

  Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of light;

  Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;

  Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.—"

  John Keats, Hyperion

  Nathaniel

  When I see her by the streetlamp, and know it’s her, that it really is her, I stop in the dark and lean against the wall. I am shaking all over, shaking and shaking and shaking. I hold a hand to my mouth, very hard, lest the beating of my heart be heard up and down the whole street. It is so much, so much, to have found her again. The world is awash with immense light, and yet I am so afraid that the light might go off once more, that it may be just a mirage, that I shake, literally shake with dread where I stand. I am not a praying man, and yet I find myself giving grace, thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, God. It is several minutes before the shaking subsides enough that I can walk up to her.

  “Gabrielle,” I whisper, because for once she’s got her back to me, and didn’t see me coming. But I know it’s her. I’d know her anywhere.

  When she turns her eyes go wild.

  “Shit, oh shit, shit, Nathaniel, what are you doing here? Go away! Go away this minute!”

  “Gabrielle, please, please. Don’t run away again. I will not stay away from you. Not unless you tell me why. I will not. I looked everywhere. I looked everywhere for you.”

  She gives a quick, hurried glance around the street, up and down, her eyes fleeting from light to light, and then lingering for a moment on every shadow.

  “Please, Nathaniel, please,
go away. I told you to stay away. I told you to forget me!”

  “I can’t! How can you ask me such a thing? You know … you know…” I can’t finish the sentence. My throat is hard and closed.

  She breathes deep and fast, like a hunted animal. Her eyes are huge and unreadable in the deep, deep shade of her eyebrows.

  “Shit,” she repeats, and suddenly she grabs my arm, and pulls me away from the light.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere, I don’t know, Nathaniel, I don’t know! Somewhere with four walls around it.”

  “Come home with me,” I say, trotting to keep up.

  She gives a strange, unhinged laugh. “Christ almighty, that’d be a sight to see, your landlady, when you creep into the door at the dead of night with a whore on your arm.”

  Even I have to admit that it is a daunting prospect.

  So I just let myself be dragged along, away from Leicester Square, eastwards, along the whole length of the Strand. For a while I know where I am. It looks like a familiar city, with places I recognize, the Temple, St. Paul, the bank of England, but as we walk on and on and on again —it must be three miles surely?—into darker and darker roads, I lose every sense of place. Where is this? Whitechapel? Spitalfields? I couldn’t tell one from the other, even by day. The night is turning foggy, and Gabrielle is walking so fast that I can barely keep up, like she’s running from something, or someone.

  I am completely at her mercy. The streetlights are mere vanishing islands, far between, in a sea of misty darkness. Alone, I’d be lost in a minute. I clutch my old satchel close. I carried it all these days as I looked for her, like a talisman, or an act of faith. It would be the ultimate irony if I lost it now. Surely these dark roads, flanked by looming ruinous houses, some of them as bare as staring skulls, are the perfect place to rob, assault, or slaughter a prostitute, or a poor bewildered painter? There are lanes no wider than five feet, slimy with muck, bordered on each side by black crevice-like passages, like mines, populated by staring women, raving drunkards, and half naked children. They could be goblins, or lepers, or restless spirits, in this dreary murk. After the lights and fashionable crowds of the Strand this is like a trip into the Underworld. Facilis descensus Averno. How easy it is to be swallowed into this pit, how hard to find a way out again. How can something as beautiful as Gabrielle have come out of this abyss?