Serial Monogamy (22 page)

A
l is standing at the door of my office with the printout I have handed him that morning. I can't tell if he's annoyed; his expression is dark and unreadable.

“So, the writer can't help herself.” It reminds me of what Jonathan said about Dickens. The piece is presumptuous, but I actually intended it as a gift. I wait.

“You aren't planning to publish this, are you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I mean, it's not part of the serial or something?”

“God, no. We wrap up safely next weekend with a final bit about Nelly. No more dervishes, no more Dickens. I wrote that for you and the girls. I just wanted to get the family history down on paper. So it won't get lost.”

“Well, thanks.”

“You don't sound sure…”

“It's odd to read about yourself in the first person. I mean, I think of myself in the first person obviously, but to read someone else…pretending to be me.”

“The novelist's art, pretending to be someone else.”

“You're good at it, that pretending.”

“Thank you.”

“All that stuff. Did I tell you all that stuff? About my marbles and the revolution and my father?”

“Yes. You told me all that stuff. In bed mainly.”

“Oh. Don't tell the girls that bit, will you?”

“No. But I loved those stories. I wouldn't want them not to know. It was part of what made me fall in love.”

“Well, thank you for this.” He gestures with the pages. “You made such an effort to understand me.”

“I tried.”

But we don't wrap up safely that weekend because I miss my deadline.

I phone Jonathan late Thursday morning, feeling stupid. I have spent the week somewhere else and haven't put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard.

“I'm sorry. I just don't think I can deliver today.”

“Not a problem,” he says breezily. “It will raise suspense. We'll put a big mysterious promo in this weekend…due to unforeseen circumstances…and you can finish up next week.”

“Oh, that's a good idea.”

“When you didn't file last night I figured something was up; you are always so reliable. I pulled out some other stuff we had in the hopper and we'll stick that in instead.
The thumbsucker about judiciary reform will finally see the light of day. You've made our justice reporter a happy woman.”

“I'm sorry to have left you to do that. I should have called last night.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh probably.”

“I know it's hard. My mum…well, she died last year.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah.” There's a silence on the line. An honest silence. And then I hear him take a breath.

“I just wanted to say I have enjoyed working with you on this. You're very professional and I know Bob is really pleased with the results. He said he's going to send you a note. Handwritten. In the mail.” He laughs. “I don't think we've saved newspapers single-handedly, but you've given everybody at this end lots to think about. Let's do another one next year.”

“Sure. Next year. I'll get the last piece to you Tuesday.”

I hang up the phone and sit at my desk thinking. It is not hard to write the end of Nelly's story. I just need to bring my mind around to it. It's how to tell Al about the doctor's appointment that is hard. I had my nine-month checkup two weeks ago; no big deal, I thought. They've tested me and poked me and X-rayed me so continually. Either you
go into every appointment with a queasy stomach or a cold sweat expecting the worst or you choose to ignore the whole thing until somebody tells you otherwise. This time, they told me otherwise.

First it's an intern, his finger pausing as he examines my scar.

“Hmmm.”

All of a sudden, I am paying attention.

“I'll just get Dr. Abate to take a look at this.”

“Take a look at what?”

“Oh, um, there's just…” The intern looks at me panicked. He knows he has screwed up. He hurries out of the room and returns a few minutes later with my oncologist at his side. She's a tall, elegant woman and she practically glides in, calming words flowing out of her in a continuous stream as she repeats the examination.

“Sharon. Doing well? Scar healed nicely. Book coming along? Family well? Little nodule here, bit of fat maybe. Probably nothing to worry about but we'll just do a quick biopsy to be sure.”

She glides out again and eventually another doctor appears and gives me a biopsy on the spot, sticking a needle into a bump on my scar that I had not even noticed. That night I tell Al the nine-month results are fine, repeating to myself that it's probably nothing. I proceed to a follow-up appointment Tuesday. They are fast these days, give them their due. They got some big donation at the breast cancer centre for the express purpose of
getting the results back to patients within a week. No more nasty waiting around thinking about it. So, Tuesday, I sit there in one of those flimsy little gowns that provide a very small amount of rather unnecessary coverage. These people cut off one of my breasts; I hardly care if they see me naked. Dr. Abate inspects my scarred chest and the remaining breast with long-fingered hands; her touch is warm and very gentle. She tells me to get dressed and then we sit together in a pair of office chairs. I'm nervous, afraid of her somehow, like I'm the dumb intern and I am about to catch hell. She clears her throat.

“I'm afraid…”

I have to tell Al there isn't going to be a happy ending.

Nelly leant back against the wainscotting and tried to consider the situation calmly. She needed to call a doctor but she trusted neither the medical expertise nor the discretion of the local man. Charles had an excellent physician in Kent. He mumbled and she squeezed his hand again.

“Yes, dear. I'm here. Stay with me now. Stay with me.” She wiped a hand across his forehead. His eyes fluttered open but he did not appear to see anything for he merely stared at the ceiling and then closed them again.

She suspected he was dying, and he needed to die at home.

“I'm going to get Jane, dear. I'll only be a second.” She got to her feet and hurried out of the drawing room to the second floor where a doorway led to the attic. She opened it and called up the stairs: “Jane. Jane, are you awake? I need your help. Can you come downstairs? Mr. Dickens has taken ill.”

He had seemed fine earlier that evening. Well enough to take a tour in the garden before dinner and admire the flowers. It was June and the roses were in full bloom. Jane had prepared roast beef and stayed downstairs until he arrived to make sure it was perfectly cooked and that she could see to the carving herself, something Nelly could never manage with her bad hand. Then, as always, she had discreetly withdrawn to her attic room. He had eaten almost nothing, but he had chatted amiably enough; his face was as lopsided as ever, but Nelly was almost getting used to that—it was the palsy that had come upon him months before—and he no longer complained of the numbness he had sometimes felt on the left side of his body. They had moved into the parlour after dinner and sat together on the sofa but he seemed to have nothing left to say. After a bit, he said simply, “I don't feel at all well.”

“Will you not lie down, dear?” she asked, rising to take him upstairs or just make room for him to stretch out on the low sofa.

“Yes,” he agreed and then said, “on the floor” as he slumped forward and fell onto the rug. He rolled on to his side as he fell and lay there, occasionally mumbling, occasionally opening or closing his eyes, as she held his hand and called to him: “Charles, Charles. Are you all right?” But clearly he was not all right.

“Oh, miss. What's happened to him?” Jane asked as
she came into the room, belting her thick dressing gown around her.

“He's had an attack. He should never have come out here. I shouldn't have let him.”

“It's not your fault, miss. I'll go for the doctor.”

“No.” Her suggestion forced Nelly to concentrate on the present. “No, Jane. Go to the Rye and see if Archer or Smithers are sitting there with a cab. I need a hackney that can go to Kent this evening.”

“You're not going to try…”

“I have to. I need a hackney with a strong driver. I'd prefer Smithers' coach; he's more sensible and that's two horses. We'll need them. If you find him, get him to come back to the house with you.”

Jane returned about ten minutes later and Nelly could hear she had the driver with her. The man came into the parlour, doffing his cap as he did so.

“I hear you need some help, Miss Ternan.”

“Yes. This gentleman has taken ill and we need to get him home. He lives in Kent, at Higham.”

“That will cost you a pretty penny.”

“I don't care how much it costs. I just need to know if you can drive me that far tonight.”

“It'll take hours, miss. Would it not be better to call a doctor?”

At this point, Charles mumbled loudly.

“Had a few, has he?” the driver asked. “Well, we'll get him home.”

Nelly was in no position to protest about her friend's sobriety. Probably best if the man just thought he was taking home an inconvenient drunk.

She turned to Jane. “I need to tell them to expect him. I'll write out a telegram for you. Once we are off, you go up to the post office and see if you can raise Mrs. Robertson. She shouldn't be asleep yet, I wouldn't think.”

Nelly rose from Charles's side and slipped into the chair in front of her small writing desk that sat in the far corner of the parlour. She pulled out paper and wrote in block capitals: “MISS GEORGINA HOGARTH, GAD'S HILL, HIGHAM, KENT.

HE IS TAKEN ILL. RETURNING TO GH BY CAB. GET DOCTOR.”

She debated how to sign the thing. She could hardly hide her identity from Mrs. Robertson, who knew Jane, but the telegram office in Higham had no call to know who was sending the message. She simply wrote N at the end and handed the paper to Jane. “Nunshead as the return address; not my name,” she said quietly.

She, Jane and Smithers then began the difficult process of lifting Charles to his feet and getting him out to the coach. It might have been easier if they had carried him as if he were a patient or a corpse with the women taking his head and Smithers his feet but the driver, assuming he was dealing with a drunk, simply hoisted up his torso as though his passenger might be trusted to put an arm over his rescuer's shoulders and at least shuffle his feet a bit.

“Oi. Here we go. Look lively, sir. There's a chap…” Smithers kept up a steady stream of such encouragements as he dragged Charles toward the door with Nelly doing her best to help on his other side.

The drive was slow as Smithers wended his way through the countryside south of London, moving eastwards but seemingly with no particular route in mind. Inside, Charles lay slumped against the side of the small coach covered with a blanket Jane had thought to hand out to them as they climbed in. He was no longer mumbling but Nelly could hear his breathing, heavy, laboured but encouragingly regular. “Not long, dear. Not long,” she kept saying, although she suspected it was going to take hours. In the dark, she could see little out the small window and soon after they passed Greenwich she lost all track of where they were. She tried to concentrate on Charles and trust in Smithers to find his route but at the point where she swore they had passed the same church tower twice, she lowered the window and leaned out to talk to her driver.

“Can you find the way, Smithers? You're looking for the Gravesend Road; we must cross it at some point.”

“Right you are, miss. Not used to going cross-country, most of my fares just go to and from the city.”

“Perhaps if we pass a pub you could pull in and ask,” she suggested.

“Right you are, miss.” Smithers was large and steady, but the journey was taking him miles out of his known territory.

They travelled for another quarter of an hour, with her scanning both sides of the road for any inn or pub. As they approached what seemed like a large crossroads, she saw a pub sign swinging from a small gabled inn and she felt Smithers pulling the coach toward it. She was just wondering whether it would still be open and scanning the premise for any sign of light when they both glimpsed the same thing: a signpost on the larger road they were approaching, indicating London and Gravesend to their left and Rochester and Canterbury to their right.

“There it is, miss.” Smithers turned the carriage to their right and they continued on their way. After half an hour, Nelly was wondering when they would ever get there and again scanning the countryside anxiously. The moon had now set and she couldn't make out where she was. She had only been to Gad's Hill on a few occasions when she could be safely invited to large parties with her sisters or mother, and she had come by train. Nothing that she could make out looked the least familiar. It was when she saw lights of a sizeable town in the distance that she realized they must be approaching Rochester itself and it dawned on her that they had overshot their mark and had passed Gad's Hill already. She banged on the wall in front of her urgently and opened the window again.

“Smithers, I think we're already past it; that's Rochester ahead. We should have turned left at the crossroads instead of right. We need to turn back.”

“Right you are, miss.” He turned the coach around and headed back the way they had come, with Nelly now glued to the window. They passed the crossroads where they had turned the wrong way and, within a few minutes, she spotted the little white pub, Sir John Falstaff's, that sat right on the road across from the house.

“We're here,” she called out to Smithers. “Turn left here. Where the lights are on.”

They had started out about nine and it was now well past two in the morning. It belatedly occurred to Nelly that she needed to pay Smithers and had, at best, three shillings in her purse. In her anxiety she had failed to negotiate the fare, but he had just driven her a good twenty-five miles in the middle of the night and would certainly need a sovereign if not two. She supposed she could ask Georgina if she had any ready cash, but she didn't like to; it would feel as though she was humbling herself somehow. Nelly had always found Georgina an intimidating figure, clever, supremely well organized, unwilling to suffer fools and ferocious in both the efficiency of her household management and in her protection of Charles and his reputation. Nelly often suspected that it was she who insisted Charles keep his life in Mornington Crescent, Slough or Peckham completely secret. Over the years, there had always been those
occasions when he was ready to defy convention and, alarmingly, wanted to introduce Nelly around, but after a trip home to Gad's Hill he would repent of his recklessness and tell her “Soon” or “Perhaps another time.” Well, that was all water under the bridge now. As the coach crunched across the gravel and came to a stop outside the house, Nelly leaned toward Charles and reached inside his jacket. She found his wallet in his pocket and slipped out four one-pound notes, for it also occurred to her she would need to pay her own way home too. The front door of the house opened, spilling light into the drive, and Georgina hurried toward them.

“How is he?” she asked without preamble as she pulled open the coach door.

“He doesn't seem fully conscious,” Nelly replied. “He was speaking a bit at first. Just mumbling really, but he has been quiet for hours now.”

“What happened?”

“He just said he didn't feel well and then he collapsed on the floor.”

“Rathborne and Evans will help get him into the house. I've made up a divan in the dining room. I thought that was easier than trying the stairs. The doctor's waiting inside.”

Rathborne and Evans, a hulking man and a more slender lad who Nelly supposed were the gardener and his boy, appeared out of the darkness and carried their master toward the house. Nelly turned to her driver.

“We did not set the fare. Here's two guineas,” she said as she handed him two of the notes and two coins of her own.

“Oh, miss, that is far too much. I only need half of that, Mr. Dickens being sick and all.”

Somewhere along the way, Smithers had figured out the identity of his passenger. Perhaps there were rumours in Peckham about her regular visitor.

“Please, take it,” Nelly said, pressing the money into his hand. “You have to drive all the way back to Peckham too.”

“Did you not want me to stay and see you home, miss?…Since you have paid for it,” he added.

“That is very kind of you, but no, I will stay for a bit.”

She saw him off, went into the house and found the dining room off the main hall. Charles was lying on a low divan under the window, his head and torso blocked from her view by the doctor who bent over him, while the gardener and his boy were just retreating through the service door at the back of the room. Georgina hurried up to her and led her back into the hall. Hers, as always, was an inconvenient presence.

“Thank you. For the telegram and for bringing him here. We owe you a large debt. It must have been a difficult journey.”

“It seemed the only thing to do.”

“It was very thoughtful of you, and sensible. Will you wait in the drawing room until the doctor leaves?”

So Nelly waited in the drawing room for hours. A maid brought her a cup of tea but otherwise no one disturbed her. Finally, toward dawn she heard noises in the hall as the doctor took his leave and Georgina came back into the room.

“I'm sorry I've been so long. The doctor is just going home to sleep for a bit but he'll come back in the morning. I'm afraid…” and at this her voice wavered and broke. She bit her lip and blinked away tears. “He says there is no hope. It's only a matter of time. As soon as it's light, I have to get a message to Charley or he won't see his father again. The doctor says he won't last the day.”

“Can I see him?”

“Of course. Kate is with him now. Mamey has just gone to lie down for a bit.”

Nelly followed Georgina across the hall and back into the dining room. Charles lay under blankets in about the same state as he had been all night. His daughter Kate was sitting beside him on a straight-backed chair.

“Nelly,” she said, rising and taking her hands. “Thank you, thank you for everything.”

Nelly wasn't precisely sure what everything included, but she nodded and took her place on a second chair. She sat there for a bit, holding his hand and stroking his forehead from time to time and then, as the room grew light, she rose to leave. More visitors would be arriving soon and she had no wish to embarrass the family.

She knelt down now to be close to his ear and, remembering she had read somewhere that hearing is the last sense to leave the dying body, whispered to him.

“You're safe home now, dear. I need to go. So…goodbye. Goodbye and thank you.”

She got up and left the room with Georgina at her heels.

“I could get the coachman to run you down to the station. It's just down the hill in Higham…” she offered hesitantly.

“I remember where it is,” Nelly replied. “I'll walk. It looks to be a beautiful morning.”

So Nelly walked downhill toward Higham station in the first light, calculating there would be a train into the city by seven and that she would be back in Peckham in time for a late breakfast. The birds were singing, on gentler notes than they did in Italy. She waited at the train station until the ticket office opened and bought herself a first-class ticket, plucking one of Charles's notes out of her purse and wondering at it as though it were a relic of what was already a bygone era. Had it been but a few hours since she had taken it from his pocket? She took her change, deftly plucking the coins off the counter and placing them in her purse with none of the usual awkwardness in her right hand. When the train arrived, ten minutes later, she joined a few early commuters on their way into the city.