ew house STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four Part five
After our honeymoon I moved into my husband's town house, number seven Devonshire Street, off Portland Place. It felt grand to live there. It felt grand to walk up Portland Place, so wide and regal, lined on either side with a long terrace of solid, regal houses, tall and proud, deep and spacious, each containing its stairways and airy rooms of luxury and comfort. I would hold my head and spirits high as I walked to the door of one of the same, as lady and mistress of such a house. And it was so, that I walked to the door after each outing, whether I had been to a lady's for lunch or a friend's for tea, to a department store, a jewellers, a milliners, a furriers or a dress shop, I always walked proud and happy back to the door of number seven Devonshire Street. Pride and happiness were appearances for myself, not for others, they were beliefs I carried right to the door and even beyond, where it was dark and I was humble, and nothing was mine. The furniture was not mine, the food I ate was not mine, the clothes I wore were not mine, all were gifts for which I had to constantly show my gratitude. The thoughts I thought and the words I spoke were not mine and for those too I had to be grateful and I was always in great debt to my husband for his guidance. I thanked him, I honoured him and I obeyed him, but the debt was never paid and I was always humbled. I fought every instinct and voice that cried inside me, I battled to stay numb and empty, so that I could continue to smile, to sparkle and to love and I succeeded with my hard held beliefs of pride and happiness. My beliefs deadened truths and killed mistakes. My beliefs locked and barred me, and condemned me to serve long years of pain and penance. I suffered those years and was emptied and broken before truths were resurrected and mistakes came back to haunt.
It was dark inside my husband's house. The ceilings, walls and carpets were all deep shades of brown. The chairs were darkly upholstered and tables and cabinets were of the darkest woods. If ever the sun managed to slant its way through the window the maid would quickly draw the curtains to keep all the darkness from fading. The nights were sullen. I moved from one low gas glow to another, from the dimness of the drawing room to the darkened dining room where we ate our evening meals at a table, dimly lit with two small candles. After dinner my husband would often go to his study and leave me alone as I had been left all day. A strip of intense yellow light would shine out from beneath the study door, but I was locked out. Sometimes I would wait a while in case I was invited in, but I never was, so I would retire to bed and each night in the pitch black hallway I would pass the mirror and think I was passing a ghost at the foot of the stairs.
The days passed and sometimes I felt like a hidden child whose existence was so secret that even her presence in a room was ignored, she could stand or sit or lie down and only ever be space and air. My husband had no need of me as the tall, grey man, his chauffeur and valet attended to his every need. The grey man would sweep past me in the house, without a look or a word. Only once did he look in my direction and I looked back at his grey uniform, grey skin and grey hair and I smiled , but he did not see because he was looking at the hat stand that stood behind me.
Every morning at nine o'clock sharp the grey man would start up the motor car and drive my husband to the university. My husband was an important man of science, a doctor of chemistry and he led the way in important research. I knew no more than that, all I knew was that every day I lost him to his laboratory and that I was left alone with the cook and the maid.
The cook was fat and ugly and the maid was thin and sharp. I was frightened of them both. They ran the house with no help from me. My help was forbidden. Sometimes I would battle against my fears and summon up the courage to request a certain dish be served at dinner or that a vase be placed elsewhere and each time they would quickly turn aside and not hear me. Like the grey man they had no voices and went about their tasks in silence. Every meal was served to the minute, breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve and dinner at nine. There was no tarnished silver and no speck of dust. The house was perfect, ordered and exact. Every picture, every ornament and every piece of furniture, everything had its place but me.
I was a loose end, a misfit. I grew pale and anguished and would often take to my bed with sickness and fever. I would think I was pregnant and in spite of my illness I would eagerly await the doctor's prognosis. I longed to have children to nurse and to love, so that they could love me and know my worth. I had failed as a wife and was desperate to prove myself as a mother. But each time the doctor's prognosis was otherwise and on the last of his many visits he took my hand in his and told me gently that I would never bare a child. His voice trembled and his words seemed to cause as much pain in him as they did in me. He was a plump man with a kind, ageing face and lots of fluffy white hair on his head and down the sides of his face. His sad, dark eyes looked into me through my own as I wept and begged him not to tell my husband. He read me as I could not read myself and there were tears in his eyes. It was not clear to me why my husband's knowing of my sterility should terrify me so, but it was clear to the good doctor. He left me to weep, I cried into the pillows, tears streamed and my heart screamed at my hopelessness and my failure. I could hear
through the bedroom door as the two men met on the stairs. They stopped and talked, my husband's voice was loud and confident, his spirits seemed high. The doctor was terse with him as he spoke of my nervous disposition. He told my husband that I was suffering from a severe melancholia and needed plenty of rest, but he kept his word and said no more. I heard the front door close as the doctor left. I was still weeping when my husband knocked at my door and then entered without being bidden. His smile was broad, he sat on the bed and patted my hand, he seemed to be in ecstasy. My stomach turned at his obscenity, but once again I pushed my intuition to the bottom of the well where it was lost deep in the darkness and I hated myself for having such cruel thoughts towards him when all he was trying to do was to lift up my spirits with a show of happiness and warmth.
Through my illness he lavished me with gifts and caresses. He would sit in my room with his wide smile on his face and he would talk to me as though I was a five year old child. I listened to banalities he thought I wished to hear and I listened to his servile flattery. Then when I was tired he would tuck the sheets tight beneath my chin and kiss me on the forehead, before leaving me to sleep. His obsequious warmth left me cold, but still I believed that to be no fault of his but the fault of my illness, and my illness was me.
I blamed my illness on my infertility, but it was my whole being that was barren. Many weeks I lay in bed, stupefied, too scared to look inside or out. Inside was black and hollow and outside was the empty life I had led, both were sterile. I would lie with my eyes wide open and staring, petrified like a creature of the forest so trapped by a predator I became senseless and unable to absorb my own danger as it rushed towards me. My wide eyes would see my sickroom, but see nothing and sometimes they would glance inside down the deep, dark well but quickly look away again when memories of a past happiness would echo upwards from far down where it was black and sightless and out of reach. Dark sensations rushed at me while my body lay ossified, turned to white stone. My thoughts became wordless and my mouth became dumb.
A doctor was called, a young sallow faced man with thin brown hair and half moon glasses. He was solemn and unmoved, he parted my lips and administered a tonic and he told me to buck up my ideas. I immediately obeyed without question and seeing my obedience the doctor immediately left, leaving my husband at my bedside. He stood over me, victorious. His face quivered between a sneer and a smile. I saw how tempted he was to lift the mask and reveal my defeat, but he was too wise, he knew the campaign must continue a while before his final victory was certain. He masked his contempt with the sweetest of smiles. I was overwhelmed by his ugliness, just as I had been once before, across a restaurant table in Paris. I was not afraid of an ugly face, for an ugly face can be full of goodness. It was my husband's soul that was ugly and he carried his soul on his face. There was a darkness that shone from him, there was a menacing light in his eyes and each expression was a false contortion. His trickery, his malice, his disdain and his dark wizardry were carried on his face, always, for all to see, but I chose not to look. Once again I banished all traces of his ugliness from my thoughts because I had made a choice of acceptance and defeat. I now accepted my life, its sterility, its emptiness and its defeat. My acceptance and my defeat were official, they had been witnessed by both my husband and the young doctor.
My husband sat on the bed and took my hand. I could see nothing but kindness and caring in his wide smile. He waited for me to speak, I could think of nothing so I broke my silence by asking why the old doctor had not been able to come. He explained patiently that the old doctor was a fool and the younger one was the man that would cure me, had that not just been proved. He tucked me up and kissed my forehead. He told me to sleep tight as in the morning I would leave my sickbed and breakfast with him. He turned out the lights and left me in blackness.
Exhaustion flooded me. My head sank through the pillows while my body was so weak it seemed to float. As I drifted towards sleep, faint echoes from inside me cried out at my folly and I knew I had done wrong. I had let the young doctor dissuade me from a journey I should have faced. A journey that would have led me through thick forests and dark floods, down slopes and valleys, across mountains and plains, much climbing and falling and all in the deepest black of starless, moonless night and always stumbling and crawling under my heart's heavy burden of sorrow, horror and shame. And then at my journey's end I would have found what I had lost and finding myself destitute, starving and mad I would accept my humiliation and therefore align myself with the truth and step through the doorway of bright light. But I knew nothing of this, for my husband was too clever, the doctor too terse and I, too weak. I had been recalled from the dark road and the terrors it held for me and there would be many dark nights with no moonlight or starlight to guide me, before I would again embark and complete the journey. All I knew was that I wished sleep would wash over me and then drown me in the depths from where I would never wake and never breakfast with my husband.
I did wake. It was in the early hours when night fades into a dull, leaden grey, heavy and oppressive. I awoke from a dream, I was gripped in its urgency and there were long minutes while I struggled to separate the vision from the coming dawn. The dream and the dawn would not be parted. The feint echoes from deep inside had sent me a message in a dream. I knew the message was of great import and must be kept at all cost, though its meaning was not yet clear. I had not been released from the dream state and it was my subconscious that controlled my sleep-walking body as I wandered through the house in my nightgown, like a white ghost, in search of pen and paper. The drawing room was dark grey with black shapes for furniture. I sat the black shape that was the writing desk and I turned the key. I drew a sheet of white paper from a pile, dipped a pen in ink and began to write. My hand and mind flowed with the vision but in the gloom my eyes were blind to the words I had written.
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