A Man of Genius (7 page)

8

‘D
on't you dare try to muzzle me.' There must have been a first time when he said these words. She should have known then that he was a fierce animal. What made her think she would be its tamer?

Had she ever tried to be? To contain perhaps, yes, at moments to prod him into a common sociability, to urge him into ordinary behaviour, into what she thought of as normality.

‘Can't you just be like other people?' she used to ask. On the first occasion remembering with a surge of unwanted heat poor Gregory Lloyd. She hoped he'd found a family.

And he replied, ‘I am not other people. I do not live by their rules. You know that. Why did you want someone like me? You try to reduce me to the commonness you admire.'

He was right. Truly she didn't know what normality was, and wouldn't have recognised or wanted it. So did she try to ‘muzzle' this extraordinary being? Her hands twitched as she pursued this self-analysis.

She knew where she was faulty. After some time, much time, she'd heard his sentiments so very often that, when he would give no tenderness, no pleasurable comfort of the sort she craved, and when she was tired from work and anxiety, and he went on talking and talking as if his listener were of no account at all, then and only then she would show her boredom – as she had to Caroline. It irritated him for he'd not changed. Was this muzzling? Probably in part.

Her mental longing for him survived intact, even her sense of his
uniqueness, his spiritual power – but yet the boredom showed, just at times. When she tried to make him say the false ordinary thing that eased a path through life, those necessary lies, he could not: this was not muzzling, this was pricking him to bark. No wonder then he growled with his eyes.

He could be greater than he had been, more wonderful. So he must not be hampered by anything or anyone. Not by her boredom or her nagging. She knew it.

And yet.

And yet, even Richard Perry might have known there was something wearing out in him, something that might not, finally, let him go to the ends only he could see so clearly, where difference between all knowledges was annihilated. Did Richard Perry or any of his friends suspect that his heat was the remains of youth being consumed, that
Attila
had perhaps been his jagged peak? How long can promise last?

She sometimes wondered whether there was a deep problem for Robert James. Something huge like Sin or Sacrifice. These were words to conjure with. He'd rejected them but they lingered. Of course, for it was not simple wholly to rid oneself of the ingrained. There was always residue, something left in the mind's sponge. Left after he'd made his
Attila
to ravage his church. He'd turned his back on his Catholic God – but had his God turned his back on him? When she phrased it like that, she rather prided herself on her antithesis.

Was he his own Pope now? Was he keeping, deep in himself, the purpose that his Catholic God once gave him when he stood near the altar or lay in bed with his special angel? She hadn't the courage to ask. But yes, she had – and she did – but shouldn't have done. Should, should.

‘You know you should have been an actor,' she said once.

‘And you should have been a schoolmistress.'

She didn't like that.

There were times when he pulled away from her embrace. He was so much stronger than she was, there was no contest. At these moments he wanted no one's touch – even if she, embarrassed but not enough to repress her feelings, was swooning with desire for some gesture of affection.

Then the repulsing was rough. He would say when she protested, ‘I cannot handle you like glass. I must be free.'

‘But surely not free from me and what we have.'

‘Just free.'

Whatever did that mean? She knew such words were wedged between them and should be allowed to do their work. But it was no good: if it was delusion to hold on – mentally, for he could certainly shake her off his firm body – she still could not let go. Desire intensified with each rejection. There was a conundrum.

It wasn't wonderful that she knew so little of men. Her ignorance sent her into the pit with no tools to dig herself out, as surely as any of her reusable gothic Lucias and Elenas. But would she have tried to scramble up if she'd known more? She doubted it. There was something sweet about being down there. Cousin Sarah could know nothing of it.

When they quarrelled over something, an interruption to his life, to his Work, he towered in rage. ‘You don't like it but this is me, my true self, the bare, the naked man.'

Later she would ponder that emphasis – not on nakedness but on ‘man'. Such a ringing word. ‘Woman' was no match for it.

She began keeping a diary to assess happiness and misery. Knowing that not one single day would have a mark alone for happiness, trying by this paper record to persuade herself this was not as it should be. But instead congratulating herself she was living this purely miserable life. Not everyone could do this.

Out of the blue, out of the black, rather, he snapped, ‘Shut your mouth, shut everything. Just get out of my way.'

Each time it happened she was stunned.

The violence was never named. It was the shedding of tension, of too much sparking inner life.

Once in a tavern he kicked a dog and knocked over a glass bottle that shattered. And the dog, which was old, fell into the sharp pieces and was hurt. Robert crouched down beside the beast he'd kicked and carefully removed the glass from the wound in its matted fur. He didn't notice at once that the dog dirtied his smart double-breasted coat with its blood and saliva.

Then – only she'd not seen it follow – then at some point, some point carved into memory but not quite clear as to date and time, he hit her hard with his clenched fist. He wished he had not, he said later, but he knew it was her fault. Hadn't he taken up with someone who professed independence, a life apart, and here she was, become so clinging, so moistly entwining, so much a Woman after all.

She could not fault the logic.

None of his friends knew and she wouldn't tell. John Humphries would have crowed, women were always trouble; John Taylor would have waved his stained blue fingers and scoffed at her feebleness, knowing that a man created his great work only when no woman hung on his belt; Richard Perry would have grieved and disbelieved anything cruel of his hero, despite her bruises. All of them would have hung together and stared at her.

It was better that he leave, he said. And he almost did. But then he relented at her urgent pleas, for where would she be without the habit of him? How could she live without the dear scrolls of hair at the nape of his neck?

When he gave in, agreed to stay, she was deliriously, painfully happy that he would be with her again. Although it ached from where his fist had landed, her body jumped up and down in glee.

In spite of reason, all pain, she actually – and she knew this – found his rages heroic, like his consuming, his talking. They were larger than life. Nothing like them had been experienced. Not in the cold intense rooms of William Bates's mansion, not in Holborn lodgings or along the streets of Somers Town, not in that little Putney
household with the negligent mother rising only to some cutting rebuke or a box on the ears, nothing grand, just emotion and irritation. This rage was masculine, wonderful and appalling.

What would Caroline have made of it? What would she have thought of Robert?

He was no Gilbert, for Gilbert had never been angry with his beloved. Yet, despite this distinction, she knew that Caroline would have loved Robert. He would need only to have kissed her hand and smiled directly into her eyes. He had such charm, such glamour. He would have won her, as Gilbert had done.

‘He is special,' said Frederick Curran in his Irish way. ‘He can be angry,' he added, when she'd asked obliquely. ‘But with such gifts, you know.' Even Curran hesitated. In these cases, of such gifts, such riches in the mind, there must be frustration, the sharp spear must make a wound. Who could withstand it? He
should be
angry, didn't she know that?

As for Ann, she said he was not himself when it happened. He didn't mean it. His thoughts were so powerful, such possibilities he had, how could he choose and not follow all? So passionate. He couldn't help himself.

And, after all, wasn't she provoking?

Following the quarrels when he'd vowed never to see her again and had actually left, so that she feared she really had lost him, she – she hung round the doors of places he might be, just as she used to do in the beginning, following paths and lingering where she thought he'd come. She even dressed differently, as disguise, so that she could scurry away if about to be discovered.

What on earth was she doing?

Perhaps such following, such spying, such prowling, had seemed exciting when she'd first done it. Now it was downright silly.

He was drinking more wine and brandy than ever, taking more laudanum for some ache in his head which he said moved round his skull, choosing stronger tea, his body tauter and more tense, then almost shaking. Sometimes she thought he might explode.

‘I must get out of England,' he said. ‘I must get out of this damned country, with its buying and selling, its hoarding and bartering, its government of fools.'

She remembered how once he'd so enjoyed mocking the absurd Regent and his vulgar Princess Caroline, doing her funny German voice with spitted consonants. Not now.

His anger came more often. She was his victim, though she kept the word for her stories. She had, he said, made herself into this pitiable thing. It was not a role she had to take or that he wanted her to take. It was a woman's way.

He put venom into the word ‘Woman' as he inflated the word ‘Man'. The rights and wrongs of woman, indeed? The wrongs women had no right to inflict on men, he said. He was all for women's independence. Oh yes. Absolutely. Then why did she not have it? It would free men, free him.

He must get away from her, her clinging love. It was too agitating, he couldn't work under it.

But then there were her tears, her endless tears. When they'd first met she'd boasted she didn't cry and faint like other women, real women, women in her books. Now there she was lying on the bed sobbing. She did it, he was sure, to reproach him, to destroy his peace.

She should have thought how to handle him; he would say this often enough. She could see where trouble lay. But she was so inexperienced, what had she to go on? She chastised her past as if it had been a wrong choice.

‘Why do you talk so much?' he'd demanded of her as her clichés streamed towards him – so he called her words. She had, he agreed, required no special notice for her chatter, only a little tolerance, which he wouldn't give. She really didn't deserve it, or rather her words did not.

Did he find her dull? He despised anything tranquil and yet no more than she could he live always in rough seas. Or could he? Did he enjoy the exhilaration of constantly bobbing about on this stormy water?

She sometimes tried to keep up with him, stimulate herself to his level, to the place where the hairs on a hand grew large and waved like fronds of fern. But she couldn't drink deeply or dissolve the white powder and down it in one go. If she tried, then next day she had a pain that coloured her room; she could hardly breathe the purple and orange air.

His headaches went on. Then he held his brow in his two hands and said nothing. He simply resumed himself when they passed. He did not, he said, lose his self, his Self.

And over and over again he said he was going to organise words in a new way. He would clarify paradox, so that ideas and metaphors, particulars and thought, would be one, no separation, no distinction, all merged in a glorious act of pure expression.

Yes, yes, she thought. The same thing. I've heard it. Why does he not do it?

The fire was burning low in her grate, no curtain drawn across her window through which the waxing moon could be spied with clouds racing across it. Neither of them got up to feed the fire. Instead they stared at the dying embers. She was tired, tired out, tired to death.

Once as a child he'd had himself electrocuted to see how it would feel. He'd let the current course through him. He'd felt vibrant.

Perhaps he'd never been the same since, just full of sparks. Perhaps touching him she'd taken on some of his electricity, only instead of making her more alive, it had singed and dulled her.

Sarah didn't raise the matter again and Ann didn't visit as often as she used to.

On one occasion, Sarah remarked, ‘I worry about you, cousin Ann. Charles and I think you are bilious. Maybe there's superfluous bile. I am no doctor, but there is something not right. There's a yellowish tinge to your skin. You're thinner. We think you are not well.'

It was cover for a deeper commentary but she didn't wait to hear
more – or encourage further diagnosing. Sarah was near her term and was sensitive to bodies.

Despite such turmoil, she finished
The Cavern of Horror; or, the Miseries of Camilla
. It was set in the echoing caves of Illyria, wherever that was, full of blood, spectral encounters and the triple swoon. It was probably her worst production, patched with bits and bobs from her more adroit work. She couldn't be ashamed for she'd put no life into it. Much life was not necessary, but some wasn't amiss, and she'd have preferred at least to add some polish to the surface.

Her mind had been elsewhere, and her obedient pen continued scratching the paper, with very minimal skill.

Mr Dean might have found the work wanting, but he took it in silence and counted the sheets, as he always did. He'd been in the navy and ran his publishing business as a tight ship. He and Mr Munday were not laggard in paying, she appreciated them, but sometimes she wondered if they ever did more than skim her work and number the pages. In this instance it was as well but at others it would have pleased her to think she entertained an idle hour for these men. She rather suspected Mr Munday admired her; he'd once asked her to take tea with him and they'd had companionable talk about what men and women wrote and what they chose to read.