The Honeymoon (16 page)

The next morning, Chapman pronounced himself thrilled with her essay on the Mackay book. He was delivering it at once. She was elated.

After breakfast, she went out to explore, pushing her way through the crowded street. The Strand was lined with newspaper offices, public houses, and shops. It smelled of rotting refuse and open sewers, but this was London, and
she didn’t mind it. She noticed a display of books in a shop window and stopped to look. There was a book called
The Lustful Turk
, and another,
The Mysteries of Verbena House
, with illustrations of ballet dancers and actresses in dishabille on the covers. She stared at them, but afraid of being seen, she quickly walked on.

The Chapman household seemed to be in chaos, the meals were always late, the children running around constantly fighting, streams of lodgers coming and going. Susanna Chapman helped her husband in the office downstairs. She moved slowly and seemed rather unintelligent, Marian thought, and totally unable to keep order in the house. Miss Tilley also seemed unhappy and always frowning.

Every Friday evening the Chapmans held a soiree. That first Friday, number 142 was packed with writers, many of whose works Marian had read. She spotted Carlyle standing among a group of admirers. They were chattering away at him; he looked quite fiercely out from underneath his bushy eyebrows, and she was afraid to approach him. And there was Emerson — Chapman was his English publisher. She went to greet him and he bowed kindly. “I remember you very well, Miss Evans,” he said. “And our talks together.” Dickens came too. They didn’t speak; he looked rather undistinguished, given his fame. She admired Dickens’s novels, but she thought his characters were depicted only superficially, they lacked interior lives; they were portrayed mostly through the way they spoke, dressed, and acted.

One-forty-two Strand seemed to be the center of all progressive London. The room was filled with exiles who’d fled the Continent after the 1848 revolutions, gathered
there because of Chapman’s reputation as a publisher of radical works. There was Giuseppe Mazzini, campaigning for a unified Italy. Chapman pointed out a dark figure with a full mustache and beard across the room, Karl Marx, who’d published
The Communist Manifesto
in Germany, advocating the rebellion of workers against their capitalist masters. Marx had been forced to flee Germany with his family and was trying to earn money writing for the American paper, the
New York Tribune
.

She sympathized with the exiles. But revolution could never work in England. The workingmen of England were too brutal, and so was the military. Any attempt at revolution would result in terrible bloodshed. She still believed that slow change was better, and it was possible in England because of the parliamentary system.

Chapman moved about the room doing business, occasionally looking up at her, smiling warmly across the room. Then his eyes would move on to the next person.

She noticed a young woman wearing glasses, which made her look very intelligent. “This is Miss Eliza Lynn,” Chapman said. “I’m publishing her new novel,
Realities: A Tale of Modern Life
.” She’d heard of Eliza Lynn. She was three years younger than Marian, and had already published a novel,
Azeth, the Egyptian
, when she was only twenty-six. Marian felt a surge of envy. Was she too old already, not only for marriage, but to become a real writer?

On Monday morning she passed Chapman striding along the hall, frowning, a manuscript in his hand. He looked at her for a moment as if he didn’t know her.

“It’s Miss Lynn’s book,” he said. “It’s full of love scenes, completely indiscreet. The books I publish are so radical
that any novel I publish has got to be above reproach.” He thought for a second. “Could you just take a look and see what you think?”

Of course she could.

The novel was about the immoral doings of the London theater world. The actress heroine, Clara de Saumarez, goes with the stage manager, Vasty Vaughan, to a hotel, unaware that he’s married.
“Vaughan flung his arms round her almost wildly. He strained her to his breast; he looked into her face with a painful mixture of sorrow and passion. His lips were warm against her own …”

It was far too shocking to publish, she said to Chapman. Later, when he told Miss Lynn that the scene had to be cut, she was furious and announced she was taking the book to another publisher.

Two days later, Chapman asked for help again. “I’m frantic. Mrs. Chapman in her usual stupid way got into a fight with James Nisbett about making revisions to his book. He’s taken umbrage and refused.”

“Would you like me to read it for you and speak to him?” she offered.

“Would you?”

Up in her room, she read through the work. It was a novel called
The Siege of Damascus
. Damascus is under siege by the Saracens. Jonas and Eudocia are in love and want to marry, but her parents are against it. Jonas is captured and converts to Mohammedanism. Eudocia kills herself rather than marry an apostate.

Marian marked up the manuscript and wrote a note for Chapman suggesting some revisions, which Chapman then passed on as his own. A few days later, Nisbett replied,
calmly saying that the suggestions were excellent and he was pleased to accept them all.

“Thank you,
thank
you!” Chapman told her.

She began going to Chapman’s ground floor office every day, reading over proofs for him, editing his manuscripts. It was possible to become entirely absorbed in the work, to shut out the world around her completely. There was satisfaction in carving out sentences from dross, in making the prose more pointed, in having an occupation.

“You’re making yourself indispensable,” he said. It was as if she had an actual job, though he said, “I’m sorry I can’t afford to pay you yet. But perhaps something will come up.”

Perhaps she could make a life of this in some way. She was good at being an editor, she had an innate sense of how language worked, she was attuned to its musicalities. The process of refining it was a craft, like wielding a knife, carving wood into a sculpted piece so that it stood out, the angles sharp, the image powerful. She could live an independent life as a single woman here in London.

Then, one evening at supper — the potatoes were as usual undercooked, the mutton tough, the children bouncing around and interrupting — Miss Tilley, the governess, rapped her spoon on her glass. “I have an announcement to make,” she said, sniffing. “I’m giving notice. I’m planning to leave my post this autumn.”

“Elisabeth,” Mrs. Chapman said. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“But Elisabeth, we can’t live without you!” Mrs. Chapman said.

“That is my decision,” she said. And then she ran from the room weeping, the two children looking after her, speechless, spoons in midair, mouths agape.

Chapman put down his serviette, hurried after her, and didn’t return to finish his food.

Later that evening, there was a knock on Marian’s door. Chapman stood there. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” he said, though she didn’t mind at all. He sat down in her chair, threw his long legs out in front him, and sighed miserably.

“You look rather upset too,” he told her.

“Miss Tilley — why did she run out like that?”

“Oh, Elisabeth’s just jealous of every woman who comes into the house.”

She felt a ping of hope in her chest. Could Miss Tilley, who was so pretty, somehow be jealous of her? Did Miss Tilley think that he was attracted to her? And she hadn’t sensed that at all.

“She sees you’re helping me with the business,” he said. He sighed again. “But we need her desperately. I don’t know what we’d do without her. The children, everything. If she went, there’d be absolute chaos. Mrs. Chapman is incapable of managing things. You’ve no idea how difficult my life is with the business. All I do is scavenge for money, to get people to pay me so I can pay my creditors. I have no time to even edit my books. But —” He let out another deep breath. “— at least autumn is nine months away.”

“Perhaps I should leave?” she offered.

“You can’t leave!” he insisted. “You’ve made things so I can’t manage without you. Let me try to calm her.”

And he left the room.

The next day, Miss Tilley returned to the table, albeit somewhat sullen and aggrieved. It seemed for now at least that it had been merely a threat.

He was insisting that Marian stay in the midst of this chaos, with people who disliked her. Perhaps she could rent a piano to play and so calm her mind. She found a small piano at Chappell’s for her room, and on Sunday morning, Chapman came up to her and she played a transcription of Mozart’s Kyrie in G. As the music filled the air with a sound like cascading church bells, Chapman half reclined on her bed and closed his eyes blissfully.

When she finished, he rose, took her in his arms and hugged her. She felt the press of his chest on her breast, the contours of his pelvis and thighs. It was if her legs would collapse beneath her.

Then he left the room.

At dinner that night, Mrs. Chapman herself seemed animated with barely repressed anger. “I heard Miss Evans’s little recital from the stairs,” she said. “John, I think we should have a piano too, in the living room. And then you can stage these performances downstairs for the benefit of everyone.” She raised her wattled chin stubbornly. “I’m sure Miss Evans would be delighted to play for all of us.”

Two days later, another piano was installed in the parlor and Mrs. Chapman seemed appeased, listening contentedly as Marian played a Beethoven sonata, Mrs. Chapman and Miss Tilley holding down the two squirming children till the end.

Chapman asked Marian, “I’ve always wanted to learn German. Do you think you could give me lessons? Who better to teach me than the translator of Strauss?”

No sooner had they begun their lessons than Miss Tilley asked for lessons too — from Mr. Chapman, though he hardly knew a word of German. At lunch and supper, Miss Tilley now refused to speak to Marian.

After just two weeks of this, she heard a soft knock on her door.

“May I come in?” Chapman whispered. He didn’t even say his name, as if he intuited her receptivity to him. She put on her dressing gown and admitted him.

He stood, head down, distraught.

“Whatever’s the matter?” she asked.

He sat down on her bed, his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face. “I just had a huge argument with Susanna. She accused me of being too fond of Miss Tilley. Everything’s a mess. She’s getting old, she can’t manage things. She’s useless at the business.”

“It must be difficult,” she said softly.

“She wants me to share her bed,” he said glumly. “But I find it unendurable.”

He looked up at her. He held his arms out to her and she took his hands. Then he drew her to him and kissed her. Once again, need flowed through her body, drowning out everything else, all caution, all self-protection.

She let him make love to her, but forced herself to lie there passively, tried to be indifferent, in her fear of what she was doing, her knowledge of how dangerous it was. Again she was succumbing to a man who belonged to another woman.

He went fast, like a bee dipping its tongue into one flower before flying quickly off to another. But it pleased her, in spite of herself.

At the end, he kissed her on the lips, quickly dressed, left her, and went back to the bed he shared with his wife.

At breakfast, Marian came downstairs first, served herself from the kippers and eggs and biscuits set out on the buffet, and sat down at the table. She didn’t look at the door, but she was conscious of waiting for him. Ten minutes later he arrived. “Oh, good morning, Miss Evans.” He greeted her in the distant way he would any lodger. “I do hope you slept well?”

Her face flamed, the hurt bubbled up in her. “I did, indeed, thank you,” she said, coldly. And then she walked out without finishing her breakfast.

All day long she was sunk in depression. She didn’t go down to the office to help him with his work. She was alternately angry with him for embracing her and at herself for giving in to him. Then she panicked: she’d been so cold to him, she’d put him off, and now he would be angry at her and he’d no longer come to her, she thought, and she’d lose him. She hated herself for these thoughts alternating in her mind.