Nina In Utopia E-Book

Miranda Miller

• Herausgeber: Peter Owen Publishers
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 405

Beschreibung

Nina In Utopia is the breathtaking new novel from one of the most original women writers in the U.K., taking in time travel, Bedlam and the mad Victorian painter, Richard Dadd. London, 1854: Nina, the wife of an ambitious doctor, is heavily traumatized by the death of her young daughter and then mysteriously transported to the capital 150 years later. A tourist in the twenty-first century, she believes she is witnessing a Utopia, with the grime and evil of Victorian London expunged. She also embarks on a brief affair with a solicitous lover who introduces her to reality t.v., clubbing and takeaway curry. Returning to her own time, her husband takes fright hearing her experiences and has her committed to Bedlam, where she meets Richard Dadd and finds another Utopia under the charge of a doctor with twenty-first century ideas on patient rehabilitation. Meanwhile, her husband is on a collision course with her lover who is travelling to find her from another time . . .

Leseprobe

MIRANDA MILLER was born in London in 1950. After leaving university she moved to Rome, where she combined writing her first novel with a variety of jobs. Later she lived in Japan, Libya and Saudi Arabia. She has published five novels - including Loving Mephistopheles, also published by Peter Owen - a book of short stories about Saudi Arabia, A Thousand and One Coffee Mornings (Peter Owen), and a work of non-fiction that examines the effects of homelessness on women.

www.mirandamiller.info

By the same author

Novels

Before Natasha Family

Loving Mephistopheles (published by Peter Owen) Smiles and the Millennium

Under the Rainbow

Short stories

A Thousand and One Coffee Mornings (published by Peter Owen)

Non-fiction

Bed and Breakfast: Women and Homelessness Today

PETER OWEN PUBLISHERS81 Ridge Road, London N8 9NP

Peter Owen books are distributed in the USA and Canada by Independent Publishers Group/Trafalgar Square 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610, USA

First published in Great Britain 2010 byPeter Owen Publishers

© Miranda Miller 2010

Excerpt from ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ from Illuminations by Walter Benjamin: UK and Commonwealth, published by Jonathan Cape, reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Ltd. North America, copyright © 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, English translation by Hary Zohn copyright © 1968 and renewed 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.

PAPERBACK ISBN 978-0-7206-1355-1

EPUB ISBN 978-0-7206-1399-5

MOBIPOCKET ISBN 978-0-7206-1432-9

PDF ISBN 978-0-7206-1433-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

For Gordon

‘A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is brewing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris in front of him grows skyward. The storm is what we call Progress.’

- Walter Benjamin,‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, from Illuminations

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I should like to thank Colin Gale at the Bethlem Archives and Mike Taylor, who read Jonathan’s chapters from an architect’s point of view. I am also grateful to Peter and Antonia Owen, who like eccentric novels, and to my editor Simon Smith. I should also acknowledge the influence of a wonderful book called London As It Might Have Been by Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde (John Murray, 1982).

I have taken liberties with the character of Dr Hood but have taken some of his words from his own Suggestions for the Future Provision of Criminal Lunatics (1854).

‘The Sultan’s Elephant’ was a show created by the French theatre company Royal de Luxe, which featured a huge mechanical elephant, a giant marionette of a girl and other public-art installations. The show was first staged in 2005 in France and has subsequently appeared in a number of cities around the world, including London in 2006.

THE SULTAN’SELEPHANT

WHEN I SEE the elephant I know I am safely in a dream and allow myself to enjoy the spectacle. This delightful creature is as big as several houses, and indeed a couple of quaint windows have been incorporated in its belly. Dancing girls sway on balconies, yet despite all this architectural and human freight the elephant looks happy. His ears wave merrily and his trunk blows steam at the crowd. The girls dancing and the watching multitude are all so scantily dressed that I feel abashed until I remember the etiquette of dreamland. I have often dreamed of my own nakedness - although when I told you, dear Charles, you said you would prefer that I should not dream of such things. In this present dream I have obeyed you to the letter, for I am wearing five times as many clothes as all the others.

One or two stare at me curiously but then turn back to the elephant. There is a loud throbbing sound like music but more savage, which comes from a kind of omnibus where goblins leap and shout upon a stage. The hammer blows of sound make my heart beat faster and stir my feet. I feel quite intoxicated as I pursue the elephant. We are in a park, and the elephant is rolling forward towards a juggernaut.

I am swept forward with the rest of the crowd and feel light-hearted and light-footed. The second carnival figure comes into sight. It is an enormous marionette, and footmen in claret velvet suits who attend this second giant shout in French and swarm all over it as the Lilliputians swarmed over Gulliver. Then I come close enough to see that the giant is a giantess - a vast little girl with long black hair, a short green frock and greenish skin. My eyes fill with tears, for I cannot see any little girl, not even a green one fourteen feet high, without being plunged back into grief for my Bella. I try to turn away, but the crowd presses against me, and as I look into the wall of people I see children everywhere. I do not know if they are girls or boys for they are oddly clothed in their undergarments. They sit in skeletal baby carriages or on the shoulders of their nursemaids or mamas or papas who also seem to have neglected their toilette. Each little face carries some fragment of our darling - a clear blue eye or a charming button of a nose or a tangle of curls. At the thought that the whole wide world both behind and in front of my eyes must now be haunted by Bella, I turn and run and do not stop until I come to another park.

Until I saw Bella’s ghost I could not accept her death. She stood in the shadowy alcove at the bend in the stairs where your surgery becomes our house. I saw her first through the banisters from the top landing where I had been tidying the horrid mess Tommy had made in the nursery. The polished wood of the banisters fell in prison bars across her lonely little figure. Her dark curls were thick and long as they were before you had to shave her head, and she was wearing her best lawn nightgown with lace at the sleeves and cuffs. Her arms were outstretched to me, and for a moment I paused because I was afraid that the vision would flutter away if I came too close. My heart was so thunderous that I thought it would burst out of my black weeds, and I yearned to embrace my child one last time but was afraid to touch death and open my arms to a phantom.

I turned and fled from Bella. I fled from our house down Harley Street and across Cavendish Square into the chaos of Oxford Street. There was a hackney cab so close that I could smell the horse’s yeasty breath and see the face of the driver twisted with rage. My body flung itself forward as if to embrace the black iron wheels and muddy hooves and ordure of the street, and I longed to hug Bella without the shame of a self-willed death.

I do not know what country this is. It may be dreamland or the Garden of Eden. All here are young and free. Some glide past sitting on wheels, and others have wheels attached to their feet. Strangely dressed or half-naked, they run and shout and chatter like birds in a hundred tongues. On the other side of a fence children play in the rigging of a pirate ship marooned in paradise. Beside me on the bench where I am sitting a lady in a veil screeches unintelligibly to a dusky child. Many have dark skins, and I think they must be freed slaves like the one we saw at the Exhibition. Ladies - but I think modesty has no more meaning here than for our first forefathers in their garden. I am as much stared at as staring in my black bombazine and my weepers and gloves.

All my limbs are aching, and I feel a trifle dizzy as I watch these happy creatures eat and drink. I yearn for a glass of cool lemonade. A tiny barefoot girl is licking a lollipop I long to snatch from her. Young half-naked people - men? women? all wear pantaloons - play with a ball on the grass. The philosophy of Amelia Bloomer seems to have triumphed here, and my petticoats feel quite cumbersome. Other folk sit or lie on the grass listening to invisible music, and I expect Puck or Ariel to appear at any moment.

This is a vast picnic - a feast of brown flesh - but I have not been invited. Alone in all this swift purposeful movement I sit quite still. My stays pinch, and sweat trickles down inside my corset.

A lady passes who is even more encased in black than I. Only her eyes are visible - angry black eyes that meet mine. Here is another grief-stricken one or perhaps a sister of Scheherazade on her way to the Sultan’s palace.

My limbs are still painful as I rise and walk away down the path. I hope to find Bella playing happily with the other children, and when I do I shall shed my dark carapace and dance with my darling in these gardens for ever. Mama, why do you always dress like a black beetle now? Tommy asked.

As if to help me orientate myself in this faery realm I find a tree that is so delightful I laugh aloud. A grand old hollow oak is encrusted with tiny folk - elves and pixies and gnomes peer at me mischievously from caves and nooks and crannies. Merrily they climb and gambol and chatter to each other and to birds bigger than their tiny selves. As I walk around the tree I see some scholar fairies in a book-lined cave - a little lost princess with long golden hair descending the tree - elfin aristocrats enjoying a feast. All these enchanted scenes are enclosed by a round cage as if they are exhibits in the zoological gardens captured on a safari into faeryland.

A little boy holding the hand of a papa as indecently dressed as his charge says plaintively, ‘I wish I lived here.’ He throws a coin into the enclosure to feed magic with filthy lucre as he might feed buns to an elephant.

I come to a sheet of water where swans and pigeons and sparrows fight for bread. Their swarming bird life is comfortingly familiar. Multicoloured angels sit on the grass and on green-and-white striped chairs. Beyond I can see great towers as if we are surrounded by cathedrals - as one would expect in paradise. The birds skimming and swooping over the lake remind me of our excursion to Virginia Water last summer. Do you remember, Charles? The picnic to celebrate Tommy’s sixth birthday, although he was so naughty we had almost to leave him at home.

Bella was exquisite in her white broderie anglaise, and her shining dark curls fell to her pink sash. She took my hand with that dear confiding air, and we walked with our parasols while you and Tommy went ahead with the hamper. A rare Sunday when the beastly invalids as the children called them stayed away from our door and you were just Papa. You looked back at us with such a loving expression, and I basked in your delight. I heard you say to Tommy, ‘Bella is like her mama; she is beautiful in both her external and her inner self.’ Through the trees I saw the love in your face and hugged our darling child closer.

‘Am I really just like you, Mama?’

‘Oh yes, but you will grow up to be clever.’

‘Aren’t you clever?’

‘Your papa calls me his dear little goose.’

‘I can read much better than Tommy. He’s a little goose - no, a disgusting white mouse with pink eyes.’

I smiled because Tommy does have a rodenty look, and Bella was so quick and observant.

‘You mustn’t be unkind to your little brother.’

‘Why not? He’s unkind to me. He pulled my hair again this morning.’

I stand among glorious fountains. Their spray dances and catches the sunlight as I hold out my hand to touch it. Water, like the sky, is unchanging and links me with the little face I long to see. Between the fountains there are stone urns full of flowers and stone nymphs. I touch one to make sure she is not a little girl, but the cold moss on her nose is all too convincing.

How long before warm rosy flesh turns cold and green slime bites into a charming nose? Such a little coffin. Hardly as big as the trunk they have delivered for Tommy’s school things. I walk over to a balustrade overlooking another great expanse of water. Here are more half-naked savages in boats, and on velvety green banks strange creatures lie and stroll and shout. I am a little afraid of their noise and brazen flesh, but I would brave worse terrors than this for my darling and tell myself I will find Bella among them.

So I walk for a long, long time. I search each strange face and look into eyes that stare back and feel that I am the strangest of all in my heavy black mourning. They look at me as if I was a ghost, and I begin to wonder if I am.

I sink down into a deckchair in a state of exhaustion. Perhaps I am dead or dreaming, yet my flesh feels solid. I am the wrong shape and the wrong colour. These others have no waist or bust, and their flaunted flesh is brown instead of white as they walk and eat as carelessly as a herd of antelopes grazing.

In the chair beside mine a man - I think the figure is a masculine one - is speaking to himself. He holds a curious little box to his ear, and I am reminded of Tommy conversing with his invisible friend personified by a cotton-reel. Now here comes a troupe of Brobding-nagian children. Boys and girls alike are dressed in white camisoles and indecently short brown trowsers. Bloomeriana everywhere. I cannot look at their plump forest of limbs without shame. They march and stride and shout in English with the strangest accent. A group behind me on the grass - male? female? - shout out like costermongers.

‘Where you from?’

‘Hooston Tecksass.’

Their words make no more sense than the honking geese that fly above our heads, and yet I feel less alien now I know that some kind of English is the language of paradise. Thank goodness it isn’t Greek or Latin or horrid French. I am so dreadfully hot and hungry and thirsty and have no money to buy refreshments. Do angels use money? The sky at least is familiar. To gauge the time I stare at the sun behind me, which is quite low, and wonder if there is any night here.

I think I sleep - if dreams can be punctuated by more sleep - and dream perhaps of you, my dearest Charles. I wake with a powerful sensation of your arms around me, and my heart beats fast as if we had just been Saying Goodnight. But I am cramped and alone in my deckchair. My mouth is a dry-shrivelled cave and my head is a throbbing wall of pain behind my weepers. I have been in mourning for so long. For Mama and Papa and now for Bella. I am glad of it, for I am tearful and conscious of the advantage of being able to hide my face like many of the other ladies around me. We black beetles relish the protection of our veils, but I peer out of mine to observe that these gardens are not after all timeless. The birds and strange crowds are scattering. They all have nests.

For the first time I feel afraid of the coming darkness. Crows fly angrily across the setting sun, and on the sheet of water ahead of me a toy boat swoops and zooms all by itself with wild insect humming. Are the nights very long in Heaven? Are there footpads among the angels? I wish now I had asked Henrietta, who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the afterlife.

The gardens are emptying rapidly. The sweet droves of children fade away, and the few people remaining glow in the rosy sunset. I am too tired to move from my deckchair. I think I will spend the night here after all.

‘Love the costume.’

No gentleman would accost an unknown lady. No lady would sit alone as night descends on strange gardens. Flustered by rules I thought had been suspended I stand up. A breeze ripples across the water and billows my skirts around me.

‘Bin filmin’? Fancy a drink?’

I don’t understand the first part of his insolent proposition, and I most certainly do fancy a drink, but I cut him, of course, and walk swiftly away across the path. My heart beats dreadfully as I think I am almost alone with this stranger who wears neither hat nor gloves and whose voice is unrefined. The human tide bears me out of the gardens on a broad path where people stare at me and I stare back. They are young, and many of them are half-naked with strange metal rings and studs embedded in their noses and mouths. Perhaps some primitive tribe half-civilized by missionaries?

I relieve myself in the bushes and dry myself on my shift. I emerge to meet disapproving stares - I have never felt so many eyes upon me - a most disagreeable sensation. I wish I could run as I used to when I was a child, but I have no strength. My black silk slippers are in ribbons, for I have already walked for miles. Through them I feel a hard surface as I leave the gardens and cling to railings.

Dearest Charles, how I wish that you were here to protect me. The river of people is a mere trickle now, and beyond it there is a torrent of monstrous traffic. I would like to hail a hackney cab, but I have no money and there are no carriages. There is not a horse in sight, only racing behemoths with dazzling yellow eyes. The sky is streaked with pink now, and above me are hideous orange lights. Behind me in the gardens I can hear shouting and laughter, and I fear that some drunken rabble is about to descend on me. There is a fearful noise like wailing banshees as yellow centaurs with wheels where their limbs should be flash past.

I am shaking like a fox that has been chased for miles by a pack of baying hounds. Darkness falls, but it is sprinkled with yellow lights like eyes, and I fear there may be garrotters. Now the gardens behind me, which were so enchanting a few hours ago, seethe with strange noises. On the other side of the broad highway I see lights and houses. Some of them are large and must be inhabited by the better class of people, so I decide to knock on one of the doors and entrust myself to some kind stranger. But as I stand waiting to cross the formidable road a gang of wild urchins surrounds me. They laugh and tug at my dress. ‘Weird clothes.’

A case of the pot calling the kettle black, for girls and boys alike wear tight bloomers and a kind of ragged bandage, but I am silent for there are seven of them. I suppose they are about eighteen, and one of them - a girl, I think - presses a painted face near to mine. Curious metal rings and studs inserted in her nostrils and lips remind me of a prize pig.

‘Wicked veil.’

‘You a Muslim or what, mate?’

Hands pull my weepers from my head. They laugh and shriek as they pull my hair most painfully, and I have no choice but to loosen my hairpins and let them run off with my veil. Now that my head is bare my hair falls around me, and I feel more exposed than ever.

There is a gap in the thunderous traffic. I pick up my skirts and try to run across the road, which is very clean although there is no crossing sweeper. But my torn slippers impede me, and one of them falls off in the middle of the road as a monstrous vehicle bears down upon me. There is a terrible bellowing in my ears, and I am unable to move. I sink to my knees in the middle of the road and hear a screeching sound. I see an enraged red face looming over me - a gentleman - although his language is most intemperate.

I limp to the other side of the road. It is so uncomfortable to walk with only one slipper that I jettison it and continue with just a few shreds of silk stocking between myself and the coarse ground. Close up the houses are substantial. I select the grandest and walk up to the front door. I know I must look a sight, for I am barefoot and my hair is in maenad-like tangles. I feel I am indeed a beggar at the gate and hope the servant who opens the door is amiable and will at least offer me a glass of water and a piece of bread. I long to wash my face and hands and comb my hair. Confusion and thirst and exhaustion have conspired to become a wretched headache as I search for a knocker or bell to pull. There is a row of little buttons to the right of the front door and beside each a box and a name. Mahfouz - Cohen - Gentilleschi - Barnes. I choose Barnes as being the least outlandish and press the button next to it. A female voice squawks out of the wall.

‘Who is it?’

‘Please excuse me, madam. I have lost my way and feel unwell. My name is Mrs Nina Sanderson, and my husband is a most respectable -’

‘If you’re selling something I’m not interested.’

‘Please could you help me?’

‘Phukoph.’

The wall is silent. I look around for the owner of the voice, but there is nobody to be seen.

Outside the unwelcoming house I turn left and hobble past brilliantly lit houses, shops and taverns. Everywhere I see people who are half-undressed and jolly and even intoxicated. They all stare at me but do not speak, and I am afraid to approach anybody else. My bleeding feet and throbbing head pull me forward, but I know not where or why. There is another road with gaudy red and yellow and green lights twinkling above it. This time I dare not cross it alone and wait until a gentleman approaches.

‘Got any change?’

I seem to have experienced nothing but change all day, but I don’t understand what he means.

‘For the night shelter. Can you spare fifty pee?’

I think after all he is not a gentleman. As I follow him across the road I observe his pockmarked skin and unkempt appearance.

‘Never mind, love. You look worse than me. You sleeping rough,

too?’

I pass on through festive streets where men and women sit at chairs and tables on the pavement. They are eating and drinking, and I think they must be celebrating some great victory. Ladies - or at least scantily dressed females - walk alone in the night. I recall your stories of the poor creatures in the Haymarket, but these women are not desperate or unhappy. Their faces are bold and almost masculine in their brazen gaze. Many of them hold little boxes to their ear and chatter to imaginary friends. They stare at me, and I stare back. I feel alone and dowdy, for my dress is like a black curtain in the midst of their bright garments. A second curtain hangs inside my head - a fog of misery and muddle.

With every step I feel smaller and more like the black beetle Tommy compared me with. I come to palatial buildings with dazzling windows full of gaudily dressed waxworks and curious furnishings and treasure troves of jewellery. Vast red houses on wheels rush past with faces staring out at me from brilliantly lit windows, and black patent vehicles and wheeled centaurs swoop after them. I stand in front of an Ali Baba’s cave blazing with brilliant white coffins and shiver to find that death has pursued me. Words leap out at me from the feverish blur of impressions. Zanussi - Indesit - John Lewis - Oxford Street.

There is no scrap of my Oxford Street to be seen. No Marshall & Snelgrove or Pantheon or Queen’s Bazaar or Oxford Market. Even slums and rookeries would be a comfort just now. I turn down a side-street to rest my eyes and walk past more of these transparent rooms. They are too rich and dazzling and too crowded with more waxwork figures that stare at me and smile cruelly in shameless semi-nudity.

I walk like an automaton and feel afraid to trust the familiar names that are attached to strange walls. Holles Street and Cavendish Square are like old friends who have disguised themselves for a masked ball. The dear mouth of Harley Street smiles at me, but the gate and the nightwatchman are not there. With my last strength I run towards our house.

I hear your manly voice directing our move from Finsbury after Tommy was born. ‘We’ll take the lease on the houses nearest to Cavendish Square. It’s dearer, but I’m more likely to catch fashionable patients there. If Sir Percy can get hold of the duchess and get himself knighted there’s no reason why I can’t ensnare a consumptive peeress or two. We’ll have to engage a better cook, and I shall entrust you with ordering more stylish dinners to help me on my way.’

I am reminded that Mrs Sturges seemed rather to despise the menu I ordered for our twelve guests next Thursday. These hum-drummeries are half a comfort and half a terror as I approach our door. Tommy will be in bed, and perhaps you will be sitting up in your study counting the guineas that will come in at the end of the year. I long to bury my face on your broad shoulder and weep as you explain that I suffered from concussion after I fell beneath the hansom cab and must rest. ‘Your hot little head is full of fancies,’ I hear you say as your deep chuckle reverberates in my ear. Now that I am so near you I seem to feel your strength through the walls. On our doorstep I reach out to pull the bell and do not care if I wake the household with its clamour.

But there is no bell. Our door is green instead of black, and where your plate should be there is a box set in the wall with a list of strange names - Botox Boutique - Beauty Unlimited - Dr Rudi Fleischer. There is a knocker, but it is not our old iron ring that we always meant to replace but never quite had the money to do so. It is a brassy yellow dolphin, and I reflect I would never have chosen it as I fling myself on it and hammer at the door. Silence. I stand back from the door and force myself to look at the house. The fanlight and the blocked windows and the doorstep are all the same, but the railings are quite different. They are black instead of green, and through them I see a strange bare room. It is not your waiting-room, although the Adam fireplace squints at me like a spiteful child in a game of hide-and-seek.

I fall down on the steps. I want only to return to our life. Even to the worst moments we have known - yes, even to Bella’s scarlatina, if it is not blasphemy to say so.

‘Are you ill?’

I am staring at the face of a young gentleman who bends over me with a puzzled air. His voice is kind and he is well looking, but I find I cannot speak.

‘There won’t be anybody here until the morning. Do you want a lift to A & E?’

Of course, in normal circumstances I would not accompany an unknown young bachelor to his chambers. But, my dearest Charles, I am sure you will understand that normality had fled and I was quite alone. I’m sure you will agree that I could not spend the night upon a doorstep, and I know you often say that relations between men and women should be more frank and open.

When I understand that he means to take me to St Mary’s Hospital I cry out in terror. I remember your stories of insanitary and drunken nurses and of beds infested with lice and bedbugs. How you said you would rather nurse Bella day and night than entrust her to the brutalities of St Mary’s.

‘Look, you’ve obviously been through some kind of trauma. I can’t just leave you here. When did you last eat?’

My stomach rumbles are so deafening that I fear he can hear. I explain that I have no money to pay for refreshment.

‘No problem. Come and keep me company. Are you an actress? Should I have heard of you?’

‘I am not at all notorious, I am glad to say. My name is Mrs Nina Sanderson, and I am the wife of Dr Charles Sanderson -’

‘Have you had a row?’

‘My husband and I live very quietly and harmoniously -’

‘Look, love, you don’t have to pretend with me. I know what marriage is like. I’m divorced.’

I rise to my feet and stare at him, for I have never seen a divorced person before. But my new friend is not in any way alarming. He has brown wavy hair and staunch blue eyes, and his skin is as soft and pink as a girl’s. From the beginning I talk to Jonathan as freely as if he were my brother.

I know my handsome rugged old bear could not suspect his little Nina puss of anything underhand. And that is why I am writing this to you, my darling Charles. When I first opened my eyes last Monday and saw you all gathered around me as if at my deathbed, I confess that just for a moment I regretted the freedom I had known. You caught that thought, and I saw the pain in your eyes. I have had a strange experience, and I defy your Science to explain what happened to me. Dearest, I have tried to tell you about it, but somehow we are not able to speak as frankly now as - before. I know you always said there should be perfect trust between husband and wife, and so I am scribbling these pages. When I finish I shall creep downstairs and push them under the door of your study. Then I shall lie awake and wait for you to come and Say Goodnight. For we are together again now in our own dear house, and all that is in the past - or in the future - you must admit it is confusing.

Jonathan wants to dine in a restaurant, but I am ashamed of the bird’s nest on my head and the beggarly feet poking out of my shabby bombazine.

‘You look fabulous. Sort of Tess meets Psycho. Where did you get that amazing dress?’

‘At Jay’s. It is not far from here if you should ever require any mourning.’

Then I remember that I do not know where Jay’s is any more and brush a tear away.

‘Oh G—d, please don’t start crying again!’

Jonathan persuades me to let him escort me back to his chambers where he says he will warm up a chicken ticker. It does not sound appetizing, but I am too hungry and tired to care, and so I take his arm. Imagine my surprise when we come to the very mews from where we hire our carriages. But there is no sign of any horses or carriages as Jonathan opens a door and we ascend to a garret.

I am astonished by his poverty. A large room with bare floorboards contains only a green sofa, shelves of books, a table and chairs and a few boxes. It is very clean but pitifully comfortless. There is no fireplace and not a scrap of wallpaper on the stark white walls, nor any curtains to soften the large dark window. I collapse on to the sofa to rest my poor feet and wish I could loosen my stays and take some smelling salts. I feel so weak that I think my poorly time must have arrived and worry how I shall manage in a strange place.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘Thank you. I do not think I was ever more thirsty in my life.’ He opens a spigot and hands me a glass of water, which I look at nervously.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I wonder - are you not afraid? My husband says that he who drinks a tumbler of London water has in his stomach more animated beings than there are men women and children on the face of the Globe.’

‘I think you’ll survive. Trust me.’

I sip the water and - oh, Charles - it is the cleanest, sweetest water you can imagine. I feel better at once. Jonathan bustles about. He is a veritable kitchenmaid as he opens drawers and cupboards and bangs plates. I feel I ought to help with these preparations, but I have no idea what to do, and besides I am exhausted. It is very pleasant to lie back and watch him.

‘Is it the housekeeper’s day off?’

He laughs. ‘And the butler’s off, too. Tikka masala or vindaloo? I like it hot.’

Conversing with him is like walking in a forest. There are glades of understanding succeeded by thickets of bewilderment, but I do not want to appear stupid, so I smile my way through the darkest undergrowth.

We picnic on the sofa in a very jolly way, and whatever it is that we eat for our impromptu supper is delicious. I think I was never so hungry in my life. We drink a little wine and a great deal of water, for the food is spicy.

Dear Charles, I think I must have fallen asleep for that is all I remember.

I awake in broad daylight to find Jonathan preparing a frugal breakfast, and there is a mouthwatering smell of coffee. I watch him through my eyelashes for a few minutes and feel a strange wave of happiness.

On reading this I am afraid you will think me callous. Of course, I constantly longed to see you and Tommy and to return to my domestic duties. But where were they?

I am touched by the way Jonathan shares his meagre breakfast with me.

‘You’ve been very good to me. I hope you find employment soon.’

‘I’m snowed under with work. But it’s Saturday, thank G—d. Don’t you think you’d better give your husband a ring?’

I glance down at my wedding ring and the mourning ring we had made of our darling’s hair.

Jonathan sighs. ‘Bathroom’s free if you want to freshen up before you go.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘Don’t you think that’s up to you?’

Seeing that I have angered him I flee into the bathroom, which is a tiny white-and-silver cubicle about the size of our linen cupboard. There are objects resembling a bath and a basin, but the commode is fiendishly complicated, and I cannot make any sense at all of a strange box like an upright coffin full of gleaming metal instruments like the ones in your surgery.

I have never undressed without a maid before. It is dreadfully hard, and I think my arms will come out of their sockets as I strain and wriggle to undo all the tiny buttons at the back of my bombazine. But I can hardly ask Jonathan to help me. The bathroom is so small and my dress is so big that it fills all the available space when at last I climb out of it. It swells like a great black balloon and floats between me and the door while the petticoats I shed flutter like frothy white clouds.

At last I stand in my corset and sit down on the commode. I know you always say I should be more frank about my bodily functions and that ‘Nature driven out through the door comes back through the window’. I establish that my poorly time is not, in fact, upon me. Then I take off my tattered stockings and struggle to unlace my stays. My corset stands alone like a gate I have just walked through, and I am quite naked. Something shimmers behind me, and I whirl around to find a looking-glass Nina. I have never seen myself unclothed before. So very white with red marks where my corset has bitten into me and my hair like a crazy jungle with dark frightened eyes peering out. I stare for a long time.

‘Are you all right in there?’

‘Yes!’ I cry and make haste to perform my ablutions. But I have no idea how the spigots work and soon become extremely wet without becoming any cleaner. Water floods the floor and laps at the black-and-white cliffs of my discarded clothes.

‘What the phuk -’

Jonathan bangs on the door, and I hear him shout above the veritable Niagara I have caused. I wrap myself in a threadbare dressing-gown that hangs beside the coffin and allow him to enter. He squeezes past my mountainous debris, then slips on the wet floor and bangs his head on the side of the basin. For a moment I think I have killed him and grow quite hysterical as I imagine that I shall be executed and never return to my proper self.

Then Jonathan springs up and turns off the spigots. He turns to me, and his cross, red face looms over me. I fear that he is going to shout at me or even hit me - you know how I detest scenes. But suddenly he laughs.

‘You’re hopeless! Anyone would think you’d never seen a bathroom before. Just go into my bedroom and get dressed there. Think you can manage that?’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I cannot dress myself.’

‘So you’re going home in my bathrobe?’

I draw it more tightly around me and feel it is the last thin wall between us. The room is so very small and his breath is hot on my cheek.

Dearest Charles, how you would have laughed to see how we resolved this crisis. Your foolish little wife became a disciple of Bloomerism. There was nothing for it but to wear the trowsers - Jonathan’s - and a tea shirt. This is a tiny short-sleeved garment that had no buttons to befuddle my fingers. It feels very strange to be inside those clothes. As if I am a little girl again running around in my shift. As if I am quite young and carefree and not a faded matron of twenty-eight with an establishment and a son and a dear dead daughter. On my feet I wear cumbersome great shoes more like boats than boots which are exceedingly ugly but very comfortable. My hair is a mass of tangles, and Jonathan’s comb breaks as I try to pull it through. I long for Lucy to come and brush it for me - and then to disappear again before she could be pert about my strange new clothes. Jonathan possesses neither a hairbrush nor a hat, so I bundle my hair up and twist it into my back-comb where it sits on top of my head like an angry porcupine.

Jonathan and I laugh as we mop the bathroom floor. The water has seeped out under the door and made puddles all over the bare floorboards of his little garret.

‘What are we going to do with this?’

He holds up my black bombazine, which seems to have grown again so that it swings from the ceiling like a great dark bell. Suddenly it looks quite ridiculous, and I can hardly believe I have lived inside it for so long. I laugh as I pick up one of my petticoats and fling it at him. My undergarments fly around the room like doves.

‘Your garret is very bare, and so I have brought some furnishings to fill it.’

I stand my bombazine and corset upon the floor, and there they remain for the rest of my visit.

A voice comes out of a box behind the sofa. I give a little squeal and listen as a man says horrid things in a most reasonable voice with a sweet smile. He speaks of people dead and wounded in far-flung places, and I can see the face of this man talking in the box. He is in the room with us, and yet when I rush around to the back of the box there is no sign of him. Jonathan stares at me and laughs again.

‘Nina, what are you on?’

‘Is it a riddle?’

‘You’re a riddle. Haven’t you seen a teavea before?’

‘I am very fond of riddles. Only I can’t remember any just at the present. Shall I tell you a joke?’

‘I can’t wait.’

‘A lady goes to visit her doctor and asks if the galvanic rings will cure depression. The doctor asks her what has caused the complaint, and the lady replies that it was the loss of her husband. And what do you think the doctor says?’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘He says then you had better get a wedding ring. Oh dear. You don’t think it’s amusing, do you?’

I stare down at my own wedding ring again because, of course, I have lost my husband, and now Jonathan says I have lost him as well, and then I see my mourning ring and remember the loss of Bella, and I cannot prevent the tears from brimming over. Then Jonathan tries to cheer me up by laughing at my joke, but his laugh is too late to convince me, and so he tries to comfort me.

By this time we are quite famished, and somehow it is clear that Jonathan no longer wishes me to leave. We walk out into bright summery streets.

Oh Charles, I do wish you could have seen the bright, merry place our dull and smoky old London has become. The night before I had been alone and frightened, but with Jonathan beside me every moment was a holiday. If you had been there you would have had your microscope out and your stethoscope and telescope and every other kind of scope, and you would have gone around measuring everything and asking questions. I know it makes you cross that I am not more methodical in my thinking, but I love to see new things - and what a banquet there was for my eyes.

Everywhere men and women walk together and drive in shiny kaas and sit and have luncheon on tables and chairs in public. The pavement is very clean, and I long to join this alfresco party, so Jonathan leads me to a delightful restaurant where charming-looking men and women chatter and laugh and listen to invisible music. I hear dozens of foreign languages and see as many exotic and dusky faces as at the Great Exhibition. All London is an exhibition, and there are very few Anglo-Saxons visible, yet most of these foreigners appear to be perfectly decent and respectable folk.

We sit down at a table in the middle of the thoroughfare, and the waiter brings a menu I cannot decipher.

‘You look happy.’

‘I think I was never so happy in my life. I hope this restaurant is not a very expensive one?’

Jonathan smiles and shows me a gaudy visiting card. ‘That’s what I’ll pay with.’

‘Has money been abolished?’

‘In your dreams.’

‘Perhaps this really is a dream, but if so it is a very pleasant one, and I am fortunate to dream it.’

In fact, I never once saw Jonathan use money apart from a few small coins. Everywhere we went he paid with his visiting card. I saw many others go to a hole in the wall near the restaurant where we sat and take bundles of money from it! So I think there has been some great Chartist revolution and the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has opened her coffers to all. I never once saw anyone ragged or starving upon the streets. A man came to our table also asking for ‘change’, and Jonathan gave him a coin, but this man cannot have been a beggar for he was well clothed and shod.

All of them wear the same clothes. Men and women and masters and servants alike are clad in tea shirts and trowsers. The colours vary and some of the ladies wear brightly coloured short shifts. Last night I felt like an ogress in my heavy dark clothes, but now I feel light and slender. Instead of an hour-glass - who would be made of brittle glass and weighed down by a crinoline and six petticoats? - I feel like a grenadier. No, not even that, for I wear no uniform and carry no sword. Like a boy going out with another boy for a lark. The way Jonathan’s trowsers have been rolled up to fit me makes me feel that I am at the seaside and about to go paddling.

Jonathan buys a newspaper as big as an encyclopaedia and hands me part of it. I glimpse the date at the top of the page. It is like a dressmaker’s bill - there are too many noughts, so I pretend to myself that I haven’t seen it. I already know I am in the future, but I have fallen in love with it and do not want to murder my love by scratching and picking at it. Then I start to read the newspaper, and it is horrid. I become very upset, for all the news is of death and war, and there is a beastly picture of a little child covered with burns. But Jonathan explains that in their wisdom they - the denizens of this happy future - only pretend that evil still exists so that they may appreciate their good fortune all the more.

‘Shall we go shopping?’

‘I should like it of all things.’

I am longing to ride in a kaa or horseless carriage but fear that the violent motion will make me sick as Mama was - all over my red gingham - the first time she went from Paddington to Maidenhead on G—d’s Wonderful Railway. Jonathan leads me through the clean, jolly streets until we come to a sort of scarlet perambulator. He opens a door with an enchanted flashing key and invites me to sit on a very low seat. Off comes the roof and off goes your Nina. I scream with delight as I fly away on this magic kaapet.

How to describe the wonders of that afternoon? Oh Charles, I do wish you had been there. The motion was very swift but not unpleasant. We flew like the wind, which took my breath away and made me more of a scarecrow than ever. Soon the half-familiar streets were far behind us, and we were in a brand-new London of broad highways and buildings vast as cathedrals. I think I shall always see that future London now etched behind our filthy old city.

We leave the kaa and enter an emporium. Not so much carriage trade as celestial trade. Imagine the Great Hall at Euston piled high with bananas and peaches and grapes and strawberries and pine apples and asparagus and tomatoes and lilies and daffodils and roses and lobsters and oysters and crabs and chickens and turkeys - as if every season had become one and all the countries in the world sacked to tickle the jaded appetite of some capricious queen. For every food I recognize there are six I cannot name. Even the potatoes and cabbages and apples are not our common-or-garden type but come in a multitude of guises. They are all cleaner and brighter and larger than ours. I think of what you said about the March of Progress and fall into step with it as I see how even an onion can evolve into a little spherical masterpiece.

I follow Jonathan as he wheels a metal cart and helps himself to this cornucopia. Invisible musicians play softly, and all around us are other carts pushed by other disciples of Bloomerism. Little children who sit upon some of these carts shriek and laugh and take sweetmeats and whatever they fancy from the munificent shelves. I think how Tommy would adore this place and poor Bella, too, and how a child might well believe itself to be in paradise.

As if in tune with this thought I see people floating above my head. You must not laugh when you read this, Charles, and say that all this happened in the reign of Queen Dick, for it is all true. I look up and see a line of heads ascending to the ceiling. A few yards away another group descends towards me. They glide with blithe insouciance as if it were quite an everyday matter to defy gravity. I run towards them and see that the staircase they stand upon is in motion. I feel quite faint to see this marvel and stand at the foot of the staircase gazing up at them.

‘What’s the matter with you now?’

I hold my tongue, for I understand that my raptures are not welcome to Jonathan. I try to suppress my gasps as we make our way along the bounteous lanes. Sometimes I seem to meet an old friend - a Cheddar cheese or a steak-and-kidney pie - but all are transformed.

When Jonathan has filled his cart to the brim he wheels it to a desk where a beautiful young lady smiles at us and packs it into bags. Jonathan gives her his visiting card, and that is the end of the transaction. Without paying a penny we carry our booty out to the waiting kaa.

Back in his garret I watch as Jonathan stores the food in his arctic larder and prepare a pot of tea. All these household tasks he performs by himself without a single servant to help him. A poor man - but riches are of no use in a world where all is free.

‘Sorry to be so boring.’

‘I was never less bored in my life.’

‘You’re very polite. What would you like to do now?’

‘May I really choose?’

‘I want you to enjoy yourself. I like it when you laugh.’

‘Are there still theatres and opera houses and museums?’

‘If they’ve done away with them since last week nobody’s told me.’

‘I suppose they are very dear.’

He hands me a shiny little magazine that is a kind of guidebook to his London.